NOTE: This is post 30,076 here on WordPress. Whew! I missed the turnover to 30,000 but here’s that post.
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral.com website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
February 19. 2025
Negotiators for the states haggling over future cuts to their use of Colorado River water say they’re committed to reaching consensus, though time and snow are running short. The seven states are effectively under a deadline to reach a deal by summer or face whatever water-use restrictions the federal government or courts may impose after the existing shortage guidelines expire next year. Meantime, a slow start to winter precipitation has dialed up the stakes, possibly leading to painful new cuts by the end of next year.
The Upper Colorado River Commission, representing Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, met virtually on Tuesday and heard projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation suggesting that current trends indicate the natural flow into Lake Powell this year will be about 71% of the 30-year average, accounting for near-normal snowpack atop soils that were parched heading into winter. It’s not a great outlook for a reservoir that’s currently 35% full and that holds the key to providing water to the Lower Basin.
“It looks like hydrology is calling us to action,” Colorado’s river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, told colleagues…
The rift flows out of a math problem that a previous generation of negotiators set up in 1922. The Colorado River Compact and a suite of subsequent deals tied to it envisioned a river spilling 16 million acre-feet of water in a typical year. The Lower Basin, below Lake Powell, would get 7.5 million acre-feet, and so would the Upper Basin, with some left over for Mexico. But the river today, after decades of drought and warming, sometimes provides only about 12 million acre-feet.
