After one of the Colorado River’s driest years in decades, Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the largest reservoirs in the country — could see alarming declines in the coming years, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced today.

Federal officials again called for Arizona and Nevada to cut back their supplies from the overtapped river — though California, with its senior claims to the river’s water, will be spared.

While expected, today’s two-year projection ratchets up tension among seven states in the Colorado River basin, which have struggled to agree on the river’s management after 2026, when current guidelines expire.

“The urgency for the seven Colorado River Basin states to reach a consensus agreement has never been clearer. We cannot afford to delay,” Scott Cameron, the Department of

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