Payments to help Western states respond to drought are on pause after an order from President Donald Trump. A pool of $388.3 million from the Inflation Reduction Act had already been allocated to fund water conservation projects by the Biden administration, and its future now hangs in the balance.
The Colorado River supplies water for about 40 million people from Wyoming to Mexico, but it’s stretched thin. Climate change is cutting into supplies, and the cities and farms that depend on it are struggling to cut back on demand. Federal funding has been a pivotal part of Western states’ response to that reality, with billions of dollars from the Biden administration helping pay for a wide variety of programs—incentivizing farmers to use less water on their crops, improving wildlife habitat and much more.
This latest tranche of money was originally destined for projects in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and four different Native American tribes. A specific list of projects the Biden Administration wanted to fund was released in the waning days of its time in the White House. Days later, shortly after his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the government to “immediately pause disbursement of funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act.”