Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
December 17, 2025
Federal officials have released a “sobering” forecast of 2026 water levels in the Colorado River, with expected flows plummeting from previous predictions. Precipitation later in the winter could turn those dire forecasts around, officials say, but the current outlook is grim for a river already flirting with crisis. Officials published the new forecast on Monday, only a day before negotiators and stakeholders from the river’s basin states gathered in Las Vegas for a three-day conference. The federal government has given states until February to agree on a longer-term strategy for managing low river flows. The Colorado River’s flow in 2026 (specifically, the unregulated inflow to Lake Powell) could be 27% lower than normal, according to the most probable scenario in the December forecast, with worst-case scenarios predicting even lower flows. The projection has worsened estimates released in November (16% lower than normal in most probable scenarios).
“We all know Mother Nature is a trickster and can often confound our expectations. We certainly hope she intends to do that this year,” said Wayne Pullan, the Bureau of Reclamation’s regional director for the Upper Colorado River Basin, on Tuesday. “But December’s outlook is troubling.”
The bureau, which manages federal dams, will delay water releases at Lake Powell to conserve supplies in the reservoir during the dry winter months in 2026, Pullan said. Even with those efforts, however, the lake’s water levels could fall to critical levels in 2027 as another disappointing year hits the basin. A bad water year in 2026 would compound already poor conditions from 2025, when river flows have been less than half of normal. The new forecast increases the possibility that water levels in Lake Powell could drop below the intakes for hydropower turbines and that releases from the lake could fall below the annual average required to meet the requirements of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which governs water allocation between the seven states that use the river. Without above-average flows in future years to bring averages back up, or an interstate deal on how to manage drought, those low releases could set the stage for a legal battle on the river.
