Why the western US is running out of water, in one chart

More than one in 10 Americans rely on the Colorado River to take showers and drink clean water. But with no end in sight to the decades-long drought in the western US and rapidly decreasing river levels, this essential resource is fueling bitter disputes over who, exactly, should be cutting back on water. 

This fight has been coming to a head especially among the seven states that make up the Colorado River Compact — California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming — as well as a sliver of Mexico and over 20 tribal nations that rely on the 1.9 trillion gallons of water pulled from the Colorado River for use each year. 

Record low snowfall in the West this winter has further strained the situation, and this week, tensions are running especially high. 

The Colorado River Compact states failed to reach a Valentine’s Day deadline for a deal on how water would be apportioned for the next two decades, with the current rules set to expire this fall. If the states don’t agree to more ambitious cuts soon, the federal government could step in and unilaterally decide for them. 

But it’s unclear exactly what that future would look like. Last year, the US Department of the Interior published a proposal with five potential options for the river’s future. Most involve a mix of voluntary and mandated water usage cuts, while another — fairly dire — option is “no action” at all. 

The ongoing and escalating water crunch has inspired localities throughout the West to creatively conserve water through water recycling programs, ripping out grass lawns, and hiking rates when households use water in excess. But ultimately, if the Colorado River has any chance at sustaining tens of millions of Americans for decades to come, the western United States will need to do something that, on the surface, doesn’t seem to have much to do with water conservation at all: raise a lot fewer cows. 

The Colorado River is running dry to feed cows

When we think about water use, we probably think of ourselves first — the water we drink, the toilets we flush, or the lawns we tend. Next, we might think of commercial uses, like water to irrigate golf courses and run car washes; or on an even larger scale, water used for fracking or operating power plants. But the biggest user of water, by far — especially among the Colorado River states — is agriculture. 

Farming accounts for about 75 percent of annual Colorado River water usage, according to a 2024 paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

But not all agricultural sectors are equally thirsty. While a small share of the Colorado River water is used on farms to grow fruits and vegetables, like lettuce, oranges, and grapes, almost half of it — by far the lion’s share — is used to grow just alfalfa and other types of hay, virtually all of which is used to feed beef and dairy cattle. 

Portions of the other crops grown with Colorado River water, like corn, wheat, cotton, sorghum, and oats, are likely fed to livestock, too.

All told, animal feed accounts for at least 47 percent of all water pulled from the Colorado River — yet the imprudence of devoting so much water to one industry receives little to no attention in public discussion over the West’s water crisis. 

What’s more, the millions of cows in the American West are themselves fueling climate change in a non-insignificant way with their methane-rich burps, which in turn accelerates the water shortages for the river.

And these crops provide little economic activity to the region. For example, almost 70 percent of all of Utah’s water is used to grow alfalfa, though it represents just 0.2 percent of the state’s GDP.

As I wrote a few years ago: “The West’s already limited water is primarily used to grow a low-value crop, alfalfa, while cities are left to spend heavily on water-saving infrastructure to keep the H2O running and ensure reserves.” 

Yet few politicians — or us, the consumers of burgers, cheese, and steaks — are willing to question the status quo of ceding so much of this shared and increasingly sparse natural resource to the cattle industry.

The uncertain future of the West’s water supply

If policymakers and agricultural researchers were to start our food system from scratch, they probably wouldn’t put a bunch of cows in the desert. 

Despite the problems the West’s large cow population has created, policymakers also can’t just pull them off the land or rip alfalfa plants from the soil. Or turn off the spigots for, either. That’s because in the American West, water rights are set by what’s called the “prior appropriation” doctrine — whoever uses the water first lays claim to those rights and holds them indefinitely so long as they use the water. 

California farmers were among the first to claim these rights in the mid- and late-1800s in the wake of the 1862 Homestead Act, which gave Western settlers free land to cultivate. Today, senior water rights holders are given priority, by law, over more junior water rights holders. (In the eastern US, where water is more plentiful, water rights are more egalitarian.)

“It is a stupid system, but the problem is that people are really heavily invested in that system,” John Matthews, executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, told me a few years back. There are some potential solutions, such as paying farmers to fallow their fields and allowing more farmers to sell or lease their water rights to municipalities.

While farms across the Colorado River Compact have innovated to cut water use and waste, they’re still the biggest H2O guzzler by far. One California irrigation district dominated by alfalfa crops for cattle alone uses more water than all of Colorado uses for everything. 

In current negotiations, the Lower Basin states — California, Arizona, and Nevada — have all committed to significant cuts. But the Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming — have refused to commit to such reductions, arguing that California and Arizona have long overconsumed water. The stalemate shows no signs of resolving soon.

Such battles over water in the West have been playing out for more than a century, and it’s all but certain they’ll continue, especially in the increasingly parched decades ahead. That is, unless policymakers — along with food companies and we consumers — address the cow in the room and challenge our meat- and dairy-centric status quo. 

In the meantime, people living in the West will continue to be told to remove their grass lawns and take shorter showers while largely symbolic scapegoats like golf courses and data centers will take the fall for the real source of the West’s water crisis: ranchers, dairy producers, and their millions and millions of cows.