Drought Looms Over Midterm Elections within the Arid West

This story is a part of the Grist sequence Parched, an in-depth take a look at how local weather change-fueled drought is reshaping communities, economies, and ecosystems. You can subscribe to Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democratic senator from Arizona, is dealing with a powerful reelection problem from far-right Republican nominee Blake Masters, in a race that might be key for management of the Senate. Last month, throughout a televised debate between the 2 candidates, Masters went on the assault, criticizing Kelly’s positions on a number of points.

Toward the tip of the talk, after skewering Kelly on inflation and the border, Masters hit him on a extra area of interest subject: federal water cuts on the Colorado River.

“A few weeks ago the federal government cut Arizona’s water allocation 592,000 acre-feet,” Masters began. “For all you water nerds out there, that’s a lot of water. Guess how much water California had to cut? Zero. Guess what Mark Kelly did about it? Nothing.”

The assault was disingenuous — there was nothing Kelly may have completed to cease the cuts, since they have been negotiated well before he entered the Senate — however a number of weeks later, because the election approached, the incumbent senator made an identical plea. In a letter to the Biden administration, Kelly additionally urged federal officers to curb water deliveries to southern California’s Salton Sea, saying that the Golden State hadn’t completed sufficient to preserve water, and that any delay would lead “only to tougher choices and litigation” between the states.

Much of the western United States has suffered underneath drought circumstances this yr, however the impacts have been most acute within the Southwest, which depends closely on the Colorado River to provide water for cities and farms. So it’s no shock that drought has emerged as a key subject within the area forward of this week’s midterm elections. Senators and representatives in shut races have talked about drought in debates and marketing campaign advertisements, with susceptible incumbents like Kelly touting their efforts to battle the acute climate circumstances as proof that they’re delivering for his or her constituents.

While points like inflation and abortion entry nonetheless high most voters’ precedence lists, the Southwest’s water scarcity has however change into an essential speaking level for western politicians as they hit the marketing campaign path, and will transfer the needle in ultra-close races like Kelly’s.

As water ranges within the Colorado River proceed to fall, the federal authorities has instituted mandatory water cuts like one Masters alluded to in his debate efficiency, and customers from California to Colorado are scrambling to search out new conservation strategies to cope with the approaching crunch. In response to the rising disaster, a group of Democratic senators from western states — together with Kelly, his Arizona colleague Kyrsten Sinema, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Michael Bennet of Colorado — secured $4 billion in drought funding as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which handed the Senate in August. Most of that $4 billion pays farmers alongside the Colorado to go away their fields unplanted subsequent yr, which can ease the burden on the river. Other funds will go to long-term water conservation methods, reuse techniques, and different drought reduction measures.

Three of these 4 Democratic senators are up for re-election this yr, and two of them — Kelly and Nevada’s Cortez Masto — are in severe hazard of dropping their seats. Arizona’s Kelly is polling just a few points ahead of Masters, who has gained help in latest weeks. Cortez Masto, in the meantime, is in a dead heat along with her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.

Political teams backing Kelly and Cortez Masto have touted their roles in acquiring the $4 billion in drought funding in advertisements on tv and social media, saying it exhibits how the senators have delivered for his or her constituents. EDF Action, the political arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, spent $1.5 million on Spanish-language advertisements hyping Kelly’s drought document.

“It’s easy for politicians to grandstand, it’s harder for elected officials to really be problem solvers,” stated David Kieve, the president of EDF Action and a former member of the Biden administration’s White House Council on Environmental Quality. “When they do, their constituents are going to notice and it’s going to be of benefit to them politically.”

Kelly and Cortez Masto have each talked up their drought credentials on the marketing campaign path in an try to indicate how they’ve delivered for constituents. Cortez Masto, in the meantime, has pushed the Biden administration to implement harder and extra forward-looking water restrictions, saying the administration wants to make sure that “all states along the Colorado River take the actions that Nevada already has.” The state is comparatively well-equipped to resist the current scarcity on the Colorado River because of its longstanding coverage of banking unused water in Lake Mead, however drought continues to be front-of-mind for a lot of voters within the state: Almost two-thirds of Nevadans think about coping with water shortages to be a high precedence, in line with a latest EDF ballot, rating it greater than training and crime.

But whereas speak of preventing drought is common on either side of the aisle, the subject of local weather change just isn’t. To that finish, Kelly and Cortez Masto are attempting to separate the two issues, stated Elizabeth Koebele, a professor of political science on the University of Nevada, Reno who has studied drought politics.

Cortez Masto, as an illustration, has spent far more time touting the drought investments within the Inflation Reduction Act than she has spent discussing the invoice’s new investments in renewable vitality. She has additionally insisted she doesn’t see climate-fueled water shortages as a marketing campaign subject, and has typically mentioned it with out mentioning world warming. That’s despite the truth that rising temperatures have helped to make the current western megadrought the worst in additional than a millennium.

“Climate is not a priority issue for voters often, and so we’ve actually seen some of these candidates up for reelection in the West who have sort of downplayed talking about climate,” stated Koebele. “Anytime drought gets attached to long-term trends in climate, it gets more politicized.”

Drought has popped up in different shut congressional races as effectively. In California’s agriculture-heavy Central Valley, the place residents have struggled with dry wells and polluted groundwater for many years, Republican Representative David Valadao has waffled on the connection between drought and local weather change.

“We’ve always had drier years and wetter years,” he told CNN, acknowledging that “there’s a possibility that [climate change] plays a role” in drought. President Biden gained Valadao’s district by about 10 factors in 2020, which makes Valadao one of the vital susceptible House Republicans this election season. His most distinguished opponent, Democrat Rudy Salas, has not emphasised local weather change as a problem in itself, however has touted his efforts within the state legislature to safe water infrastructure and help for ailing farmers.

Also within the Central Valley, a Republican farmer named John Duarte is hoping to flip a Democratic-held seat that encompasses the cities of Modesto and Merced. Duarte grew to become well-known for partaking in an extended authorized battle towards the federal authorities over water laws, and he’s spent lots of time on the marketing campaign path speaking concerning the need to build new dams to shore up California’s water provide, one thing environmental teams have lengthy opposed.

The stakes round all this speak are excessive. The end result of the midterms may sway the way forward for federal drought coverage.

The present Democrat-led Congress has handed three main spending payments that every one contained some form of funding for local weather motion or local weather resilience, with cash obtainable for drought response in every certainly one of them. In addition to the $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, the group of senators led by Kelly and Sinema additionally secured greater than $8.3 billion in long-term drought funding in final yr’s bipartisan infrastructure invoice. That cash will go to develop new reservoirs and different water sources throughout the area. Nevada governor Steve Sisolak, in the meantime, has used cash from the federal $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of early 2021, often known as the COVID-19 stimulus invoice, to fund water conservation efforts.

If Democrats lose management of 1 or each chambers, it may imperil future spending like this. The House of Representatives handed a drought spending invoice again in July that contained another $500 million for western water conservation, however the invoice stalled out within the Senate for lack of Republican help. If the Republicans retake the House or the Senate, that laws will probably be lifeless within the water, particularly if Kelly and Cortez Masto aren’t round to advocate for it. Republican leaders have stated they hope to make use of their new majorities to cut government spending and examine President Biden, which takes much more drought funding payments off the desk.

Meanwhile, neither Masters in Arizona nor Laxalt in Nevada have put ahead any detailed proposals for drought response: both candidates have stated they imagine constructing new desalination plants may assist enhance the West’s water provide, however desalination on a big scale is troublesome to realize. Laxalt has criticized Cortez Masto for supporting funding efforts just like the Inflation Reduction Act, saying she “should have demanded real change in exchange for her vote on any number of Democrat spending bills.”

Even so, says Koebele, a change in who controls Congress gained’t derail the continued negotiations over the way to clear up the Colorado River disaster. Those negotiations are led not by Congress however by representatives from state water departments, a lot of whom are longtime civil servants, and by main water customers, who aren’t politicians in any respect. The identical goes for points just like the Central Valley’s groundwater scarcity — Congress may help out, nevertheless it’s as much as native leaders to search out everlasting options.

“These water managers are closer than senators and representatives to the actual water issues, so there’s going to be continued momentum,” she stated. “Policymaking is still going to happen, but it might change the resources that the federal government can bring to the table.”