Day: May 9, 2026

Responding to Historic #Drought with Options for Water Users — Colorado Water Trust

Colorado Rivers. Credit: Geology.com

From email from the Colorado Water Trust (Barrett Donavan):

April 29, 2026

To: Any Direct Flow or Stored Water User

From: Colorado Water Trust

Dear Water Users,

Colorado Water Trust works statewide to restore water to Colorado’s rivers. We wanted to take a moment to recognize the historic drought we are facing this year. We operate streamflow restoration projects in many different basins, some of which use water rights permanently decreed to protect water in the river, and many of which are temporary water sharing agreements with agricultural, municipal, and industrial water users.

We understand that many of our temporary water sharing agreements may not operate to restore streamflow this year—the agricultural partners with whom we have agreements may not have enough water for their own use. Those considerations are built into our agreements and we always respect our partners’ operational needs. It has also come to our attention that there may be people interested in using their water rights to prop up streamflow this year. Others may have insufficient supply and want to safeguard water that would otherwise be unproductively diverted. We prepared the following information for people in these situations:

Water Sharing

Colorado Water Trust can help you determine whether your water rights will help to save fish and streamflow this year if you want to leave your water in the river.

Administrative Approval

If your water rights could benefit streamflow, we can secure administrative approvals from the appropriate state agency or water conservation district.

Protection Against Abandonment

The statutes Colorado Water Trust works with for administrative approval provide clear protection against abandonment or any diminishment to the HCU of your water right.

Compensation

Colorado Water Trust provides compensation to partners in our ongoing water sharing agreements. We will do our best to secure compensation for any neew agreements, but whether we can provide compensation this year will depend on demand. Please feel free to reach out to us at RFW@ColoradoWaterTrust.org for more information, call (720)570-2897 x2, or visit our website, ColoradoWaterTrust.org. This is a hard year for all of us in the water community, and we would like to help water users and rivers wherever we can.

#LakePowell runoff to hit record low, putting #Arizona’s water supplies at risk — Tucson.com #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

May 1, 2026 seasonal water supply forecast summary.

Click the link to read the article on the Tucson.com website (Tony Davis). Here’s an excerpt:

May 8, 2026

Very dry and warm weather in the winter and early spring means Colorado River flows into Lake Powell will hit record lows this summer, a new federal forecast says. The past winter brought record-low snowpack in the mountains of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that feed the Colorado. March brought record heat that caused the snows that had fallen to melt prematurely.  The result is that runoff from the melting snow into the river will bring April through July flows into Powell to only 13% of average, says the federal Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That would make the spring-summer runoff into Powell the lowest of its kind since Lake Powell was created in 1963 by the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. The total amount of water expected to reach Powell is 800,000 acre-feet from April through July.