By Kennedy Maize
One of the nation’s most important and least well-known environmental and energy wrangles could be headed to a conclusion. The clock is ticking on the multi-state discussion on how to manage the use of the water from the crucial Colorado River.
The Denver Post reports, “After months of stalemate, glimmers of hope have emerged for consensus on a new plan to manage the shrinking Colorado River.” The seven-state parties to the 1922 Colorado River Compact are wrestling with how to allocate the water that is the lifeline of some 40 million people in the river’s 1,450-mile course through the Southwest.
The river hosts 15 main-stem dams and two major hydropower projects: Hoover Dam (dedicated 1935) on the Nevada-Arizona border, where Lake Mead’s water generates over 2 GW of power, and the Glen Canyon Dam (dedicated 1966) in Northern Arizona where Lake Powell’s hydro generators produce 1.3 GW.
The current agreement, in place since 2007 (with modifications in 2012 and 2019) and overseen by the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation, divvies up the river’s water. The allocations expire Oct. 1, 2026, the beginning of the 2027 “water year.” Scott Cameron, Interior’s acting water chief, issued a warning to the parties on June 26 that if there is no new draft agreement by Nov. 11, BuRec will take over management of the crucial river system.
A new compact agreement will surely constitute a “major federal action” by Interior, requiring a full-fledged rulemaking, including an environmental analysis and opportunities for parties to comment. That process itself could take up to a year, which is why BuRec wants a compact in hand this year.
“Secretary Burgum is prepared to exercise his responsibility as water master,” Cameron said. “He’s not looking forward to that, but in the absence of a seven-state agreement, he will do it.” Previous administrations have made similar threats. They’ve never pulled the trigger.
The heart of the difficulties in the century-old deal for allocating the water is that the compact consists of two formalized, often-clashing parties: the four Upper Basin states (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming) and the three Lower Basin states (California, Nevada, and Arizona).
To simplify the divisions, the Upper Basin states are the major sources of the river’s increasingly diminishing water. Rain and snowmelt in the Upper Basin fill the river. The Lower Basin states are the big consumers. They take what comes their way. Each basin believes it is shortchanged in the existing compact allocations.
The river system has been in a long-term drought since 2000. At the same time populations have grown, bringing greater need for water for irrigation, municipal and industrial users, and hydropower generation.
Negotiations for a new deal have been stalled since early last year, when, as the Denver Post reported, the parties blew past a deadline set by the Biden administration.
Since the beginning of the compact, water has been allocated as if it was a boundless resource. Each participant got a fixed volume of the river’s water, regardless of supply, essentially a demand-based allocation. The allocations were largely based on the history of the river flows. The historic allocation approach is known as the Long Range Operating Criteria, or LROC.
There seems to be general agreement that LROC is on the rocks. Veteran water lawyer Anne Castle, assistant interior secretary for water and science at Interior in the Obama administration and a member of the river commission from 2022 to January 2025, has said the commission must abandon the past approach. “That’s a nightmare scenario,” she said. “And I don’t think that the states or the federal government would allow that to happen.”
The states are now pondering a supply-based approach, a fundamental change in the water allocation. Late last month, the Upper Colorado River Commission announced this new concept. Becky Mitchell, who is Colorado’s commission a member and acting chair of the commission, said, “The basin states have been exploring an explicit supply-driven operational framework based on the natural flow of the river.”
Mitchell added, “The quantification of hydrological shortage is incredibly important. No amount of lawyering is going to fix the math problem…we must live with the river we have, not the river we want.”
In an interview with the Denver Post, Castle said working out the details of a new approach will be a challenge. The states will have to decide on what is the “natural flow” of the river: how much water would flow absent any human intervention. Then they will have to decide how to allocate percentages to the states.
Anne Castle added that the negotiators will also have to figure out how to enforce the agreement if the Upper Basin fails to supply its percentage to the lower reservoirs.
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