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- Climate
- USA Today
The Colorado River used to be predictable as a water supply. What happens when it's not?
As Colorado River states race to finish a deal, water users face a resource altered by drought and climate change. CEDAREDGE, CO — Grand Mesa's hulking south flank appeared green and brown through the windshield as a crew of state water regulators rode up its dirt roads to christen a fraught 2025 irrigation season on what promised to be one of many parched Colorado River tributaries this spring. At the juncture of a flowing creek and a dry ditch, one hopped out to crank a headgate shut, forcing the water into the ditch and toward a string of valley farms for however long it might last. The mountain would have gleamed more brightly during most 20th century springs, a mound of white propping up the evergreens. In this, the latest year of a decades-long megadrought, the water commissioner needed no snow boots. It was April Fools' Day, and Mother Nature had crafted a cruel punchline for the fruit orchardists below – a groaner that this crew would have to deliver to those farmers one by one later in the spring and summer by cutting off those who don't enjoy the oldest water rights. Peach, plum and apple trees had budded out after a 79-degree warmup the previous week, demanding water that wouldn't last the growing season. The state allows diversions starting April 1, but in a better year with ample snowpack the added moisture wouldn't be needed until May. It shouldn't have been green yet where they were, motoring upward past 6,200 feet above sea level. In a normal year — the kind before this megadrought of 25 years plunged the river's big reservoirs and the states that rely on them into crisis and conflict — they wouldn't need to act so soon. There still might have been 4 feet of snow on and below the giant forested mesa looming over western Colorado's arid lands, so much that no one along the North Fork of the Gunnison River would need to push water onto their fruit orchards yet. 'In a normal year, we wouldn't even be able to drive up here' yet, Gunnison Basin District Engineer Bob Hurford said from the back seat. But 'normal' years aren't the norm anymore — here or anywhere in the 250,000-square-mile drainage that supplies the 1,450-mile Colorado River. A river that has long been overallocated and draining its massive reservoirs is now nearly tapped out, soon potentially unable to keep flowing past the giant American dams that water and power much of the Southwest. Already, its last drops sink into Mexican sand before reaching the sea. 'Today we stand on the brink of system failure,' the state of Colorado's river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, said during a late-June meeting with colleagues from the Rocky Mountain states that make up the Upper Colorado River Commission. Such a collapse has grown larger on the horizon for most of this decade as reservoir replenishment has failed to keep up with downstream demands. 'A world unlike anything we know' A new reckoning is at hand. The Trump administration has put the states on the clock to reach a consensus deal by the end of this year to share the shrinking river equitably — the only way they can control their own fates. 'If you can't get there,' Assistant Interior Secretary Scott Cameron warned in one of several recent appearances before state negotiators, '(Interior) Secretary Burgum is prepared to exercise his authority as water master and make decisions himself.' Cameron also urged the states to work with the 30 Native American tribes living across the watershed, both to ensure that they have adequate water and to partner with the tribes who have secured substantial water settlements to store more water in the reservoirs. Arizona, for example, has leaned heavily on deals with the Gila River Indian Community to save water. Loralei Cloud, a Southern Ute tribal member and Colorado Water Conservation Board member, said it's time for every tribe to have both a direct say in how the river is managed and to secure its fair share. If the states can't reach a deal, she told a crowd at the University of Colorado Law School in June, they should get out of the way. 'If our state representatives are going to sit silent,' she said at the annual Getches-Wilkinson Center's Conference on the Colorado River, 'then we have 30 tribal nations that are ready to take over and make a decision and save our river. We've been doing it from time immemorial.' Federal officials have a trust responsibility to secure water for tribes, which the Bureau of Reclamation will need to account for in any interstate deal. The tribes with secure rights will likely also commit more water to the system in exchange for money or infrastructure help. For instance, an attorney for the Navajo Nation told conference attendees that the tribe is considering conserving water that previously flowed to a now-decommissioned coal-fired power plant. In future years, the tribe wants to use its rights to fill a planned pipeline to reservation communities, but the water saved until then could stay in the river to boost reservoir storage. The river's two largest dammed reservoirs — also the two largest in the nation — are each around one-third of capacity, a quarter-century after being essentially full. The mostly dry winters since 2000 have plunged storage pools behind Hoover and Glen Canyon dams to the point where the U.S. government is temporarily paying millions of dollars to Arizona and California irrigators who agree to grow less to keep from draining them. This year's liquid reinforcements, mostly from melting snow that reaches Lake Powell between April and July, were on track to provide less than half of the average over the last 30 years, according to the National Weather Service's Colorado Basin River Forecast Center June estimate. A river that the interstate negotiators of a century ago thought would routinely provide more than 15 million acre-feet a year has already declined to less than 13 million on average since 2000, in a fast-growing region. An acre-foot equals roughly 326,000 gallons and is enough to support several households for a year, though farms use the bulk of the Colorado's water. Colorado State University climate researcher Brad Udall warned that the river may provide only 10 million acre-feet if current global warming trends continue through the century — a sharp new reduction in an already diminished and overused source on which 40 million people rely. 'That's a world unlike anything we currently know,' Udall said. Total failure would mean Lakes Powell and Mead decline below where intakes for hydroelectric turbines or bypass tubes can pass water through the dams — a condition known as dead pool. It would restrict Grand Canyon to the relative trickle out of small tributaries below Glen Canyon Dam, and would desiccate the sprawling and lucrative vegetable and forage crop empires of Arizona, California and northwestern Mexico. It would also interrupt a major part of the domestic water supply to millions of people in Arizona and Southern California. Such a doomsday is still years away, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates the dams. The agency's two-year projections of reservoir storage predict a most-likely scenario in which Lake Powell's waterline bumps along near its current point and a worst-case scenario in which it could drop some 80 feet, at which Glen Canyon's hydropower intakes could go dry but the bypass tubes, more than 100 feet deeper, could still release water. Trying to measure snow that isn't there A partial and painful system failure of the kind Colorado's Mitchell referenced could happen sooner if next winter is disastrously dry in the mountains, triggering a cascade of administrative decisions that could force officials to drain smaller mountain reservoirs to prop up Lake Powell. That would force significant conservation measures above the big reservoir and cause the government to consider cutting back on releases to Lake Mead, ultimately reducing that reservoir's ability to serve downstream users. Hydropower production at both dams would suffer, forcing utilities to buy more expensive power on the grid. 'We are one bad runoff year from a crisis,' Mitchell said. This is what happens when rules and adaptations don't keep up with nature. Twenty years ago, when the reservoirs were still early in their downward spirals, the seven states that share the Colorado's water agreed to a new set of shortage guidelines that Reclamation then adopted to rule the river through 2026. They called on the states below the reservoirs to reduce their consumption by varying tiers based on Lake Mead's elevation at the start of any given year. Most of the risk and eventual harm fell on Arizona because the state had been forced to accept a lesser priority than California's when it sought congressional approval to build the Central Arizona Project canal and deliver river water to Phoenix and Tucson. When those cuts proved too little, the states added a drought plan imposing new reductions, and then the former Biden administration began paying farmers to temporarily leave behind some of their entitlements. Federal officials worked out an emergency update to the guidelines with new water savings from California, Arizona and Nevada, the Lower Basin states, to keep the dams functioning through next year. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — those above Lake Powell — were not required to trim current uses, in part because they have yet to fully develop the half of the river's flow that the compact had arguably promised them in an age before climate change. The Reclamation Bureau now intends to adopt a new set of shortage guidelines to rule dam releases by mid-2026, the impetus for Trump officials to call on the states to devise their own plan by winter before the government imposes its own. How dust from Arizona affects Colorado snowpack Grand Mesa is a harbinger of the Colorado River's long-term decline. Atop the mountain and next to one loop of the Skyway Ski Trail, at elevation 10,600, is a continuing science experiment that suggests the West's water supply will continue to shrink. A tower with a weather vane and other instruments to gauge and transmit conditions pokes out of the snow in an opening among the evergreens. A short distance from its base is a patch that University of Utah geographers routinely ski to in winter and dig pits to study how the snow is holding up, how cold it keeps throughout the winter, and how much dust has fallen on it. The dust, mostly from northern Arizona, takes flight on windstorms in early spring and drops in layers on Rocky Mountain snowpack. As gradual melting uncovers each layer, the dust's relative darkness absorbs more solar radiation, speeding the thaw. Core samples from the mud below alpine lakes show that dust deposition has increased since modern land disturbance and grazing in the Southwest exposed more soil to the winds. 'It can accelerate snowmelt by weeks to months,' said McKenzie Skiles, who directs the university's Snow Hydrology Research-to-Operations Laboratory, or Snow HyDRO. On average, according to research published a decade ago, dust melts snow three weeks early and results in a 5% reduction in water flowing in the Colorado. The sooner the snow melts, the sooner plants green up and start using it, reducing what reaches creeks that feed the river. Add in dry soils that increasingly act as a sponge when drought years pile up, and the mountain grows ever thirstier. This exacerbates ongoing reductions in snowpack as warming air causes some of what used to fall as snow to instead fall as rain, especially lower on the mountain, Skiles said. She has studied western Colorado's snows since 2008 and sees a clear trend toward early green-ups, especially lower on the mountain — the mid-elevation areas like the one Hurford said he wouldn't be able to access to divert irrigation water in the 'normal' year. Another unfortunate trend she identified is finding liquid water when she or her graduate students dig snow pits mid-winter. 'It sort of portends of the future of warmer snowpacks,' she said. Combine that with rising heat that increases both evaporation and human demands on the water that reaches the river, and scientists predict an even more depleted waterway later this century. Throughout the Colorado headwaters, snowpack and its meltwater fluctuate yearly, sometimes wildly, with big years occasionally pulling Lake Powell back from the brink of losing its ability to produce hydropower. That happened with a big winter in 2023. But since the turn of this century it's never enough to actually refill the reservoirs, and both Powell and Mead were roughly two-thirds empty heading into spring. Hurford, the district engineer in western Colorado, has seen the signs of aridification year by year, especially in the flow gauge where his local river, the Gunnison, spills into the Colorado near Grand Junction. He has averaged those readings by decade. The 1920s: 'huge.' The 1930s: 'Dust Bowl,' a dry decade that pried millions of inland Americans from their homes and was, until now, the modern measuring stick for drought. The 1980s and 1990s: 'fantastic.' The 2023 snowpack was a godsend, he said, but it was only a Band-Aid on scars accumulated over 2020, 2021 and 2022. The last five years cumulatively were the river's driest in a century. 'Where we are in the 2020s is worse than the Dust Bowl,' Hurford said. 'We're in the bullseye' On the day that Hurford and crew officially opened irrigation season, organic fruit farmers Steve Ela and Regan Choi feared the worst. Their farm in Hotchkiss, to Grand Mesa's southeast, has experienced a string of climate calamities in recent years: water shortages, a tree-killing autumn freeze and untimely spring frosts. On that day, the latter loomed — a forecasted 21-degree night just a week after highs in the upper 70s had caused trees to flower precariously early. 'The increasing variability is the real climate story,' Choi said. 'Trees do not do well with variability,' Ela added. The couple would lose much of their plum and cherry crops that night, an increasingly common problem as warming spring days have pushed the typical flowering season up by a couple of weeks and left the blooms more exposed to frosty nights. They hoped the peach, pear and apple trees could compensate. As the drought years accumulate, though, the potential for abundant years has withered. The farmers have dramatically curtailed their plantings to make sure that whatever water reaches their farm by late summer is enough to keep the trees alive through the growing season. It leaves less for them to truck to the Colorado Front Range, where they sell most of their fruit at farmers markets. The downsizing has been a painful and ominous step for Ela, whose family has farmed in western Colorado since 1907 and who has personally worked the Hotchkiss lands as Ela Family Farms since 1990. The water rights predate the Colorado River Compact, but that may not matter if the federal government or the courts decide Colorado farmers must cut back to fulfill delivery obligations to the Southwest. Even short of that, his own state's population centers, clustered around Denver, could offer money to leave water in the river, so they can divert more from the headwaters while still sending water downstream. 'We're in the bullseye,' Ela said. 'At some point, how much do you fight it?' The couple has a blended family of grown children, none of whom fancy a farming life. When The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, first visited Ela's farm 10 years ago, he had invested thousands of dollars per acre in a filtration and drip irrigation system to squeeze every ounce out of his supply. He got some government assistance as part of a program to reduce salt runoff that flood irrigation pushed toward the Colorado from the region's highly saline soils. But most of the expense was on Ela. The farm's water procurement system is a portrait of the Upper Colorado River Basin's broader water struggles. Ela and Choi have rights to direct creek water that runs off of Grand Mesa in the spring, but that only lasts so long with farmers all around draining it. Then they can draw from ditch companies they've bought into, including delivery of water from small reservoirs atop the mesa. But in dry years like this, those reservoirs with more recent claims, known as junior water rights, can't fill. At some point, state officials like Hurford and his crew start cutting people off altogether according to the seniority of their claims. As drought lengthens and takes on an air of permanent aridification, farms shrink. Fruit trees can't last a season without water. As a result, Ela Family Farms has pared its orchards from 83 acres a decade ago to 60 today. Each dry year makes it harder to imagine replanting. 'We'd probably be better to go to Vegas and spend the money (gambling) there,' Ela said. 'We might have a better chance.' Dry ground soaks up runoff before it reaches the river On the evening of April 3, the Colorado River District, a state-chartered protector of water rights for 15 rural Colorado counties west of the Continental Divide, hosted a State of the River briefing in Carbondale for dozens of water users. The state of the river, to no one's surprise, was not strong. The snowpack still gleaming off nearby Mount Sopris and ranges ringing Aspen was melting ahead of schedule and likely sinking into unusually dry soils, said Caleb Foy, a deputy engineer in the state water department's local district. 'We definitely peaked early this year,' Foy told the ranchers, skiers, raft trip guides and local officials while they digested a catered buffet. The Roaring Fork, a tributary flowing through that valley toward the Colorado, had started melting its snowpack on March 23, he said, two weeks before average. Its water equivalent stood at 87% of average, but the amount reaching irrigators and then the mainstem Colorado at Glenwood Springs would likely lag. 'If you have a dry sponge and you put a bunch of water on it, it's going to soak it up,' Foy said. 'It's not going to make it to the river.' That is what happened to the entire Colorado River watershed in 2021, when a reasonably good snowpack yielded dire runoff toward the river and Lake Powell. Most of the region entered that year in severe drought, clearing space in the 'sponge.' Then precipitation built to 84% of the 30-year average, according to the Upper Colorado River Commission's annual report. The resulting runoff only yielded 32% of average, by far the worst drought year since 2002. The Colorado River District represents about a twelfth of the state's population spread across a quarter of the state's land. It seeks to protect their access to water for communities and the dominant industries of agriculture, recreation and oil energy. The area's prodigious snow produces nearly two-thirds of the Colorado's flow on average. The district's only substantial metro area, at Grand Junction, has about 150,000 people, a political force that pales against Denver and the Front Range within the state, and against Los Angeles, Phoenix and others in the national debate. District General Manager Andy Mueller told The Republic that he understands the argument that providing water to those cities generates the bulk of the West's economy, and that some believe it means drying farms to do so will prove a 'higher and better use.' But dewatering places like western Colorado will harm the entire region, he argued, by killing off wildlife habitats and late-summer flows that irrigation creates by spreading water on the land to seep back toward the river. And drying farms means killing a culture while increasing food imports. 'We all need to figure out ways to conserve water,' Mueller said. 'But I think that what is important, and what my agency is responsible for, is defending the values of having a local and regional food supply within the Colorado River Basin. It is recognizing that there's an inherent value in all of these small, thriving communities.' Squeezing every drop, sometimes with weed whackers While the State of the River's official topic was the year's local outlook, the specter of the greater river's collapse hung over every presentation that evening. After Foy, Colorado River District spokesman Matt Aboussie stepped onstage to describe the stakes for western Coloradans. District lands – from the headwaters at Rocky Mountain National Park to the Utah line, from Steamboat Springs ski slopes in the northwest to Grand Mesa and the Gunnison River canals in the south – gather and melt roughly two-thirds of the water that swells the Colorado River, he said. Garfield County, where they stood that night, has warmed on average 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895. Each degree squeezes between 3% and 5% from the streamflow, scientists say, so he pegged the annual loss so far at around 15%. Farmers already strained by local flow restrictions now face the prospect of new diversions to urban Colorado, or pressure to shunt water to users downstream and out of state. 'We can't have a scenario where the Western Slope becomes a sacrifice zone,' Aboussie said. Rancher Bill Fales listened attentively to some of the evening's presentations. He had long shared these fears, having lived through the area's warming and drying decades. But he left early when he got a call alerting him to an ailing cow on his ranch. The next morning, Fales joined a neighbor's ranch manager to inspect a small ditch that they share to deliver water from a nearby creek. Red willow stems poked out of a dusting of snow in the knee-deep ditch, and they would need to collaborate to clear that brush so the water would flow efficiently to their hayfields before the creek dried up. 'I don't think this water's going to last too long,' Fales said. A creek that once lasted until May now typically runs out in mid-April. On a mountain pass to the south, his best gauge of the near future, the government was reporting 62% of normal snow water content and dropping. 'We should be gaining, building snowpack right now, not losing it.' It wouldn't mean the end of his irrigation season, as he also has rights to Crystal River water, which he expected would see him through early August — weeks less than when he started ranching, but enough for him to put up hay for his herd. Fales suggested that the neighbor have his crew work through the ditch with weed whackers. Then Fales and an intern assigned to his ranch by a sustainable farming nonprofit would return to clean out the debris with clippers and a pitchfork. With that plan of attack settled, he drove off with the intern to drop hay from his truck in a field while his bulls followed in anticipation, then back to his house to wrangle the sick cow for treatment. He suspected it had ingested a piece of barbed wire, and he needed to feed it a magnet that would lodge in its second stomach and keep the wire from tumbling through its digestive tract. Ranchers feel vulnerable as states negotiate Fales has ranched at Carbondale since 1973, when he began working for his future wife Marj Perry's father on Cold Mountain Ranch. Perry was born on the ranch, which has been in her family for a century in which first the pressures of real estate development in a resort-dominated valley and now the thirst of farms and cities far beyond it have tested its viability. Her family started farming there two years after the states ratified the Colorado River Compact, but the water rights attached to the land are even older. With too much demand for what the Colorado and its tributaries can supply, Perry said, something has to give. She's not confident that either in-state or interstate negotiations will protect the water coursing through gated pipes to flood her family's hayfields. 'It's going to go to people,' she predicted, 'not alfalfa.' Never mind that she considers that crop drought-tolerant and well-adapted to Colorado, only requiring that they plow and replant once a decade. Never mind that her husband and some scientists argue that flood irrigation is the best bet here because most of the water can seep back to the river. She believes they're at risk in whatever deal the seven states reach. Fales said if either the state of Colorado or the federal government came calling for the senior water rights that he and his neighbors own, they would provoke 'a horrendous fight.' If the drought got bad enough, though, he could see losing that fight. 'If I think I'm going to be out here with my shovel irrigating my alfalfa and people in Denver turn on their tap to brush their teeth and nothing comes out,' he said, 'I don't think that situation will last very long.' Even before any such fight, things are getting tough. Despite Cold Mountain Ranch's rights on paper, it essentially ran out of water in 2018, something he had once laughed off when a visitor asked what he would do in that event. That year the Crystal River dropped to 1 cubic foot per second – dry for practical purposes – and the ranch made only 12 of the large round bales that see his cattle through winter. A rebound the following year produced 180 bales. During the bad years he must sell more cattle to keep from buying hay, which rises in price with the scarcity. Whatever the states and the feds work out, Fales said, he hopes it causes residents and farms throughout the West to live with the water that's available year-to-year instead of continuing to drain what's left in reservoir storage. That's how his family and neighbors do it, as they have no reservoirs above them except what the snow itself stores. 'We're forced to live with what nature gives us in snowfall, in snowpack,' he said. 'And in bad years, we don't have as much water as we'd like. And it seems like everyone in the basin needs to accept the fact that some years there's more water than others.' With that notion, he effectively stated the rift between the states. What happens when the numbers no longer add up? The 1922 compact split the seven water-sharing states into two administrative zones: the Upper Basin of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and a sliver of rural northeastern Arizona, and the Lower Basin of California, Nevada and most of Arizona. The dividing line is at Lees Ferry, a river access point in northern Arizona some 15 miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. The compact theoretically split the river in two, awarding half to each basin, with later actions requiring each to give a small share to provide a supply for Mexican farmers. The Lower Basin, led by booming Southern California and a sprawling farm network, was quick to develop its half, for a time even exceeding its 7.5 million-acre-foot share. That was possible because the slower-developing Upper Basin never built out its share, even today. The Southwest has since weaned itself of its excesses, and then some. Arizona has lost more than 500,000 acre-feet a year in mandatory cuts to the Central Arizona Project since 2022, and various agreements with the basin's water users have left water behind either permanently or for later use. To stabilize Lake Mead until the new shortage guidelines are settled and adopted next year, the Biden administration in May 2024 adopted emergency rules taking some 3 million acre-feet from the Lower Basin states over three years, with more than 2 million of sacrifice compensated by the federal government. Arizona officials say their state alone has left some 5 million acre-feet in the reservoir over the last decade — a volume that, if every day's demand were equal, previously would have seen the state through all of one year and almost to Halloween of the next. The Upper Basin has capacity to take about 5.2 million acre-feet a year, but it reports on average using about 1.2 million less than that because streams dry up and farmers are cut off. 'That's the stark reality of what we're doing in the upper division states,' Mitchell said at an Upper Colorado River Commission meeting. 'It's incredibly sad when you see it on the ground.' For that reason, she and others in the Upper Basin have argued that their states cannot be expected to make up for climate change by cutting back from current uses. This stance threw the discussions into impasse last winter, when Lower Basin officials said they're already cutting back by millions of acre-feet from existing uses and will need Upper Basin help during dry years. The Lower Basin negotiators offered to take the first 1.5 million acre-feet of cuts in the new scheme to be adopted next year, but said they would need to split any deeper cuts with the Upper Basin. Mitchell insisted that the Upper Basin will conserve water, but that Colorado farmers already have taken their hit from climate change and cannot be forced to take more. 'The upper division states use 3 to 4 million acre-feet less than our apportionment every year,' she said. 'This is real water. And the shortages have impacts. It's caused pain in our communities that is unseen, unheard, uncompensated. 'Ranchers are selling off prized cattle to make ends meet. They're buying hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of hay to survive the winter. Farmers are firing people when nothing is growing, and they're selling off land because they can't keep it profitable.' Disputes over the compact could land states in court Lower Basin negotiators say those yearly cuts — the kinds that Colorado farmers must take when paltry stream flows are diverted to neighbors with better rights—wouldn't save the river. Painful as they are locally, Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said, those curtailments don't put more water in Lake Powell and then Lake Mead to shore up future flows. Instead, one farmer with a junior right lets water pass to another farmer with a senior right who then grabs it before it hits the state line. 'So it's not an equivalent to the cuts we're taking below Lake Mead, where we have a user who has the water available to them and they're taking a cut and the water is staying in Lake Mead,' he said. 'Those are not the same things.' As talks stalled, the Lower Basin started to wave the 1922 compact language at the Upper Basin. The compact's enforcement mechanism lay in the words 'the States of the Upper Division 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.' In other words, the Upper Basin could not cause the Lower Basin to receive less than its 7.5 million acre-foot annual share on average. The Upper Basin responded that it wasn't its water users that might cause such a depletion in the next few years, but rather climate change itself. Arizona girded for legal battle, with Buschatzke requesting and getting a legislative allocation for litigation. Mitchell publicly alluded to Arizona's risk if it goes to court, because the state's significant use of Colorado tributary water from the Gila River Basin has never been counted against its compact allocation. Part of the watershed, the Salt and Verde rivers, supplies a substantial portion of the Phoenix area's supply. Both sides repeatedly said they wanted to avoid a court battle that could take years or decades and yield an unpredictable judgment. To break the deadlock, Buschatzke and his counterparts in California and Nevada suggested an idea they're calling the supply-driven plan. The two basins would agree to split the water roughly based on a three-year average of actual flows off the mountains. This would depart from the current method of mandating cuts on the Lower Basin according to how low Lake Mead gets. Each basin would get an agreed percentage — 'not 50/50', Buschatzke said, but a split reflecting that most demand is in the Southwest – and then each basin would have to learn to live with whatever the river gives. It likely would mean that the Lower Basin would get less than the 7.5 million acre-feet that the compact allows it. It likely also would mean that the Upper Basin would get less than what it currently uses in the driest years. They could choose to alleviate that by conserving water during the wet years to create a downstream delivery pool in Lake Powell. 'We're trying to cut a deal,' Buschatzke said. 'We're trying to check the box (saying) if there is a smaller river, we'll have to live with it.' Upper Basin negotiators confirmed in June that they are reviewing the proposal, but they were far from signing off. Any consensus deal will have to set aside either basin's legal theory, Mitchell said. In effect, the Upper Basin would turn a blind eye to the Lower Basin's extra use of tributary water, and the Lower Basin would ignore what it considers a delivery obligation from upstream. 'We do not have a delivery obligation under the terms of the compact, and will not agree to impose one on ourselves through agreement now,' Mitchell said. That's not how Arizona's Buschatzke saw it. 'It locks in a system in which they have a delivery obligation to us and they have to figure out a way to achieve that,' he said in an interview. The states say they have broken the impasse and are talking regularly, but they remain far from a deal. Another reservoir? Conservation advocates say 'no' Meanwhile, the Upper Basin is building capacity to store and use more of the Colorado. In a pine-ringed canyon southwest of Boulder, neighbors and environmentalists are in a race against construction cranes and cement mixers that they say are attempting to buy Denver's future at the expense of the river. There, at Gross Reservoir, Denver Water is raising an existing concrete dam by 121 feet, a height that could add 77,000 acre-feet of capacity to what the state's urban Front Range currently pulls away from the Colorado through Rocky Mountain tunnels. It's a project decades in the making, meant to secure the growing region's future. But it's under fire and at risk because it's unclear whether the river will legally be able to give more once it's completed. Save the Colorado and a local cadre calling itself The Environmental Group this spring succeeded in getting a judge to stay Denver Water's ability to draw the water it would need to fill the expanded reservoir. Construction nonetheless continued when some of the opponents visited with The Republic on a bluff overlooking the dam. Having removed some of the original dam's fortification in preparation of expansion, the water utility convinced the same judge that it must proceed with construction to prevent dam failure and flooding. In effect, lead plaintiff Save the Colorado is siding with Arizona, California and Nevada in seeking to keep as much water flowing downstream for as far as possible – not diverting more to Colorado's Great Plains metropolis. Ideally, group executive director Gary Wockner said, the water that Denver wants to pump into this reservoir would instead flow all the way to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Short of that, he said, it should at least grace Grand Canyon and then flow through Hoover Dam before the river's biggest user, the Imperial Irrigation District, nabs it in Southern California. The point is to keep as much of the river healthy and flowing as possible, he said, and to deal with Denver's thirst by conserving and reducing outdoor uses as the city grows more dense. 'Not everybody in Colorado thinks the water should be diverted in Colorado,' Wockner said. 'These projects increase risk on the Colorado River, and political tension.' A Denver Water spokesman said in an email that the agency expects per-capita water use to decline in the future, continuing a trend already underway there and in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and most cities that use Colorado River water. Still, the state's Colorado Water Plan envisions a metro Denver that needs at least 134,000 acre-feet more water in 2050 than it did 10 years ago, and possibly as much as 280,000 acre-feet. The South Platte Basin, in which Denver sits, is expected to grow in population by between 42% and 70% in that time. 'For further context,' the spokesman wrote, 'note that Denver Water serves one-quarter of Colorado's population using less than 2% of the water used in the state.' Monument to climate change denial? This is but one of numerous in-state struggles to keep water from the Colorado flowing downstream to the west instead of under the mountains to the east. The Colorado River District, for example, is hoping to swing a deal that could keep the Denver area from pulling more water out. The district is spearheading an effort to buy water rights that have powered a hydroelectric plant near Glenwood Springs since 1902. 'It is senior to every single trans-mountain diversion and every single West Slope water project,' Mueller said. To gain those rights from the power company and ensure that the water keeps flowing downhill, his district has pledged $20 million from its property tax collections toward a $99 million purchase price from Xcel Energy. The state would match that and communities would kick in nearly $17 million more. For the remainder, the parties are seeking a federal grant. A group of the Front Range's urban water providers has objected. Although they have said they support the district's ability to keep water moving downstream, they dispute its calculation of how much water the plant has used in the past and is therefore entitled to in the future. The state's water board agreed to conduct a hearing in the fall. The plant operates without storing water behind a dam, instead moving river water through a 13-foot-wide tunnel in the canyon wall and dropping into turbines that return the water to the river 2.4 miles downstream. Sometimes in late summer it's the only flow left to water the rafts and kayaks that help float Glenwood's recreation economy, the only clean water available to downstream communities. But the plant is old, and is occasionally shut down by rockfall or fire debris. If Xcel were to stop operating the plant, the water could be available for the taking by users up and down the river (or over the mountains). Mueller's district hopes to convert that water for the benefit of the river, which is known as an in-stream flow right. 'We're not doing this project in order for us to be able to consume more water. We're doing this to keep the water in the system,' he said, 'and make sure it remains there even as the climate dries.' Denver Water declined The Republic's request for a Gross Reservoir site visit and interview, but provided a link to its statements on the legal case. In one, it said it is appealing the judge's stay because it endangers a safe water supply for 1.5 million residents, and because it had spent $30 million to permit the project and completed 60% of it before being stopped. 'We view this decision as a radical remedy that should raise alarm bells with the public, not only because of its impacts to water security in an era of longer, deeper droughts, catastrophic wildfire and extreme weather,' the utility's statement said, 'but because it serves as an egregious example of how difficult it has become to build critical infrastructure in the face of relentless litigation and a broken permitting process.' To the opponents, what seems radical is trying to pull more water from a river that has no more to give. Denver Water's rights on this reservoir are dated well after the Colorado River Compact, a point that those who sued to block it say could render the whole project worthless if states downstream of Colorado go to court to demand their shares under that compact. 'There isn't going to be enough water to fill this reservoir,' neighbor Bev Kurtz said. 'It'll be the largest monument in history to the denial of climate change.' On this point Udall, the CSU scientist who is among the most vocal about the Colorado's hastening collapse, said he has what he calls 'really mixed feelings' about the wisdom of expanding and filling Gross Reservoir. It's a dilemma that goes back decades for him, to a time before the crisis, when he was more focused on saving a different river. In the late 20th century Udall worked as a consultant who advised Denver Water to drop plans for its then-proposed Two Forks Dam on the South Platte and instead consider moving more Colorado River water to Gross. Nebraska was at legal and political war with Colorado at the time to block Two Forks from depleting the Platte, which flows eastward across most of the Cornhusker State's length and supports irrigation, drinking water and hordes of Central Flyway migratory birds from swans and ducks to endangered whooping cranes, and a half-a-million-strong Sandhill crane rumpus. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ultimately sided with Nebraska and rejected Two Forks during President George H.W. Bush's administration. Denver cast its eyes to the west. 'That's huge,' Udall said of protecting the Platte, which he called 'an unbelievable system.' Now that Denver is ready to tap the Colorado as a replacement, he sighed, 'we have the threat of decreased flows.' Still, Udall believes that if Denver Water wins its appeal and completes Gross Reservoir expansion, it may be able to fill it during the region's wetter years. The headwaters from which Denver pumps just west of the Continental Divide are faring better with snowfall than are tributaries farther south, such as the San Juan River. In general, though, Udall concurs with critics of schemes to take and store more of the Colorado to expand consumption. 'It's idiotic to build any reservoirs to increase use, based on what we know about flows,' he said. Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
E&E News
27-06-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
Colorado River states see possible breakthrough as deadline looms
State negotiators grappling with how to share the drought-ravaged Colorado River say they could be close to breaking free from gridlock just as the Trump administration warns that missing a November deadline could force the federal government to take control. Members of the Upper Colorado River Commission — which represents Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — announced Thursday that the states are weighing a new method of sharing the waterway based on the actual flow of the river, as opposed to projected flows and historical agreements. 'The basin states have been exploring an explicit supply-driven operational framework based on the natural flow of the river,' said Becky Mitchell, who serves as both Colorado's Colorado River commissioner and acting chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission. Advertisement The plan — at the heart of which is a formula for declaring how much water can be shared among the seven states each year, based on actual flows from the preceding three years — was proposed by the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, Mitchell said. 'If done correctly, it should provide the opportunity for the Upper and Lower basins to manage themselves, with the only real point of agreement being the [Lake] Powell release,' Mitchell said of the flows that leave Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam and head toward the Lower Basin states. Characterizing the proposal as a 'divorce' between the basins, or a 'conscious uncoupling,' she added: 'What we know today is that for any approach to work, it must be supply-driven and perform well under both dry and varying hydrologies and adapt to uncertain future conditions.' Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, first detailed the proposal last week at a state meeting. 'We are evaluating a supply-driven concept that shares the water that the river actually provides while requiring each basin to take actions to live within their respective shares,' Buschatzke said. The seven states that share the Colorado River have been in protracted negotiations over a new long-term operating plan for the waterway for more than a year, unable to agree how to share the pain of potential cuts to their individual allocations. A series of existing agreements that govern the waterway are set to expire next year, and a new agreement must be in place by Oct. 1, 2026, which marks the start of the 2027 water year. Scott Cameron, who serves as the Interior Department's acting assistant secretary for water and science, reiterated his warning Thursday to states that a failure to reach agreement would result in federal intervention. 'Those are my three charges: Get heavily involved, work intensely to help the states come to a seven-state solution but let [Interior Secretary Doug Burgum] know if he has to act,' Cameron said via video at the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting. 'That's certainly not his preference at all, but he's prepared to follow through on his responsibilities, if necessary.' Cameron, who has taken on a key role in the negotiations for the Trump administration, issued the same warning earlier this month at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. On Thursday, he set hard deadlines for the states to meet, warning that if a draft agreement has not taken shape by Nov. 11, then Reclamation will need to shift its focus to federal action. A final deal is needed by Feb. 14 to be included in a March 2026 environmental report. A record of decision is expected in May or June 2026, Cameron said. Use of the Colorado River water is divided based on the terms of a 1922 agreement known as the Colorado River Compact. That document allocated 15 million acre-feet of water evenly between the two basins. The basins then further divided the flows among their respective states. An acre-foot of water is equal to about 326,000 gallons, or enough to support two to three families for a year. The same amount of water would cover a football field to a depth of 1 foot. But decades of persistent drought in the West have reduced water in the river by as much as 20 percent, forcing the states and Mexico, which also claims a share of the waterway, into a series of repeated cuts and conservation efforts. At the Arizona meeting last week, Buschatzke noted that the average of the past 25 years shows just 12.4 million acre-feet of water in the river. Those measurements, like the ones that would be used in the new proposal, are taken at a point called Lees Ferry a few miles below the Glen Canyon Dam. 'Unfortunately, the river continues to shrink, which obviously provides a real challenge for us,' he said. 'In its simplest form, basing the Lake Powell releases to Lake Mead on natural flow allows for a fair division of what Mother Nature provides to us.' Buschatzke added: 'We haven't agreed to anything, but we've agreed to test it.' JB Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, confirmed to POLITICO's E&E News on Thursday that the states are pursuing the idea. 'California and the other six basin states are exploring a natural flow-based approach to post-2026 operations — one that offers a far clearer path to consensus than last year's competing proposals or continued debates over the compact,' Hamby said. He added: 'California remains committed to collaboration. Walking away from compromise and cooperative problem-solving is not an option — it's both irresponsible and dangerous.' Despite the general agreement on how to calculate the available water, there could be some sticking points. Buschatzke insisted that a new agreement would not alleviate the Upper Basin states from meeting a 'delivery obligation,' or the 75 million acre-feet over a running 10-year period marked by flows at Lees Ferry. But Colorado's Mitchell rejected that idea Thursday. 'It's essential to understand that this must not impose a delivery obligation on the Upper Basin under any context,' Mitchell said. In his address to the Upper Basin commission, Cameron did not mention the 'natural flow' proposal under discussion by the states but said that Interior expects any agreement reached by the states will become the de facto operating plan to be adopted by Reclamation. 'The goal is to essentially parachute in a seven-state deal as the preferred alternative' into an environmental impact statement expected next year, Cameron said. He likewise reiterated comments he made earlier this month about preparing the House and Senate for potential legislation related to any deal, with a focus on water transfers among states or between the basins themselves. 'Perhaps most fundamentally, I think we all need to realize it's a lot less water in the Colorado system than people thought there was going to be 100 years ago or 50 years ago or, quite frankly, 10 years ago,' Cameron said. 'That's a new hydrologic reality, and we all have to live in the physical world as it is, not as we might hope it will be.'
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A deal in sight? Colorado River talks are moving again, officials say
BOULDER, CO — Metaphors about divorce and grief defined an emotional presentation about the Colorado River in Boulder, Colorado, on June 6. Those metaphors, however, did not represent strife or disaster in stalled water negotiations, but apparent progress and the willingness to let go of past ideas and move toward compromise. "We've heard about the stages of grief ... about denial and anger and the need to be at bargaining," said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission. "Well, I believe the basin states are there." Officials involved in tense negotiations over how to manage shortages on the Colorado River suggested that months of harsh talk and stalemates have ended and negotiators are exploring new options. Federal officials indicated that even parts of the "Law of the River," a 100-year-old legal framework that governs Colorado River allocations, could change as a result of the negotiations. 'We're trying to pivot to something else and be creative, and we have good engagement on that right now," said Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. While most of the negotiators from the seven Colorado River basin states did not attend the conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder, the speakers who did attend were cautiously optimistic about their chances at making a deal. The states have been wrangling for two years over how to distribute water cuts as reservoir levels and stream flows have plummeted in the river. Existing operation guidelines for the river expire in 2026, and the federal government will impose its own regime of water cuts unless states can reach a deal. Now, officials are signaling that progress has resumed toward a deal. Alternative urged: How will Arizona deal with Colorado River shortages? Cities need a 'Plan B,' expert says The Colorado River is a critical source of water for Arizona, providing 36% of the state's water, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Populous counties in central and southern Arizona — Maricopa, Pinal and Pima — are the most vulnerable when it comes to water cuts as their water rights have lower priority. Negotiators from the upper and lower basins of the Colorado River have blown through several informal deadlines to reach a deal, sniping at one another in public remarks and propping up their own proposals for shortage management. The debate often centered on whether upper basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) should take any administered water cuts, as lower basin states like Arizona have already taken cuts. Now, the basin states have begun the process of 'letting go,' Pellegrino said, backing away from some of the ideas they clung to at the beginning of the process and imagining new compromises. The states, along with federal officials, have met every other week since the end of March, according to Scott Cameron, acting assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior. Cameron said the Trump administration is looking to rework and expand the alternatives for river management that the Biden administration put forward in January. Cameron said Trump officials like Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are seeking to engage intensely and support Colorado River basin states in reaching a deal. Although the administration has fired large numbers of federal employees working in water modeling, Cameron said he was working to shield this process from those cuts, and state representatives have said they are receiving strong services from federal agencies. California's representative on the river, J.B. Hamby, said in an interview on June 5 that renewed support from federal officials has helped jump-start negotiations. 'For the longest time, states weren't meeting all that often, or were certainly not inviting the feds into the room," Hamby said. "Now that the Trump administration officials are actively engaged in our discussions, I think everyone who supports the basin-state process has seen that as a material benefit.' Cameron said he has also met with several of the 30 tribes in the Colorado River basin to learn about their unique and differing positions and incorporate their views into official negotiations. Less water: Worsening climate outlooks raise the stakes for an agreement on the Colorado River The Colorado River is expected to carry about half of the water it should, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, pushing states dangerously close to trip wires for legal action under contracts that govern the river. Scientists expect climate change to bring more erratic flows to the river in the long term, with an overall decline in water levels. Brian Richter, scientist and president of the nonprofit Sustainable Waters, presented preliminary estimates on June 5 that potentially a quarter of human water use in the Colorado River basin over the last decade has been unsustainable, meaning it is drawing on limited water reserves that natural water cycles have not replenished. 'There is a massive cultural change that has to happen in this space, and about how we use water, and that is going to affect the culture of every single water user,' Pellegrino said. "And we need to be doing that cultural change very rapidly." Cameron indicated that the negotiations could mean big changes in the bedrock laws that govern the river, saying some of the legal framework defining river management can be changed by Congress or state legislatures. The Colorado River is governed by a long list of compacts, court decrees, and international agreements with Mexico. "We don't take all aspects of what people lump together as the 'Law of the River' right now to be fixed," Cameron said. "If the needs of society change, we ought to be open to having a conversation about changing existing law." Cameron said his team has notified federal lawmakers that they might seek congressional action in the spring of 2026. The federal team aims to have a final decision in place by the summer of that year. Interested in stories about water? Sign up for AZ Climate, The Republic's free weekly environment newsletter. But to even reach a state-approved deal, Pellegrino said, state negotiators need to be better shielded from stakeholders and interest groups in their states that keep squashing ideas for deals before they can be fleshed out. 'If every whisper of what we are working on results in every person who's worried about how it might affect them running and saying, 'This isn't the deal for us,' we're never going to get there,' Pellegrino said. Cullom and Pellegrino said the basin is dealing with a hydrological reality in the river that no one can change. 'People are trying to turn this thing upside down and sideways, trying to find a unicorn," Cullom said. "But there is probably not an operational scheme that prevents us from the challenges that this drier future brings.' Austin Corona covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to 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: Colorado River negotiations are getting unstuck, officials say
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How much water flows down the Colorado River? The right answer is more important than ever
With their funding source under review by the Trump administration, states and the federal government are continuing a mission to better understand how much water flows in the Colorado River, and how much of that water gets used before it reaches Arizona. As the possibility of legal battles on the Colorado River grows, competing states could use water data to back up their arguments, including claims that Arizona should bear the most water cuts in future shortages The Upper Colorado River Commission — a body that represents the four states in the upper Colorado River basin — is in its third year beefing up the measurement of stream flows, water consumption by crops, and water diversions that its states use to regulate their water use. Though the Trump administration is reviewing the federal funding designated for the projects, the commission says it has continued its work. In 2023, the commission and its member states (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming) began installing and re-activating stream gages, eddy covariance towers and other measurement technology that will ultimately cost around $50 million. The new and re-activated systems measure the water consumption of hayfields, hookup river level gages to the internet, and count the cubic feet of water that run down ranchers' and farmers' diversion ditches. 'One of the critical paths to successfully managing water in an uncertain future is having the best available information to guide decisions," the commission's executive director, Chuck Cullom, said in a written comment. So far, the commission has spent close to $40 million, with the largest share going to measuring the water upper basin users divert from the Colorado and its tributaries. The commission has also sought contractors to integrate all the information from these tools and create an online data portal for public view. The new data will help the Upper Basin fine-tune its water management, but it could also play a role in lawsuits between Colorado River states if ongoing negotiations break down. A lawsuit could drag on for years, partly because states would interpret the new data differently, at a time when some experts say the river needs shared understanding and basin-wide action. Quantifying the river's flow is also critical in the short term, as the seven states try to reach an agreement on how to divide up the water during times of shortages. The current plan expires in 2026, but the states have been unable to reach a consensus on most of the key issues. And the agency that oversees the river's operation, the Bureau of Reclamation, is still without a commissioner, further slowing work on a new deal. Law of the River: As the Colorado River is stretched thin by drought, can the 100-year-old rules that divide it still work? Measuring water use has challenged Upper Basin water managers for decades. A network of almost 70 major creeks and smaller rivers feeds into the Colorado before it reaches Arizona. Cities and farms divert water from more than 20,000 points along those tributaries. Plants and trees also take their share, and so do the soil and atmosphere. The amount nature provides, and the amount ecosystems and people consume, changes each year depending on the weather and human development. When the river hits Arizona, water dynamics become much easier to measure. Nearly all the water in the river system has naturally collected in one channel, and there are far fewer points of diversion (though those diversions are larger). Some Lower Basin tributaries like the Gila River are not included in the overall measurement of the river for interstate legal purposes, a difference in accounting that Upper Basin states commonly say is unfair. Over the last century, governments and scientists have developed an immense network of sensors, gates, and webpages to communicate the vast, ever-changing reality of the Upper Basin to the millions of people who rely on that river every day. Across four states, federal and state officials monitor and operate more than 125 snow measurement sites, 325 real-time streamgages, 20,000 water diversions, 22 large dams, nine eddy covariance towers, and four high orbit satellites that transmit data from those sites to data centers and ultimately computers. There are at least four federal departments involved in this network, along with the four state governments and thousands of water users. 'We feel responsible for providing this real time, reliable public information,' said Matt Ely, director of the US Geological Survey's Colorado Water Science Center, which operates streamgages throughout the state of Colorado. The streamgages, some of which are more than a hundred years old, transmit data to satellites or cellphone links every 15 minutes. The data is then bounced back to a database called the National Water Information System, where it then becomes visible to the public through the internet. The data from the gages and related systems is a bedrock resource for communities in the Upper Basin. Rafting companies and anglers check the flows every morning before they hit the river, and state water officials use the meters to decide who gets water every day. 'I took a fly fishing course once, and the instructor said, 'The first thing you do before you head out is you look at the USGS streamgage.' I didn't say anything, but that was a point of pride,' Ely said in an interview. State officials use the network to decide who gets water during dry times. When the water level gets too low to provide for everyone, they pick up the phone, or hop in their trucks, and tell water users with the lowest-priority water rights to shut down. 'Some folks aren't extremely excited to be shut off,' Colorado State Engineer Jason Ullmann said. 'It's a difficult job, because the (water officials) have to make that decision, and each year is completely different based upon the snowpack we receive.' The data also indicates how much water Arizona will get each year, as Arizona's water allocation relies on the amount of water that flows out of the Upper Basin. Still, the system is not perfect, and officials are filling gaps. Until recently, Colorado had no strict requirements for measuring water diversions in some parts of the Colorado River basin (diversion records were kept through more informal or situational methods by local officials). Now, the state is expanding water measurement devices into more corners of the state and establishing rules everywhere, using money from the same Biden-era law that is funding the UCRC project. Utah is also expanding the number of its measurement sites that can transmit data remotely, according to Utah State Engineer Teresa Wilhemsen. "The expansion of water measurement and monitoring in the Upper Division States is improving the information available to water managers and users to adapt to changing water supplies," Cullom said. Water shortages: Colorado River states fear a long legal battle as talks falter over shortage rules All of this data — and the way it's interpreted — has gained special importance in the last two years as Colorado River basin states negotiate who should bear the brunt of an ongoing megadrought and long-term unpredictability in water supplies brought on by climate change. The negotiations have been strained, but states have met to discuss their positions as recently as mid-March, according to a river commission spokesperson. If the talks break down, the data could be critical in understanding the reason for the dwindling supplies in the Colorado River, and how much of a cut Arizona should take in dry times. Flows in the Colorado River have dropped 20% over the last century. Scientists believe a warming climate will have an overall drying effect on the river system, though it will happen through dramatic swings of intense drought and intense wetness. Legally, the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada) should split a fixed, equal amount of Colorado River water, but that split has become physically impossible as water levels swing and drop. Someone has to take less than they are entitled to — a 'cut' — and the states are debating who that should be. In their first climate-related argument, the Upper Basin states claim they should not have to take administered cuts because climate and geography have constrained the river, not them. The Upper Basin has pushed this argument in two forms. In their first argument, Upper Basin states say that because their geography and climate already curtails their water supply in dry years, they shouldn't have to take additional cuts. Unlike the Lower Basin states, the Upper Basin can't rely on large reservoirs like Lake Powell and Lake Mead in dry years, which is why they have state officials who cut off water users frequently. Upper Basin states say they already take these nature-caused "involuntary cuts" each year. 'When you are a headwaters state and all your water comes from snowpack and follows gravity throughout the state, you don't have a lot of choice and sometimes it sucks,' Colorado's negotiator Becky Mitchell said at the annual Colorado River Water User's Association conference in December. In their second climate-related argument, the Upper Basin says it cannot be held responsible for what climate change does to the river. According to the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which divides the river between the two basins, the Upper Basin states must not 'cause' the river to be depleted below a certain amount. If climate change depletes the river to the point that downstream states like Arizona don't get their promised amount of water, the Upper Basin says it isn't at fault. Data is critical in making both arguments work, according to John Fleck, a professor of water policy at the University of New Mexico. At this point, Fleck said the data isn't totally clear cut. New data has already complicated the Upper Basin's argument about water shortages in dry years. In 2014, the Upper Basin states began pushing the federal government to update its methods for calculating those states' agricultural water consumption on the Colorado River. Under the old methods, the data did not show that Upper Basin states use less water in dry years, taking 'involuntary cuts.' Rather, it indicated that thirsty farm fields used slightly more water in dry years. The new methods were supposed to clear that up, but the story is still complicated. Colorado has pointed out that in the new consumption data, the Upper Basin has used 200,000 acre-feet less in the five driest years than the five wettest. The basin used 3.8 million acre-feet in dry years and 4 million in wet ones. But the data also challenges the Upper Basin's narrative in some way. Two of the Upper Basin's five highest-use years are also among the five driest. In addition, the basin seems to use the same amount in average years that it uses in dry years (3.8 million acre-feet). As for the climate change argument, Fleck said negotiators will need more than data to distinguish between the effects of climate change and the effects of human water consumption. If climate change dries the river, thirsty crops could require more irrigation, blending human use and climate into a combined drain on the river. 'This is one of the huge scientific uncertainties,' Fleck said. 'There's an unanswerable question … Let's say my field takes three acre feet of water for alfalfa this year, and it used to take two and a half. Is that climate change, or is that me? I mean, I'm the one taking more water, but I have to because of climate change. And you know, we'll just argue about that.' Drought in the West: Could wet winters start to refill Colorado River reservoirs? What researchers are saying If states can't reach an agreement about how to distribute cuts, the Supreme Court may wade into these undefined and thorny data questions, an outcome public figures in the basin frequently say they want to avoid. 'Trials and litigation are expensive in terms of dollars, resources, and trust,' said Jeffrey Wechsler, a litigator focusing on water law at the New Mexico-based law firm Spencer Fane at the water users association event. Conflicts over data analysis can make those trials costlier, Wechsler pointed out. In a 1995 Supreme Court case between Kansas and Colorado over water allocations in the Arkansas River, the states fought for more than 100 days just to determine which hydrologic model the court would use for measuring water use. Wechsler estimated that a lawsuit between states over the Colorado River could run five to seven years before the actual trial even begins. 'And along that same timeframe,' said New Mexico Deputy State Engineer Tanya Trujillo in the same event, 'the hydrology is shifting, operations haven't ceased, and people haven't stopped planting crops or drinking water in their homes.' The engineers and water experts at the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the Colorado River's largest dams, have signaled they are unlikely to make their own reading. In releasing their alternatives for the next set of operating guidelines for managing the river, the Bureau did not include an option that would place cuts on the Upper Basin, as Lower Basin states have proposed. The Bureau has also not firmly stated how or whether it would 'enforce' the Colorado River Compact, something Lower Basin states have repeatedly asked the agency to do. That enforcement would require the federal government to interpret the compact in relation to the Upper Basin's climate argument, drawing legal resistance. The Bureau may also be losing time and effectiveness as the Trump administration has still not appointed a commissioner to lead it. With the Upper Basin hardening its arguments, producing more data for both sides to interpret in their own ways, the federal government declining to intervene and interpret the compact for the states, or otherwise threaten to 'enforce' it in some way, the states could be headed toward the litigation nightmare described by Wechsler, and that litigation nightmare could arrive soon. Official projections from the Bureau of Reclamation show that flows from the Upper Basin could drop below the amount required to satisfy allocations to the Lower Basin and Mexico as soon as 2027, depending on changes in dam operations. 'Given the current stalemate between the Upper and Lower Division States over how the reservoir system should be operated, it means the potential for basin-wide litigation is now in the 'Red Zone,'' Fleck wrote in a January blog post. Instead of fueling conflict, the data could help states collaborate on basin-wide reforms, argues Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado. Squillace has argued that states should simultaneously enact reforms to their water laws to discourage waste and maximize efficiency, stretching water supplies to serve more users. Doing so, he has written, would require a consensus around how to legally quantify water consumption, something new measurement technology could help water managers do. 'My view is that no state wants to get out front on efforts to conserve water, because they don't think it's fair that they should do those conservation measures when another state is not doing them,' Squillace said. 'And so if the states were able to reach agreement about changing their laws in ways that would better conserve water, then everybody would have, I think, an equal sort of incentive to do it.' Referencing the late sociologist Elinor Ostrom, Fleck pointed out that data can be as useful for collaboration as it is for conflict. 'Ostrom argues that you don't need a centralized government to make decisions for you and impose solutions—that it works better if the management regime emerges from the people who are using the water,' Fleck said. 'And one of the things Ostrom thought was crucially important for the success of these water management regimes was a shared understanding of the numbers, a shared understanding of the measurement and quantification of the resource.' Austin Corona covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to 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: Upper Colorado River states are measuring their water use better
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
At odds over water cuts, Colorado River states still seek consensus as deadline nears
Negotiators for the states haggling over future cuts to their use of Colorado River water say they're committed to reaching consensus, though time and snow are running short. The seven states are effectively under a deadline to reach a deal by summer or face whatever water-use restrictions the federal government or courts may impose after the existing shortage guidelines expire next year. Meantime, a slow start to winter precipitation has dialed up the stakes, possibly leading to painful new cuts by the end of next year. The Upper Colorado River Commission, representing Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, met virtually on Tuesday and heard projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation suggesting that current trends indicate the natural flow into Lake Powell this year will be about 71% of the 30-year average, accounting for near-normal snowpack atop soils that were parched heading into winter. It's not a great outlook for a reservoir that's currently 35% full and that holds the key to providing water to the Lower Basin. 'It looks like hydrology is calling us to action,' Colorado's river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, told colleagues. While the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada have conceded they will have to cut back when water levels dip too low in the river's largest reservoirs at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the upstream states have argued that they already suffer outsize losses in dry years because they have no such massive storage pools. A dispute over whether the Upper Basin should join the Lower Basin in taking additional cuts in the driest years led to an impasse at the annual winter meeting of river water users. The Rocky Mountain states use less water and argue that they have little more to give up. Divisions on the river: Colorado River states fear a long legal battle as talks falter over shortage rules The rift flows out of a math problem that a previous generation of negotiators set up in 1922. The Colorado River Compact and a suite of subsequent deals tied to it envisioned a river spilling 16 million acre-feet of water in a typical year. The Lower Basin, below Lake Powell, would get 7.5 million acre-feet, and so would the Upper Basin, with some left over for Mexico. But the river today, after decades of drought and warming, sometimes provides only about 12 million acre-feet. Over the years, the Lower Basin maxed out its allowable use, while the slower-developing Upper Basin lagged, developing just over 5 million acre-feet in the best of years. Now the Lower Basin must cut back to keep water flowing our of the reservoirs, and the Upper Basin has little ability to develop without shorting the Lower Basin. An acre-foot is roughly 326,000 gallons, or enough to support about three southwestern households for a year. Most of the river, though, supports agriculture. Upper Colorado River Commission Executive Director Chuck Cullom on Tuesday spelled out the typical shortage that water users in the mountain states face. The Upper Basin states have developed capacity to use 5.2 million acre-feet in good years, but in practice fall short on average by at least 1.2 million acre-feet because of localized dry weather. So while the Lower Basin uses its 7.5 million, the Upper Basin uses about 4 million. Mitchell noted that the Upper Basin's shortages are not compensated, as some of the Lower Basin's have been — a water officials simply comes around to close a headgate and drain a canal. Wyoming's top negotiator, State Engineer Brandon Gebhart, said ranchers in his state can't feed their cattle when that happens and must sell off herds that might have taken years to build. 'These existing and very real impacts must be adequately recognized and considered in our discussions,' Gebhart said. Sharing resources: As the Colorado River is stretched thin by drought, can the 100-year-old rules that divide it still work? The counterargument from Arizona and its neighbors in the Southwest has been that they can't realistically take all of the possible cuts — up to 4 million acre-feet in the worst years — out of existing uses without deep economic pain. Arizona Water Resources Director Tom Buschatze was not available for comment on Tuesday, but at the December meeting of water users he noted that his state already has reduced its 2.8 million acre-foot share of the river to 1.9 million over the last decade. Heaping all of the future cuts onto the Lower Basin could actually zero out a major water supplier to Phoenix and Tucson, the Central Arizona Project, he told The Arizona Republic. California continues to seek a seven-state consensus, its Colorado River commissioner, JB Hamby, said in an email. But, as he has before, he said that 'involves all users, states, basins, and both countries further reducing use to manage what the river now provides.' In putting forward several alternatives for future shortage guidelines, the Biden administration had envisioned putting most of the burden of new cuts on the Lower Basin, except for up to 200,000 acre-feet of voluntary conservation during wet years in the Rockies. 'We are working to reach a consensus during this (Trump) administration,' Hamby said. Without offering specifics, Colorado's Mitchell closed the Upper Basin meeting on a conciliatory note, saying that everyone will have to give something to reach consensus and avoid the uncertainty that would arise from a lawsuit. "Cuts are probable," she said. "We need to do that for certainty, and everyone needs to do that." 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: As drought continues, the stakes for a Colorado River deal rise.
