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New Report by Food & Water Watch Reveals Big Ag is Draining Colorado River Dry [1]
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Date: 2025-05-06
The environmental organization Food & Water Watch last week published a new analysis exposing the impact of Big Ag on the Colorado River. The impact of Big Ag in California has been particularly egregious, leading to the dewatering of the once thriving Colorado River Delta where the region’s Indigenous Peoples have fished, hunted and farmed since time immemorial.
In California alone, the report reveals that:
In 2024, alfalfa farms consumed an estimated 545 billion gallons of water, with over 50% occurring on large farms (1,000+ acres). This is equivalent to 38% of California’s Colorado River allocation and could supply the combined populations of LA and San Diego with water for almost 7 years.
In 2022, California’s 1.7 million mega-dairy cows consumed 55.5 billion gallons of water, a 7% increase from 2017 and the largest total consumption across Basin states. This is enough to supply 3.6 million people with their annual indoor water needs.
In California, the average acre-feet applied per acre of agricultural land is 2.9 AF/acre, over 90% higher than the US average.
“Protecting the Colorado River – which supplies water for nearly 40 million Americans every year – is more vital than ever now, as President Trump’s administration’s decisions are putting our water resources even more at risk, according to the group,” the group reported.
An analysis reveals the agribusiness industry’s over-consumption of the Colorado River’s water including that:
In 2024, thirsty alfalfa farms consumed an estimated 2.15 trillion gallons of water across all seven Basin states. 40% of these farms are 1,000+ acres. This could supply the Basin states’ 40 million people with water for 3 and a half years.
In 2022, mega-dairies consumed an estimated 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 of water applied per acre of agricultural land is 70% higher than the US average.
Food & Water Watch said the agricultural system has created a “feedback loop” where more thirsty crops are being grown to feed animals on factory farms, leaving less water for communities.
“One of the Trump administration’s first executive orders paused about $4 billion that had been set aside to protect the Colorado River. Some funds are reportedly resorted, but many remain in limbo. In addition, federal staff cuts continue to threaten water security across the Western United States at large,” the group stated.
All of this comes as the surrounding river basin states are currently negotiating a plan for cutting water use along the Colorado, with the current interim rules expiring at the end of 2026, the group stated.
“A week after Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission resigned after pressure from the new administration – with the seat still remaining vacant. In January, Arizona’s government included up to $3 million for litigation related to the Colorado River in a proposed state budget – lending credence to suspicions that negotiations could break down and lead to a Supreme Court battle,” the group added.
“With the Colorado River already under threat from President Trump’s nonsensical and damaging water policies and funding cuts, it is more imperative than ever that we protect our precious water resources,” said Food & Water Watch Research Director Amanda Starbuck. “Big Ag operations in Basin States continue to use staggering amounts of water and don’t seem to be letting up any time soon. Basin State leaders must hold firm on water conservation goals and take on major water abusers by instituting a moratorium on new and expanding nut crop and mega-dairy operations.”
The draining of the Colorado River — and the violation of indigenous fishing rights in the Delta — was brought to light in an article I wrote in April 2026 for Counterpunch. In light of the Food & Water Watch report, this article reveals the terrible impact the destruction of the ecosystem has caused to the Indigenous Peoples of the Colorado River:
Zapatistas on the Colorado Delta
Since February 26, the Cucapa Tribe in El Mayor, Baja California has organized an historic Zapatista peace camp to defend their fishing rights against harassment and intimidation by the Mexican government on the Colorado River Delta.
The idea for the camp originated during a visit by Subcomandante Marcos, spokesman for the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation), to El Mayor during the Zapatista “Otra Campana” (Other Campaign) in October 2006.
“We have decided to send an urgent message to the Mexicans and Chicanos north of the Rio Grande to come in order to maximize the number of people here, create a safe space, and protect the Cucapa and Kiliwa community during the fishing season,” said Marcos, also known as “delegado zero,” in announcing the initiation of the camp after a meeting with the Cucapa and Kiliwa community leaders.
In February, the Cucapa community issued its call to action. “You are no longer being asked to stand in solidarity with the indigenous people of Mexico. Now you are being asked to stand to play an integral role in a bi-national effort that will no longer consist of only resisting but also helping these communities exist and live as they have for thousands of years,” said the tribe.
The 304 member Cucapa Tribe said the camp aimed to “help reestablish the networks and relations that existed before borders separated families and communities, and to help expose these atrocities to a world that has avoided looking at the price of its excess, comfort and luxury.”
Although the peace camp got off to a slow start, the momentum built in March as the Cucapa and supporters constructed a fishing camp, secured buyers for the fish (corvina), purchased a refrigerated trailer and netted fish in defiance of federal fishing regulations that require permits in a “marine protected area.”
By the end of April, the camp had achieved its goals. “The camp is almost over, but it has been extremely successful,” explained Cesar Soriano from the Banda Martes in Los Angeles. “The main goal of the Cucapa to fish without government harassment – was achieved.”
“The camp also achieved its second goal, to organize direct support from people from both sides of the border,” said Soriano. At different points during the camp, activists from Mexico City, Australia, El Salvador, and American Indian nations, as well as from San Diego and Los Angeles, showed their solidarity with the Cucapa. Many Zapatista solidarity groups from throughout California and the Southwest organized fundraisers for the Cucapa struggle.
Subcomandante Marcos and 10 Comandantes from Chiapas, en route to the Cucapa Camp in April, were also welcomed by the O’odham Tribe and friends in the state of Sonora.
“The Cucapa are doing the same thing they have been doing for 9,000 years,” said Marcos, as quoted by Brenda Norrell in Narco News on April 10. “The Cucapa and other Indian people called for this camp in defense of nature so they can fish without detentions or being put in jail.”
Caravans from Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland and other California cities have gone to the camp to support the Cucapa when they fish during the high tides. While some accompanied the fishermen and fisherwomen on their boats, the others stayed on shore to watch out for federal soliders coming to cite or harass the Cucapa. The last high tide that the Cucapa will fish during will be from May 10-May 16, 2007.
For over thousands of years, the Cucapa people lived on land surrounding the Colorado River and its Delta where it empties into the Sea of Cortez. The tribe, in what is now the southwestern United States and north end of Baja California, lived off harvesting the native fish and plants of the river and Delta.
However, fish catches by the Cucapa and other tribes plummeted in recent decades as agribusiness in California and Arizona and thirsty Southern California cities diverted the entire flow of the Colorado without regard for the indigenous people below the U.S.-Mexico border. With only a trickle of the river ever reaching the once fertile Delta, catches of corvina, totuava (a giant seabass like fish that is now protected) and other species of fish declined dramatically.
Rather than addressing the problems of massive water diversions and fishing by corporate commercial fishing fleets that caused the fishery and ecosystem to decline, the Mexican government, under urging by corporate-funded U.S. conservation groups like Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund, declared the traditional area of the Cucapa and Kiliwa people “an ecological reserve.”
They transformed the waters that for thousands of years sustained indigenous people into the “Biosphere Reserve of the Upper Gulf of California” on June, 10, 1993, because it was “in the public interest,” according to the government’s National Commission of Protected Natural Areas website.
“The website also noted that 77 percent of the people who live and around the reserve rely on fishing for their livelihoods, so it is unclear which public interest the fishing ban in the protected area serves,” said Kristin Brucker, in the Narco News Bulletin, October 22.
According to Brucker, “The problem isn’t that the Cucapa and Killiwa don’t want to preserve endangered fish and dolphins. They point out that it is in their very best interest to protect the species they rely upon for their livelihood and they want very much to be custodians of the river and its fish as they have for generations.”
Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela, the secretary of the Cucapa fishing cooperative, stressed that the Cucapa was not responsible for the overfishing, even though they bear the brunt of its consequences.
Armed federal soldiers (federales) have patrolled the reserve and accosted the fishermen since the marine protected area was established. In October, the community had approximately thirty outstanding warrants for “illegal” fishing in their attempt to survive, practicing the same traditions as their ancestors.
Hopefully, the success of this camp will send a strong message to the Mexican government and U.S. “conservation” groups that so called “bio-reserves” and “marine protected areas” cannot be imposed upon indigenous people and other family fishermen without resistance.
The problems that the Cucapa Tribe faces in Mexico parallel the situation in California where well funded “conservation” groups, in collusion with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are attempting to kick recreational anglers and family commercial fishermen off the water through the institution of “marine protected areas,” even though massive de-facto reserves and some of the strictest fishing regulations in the world are already in place.
The “marine protected areas” constitute a major case of “green washing” where the main problems responsible for fishery declines in California – habitat destruction, water quality decline and global warming are avoided because to address these problems would require dealing with major corporate interests responsible for fishery declines.
Just like the Cucapa and other tribes have been completely excluded by “conservation” groups and Mexican government from any input into the institution of the bioreserves, the California Indian tribes have to date been completely excluded from a privately funded “stakeholders” process to push through the MLPA (Marine Life Protection Act) initiative.
And just like the ecosystem of the Colorado River Delta has been destroyed by water diversions and pollution, the California Delta, a nursery sustaining a wide variety of species along the California Coast, is threatened by a food chain collapse caused by massive increases in water diversions by the state and federal governments.
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