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4 days ago
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Shared risk at the heart of dispute over Colorado River
Railroad tracks run along the Colorado River as it flows along Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon near Glenwood Springs. (William Woody for Colorado Newsline) A version of this story originally appeared in Big Pivots. Even-steven. That was the intent of delegates from the seven basin states in 1922 when they met near Santa Fe to forge a compact governing the Colorado River. But what exactly did they agree upon? That has become a sticking point in 2025 as states have squared off about rules governing the river in the drought-afflicted and climate-changed 21st century. The negotiations between the states, according to many accounts, have been fraught with tensions. Becky Mitchell, Colorado's lead negotiator, delivered a peek into that dispute at a forum on May 22 in Silverthorne along the headwaters of the river. The Colorado River Compact was a quid pro quo. California, in particular, but also Arizona, was ready to see the highs and lows of the rivers smoothed out. They, as well as Nevada, wanted a giant reservoir in Boulder Canyon in Nevada near the small town of Las Vegas, which then had a population of 2,300. Those Southwestern states couldn't do it alone, though. They needed the federal government to build the dam later called Hoover. For that, they needed the support of Colorado and the three other upper-basin states. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Colorado, represented by Delph Carpenter, and the three other headwaters states realized that they had best reach a compromise, as they would more slowly develop the rivers. If the doctrine of prior appropriation that they had all adopted within their own states prevailed on the Colorado River, the water would be gone by the time they found need for it. This was the foundation for Article III of the Colorado River Compact. It apportions 7.5 million acre-feet in perpetuity for the exclusive beneficial consumption by each of the two basins. On top of this 15 million acre-feet, they knew there would be water lost to evaporation, now calculated at 1.5 million acre-feet annually, plus some sort of delivery obligation to Mexico, which later turned out to be 1.5 million acre-feet. In Santa Fe, delegates had assumed bounteous flows in the river, as had occurred in the years prior to their meeting. And so, embracing that short-term view of history, they believed the river would deliver 20 million acre-feet. It has not done so routinely. Even when there was lots of water, during the 1990s and even before, as Eric Kuhn and John Fleck explained in their 2019 book, 'Science be Dammed,' troubles ahead could be discerned. And by 1993, when the Central Arizona Project began hoisting water to Phoenix and Tucson, the river ceased absolutely to reach the ocean. Then came the 21st century drought. Those framing the compact understood drought as a temporary affliction, not the multi-decade phenomenon now perplexing the states in the Colorado River Basin. Nor did they contemplate a warming, drying climate called aridification. Similar to drought in effects, it is rooted in accumulating atmospheric gases. Unlike drought, it has little to no chance of breaking. Now, faced with creating new rules governing the sharing of this river, delegates from the seven states are at odds in various ways, but perhaps none so much as in their interpretation of compact's Article D. It says that the upper-division states 'will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.' The lower division states have so far received 75 million acre-feet over every revolving 10-year period. The upper-basin states have not fully developed their apportionment, although Colorado has come close. In the last 25 years, the upper-basin states have been using 3.5 million to 4.5 million acre-feet. The lower-basin states that a decade ago were still using 10 million acre-feet have cut back their use to 7.5 million acre-feet. Lake Powell serves as a water bank for the upper basin states. The storage in 2022 had declined to 22%, although a good snow winter in 2022-23 restored levels somewhat. Today, the two reservoirs are at a combined 34% of full. 'That means 66% empty,' said Mitchell at the forum along the Blue River in Silverthorne at a 'state of the river' forum organized by the Colorado River Water Conservation District. Mitchell, an engineer by training, has a large on-stage presence. She's not one to mince words, sometimes straying into the colloquial. This outspokenness is more evident when she speaks exclusively to a home-town crowd. Silverthorne certainly counted as one. Shared risk is at the heart of the dispute. Colorado and other upper-basin states want the lower-basin states to accept that the river will not always satisfy all needs. 'How do we handle drought? We know how to do that in the upper basin, and most of the people in this room know that you get less,' said Mitchell, Colorado's representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission. 'That hasn't been the case in the lower basin.' The two basins differ in three fundamental ways. One is the pace of development. The lower basin developed quickly. The upper basin still has not used its full allocation. From the upper-basin perspective, that does not mean that the lower-basins states should expect something beyond a 50-50 split. 'The main thing that we got from the compact was the principle of equity and the ability to develop at our own pace,' said Mitchell. 'We shouldn't be punished because we didn't develop to a certain number. The conversation now, she added, is 'what does equity look like right now?' Another difference is that the upper basin has thousands of individual users. Sure, there are a few big ones, like Denver Water and the other Front Range transmountain water diverters who collectively draw 400,000 to 450,000 acre-feet annually across the Continental Divide. The lower basin has just a handful of diverters, and the diversions are massive. Also different — as alluded to by Mitchell — is that the lower basin has the big reservoirs lying upstream. The largest is Mead, with a capacity of almost 29 million acre-feet, followed closely by Powell at a little more than 25 million acre-feet. Mead was created expressly to meet needs of irrigators and cities in the desert southwest. Powell was created essentially to ensure that the upper-basin states could meet their delivery obligations. Mitchell shared a telling statistic: More water has been released from Powell in 8 of the last 10 years than has arrived into it. Upper-basin states must live within that hydrologic reality, said Mitchell. If it's a particularly bad snow year in the upper basin, the farms and ranches with junior water rights and even the cities can get shorted. The lower basin states? Not a problem. They always get their water — at least so far. But the two big reservoirs have together lost 50 million acre-feet of stored water. 'We're negotiating how to move forward in a way different place than we were negotiating 20 years ago,' said Mitchell. Upper-basin states have managed to deliver the 75 million acre-feet across 10 years that the compact specifies, but what exactly is the obligation? That has long been a gray area. At a forum two days before Mitchell spoke in Colorado, her counterpart in Arizona, Tom Buschatzke, reiterated at a conference in Tucson that they see the compact spelling out a clear obligation of upper-basin states to deliver 75 million acre-feet plus one-half of the water obligated to Mexico. What if the water isn't there? That's the crux of this dispute as the upper and lower basin states negotiate in advance of a September deadline set by the Bureau of Reclamation. In theory, if the situation were dire enough, Colorado could stop all its post-1922 diversions to allow the water to flow downstream. But is that what those gathered in Santa Fe in the shortening days of November 1922 had in mind? Will lawsuits toss this into the court system for resolution? That process might take decades and, if it ended up at the Supreme Court, it might not yield a nuanced outcome. Mitchell didn't address that directly, although she did say everybody on the river wants to avoid litigation. The situation described by Mitchell and other upper-basin proponents is perhaps analogous to a divorce settlement. The settlement may call for a 50-50 split of all earnings between the partners, but what if one becomes destitute and has no money to pool? Upper-basin states do have reservoirs to help buffer them from short-term droughts. Altogether, however, they don't come close to matching the capacity of Powell. Again, from the perspective of upper-basin states, California and Nevada have a sense of entitlement. Not that the upper basin states are angelic, said Mitchell. It's because they have no choice. 'I say we use three to four million acre-feet less than our apportionment. It varies. You know why? Because hydrology varies. And so we respond to hydrology. It's all based on snowpack and it's all gravity. Most of it is gravity dependent. We don't have those two big reservoirs above us like the lower basin does. We don't have those reservoirs to equal out the flows or allow us to overuse. We have to live with variable hydrology, and we take cuts every single year.' Upper-basin states want a willingness in this settlement for agreement that focuses on the water supply, not the demand. 'Common sense would tell you, maybe Mother Nature should drive how we operate the system.' That, she said, is the bedrock principle of the proposal from the upper division. With plentiful snowfall, greater releases from Powell might be possible, said Mitchell, and in times of extreme duress, water from Flaming Gore and perhaps the Blue Mesa and Navajo too. She said there might be room for greater conservation measures in the upper basin states. But there must be 'real work happening down in the lower basin,' she said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
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A power company plans for life after coal
A Tri-State Generation and Transmission natural gas plant. (Allen Best/Big Pivots) This commentary originally appeared in Big Pivots. Oh, what a difference 20 years has made in how Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association views energy. An organization that in 2005 wanted to build a giant new coal plant now sees a future almost entirely devoid of coal. It expects to be at 70% renewables by 2030. Perhaps Tri-State failed to get the executive order from President Donald Trump, 'Reinvigorating America's Beautiful, Clean Coal Industry.' It's an echo of the past. During a campaign stop in Grand Junction, Trump in 2016 promised to bring it back. It was an empty promise. Prices of, first, wind and then solar had slid downhill on trajectories steeper than Interstate 70 descending from the Eisenhower Tunnel. Reduced emissions were a bonus argument for renewables. In an April 11 filing with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, Tri-State proposes adding 700 megawatts of new renewable resources, the majority on the windy, sun-drenched and sparsely populated plains of eastern Colorado, and also 650 megawatts of short-term battery storage. 'That's a lot of steel in the ground,' said a member of an electrical cooperative on the Western Slope. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Natural gas is also part of the mix. Tri-State proposes a 307-megawatt plant somewhere near Craig. There, in little more than three years, it will close all three coal-fired power units it now operates. It also proposes to replace five aging combustion turbines near Fort Lupton at the J.M. Shafer Generating Station, boosting capacity modestly to 281 megawatts. This proposal fits in with a broad theme in Colorado. More than 2,300 megawatts of new natural gas capacity is being built, has been approved, or is proposed by Colorado's major electrical utilities. In a sense, we're swapping coal for gas. That represents a net reduction in emissions. Will these very expensive gas plants be stranded by new technologies during our journey to a mid-century goal of net-zero emissions? The answer is complicated. Utility resource planners given responsibility for keeping lights on today think we need gas, at least if we want to avoid giant price increases in electricity. A study released by the Colorado Energy Office in early 2024 reached a similar conclusion. In 2005, our utilities thought our future was in coal. Xcel Energy had started building Colorado's largest coal unit ever, the 750-megawatt Comanche 3 in Pueblo. It was expected to operate until 2070. Now, it is to close in 2030. Tri-State was also dreaming big coal in 2005. It wanted to build 1,400 megawatts of new coal-burning generation in southwest Kansas. A partnering utility, Sunflower Electric, was to get another 700 megawatts. In 2007, the two utilities suffered a setback. Kansas denied a permit for these coal-burning castles because of greenhouse gas emissions. The denial, shocking then, became a blessing. When the utilities finally got their permit in 2017, the economics of electricity had turned upside down. Imagine the financial albatross hanging around Tri-State's neck had it succeeded. As it was, Tri-State spent $100 million or more on this errant path. By 2018, Tri-State was imagining a different future. A new chief executive, Duane Highley, was given a mandate to explore the new economic terrain. In November, Jared Polis won election as Colorado governor after running on a platform of 100% renewables by 2040. That December, Xcel executives announced their plans to leave coal. Beginning this year, Tri-State will close its three coal units by September 2028. In 2031 it plans to close its coal unit at Springerville, Arizone. In this transition, Tri-State hopes to get federal assistance promised it under the Inflation Reduction Act for stranded assets. It will then have coal-burning ownership only in Wyoming's Laramie River Station, a short railroad trip from the Powder River coal fields. 'Just transition' is also part of Tri-State's pivot. State legislators in 2019 said that coal-dependent communities should be given aid as they made their career shifts. In a 2024 agreement, Tri-State pledged to pay Craig and Moffat County $22 million between 2026 and 2029 and committed to support investments with $48 million in additional benefits between 2029 and 2038. Tri-State payments can be reduced if taxable property is added. A gas plant in Moffat County will do just that. Tri-State still has challenges. For example, it is still losing members. And questions remain for it and other utilities about where to hedge bets. Natural gas is a conservative bet, the way coal was 20 years ago. At that time, few among us were carrying a smartphone. We were mostly beholden to land lines. Will a still nascent technology fully emerge to replace gas, too? SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Business
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A tale of two bills in Colorado
(Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury) This commentary originally appeared at Big Pivots. Matters of little consequence often get major time and attention. And vice versa. Two energy bills in the Colorado Legislature this year, one about nuclear energy and the second about electrical transmission, illustrate this. The first bill, House Bill 25-1040, which is now law, declared that nuclear energy is clean. It proclaims that utilities can meet clean-energy targets with nuclear. It also allows private projects access to financing restricted to clean energy development. The bill sailed through the Legislature. Gov. Jared Polis signed it into law March 31. For believers, those who want to believe that nuclear energy will be the answer, it was a big win. To what effect? Likely none. Forget about nuclear waste and safety concerns. Cost of energy from new nuclear plans remains exorbitant. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Some of this was sorted through in a four-hour committee hearing in March. Chuck Kutscher was among several dozen individuals given two-minute slots to testify. He deserved more time. A nuclear engineer by training, he subsequently moved into renewables, retiring from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory several years ago. At a later meeting in Jefferson County, Kutscher explained why he expects nuclear energy to play no role in Colorado's energy transition. It comes down to cost. 'I like to give credit where credit is due. And the fact is that nuclear power in this country has saved a heck of a lot of carbon dioxide and air pollution emissions,' he said. 'Nuclear provides almost half of U.S. carbon-free electricity, which is pretty impressive.' As for costs, Kutscher cited two metrics courtesy of Lazard, a financial company that monitors electrical generation. The cost of building new nuclear plants comes in at $8,000 to $13,000 per kilowatt of generating capacity. Solar comes in at $1,400, wind at $2,000. A broader metric, the levelized cost, includes capital, fuel and operating costs over the life of an energy plant. 'The longer a plant runs, the lower its life-cycle costs, because it's producing more energy,' Kutscher explained. By this measure, nuclear still comes up short: 18 cents a kilowatt-hour compared to solar and wind for 5 and 6 cents. Might costs drop with a new generation of small modular reactors? SMRs can generate 300 megawatts or less. One was planned in the West, but in 2023 the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems pulled out of its contract with nuclear company NuScale — because of cost. If nuclear costs make it a non-starter in Colorado, can renewables deliver us to an emission-free electrical system? The sun vanishes daily, and sometimes winds on our eastern plains die down, even for days. Kutscher sees possible solutions in improving storage technologies and expanded transmission. Transmission can enable electricity to be shared across multiple time zones and weather systems. Even moving electricity around Colorado more efficiently has value. The second bill, Senate Bill 24-127, proposes to do that. It would require investor-owned utilities to investigate tools called advanced transmission technologies. They will enable more use from existing transmission lines and associated infrastructure. Larry Milosevich, a Lafayette resident, decided six years ago to devote himself to fewer pursuits. He says he chose the role of advanced technologies for transmission because of its oversized impact. The transmission system developed during the last century has many inefficiencies. 'I would love to see advanced transmission technologies get a little more light,' he says. Why hasn't it happened? 'It doesn't have sex appeal.' This bill will not solve all problems. 'You need a lot of arrows in your quiver to get there. And it's not one technology that's going to save the day,' says Leah Rubin Shen, managing director of Advanced Energy United, an industry association that advocates for technologies and policies that advance decarbonization. More transmission will still be needed. Approvals take time. Using these tools can more rapidly expand capacity at lower cost. 'We characterize it as a no-regrets solution,' says Rubin Shen. State Sen. Cleave Simpson, a Republican from Alamosa, was the primary author of the bill. 'We can increase the capacity and resilience of our infrastructure without having to undertake expensive, large-scale construction projects,' he told committee members at a March meeting. The committee that day heard from fewer than a dozen witnesses. It passed an amended bill and moved on within 45 minutes. Several weeks before, the same committee heard nuclear testimony for hours. In a later interview, Simpson described the bill, slimmed greatly in ambition from its original iteration, as 'maybe a tiny step forward, but a doable one.' Unlike nuclear, not the answer, but a doable one. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Climate
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Reduced Colorado River flows prompt some to contemplate cutbacks in use
The Colorado River at Grand Junction is seen on Sept. 11, 2024. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline) This commentary originally appeared in Big Pivots. Snow in southwestern Colorado has been scarce this winter. Archuleta County recently had a grass fire. A store manager at Terry's Ace Hardware in Pagosa Springs tells me half as many snowblowers have been sold this winter despite new state rebates knocking 30% off the price of electric models. Near Durango, snowplows normally used at a subdivision located at 8,000 feet remain unused. At Chapman Hill, the in-town ski area, all snow remains artificial, and it's not enough to cover all the slopes. A little natural snow would help, but none is in the forecast. Snow may yet arrive. Examining data collected on Wolf Creek Pass since 1936, the Pagosa Sun's Josh Kurz found several winters that procrastinated until February. Even when snow arrived, though, the winter-end totals were far below average. All this suggests another subpar runoff in the San Juan and Animas rivers. They contribute to Lake Powell, one of two big water bank accounts on the Colorado River. When I visited the reservoir in May 2022, water levels were dropping rapidly. The manager of Glen Canyon Dam pointed to a ledge below us that had been underwater since the mid-1960s. It had emerged only a few weeks before my visit. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX That ledge at Powell was covered again after an above-average runoff in 2023. The reservoir has recovered to 35% of capacity. Will reservoir levels stay that high? Probably not, and that is a significant problem. Delegates who wrangled the Colorado River Compact in a lodge near Santa Fe in 1922 understood drought, at least somewhat. They did not contemplate the global warming now underway. In apportioning the river flows, they also assumed an average 17.5 million acre-feet at Lee Ferry, the dividing line between the upper and lower basins. It's a few miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam and upstream from the Grand Canyon. Even during the 20th century the river was rarely that generous. This century it has become stingy, with average annual flows of 12.5 million acre-feet. Some worry that continued warming during coming decades may further cause declines to 9.5 million acre-feet. Colorado State University's Brad Udall and other scientists contend half of declining flows should be understood as resulting from warming temperatures. A 2024 study predicts droughts with the severity that formerly occurred once in 1,000 years will by mid-century become 1-in-60 year events. How will the seven basin states share this diminished river? Viewpoints differ so dramatically that delegates from the upper- and lower-basin states loathed sharing space during an annual meeting in Las Vegas as had been their custom. Legal saber-rattling abounds. A critical issue is an ambiguous clause in the compact about releases of water downstream to Arizona and hence Nevada and California. Might Colorado need to curtail its diversions from the Colorado River? That would be painful. Roughly half the water for cities along the Front Range, where 88% of Coloradans live, comes from the Colorado River and its tributaries. Transmountain diversions augment agriculture water in the South Platte and Arkansas River valleys. The vast majority of those water rights were adjudicated after the compact of 1922 and hence would be vulnerable to curtailment. Many water districts on the Western Slope also have water rights junior to the compact. In Grand Junction last September, Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, the primary water policy agency for 15 of Western Slope counties, made the case that Colorado should plan for compact curtailments — just in case. The district had earlier sent a letter to Jason Ullmann, the state water engineer, asking him to please get moving with compact curtailment rules. Eric Kuhn, Mueller's predecessor at the district, who is now semi-retired, made the case for compact curtailment planning in the spring 2024 issue of Colorado Environmental Law Review. Kuhn's piece runs 15,000 words, all of them necessary to sort through the tangled complexities. Central is the compact clause that specifies the upper basin states must not cause the flow at Lee Ferry, just below today's Glen Canyon Dam, to be depleted below an aggregate of 75 million acre-feet on a rolling 10-years basis. That threshold has not yet been met — yet. Kuhn describes a 'recipe for disaster' if it is. He foresees those with agriculture rights on the Western Slope being called upon to surrender rights. He and Mueller argue for precautionary planning. That planning 'could be contentious,' Kuhn concedes, but the 'advantages of being prepared for the consequences of a compact curtailment outweigh the concern.' Last October, after Mueller's remarks in Grand Junction, I solicited statements from Colorado state government. The Polis administration said it would be premature to plan compact curtailment. The two largest single transmountain diverters of Colorado River Water, Denver Water and Northern Water, concurred. Recently, I talked with Jim Lochhead. For 25 years he represented Colorado and its water users in interstate Colorado River matters. He ran the state's Department of Natural Resources for four years in the 1990s and, ending in 2023, wrapped up 13 years as chief executive of Denver Water. Lochhead, who stressed that he spoke only for himself, similarly sees compact curtailment planning as premature. 'It just doesn't make sense to go through that political brain damage until we really have to,' he said. 'Hopefully we won't have to, because (the upper and lower basins) will come up with a solution.' Lochhead does believe that a negotiated solution remains possible, despite the surly words of recent years. 'We need to figure out ways to negotiate an essentially shared sacrifice for how we're going to manage the system, so it can be sustainable into the future,' he said. This, he says, will take cooperation that so far has been absent, at least in public, and it will also take money. Of course, with God on his side, maybe President Donald Trump will issue yet another executive order, this one ordering deep, deep snows — and cooler temperatures — in the Colorado River Basin for the duration of his term. I wouldn't count on it, though. Three of the seven basin states — California, Colorado, and New Mexico – voted against him. Instead, we'll have to slog along. The runoff in the Colorado River currently is predicted to be 81% of average. It fits with a theme. Unlike the children of Lake Wobegone, most runoffs in the 21st century have been below average. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
