Click the link to read the article on The Salt Lake Tribune website (Leia Larsen). Here’s an excerpt:

June 26, 2025

The clock is ticking for seven states to figure out how they’ll share dwindling water in the Colorado River for the foreseeable future. In a meeting at the Utah State Capitol Thursday [June 26. 2025], the river’s four Upper Basin state commissioners further embraced the idea of a “divorce” with their Lower Basin neighbors — an idea also floated at a meeting in eastern Utah last week, as reported by Fox 13.

“Today we stand on the brink of system failure,” said Becky Mitchell, the commissioner for Colorado. “We also stand on the precipice of a major decision point.”

…negotiations between the four Upper Basin states, which includes Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, have been in a standstill with the remaining three Lower Basin states for more than a year. The Interior Department’s acting assistant secretary for water and science, Scott Cameron, has met with leadership in the seven states that use Colorado River water since April, working to broker a deal.

“We all have to live in the physical world as it is,” he said, “not as we might hope it will be.”

On Thursday, Cameron presented water managers with a deadline. The Interior Department plans to release a draft environmental impact statement evaluating different alternatives for the river’s future in December, which will then open to public comment. The department will make its final decision on how to proceed by June of 2026.

“The goal is to essentially parachute in a seven-state deal as the preferred alternative,” Cameron said.

For that to work, the states will need to reach an agreement by Nov. 11. By Feb. 14, they’ll need to hand over the details of their plan. Whatever the states decide on, Cameron reminded commissioners, will likely take an act of Congress and new policy adopted by most of the affected states’ legislatures…

The idea of framing the future relationship of the river users as a “divorce” was first pitched by the Lower Basin states, Mitchell said. Under that proposal, the Upper Basin states would release water from Lake Powell based on the average natural flow measured at Lee’s Ferry, a point just downstream of the reservoir and upstream of both Grand Canyon National Park and Lake Mead.

“If done correctly,” Mitchell said, “it should provide the opportunity for the Upper and Lower basins to manage themselves, with the only real point of agreement being the Powell release.”