Federal water managers recently announced a 10-year plan to manage the critical Colorado River that opens the door to unprecedented water supply cuts to three states and will require near-constant negotiation between water users in the river basin. Those two-year plans will determine how much water will be released from the system’s two major reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — and how large water cuts will be to users downstream of those reservoirs. Nearly every year since 2000, water users below the reservoirs have consumed more water than flowed into the river system’s primary water storage banks. The plan opens the door for major cuts to water supplies for the three Lower Basin states downstream of the reservoirs: Arizona, California and Nevada. About three-fourths of the water that’s taken out of the river is for agriculture, producing hay, lettuce, broccoli and other crops.