Seven states that depend on the drought-stricken Colorado River have failed to meet a federal deadline of Jan. 31 to strike a deal on voluntary water use cuts, an impasse that could eventually force the Biden administration to impose cuts as the West grapples with historic drought and record low water level in reservoirs.

After talks stalled, six of the seven states that rely on the Colorado River instead submitted a proposal to the Bureau of Reclamation that outlined ways to reduce water use and accounted for water losses from evaporation and unsustainable infrastructure.

A proposal called “an alternative to consensus-based modeling“, was jointly submitted by Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The proposal specifically excluded California, the largest user of the Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million people. Officials said the state will release its own plan.

The six-state document outlined an approach to help protect the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam infrastructure, water supply and power generation, and prevent Colorado River reservoirs from reaching a “dead pool,” which occurs when water levels drop so low that which may not move downstream from the dam.

The Colorado River has long been in excess, but climate change has exacerbated drought conditions in the region, and reservoir levels have dropped dramatically over the past few decades. The western United States is experiencing its driest two decades at least after 1200 yearswater levels in the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, reached record lows.

Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University’s Kyle Center for Water Policy, said the states’ proposal is a “very sincere commitment” to move forward with negotiations on the water shutdown and prevent reservoirs from falling to dangerous levels.

“It’s easy to overlook how complex and difficult it is for every state,” Porter said. “We have to take less water out of the system, and that’s the hardest negotiation.”

Water Services emphasized that the proposal is not a formal agreement between the states, but rather an important step toward protecting the Colorado River and eventually reaching a seven-state agreement.

“This modeling proposal is a key step in the ongoing dialogue among the Seven Basin States as we continue to seek a collaborative solution to stabilize the Colorado River system,” said Tom Bushatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

Still, the failure to reach a deal marks the second time in six months that the seven states that use water from the Colorado River have missed a deadline to agree on cuts under the Department of the Interior, which manages the river’s flows.

Historically, the states were the ones who figured out how to divide up the water of the Colorado River. But failure to agree on cuts could put the responsibility on the federal government.

The Biden administration called on seven states to save 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water, or up to a third of the river’s average flow. By comparison, California has the right to use 4.4 million acre-feet of river water per year, while Arizona has the right to 2.8 million acre-feet per year. (An acre-foot of water is roughly what two average households use each year.)

While in Arizona took the brunt of it government water cuts – specifically for the state’s farmers, who grow produce in the desert and use nearly three-quarters of available water to irrigate crops.

The alternative outlined by the six states calls for water cuts that nearly reach the lower limit of 2 million acre-feet that federal officials have called for, with almost all of the mandatory cuts concentrated in Arizona, California and Nevada.

The proposal also calls for “voluntary conservation measures” in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Becky Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Council, said the approach “properly distributes the load across the basin and provides protection for tribes, water users and ecological values ​​in the upper basin.”

The Bureau of Reclamation is set to release a draft of its proposal in March for how it operates the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams, and will consider a letter from six states as part of that plan.