Colorado River talks hit crunch time. What’s at stake for California water?

This story was originally published by . for their newsletters.

The clock is ticking down to a federal deadline Tuesday for California and six other Western states to reach the broad strokes of a deal portioning out supplies from the parched Colorado River.

Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal stewards for the river under the Department of the Interior, have threatened to impose their own plan if the states can’t agree how to manage the river after 2026, when the river’s current rulebook expires.

Dire projections that another dry year could send the basin’s major reservoirs plummeting to alarmingly low levels have ramped up .

But, after , the states remain at an impasse. Those in the river’s lower basin — California, Arizona, and Nevada — are clashing with Colorado,