Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

March 8, 2026

The state of Colorado, Upper Colorado River Commission, the Colorado River Water Conservation District, the Southwestern Water Conservation District and several Front Range water providers were among those that submitted comments, asking for the Bureau to finalize an agreement that legally fulfills all water rights while making bold and sustainable changes that align with the hydrologic reality of the river. 

“The Colorado River has changed dramatically over the last two decades, and our operating rules need to change with it,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s water commissioner and lead negotiator in the post-2026 operations, in a statement. “The current rules have not done enough to protect Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and it’s clear that a future management framework must better respond to today’s reality. Colorado’s comments provide constructive, legally grounded recommendations to bring the system into balance.” 

[…]

Since the reservoirs’ current operational guidelines were set in 2007, the Colorado River Basin has experienced deepening drought conditions, declining inflows to the reservoirs and shrinking storage in Powell and Mead. As of March 1, Lake Powell and Lake Mead were 25% and 34% full, respectively.  As the upper and lower basin states sought to reach a consensus on the post-2026 guidelines for the reservoirs, disagreements were rooted in where cuts needed to be made to deal with these worsening conditions. Through the deadline for consensus, the Lower Basin states offered up some cuts and pushed for basin-wide water use reductions. The Upper Basin states, however, have pushed back, claiming they already face natural water shortages driven primarily by the ups and downs of snowpack. In February, the upper division said this winter’s critically low snowpack will result in natural reductions “greater than 40% of the proven water rights” across the four states.  In the draft, the Bureau recognizes that with “critically low storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, significant hydrologic variability and the anticipation of drier future conditions,” an agreement must strike a balance between “potentially profound impacts of water-delivery reductions” and “the need to maintain reservoir storage.”

The latest Upper Colorado River Commission and Colorado comments to the Bureau of Reclamation called on the federal agency to root the post-2026 guidelines on what the river actually supplies.  In its comment, the state of Colorado said that the “failures of the current set of guidelines developed in 2007 have driven the current crisis on the Colorado River.”

“We can no longer rely on the management strategies of the past to solve the challenges of the present and future,” said Lauren Ris, director of Colorado’s Water Conservation Board.