Latest news with #ColoradoRiverCompact
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Worsening climate outlooks raise the stakes for an agreement on the Colorado River
BOULDER, CO — Everyone who's haggling or agonizing over how to split up the drying Colorado River in coming decades is painfully aware that the river's flow has dipped below what previous generations thought would water an ever-growing West. That's now the good news. A leading Colorado River Basin climate scientist told hundreds gathered for a conference about how to stretch, share and save the river that the current warming trajectory will seriously strain their efforts at balancing supply and demand. The world is on track to exceed 3 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100 — 5 degrees Celsius (or 9 Fahrenheit) over land — according to Colorado State University water and climate researcher Brad Udall. 'That's a world unlike anything we currently know,' Udall said June 5 at a University of Colorado Law School conference examining the river's woes, 'and it's going to challenge us on every front.' On the Colorado River front, warming equals reduced flows as the atmosphere, desiccated soils, thirsty forests and human irrigation demands all take their share to deplete water that could otherwise be stored in the nation's two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This year's snowmelt runoff outlook, projected to reach just over half of the 30-year average by the time it effectively ends in July, is complicating efforts to reach consensus on interstate cutbacks. Any future reductions in flow will only add to the pain. Climate change is speeding faster than expected, with the likely effect of further tanking the river's bounty until it provides just two-thirds of the water that the negotiators of a century ago thought would support the growing region, according to Udall's worst-case scenario for the end of the century. And that doesn't account for water that the United States must provide to Mexico by treaty. In the language of water managers, it means a river that the interstate negotiators of a century ago asserted could provide 15 million acre-feet to the seven states that use it could instead average just 10 million acre-feet a year. Already, the megadrought that started in 2000 has dropped the average below 13 million. Mexico's share is 1.5 million. (An acre-foot is roughly 321,000 gallons, enough to support several households for a year, though more river water is consumed on farms.) Measuring flows: How much water flows down the Colorado River? The right answer is more important than ever Against today's startling water losses and tomorrow's even more frightening projections, the states are struggling to reach consensus on how to spread the pain among themselves after guidelines for navigating shortages expire next year. The Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada fully developed their half of the 15 million acre-feet that the 1922 Colorado River Compact granted them and have had to cut back. The four states upstream of them now face the prospect of never getting their full half even as the southwestern states ask them to consider cutting back from their existing uses in the driest of years. The Trump administration's Interior Department will likely need to step up as a moderator in a debate that to date has been left largely to the states, said Mike Connor, who led the department's Bureau of Reclamation in the Obama administration. The new administration is showing signs that it may begin to work on bringing the states together, Connor said, and it should help that it still has more than $1 billion in funds from the last administration's infrastructure allocation to help tackle drought. 'The federal government is the key mediator and facilitator,' he said. So far, though, the states at least publicly are far apart. The Upper Basin States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have said their cuts come in the form of dry winters that limit what farms and ranches can divert, and that it's up to the Lower Basin to cut more from what it takes out of the big desert reservoirs before they drain below useful levels. The Lower Basin states say they are willing to give up more in future years, but that trying to fill the gap all on their own could lead to unacceptable results such as a dry Central Arizona Project Canal cutting off Phoenix and Tucson. The rift has proved deep enough that most of the lead negotiators who normally appear together for panel discussions at this and similar annual conferences did not even show up. Preparing for a fight: Hobbs says Arizona will defend its Colorado River water, wants other states to accept cuts Conference attendees — the experts and advocates who work to protect the river and its various uses — must help give political cover to those negotiators who are responsible for protecting their own states' interests, said Anne Castle, a former Interior Department official and Upper Basin Commission chair who is now a fellow at the University of Colorado Law School. Their jobs are difficult, she said, and experts could help by making clear to their constituents that there's not enough water to go around, and all must use less of it. 'Some of what we thought were our legal entitlements and what we had expectations about using in the future … have to be moderated,' Castle said. Other speakers detailed how cities have adapted by growing while using less water, and how some, such as Phoenix, are able to essentially save water by growing because homes will use less water than the farms that they displace. But others pointed to a challenging future in which farms will likely have to cut back further to keep supplies flowing to cities. In all, according to water researcher Brian Richter of the global scarcity solutions organization Sustainable Waters, current rates of reservoir and groundwater drawdowns suggest that 15% of current use within the Colorado River Basin is unsustainable and will have to go. And that's at today's average rate of flow. If warming and drought continue to shrink the river, more cutbacks will be needed just to balance the annual supply, let alone the roughly two-thirds of storage capacity now unfilled in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Want more stories about water? Sign up for AZ Climate, The Republic's free weekly environment newsletter To Udall, the water and climate researcher, the new 'anti-knowledge' Trump administration seems bent on worsening the problem by eliminating the science that the states and federal dam managers rely on to make informed decisions. The administration is crippling agencies that are critical to climate adaptation by 'going after anything and everything that has the word climate in it,' he said. 'It's insanity, what they're doing,' Udall said, especially given that warming is accelerating. 'There is no way this makes for a better world in which we live, a better world in which the Colorado River flows.' A Trump administration official, Acting Assistant Interior Secretary for Water and Science Scott Cameron, was scheduled to appear on the conference's second day, June 6. Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and Reach him at Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: A warming, drying Colorado River increasingly vexes water negotiators
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
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
16-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Speedboat re-emerges at Lake Mead, a reminder summer's dropping water levels
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Like a ghost of summers gone by, a speedboat sticking out of the bottom of Lake Mead is back to remind Las Vegas of what could be next for our water supply. Protruding about 8 feet above the lake's surface, the boat still has about 14 feet to show. We last saw it in all its glory in August 2022, rising from the lakebed and earning names like 'Lake Mead monolith' and 'the vertical speedboat.' It became a landmark, or watermark, if you will. Now, it's not in the public eye much. The National Park Service closed Government Wash to vehicle traffic last summer after campers turned into long-term residents and trash started to build up. Photos taken by boaters pop up occasionally on social media. A report released today shows water levels will continue to drop at Lake Mead through the end of July, but only about 6 feet below where they are now. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's 24-month study shows the lake surface at 1,053.62 feet above sea level by the end of July before rebounding through February 2026, rising 8 feet to 1,061.30 feet. The lake is at 1,059.56 feet as of noon Thursday. Even if Lake Mead won't drop to its 2021 and 2022 levels this year, the news isn't uplifting. Reclamation's projections today seem to defy reports that streamflow into Lake Powell is expected to be about 55% of average, even though snowpack levels reached a peak of 91% on April 8. But looking further into the future, Lake Mead is expected to keep going lower in 2026. Some of the lowest levels that show up in the projections: 1,047.80 — July 2026 1,046.87 — November 2026 1,048.40 — December 2026 1,047.40 — April 2027 Those figures, and particularly the December number, could have serious implications. In August, the Bureau of Reclamation uses Lake Mead's level to set water shortage restrictions that apply to Nevada, Arizona and California. Currently, we're under Tier 1 water restrictions. If Lake Mead is projected to be below 1,050 feet when Reclamation reports in August, states would lose some of their water allocations. 'We're not talking about dead pool this year,' John Berggren of Western Resource Advocates said earlier this week. Dead pool is at 895 feet, when water behind the dam drops lower than pipes used to let water out to flow downstream. When we spoke with Berggren about a month ago, streamflow projections showed Lake Powell inflow at 67%, but it had dropped from 74% projected just two weeks earlier. Now, that number is 55%. For Berggren, the statistics are most concerning because the federal government needs a plan when the current Colorado River guidelines expire. If a new plan isn't in place, rules will revert to a century-old document called the Colorado River Compact — commonly called 'The Law of the River.' What we need, he said, is a plan that is robust enough to account for the reality of a Colorado River that simply has less water than it did when those rules were written 100 years ago. Even the most recent guidelines adopted in 2007 were woefully inadequate to deal with drought conditions that began in 2000 and don't appear to be ending anytime soon. It's not a temporary problem, Berggren said. It demands a long-term fix. About 90% of the water used in Southern Nevada comes from Lake Mead, sucked out through an intake at the bottom of the lake. The majority of the water that comes down the river into Lake Mead belongs to California, which has senior water rights under the Law of the River. On July 27, 2022 — only about three years ago — Lake Mead reached its lowest point since it was filled in the 1930s, dropping to 1,041.71 feet. A wet winter in 2023 helped refill lakes Mead and Powell, the biggest and second-biggest reservoirs in the U.S., after they had dropped to about a fourth of their capacity. Now, Lake Mead is 32% full and Lake Powell is 33% full. The speedboat has been almost like a gauge that tells everyone if the lake is rising or falling. It's a little easier to read than the 'bathtub ring' at Lake Mead that is now somewhere near 170 feet tall. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Hobbs says Arizona will defend its Colorado River water, wants other states to accept cuts
Arizona is doing its part and taking its hits to conserve the Colorado River, Gov. Katie Hobbs said, and it's time for upstream states to do the same. The governor assembled a roundtable of water users and officials on May 13 to present what she called a unified front among the state's interests in defending Arizona's share of the Colorado River as time runs short for reaching a deal with other states that use the water. So far, states upstream from Arizona have not offered cutbacks beyond the limits that a paltry snowpack naturally extracts from their farmers. 'It's been more than a little frustrating,' Hobbs said. 'We've come to the table with real solutions, with real proposals. We have real skin in the game,' she said, including billions of dollars in water infrastructure upgrades and in conservation agreements that keep water in the river's reservoirs. 'The upper states need to be willing to take their share as well.' Gathered at Central Arizona Project headquarters with representatives of cities, tribes, farms and hydropower interests — all reliant on the river water that flowing into the CAP's canal — Hobbs said the state seeks a compromise. Otherwise, supplies could become subject to litigation, an outcome she said she's preparing for in part by seeking a legal fund from legislators. 'We need a signal that we're prepared to defend our water, and that's a strong signal,' Hobbs said. Negotiations lag: At odds over water cuts, Colorado River states still seek consensus as deadline nears As the West has warmed and dried, the river that seven states and Mexico share has shrunk. It's a reality that has already brought significant supply cuts to Arizona in particular, and that the states and federal government are trying to address with a new shortage-sharing deal that must be in place by the time the old one expires next year. U.S. Interior Department officials seek to publish a draft of a plan by summer, though it's unclear if the states will be able to agree on something by then or will simply wait to see what federal officials envision. So far, the Rocky Mountain states known collectively as the Upper Basin have declined to specify new cuts they might take, because they say they already suffer the consequences of a reduced snowpack that shortchanges their farmers every year. The federal government has paid some Lower Basin farmers and others to cut back on their demands from Lake Mead's storage bank, and the four Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming argue that their year-in, year-out hardship is unrewarded and largely invisible to water users in the Southwest. Those state also were slower to develop water that the 1922 Colorado River Compact envisioned for them, and therefore continue to use less even as an age of aridification has threatened their ability to send the Lower Basin its compact-prescribed share each year. 'We have hydrologic shortage every year across all four states,' Colorado's river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, said at a February meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission. 'These are forced cuts based on administration (of water rights) that are not compensated.' Presented with that viewpoint, Hobbs rejected the claim that the Upper Basin is doing its part. 'That's water on paper,' the governor said. 'It's not real water. We're putting real water on the table and they're not, and they're not feeling any impact based on the system changes.' Questions linger: Trump's funding freeze muddies water outlook on the drought-stricken Colorado River Recognizing that the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — use more of the water, those states have together proposed absorbing the first 1.5 million acre-feet of new cuts, enough water to support millions of households. But they want the Upper Basin to agree to share equally in any further cuts that might be necessary to keep the river flowing past Glen Canyon and Hoover dams in especially dry years. (Arizona's full allocation of Colorado River water, including on-river uses such as Yuma farms, is 2.8 million acre-feet. It is second to California's 4.4 million.) So far, the Upper Basin has not agreed to send more water, and the former Biden administration did not include that option in the alternatives it began analyzing before leaving office. Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said Trump administration officials appear ready to help reach a 'collaborative agreement.' Because the previous administration's initial approach did not suggest obvious risk of new cuts for the Upper Basin, he said, it may have reduced incentives to deal. Discussions with Interior officials now suggest that they're 'more willing to tweak alternatives' in a way that can prod collaboration. 'This administration is taking more of the tack that we asked for, which is to show risk for both basins,' Buschatzke said. The two basins continue to talk, but he said he could not rate the chances of reaching a deal this summer. The Central Arizona Project has already absorbed a reduction of nearly a third of its normal entitlement to the river, partly from voluntary conservation measures and partly because the expiring shortage-sharing agreement lumped the first steep cuts on Arizona. Those mandated cuts reflect the lower priority that the state accepted decades ago in its effort to secure federal authorization for CAP. CAP Board President Terry Goddard told The Arizona Republic that what's left is critical to the region's health and the U.S. commitment to tribal water rights. He said he doubts it would be legal to further reduce canal flows to those users in the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Besides seeking conservation in other states, he said, it could be necessary to shift some of Arizona's next cuts to the Yuma area, which generally has older, superior water rights. Whether by cooperation or eventual emergency legislation, he said, it will be necessary to spread the pain. 'It's a time of shortage an everybody's going to pay the price,' Goddard said. 'We've already paid ours.' Want more water news like this? Sign up for AZ Climate, The Republic's weekly environment and climate newsletter Tribes including the Tohono O'odham, Ak-Chin and Gila River Indian Community attended the roundtable and said they have collaborated with cities and others to keep water in Lake Mead, and now it's incumbent on the United States to keep water flowing to them through the CAP canal. Ak-Chin Chairman Gabriel Lopez said the Colorado is his tribe's only reliable source for irrigating its 16,000 acres of farms. The U.S. granted the water in a 1978 settlement meant to make up for other users' depletion of the groundwater that previously supported the community, he said, and is a sacred trust. 'Tribes like us hold senior water rights,' Lopez said. 'We expect these sacred and good-faith obligation agreements to be honored.' Phoenix and Tucson officials noted that they have dramatically reduced per-capita use over decades and in recent years struck deals to keep some of their water in Lake Mead — a case that other cities around the watershed can also make. A representative from the Arizona Power Authority said low water kept Hoover Dam from generating a third of its contracted power last year, driving up prices for replacement power. An attorney for Pinal County farm groups said their conversion to groundwater as a replacement for previous CAP cuts will be in jeopardy if there's no baseflow in the canal to help move the groundwater to where it's needed. The economic development group Valley Partnership said it's the certainty surrounding CAP water that has allowed Phoenix and its ascendant semiconductor industry to thrive. Hobbs agreed, and said computer chip manufacturing in the area makes Arizona's water security a national priority. 'Our growing economy is not just important to Arizona, but it is important to the nation's economy, to national security, to moving manufacturing back to America,' Hobbs said. 'This conversation isn't just about Arizona. It's about our country.' Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and Reach him at Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Sign up for AZ Climate, our weekly environment newsletter, and follow The Republic environmental reporting team at and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Gov. Katie Hobbs says other Colorado River states must cut water use
Newsweek
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Senator Raises Alarm as Major Lake Mead Water Deadline Looms
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. As the deadline to renegotiate Colorado River water use agreements approaches, Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper says he is "frustrated" with the lack of progress on a consensus between the seven basin states. "Colorado should have a right to keep the water that we have been using the way we've been using it, and I don't think we should compromise that," Hickenlooper said after a roundtable in Glenwood Springs with Western Slope water managers on April 15, according to Aspen Journalism. "But there are a lot of things we could do to give a little to be part of the solution to the Lower Basin and get to a collaborative solution. Again, I'm frustrated by our lack of progress." Why It Matters The Colorado River is a lifeline for the Southwest, supplying water and hydroelectric power across seven states. Its two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, have dropped to record lows in recent years due to overuse and drought conditions. New guidelines are needed by 2026 to replace the current set of rules. Federal officials previously released five conceptual alternatives, including a "no action" option required under environmental law, to determine how to allocate dwindling water resources. One proposal emphasizes infrastructure protection and strict limits on water deliveries during shortages, while another promotes expanded conservation and flexible storage solutions, the Hill reported. Without an agreement, a federal management plan would likely be implemented by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, according to Aspen Journalism. What To Know The Colorado River Compact, originally crafted a century ago, is expiring as the region has been confronting the crises of prolonged water scarcity. The states—Arizona, California, and Nevada in the Lower Basin, and Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming in the Upper Basin—have until the end of May to submit a consensus-based plan. Without agreement, federal officials are expected to begin drafting a unilateral management plan as part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. Talks had stalled late last year but have since resumed. Upper Basin negotiators, including Colorado's lead, Becky Mitchell, are pushing for supply-driven management of reservoirs like Lake Powell and Lake Mead "that are resilient across a range of hydrologic conditions experienced in the basin," Aspen Journalism reported. Lower Basin representatives, however, want the Upper Basin to absorb a share of usage cuts during drought years. The outlet noted that upper Basin states say they already suffer approximately 1.3 million acre-feet in annual shortfalls due to limited water availability and have never fully utilized their compact allocation. A ferry passes Rock Island rises on Lake Mead along the Colorado River on March 14, 2025. A ferry passes Rock Island rises on Lake Mead along the Colorado River on March 14, option put forward by the Bureau of Reclamation, described as "federal authorities," would require up to 3.5 million acre-feet in cuts exclusively from the Lower Basin, while preserving Upper Basin allocations and using upstream reservoir releases to maintain hydropower production at Glen Canyon Dam. Complicating matters further is a bleak hydrological outlook. The snowpack in the Upper Basin has fallen to 74 percent of average and may collapse entirely, echoing the severe drought conditions of 2021 and 2022, according to Aspen Journalism. What People Are Saying Lead negotiator for Colorado Becky Mitchell as reported by Aspen Journalism: "The basin states share common goals: we want to avoid litigation, and we want a sustainable solution for reservoir light of these goals, I see the basin states working towards sustainable, supply-driven operations of Lakes Powell and Mead that are resilient across a range of hydrologic conditions experienced in the basin." Andy Mueller, general manager of the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District, as reported by Aspen Journalism: "We have to remember that creating your own solution for the consensus is always better than allowing somebody else to create it for you, so we are hopeful that will happen." What Happens Next If consensus fails, the risk isn't only legal paralysis—a failure to reach consensus could trigger federal interventions and potential disruptions to water and energy supplies in the West.
