Click the link to read the article on The Las Vegas Sun website (Ilana Williams). Here’s an excerpt:
December 18, 2024
Federal water officials are expected to provide further details in the coming weeks on four proposals for managing the dwindling Colorado River water supply. The current agreement among states expires next year…A pending analysis will detail the benefits and drawbacks of four different plans, said Carly Jerla, the senior program manager at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The analysis will not include any recommendations. The states must reach an agreement on how to allocate the available water by August 2026…
The proposed alternatives include: protecting infrastructure by monitoring how much river water is delivered and using existing agreements when demand overwhelms the supply; adding delivery and storage for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, along with “federal and non-federal storage” to boost system sustainability and flexibility; and a cooperative conservation approach aimed at managing and gauging water releases from Lake Powell amid “shared contributions to sustain system integrity. The fourth proposal would add delivery and storage for lakes Powell and Mead, encourage conservation and agreements for water use among customers and “afford the tribal and non-tribal entities the same ability to use these mechanisms.”
“The preferred alternative isn’t any single one of these alternatives,” Jerla said. “They were constructed to ensure that these concepts were grouped together to allow for the possibility to mix and match.”
[…]
Whatever management path the states agree on, a team of water officials has one concern: the annual set water releases at Glen Canyon Dam. Eric Kuhn, the retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, partnered with other water leaders to author a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation asking it to stop the practice of determining water release quantities annually for Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. They agree that water releases must continue. However, they don’t want a set release amount, stressing the flexibility helps with maintaining the ecosystem around the river, specifically the ecosystem around the Grand Canyon…The management approach Kuhn’s team prefers would create two pools: a Lower Basin pool in Lake Powell, the reservoir connected to Glen Canyon Dam; and an Upper Basin pool in Lake Mead, the reservoir connected to Hoover Dam. That would allow for changes in annual releases, if necessary, and offer flexibility, he said.
