Twenty families in the Imperial Valley received a whopping 386.5 billion gallons of the river’s water last year — more than three Western states. Century-old water rights guarantee that supply.
As the Biden administration moves closer to cutting how much water states can pull from the Colorado River, famers in California's Imperial Valley are in a powerful but precarious position.
The vast California lake relies on runoff from cropland to avoid disappearing. But as farmers face water cuts due to drought and an ever drier Colorado River, the Salton Sea stands to lose again.
The seven states that rely on the river for water are not expected to reach a deal on cuts. It appears the Biden administration will have to impose reductions.
What happens in Imperial matters to everyone else in part because of the valley’s startlingly large draw on the Colorado River, which supplies 40 million people across seven states.
