Monday April 18, 2022
12 News —
Arizona’s top water official says he never thought this day would come so soon.
Federal officials are warning that the West’s escalating water crisis could put some Arizona communities’ “health and safety” at risk, by cutting off their supply of drinking water.
“This is really getting to (be) a health and safety issue… the health and safety of those who want to turn on the tap and have water,” Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s director of water resources, said in an interview on this weekend’s “Sunday Square Off.”
Arizona and other Western states have until Friday to respond to an emergency request to postpone their water deliveries from the Colorado River, in order to shore up a rapidly diminishing Lake Powell.
If Lake Powell’s levels continue to fall, the letter says, access to drinking water would be cut off for the 7,500 residents of Page, at the southwestern tip of the reservoir, and the neighboring Navajo community of LeChee.