Click the link to read the article on Ken’s Substack (Ken Neubecker):
March 27, 2026
The February 14 deadline for the seven Colorado River Basin States to come up with an agreement on future management of the river is long gone, and still no agreement in sight. The deadline for submitting comments on the Bureau of Reclamations Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is also past. Reclamation didn’t have a “preferred alternative”, which is not normal. They were hoping the States would have an agreement so that could become the preferred alternative. So they are left with their suite of six alternatives. All six are fraught with what Reclamation calls “decision making under deep uncertainty” (DMDU, they love acronyms).
That is an understatement.
No one seems to be very happy with any single proposed alternative. Some are calling for a new DEIS, or at least a Supplemental DEIS. This would only push any deadline further down the road. Reclamation is caught between a rock and a hard place.
The only real alternatives that they can implement without full approval by the States are No Action and the Basic Coordination Alternative. Both would be disastrous. They would simply be going back to how things were done prior to the 2007 Interim Guidelines and even earlier policies, none of which reflect the needs of the Colorado River we have today.
Adding to that is the very dry record low snowpack in the Rockies. This annual winter snowpack is the ultimate water storage reservoir for the entire basin, from Pinedale, Wyoming, to Yuma, Arizona. It is what puts water into the two great reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead, that the Lower Basin desert states of California, Arizona and Nevada depend on. It is the only real reservoir that the needs of the arid Upper Basin states, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming depend on. This year that snowpack reservoir is as low as it has ever been, even eclipsing the former record year of 2002 when all this mega-drought started. The recent heat dome setting up over the Four Corners area is melting and sublimating what little snowpack there is fast.
Lakes Powell and Mead are already at very low levels, and the 1.7 maf projected inflow from spring runoff is looking smaller every day. Reclamation predicts that the water level in Lake Powell will drop to a point where no hydropower can be generated, power pool, by as soon as late July or at least in December. That, in effect, could be dead pool, with very limited releases from the lower “river outlet” tunnels. In effect, the flows from Lake Powell will become run of the river, what comes in is what goes out. No more storage for expected water deliveries downstream except what they might risk in lowering Lake Mead even more.
Needless to say this has sparked a war of words between the Upper and Lower Basins, with the Lower Basin being particularly vitriolic. As the February 14 deadline passed, JB Hamby of California declared “The 1922 Colorado River Compact requires the Upper Basin to deliver an average of 8.25 million acre-feet (maf) annually to the Lower Basin and Mexico. That delivery obligation is fixed in law, even if the river produces less water.” Arizona has gone even further, declaring in TV ads that the water delivery is not only an obligation, but a “guarantee” for delivery.
Huh??? Fixed in law and a guarantee? The reality of the river disagrees. The requirements of the Compact are, yes, written in law. On paper. It is “paper water”, not real, or “wet” water. Colorado’s commissioner Becky Mitchell was more to the point, if less vitriolic, “We are being asked to solve a problem we didn’t create, with water we do not have.” At least someone understands the reality of the situation.
John Wesley Powell, the hero of the Colorado River was invited as the honored guest and keynote speaker at the second International Irrigation Congress, held in Los Angeles in 1893. He was held in high regard by the many boosters, speculators and people hoping to cash in with irrigated farms all across the Colorado River basin. After listening to what they were saying, Powell pocketed his prepared remarks and said,
“When all the rivers are used, when all the creeks in the ravines, when all the brooks, when all the springs are used, when all the canyon waters are taken up, when all the artesian waters are taken up, when all the wells are sunk or dug that can be dug in all this arid region, there is still not sufficient water to irrigate all this arid region.”
The delegates didn’t want to hear that. As they booed him off the stage he added,
“I tell you gentlemen that you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.”
Powell was right, but the boosters didn’t listen. Many still aren’t listening. Agricultural dreams have faded and new dreams of housing developments and data centers are taking their place. The boosters, in both Basins, are still booing reality off the stage. Dreams continue to grow as the river continues to shrink.
I read of fears that the Upper Basin will take advantage of Lower Basin cuts by taking more themselves. Really? From where? That vast winter snowpack reservoir that is expected to “guarantee” so much water for the Lower Basin, to refill Powell and Mead, is the same shrinking reservoir that the Upper Basin depends on. Upper Basin diversions are being curtailed every year, not expanded. There isn’t enough water. The Upper Colorado River Commission’s “Amended 2016 Upper Division States Depletion Demand Schedule”, published in June 2022, was used in BOR’s modeling of Upper Basin demands, but the optimistic projections of that report have never born fruit. The report is a projection of potential future depletions from the Upper Colorado River, but they are just that, projections. And relatively modest ones at that. The report begins with a resolution of the Commission that states,
WHEREAS Depletion Demand Schedules issued by the Commission are not a prediction of future water use or depletions. The Depletion Demand Schedules are estimates that presume the continuation of the observed historically available supply and other demand drivers used for planning purposes and are useful for modeling purposes.
It is simply and estimate based on “observed historically available supply”. Observation and history have made some changes to any anticipated future depletions. The report cites 5.7 maf as the current historical use as of 2022, with potential for increased depletions up to 5.8 maf in 2020 and 6.6 maf by 2070. In reality the annual depletion has dropped to 4 maf or less. With continued aridification and dwindling snowpack Upper Basin depletions will likely stagnate, if not decline. That is just the reality.
Under Colorado law, and constitution, the right to divert water to a beneficial use “shall never be denied”. What that means, as I stated in the previous post, is that anyone can dig a ditch or throw a small pump into any stream and divert water. New applications for water rights are filed every month with the Water Courts, and their decrees will likely be granted. That is again, all on paper. The reality is they probably won’t get much if any water. When the river is flowing high in the spring it is a “free river”, meaning anyone can stick in their straw for a drink. But as soon as the first senior call is placed all that stops, and senior calls are happening earlier and earlier every year. And the local Water Commissioners, the ones who can shut down diversions, are getting busier.
The 1922 Compact has a fairly senior right on all streams and rivers in the Upper Basin. So far, the non-depletion requirement for flows averaging 75 maf over a ten year running average hasn’t been breached. Lake Powell will probably hit power pool or worse before then.
The difference between the demands, hopes, and fantasies of paper water and the hard reality of actual wet water are growing starker every winter and have been since the three giant reservoirs, Powell, Mead and the winter snowpack, have shrunk over the past 25 years. Nature doesn’t care much about paper, reports, lawyers or the dreams of boosters past and present. She always wins in the end.
And as Becky Mitchell, said, litigation won’t create any new water.
A correction/addition to my previous post about misunderstandings on the Colorado River
I need to make a correction on my previous post. The three large Upper Basin’s reservoirs, Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo do provide some water for Upper Basin use, especially Navajo, which provides water to the San Juan-Chama diversion to the Rio Grande basin and Albuquerque. It supplies on average 91 kaf of diverted water. It is expected that there will be no diversion this year. Navajo also provides water for Tribal use to the Navaho and Jicarilla Apachie. Downstream flows from Flaming Gorge, the largest of the three can provide smaller amounts for hay fields in Browns Park and the melons in Green River, but that’s pretty small too. Blue Mesa releases can benefit the Gunnison Tunnel diversions and Redlands downstream, but both are well senior to the Compact.
I knew better.
The main storage of the three reservoirs is still primarily as that Compact compliance savings account, and they will be called upon soon to bolster the levels of Lake Powell, where the inflow from runoff projection is dropping below 2 maf. If things keep going like this for another few weeks it will likely be lower.
