Long-term Colorado River rescue plan at an impasse? It's north vs. south in the West
Will seven Western states be able to rapidly craft a voluntary plan to keep the Colorado River afloat for decades to come? It’s increasingly unclear, as negotiations have foundered between two sides, according to key players.
There are sharp differences between northern and southern states' proposals, with representatives of the mountainous Upper Basin states of Colorado and New Mexico unwilling, to date, to shoulder large future cuts, both because of historic underuse of their share of the river and because of heavily populated California and Arizona's historic overuse. The southwestern states have for years taken twice as much as their northern neighbors.
Major progress appears to be brewing on another front.
Upper Basin officials, including Colorado's plainspoken river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, said they have been informed of a proposal under discussion by California, Arizona and Nevada, collectively known as the Lower Basin, where the Lower Basin and Mexico would agree to take 1.5 million acre-feet of water less from the shrinking river each year. Mitchell said far more details are needed.
That amount would be enough to both to make up for evaporation and leakage from delivery canals snaking across the hot desert, and to help stabilize the nation’s largest reservoirs, based on a report released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that showed average annual losses to evaporation and river banks of 1.3 million acre-feet in the Lower Basin.
Lower Basin officials, including California's Colorado River commissioner JB Hamby, who is leading the state's negotiating team, declined to confirm numbers while they hash out specifics, but pointedly said major reductions need to be contributed by every state. One California official did confirm the numbers.
Tom Buschatzke, Arizona's top representative on the river talks, also wouldn't confirm the 1.5 million acre-feet number, but emphasized the structural magnitude of what the Lower Basin is offering to do, noting his state and California, with help from Nevada and Mexico, would address evaporation and leakage for decades to come, and contribute more atop that to help stabilize the system. But, he said, more needs to be done, by everyone.
"It's hugely important for folks to know that the Lower Basin is going to step up, and that we see a desire and a need for the rest of the problem to be solved collectively," he said. "We can't do it all. It is not physically possible."
Federal officials say the wet winters and commitments to major conservation through 2026 have reduced the chances of Lake Mead falling below critical levels to just 4%, and of Lake Powell to 8% in the next three years. But far more than 1. 5 million acre-feet ‒ as much as 4 million acre-feet in dry years ‒ will likely be needed as climate change amps up extended droughts, experts say.
Others disagree on where further cuts should be made.
"I think the lion's share of that needs to come from the Lower Basin, from the ones who are using it," said Estevan Lopez, New Mexico’s representative on Colorado River policy, and a former U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner under President Obama. He acknowledged that the Lower Basin states disagree, and said, "the conversation has gotten a little rough."
“I don't want to say that we don't have to do anything. That's not what I'm saying. But it cannot be a one-to-one reduction with the Lower Basin," he said.
For now, negotiations between the two sides have ground to a halt, even as a deadline looms to produce a draft agreement by next month. The last time representatives from all seven states met face to face was in early January, when they convened at the Woolley's Classic Suites, at Denver Airport. Since then, at the urging of U.S. Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, there have been two Zoom calls with all the states that highlighted the fundamental differences, one participant said. The northern states recently invited their southern counterparts to Salt Lake City to resume full talks, but none chose to attend.
"We'll keep inviting them," Mitchell said. "I do not think we are at an impasse, and I do not believe we need to be at an impasse."
To kickstart talks again, Mitchell says the Lower Basin states simply need to respond to a fairer, more flexible framework that the northern states have proposed, and be willing to live within the same constraints they have endured moving forward, as well as ensuring compensation for northern tribes who have not used their rivers supplies.
Asked about what the Upper Basin states had proposed, California commissioner Hamby said "no comment," but did say, "There is no path forward that will be successful where .... the entirety of the pain of future drought and shortage ... would fall on one basin or another, or one user or another. The only successful path forward is for everyone to compromise."
Mitchell said in addition to agreeing to the framework, far more details are needed on the Lower Basin's proposal.
"So one and a half million acre-feet, how that's calculated and where it's coming from is incredibly important," she said. “I’m excited to see the Lower Basin’s willingness to conserve. Now comes the hard part: keeping verifiable, wet water in (Lake) Mead. It will be difficult, and I look forward to seeing their plans materialize. We have not yet seen any specifics."
Much of the savings could potentially mirror earlier agreements, which have left water in Lake Mead, but also allowed the Lower Basin states to keep using more than their annual allocations. An acre-foot is enough to supply about three California households, so 1.5 million acre-feet would on paper be enough to supply half a million residences in dry years, though almost 80% of Colorado River water is used for agriculture.
Into thin air: Evaporation a major factor
Reclamation's Thursday report shows about 860,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water was lost to evaporation annually between 2017 and 2021 from Lake Mead to the border with Mexico, and 445,000 acre-feet was lost to evaporation and transpiration from natural vegetation and habitats, or about 10% of the river's average yearly total flow.
That lines up with the highest amount that the three southwestern states are discussing to make up for evaporation. They could also add another 300,000 acre-feet that would be held back in the nation's two largest reservoirs to gradually build back elevation levels.
Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell nearly collapsed last year, after almost two decades of record drought. The federal agency is expected to release a second data report soon that might or might not help, on “consumptive use” by both sides over the past five years. A reclamation spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the reports or the negotiations.
State negotiators praised Thursday's report.
"California is grateful that Reclamation compiled this comprehensive assessment of system losses in the Lower Basin, it’s a helpful factual basis to inform ongoing discussions," Hamby said in an email. "The Lower Basin is working at light speed to determine how it will address the supply-demand imbalance and rebuild resiliency into management of the river. This is an historic and massive undertaking."
But, he added, "We need to have productive conversations with our partners in the Upper Basin about how they can do their part and meet their downstream obligations to the Lower Basin and Mexico under the Colorado River Compact."
Mitchell also said she is "grateful to see the Bureau of Reclamation’s report" and added, "the Lower Basin has never accounted for these losses."
Representatives for all three Lower Basin states announced in December that they would account for the evaporation and seepage moving forward.
Wet winters not nearly enough
Lake Mead is currently about 40 feet higher than it was projected to be at this time last year, federal officials said Thursday, thanks to healthy winter snowpack last winter and increasing heavy storms in recent weeks, along with conservation measures.
Federal officials said the wet winters and commitments to major conservation through 2026 had reduced the chances of Lake Mead falling below critical levels to just 4%, and of Lake Powell to 8% in the next three years.
But millions more acre-feet of reductions are needed in coming dry years.
Snow from the Upper Basin states are what supplies the Colorado River and is tributaries. But Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have no huge dams holding surplus water for their populations, and during the extended drought used half or less of what they are legally entitled to, with farmers, tribes and small towns often facing empty streams or padlocked water diversion channels.
Meanwhile, Mitchell said, they were required under the terms of the expiring 2007 guidelines to keep sending water downstream to the Lower Basin states, who continued using or losing to evaporation and seepage more than 10 million acre-feet annually through the tough drought years, well above their annual allocation of 7.5 million acre-feet.
Mitchell has spoken bluntly about the overuse.
In an interview with a Colorado Springs TV station last week, she said the Lower Basin states, rather than living within their water budget, had for years had depleted their "checking account," Lake Mead, and their savings account, Lake Powell, "and now they're trying to use their brother's credit card" ‒ the Upper Basin's already overtaxed streams and smaller reservoirs.
"That's not appropriate water management," she said.
"Living on a water budget will be hard for the Lower Basin—we do not want to suggest otherwise," she said in an email to The Desert Sun. "We know because we have been living on a tight water budget in the Upper Basin for decades. But if we want to sustain this system that 40 million people depend on, we must all start by living within the means of what the river provides."
That type of talk has left some negotiators in the Lower Basin states seething, though they declined to be identified because of the "sensitive' nature of the proceedings. Arizona in particular has endured large cuts in recent years, and the three southern states combined have far larger populations living on less land than their neighbors to the north. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provides drinking water to agencies serving 19 million people in greater Los Angeles and San Diego, and has also conserved large amounts of water in Lake Mead.
The clock is ticking.
Mindful of the fast-approaching national elections, federal and state officials are pushing to finalize a voluntary agreement by the end of this year, even though they have until Dec. 31, 2026, before current operational guidelines for the river system expire. The concern isn't entirely about a different president or Congress, but that key officials with whom the states have developed strong relationships could be replaced, Buschatzke said. To have an approved plan by year's end, federal officials told the states they'd need a draft by March.
The ice box is emptying
Both basins and all seven states are faced with the increasingly tough math of supplying more than 30 million people and thousands of farmers with water from the system, even as it has shrunk by 20% on average.
Despite recent rains and snows, the trends are unmistakable, said Elizabeth Koebele, a University of Nevada Reno political scientist who researches Colorado River policy. She and others say the recent unprecedented 19-year mega-drought offered clear evidence of a warming atmosphere.
Longtime seasonal cycles like the "winter icebox" that stored snow and ice in the Rockies, the San Juan Mountains and other areas and then released it during spring thaws are being altered, with less snow falling. Soil is also hotter, meaning water evaporates faster, not making it to critical tributaries and the river's main stem.
Upper Basin officials say that is a reality they have lived with for decades, with no giant reservoirs to capture water and hold it for gradual release below Glen Canyon Dam ‒ the demarcation point between the two basins ‒ or lengthy canals to distribute it widely. Mitchell says even farmers with "senior" rights to water in her state must take what they can get each year ‒ and it is often not enough. One tribe in the southwestern corner of Colorado received just 10% of its legal allocation in 2023, she said.
"We are on the front line of climate change, we are living it every day," said Mitchell, saying the three Upper Basin states had to cut use by an average combined 1.3 million acre-feet each year due to a lack of snow and warmer temperatures.
Each basin was assigned 7.5 million acre-feet of water in a seminal 1922 compact, and Mexico was granted 1.5 million acre-feet under a separate treaty, with each of the U.S. basins supplying half of that if necessary, for a total of 16.5 million acre-feet. But there has typically not been that much water flowing through the system, with an annual average of about 12 million acre-feet. Now, as climate change takes hold, all the states are looking for extra supply, like an unemployed person faced with bills scrounging for change in coat pockets and sofa cushions.
Multiple solutions? 'Silver buckshot' rather than silver bullet
Both sides say they don't want to reopen the 1922 compact, and there is some agreement on a suite of available options, dubbed a "silver buckshot" rather than a single silver bullet approach by veteran southern Nevada negotiator John Enstminger. A consortium of environmental groups is also working on their own draft plan.
New Mexico Director Lopez told The Desert Sun that while he had not calculated final numbers, the northern states could potentially contribute another 50,000 acre-feet annually, to be pooled and held back for especially dry years, both from early or additional releases of water from smaller, upstream reservoirs to the large ones, and via ramping up a voluntary farm conservation program. But he said that water should be banked and held back for especially dry years, not sent downstream when the southwestern states request more than their allocation.
A pilot version of an Upper Basin farm conservation program had limited success, yielding about 37,000 acre-feet from four states, compared to a program run by the Imperial Irrigation District, for instance, that netted 163,000 acre-feet in 2021, and 1.15 million-acre feet since its inception in 2013.
Lopez said IID works with hundreds of farmers in one valley, rather than thousands scattered across four states, but he and others said improvements could be made to the Upper Basin program. Koebele noted prices offered to northern farmers were far lower than those paid to southwestern growers, and she also suggested better outreach to farmers distrustful of losing water.
Koebele said there are areas where the Lower Basin could give relief to the Upper Basin ‒ the 1922 compact gives them the right to issue a mandatory "call" for Upper Basin water, for instance, which has never been done but has become a greater threat. She suggested easing that and implementing a more flexible demand system could relax tensions.
But she said "the time is probably past" for the upper basin states to do significant new development that would require more large supplies of river water, despite assertions by Mitchell that they had a right to the water and could do it sustainably.
Long odds, but not abandoning hope
The states have deadlocked before and eventually hammered out a deal. Just a year ago in January, after holing up at the same Woolley's motel, six states announced one plan to prop up the river in the short-term by saddling California, Mexico and Lower Basin tribes with larger cuts, and the next day, Hamby, just weeks into the job, announced a separate plan that would have required Arizona in particular to reduce lots more.
But by May, all seven states had resolved their differences and announced a joint plan that federal officials accepted as a proposed action, and are still reviewing for potential environmental impacts.
Still, "there's a lot of work to be done in a short period of time, and much has yet to be worked out to date," said Hamby.
"I would not want to put odds on it," said Lopez of the likelihood of a seven state draft being produced by next month. "I am optimistic ... that people perhaps for the first time understand the magnitude of the problem."
He said while there have been discussions about different interpretations of court decisions, legislative actions and operating agreements, no one wants to end up suing the other side or facing mandatory cuts by federal authorities.
"I think we all understand and understand very well ... that the very best we can do is trying to come to an agreement amongst ourselves. ... If we decide to go to war over this. I think that's the wrong answer."