Overview
- Representatives from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and major water agencies in Arizona, California and Nevada signed a memorandum of understanding at the Carlsbad desalination plant on Wednesday to explore interstate water exchanges.
- The proposed trades would be 'paper' exchanges rather than physical piping, meaning San Diego could use more desalinated water while leaving some of its Colorado River allocation in the system for other agencies to use.
- The MOU is exploratory and non-binding, with key details still unresolved including how much water could move, how transfers would be legally accounted for across state lines, who pays, and what operational rules would apply.
- The Carlsbad plant produces about 56,000 acre-feet per year but desalinated water is far more expensive than Colorado River deliveries, so cost and scale will shape any deals and who can afford them.
- The step toward pilot projects and negotiations follows record-low mountain snowpack and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates that basin storage has fallen to about 36 percent of capacity, a pressure that officials say the swaps aim to relieve.