\nShe previously served as executive director of the California Water Alliance, California state executive director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, director of sustainability at Western United Dairies and president and CEO of the Almond Alliance of California.<\/p>\n
\nFrom 2019 to 2021, she oversaw water and science policy at the Interior Department.<\/p>\n
\nMost recently, Bettencourt spent just over a year as the chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. That agency studies soil and water and has worked to develop, fund and permit water projects in the Colorado River Basin. Bettencourt stepped down from her role at the NRCS in mid-May, as reported by Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nReclamation currently finds itself in the middle of a standoff about how to share the Colorado River’s water going forward.<\/p>\n \nThe federal agency runs the nation’s two largest reservoirs \u2014 Lake Powell and Lake Mead \u2014 and the dams that hold them back. Water levels in Lake Powell are nearing record lows, and further drops could cause<\/a> big infrastructure problems at Glen Canyon Dam, like the shutdown of massive hydropower generators.<\/p>\n \nSeven Western states share the Colorado River. It supplies drinking water for nearly 40 million people and fuels a massive agriculture industry that puts produce on shelves across the nation. Reclamation typically waits for those states to agree among themselves on how to share those water supplies. The current rules for sharing water expire later this year, and states are stuck at an impasse in negotiations<\/a> about how to replace them.<\/p>\n The Central Arizona Project canal carries Colorado River water through a neighborhood in the Phoenix area on March 26, 2026. State leaders are currently in tense negotiations about how to cut back on demand for the river’s water.<\/p>\n The states are split into two camps and disagree about who should cut back on demand<\/a> in response to dwindling water supplies. The downstream states of Arizona, California and Nevada have proposed a plan to take some mandatory cutbacks<\/a>. The upstream states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico have not volunteered to do the same.<\/p>\n \nIf the states can’t agree, Reclamation may have to implement its own rules to protect its dams and reservoirs, but that could trigger lawsuits that would likely end up in the Supreme Court. Previous and current federal water leaders have urged states to find consensus and help avoid that.<\/p>\n \nBettencourt’s background may make her uniquely qualified to lead Reclamation amid the negotiations. She comes from a career in water policy, but also comes from just outside the Colorado River basin.<\/p>\n \nLast June, the Trump administration nominated<\/a> longtime water manager Ted Cooke to lead Reclamation. Leaders from the upstream states pushed back on Cooke’s nomination, suggesting that his career with the Central Arizona Project \u2014 which delivers Colorado River water to the Phoenix and Tucson areas \u2014 might make him too biased to impartially lead the agency during negotiations among the states.<\/p>\n \nCooke denied that he would bring a bias to the position, but ultimately withdrew his nomination<\/a> and called himself “a political casualty.”<\/p>\n \nWhile Bettencourt comes from California, one of the states involved in the negotiations, her ties appear to fall mostly in parts of the state \u2014 like the Central Valley \u2014 that do not use Colorado River water. Attempts to reach Bettencourt for this story were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780622478_272_.jpeg\"\/)
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