The Colorado River crisis is no longer part of some hypothetical future — it’s here.
Fueled by one of the worst snowpacks on record, the “most probable” February projection from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates 5 million acre-feet flowing into Lake Powell this year, which is 52% of average. A more grim estimate puts that number at just 3.5 million acre-feet, or 37% of average.
Forecasts show the nation’s second-largest reservoir could fall below the minimum level needed to make hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam as soon as July under the worst-case scenario, or by December under the “most probable” forecast. Reservoir levels are projected to fall to their lowest elevation on record in March 2027, threatening the water supply for millions in the Southwest.
But the increasingly dire projections, this winter’s historically bad snowpack and the growing gap between supply and demand haven’t yet pushed the seven states that share the river to come to an agreement on its future management.
Last week, state negotiators blew past a second federally set deadline to find a consensus plan on how to share shortages and manage Lake Powell and Lake Mead after the current guidelines expire at the end of the year. They have been stuck at an impasse for two years.
The need for a new management paradigm that adapts to a shrinking water supply has never been more urgent. So why isn’t the crisis forcing a deal?
“We’re at a moment where we really need something different that responds to our current hydrology, our current demands, and we’re not seeing a development of that kind,” said Elizabeth Koebele, a professor of political science and associate director of the graduate program of hydrologic sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno. “You’d think that all of these signals would be pointing to the fact that we really need to do something different, but we’re not.”
Anne Castle, a former federal representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission and a Colorado River expert, co-authored a paper in 2021 that said successful negotiations of new Colorado River agreements tend to be triggered by very dry conditions, and that federal directives and deadlines also play an important role. But the current stalemate amid worsening drought throws those findings into question.
“Our premise was that a crisis in terms of water supply and reservoir levels and snowpack and expected runoff can prompt creative compromise,” Castle said. “But we have all those underlying conditions, and we don’t have a compromise.”
The scale of the problem could be part of what’s making consensus difficult between the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and the Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada). As a junior water user on the river, the Central Arizona Project, which supplies the metro Phoenix and Tucson areas, could face the deepest cuts.
“I think if this had been a 2 million-acre-foot problem, the states probably could have solved it, but it’s potentially a 4 million-acre-foot problem,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a researcher and professor at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. “There’s so little water to go around that positions have become hardened as a result. We’re not just talking about inconvenient cuts; we’re talking about severe pain to economies at this point.”
Federal involvement
Some of the normal levers that have been pulled to force action in the past — such as directives and deadlines from the federal government — don’t seem to be effective in the current situation. There have been no apparent consequences for the states missing both the Feb. 14 deadline and an initial Nov. 11 deadline set by the feds for the states to present the outline of an agreement.
The seven state negotiators and their governors were summoned to Washington, D.C., the last week of January for a meeting with Department of Interior officials. That, too, failed to result in a deal.
In a Feb. 14 news release, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum thanked the governors for their engagement and said a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach.
Koebele said when the states were hashing out the 2007 guidelines, which currently govern the river and are just months from expiring, the threat of federal action was part of what spurred the states to come up with a plan.
“There’s a little bit less of this idea of a single or central federal leader in the negotiation process,” Koebele said. “And they’re also still saying, ‘Hey, states, please come up with your own option too.’ I’m not really sure how credible threats are from the federal government when we’re in this sort of context.”
Reclamation has presented five options for managing the river, but although the federal government owns and operates the infrastructure such as dams and reservoirs, it doesn’t have the authority to implement all of the actions outlined in the options. The new, innovative and collaborative actions would need an agreement among the states.
Absent that, federal officials believe the only tools at their disposal, which allocate cuts based on prior appropriation and existing water law, could see Arizona take up to 77% of total shortages, yet they “may not provide adequate protection of critical infrastructure or the system and may be viable only in the short term given current reservoir conditions,” according the bureau.
The federal management options are part of a draft environmental impact statement, which is required as part of the National Environmental Policy Act review for new guidelines. This process is moving forward on a separate, parallel track to negotiations among the states. If the states agree on a plan, it could be plugged into the EIS and become the “preferred alternative.”
“We’re sort of at a key moment for those two processes coming together,” Koebele said. “But the EIS and the state negotiations are not really intersecting in a way that we have seen them intersect in the past or that we hoped they would.”
Federal officials are accepting comments on the draft EIS until March 2.
Blame to go around
In a series of news releases on Feb. 13, Upper Basin and Lower Basin officials blamed each other for the continuing standoff.
“We’re being asked to solve a problem we didn’t create with water we don’t have,” Colorado’s representative, Becky Mitchell, said in a prepared statement. “The Upper Division’s approach is aligned with hydrologic reality, and we’re ready to move forward.”
The crux of the issue is who should take shortages in drought years. The Lower Basin has committed to 1.5 million acre-feet of reductions annually and wants cuts beyond that to be shared by the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin says their water users already take cuts in some years because streams run dry by midsummer and any contributions they make through conservation must be voluntary.
Water managers upstream of Lee’s Ferry would note that they were promised an equal amount of water as the Lower Basin was in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, although they use about 4 million acre-feet a year, while the Lower Basin — whose flows are backed up by releases from the country’s two largest reservoirs — regularly uses all of the annual 7.5 million acre-feet to which it’s entitled. The Lower Basin’s position points to its larger population and economic output, and that their water users, already subject to mandatory cutbacks, tend to be more aggressive in their conservation measures.
“It’s the fundamental disagreement that we’ve had for the past many years,” Castle said. “The Upper Basin doesn’t want to agree to any enforceable reductions in use. And that is something that the Lower Basin, and Arizona in particular, don’t feel like they can live with.”
The states appeared to be on the verge of a breakthrough last summer, when representatives from both basins indicated a willingness to consider a supply-driven approach, where reservoir releases are more directly tied to the natural flow of the river. But hashing out the details is complicated, and a plan that all parties can agree to has yet to emerge.
A new management plan would need to be in place by the start of the new water year on Oct. 1. And if the states can’t reach an agreement by then, the federal government will impose its own management rules, doling out cutbacks that could trigger lawsuits from the states but would not go far enough to prevent the system from crashing.
Even if the states come to an eleventh-hour agreement, federal action will be needed in the immediate future to protect levels at Lake Powell and the ability to produce hydropower. The dire projections showing Powell dropping below minimum power pool assume that the feds would release 7.48 million acre-feet from Powell this year, but under a short-term agreement that also expires at the end of the year, they could reduce releases down to as little as 6 million acre-feet. The Bureau of Reclamation is also holding back about 600,000 acre-feet in Lake Powell through April, which will be released later in the year.
The last time Lake Powell was projected to drop below system-critical thresholds after the 2021 spring runoff, Reclamation conducted emergency releases from upstream reservoirs. The chance that the bureau will again release additional water from those federally controlled reservoirs — Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo — to boost Powell in the coming months is “about 100%,” according to Colorado River expert and author Eric Kuhn.
“Just how much is going to be up in the air, but right now, it looks like they need a million to a million-and-a-half acre-feet based on the current projections,” Kuhn said.
John Fleck, an author, writer and University of New Mexico professor, was the co-author with Castle on the 2021 paper, titled “Green Light for Adaptive Policies on the Colorado River.” He said that in previous negotiations, state representatives not only had a sense of responsibility to protect water for their own communities, but were also looking out for the health of the entire interconnected basin.
“What we have seen in the last few years is a shift to a leadership that is made up of people who are solely looking out for the interests of their own community,” Fleck said.
Experts say the Colorado River needs a new and different management plan that responds to dwindling flows, rebuilds reservoir storage and creates a resilient system in the face of climate change. The current leadership is failing to provide that, Fleck said. The solution is a shift in mindset for water managers to start playing not for the Upper Basin or Lower Basin, but for Team Colorado River Basin, he said.
“There’s a moral question involving the obligations we have to one another in shared river basins,” Fleck said. “I would not be at all happy to win the litigation and see the Central Arizona Project shut down. I would see that as a failure even though my community’s water supply might be protected.”