Water managers are preparing for another potentially lackluster runoff this year in the Colorado River Basin.
At a meeting Tuesday, water managers from the Upper Colorado River Commission agreed to write a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation asking for a monthly meeting to monitor drought conditions. Officials from the four Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) are hoping to avoid a repeat of 2021 when emergency reservoir releases caught them off guard.
“We want to be as prepared as possible since hydrology has flipped pretty quickly in previous years,” said UCRC Executive Director Chuck Cullom. “We think it’s prudent to collectively review the forecast and the water supply so that we aren’t caught in the situation we were in in 2021.”
From July through October of that year, Reclamation made emergency releases from three Upper Basin reservoirs: 20,000 acre-feet from Navajo, on the San Juan River; 125,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge, on the Green River; and 36,000 acre-feet from Blue Mesa, on the Gunnison River. The goal was to boost water levels at Lake Powell, which had fallen to a critical elevation, and ensure that Glen Canyon Dam could still produce hydroelectric power.
Guidelines for Upper Basin reservoir releases are laid out in the Drought Response Operations Agreement, which was signed in 2019 by the Upper Basin states and the federal government. The three reservoirs are part of the Colorado River Storage Project, and the federal government can authorize emergency releases from them without permission from the states or local entities.
But Colorado water managers were not happy about the timing or lack of notice from the bureau when the emergency releases happened in 2021. Drawing down Blue Mesa, Colorado’s largest reservoir, during the height of the summer boating season forced marinas to close early for the year and was a blow to the state’s outdoor recreation economy.
“It’s February, and we are seeing hydrology that could potentially impact reservoir operations,” Cullom said. “Let’s plan for it rather than reacting over a weeklong period. We’re trying to preempt some of the concerns and criticisms of reservoir operations in 2021.”
Water year 2021 was historically bad, with an Upper Basin snowpack that was near normal at 93% of average but translated to only 36% of average runoff into Lake Powell, the second-worst runoff on record. One of the culprits was exceptionally thirsty soils, which soaked up snowmelt before runoff made it to streams, due to 2020’s hot and dry summer and fall.
Officials said current conditions could be setting the basin up for another year like 2021. Alex Pivarnik, a supervisor with the bureau’s Upper Colorado Operations Office, presented the latest data to commissioners Tuesday.
“Coming into the winter, soil-moisture conditions were pretty much dry throughout most of the basin,” Pivarnik said. “And January was a really bad month for us in the basin. … Coming into February, it was kind of a make-or-break for us.”
February’s “most probable” modeling projection for spring runoff into Lake Powell is 67% of average. The February forecast for total Powell inflow for water year 2025 is 71% of average.
Those numbers, taking into account snowpack conditions up until Feb. 5, were down from January’s most probable runoff forecast, which put Lake Powell’s spring inflow at 81% of average and total Powell inflow for water year 2025 at 82% of average.
After a storm cycle that brought snow to mountain ranges throughout the Upper Basin over Presidents Day weekend, snowpack for the Upper Basin stood at 94% of median as of Wednesday. In 2021, Upper Basin-wide snowpack on Feb. 19 was 89%.
“While the snow brought us some positivity, I still like to remind folks when we see Lake Powell at 35% full, that means it’s 65% empty and that’s troubling,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s representative to the UCRC. “I want to note that we’ve been slightly optimistic because of the snow, but it still does not look as good as we’d like.”
Mitchell acted as chair of Tuesday’s UCRC meeting after former chair and federal representative Anne Castle was asked to resign by Trump administration officials last month. A new federal representative to the UCRC has not yet been appointed.
This is a critical time for Colorado River management as the Upper Basin states are in talks with the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona, Nevada) about how the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, will be operated and cuts will be shared after 2026 when the current guidelines expire. Overuse, drought and climate change have driven reservoir levels to their lowest points ever in recent years.
Cullom gave an overview of the timeline needed to implement a new plan for post-2026 operations. The seven basin states need to reach agreement on a plan by early summer; the bureau would issue a final environmental impact statement by the spring of 2026 and a record of decision by August 2026. New guidelines would take effect in water year 2027, which begins Oct. 1, 2026.
Negotiations with the Lower Basin states, which ground to a halt at the end of 2024, have resumed, and Upper Basin commissioners said they are hopeful that they will reach a consensus. Failure to do so would mean river management decisions would be imposed by the federal government, which is something that state representatives want to avoid.
“A consensus is the best option out there for everyone, and I’m hopeful that we’ll get there,” Mitchell said, adding that “the highest level of certainty that we will have as seven basin states is if we can determine our own future. … I want to reiterate that we are committed to work with the Lower Basin states toward that seven-state consensus.”
This story ran in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent.
