Interior Department head Doug Burgum signs off on Colorado River reduction plan for 2027-2028, cutting allocations for Arizona, Nevada and California

The U.S. Department of the Interior has approved Colorado River water reductions for Arizona, Nevada and California for the 2027 and 2028 periods, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signing off on the change on Aug. 21, according to a report published Tuesday.

Under the department’s approach, the reductions would apply to the amount of water Interior allocates through the Colorado River system to the three states during those two operating years. The approval is described as part of the Department of the Interior’s 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines, which the department uses to set how water is managed across the river basin while balancing federal obligations and state contracts.

The Aug. 21 sign-off, as described in the report, was attached to the Interior Department’s 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines. The guidelines are intended to provide a framework for how federal reservoir operations and related planning support Colorado River water delivery under conditions that can include drought risk, reservoir levels, and other hydrologic factors.

The report states that the decision reduces allocations in the three-state system that depends on Colorado River deliveries, affecting how much water those states receive through the federal planning and administration of the river. It also identifies the Interior secretary as the decision-maker who signed the governing documents for the operating periods in question.

While the report centers on the Interior Department’s approval, Colorado River management also depends on a larger web of agreements and state implementation steps. The practical effect of Interior’s allocation adjustments typically runs through the way deliveries are scheduled and administered under applicable contracts and operating plans, meaning state agencies would be expected to align their distribution practices with the federal framework during the 2027-2028 timeframe.

The Interior Department’s operating guidance is often tied to the legal and administrative responsibilities the federal government holds for river management, including the setting of operating conditions for federally managed assets and the translation of hydrologic triggers into delivery rules. In that context, Interior’s signed guidelines report that federal water-allocation parameters for 2027 and 2028 will move forward under the newly approved reduction framework.

Neither the report nor the information provided with this discovery item specifies, in the summary available here, the precise size of the reductions or whether particular triggers, exemptions, or compliance mechanisms apply to the three states in the 2027-2028 periods. If more detailed terms are published in the underlying Interior guidelines document, those provisions would determine how the reductions are calculated and how they would be implemented across the basin for the affected states.