r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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u/ragnarokxg 1d ago

Colorado and New Mexico cutting off the water to the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers would hurt Arizona and Texas so bad.

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u/starmartyr Colorado 1d ago

Nevada as well. Las Vegas would be uninhabitable within weeks.

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u/Scott5114 Nevada 1d ago

Nevada depends so heavily on California agriculture that if California is out Nevada kind of has no choice but to go along with it.

Nevada also isn't (that kind of) stupid so I would imagine that you'd get a CO-NV water rights compact in place pretty quickly. NV really doesn't use a whole lot of Colorado River water since most of what we do use can be recycled fairly effectively. Las Vegas's net water usage is tiny for a city of our size.

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u/starmartyr Colorado 21h ago

The city is dependant on the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead is fed by the Colorado River. If there isn't enough water flowing into Lake Mead, it starts a short countdown before the city hits a permanent blackout.

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u/Scott5114 Nevada 18h ago

I know; I live here in Las Vegas. Our dependency on Lake Mead is why the governor of Nevada would be on the next flight to Denver to sort things out if it ever happened.

That being said, Nevada would be more interested in the water rights than the rights to the electricity from the dam (if that's what you're implying by the word blackout). Because Las Vegas only barely existed when the dam was built, we only get 25% of the electricity the dam generates, with 19% going to Arizona and the rest to California. Most of Las Vegas's power is supplied by natural gas and solar. Losing the power we do get from the dam would suck, but not anywhere nearly as badly as losing the water. NVEnergy could make up the difference eventually, but there's really no way to substitute the water supply (and if you somehow did you would fuck over the rest of the state).

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u/crankyrhino Texas 1d ago

Have you seen the Rio Grande lately? There's not much water there these days.

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u/bassman1805 1d ago

Yeah, so imagine how much worse it'd be if CO stopped giving a shit about the people downriver.