Drought on tap to intensify over US Southwest

Climatologists and other experts are scheduled Wednesday to provide an update on the situation in the Four Corners region – where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet.
The area is dealing with exceptional drought – the worst category.
That has left farmers, ranchers and water planners bracing for a much different situation than just a year ago when only a fraction of the region was experiencing low levels of dryness.
With the region’s water resources strained, a top federal official has resumed pressure on states in the Southwest to wrap up long-delayed emergency plans for potential shortages on the Colorado River, which serves 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico.
"We face an overwhelming risk on the system, and the time for action is now," Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman said Tuesday.
She spoke before the Imperial Irrigation District in Southern California, one of the biggest single users of the Colorado River.
Forecasters say the river will carry only about 43 percent of its average amount of water this year into Lake Powell, one of two big reservoirs on the system.
There’s a 52 percent chance that Mexico and the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada will take a mandatory cut in their share of water in 2020 under the agreements governing the river, forecasters have said.
The river this summer is expected to dry as far north as Albuquerque, New Mexico’s most populous city.
It wasn’t enough to make up for months without meaningful precipitation.

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