Today, the federal government released a final environmental report outlining its plan to manage Lake Powell and Lake Mead – two massive reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin. 

This is the latest development in a years-long deadlocked negotiation between the Upper and Lower Basin states over how to manage the Colorado River – the drinking water source for 40 million people across the United States.   

Food & Water Watch Research Director Amanda Starbuck released the following statement: 

“This proposal, like other ones, misses the real problem: how our current food system is not in line with our climate reality. We have been seeing decades of megadrought – supercharged by climate change – across the Western US and instead of dealing with this issue head on, we are giving away our water by the millions of gallons to corporate factory farms at every turn. Now, with the looming threat of thirsty AI hyperscale data centers proposals on the horizon, we could see these threats to our water compound. It is more vital than ever that Basin states rein in the water use of Big Ag and other industries.”

Food & Water Watch analysis has shown: 

• Across all seven Basin states, alfalfa farms produced over 12 million tons of alfalfa, consuming an estimated 2.1 trillion gallons of water in 2025.
  • 40% of this is occurring on large farms (1,000+ acres), up from 32% in 2017.
  • This could supply the Basin states’ 40 million people with water for nearly 3 and a half years.
• In 2022, mega-dairies consumed 82 billion gallons of water across six of the seven Basin states.
  • This is enough to supply over 5.3 million people with their annual indoor water needs.
• In Basin states, the average acre-feet (AF) applied per acre of agricultural land is 2.6 AF/acre, 70% higher than the US average.