State officials are at odds over how to plan for drier years in the Colorado River Basin, but they agree on the main issue blocking their progress: How to cut water use in the worst years a changing climate has to offer.
About 40 million people, including communities across Colorado, rely on the drought-plagued and overused Colorado River. Basin officials have developed plan after plan to try to respond to lower flows on the river and declining storage in reservoirs — but none could prevent the historically low water levels at the basin’s biggest reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, in 2022.
Now, officials from seven states are debating the terms of a new agreement for how to store, release and deliver Colorado River water for years to come, and they have until 2026 to finalize a plan. This month, the tone of the state negotiations soured as some state negotiators threw barbs and others called for an end to the political rhetoric and saber-rattling.
Each year, Colorado gets over half the water shared by the Upper Basin, which also includes New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. For Coloradans, the high-level talks could impact how the state conserves water and manages shortages, how certain reservoirs are operated, and even how the state grows in the future.
“We may not be able to develop in all the ways that we’d hoped,” said Commissioner Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top negotiator. “But we can’t plan for hopes and dreams. We have to plan for what’s actually there, and that involves hard choices.”
If state officials cannot come to an agreement, they might get stuck with a federal plan they don’t like or in a decades-long court battle, which would take the solution out of the basin’s hands entirely.
With the stakes so high, what exactly are the sticking points that are holding up the negotiations? Several of the governor-appointed state officials at the table shared their view.
Wait, what are the Colorado River negotiations about?
The Colorado River negotiations will help replace a set of rules established in 2007.
The rules, which expire in 2026, govern how lakes Mead and Powell store and release water in wet, average and dry years. These reservoirs comprise over 90% of the storage capacity in the entire basin, which includes seven Western states, 30 tribal nations and part of Mexico.
The next set of rules will decide how reservoirs in the basin store, release and deliver water for years to come.
The state negotiators are not the only players at the table: Tribal leaders, federal officials, environmental organizations, agricultural groups, cities, industrial interests and others are weighing in on the process.
The discussions are part of a long, federal process to create a final document, called an environmental impact statement, under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The biggest issue: How to share a shrinking pot
The biggest disagreement among negotiators is how to cut use in dry years, which will impact billion-dollar industries, big cities, environments and millions of people.
“It’s pretty basic: Who will take cuts? How much? And in what form?” said Amy Haas, who is on the negotiating team and is the executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah. “That is the essence of the impasse.”
Estevan Lopez, the governor-appointed representative of New Mexico, agreed. Mitchell of Colorado said one of the critical issues is a deliberate lack of understanding about how Coloradans already reduce their use. (More on this later.)
The fourth Upper Basin state, Wyoming, did not respond to a request for comment.
John Entsminger, Nevada’s representative, said there is agreement on how to address 70% to 80% of the possible scenarios for future conditions in the basin. The problem is how to plan for the worst, driest hydrologies, he said.
Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top negotiator, said the biggest issue was the Upper Basin’s plan, which says the Lower Basin (Arizona, California and Nevada) should take all mandatory cuts in dry years while the Upper Basin voluntarily conserves water.
California agreed.
“There’s no circumstance that works where the Lower Basin is the only one committing to mandatory reductions,” said JB Hamby, the state’s top negotiator.
Will the Lower Basin acknowledge upstream shortages?
Upper Basin farmers, ranchers and other water users get cut off early when there’s not enough water in the river, while big upstream reservoirs help stabilize supply in the Lower Basin. The shortages averaged about 1.2 million acre-feet per year over the past 20 years, according to the Upper Basin.
The Upper Basin states are adamant that any future deal needs to acknowledge these shortages. How? Lopez said the cuts just need to be acknowledged as real. Haas described the shortage calculations as a way to determine equal cuts in the Lower Basin.
Entsminger does recognize the shortages: He recalled growing up in Colorado and seeing how changes in spring runoff can limit water for farms and communities downstream.
“I don’t know what they mean by ‘acknowledge’ it. I’ve said the same thing to all four Upper Basin commissioners,” he said.
Lower Basin officials want to see the math. They said the estimates seem high and questioned how naturally occurring shortages fit into conservation efforts and interstate water sharing obligations.
“It would help to understand how they actually calculate it so that I have a correct understanding,” Buschatzke said. “Would I buy into their proposal? … That would remain to be seen.”
Why won’t the Upper Basin agree to cut water use?
So far, the Upper Basin has refused to agree to additional, mandatory cuts, instead committing to voluntary conservation efforts.
The federal government has put forward ideas that include up to 200,000 acre-feet of conserved water each year in the Upper Basin. The Lower Basin’s proposed plan calls for 1.2 million acre-feet (or more) of mandatory cuts in the four upstream states.
Upstream officials say that might not be legally possible or even physically possible when rivers are too low.
“They’re asking for mandatory reductions. We have mandatory reductions. They are implemented by Mother Nature,” Mitchell said.
The Lower Basin officials refuse to agree to a plan in which Arizona, California and Nevada are the only states making mandatory cuts, which could total 4 million acre-feet, in extremely dry years.
To reduce water use by that much, the Lower Basin would have to stop sending water to big pipelines, like the Central Arizona Project which sends water to 6 million people in Arizona. They’d have to wipe out supplies for farms that grow winter vegetables for the nation.
The impacts would be devastating, Hamby and Buschatzke said.
If that is the likely outcome on the horizon, Buschatzke said he would be willing to take matters to court to avoid it.
What are other key disagreements?
The basin states disagree over other key parts of Colorado River management, some of which have been intractable issues for decades.
The states do not agree on how the streams and tributaries that eventually enter the Colorado River should be accounted for in the Lower Basin.
They disagree about which federal reservoirs should be involved in river management over the next few decades. The Lower Basin wants to include upstream reservoirs, like Colorado’s Blue Mesa, saying it will give a better picture of conditions across the basin.
The Upper Basin says these upstream federal reservoirs were built to store water for development in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Buschatzke disagreed, saying the reservoirs were built to ensure water deliveries to the Lower Basin.
Can the states come together? It’s possible, and it has been done before, said Entsminger, the Nevada negotiator.
“I’ve been negotiating Colorado River deals for 25 years,” he said. “We were always deadlocked and on the brink of disaster right before we had a breakthrough and got some stuff done.”
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