After Colorado River negotiators missed a mid-November deadline, Colorado water experts ranged from disappointed to optimistic. But they agreed on one thing: State negotiators need to break their current impasse — whether that’s by hiring a mediator or taking a hard look at conservation.
The Department of the Interior has turned to Colorado River Basin states to figure out how to manage their water supply after a set of 20-year-old rules expires in August, but states officials blew by a Nov. 11 deadline to share the gist of a joint agreement.
Some Colorado water professionals were OK with the delay or were keeping an eye out for updates as soon as December. Others were disappointed or impatient for clarity about the future of the river’s overstressed water supply.
Inside the negotiating room, state principals say they have put every tool on the table, and after two years of discussions, they understand each other’s positions. But they’re also more entrenched in their own arguments, JB Hamby, the negotiator for California, said in an interview with The Colorado Sun.
Progress has been…
“Lame. Can I use that word?” Hamby said. “We’re still in the same holding pattern we’ve been for the past several years, and real conversations need to happen.”
The next set of management rules will govern how key reservoirs, like lakes Mead and Powell, store and release Colorado River water. The rules will need to handle a warming climate that is shrinking the water supply for almost 40 million people.
Officials must also launch the new rules with less stored water available to soften the impacts of dry years, like water cuts. Lakes Mead and Powell, which account for 92% of the reservoir storage in the basin, have fallen to a fraction of their capacity over the past 25 years.
The negotiations over the basin’s future have been gridlocked over stubborn sticking points, like who will have to cut back on water use by how much in the basin’s driest years.
Arizona lawmakers submitted a letter to the federal government Nov. 11 that pointed the finger squarely at the Upper Basin, saying it was “alarming” that the upstream states hadn’t committed to mandatory water conservation.
Other Lower Basin states, Nevada and Arizona, declined to respond to questions about the status of the negotiations.
The four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have been operating as a single block. Colorado’s top negotiator, Commissioner Becky Mitchell, said she is focused on finding an equitable and sustainable solution.
“The most helpful thing we can do for the millions of people who are counting on us to address these serious challenges is to focus on finalizing the details of a fair deal,” Mitchell said in a prewritten statement, “instead of allowing heated rhetoric and politics to get in the way of the significant progress that has been made in the negotiations.”
What do Colorado water experts say?
Several Colorado water experts said they want the deal done well, even if it takes more time. Missing the November deadline wasn’t a huge issue or unexpected, said Steve Wolff, general manager of the Durango-based Southwestern Water Conservation District.
“Everybody’s a little disappointed that there hasn’t been an agreement to date, including the seven principals in the room,” Wolff said. “I know they’re working very, very hard, and they will continue to do so.”
The Colorado General Assembly created SWCD and its sister organization, the Colorado River Water Conservation District, to manage water resources in western Colorado. The Western Slope includes the river’s headwaters and is part of the Colorado River Basin.
Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District, is optimistic.
“It’s really critical that any agreement be workable and protective of the values that are important to Colorado,” Mueller said. “If it takes an extra couple months to reach that agreement, we’re OK with that.”
Denver Water, the largest water provider in Colorado, still wants to see a seven-state agreement, CEO Alan Salazar said in a statement. About half of Denver Water’s supply originates in the Colorado River Basin and ends up in faucets around the Denver area.
For Western Resource Advocates, a Boulder-based environmental group that works across the basin, the lack of substance in the states’ Nov. 11 announcement was concerning, said John Berggren, a regional policy manager in the nonprofit’s Healthy Rivers program.
“The sooner we can get a state agreement, the better, because that gives the rest of us who have an interest in this river a chance to build upon that framework,” he said.
How to break the impasse
With the state negotiators stuck in a logjam, Colorado water professionals leaned into different ideas — from a short-term plan to mediators — to help shake loose some progress.
Wolff supported the idea of creating a short-term phase of the post-2026 management rules to give states time to set up programs and adjust to new water limitations.
“Everybody would like to see a 20-year agreement, but if this is what’s going to move the needle, I think that’s just fine,” he said.
Colorado should also start having discussions about how future water reductions or conservation programs might be deployed, Wolff said.
The state engineer has the authority — within Colorado — to decide how much water to send into ditches, canals and other diversions based on water availability and the state’s priority system for water rights.
When it comes to guiding water past Colorado headgates to move it out of the state? There are legal questions, arguments and counterarguments about where, when, how and under what circumstances Colorado can take water out of the state for interstate purposes.
In a voluntary program, “as of today, I would argue he (the state engineer) does not have the authority to try and administer that water and move it out of state,” Wolff said.
Hamby said California needs some degree of assurance about Upper Basin activities, i.e., some commitment to conserve water.
“It doesn’t need to be big. It doesn’t need to be certain. It doesn’t need to be defined in explicit detail,” he said. “Some degree of efforts to conserve water would be absolutely game changing in this whole thing.”
Calling on Colorado to agree to mandatory cuts is not a path forward, Mueller said.
“Our state law and our constitution do not permit our negotiator to agree to mandatory reductions,” Mueller said.
The Colorado legislature would need to pass a law to give the state engineer authority to move water out of state as part of a new conservation program under a post-2026 agreement, water experts said.
But Colorado is still at the table, state officials said.
Colorado and its Upper Basin sister states have offered to do voluntary conservation, Mitchell said. They have committed to voluntarily releasing water from upstream federal reservoirs, like Blue Mesa near Gunnison, if downstream reservoirs, like Lake Powell, drop too low. The states conducted similar emergency releases in 2021.
Officials could tap a “conservation pool” in Lake Powell — an earmarked water “account” within the reservoir’s total storage — to help the entire river system in some situations, Mueller said.
“Our state is at the table and has proffered numerous offers of compromise, all of which have been ignored by the Lower Basin,” Mueller said.
Another path forward might be to bring in a skilled negotiator other than the Department of the Interior, which has played the intermediary so far. The federal department is helping and operating in good faith, but they’re not actually a neutral party, Mueller said.
“It may be too late in the process to bring someone in (to help) with that, but maybe not,” he said.
What’s next for the Colorado River?
Water watchers are buzzing about the potential for big announcements at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas next month, the largest gathering of Colorado River professionals each year.
State officials did not say whether the public would hear updates on a joint agreement during the conference.
“Everything is totally possible,” Hamby, the California negotiator, said in an interview.
The Department of the Interior plans to release its next Colorado River update in December as part of a yearslong National Environmental Policy Act process. The act requires federal agencies to analyze environmental impacts of major federal actions, like how Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell and Hoover Dam at Lake Mead will store and release the water supply for millions of people.
The NEPA process will culminate with an environmental impact statement, which will detail how the reservoirs will be managed after 2026.
Sometime in December, Interior officials plan to release a draft of their analysis, but it’s not clear yet when that will happen or whether it will be timed to coincide with the Las Vegas conference.
It will include five options for managing the river and its key reservoirs. All environmental impact statements have to include a “no action” option under NEPA, which outlines what happens if officials do nothing. In this case, river management would revert to pre-2007 rules that did not consider major drought impacts in the basin. This is not a viable alternative, officials said.
The Bureau of Reclamation, which is part of the Department of the Interior and is responsible for managing dams and other major water projects in the West, has given states until Feb. 14 to share a detailed, joint proposal for managing the Colorado River’s water supply.
If states can submit their proposal in time, the feds have said they will use the states’ plan as the preferred choice to manage the basin’s water supply.
“We are currently working to have the final details of a deal worked out by the February 14 deadline,” Mitchell’s written statement said. “But we hope to have more information to share before that.”
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