Click the link to read the report on the University of New Mexico Digital Repository website (Jack Schmidt¹, Anne Castle², Eric Kuhn³, Kathryn Sorensen⁴, Katherine Tara⁵):

September 2, 2026

KEY POINTS

• Reductions in Lower Basin water use during the last four years, including forecast use in 2026, are similar to the initial targets for Lower Basin shortages described in the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead (FEIS) and the accompanying Record of Decision (ROD). ⁶ Lower Basin consumptive use in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and forecast for 2026 has been the smallest for the entire 2010-2026 period. These four years of smallest use are between 1.4 and 1.7 million acre feet/year (maf/yr) less than the 7.50 maf/yr amount generally recognized as the Lower Basin’s mainstem allocation.
• Reductions in Lower Basin use have been achieved by large reductions implemented by Central Arizona Project (CAP) contractors and subcontractors, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), and non-CAP water users in Arizona. The reductions in use in the IID have been in summer water use and have not affected consumptive use in winter when garden crops, such ass lettuce, onions, carrots, and broccoli, are grown.
• There is no historical analogy for implementing Lower Basin shortages of 3 maf/yr that would reduce annual consumptive water use to 4.5 maf/yr. We identified the lowest use in each month between 2010 and 2026 in each Lower Basin state and summed those monthly values, even when those months did not occur in the same year. The annual total of the summed lowest monthly uses yielded a minimum total Lower Basin use of 5.03 maf/yr. Thus, implementation of 3 maf/yr shortages would require reductions in monthly use greater than the sum of the smallest monthly uses during the past 17 years.

INTRODUCTION

This paper is part of a series, The Colorado River Water Supply Crisis in a Few Graphs, whose goal is to provide readers with summary information about the natural water supply, reservoir storage, and consumptive uses and losses in the Basin so that readers can better understand and consider the current water crisis. The long-term fate of the water supply provided by the Colorado River depends on many complex and interconnected factors: the natural flow of the river, the amount of water stored in the Basin’s reservoirs, the consumptive uses of that water, the losses caused by reservoir evaporation, and the losses associated with water flowing through natural channels (i.e., transmission losses).

In 2024, approximately 60% of all uses and losses of Colorado River water in the United States occurred in the Lower Basin (Table 1).⁷ In this paper, we summarize water use in the Lower Basin since 2010, primarily focusing on consumption by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), the largest user in the entire Colorado River Basin, and on the aggregate consumption by Arizona users not served by the Central Arizona Project (CAP). We focus on these agricultural users, because agriculture makes up approximately 60% of consumptive uses in the Lower Basin,⁸ and the agricultural sector will play a significant role in future reductions in water use in the Lower Basin.

This paper provides historical context in which to consider the magnitude of recent reductions in Lower Basin water use by comparing current water use with typical rates of use since 2010. We also provide historical context for the shortage goals described in the recently released ROD and Operating Guidelines for 2027 and 2028. ¹⁰ The ROD lists a potential maximum Lower Basin reduction of 3.0 maf/yr but also includes language that seems to allow for even greater reductions, after consultation, in extraordinary circumstances.

We analyze the Lower Basin water use data summarized by the Bureau of Reclamation in annual decree accounting reports formally titled Colorado River Accounting and Water Use Report: Arizona, California, and Nevada.¹¹ These reports are issued each May and summarize monthly water use by every Lower Basin user. Reclamation also provides monthly provisional data on the current year’s water use, and the agency provides forecasts of annual use for the current year.¹² Similarly extensive and precise data describing Upper Basin use are not readily available.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell are the largest reservoirs in the United States and essentially are one gigantic reservoir separated into two parts by the Grand Canyon.¹³ Inflow to this gigantic reservoir primarily is snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, and a significant amount of that runoff is put to beneficial use by Upper Basin users before it reaches Lake Powell. A small amount of additional inflow occurs within the Grand Canyon, and there are occasional inflows to Lake Mead from the Virgin River. Southern Nevada Water Authority directly withdraws water from Lake Mead, and other Lower Basin users divert stream flow after it is released from Lake Mead.

RECENT LOWER BASIN WATER USE

In 2025, total consumptive use in the three Lower Basin states was 5.755 maf, the smallest annual total use since at least 2010 (Fig. 1) and 17% less than the average for 2010-2025.¹⁴ This small amount resulted from the lowest annual use in California (3.647 maf) since at least 2010 and the second lowest annual use since 2010 in Arizona (1.911 maf). Lower Basin use in 2026, 5.961 maf, is forecast to be slightly more than in 2025.¹⁵

Water use in California since 2023, including forecast use in 2026, has been 13% less than between 2010 and 2022.¹⁶ Decreased use in California in those years has been primarily due to reductions in use by IID (Fig. 2). IID’s consumptive use of 2.187 maf in 2025 was the lowest since 2010 and forecast use in 2026 of 2.242 maf is also very low. Average use by IID between 2023 and 2026 will be 12% less than average use between 2010 and 2022.¹⁷ Annual consumptive use by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) between 2023 and 2026 will be 13% less than between 2010 and 2022, although the savings are not as great because MWD uses less water than does IID.¹⁸

The proportionate reductions in water use in Arizona have been much larger than in California. Average statewide water use between 2023 and 2026 will be 25% less than between 2010 and 2022.¹⁹ CAP has reduced its uses by 40% between those two time periods, while non-CAP users have reduced consumption by 6%. The smallest use by Arizona was 1.890 maf in 2023 (Fig. 3). Use in 2025 by non-CAP customers, 1.004 maf, was the lowest since at least 2010. Non-CAP use has exceeded CAP use since 2022.

LOWER BASIN AGRICULTURAL WATER USE

Imperial Irrigation District

IID is the largest individual user of mainstem Colorado River water in the Colorado River Basin, exceeding use by any state in the Basin except California itself. Much of California’s ongoing reductions in use are due to decreased use by IID resulting from various compensated agreements. Future reductions by IID have the potential to significantly affect the Basin’s effort to balance consumptive use with declining supply.

In comparison to typical annual use since 2010, IID’s use in 2024 and 2025, as well as forecast use in 2026, has been notably reduced, as represented in a box-and-whisker plot (Fig. 4).²⁰ The box in Figure 4 encloses 50% of the years since 2010, and the length of this box is called the Inter Quartile Range (IQR), bounded by the 25th and 75th percentile of the 17 years of data, including forecast use in 2026. The line through the middle of the box is the median value for this period. Lines extending up and down from the box (i.e., whiskers) extend from the box to values within an acceptable range. Values that are greater than 1.5 times the IQR above the 75th percentile or below the 25th percentile are beyond the acceptable range and are outliers and individually plotted. Thus, 2024, 2025, and forecast use in 2026 are outliers, indicating that use in those years has been significantly less that typical use during the entire period since 2010.

The largest proportion of irrigated land in IID is devoted to field crop production, the largest proportion of which is devoted to alfalfa (Fig. 5).²¹ The area devoted to alfalfa production changes little from year to year and during the year and was approximately 150,000 acres in 2025.²² In 2025, other significant field crops were Bermuda grass and kleingrass, whose average irrigated area was 80,000 and 20,000 acres, respectively. The area devoted to garden crop production changes greatly throughout the year and is largest between November and March. Little land area is devoted to garden crop production in the heat of summer. The most significant garden crops are lettuce, onions, carrots, and broccoli.

Water use by IID is typically lowest between November and February when garden crops are grown (Fig. 6). Water use increases greatly in March and remains high through October when field crops are the primary focus of production (see Appendix).

Reductions in consumption during the past few years have been accomplished primarily by reduced water use between June and September when alfalfa and grass hay are the primary crops. These reductions are reflected in Figure 5 where red dots are the average monthly water use since 2024. Red dots plot below the grey boxes of the IQR in June, July, August, and September, demonstrating that recent water use in these months has been significantly less than typical since 2010. In contrast, recent water use between December and May has been within or slightly less than the IQR.

Agricultural use of mainstem Colorado River water in Arizona

We estimated agricultural use of mainstem Colorado River water in Arizona by subtracting the total diverted by the CAP from the total use in Arizona. This remainder includes all the agricultural uses along the Colorado River as well as a small amount used by the City of Yuma, other towns along the river, and military bases.²³

The monthly pattern of water use is similar to the monthly pattern by the IID. The smallest uses are between November and February (Fig. 7). Consumptive use increases in March and is highest between April and August.

Reductions in water use by these Arizona growers have been more modest than by IID. Recent average use has been somewhat less than the typical range between April and July and has been within the typical range in other months, except for November when there was significant precipitation near Yuma in 2025.

Management and Policy Implications

Consumptive water use of mainstem water in the Lower Basin has been less than 7.5 maf/yr in every year but one since 2010. Since 2023 including forecast use in 2026, this reduction ranged between 1.4 and 1.7 maf/yr. The Lower Basin states have reduced water use comparable to the initial targets for Lower Basin shortages described in the recently released ROD²⁴ and Operating Guidelines for 2027 and 2028.²⁵ Thus, the good news is that the initial shortage goals of the FEIS have been achieved in recent years.

These savings have been achieved by large reductions in use by the CAP (Fig. 3) and by reduced agricultural water use in summer by IID (Fig. 6) and non-CAP water users in Arizona (Fig. 7). These reductions in agricultural water use have not resulted in changes of the amount of water consumed in winter when garden crops are grown.

The ROD allows for potentially large Lower Basin shortages of up to 3 maf/yr and potentially more in the event that Basin runoff continues to be low and reservoir live storage drops to critical levels. We placed these potential shortages in perspective by summing the smallest monthly use in each Lower Basin state since 2010 even though these months of smallest use did not occur in the same year. In some cases, the smallest water use was not due to significant water conservation but to unusually rainy conditions when demand for supplemental irrigation water was low, such as in November 2025. In other words, there is no historical experience with implementing the annual sum of these smallest monthly uses, because the smallest monthly uses did not occur in the same year.

Nevertheless, summing the lowest monthly use in each state provides perspective to the magnitude of the proposed 3 maf/yr shortages. The summed value of smallest monthly uses yields a potential minimum annual Lower Basin use of 5.03 maf/yr for the three Lower Basin states (Table 2). Although many of the months of smallest use occurred between 2022 and 2026, some were unique months of very low use in the 2010s. There is no historical analogy for imposition of the largest Lower Basin shortages envisioned by the recently released ROD and 2027-28 Operating Guidelines. [ed. emphasis mine]

CONCLUSION

The analyses summarized in this paper demonstrate that agricultural water use that supports winter garden crop production has not changed despite recent reductions in annual water use by IID or by non-CAP water users in Arizona. To date, water use by IID and by non-CAP water users in Arizona has been reduced in summer when garden crops are not grown. In times of acute water shortage, it is likely that continued and additional water savings can be achieved by reductions in irrigation of field crops in summer, without causing shortages to garden crop irrigation in the winter.

It is notable, however, that summing the lowest monthly water use in each state since 2010 results in a theoretical reduction from the Lower Basin allocation of 7.5 maf/yr of approximately 2.5 maf/yr, less than the maximum potential Lower Basin shortage envisioned in the recently released ROD. Our calculation of a theoretical shortage is based on summing the smallest use in each month between 2010 and 2026, and these months are not all in the same year. In some cases, the lowest use resulted from unusually large precipitation that reduced irrigation demand, rather than explicit conservation efforts.

The Priority Shortage Allocation Model utilized in the FEIS distributes shortages among the Lower Basin states in a much different manner than the way shortages have been achieved in the past.26 Tabulating the historical minimum monthly uses demonstrates that achieving the 3 maf/yr reductions described in the FEIS and ROD would be very difficult and is without historical precedent. Implementation of such large shortages would likely require new management policies, including compensated fallowing, permanent retirement of irrigated acreage and corresponding water rights, and unprecedented investment in increased irrigation efficiency.

We recognize that our theoretical comparison of minimum monthly uses since 2010 in no way captures the economic dislocation and secondary impacts that might result from implementing such shortages now. A full economic analysis of the impacts of the largest potential Lower Basin reductions described in the FEIS and the ROD is critical for understanding the consequences of significant reductions in water use in the Lower Basin. That type of analysis is beyond our expertise. Nevertheless, we recognize the importance of such an analysis, and we recognize the real-world distress that such large reductions of use might cause.

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¹ Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University, former Chief, Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

² Getches-Wilkinson Center, Univ. of Colorado Law School, former US Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission, former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, US Dept. of the Interior.

³ Retired General Manager, Colorado River Water Conservation District.

⁴ Kyl Center for Water Policy, Arizona State University, former Director, Phoenix Water Services.

⁵ Staff Attorney, Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico.

⁶ FEIS is available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/final-eis/index.html. ROD is available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/P26_RecordofDecision_Final.pdf.

⁷ All annual data in this paper are calendar year. 2024 is the most recent year that consumptive uses and losses data are available for the entire Basin.

⁸ Richter et al., 2024, New water accounting reveals why the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea. Communications Earth & Environment 5:134. available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01291

⁹ Upper Basin state uses in Table 1 do not include state reservoir evaporation. Total major and minor state reservoir evaporation is listed separately in Table 1. Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) reservoir evaporation is evaporation from Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, Flaming Gorge, and Lake Powell reservoirs. Source of Upper Basin data: J. Prairie, Upper Colorado Basin Research and Modeling Group Chief, Bureau of Reclamation. Source of Lower Basin state uses: Reclamation. 2025. Water use report: Arizona, California, Nevada, calendar year 2024. Source of mainstem reservoir evaporation (Mead, Mohave, Havasu) data: S. Tighi, Hydrologist, Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region. Evaporation at Senator Wash and diversion dams estimated at 28,000 af.

¹⁰ Department of the Interior, August 2026, Operating Guidelines: Colorado River Guidelines for Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Operating Years 2027 and 2028 (2027-28 Operating Guidelines), available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/2027-2028OperatingGuidelines_Final.pdf. We note that these Operating Guidelines provide for 1.25 maf/yr of shortage, allocated among the Lower Basin states as previously proposed: 760,000 af/yr in Arizona, 440,000 af/yr in California, and 50,000 af/yr in Nevada, The distribution of shortages greater than 1.25 maf/yr is not specified but would presumably be subject to consultation. See 2027-28 Operating Guidelines at 5.3.A. The ROD allows for the development of different methods of shortage allocation. See ROD at 5.

¹¹ Colorado River Water Accounting and Water Use Report: Arizona, California, and Nevada, available at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/wtracct.html.

¹² Lower Colorado River Water Accounting – Actual Water Use and Official Water Use Forecast, both available at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/wtracct.html. Throughout this paper, we refer to the forecast for 2026 that was made on September 1, 2026. The forecast is frequently revised.

¹³ There is no significant water use in the Grand Canyon.

¹⁴ Average Lower Basin consumptive use between 2010 and 2025 was 6.880 maf/yr.

¹⁵ Reclamation, Lower Colorado River Basin, available at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/hourly/forecast.pdf.

¹⁶ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 4.326 maf/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 3.764 maf/yr.

¹⁷ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 2.600 maf/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 2.290 maf/yr.

¹⁸ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 925,000 af/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 804,000 af/yr.

¹⁹ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 2.590 maf/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 1.930 maf/yr.

²⁰ IID used 2.187 maf in 2025, 2.312 maf in 2024, and is forecast to use 2.242 maf in 2026. Median use between 2010 and 2026 was 2.546 and use in 50% of the years of that period was between 2.481 and 2.558 maf/yr.

²¹ Imperial Irrigation District, 2025, written communication, Monthly crop acreage summary, 2011-2025.

²² Total net area of crops in 2025 was approximately 350,000 acres.

²³ Forecast use in 2026 for Bullhead City, Lake Havasu City, Parker, Yuma, U.S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds, and the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma is 35,000 af.

²⁴ Department of the Interior, August 2026, Record of Decision, Decision Framework for Colorado River Guidelines: Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead (2027-2036), available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/P26_RecordofDecision_Final.pdf.

²⁵ Department of the Interior, August 2026, Operating Guidelines: Colorado River Guidelines for Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Operating Years 2027 and 2028 (2027-28 Operating Guidelines), available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/2027-2028OperatingGuidelines_Final.pdf. We note that these Operating Guidelines provide for 1.25 maf of shortage in each year, allocated among the Lower Basin states as previously proposed: 760,000 af in Arizona, 440,000 af in California, and 50,000 af in Nevada. The distribution of shortage greater than 1.25 maf/yr is not specified but would presumably be the subject of consultation. See 2027-28 Operating Guidelines at 5.3.A. The ROD allows for the development of different methods of shortage allocation. See ROD at 5.

²⁶ See FEIS Appendix C, Shortage Allocation Model and Alternative Distribution Model Documentation, at C.4.2. However, the ROD specifies that other methods of shortage allocation may be developed. ROD at 5.

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Austin Corona):

August 28, 2026

Nevada officials have long presented themselves as a voice for compromise and conservation in debates over the Colorado River. The Las Vegas area, home to two-thirds of the state’s population and most of its economy, has become a model of urban water conservation. As the river has declined from overuse and a decades-long drought exacerbated by climate change, southern Nevada water planners built extensive water reuse facilities and implemented tight restrictions on new turf and fountains, dropping the region’s per capita water use by 58 percent in roughly 20 years. Meanwhile, in interstate negotiations over the management of the Colorado River, state representatives have positioned themselves as bridge-builders, sometimes referring to themselves as the “middle basin” between the river’s divided upper and lower basin states. 

When the federal government’s new management plan for the river was announced earlier this month, most observers thought Arizona, which stands to take the largest immediate cuts, would launch the first lawsuit over the plan’s implications for its water supplies. So it came as a surprise to many Colorado River experts when Nevada became the first to sue the federal government over the plan this week.

“I expected that there would be litigation, but it was surprising to me that Nevada fired the first shot,” said Anne Castle, former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

Nevada’s lawsuit comes after more than two years of negotiations among the seven Colorado River states and the federal government over how to reduce water use on the declining river. The states failed to reach a long-term agreement before the river’s current management procedures expire in October, leaving the Interior Department to impose its own plan. The federal government’s plan largely relies on cuts to water use among the Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada, and California — to prop up water levels in the river’s largest reservoirs. Those reservoirs have been draining so quickly that the dwindling water depth could threaten hydropower and dam operations within months without intervention. 

Nevada argues that the federal government’s plan illegally forces it to take too much of those cuts. In a worst-case scenario, the plan could allow for a 71 percent cut to the Las Vegas area’s water supply, the state argued, calling it an unacceptable risk to the state’s largest population center and economic hub. Nevada believes this outcome results from a misreading of the law and also claims the government didn’t consider important alternatives to such drastic cuts.

This worst-case scenario, which experts say is an interpretation of the plan’s implications by Nevada, would become possible if reservoir levels continue to drop and if Nevada couldn’t reach an agreement with Arizona and California to help it absorb more of those cuts. Those three states already have such an agreement, which is incorporated into the federal plan and meant to last through 2028, at which point the plan allows the states to update the operations with a new agreement. Without an agreement, the federal government will implement cuts based on preexisting water rights and agreements, cutting the most from Arizona and leaning increasingly on Nevada and California as potential shortages increase. The plan was created through a decision-making process required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which mandates that federal agencies gather public input and consider environmental and socioeconomic impacts of major decisions.

SNWA filing against #ColoradoRiver Record of Decision in District court this morning https://t.co/TvE3d0on44 pic.twitter.com/8yjOZLZ6YI

— Ed Millard (@edmillard) August 24, 2026

Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (Karl Flessa):

August 20, 2026

In the classic Monty Python sketch, a customer returns to the pet shop where, just 30 minutes ago, he purchased a parrot.  He complains that the parrot is dead.  The shopkeeper tries to convince the customer the parrot is only resting or is stunned. 

In the ensuing argument, the customer uses no fewer than eighteen euphemisms: “This parrot is definitely deceased…demised…passed on…no more…ceased to be…expired…gone to meet his maker…a stiff…bereft of life…rests in peace…pushing up the daisies…metabolic processes are now history…off the twig…kicked the bucket…shuffled off his mortal coil…run down the curtain…joined the bleedin’ choir invisible.”

Indeed, the parrot was nailed to its perch, already dead when the customer bought it.

The Compact and its subsequent agreements are as dead as that parrot.

• The Compact is dead because it is founded on a false premise: a river that can produce the prescribed amount of water.
• The Compact is dead because it is unjust: neither the Tribes nor nature participate in negotiations.
• The Compact is dead because it doesn’t work.  The Basin States are locked in battle; the Federal government tinkers and dithers.

In the longer version of the sketch, the shopkeeper goes to the back in search of a live replacement, returning to report “…we’re right out of parrots.”

So are we. 

We need a new Compact. 

Proposals are not lacking: proportional allocations, Tribal standing, a whole-basin approach, adjustments based on actual flows, a basin authority, nature’s fair share, interstate trading… .

What’s lacking is the courage to change. [ed. emphasis mine]

The Compact is a dead parrot.

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

August 25, 2026

THE NEWS: The U.S. Interior Department on Friday handed down the operating guidelines for the Colorado River for the next two years, while also finalizing the 10-year decision framework that will guide these plans. And on Monday, Nevada filed a lawsuit challenging both the framework and operating plan, saying that potential shortages required by the plan could cause “cause devastating environmental, socioeconomic, and health and human safety impacts to southern Nevada and its citizens.”

THE CONTEXT: Interior, i.e. the Bureau of Reclamation, did two things. The first was to hand down a record of decision on the framework that will guide operating plans for the next decade, which I wrote about here, so I’ll skip the details this time.

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Feds release Colorado River plan, and no one’s very happy about it — Jonathan P. Thompson

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They also released a more specific plan for the 2027 and 2028 operating years. In the new plan, the feds affirm their commitment to “defending” minimum power pool in Lake Powell, or a reservoir surface elevation of 3,490 feet. When the water falls below this level, water can no longer be released via the penstocks and hydropower turbines, so it must all go through the lower river outlet works, which weren’t designed for sustained use.

Notably, Reclamation plans to do this by “initially seeking to maintain a minimum elevation of 3,510 feet. This provides an operational buffer and provides additional flexibility in recognition of the operational risks associated with sustained operations below elevation 3,490 feet … .”

The current elevation is 3,518 feet, meaning it could reach that upper buffer zone of 3,510 feet in October if current levels of decline continue.

To prevent it from falling any further, Reclamation would cut back releases from Glen Canyon Dam, which in turn would cut flows through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead, which would pull down Mead’s levels and trigger mandatory cuts for the Lower Basin users. Under the new operating plan so far, these cuts aren’t as onerous as many feared, and actually match up with what the Lower Basin had proposed to do voluntarily. The deets:

• The Lower Basin would receive 6.25 million acre-feet from the Colorado River, or 1.25 MAF below the Colorado River Compact’s allotment of 7.5 MAF.
• Arizona would receive 2.04 MAF; California 3.96 MAF; and Nevada 250,000 AF.
• This means Arizona would take a 760,000 AF cut; Nevada a 50,000 AF cut; and California a 440,000 AF cut.

Arizona takes the largest cut by percentage and volume because the Central Arizona Project, which delivers most of the state’s Colorado River water, has junior water rights to other big users on the river.

But if reservoir levels continue to drop, then Reclamation could impose further cuts on the Lower Basin, potentially slashing Nevada’s water deliveries by as much as 213,556 acre-feet, or about 71% of its total entitlement of 300,000 acre-feet. This would be truly disastrous for the Las Vegas metro area, which relies on the Colorado River for about 90% of its water. And it’s not like there are a bunch of alfalfa fields the city could “buy and dry” for the water rights.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has managed to cut overall water consumptionover the last three decades, even as the population has soared, through system-wide efficiencies, incentives, tearing up ornamental grass, water recycling, and extra fees for water gluttons. Las Vegas still has room to conserve, but as Western water scholar John Fleck put it, there “is an absurdity to a plan that would require Las Vegas to cut 71%. That’s existential.”

Even more astonishing than the fact that the federal government is considering virtually drying up one of the Southwest’s major metropolises is their justification for doing so: To protect Glen Canyon Dam and keep it producing hydropower, even at greatly diminished levels, and — though it’s not stated — to keep lake-based recreation somewhat viable.

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Glen Canyon Dam hydropower: What’s it good for? — Jonathan P. Thompson

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You have to remember that when the feds vow to defend the 3,500-foot level at Lake Powell, and when they refuse to even consider re-engineering Glen Canyon Dam to allow for releases at lower levels, either by rebuilding the outlet tubes or tunneling a bypass around the dam, they are also saying they are going to trap more than 4 million acre-feet of water behind the dam that could otherwise flow downstream into the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead. That’s enough water to fill Nevada’s entire allotment for more than 13 years that, instead, will be sitting in the reservoir and slowly evaporating. 

Nevada’s lawsuit — which is against the federal government, not the Upper Basin states — alleges that the feds’ plan violates the Law of the River. It slams the plan for not explicitly calling for releasing more water from Upper Basin reservoirs to prop up Powell, does not require Upper Basin states to make any cuts, and fails to consider a long-term alternative or engineered solution alternative to address Glen Canyon’s infrastructure limitations. The plan also does not account for its potential impacts on hydropower production at Hoover Dam, which drops off steeply as reservoir levels decline (meaning that preserving power output at Glen Canyon could lead to a net reduction in combined output from the two dams).

Save the Colorado, a river advocacy group, came out in support of Nevada’s lawsuit in a written statement. “Las Vegas has one of the best water conservation programs in the entire U.S.,” said Gary Wockner, the group’s executive director. “Penalizing Las Vegas for water use is like penalizing an obese person who lost a lot of weight taking GLP1s.”

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A Colorado River glossary and primer — Jonathan P. Thompson

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🌵 Public Lands 🌲

Rough Times at the national parks these days. In Bryce Canyon, a sudden thunderstorm left visitors stranded on trails and requiring rescue, with two of them transported to a hospital for hypothermia. It also unleashed some serious flash flooding. In Zion National Park, a rockslide narrowly missed a shuttle bus and forced the closure of a portion of the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. And in Canyonlands, officials were searching for a missing individual in Horseshoe Canyon, a remote area north of the park’s Maze district. Temperatures in the area were in the 90s. In Death Valley, a French tourist died after his car got stuck in the mud on a remote road in 116° F heat.

The video below shows flooding near Tropic, Utah, downstream from Bryce Canyon National Park. Source: Garfield County Sheriff.

In May, I wrote about how climate change and aridification and a shrinking Lake Powell were coming for the Bullfrog Marina, on the northwest side of the reservoir. The water was simply getting too low for the marina to remain viable, so they were planning on moving it across the reservoir to Halls Crossing Marina. 

At the time, it was not yet clear how lower water levels and the marina’s removal might affect visitation to the remote area. Now preliminary numbers are in:

• 67,277: Total recreation visitors to the Bullfrog District of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, January through July 2025
• 44,206: Total recreation visitors to the Bullfrog District, January through July 2026.

That’s a decrease of over 23,000 visits, or a 34% drop. Even more dramatic is the drop in overnight stays in July, from over 47,000 in 2025 to just 17,000 in 2026. Then did folks make the long drive over to Halls Crossing, instead? It appears that some of them may have once the marina was moved, but overall this year visitation is also down on the northeast side of the reservoir.

• 18,023: Total recreation visitors to the Halls Crossing District of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, January through July 2025. 
• 15,099: Total recreation visitors to the Halls Crossing District, January through July 2026.

That’s a decrease of 2,944 visits, or a 19% drop. This may not all be related directly to the dropping lake levels. Horseshoe Bend, which is in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area but downstream from the reservoir, has also seen a significant drop off in visitors this spring and summer. In a future dispatch I’ll take a closer look at tourism numbers in general to get a better sense of how widespread the declines are.

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Climate change comes for a Lake Powell marina — Jonathan P. Thompson

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And now for the images showing Bullfrog with the marina, and without. The first image is from August 2024, when the reservoir’s surface elevation was at about 3,580 feet. The marina was still there, and the boat ramps still made it all the way to the water. The second image is from August 2026, with a surface level of just over 3,518 feet. Look closely and you’ll see the marina is gone, and the ramps are high and dry.

Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):

August 25, 2026

You may remember my mention in early February of a research paper from scientists at the United Nation University Institute of Water, Environment and Health, titled Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. The report begins:

‘Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all compounded by global heating, a UN report today declared the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, inviting world leaders to facilitate honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.’

Our Colorado River made their list of exemplary global ‘hot spots’ for bankruptcy, with the observation that ‘the Colorado River and its reservoirs have become symbols of over-promised water.’

You’ve seen the word ‘crisis’ used frequently this year in the countless morbid articles about the Colorado River. But the UNU Institute director Kaveh Madani argued that we are now ‘post-crisis’: the term ‘crisis’ implies a deviation from the normal, a disruption to be dealt with in order to get back to normal, but there is now, Madani says, no going back to what passed for ‘normal’ in the last century. [ed. emphasis mine]

The study indicates that we have drained too many aquifers, resulting in subsidence that destroys the aquifers for the rest of the geological age; we have lost high-storage wetlands to gullying and lowered water tables; we have spread too much surface water out to dry under an atmosphere heating up incrementally with every additional gallon of fossil fuel we burn; desertification spreads in our wake; et cetera, et cetera. As a result:

The report makes the case for a fundamental shift in the global water agenda—from repeatedly reacting to emergencies to “bankruptcy management.” That means confronting overshoot with transparent water accounting, enforceable limits, and protection of the water-related natural capital that produces and stores water—aquifers, wetlands, soils, rivers, and glaciers—while ensuring transitions are explicitly equity-oriented and protect vulnerable communities and livelihoods.

There is in this research paper the kind of lovely naivete that one finds in most of the analyses of Big Issues today (climate change, systemic racism, corporate personhood versus people, etc.); there is an underlying conviction that when the facts are all laid out, we will rationally accept that, yes, we are indeed in a bankrupt situation. And so we will all sit down together, like rational beings would, and work out ways to resolve the ‘reality deficit’ between what has been promised and what can be delivered.

This ignores the fact that, when we are first confronted with evidence of something so big in its threat to our way of life, that its correction might require creating a whole new way of life, our first response is to say, ‘this can’t be so.’ There has to be a mistake. And a long winding road leads on, into and through a morass of denial, anger, blames cast, responsibilities denied, hopeful negotiations and underlying despair – the whole medieval pilgrim’s Slough of Despond that must be negotiated before we might actually sit down together and work out some way of resolving the ‘reality deficit.’

There is, however, a kind of honesty in coming around to realizing – and acknowledging – that a system might be bankrupt. Bankruptcy is not necessarily the end song of what has become bankrupt, although it can be (Chapter 7 bankruptcy).  It can instead be a time of operational or financial reorganization, aa time for acknowledging circumstances, conditions and misconceptions not originally taken into account that, accounted for, might enable a measure of eventual recovery and even success.

The seven Colorado River Basin states, still stuck in the zomboid Colorado River Compact, are not there yet, but the Bureau of Reclamation might be getting there. On the viable assumption that the seven states will not come up with a last-minute plan before the end of September and expiration of the Interim and Interim Interim Guidelines, they are preparing to institute a temporary plan that will maintain functionality in the river storage and delivery system, with (they hope) no embarrassing ‘dead pool’ episodes – which basically means getting and keeping as much water as possible in the two big reservoirs, Mead and Powell, and that can only happen at considerable cost to users below the big reservoirs.

The Bureau plan will not be carved in stone for forever like the Colorado River Compact; the Bureau will basically be planning operations for two-year periods, through the coming decade; every two years, the parties of interest will reconvene to review and revise the operating plan as circumstances require. This ‘adaptive’ approach makes sense in a bankruptcy situation in which the future is mostly unknown. [ed. emphasis mine]

The plan really has no surprises for anyone who remembers the 2022 bolt of reality that caused Bureau Commissioner Camille Touton to tell the water leaders in the seven states to immediately plan to voluntarily cut 2-4 million acre-feet (maf) of water use – basically a quarter of river use at that time – or the Interior Department would do it for them. That – in the centennial year of the Compact – is probably a good marker for the Bureau’s acknowledgement that we were beyond crisis, and slipping into bankruptcy.

That 2022 siren call was met by the Lower Basin states agreeing to finally take the Lower Basin system losses (evaporation, etc.) and their half of the Mexican obligation out of their river-use shares rather than out of Mead storage until the 2027 water year – provided they would be paid to do so. The absence of ‘surplus flows’ to take care of those losses – ~1.25 maf – from the coming online of the Central Arizona Project was a principal source of the draining of the big reservoirs, the so-called ‘structural deficit,’ 30 maf of storage gifted to the Lower Basin.

(A side note on this: The Upper Basin states, since a 1970 Law-of-the-River agreement, have been regularly sending downstream their 750,000 acre-feet for the Mexican obligation and absorbing as part of their whatever’s-left-over share of the river the ~400,000 acre-feet of Upper Basin system losses. The four states have never asked for or been paid for doing that.)

But that 1.25 maf of voluntary shortages was only a large fraction of the 2-4 maf of cuts the Bureau said needed to happen. So the Bureau’s original 2027-28 plan announcement in late July included cuts of up to 40 percent for the states below Mead Reservoir (Arizona, California and Nevada) – roughly equivalent to the 2022 request for 2-4 maf in cuts. The three downriver states countered that with an offer to permanently do the same 1.25 maf cut (with payment) for 2027-28 they were doing for 2025-26, with intimations of lawsuits if the Bureau pushed too far beyond that.

Arizona has led the countercharge from the states below Mead Reservoir – being the state with the most to lose, since the junior status of the Central Arizona Project means it would be practically shut down by 40 percent cuts in usage.

A letter to the Interior Department from Tom Buschatzky, Arizona’s Director of Water Resources, castigated the Bureau plan for making no mention of the Colorado River Compact and the Law of the River (LOTR). The letter insisted that Article III(c) and (d) of the Compact be executed to the letter as stated in the LOTR 1970 agreement: that a minimum of 8.23 maf be released from Powell Reservoir every year – the Compact commitment of 7.5 maf per year on average passing Lee Ferry, plus the Upper Basin’s share of the Mexican obligation (750,000 af/year).

In their August 21 announcement of the more detailed plan for 2027-28, the Bureau backed down from the 40 percent number, and now wants a 20 percent reduction in use for the two years – more in line with the Lower Basin’s willingness to continue taking care of its own system losses and Mexican share, but requiring some additional cuts – and avoided discussion of the Compact issue raised. It will, however, probably be pushing for more cuts in the 2028 discussions for the 2029-30 plan renewal; the Bureau still feels that it needs at least 3 maf in permanent cuts to begin any hope of turning the current near-bankruptcy around, and bringing demand in line with at least current supply.

The Bureau would also like the seven states to be reviewing, revising and executing the two-year plans consensually by 2036, rather than imposing it on them. But Arizona, according to the Buschatzky letter, wants a ‘longer, more comprehensive’ plan from the states, consistent with the LOTR, and ‘does not accept a framework that gives the federal government the discretion to select from a wide range of alternatives—including catastrophic cuts to the Lower Basin—every two years for the next decade.’

‘Bankruptcy management’ would seem to argue that the Colorado River Compact should be on the table along with everything else – including the nonexistence of the 18 maf river for which the Compact was written. A detailed analysis of the current situation by the ‘River Elders’ – the Kuhn-Schmidt-Castle group – suggested that ‘Basin water users must focus on solutions to the fundamental, wet-water math problem, rather than legal arguments over paper water.’ [ed. emphasis mine]

Nonetheless, Buschatzke’s letter states that ‘Arizona reserves the right to seek the resolution of its Compact rights in an appropriate judicial forum.’ The states are not yet willing to acknowledge the bankruptcy of the Compact – a Humpty-Dumpty that not all the patches and bandaids of the Law of the River can put back together for an ever-shrinking 21^st century Colorado River.

That, more or less, is where the river system’s future sits as of August 21. There will – thanks to the Bureau – be a plan for moving carefully into the future, a two-year step at  time. A big question is how hard the Bureau will begin to push for the 3-4 maf in permanent cuts by users necessary to stop the march into real dead-pool bankruptcy of the system – leading to another big question: whether the Compact nostalgitarians will push the system into dead-pool bankruptcy by suing the Bureau/Interior Department over paper water, tying things up in court for another several years.

Ah, the lovely Slough of Despond. There with Henry: ‘All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps among the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there….’ Bankruptcy, the Apocalypse – only the end for those who fail to see that something else is always struggling for a chance to be born; don’t put a period where God (or Nature) would put a comma (Gracie Allen). As Henry also observed, ‘The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake….’

Next post, I want to go back to the ‘desert river’ concept to think a little outside the (Compact) box.

Click the link to read the release on the ADWR website:

August 21, 2026

After more than three years of difficult negotiations over post-2026 Colorado River Operations guidelines, Arizona and the Lower Basin states have created a level of stability for the Colorado River system with the adoption of the 2027-2028 operating guidelines in the Record of Decision. While the framework for years 3-10 continues to be of concern, we applaud the Department of the Interior for clarifying the decision-making process for operations beyond 2028.  That outcome allows for continued negotiations for years 3-10 while preserving our ability to protect Arizona’s legal rights to Colorado River water. 

We will continue to work with our partners in Arizona, the Lower Basin and Interior, to finalize the agreements necessary to implement the Lower Basin Plan. With the Record of Decision, the 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines and the supporting agreements in place, we can focus on a longer-term, equitable, basin-wide outcome that includes shared sacrifices along with our Upper Basin partners in an effort to avoid protracted litigation. The actions in the Lower Basin in recent decades to protect the system have demonstrated how much we can accomplish when we all join together as part of the solution. – Tom Buschatzke, Director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources

Click the link to read the article on the Las Vegas Review Journal website (Alan Halaly). Here’s an excerpt:

August 24, 2026

Nevada officials filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s order for cuts in water use Monday, marking a major escalation of tensions between the seven states that share the Colorado River. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Nevada, asserts that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s operating plan unlawfully authorizes the federal government to reduce the state’s allocation of the river by up to 71 percent annually sometime over the next 10 years. Such a cut would slash the state’s share of 300,000 acre-feet down to 86,444 acre-feet. Nevada’s use, after cashing in water recycling credits with its state-of-the-art system, came in at 198,000 acre-feet last year.

“There are four states upstream of us that are facing zero mandatory reductions,” said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, in a Monday interview. “That is not going to balance the system. This is a system-wide problem. It requires system-wide solutions.”

Lawyers for the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, the water authority and the state as a whole requested an injunction to halt implementation until federal documents can reflect the toll water cuts would have on Southern Nevada’s $180 billion economy.

“This shortfall will cause devastating environmental, socioeconomic, and health and human safety impacts to southern Nevada and its citizens,” attorneys wrote. “Federal Defendants failed to consider such impacts in any meaningful way.”

While 2027 and 2028 will see allocation cuts that the Lower Basin states of Nevada, California and Arizona have already agreed to, the years 2029 to 2036 could bring much harsher reductions. Entsminger said he felt it was important for Nevada to have its own representation on the issue, but he added he would be surprised if California and Arizona don’t sign on to the lawsuit, considering officials remain aligned in their positions. No mandatory cuts will be imposed on the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. Entsminger submitted a letter to all six Colorado River basin states Monday, saying the state’s decision to sue wasn’t made lightly but that “hiding from reasonable legal interpretations in order to defer hard political decisions helps no one over the long term and further endangers our shared resource.”

Sarah Porter, Arizona State University

In August 2026 the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River, hit their lowest levels since they first began to be filled in 1936 and 1963, respectively.

The federal government and the seven Colorado River basin states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – have been unable to reach an agreement about who should reduce water usage by how much to avoid catastrophic declines in lake levels.

And the existing plans and commitments, including a federal outline announced in late July 2026, don’t get close to achieving what’s needed to keep the river flowing. Here’s a look at the key issues making an agreement so hard to reach.

Big cuts are needed

To stabilize the Colorado River system, seven states and Mexico need to reduce annual consumption of Colorado River water by at least 3 million acre-feet (980 million gallons), and probably more like 4 million acre-feet (1.3 trillion gallons), each year.

The Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – have been using less water, even as their populations have grown.

They have proposed to further reduce water use in 2027 and 2028, and Mexico has, too. Those decreases, coming only from the Lower Basin states, would be the biggest-ever reductions of Colorado River water use, but they would amount to only about 3.7 million acre-feet over two years, about half what is likely needed.

Unless more water is conserved, the reservoirs that have stored surplus water over the decades could shrink to the point that only the water that naturally flows into the river each year would be released downstream. That’s a condition called “run of river,” which could result in drastic cuts to the Lower Basin’s water supply.

If the winter of 2026-27 is like the winter the West had in 2025-26, the river and reservoirs will likely be at that point by mid-2027. A really good winter with lots of snow might push the timing out a year or two, but it won’t solve the problem: People are using a lot more water from the reservoirs than nature is replenishing each year with rainfall and snowfall.

Why is there so little water?

Water was first divided among the Upper and Lower Basins in 1922, using an overoptimistic estimate of how much water there would be. In the past quarter century, low snowpack and reductions in the amount of snow that converts to surface water have meant that flows can’t keep up with demand.

The other key problem is evaporation. These massive reservoirs are in a hot, dry region. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that annual evaporation is about 1.5 million acre-feet. That’s about 10% of what the seven states expect to be able to use each year – and about half of the overall cuts in water use that would be needed to keep the river flowing.

Even if sufficient water were released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead to cover the Lower Basin’s and Mexico’s apportionments, Lake Mead would continue to decline because of evaporation.

What would deep cuts mean for people?

Farmers and ranchers in the Upper Basin have had less water available in 2026 because the winter was extraordinarily dry.

But if water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead fall too low to allow dam managers to release stored water, the effects would be on the Lower Basin.

Entities that receive water from the Central Arizona Project have junior priority in the Lower Basin. Central Arizona cities have years’ worth of groundwater they could access – not a forever supply, but enough to use for some years while they work on developing new water supplies.

If cuts go deeper, tribal and nontribal agriculture along the main stem would arguably take the hardest hit. They may have higher-priority rights, but if there’s no water they’re still in trouble. And there isn’t an alternative water supply for agriculture along the river’s main route.

Across the nation, people would notice higher costs and limited availability of some produce, especially in the winter. At times of year when those crops can’t grow in colder parts of the country, Yuma County, Arizona, and Imperial County, California, are key suppliers of vegetables. Other products would be affected too, including Desert durum wheat, a high-gluten wheat that is preferred for pasta.

What would those cuts mean for electricity?

The federal Bureau of Reclamation has made clear its commitment to continuing hydropower production by keeping reservoir elevations above the minimum level needed to generate electricity.

As a result, the reservoirs will likely not reach the point called “deadpool,” at which no water can move through the dam. But they may reach levels at which no water beyond what’s required to generate power – or what arrives as rain or snow – would flow downstream.

What are the states’ positions?

The Lower Basin states have said they would reduce water use by 1.6 million acre-feet a year, effectively handling the reduction due to evaporation. But the Lower Basin has remained insistent on the Upper Basin states’ sharing in additional conservation measures.

The Upper Basin states say they’re already using much less water than they are apportioned under the Colorado River Compact and that the shortfall is due to overuse in the Lower Basin.

Without a negotiated way forward, there are two potential legal fights on the horizon, which could happen at the same time.

One is a Supreme Court fight over how to interpret the Colorado River Compact. It tends to take about a decade to resolve interstate water-sharing fights in the Supreme Court. If that happens, the region will face years of uncertainty regarding the amount of water available to different users.

At the same time, negotiators, tribes and others in the Lower Basin have made clear that they don’t agree with the approach to the crisis the Bureau of Reclamation announced in late July 2026. The specifics of how that plan will be carried out have not yet been released, but Arizona and Nevada have already threatened to sue.

What’s required to achieve the water-use cuts that are needed?

Agriculture uses somewhere between 70% and 75% of the water in the Colorado system.

The reductions needed to protect the system can’t be achieved by getting people in Phoenix and other cities to turn the water off when they brush their teeth. Even if people ripped out all the grass that’s watered with Colorado River water, it wouldn’t save enough.

Ideally, farmers would be encouraged – and even paid – to permanently stop irrigating some land. My colleague Kathryn Sorensen and I have called for people to start talking about how to permanently eliminate some agricultural water demand across the entire Colorado River basin. The scope of the problem is too large: There’s no other way to balance the system.

I think it’s going to require federal leadership. In the 1930s a national effort set out to improve farming efficiency all around the nation, but especially in the South and West. Under the Bankhead-Jones Act of 1937, the federal government bought millions of acres of marginal farmland to take it out of production.

Farming is important, but not every acre of farmland should stay in production. If it’s a choice between making sure some water goes to cities or keeping every possible acre of farmland irrigated, we have to be able to discuss both options.

Sarah Porter, Director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy, ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:

August 12, 2026

Tensions about water management are high on the Colorado River, even as water levels in reservoirs like Lake Mead drop to record lows and the west faces severe drought conditions…On July 31, the federal Bureau of Reclamation released a final environmental impact statement which outlines a potential framework for management of the river between 2027 and 2036. This framework would include mandatory water use cuts of up to a combined 3 million acre-feet per year for the lower basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona while seeking 200,000 acre feet in voluntary reductions from the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The impact statement and the associated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) decision-making process still leave an opportunity for the states on the Colorado River to reach their own agreement about future water use…

Colorado is introducing a new near-term water contribution program designed to take advantage of federal funding to encourage voluntary, compensated reductions in Colorado River water use. At a webinar on Aug. 6, Amy Ostdiek, section chief for the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) interstate, federal and water information section, explained that this program is one of several parallel activities that the state is undertaking alongside the ongoing NEPA process. She explained that the Bureau of Reclamation has announced that $100 million in funding will be available to support the upper basin states in establishing water contribution programs that will provide “water that but for these actions would not be there” to the Colorado River. She noted that funding would likely support about two years of a program, based on previous project costs, and that, to participate and claim the funds, Colorado would need to act now to begin establishing a program. Ostdiek stated that establishing such a program would honor commitments the state has made in negotiations to making voluntary water use reductions and would show that “Colorado is committed to being part of the solution.”

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jake Bolster):

August 4, 2026

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Water users in the American Southwest confronted on Friday the strong possibility that cities and farms in the region must reduce Colorado River use by hundreds of billions of gallons after the Trump administration released a new management plan for the coming decade.

The document, published by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, outlines a 10-year management approach that could adjust to changing hydrological conditions that affect the river’s flow, with operations updatable every two years. The agency proposed cuts in water allotments originally suggested by Arizona, California and Nevada, which make up the river’s Lower Basin. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, the region’s Upper Basin, could make voluntary conservation measures.

Interim guidelines and drought contingency plans agreed upon by the basin states in 2007 and 2019 are set to expire in 2027 and negotiations for a new agreement due this year have stalled, with the states missing repeated deadlines to come to a consensus.

But the Bureau of Reclamation operates much of the river’s infrastructure, including the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, which form Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation’s two largest reservoirs. A federal record of decision finalizing operations on the river for the next two years will follow the final environmental impact statement Reclamation released Friday. 

“This plan strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability for the Colorado River system that is vital to the 40 million people who rely on it given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users,” said Andrea Travnicek, Interior’s assistant secretary for water and science, in a statement accompanying the plan’s release. “It also allows a new flexibility to respond to changing conditions and potential consensus.”

The agency is considering releases from Lake Powell, the reservoir near the border of Utah and Arizona that delineates the upper and lower basins, ranging from 5 million to 12 million acre feet to the downstream states (one acre foot can supply about two to four households for a year). The Lower Basin, including Mexico, could take steep cuts in their water allocations, potentially losing 1.5 million acre feet in both 2027 and 2028.

Under such a scenario, Arizona would lose 760,000 acre feet of its allotment from the river, California 440,000 acre feet and Nevada 50,000, following a proposal submitted by the Lower Basin.

But beyond 2028, Lower Basin cuts could reach up to 3 million acre feet.

The Arizona Department of Water Resources called that figure “unacceptable” in a statement published online. “Such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy,” the agency said. 

Reclamation appears to be seeking voluntary Upper Basin reductions of up to 200,000 acre feet, and discussed moving water from federally managed dams in the basin downstream, as hydrology allowed.

“The proposal responds to a fundamental reality: the Colorado River no longer reliably produces enough water to support all the uses and expectations built around it,” said JB Hamby, California’s Colorado River Commissioner, in a statement. “That challenge is shared across the Basin, and addressing it requires specific, measurable reductions in water use by every state.”

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources said the state is “analyzing” the document.

Upper Basin governors said in a statement that they were “encouraged that new operating guidelines will better reflect existing water supply, which must underpin any practicable plan going forward.”

The Colorado River is perhaps the most climate-stressed waterway in the U.S. It provides water to between 35 and 40 million people across seven Western states, 30 tribes and two Mexican states as it wends its way through the Southwest, home to some of the country’s most arid and drought-stricken landscapes. Millions of Westerners also rely on the electricity the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams generate. 

The 1922 compact between the river’s users assumed roughly 17.5 million acre feet of water was available to the two basins and Mexico, but the historical average of its natural flow has only been roughly 14.7 million acre feet. That number plummeted to an average of 11.2 million acre feet between 2020 and 2024, according to provisional data from Reclamation. 

In that same time period, the agency calculated average use and evaporative loss across the basin at just over 13 million acre feet.

“The operational ranges that Reclamation put forward, they’re the right things that we need to be doing in order to fix the supply and demand imbalance,” said John Berggren, regional policy manager at Western Resource Advocates. “But it is just a range, and what they actually do over the next two years or within any given year, that will matter if they’re actually gonna be able to bring the system back into balance.”

Berggren hopes the short-term certainty this plan provides can unstick negotiations between the states.

“I hope [the basin commissioners] don’t just keep doing what they’ve been doing for the last two or three years, ’cause that clearly hasn’t worked,” he said. “I hope they try and take this opportunity to change things up. Let’s try something new and hopefully get to a seven-state agreement.”

Reclamation’s final environmental impact statement was initially supposed to codify the management plan the basin states have yet to agree on. Though deadlines for those negotiations have come and gone, Reclamation is still holding the door open for a deal, which is widely regarded as the most productive path to a durable long-term operating agreement for the river. 

“Let’s try something new and hopefully get to a seven-state agreement.”

Negotiations are stalled over whether cuts should be mandatory across the entire basin. After overdrawing from the river for decades, the Lower Basin now uses less water than it is apportioned, according to federal accounting; it wants to see future cuts shared across the seven states. The Upper Basin, which has never used the full amount of water it is legally entitled to, has fiercely contested demands for it to make mandatory cuts, offering voluntary conservation measures instead. The states that make up that basin contend that variable environmental conditions, such as this year’s record-low snowpack, already limit how much water they use.

Even with some idea of federal management options in place, the absence of a seven-state  agreement further increases the prospect of states dependent on the Colorado River suing one another in cases that would be adjudicated by the Supreme Court.

Still, proposing to manage the river in a way that is adaptive to hydrological conditions is “the kind of agreement that we are going to need to really think about long-term how do we live in this basin with much less water moving forward,” said Celene Hawkins, Colorado River program director at The Nature Conservancy. 

Hawkins hopes this spurs a seven state agreement “so that, ultimately, we can do really good work for communities and for the river itself.”

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

by Annie Knox, Utah News Dispatch
July 31, 2026

After Utah and six other states along the Colorado River failed to reach a deal on how to share its dwindling water supply, the federal government on Friday released its own 10-year outline. 

Colorado River Collaborative

This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River at greatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver

Under the proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada would share in cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet per year. The framework doesn’t mandate cuts for Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. 

Instead, it identifies a conservation goal for the Upper Basin — 200,000 acre-feet per year — about as much as Utah’s Deer Creek and East Canyon reservoirs together can hold. The plan would also allow for smaller annual releases from Lake Powell of down to 5 million acre-feet, compared to the current 6 million acre-feet, with new operating guidelines every two years. 

Utah’s chief Colorado River negotiator, Gene Shawcroft, praised the proposal on Friday, telling reporters it recognizes the reality of the water available, not just the demand. But he emphasized it provides a broad framework, with the details to follow in coming days. 

“I would just simply say, this is a bridge, not a destination,” Shawcroft said in a virtual news conference. “It certainly could be a bridge over troubled waters, but perhaps a bridge over no waters. We just aren’t quite sure.”

He and Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, were still reading through the 2,600 pages contained in the bureau’s environmental impact statement released Friday.  

Haas said the state will know more about what it’s contending with when it gets a copy of a two-year operations plan for 2027 and 2028 in coming days, though the exact timeline wasn’t clear.

The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Mexico, contributing 27% of Utah’s water supply. It’s shrinking because of drought, overuse and hotter temperatures linked to climate change.

This year’s record-high temperatures and lowest snowpack on record aren’t helping. Normally, Colorado River runoff is about 13 million acre-feet, Shawcroft said. Now it’s 3.5 million acre-feet. 

He told reporters: “We’re in a dire situation.” 

On Friday, Arizona’s Department of Water Resources called the proposal’s cuts for the Lower Basin “unacceptable,” saying such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”

The agency described negotiations over many months as “an exercise in lowering expectations, particularly for a long-term, seven-state agreement on operating this vital river system.” 

The disagreement could find its way into a courtroom soon. Arizona and Utah have both taken steps this year to build up litigation funds. 

“For Utah, litigation is never our plan A,” Haas told reporters Friday. “Whether it’s a plan B, depending on the context of this document, that remains to be seen. But litigation is not going to get us anywhere on this river. It’s not going to get us more water.” 

At issue in the negotiations is who absorbs necessary cuts. Upper Basin states argue they use less water than Lower Basin states, don’t have huge reservoirs to store water in dry years, and lack legal authority to place significant restrictions on water users. 

The proposal out Friday is adaptable and allows the states to keep negotiating, said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.  

“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” Burgum said in a statement. 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, in a joint statement with his counterparts in the other upstream states, said they’re encouraged that incoming operating guidelines “will better reflect existing water supply, which must underpin any practicable plan going forward.” 

They went on to say that both the upper and lower divisions of the basin “are feeling the pain of severe drought. This is a reality that all states, and the federal government, will need to address practically, which is why a seven-state agreement will provide the best outcome for all water users in the Colorado River Basin.”

Water use is outpacing the river’s flows, and that overconsumption adds up. The combined amount of water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is at its lowest point since before Glen Canyon Dam began to fill up in 1963, the bureau said in its Friday news release. 

If water levels dip to critical lows, as forecasts suggest they could by late this year, the nation’s two largest reservoirs could fail to produce power. If their depths continue to slide, they’ll fail to send water downstream. 

Conservation and recreation groups have called for an end to the gridlock, saying it’s dragging on in the background while hotter and drier conditions are driving up wildfire risks, air quality concerns and restrictions on the water supply. 

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.