Washington, D.C. — This week, League of Conservation Voters (LCV) launched a new ad campaign highlighting the Lake Mead crisis and the growing threat climate change poses to water supplies. The campaign will target communities in Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado hardest hit by water shortages, drought, and rising temperatures.

Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, supplies drinking water for roughly 25 million people across the West. At around 1,067 feet above sea level and 35% full, the Colorado River reservoir is at its lowest since the lake was filled after the Hoover Dam was completed in the 1930s. Water rationing and cuts have already begun across Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado throwing the future for farmers, ranchers, and smaller cities and towns into question.

The Build Back Better Act could provide billions in drought relief, funding to upgrade water treatment facilities, and protections for drinking water. President Biden’s original plan called for $111 billion investment in clean drinking water infrastructure.

Clean water continues to be a top priority for voters, and a winning message at the polls. Across all three states, recent polling from Data for Progress shows at least 68% support for the provisions of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, with clean water issues as a top priority.

Example ad in Nevada:

“Scale”

Decades of rising temperatures and drought
Fueled by climate change
Have cut a main water supply by nearly 2/3rds
and it’s dropping fast.
Water, that fuels our economy
Water, that sustains our lives.
That would trigger some mandatory cutbacks,
Lake Mead, where we get 90% of our water at record low levels right now.
That’s why Congress needs to pass President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan,
To put Americans to work combating climate change
And protecting the water we all depend upon.
Because climate can’t wait.

###