The Colorado River flows near Hite, Utah on July 4, 2022. The river’s water supply is shrinking, and states are caught in a standoff about how to cut back on demand. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Scott Franz):
April 8, 2026
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
Last month’s record breaking heat across the Mountain West led to the worst snowpack on record in Colorado and Utah, along with a significantly downgraded forecast for the upcoming supply of Colorado River water.
Cody Moser with the federal Colorado Basin River Forecast Center said in a monthly briefing Tuesday [April 7, 2026] that just 1.4 million acre feet of Colorado River water is expected to reach Lake Powell through July. That’s less than a quarter of what’s considered normal.
It’s also much lower than the 2.3 million acre feet Moser’s office projected a month ago, before the heat wave in the West melted away an already meager supply of snowpack.
“With record low snow pack, we have well below normal water supply forecasts,“ he said. “In many cases, our April through July (water) volume forecasts rank in the lowest five on record when compared to historical observations.”
The forecast for how much water will reach Flaming Gorge Reservoir also dropped more than 20% since the last monthly projection. Flows for the Yampa River are also projected to be near the record low.
Moser added it’s likely some rivers and streams in western Colorado have already reached their peak runoff for the year.
He said the water supply forecasts could improve if wet conditions arrive, or decline even further if the West remains dry.
The worsening river forecasts arrive as the seven states that use the waterway remain at an impasse this spring over how to share and conserve the water in the future.
If states can’t reach a deal, the Interior Department is expected to identify its preferred option for how to manage Lake Powell and Lake Mead after the current operating guidelines expire this fall.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Arizona radio station KTAR News this week that the worsening spring runoff conditions are going to “require everybody to dig in and take bigger cuts than they want, and we haven’t reached that spot yet.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, center, speaks during a gathering with governors from six states in the Colorado River basin on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo credit: Lowell Whitman/Department Of Interior
Click the link to read the article on the Tuscon.com website (Tony Davis). Here’s an excerpt:
April 8, 2026
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, pressed Monday to spell out how he’ll handle the Colorado River’s water crisis, wouldn’t get specific but said repeatedly that “nobody will be happy” with how his department will split a rapidly dwindling supply of river water among the seven states, including Arizona, that want a piece of it. Speaking at a roundtable in the Tucson area populated by a host of public lands industry leaders and University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella, Burgum pledged to hand down a decision this month on the first of two crucial, divisive issues his office is confronting regarding the river. That decision will be how much water the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation will release from its upstream reservoirs in the four Upper Colorado River Basin states to head off a potential calamity in which Glen Canyon Dam, forming the boundary between the Upper and Lower Basins, would no longer receive enough water to continue generating electricity that serves customers in seven Western states.
The white bathtub ring clinging to the sandstone walls of Glen Canyon is more than a marker of a receding lake; it is a physical manifestation of a century-old accounting error. PHOTO BY BOB HEMBREE (MARCH 2019)
The white bathtub ring clinging to the sandstone walls of Glen Canyon is more than a marker of a receding lake; it is a physical manifestation of a century-old accounting error. For decades, the conventional story of the Colorado River’s decline has been framed as a tragic stroke of bad luck. The narrative, popularized in modern classics like Cadillac Desert, suggests that the framers of the 1922 Colorado River Compact simply did their best with a limited record of “eighteen years of streamflow measurement” taken during an unusually wet “binge.”
However, emerging historical research and systems analysis tell a more complicated and troubling story. In their definitive study, Science Be Dammed, authors Eric Kuhn and John Fleck argue that the crisis we face in 2026 was not an accident of nature but a predictable consequence of “selective science.” The decision-makers of 1922 were not victims of ignorance; they were sophisticated professionals who chose to ignore inconvenient data in favor of a political vision that required the river to be larger than it actually was.
Eugene Clyde LaRue measuring the flow in Nankoweap Creek, 1923. Photo credit: USGS
The Inconvenient Hydrologist
As the seven basin states gathered at Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe to carve up the river, they were joined by Eugene Clyde (E.C.) LaRue, a hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. [Eric Kuhn responding to my X post, “Actually LaRue was never allowed to attend a Commission meeting. He asked, but Hoover said no.] LaRue presented the commissioners with a conclusion that threatened the very foundation of their negotiations. His data, which included early gauge records and historical flood markers, suggested that the river’s long-term average was approximately 15 million acre-feet (maf)
LaRue explicitly warned the commission that the period between 1905 and 1922 was a hydrological anomaly. Had the negotiators included the drier records from the late 1890s, the estimated annual flow would have dropped significantly. As Kuhn and Fleck note, the decision-makers had at their disposal a relatively thorough, almost modern picture of the river’s hydrology. They chose to ignore it because accepting LaRue’s science might have left them with a flow too low to reach the compromises necessary to develop the West.
Members of the Colorado River Commission, in Santa Fe in 1922, after signing the Colorado River Compact. From left, W. S. Norviel (Arizona), Delph E. Carpenter (Colorado), Herbert Hoover (Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of Commission), R. E. Caldwell (Utah), Clarence C. Stetson (Executive Secretary of Commission), Stephen B. Davis, Jr. (New Mexico), Frank C. Emerson (Wyoming), W. F. McClure (California), and James G. Scrugham (Nevada) CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY WATER RESOURCES ARCHIVE via Aspen Journalism
Paper Water and the System Trap
By sidelining LaRue and enshrining a “paper water” figure of 16.4 million acre-feet into the Law of the River, the commissioners fell into a classic “system trap.” They created a legal stock of water rights that far exceeded the river’s physical flow. This inflated number was essential to the “reinforcing loop” of 20th-century growth. It provided the legal certainty needed to secure federal funding for massive infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam and the Glen Canyon Dam.
This intentional overestimation created a massive “information delay.” For eighty years, the system appeared stable only because the Upper Basin states were slow to develop their shares, allowing their “unused” water to flow downstream. This masked the fundamental deficit, leading to a state of “overshoot” in which the regional economy came to depend on water that did not exist. Professor Rhett Larson describes the resulting legal framework as a system of “calling shotgun” that was excellent for settling a desert but is catastrophic for managing one in a time of scarcity.
The End of the Delay
Today, the “delay” has finally ended, and the “inconvenient science” of 1922 has become the undeniable reality of 2026. The river’s source is being further depleted by “aridification,” a process climate scientist Brad Udall describes as a “sponge above our head” that evaporates moisture before it can reach the streamflow. We are now witnessing the collision of a 100-year-old legal fiction with a 21st-century climate reality.
The current impasse between the Upper and Lower Basins is a symptom of “policy resistance,” where every actor is incentivized to protect their “paper” share even as the “wet” water disappears. As Professor Andrea Gerlak observes, if a system has 25 years to produce an agreement and fails, there is likely something fundamentally wrong with the system itself. Solving the crisis at Lake Powell will require more than engineering; it will require a paradigm shift that finally aligns our laws with the river’s actual physical limits.
The All American Canal, the largest diversion on the Colorado River, passes through Winterhaven, CA on its way to the Imperial Valley. The Colorado River is seen flowing next to it.
April 2, 2026
In the southeast corner of California, 300-foot-tall sand dunes rise from a sunbaked landscape dotted with ocotillo and creosote bushes. Summer temperatures here regularly exceed 110 degrees, and annual rainfall is comparable to that of the Sahara Desert. Despite its unforgiving terrain, more than 180,000 residents live in Imperial County, one of the country’s most productive agricultural regions and more recently a magnet for data center development and lithium extraction proposals. This has all been made possible by turn-of-the-20th century canals that carve up the region, supplying it with more than a million gallons of Colorado River water every minute.
“We’ve often called it the lifeblood of Imperial Valley,” said Robert Schettler, a spokesperson for Imperial Irrigation District, the area’s public utility, which manages the region’s over 3,000 miles of drains and canals. “If something were to happen to that river, we would all have to pack up and leave.”
Something is happening to the Colorado River. Over the past century, its average water supply has fallen by nearly a third due to prolonged drought and climate change. Experts predict that decline will continue, threatening cities, tribes and farms that depend on the river’s flow, from Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico to Arizona, Nevada and Northern Mexico. Most of the Colorado River’s water starts as snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, but after the American West experienced the warmest winter ever recorded, snow levels are now at historic lows, prompting experts to warn that 2026 may be one of the river’s driest years yet.
That could spell disaster for Imperial County, whose harsh desert landscape of windblown sand and rugged burnt-orange mountains was transformed more than a century ago into productive, gridded farmland dotted with small cities such as Brawley, El Centro and Calexico…Imperial Valley’s agricultural industry consumes by far the largest share of water in the region, about 97% of the 3.1 million acre-feet managed by the Imperial Irrigation District every year…Those ambitious and largely successful conservation efforts have come at a cost. Much of the water used by farmers historically flowed into the nearby Salton Sea, but as farmers have reduced their water use, less runoff has reached the man-made lake, accelerating an existing environmental crisis Over the last three decades, the Salton Sea has shrunk by more than 60 square miles, exposing a dry lakebed laden with pesticides, particulate matter and heavy metals. Those contaminants are carried as dust through the air into nearby communities, contributing to a childhood asthma rate triple that of the national average. Now, farmers such as Brian Strahm, whose family has been growing crops in the area for four generations, are concerned they may have to decrease their water use further. That may prove difficult since farmers have already put in place many efficiency measures, Strahm said…Farmers say cuts could seriously harm the area’s already struggling economy. In addition to being the county with the highest percentage of Latinos in California, Imperial has among the highest unemployment rates of any county in the country, at nearly 19%. For those who do find work, the agricultural industry offers a lifeline, accounting for one out of every six jobs in the region.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Coloradans often hear that the Colorado River crisis is happening somewhere else. Headlines focus on Lake Mead, Lake Powell, and the Lower Basin, while Colorado is portrayed as a responsible headwaters state doing its part. Yet that narrative misses a deeper truth. The Colorado River crisis is not only about drought or downstream shortages. It is also about how the river is managed. In that sense, Colorado shares responsibility with every basin state.
Colorado’s water system is built on ‘prior appropriation’. The rule is simple: “first in time, first in right.” The earliest water users receive priority when supplies run low. This framework helped farmers, cities, and industries expand across the West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, creating stability in a region where water determines survival.
However, the system was designed for a different climate and a by-gone West. It also encouraged states and water users to claim more water than the river could supply, contributing to the overallocation of the Colorado River. Legal analyses of the Law of the River show that the basin was effectively overburdened by water claims decades before climate change began reducing flows.
Today, climate change is altering the river itself. Scientists estimate that warming temperatures have already reduced Colorado River flows by roughly 20 percent. Federal water managers warn that declines could continue as temperatures rise. In a river system that is already legally overcommitted, treating water rights as fixed privileges can deepen instability rather than prevent it.
Colorado sits at the center of this challenge. As the largest contributor of water in the Upper Basin, the state must balance many competing demands. Front Range cities continue to grow. Western Slope agriculture depends on reliable irrigation. Rivers and aquatic ecosystems are under stress. Yet much of Colorado’s water policy still assumes shortages are temporary and that legal priority alone will determine who receives water. That mindset often encourages defensive politics rather than shared problem-solving.
Conflicts between upstream and downstream states are often described as unavoidable. In reality, much of the tension stems from the priorities of management. Upper Basin states emphasize uncertainty about future river flows, while Lower Basin states focus on delivery obligations and infrastructure investments, according to recent reports on Colorado River governance. Each group is acting logically within the current system. The problem is that the system frequently rewards delay and legal conflict rather than cooperation, as researchers studying collaborative governance in the basin have found.
Colorado has an opportunity to change that pattern. One promising approach is collaborative adaptive management. This framework begins with a simple idea: uncertainty is normal in complex systems. Instead of assuming managers already know the right solution, adaptive management relies on monitoring conditions, learning from outcomes, and adjusting policies over time. With collaboration of states, tribes, farmers, cities, and environmental groups conflict can be reduced and management decisions can improve.
Some elements of this approach already exist in Colorado, including experimental reservoir operations and voluntary conservation programs. However, research on collaborative drought science planning in the Colorado River Basin shows that these efforts remain limited and politically fragile.
Equity must also be part of Colorado’s leadership. For decades, Tribal nations and many rural communities have carried the environmental costs of water development while urban growth captured much of the benefit, a pattern highlighted in research on environmental justice and Indigenous governance. Tribal nations, many of which hold some of the most senior water rights in the basin, remain underrepresented in major water decisions. Adaptive governance recognizes that whose knowledge it is that counts, matters. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge, local experience, and community-based monitoring can strengthen decisions and build trust in governance. Research shows that when affected communities help shape policies, those policies are more likely to be trusted, followed, and sustained over time.
Importantly, collaborative management does not mean abandoning Colorado water law or taking away private rights. Instead, it means updating water governance so users can share risk and adapt together as conditions change. The alternative – waiting for wetter years or relying on courts to resolve disputes – ignores both climate science and political reality. Climate projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate that the American Southwest will likely remain hotter and drier for decades. Planning for a return to twentieth-century river flows is increasingly unrealistic.
Critics argue that collaboration takes too long when the crisis is already severe. Colorado has already tried temporary agreements, emergency negotiations, and federal pressure. Those approaches have not produced lasting solutions. Short-term deals may stabilize reservoirs for a season, but they do little to address the deeper management problems driving the crisis. Without stronger cooperation, the basin risks repeating the same cycle of shortage and conflict.
Colorado has long prided itself on practical problem-solving and environmental leadership. The state now has an opportunity to apply those values to its most important river. Policymakers should strengthen collaborative water governance, ensure meaningful Tribal participation, and support conservation policies that reward flexibility rather than litigation.
Coloradans also have a role to play. Public participation in basin planning, engagement with watershed organizations, and pressure on elected officials can help shift water policy toward long-term climate adaptation rather than short-term crisis response.
The Colorado River begins in our mountains. Leadership today means recognizing that rules built for a wetter past may no longer work in a hotter future – and choosing cooperation before the river forces the decision for us.
Anderson, Patrick J., Jeanne E. Godaire, Daniel K. Jones, William J. Andrews, Alicia A. Torregrosa, Meghan T. Bell, JoAnn M. Holloway, et al. 2025. “Collaborative Drought Science Planning in the Colorado River Basin.” U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2025-1041. https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20251041.
Birnbaum, Simon. 2016. “Environmental Co-governance, Legitimacy, and the Quest for Compliance: When and Why Is Stakeholder Participation Desirable?”. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 18, no. 3, 306–323.https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2015.1077440
Hite, Kristen, Pervaze A. Sheikh, and Charles V. Stern. 2025. “Management of the Colorado River: Water Allocations, Drought, and the Federal Role”. Congressional Research Service Report R45546.https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45546.
Holling, C. S. 1978. Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management. New York: Wiley.
Kuhn, Eric. 2024. “The Risks and Potential Impacts of a Colorado River Compact Curtailment on Colorado River In-Basin and Transmountain Water Rights Within Colorado.” Colorado Environmental Law Journal, 35.https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/celj/vol35/iss2/4.
Sullivan, Abigail, Dave D. White, and Michael Hanemann. 2019. “Designing Collaborative Governance: Insights from the Drought Contingency Planning Process for the Lower Colorado River Basin.” Environmental Science & Policy, 91: 39-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.10.011.
David is a Colorado Certified Water Professional and environmental scientist dedicated to protecting aquatic systems through rigorous data analysis, public service, and responsible resource management. He holds a bachelors degree in Biology from Western Colorado University and will graduate soon from the University of Denver with a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy and Management.
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.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map April 4, 2026.
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.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The record-breaking hot and dry winter and early spring has continued through March in Colorado’s mountains and plains. Snow gauges and weather stations throughout Northern Water’s collection and distribution areas have collected data showing the lack of precipitation in the region this year.
On April 9, the Northern Water Board of Directors will use the data collected this year and more to determine the annual quota for allottees of Colorado-Big Thompson Project water. Unlike many irrigation systems, the C-BT Project is designed to provide water to supplement the native supplies available in a given year, using water collected in previous seasons. If there is a bright spot this season, it’s that C-BT Project reserves are above their average levels over the life of the project for this time of year.
If you would like to provide comment on the quota send an email to quota@northernwater.org or offer a comment at the April 9 Board meeting.
Colorado-Big Thompson Project map. Courtesy of Northern Water.
An Xcel truck outside the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. Denver Water has enacted with water rights owner Xcel to implement a call reduction agreement, which lets the Front Range water provider divert more water for a limited time. CREDIT: BRENT GARDNER-SMITH/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Facing an abysmal snowpack and spring runoff, the state’s largest Front Range water provider has enacted an agreement that lets it take more water from the Western Slope for a limited time.
On March 18, Denver Water put the Shoshone call reduction agreement into effect with water rights owner Xcel Energy, which allows Denver Water to divert more water from the headwaters of the Colorado River in an attempt to alleviate shortages. The agreement reduces the call at the Shoshone hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon by half, from 1,408 cfs to 704 cfs.
The call reduction can only be implemented when two drought conditions are met: an April to July streamflow forecast for the Colorado River measured at the Kremmling stream gauge must be at 85% or less than average and the forecasted storage for the 10 largest Denver Water reservoirs for July 1 must be at or below 80% full.
The March water supply outlook from the National Resources Conservation Service for the Colorado headwaters from Kremmling to Glenwood Springs was 56% of normal. Experts expect conditions to have worsened when the April forecast comes out next week.
This winter is shaping up to be one of the worst on record and since water supplies depend on snowmelt, municipal water providers have been quick to implement cutbacks this spring. Last week, Denver Water declared a Stage 1 Drought and will impose two-day-a-week outdoor watering restrictions this summer.
“In the wake of the worst snowpack conditions in some 50 years of records at Denver Water, we began exercising the Shoshone Relaxation Agreement with Xcel Energy starting March 18,” Denver Water’s Media Relations Coordinator Todd Hartman said in an email. “We have taken this step only one other time under the 2007 agreement with Xcel (2013) and we don’t do so lightly.”
According to the agreement, Denver Water will be able to divert additional water until May 20.
The water provider, which serves about 1.5 million people on the Front Range, gets roughly 50% of its supply from the Colorado River basin and brings it across the Continental Divide through a highly engineered system of tunnels and reservoirs that facilitate the so-called transmountain diversions.
The Shoshone water rights, which date to 1902, are some of the largest and most powerful on the mainstem of the Colorado River in the state. They can command the river’s flows all the way to its headwaters, ensuring water keeps flowing downstream on the Western Slope.
When the plant’s turbines are spinning, it can “call” for its full water right, effectively forcing upstream water users with junior rights – like Denver Water – to cut back. And because the water is returned to the river after it runs through the plant’s turbines, Shoshone benefits downstream cities, irrigators, recreators and the environment on the Western Slope.
Colorado River Basin in Colorado via the Colorado Geological Survey
River managers need to conserve around 1.7 million acre-feet in Lake Powell to keep the reservoir from dropping below hydropower turbines this year, according to federal government projections. The Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency that manages dams on the Colorado River, has estimated that reservoir levels could fall below required elevations for hydropower production before August as record-low snowpack turns into pitiful flows in streams and rivers.
“The situation is dire, the stakes have never been higher, and the reservoirs have never been drier,” Estevan Lopez, New Mexico’s negotiator on interstate Colorado River matters, said during a meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission on Tuesday [March 24, 2026].
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
If water levels fall below required levels for hydropower production, dam managers will be forced to release water through bypass tubes, which are not designed for sustained, high-volume flows. With too much use, the bypasses could fail, turning the dam into a massive plug in the river and shutting off downstream flows. To keep Powell above those critical levels, federal officials can either fill it with water from upstream reservoirs, including some in Colorado, or they can reduce the water it drains from Powell and sends to the Lower Basin (California, Arizona and New Mexico). States are already expressing their views on how those operations should work. Upper Colorado River basin states, including Colorado, want the federal government to achieve the conservation requirement by reducing water releases to downstream states, at least in part. Upper Basin states say upstream reservoirs aren’t enough to save Powell without cuts to Lower Basin water deliveries. Draining the upstream reservoirs could also leave the system without backup supplies in the event of another dry year…The three primary reservoirs that could prop up Powell are Flaming Gorge in Wyoming, Navajo Reservoir in New Mexico, and Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison, Colorado. Of the three, only Flaming Gorge is large enough to contribute the entire 1.7 million acre-feet on its own, and that would require draining the reservoir to halfway full. Blue Mesa and Navajo already stand at around halfway full, and the two reservoirs likely could not provide the water to save Lake Powell even if both were entirely drained.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
American White Pelican and Double-crested Cormorant at Bill Williams Wildlife Refuge along the Colorado River, Arizona. Photo: Gary Moore/Audubon Photography Awards
Click the link to read the article on the Audubon website (Jennifer Pitt):
March 20, 2026
Audubon and partners cut through the conflict with a unique, basinwide perspective, championing the river’s health for the people and birds that rely on it.
The winter of 2025-2026 has not been kind to the Colorado River. Record-warm temperatures day after day across the mountains that feed the river have led to record-low snow levels. All indications are that spring snowmelt feeding the river will be scant.
That is a huge problem, because Colorado River reservoirs, which historically held vast water reserves, are already depleted, with Lake Powell at 25% and Lake Mead at 34% of capacity. This is bad news for people and birds relying on water from the Colorado River. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), the federal agency managing the dams, projects that Lake Powell’s water levels could fall low enough to threaten Glen Canyon Dam’s infrastructure, downstream water delivery, hydropower, and native wildlife in the Grand Canyon including the California Condor and the Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo, among others.
As this crisis plays out, Reclamation has the difficult job of re-tooling systemwide, long-term dam operations on the Colorado River (often referred to as the “Post-2026 Guidelines”). Existing rules, first set nearly two decades ago and tweaked repeatedly to keep up with the declining Colorado River (the result of a warmer and drier climate), expire at the end of this year. As anticipated under this timeline, Reclamation issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Draft EIS) in late January which laid out potential alternatives for federal management and solicited comments from stakeholders. This Draft EIS embraced uncertainty as a central planning condition as they tested different approaches under a broad range of hydrologic conditions. For a long time, the expectation was that the seven U.S. states sharing the river (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming) would develop a consensus-based proposal for Reclamation, but that hasn’t happened and talk of litigation has increased.
Southwestern Willow flycatcher
Reclamation must now figure out next steps. The agency does have legal authorities, but those legal authorities were crafted long ago and do not necessarily spell out how to take meaningful action in this historic crisis. That threatens the water supply for more than 35 million people including the major cities of the American Southwest, Tribes, millions of acres of irrigated farms and ranches, as well as the Colorado River itself and every living thing that depends on its habitats, including hundreds of bird species like the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, Yuma Ridgway’s Rail, and Summer Tanager.
This is a graph of snowpack above LakePowell using 104 snow measuring stations. It was 9 inches of water on March 7, now 6 inches. Other dry years shown.There is no historical analog to this — Brad Udall
Audubon submitted formal comments in response to the Draft EIS, joining conservation partners to weigh in on what comes next for Reclamation’s consideration (read our comment letter here). Dozens of comments were submitted by the Colorado River Basin states, water users, and other stakeholders making their case with Reclamation that their water uses need to be protected at the expense of others. In its comments Audubon emphasized the need to stabilize the Colorado River system from its headwaters to its delta—a unique, basinwide perspective that urges Reclamation to manage risks for people and nature rather than deferring hard decisions until emergency conditions force action. Our comment letter focused on constructive engagement noting the Draft EIS’s strengths in its analytical foundation while identifying and describing targeted refinements that would help ensure the Final EIS fully informs decision-makers about risks and real-world consequences. Specifically, Audubon calls for:
Clarity and predictability
Flexible, adaptive tools for conserving, storing, and managing water
Environmental stewardship embedded into operations
Meaningful and voluntary Tribal participation
Pathways for advancing in-basin mitigation and resilience-building opportunities
Pathways for advancingbinational cooperation with Mexico
Over the next few months, Reclamation still has an opportunity to persuade the Colorado River Basin states into consensus. Whether or not they are successful (and we hope they are), sometime this summer we expect Reclamation to issue a Final EIS that includes refinements to the Draft as well as an indication of their preferred alternative for Colorado River operations. In the meantime, it is urgent Reclamation also prepare for the water supply emergency that is unfolding in 2026.
For much of the last century, Reclamation was a leader in developing the southwestern United States by harnessing the Colorado River and delivering its water across the land. Today, Reclamation must lead in a new way, helping everyone and everything that depends on the Colorado River live with the river we have in a warmer, drier world.
The sun rises over Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, in Page, Arizona. Lake Powell, a critical Colorado River reservoir, is only at a third of its capacity as drought conditions in the Southwest worsen. CREDIT: ECOFLIGHT
Click the link to read the article on the AZMirror website (Caitlin Sievers):
March 23, 2026
Arizona is preparing for a legal battle over its rights to Colorado River water.
Following an extraordinarily dry winter along the river basin and what’s expected to be an exceptionally hot and dry spring across the West, where high temperatures in March have already blown past records, the pressure to maintain access to the state’s fair share of river water is growing.
The Colorado River is a vital source of drinking water for 40 million people in the seven basin states, Mexico and 30 Native American tribes, and provides water for farming operations and hydroelectricity.
Reaching a water usage agreement is imperative to the basin states as the river’s water supply continues to decline, as it has done for the past 25 years due to a persistent drought spurred on by climate change.
On Monday, the Arizona Governor’s Office announced that it had retained the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to represent the state in possible litigation among the Colorado River Basin states and the federal government.
Sullivan & Cromwell is an international firm based in New York City that has represented big names like Microsoft, BP, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. The state is using some of the $3 million it put into its Colorado River legal defense fund last year to retain the law firm.
The Governor’s Office doesn’t expect to take any legal action until June at the earliest, but wants to be prepared for the possibility, especially if the dispute ends up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California — and the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — have been negotiating an updated water usage agreement for more than two years.
But so far the states have blown past two deadlines to do so — one in November and one in February — and are quickly approaching October, when the existing usage agreement expires.
If the states can’t reach an agreement before that, the federal government will implement one of its draft plans, all of which would place an outsized burden on the Grand Canyon State.
That’s because the Central Arizona Project, a series of canals that supplies Colorado River water to the Valley and the Tucson area, is one of the newest users of the river water, making it legally one of the first to be cut.
But so far, the Upper Basin states have refused to agree to any water usage cuts of their own, while the Lower Basin states insist that every state take their fair share.
Arizona has offered to reduce its Colorado River allocation by 27%, California by 10%, and Nevada by nearly 17%.
Negotiators for Arizona also insist that the Upper Basin states be held to the original 1922 Colorado River Compact that requires them to release a 10-year rolling average of at least 75 million acre-feet of water to the Lower Basin, in addition to one-half of the annual allotment owed to Mexico, for a total of about 80.2 million acre-feet.
An acre-foot of water represents enough to cover an acre of land to a depth of one foot, or about 325,851 gallons. That’s enough to provide three homes in Arizona a year of water, on average.
So far, the Upper Basin states have held to the original release agreement. But as water levels in the two major reservoirs on the river, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, continue to decline, it’s expected that the Upper Basin states will be unable to meet that requirement as early as 2027.
When the states entered into the original Colorado River Compact in 1922, they allocated 7.5 million acre-feet of water each year to be shared by the Upper Basin states and another 7.5 million to be used among the Lower Basin states.
Since then, the states have updated their water usage guidelines several times, even though the apportionments remain the same. But Lower Basin states face mandatory cuts during times of drought and Upper Basin states do not. In 2025, for the fifth year in a row, the federal government imposed drought-based cuts, and Arizona’s amounted to a loss of 512,000 acre-feet of water for the year.
Under current allocations, Arizona has rights to 2.8 million acre feet of water per year, and has implemented 800,000 acre feet in reductions per year. In contrast, Colorado has rights to 3.8 million acre feet a year, although it uses an average of 1.9 million acre feet, annually.
The amount of water that Colorado has access to can be unpredictable because it relies mostly on melted snowpack for its water, which varies from year to year. This year’s snowpack levels are historically low.
The Lower Basin states have undertaken significant conservation efforts for Colorado River water since 2014 and have reduced their consumption from 7.4 million acre-feet in 2015 to just over 6 million in 2024.
The Upper Basin states have increased their usage in the past five years, from 3.9 million acre-feet in 2021 to 4.4 million in 2024. The federal government’s draft plans allow for the Upper Basin states to use even more water.
Gov. Katie Hobbs’s proposed budget for this year would put another $1 million toward the Colorado River Legal Defense fund, and lawmakers earlier this month gave preliminary approval to doing just that.
Even as Arizona prepares for a legal battle, the state plans to continue attempting to reach an agreement with the other river basin states, according to the Governor’s Office.
“Governor Hobbs is committed to working with the federal government and other Colorado River states to deliver a negotiated settlement that protects Arizona’s fair share of water and stabilizes the system,” spokesman for Hobbs Christian Slater said. “However, it’s critical that Arizona be prepared to defend ourselves in court if an agreement cannot be reached or the Law of the River is violated.”
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
March 18, 2026
Some notes on the current state of the Colorado River…
I’m preparing for a panel discussion this evening in Albuquerque. I promised – three-finger promise, Scout’s honor, which still means something to me – that I wouldn’t use any swear words., either in the blog post or the panel discussion.
The state of the water
Per the latest numbers from my colleague/collaborator/friend Jack Schmidt, Lake Powell currently holds 1.57 million acre feet of water above the protect-the-infrastructure no-go line of elevation 3,500.
Storage at this point in the year is similar to 2022, when we began a hair-about-to-be-on-fire drill as Interior raced to figure out how to protect Glen Canyon Dam because of newly understood (or newly publicly understood) risks of dropping below minimum power pool and using the dam’s outlook works. That constraint still holds.
The forecast this year is a catastrophe compared to 2022: 1.75 million acre feet for the 2026 runoff season, compared to 3.8 maf in the 2022 runoff season. [ed. emphasis mine]
The result, according to the most probable forecast from Reclamation, is that absent some sort of action (see governance below) Powell will drop below 3,500 in September, and stay that way until the spring runoff in 2027.
According to the min probable forecast, which is realistic given the looming heat-pocalypse, we hit 3,500 by July and stay there forever (by which I mean as far as the current 24-month forecast runs – as the late Jim Morison wrote, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near).
The state of the governance
The state of the governance nests two separate by closely linked problems: near term actions and long term rules.
Near term actions
Protecting Glen Canyon Dam from that 3,500 no-go line requires coming up with a least 2 million acre feet of water over the next two years – to get us past that spring 2027 problem described above. There are two ways to do this. The first is to release a bunch of water from upstream, primarily Flaming Gorge Reservoir. How much? Dunno. The second is to cut releases from Glen Canyon Dam, reducing flows through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead. How much? Dunno, though we may find out soon.
The current rules, adopted in response to the challenges of 2022-23, allows releases from Glen Canyon Dam to drop this year to 6 million acre feet, which effectively gets 1.5 million of the needed 2 million feet from Lake Mead by reducing releases thereto. Another 500,000 in releases from upstream reservoir gets you 2 million acre feet, with room to do more if the hydrology gets even worse – which it might.
Longer term actions
The longer term stuff is where, as a student of governance, this gets really interesting for me. As a citizen of the basin, I am inclined to swear words at the dysfunction that has left us with no long term plan beyond the end of this year. But I Scout’s honor promised, so shifting to the “student of governance” schtick gives me a view from nowhereway to approach this dispassionately, without the, y’know, words that would have made Mr. Vinatieri, my Scoutmaster, disappointed in me.
Others have chronicled the failure of the seven U.S. Colorado River Basin states to come to a consensus agreement on a set of river operating rules, we need not repeat that here, other than to note that what we have here is a classic case of what has been called the tragedy of the anticommons. This is a situation where many people or entities – in this case the states of the Colorado River Basin – each have the power to block a solution that might be to the benefit of the community as a whole. In this case, each of the seven states of the Colorado River Basin have blocking power over solutions that would prevent the reservoirs from crashing.
See above: the reservoirs are crashing and we have no plan to prevent it because any proposal that might prevent it has been blocked by one or more states that object.
The reason behind this is a set of rules written beginning in the 1920s governing the river – the Colorado River Compact and a series of ad hoc additions that followed – that attempted to lay out rules for managing the river but failed to include functional processes for modifying the rules when they proved inadequate to changing the situation. We’re now stuck with a system under which each of the seven basin states has blocking power over any attempt to change the rules.
This violates one of the fundamental institutional design principles identified by the late Elinor Ostrom, who taught us so much about how we succeed or fail in overcoming the tragedy of the commons: “How will the rules … be changed over time with changes in the performance of the resource system, the strategies of participants, and external opportunities and constraints?” We have to have rules about how we rewrite the rules. We lack that.
Despite this, we have succeeded in the past, in a series of rule-writing exercises that began in the late 1990s, by depending on principled actors at the state level recognizing that they needed to balance their need to protect their own community’s water supplies against the need to solve problems at the scale of the basin as a whole.
My personal values on this question are both instrumental (things that I think are in the best interests of myself and my community) and deontological (things that I think are fundamental moral principles). The second first: I think we have ethical obligations to those upstream and downstream of us in shared river basins. This is, for me, fundamental. The second is instrumental – I think compromise is in the best interests of my community’s water supply and therefore its future, because if we end up in litigation and the system crashes, we stand to lose a lot more than if we compromise, are willing to act on our obligations to our downstream neighbors by using less ourselves.
The last two years of increasingly hostile negotiations among the states make clear that behavior that recognizes those principles is gone, replaced by interpersonal bickering and a game of chicken driving the basin toward litigation (effectively hoping to manage the basin by convincing a judge of our preferred interpretation of ambiguous rules written a century ago) and reservoir collapse.
Thar be dragons.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Sunlight glimmers on the Colorado River near Page, Arizona on Nov. 2, 2022. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Scott Franz):
March 20, 2026
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
Critical negotiations about the future of the Colorado River took a two week hiatus last month after the seven states in the basin missed a key Valentine’s Day deadline for striking a deal, New Mexico’s water negotiator said Thursday.
Estevan López said talks resumed March 2, and the upper and lower basin states are using a short-term pitch from Nevada as a starting point.
“Right now, we’re in discussions with the lower basin about a potential short-term agreement,” Lopez told New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission.
Nevada is proposing to increase water releases from upper basin reservoirs like Flaming Gorge by at least 500,000 acre feet to help prevent Lake Powell from dropping too low.
The latest forecasts predict that Powell could drop enough to stop producing hydropower by December.
In return, lower basin states would agree to cut their water use by 1.25 million acre feet “until system conditions have meaningfully improved.”
López said upper basin states had a counter proposal and talks about it were scheduled on Thursday afternoon.
“The hydrology right now is incredibly dire,” López said. “So we’re beginning for this year, for the remainder of this water year, we’re suggesting that there needs to be a release from the upper initial units, most likely Flaming Gorge, since that’s the reservoir that’s largest and has the most water. And we are anticipating that there will be a release of half a million acre feet from Flaming Gorge to prop up Lake Powell.”
Meanwhile, the Interior Department is reviewing thousands of comments it received on a range of options for how to manage the vital waterway.
The alternatives were published in January and could result in a variety of scenarios, ranging from significant water reductions in lower basin states to creating new incentives for states to conserve water.
And after the states missed two deadlines to reach an agreement, it’s becoming increasingly likely the federal government will try to piece together its own plan before the current guidelines expire in the fall.
Water negotiators are also facing a worsening water supply forecast with record low snowpack across the West.
A map shows how much water is predicted to arrive at certain locations in the Colorado River basin as of a March 1 forecast.
Cody Moser with the federal Colorado Basin River Forecast Center said last week just 2.3 million acre feet of Colorado River water is expected to reach Lake Powell through July. That’s about a third of what’s considered normal.
“You’ll notice it’s not a pretty picture here with lots of reds,” he said as he presented a color coded map of how much water is expected to reach certain locations in the river basin. “That’s 50 to 70% of normal April through July runoff. Those maroon colors are 30 to 50% and we even have some of those pinks, which indicates less than 30% normal seasonal spring runoff.”
An attorney for New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission said Thursday the state expects the Interior Department to identify a preferred option for managing the dwindling river by July. The current operating guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead expire in the fall.
The seven U.S. states that make up the Colorado River basin are struggling to agree on how best to manage the river’s water as its supply dwindles due to climate change and a period of prolonged drought. Their negotiations, which are not open to the public, missed a Feb. 14, 2026, deadline the federal government had established, after which federal officials said they would impose their own plan.
The federal government has not yet done so, but the prospect of such an action is not good news for the nearly 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River for water, energy, agriculture and recreation, nor for the estimated US$1.4 trillion in economic activity the river supports.
But compromise on Colorado River management is possible and, in fact, was achieved to curb California’s water use in the 2000s, to negotiate an interim agreement to coordinate operations at the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs in 2007, and to enact contingency plans to manage drought in 2019. But this time around, circumstances are different.
The negotiators for the states had long-standing relationships and built trust by frequently communicating outside formal meetings and seeking to listen to and understand other states’ perspectives, even if they didn’t agree.
The states also agreed to use the bureau’s computer model for analyzing scenarios of climate change and management decisions. That meant all the negotiators were looking at the same data when delving into possible options. And the political and social environment was less polarized than today.
The current situation
In this round of negotiations, federal leadership has been lagging. The Department of the Interior has not made clear what the consequences might be for the states if they fail to agree. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been without a permanent commissioner since President Donald Trump retook office in January 2025.
The states are fractured into subgroups, according to whether they are in the river’s Upper Basin – Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – or the Lower Basin, which includes Arizona, Nevada and California. Each basin group holds strong positions and has generally been unwilling to shift.
Each basin group is using a different set of assumptions for the bureau’s computer model to explore options. And the discussion often gets stuck on details, which prevents progress toward broader agreements.
But those relatively new challenges to Colorado River compromise are not an excuse for failure.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, center between flags, meets with governors and representatives of the seven Colorado River basin states in January 2026. U.S. Department of the Interior via X
A way forward?
The current negotiations have all been done behind closed doors. From talking with people involved in the negotiations, we understand the negotiators have been left to set their own agendas and meeting plans and conduct their own communications and follow-up, with no formal facilitators.
It’s reasonable to expect the negotiators to be ready to represent their states’ interests, working through an incredibly complicated landscape of hydrology, climate and management scenario modeling, water law and administration, and politics. But we believe it’s unreasonable – and unrealistic and unfair – to expect them to also be experts at designing and facilitating an effective process for sorting out their differences.
Federal officials are not necessarily the best people to run the process either. And if the agency that ultimately needs to approve any deal is the one leading the process, real or perceived biases about the states or key issues in the agreement could further complicate the discussions.
We believe that agreement between the seven states is still possible. It may be less effective to bring in a third-party facilitator at this stage in the negotiation process, though, because of the degraded trust, hardened positions and shortage of time.
A more hopeful possibility is that the bureau adopts short-term rules that would give the states another chance to negotiate a longer-term deal – ideally with an unbiased third-party facilitator for support.
A collaborative and consensus-based planning process in the Yakima River Basin in Washington state in the early 2010s is evidence that while nobody gets everything they want in a negotiated agreement, “if they can (all) get something, that’s really the basis of the plan,” as a Washington state official told The New York Times.
We are two and a half decades into the Southwest’s most severe drought of the last 1,200 years, and this winter’s snow dearth is one of the most extreme on record.
Without an April-May miracle, human-caused climate change likely will finally catch up with the Colorado River—and the 40 million people who rely on it—in the form of a full-blown crisis later this year.
“Drought” may be too hopeful a word, since it implies an eventual end. Most climate scientists refer to the phenomenon as “long-term aridification,” caused by a lack of rain and snow and warming temperatures.
The West has just experienced its warmest winter since record-keeping began in 1895. The average October-through-December temperature in some parts of the region has been more than 8° F warmer than the 20th-century mean. This is a huge anomaly.
In Gunnison County, Colorado, one of the colder places in the nation, the average minimum temperature for that four-month stretch was about 19° F. That doesn’t seem so bad until you realize that back in 1990, another dry, warm winter, the corresponding measure was 13.6° F. For the Upper Colorado River Basin, the average minimum temperature for that four-month stretch was about 26° F, the warmest on record.
The warmer temperatures tinker with the health of the watershed.
This water year, which began Oct. 1, started out with record-high precipitation in some areas, most of which fell as rain. That helped fend off severe drought conditions. But what really counts is the mountain snowpack, which serves as a giant natural reservoir that supplies at least 70% of the Colorado River’s water each year. Warm temperatures have left some areas snow-free even in parts of Wyoming, where the white stuff normally would be piled high in March.
The diminishing snow has, in turn, shrunk the Colorado River. The “natural” flow—or an estimate of how much water the river would carry without upstream diversions or human consumption—has been below 15 million acre-feet (MAF) at Lees Ferry during 20 of the last 26 years, with an average flow of 12.25 MAF during that time.
This matters, because when the Colorado River Compact of 1922 parceled out the river’s waters, the river was assumed to carry an average annual flow of at least 16.5 MAF. Demand has significantly exceeded supply for the last 26 years, forcing the drawdown of the watershed’s big savings accounts, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, to about one-third of their capacity.
Meanwhile, to comply with the Colorado River Compact of 1922—the document that serves as the Ten Commandments for the management of the river’s waters—the Upper Basin States must release, on average, at least 7.5 MAF from Glen Canyon Dam each year.
Given that the Upper Basin states need a bunch of water to keep their cities and farms from drying up, and that an additional 800,000 acre-feet evaporates or seeps into the underlying rocks at Lake Powell each year, you can see how the warming climate wreaks havoc on the math of the Colorado River.
The entire river system now teeters on the brink, and this year’s snow drought may be what pushes it over the edge.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast says Lake Powell’s surface level is likely to drop below the minimum level needed for power production later this year. This so-called “deadpool” would not only mean the end of hydropower production, it would also force all of the dam’s releases to go through the river’s 8-foot-wide, steel outlet tubes, which were not made for sustained use. This could compromise the tubes and the dam itself.
It’s possible that the dam would even be shifted to a run-of-the-river operation, in which releases equal the amount of water flowing into the reservoir, minus evaporation and seepage. That would almost certainly result in water shortages downstream, at the very least for the Central Arizona Project, which serves the Phoenix metro area.
This quandary didn’t sneak up on us.
The seven Colorado River states and the federal water managers can’t agree on who should make what cuts in consumption. The feds, meanwhile, haven’t gotten around to re-engineering Glen Canyon Dam or creating a bypass around it that would enable the water to keep flowing. It’s almost as if they’ve been paralyzed by the belief that dry winters were just a minor glitch.
Now, as the spring runoff gets underway, it has become clear that nature won’t save us: We have no choice but to live within increasingly meager limits.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a longtime journalist and author about the West.
Lake Powell, on the Colorado River, is seen from the air in 2019. The Upper Basin states are planning how to potentially fill a dedicated pool in the nation’s second largest reservoir. CREDIT: ECOFLIGHT
With a Lake Powell conservation pool nearly guaranteed for the future of Colorado River management, the four Upper Basin states are exploring and refining the ways they could fill it.
Conservation by those states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) could be one of the keys to reaching a deal among the seven states that share the Colorado River and an important part of the framework for managing the drought-stricken river after this year. The water saved by the Upper Basin states could be stored in Lake Powell as a means of maintaining higher water levels and as an insurance policy against drastic cuts.
This type of pool isn’t yet being used in Lake Powell; it would have to be established by an agreement among the seven states. An agreement in the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan allowed for a 500,000 acre-foot Upper Basin storage pool in Lake Powell, but so far, the states have not utilized this and the agreement expires this year.
The Upper Basin and Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada) have been at an impasse for more than two years about how the nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — will be managed and shortages shared in the future. The situation has never been more dire: The current guidelines for river management expire at the end of the year, while record-low snowpack is expected to push reservoir levels below critical thresholds. The seven states have blown past two deadlines to come up with a plan, and the federal government is gearing up for emergency actions to manage reservoirs.
The crux of the disagreement between the two basins has been over who should take shortages in drought years. The Lower Basin has committed to 1.5 million acre-feet of reductions annually and wants cuts beyond that to be shared by the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin says its water users already take cuts in some years because streams run dry by midsummer and any contributions they make must be voluntary.
TThe main boat ramp at Wahweap Marina was unusable due to low water levels in Lake Powell in December 2021. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is projecting that the reservoir will fall below critical thresholds later this year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Contribution not conservation
Some Upper Basin officials have made a slight shift in the way they now talk about a pool in Lake Powell. No longer referred to as a conservation pool, it is called a “contribution” pool, reflecting the different methods — not only conservation of agricultural water — of contributing water to a Lake Powell pool.
Traditionally, the Colorado River basin states have turned to programs that pay irrigators to voluntarily leave fields dry for a season or two as the primary way to cut water use. With agriculture representing the majority of water use in the Upper Basin, it’s often the low-hanging fruit when it comes to water savings.
But at least two Upper Basin states are turning to other methods to contribute water to a Lake Powell pool.
For example, New Mexico can contribute water from Navajo Reservoir that it leases from a tribe. In Colorado, the method is less straightforward, but officials say the state is prioritizing and expanding existing programs and projects that save water.
“When you talk about things like turf removal, water-loss prevention, watershed restoration, forest-health efforts that are happening on the ground, those are benefits not only to Colorado but to the entire system,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s lead negotiator in talks among the seven states that share the Colorado River. “So we’re trying to figure out: How do we acknowledge all of that work?”
Raymond Langstaff, a rancher and president of the Bookcliff Conservation District, irrigates a parcel north of Rifle. The state of Colorado explored the feasibility of a demand management program that would pay irrigators to cut back, but did not implement one. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Utah touts pragmatic approach
Over its run in 2023 and 2024, the federally funded System Conservation Pilot Programdoled out $45 million to Upper Basin irrigators to cut their use by about 100,000 acre-feet. Utah water users received about $15 million of that in exchange for temporarily forgoing about 37,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water. The state put lessons learned with SCPP to use and is now in the second year of its own demand management pilot program, funded by $5 million from the state legislature and run by the Colorado River Authority of Utah.
The pilot program lets water users temporarily participate in a conservation program, and pays them $390 an acre-foot of water to do it. In 2025, Utah sent about 8,000 acre-feet downstream to Lake Powell under this pilot program, according to Marc Stilson, deputy director and principal engineer of the authority. There are a couple industrial water users and one municipal water user among the participants, but the majority are agricultural, he said.
“The pilot program is trying to iron out all these issues so that if we end up with some type of post-2026 commitment to do these types of voluntary conservation programs, we’re ready to do it,” Stilson said. “There is a very pragmatic approach in Utah looking at the big picture, and I think generally there is a sense that we have to adapt to changing conditions.”
Whether the program will continue after this year is unclear and could depend on whether the states reach a deal.
“We were anticipating that we’d have an agreement and that these types of programs would be part of that agreement,” Stilson said. “I think we just have to take a wait-and-see approach.”
Wyoming is also looking to traditional programs: State lawmakers are establishing a voluntary water conservation program. Wyoming state engineer and lead negotiator Brandon Gebhart did not respond to phone calls, emails or a list of questions from Aspen Journalism.
Boater on the San Juan River in May 2023. New Mexico officials say they can contribute water to a pool in Lake Powell through releasing water they lease in Navajo Reservoir. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
New Mexico seeks ‘more diverse’ ways to contribute water
The state of New Mexico plans to contribute to a Powell pool mostly through 20,000 acre-feet of Navajo Reservoir water, which it leases from the Jicarilla Apache Nation and can be released down the San Juan River. Along the way to Lake Powell, it boosts flows for endangered fish. Officials say because they can control when they release the water, it can be tracked with certainty to the reservoir.
“We all need to focus on more diverse ways of contributions, not just the classic conserved consumptive use,” said Ali Effati, Colorado River basin bureau chief for the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission.
Water managers say that automatically turning to agricultural water isn’t always reliable because as climate change continues to rob rivers of flows, even if senior water users want to participate in these types of conservation programs, they may not have any water to spare in dry years.
“That doesn’t mean that we have shied away from those sorts of activities, but to the extent that we can do our part without having to ask our agricultural community to cut water where they already take significant cuts almost annually, that’s just a preferable perspective,” said Estevan Lopez, lead negotiator for New Mexico.
Lopez said the likelihood of seeing a future Upper Basin contribution pool in Lake Powell is nearly 100% and that New Mexico will be ready, willing and able to contribute its share of water when the time comes.
“We have our percentage easily covered, plus a significant amount more,” he said.“We have our percentage easily covered, plus a significant amount more,” he said.
TThese hay bales stand ready to be collected on a ranch outside of Carbondale in July 2024. Upper Basin states have traditionally looked to agricultural to conserve water, but some are now turning to other ways to contribute water. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Colorado points to programs already in place
Colorado water users participated in both years of SCPP, but the state has been reluctant to take the leap into setting up its own program, despite being an early leader of the conservation conversation among the Upper Basin states.
In 2019, Colorado convened nine workgroups to explore the feasibility of a demand management program. The process included Colorado River water users from across the state and in multiple water-use sectors, who looked at how to set up a temporary, voluntary, compensated state program. But in 2022, the state water board shelved the studies without implementing a program, in favor of focusing on drought-resiliency initiatives.
Mitchell said the demand management feasibility investigation was an incredibly valuable exercise, but that there are still a number of open questions. Inaction on a demand management program doesn’t mean inaction on conservation overall, she said.
“The CWCB board voted to pause that investigation until there was clarity about whether any such program would be achievable, worthwhile and advisable and until there’s evidence that a demand management-esque program would benefit Colorado,” Mitchell said.
In 2023, Colorado lawmakers created a task force to again examine how the state could implement demand reduction and conservation programs. Water managers punted the issue again, failing to make recommendations to lawmakers on this topic, with some members saying conservation programs were “premature.”
The state still does not seem to have the policies in place to implement a large-scale, traditional conservation program in the near future. Mitchell said Colorado’s plan to contribute water to a Lake Powell pool is through the programs and projects already in place, many of which are funded through the state’s Water Plan grants.
At its March meeting, the CWCB approved more than $13 million for 38 projects across the state, according to a press release. They include things like urban turf replacement, creek and wetland restoration, outdoor water budgeting and wildfire ready action plans.
“Our strategy is to continue on with the programs that are already in existence, continue to fund conservation efforts that benefit all Coloradans as well as the entire system, continue to live within the means of the river and adapt our uses to align with available supply,” Mitchell said. “Because of all those programs already set up, we believe we have the majority of the structure in place.”
But Mitchell would not put a number on the amount of water that Colorado could contribute.
“We want to be a part of the solution when and how we are able to, but no, I’m not going to say we can do 100,000 acre-feet in a year like this,” she said.
Colorado River watchers may soon get some clarity around exactly how — and how much — Upper Basin states plan to contribute to a Lake Powell pool. On March 24, the Upper Colorado River Commission plans to consider projects to include in a “provisional accounting” memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, according to UCRC Director Chuck Cullom.
Some Upper Basin projects that are not traditional agricultural conservation programs may be counted under the MOU, allowing the states to “get credit” for the water they save through unconventional means. Cullom said the UCRC and Bureau of Reclamation will also soon have an accounting report of water-saving activities undertaken in 2025.
Mitchell said Colorado is still committed to a seven-state consensus agreement and wants to avoid litigation. But acknowledgement of what the Upper Basin is already doing to cut back on water use will be important.
“The MOU is one component where we would like to see some sort of real acknowledgement of what is occurring in terms of the way that we live within the means of the river and what our strict administration is doing,” Mitchell said. “As long as we are not acknowledged in what’s happening on the ground, I think we’re going to have struggles.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The hard news about the Colorado River since my last post here is not good; we had a storm that dropped around two feet of snow above the 8,000-foot elevation – well, maybe the 9,000-foot elevation. But that was followed by a couple weeks of ridiculously warm weather for February and early March, with more 50-degree weather forecast into the near future, and overnight lows often in the 20s, rather than down around zero. Forecasts for the runoff this year range around a third of the ‘historic normal,’ which is an increasingly meaningless number – and dangerous too, MAGA-thinking, keeping alive the hope that eventually the Colorado River will be great again if we just wait it out, or close our eyes and wish real hard, with real violence toward realists….
The Bureau bases its ‘averages’ on the recent 30-year average going by decades – so now the ‘long-term average’ is based on 1991-2020. Back as recently as 2019, it was based on the average from 1981-2010, which was more than a million acre-feet per year higher than the current 30-year average. God help us when we’re figuring in the decade of the 2020s into a 2001-2030 average – the new average would probably make this years runoff look better than it looks by the 1991-2020 average, but there’s certainly an element of delusion in that.
The ‘soft news’ about the Colorado River recently has been a declaration of ‘personhood’ for the river by the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT). This is a lovely gesture by people who have been struggling for ‘personhood’ themselves for 150 years in the river’s region, and still are not quite at the table in negotiating over the river’s future, even though they have ‘used’ the river, often in fairly ‘civilized’ ways, for many hundreds if not thousands of years more than the white masters of the river.
But it seemed naive (or maybe just cynical) for the ‘lamestream media’ to ask if this declaration of personhood was going to ‘help save the river.’ We probably need to face the fact that, until we get serious about slowing down the warming of the planet, we can do nothing by way of nomenclatter to ‘help save the river’ – and even then, the best we could do would be to maintain the river where it is now, or at least not a whole lot worse – which is what’s going to happen if every year we continue to put more new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we did the year before. I do not see how considering the river a ‘person’ is going to change that much.
I think we should also consider that granting ‘personhood’ to another set of living ecosystems might be kind of anthropocentric. I can barely contemplate what goes into ‘riverhood,’ for example, but watching a stream one sees a system very much engaged in interaction with its whole neighborhood – giving water to the surrounding land when the land’s water table is low, and taking on water the land can’t hold when it is wet. ‘Riverhood,’ I infer, has aspects of sharing, giving and receiving, that might have things to teach us about improving ‘personhood,’ rather than operating on the assumption that all life on the planet would love to be reduced to ‘personhood’…. Just thinking out loud, sorry.
Graphic via Holly McClelland/High Country News.
Our real question today is whether we can ‘save the river system’ – the structure for storage and distribution we have laid over the river – a question with which we need to actually spend some constructive time. And that kind of leads into the second part of my second ‘era’ in updating Fred Dellenbaugh’s 1903 Romance of the Colorado River: the ‘Era of Conquest.’ (First, remember, was the ‘Era of Exploration and Discovery.’)
World War II, where I left the story last post, is a natural break in the Era of Conquering the Colorado River. Prior to World War II, we saw the Bureau do its greatest work: overseeing the construction of Hoover Dam, Imperial Dam and the All-American Canal under the Boulder Canyon Project, as well as Parker Dam to back up water for the 250-mile Colorado River Aqueduct to the West Coast cities. It is hard not to call it a masterpiece of regional urban-industrial development. In our six or eight thousand-year history of humans trying to create ‘civilizations’ to constructively deal with exploding populations, the Boulder Canyon Act stands tall as a public work, fitting for a state struggling to become a mass-society democracy (possible?) rather than putting people to work on massive tombs for the self-proclaimed ‘God of the Sun’ or maybe ‘The Son of God.’
Advocates for private-sector industry will be quick to say it could not have been done without the private contractors, ‘the Six Companies’ and most notably Henry J. Kaiser. Critics of private-sector industry will be as quick to say that the private sector has not produced very many large-scale industrial organizers like Henry J – who demonstrated than you can do big work and also take good care of the people doing it. He did not rest on his laurels but capitalized on that regional system with his Fontana steel and aluminum plants and Liberty Shipyards up the West Coast.
Green Mountain Reservoir, on the Blue River between Kremmling and and Silverthorne, was built for Western Slope interests. Photo/Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District via The Mountain Town News.
The war effort cut off most domestic development – but the Bureau of Reclamation did complete two dams on the Colorado River during the war years. One was the Green Mountain Dam and Powerplant on the Blue River high in the river’s headwaters, part of the equally massive Colorado-Big Thompson Project. More about this in the next post.
The other was a modest diversion dam below Parker Dam on the Lower Colorado: Headgate Rock Dam – for the Colorado River Indian Tribes! With all the tribes in the Colorado Basin feeling – righteously – left out of river development, one might think the Bureau would make a bit of a big deal about the fact that their first Colorado River project completed after the Boulder Canyon Project was a diversion dam for irrigating Indian agriculture. Yet I can find none of the usual historical and statistic evidence in the Bureau websites about the Headgate Rock Dam, like they have for all of the other Colorado River projects, each getting its own website. Possibly this is because the operation of the dam was turned over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office after construction was finished.
It is, however, an interesting story. The tribes along the river were farming like Nile Valley Egyptians, planting in the new layer of silt laid down annually by the snowmelt floods, crops that needed little further irrigation. That worked until the federal Indian agents started moving Hopi and Navajo bands onto their reservation in the 1860s – the reservations truly were ‘concentration camps,’ forcing the move to ‘civilized’ agriculture. This had moved the Indian agents to acquire some pumps round the turn of the century, to water land beyond the riparian floodplain. But when the gates on Hoover Dam were closed in the mid-1930s, that ended the annual snowmelt floods, also ending the traditional agricultural economy.
So the Bureau plotted out a gravity-flow diversion dam and canal in 1938, and began construction. But construction did not really accelerate until 1941, when in one of America’s most shamefully hysteric events 17,000 Japanese-Americans were ‘relocated’ to the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) reservation – undeniably a concentration camp at that point, if only for the concentration of people. But that added not just a lot of hungry mouths, but a proven workforce that joined the First People in working on the Headgate Rock Diversion Dam and the canal works to carry the water.
It would be both insensitive and naive to speak of a ‘happy ending,’ but as the interred Japanese did in many of the desert places they were sent to, their concentration camp became a very livable village system; some stayed on after the war, and today there is a memorial monument and periodic celebration commemorating the positive relationship that developed between two ‘unwanted peoples’ – the uprooted Japanese and the Indians who forcibly shared their homeland. A story that, for some reason, the Bureau is not interested in telling….
Meanwhile, however, the Bureau was not lying dormant. Immediately after the war’s end, the Bureau released what amounted to a smorgasbord of opportunities, under the title The Colorado River: A Natural Menace Becomes a National Resource. This proposed 134 possible projects for the development of the entire river basin for human uses – cautioning that there was not enough water in the river to build them all, thereby intruding the good old all-American element of interstate competition. Fifty-eight of those proposed projects were for the Lower Basin states, but the other 88 were for the Upper Basin states. If the pre-war Colorado River development had all been about the Compact’s Lower Basin states, the post-war development would begin with controlling the ‘natural menace’ in the Upper Basin states and putting the water to work.
The 1946 Bureau report divided the Upper Basin into three different divisions, based on the River’s three main tributaries above the canyons: there were 33 projects for the Green River Division out of Wyoming and Colorado but flowing mostly (but not entirely) through eastern Utah; 35 projects for the ‘Grand Division’ (the Upper Colorado-Gunnison Rivers, originating in Colorado but flowing into Utah (using the older name for the Upper Colorado); and 20 projects for the San Juan Division, most of whose tributary waters flowed out of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains but the river itself flowed mostly through northern New Mexico and southern Utah.
The Little Snake River is about to join the Yampa River on Oct. 8, 2020. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
An obvious challenge lay in the absence of any coordination between those natural divisions of the Upper Basin and the geographically-irrelevant state boundaries. Every major tributary except for the Gunnison River crossed at least one state boundary. The Little Snake River in the Yampa River Basin is the extreme example, crossing the Colorado-Wyoming border seven times.
Grand River Ditch in Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo credit: Greg Hobbs
Nonetheless, the first task for the Upper Basin, before the Bureau could go to work, was to divide the use of the waters among the states in an Upper Colorado River Basin Compact. This task was made the more difficult because the state boundaries bundled the relatively water-rich Upper Colorado River Basin with other drier river basins – the Platte, Arkansas and Rio Grande rivers in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico; and the Great Basin in Utah. And water law – plus fervent belief in big-project technology – accommodated the notion of moving water from one river basin to another. The Grand Ditch from high on Colorado’s West Slope to the Poudre River on the East Slope was already being dug by the turn of the century. Unlike water for either agricultural or municipal uses within a basin, nothing flows back into the basin of origin from a transmountain diversion – a total depletion.
The task of dividing the use of the Upper Basin waters was also complicated by vague writing in the Colorado River Compact – Article III(d), stating that ‘the States of the Upper Division will note (sic) cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre feet for any period of ten consecutive years.’ Was this a caution to the Upper Basin states to make sure their uses did not start cutting into the Lower Basin’s shares? Or was it a mandate to those states to deliver that much water even if it meant cutting their own uses – essentially turning the Compact into a ‘senior water right’ to the Lower Basin?
This was not really foreseen as an issue in 1922, with a river that early 20th-century optimism assumed would run at around 18 million acre-feet (maf) forever. But after the drought of the 1930s and the middling flows of early 40s, plus the mid-war treaty with Mexico to deliver 1.5 maf across that border every year, it was evident to the Upper Basin state negotiators, who gathered in 1946 to work on an Upper Basin Compact, that the river might not always produce the 7.5 maf the Compact promised to them. Their preferred interpretation of the Compact’s Article III(d) would obviously be the ‘cautionary’ interpretation – don’t be the cause of the river flow declining. But they also knew that California and Arizona would interpret it as a ‘mandate’ – and since Congress would have to ratify their Compact, they chose to not ‘waken the bear,’ as California’s current governor would put it.
So rather than dividing the use of the Upper River’s hoped-for allotment of 7.5 maf in four set figures, like the Lower Basin has, they chose to divide it into percentages: 51.75% for Colorado (which provides around 70% of the river’s water), 23% for Utah, 13% for Wyoming, and 11.25% for New Mexico. They also chose to calculate their usage by their depletions of a stream’s flow rather than adding up consumptive uses, as the Lower Basin does. I will not pretend to know exactly how this works – except to note that a measure of depletions by users also includes evaporation and transpiration, while the Lower Basin’s measures allows such considerations to get lost in their calculations of usage. (The Bureau calculates Lower Basin evaporation and transpiration on a separate spreadsheet from recorded uses.)
Meanwhile, however -… Don’t you just love it when a writer intrudes ‘Meanwhile, however’ into an already complicated mess? This is my secondmeanwhile in this post, so it is probably time to give you a break, with only a teaser about the next step in this growing ganglia of complexity.
While the still somewhat beloved Bureau of Reclamation, creator of Hoover Dam and the New West, was just cranking up the mill for the development of the rest of the Colorado River Basin waters, the Upper Basin states had already been working out their separate peace over the transmountain diversion issue between the wet Colorado River basins of origin with low populations, and drier basins of destination with large populations across the mountains. This is a story that goes back to the 1930s, with the ‘New Deal’ federal government putting out large amounts of funding for public projects in all the states – but with the caveat that for any state to tap into that funding, the whole state had to want the project…. Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode in The West’s Romance with Conquest.
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Click the link to read the article on the Tucson.com website (Tony Davis). Here’s an excerpt:
March 14, 2026
The record-breaking heat in this month’s forecast is likely to help push the Colorado River Basin to the edge of “disaster,” in which drastic cuts in water use will be necessary next year, experts say. The heat is almost certain to slash river flows even more than already expected after the snowpack in key sites above Lake Powell hit record lows this winter. The upshot: Lake Powell is likely to get less than one-third the water from the river that it would in an average April to July. The unusually low flows won’t be bad enough to push the basin into immediate disaster this year. But several experts said it is virtually inevitable that major cuts in river water use will be needed next year in Arizona and other Western states — unless the winter of 2026-27 is far cooler and wetter than the current one.
“We can survive this year, no problem. What’ll be interesting to see is if this year puts enough scare into the states to begin real serious rethinking about how we manage water,” said David Wegner, a retired U.S. Bureau of Reclamation planner and congressional staffer who now sits on a National Academy of Sciences board that reviews water issues.
The Bureau of Reclamation already projected, in February, that Lake Powell is likely to fall below the level at which the turbines at adjoining Glen Canyon Dam can generate electricity — 3,490 feet — by December 2026. Given the trend toward lower snowpack, higher temperatures and less runoff of water into the river, it’s very possible if not likely, that future forecasts will show the lake falling below 3,490 feet sooner than December. But most observers, including Kuhn and Wegner expect the bureau to try to forestall that possibility in advance by releasing extra water from reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell, led by Flaming Gorge reservoir at the Utah-Wyoming border. Powell is at the Arizona-Utah border.
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
March 6, 2026
Might the Colorado River runoff be as bad as 2002? March could bring snow and rain. Almost certainly it will bring warm temperatures.
What if March brings temperatures suitable for flip flops in places like Steamboat, Vail and Telluride? And what if the snow that does fall on the headwaters of the Colorado River is average or less?
Things could get much more grim in the Colorado River Basin this year, conceivably as bad as 2002. That year was memorable for the pitiful runoff, the peak barely discernible in Glenwood Canyon in April and May. Worse came in June when three fires erupted at very nearly the same time.
The Hayman Fire (2002) was the state’s largest recorded wildfire. Smoke from the massive blaze could be seen and smelled across the state. Photo credit to Nathan Bobbin, Flickr Creative Commons.
Bill Owens, who was then Colorado’s governor, toured the state by plane, visiting the Hayman fire that started near Colorado Springs, the Coal Seam Fire at Glenwood Springs, and the Missionary Ridge Fire north of Durango. “All of Colorado is on fire,” he said, a remark that some, concerned about impacts to tourism, derided as an overstatement. But within that statement was a certain truth.
This week, NOAA’s Colorado River Basin Forecast Center released its projected flows into Lake Powell. It doesn’t look pretty. Jeff Lukas, the principle at Lukas Climate Research and Consulting, assembled this graphic that shows how the projections visually compare to other years since 1991.
“Despite better snowfall in February, the most probable forecast remains bleak at 36% of average,” he said on LinkedIn. That, he added, would put runoff in the observed flows into Powell in 2012, 2013, 2018, 2021, and 2025. “In other words, a bad neighborhood,” he said.
An unusually wet and cool March through May would only get the inflow to 65% of average. On the other hand, it could go in the other direction. A warm and dry March could eviscerate the existing snowpack.
James Eklund, a water attorney and former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, pointed out that the long-term average has been 6.7 million acre-feet. The March forecast projected runoff of around 2.3 million ace-feet.
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
“The river cares not about our legal arguments,” he said in a LinkedIn post, a reference to the intense squabbling about how to share a river that has been rapidly diminishing in average volume in the 21st century. Even in places like Arvada, people who don’t realize that they are watering their lawns and taking their showers with water imported from a Colorado River tributary do realize the Colorado River has problems.
The runoff could conceivably be worse than 2002. There’s a big difference, though. In 2002, the reservoirs held a great deal of water. Not completely full, but within a good water year of being full. Total runoff that year was 25% of average. Most years since then have been below average, leaving water levels of Powell within striking distance of deadpool.
From his post in the Glenwood Springs area, Eric Kuhn sees March storms having potential to bump up the runoff numbers. “This is one of those years where March could make a big difference. But when I look at the outlook for three or four weeks, it looks like March will definitely be above average in temperatures, which is not good news. I think it’s too soon to tell whether we will have average or below average precipitation. But warm temperatures will not be good to the snowpack.” [ed. emphasis mine]
This year’s runoff will add tension to the already fraught situation in the Colorado River Basin. Kuhn, a former manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Bureau of Reclamation — an agency within the Department of Interior that oversees operation of the federal dams — finds it must release one million acre-feet less than the base 7.5 million acre-feet release.
This could trigger a legal fight. The Colorado River Compact imposes a requirement upon the upper Colorado River Basin states to deliver 75 million acre-feet on a rolling 10-year average. This would take the upper-basin states below that threshold.
That provision in the compact has been debated almost since Congress approved it in 1929. But, under the most aggressive interpretation by lower-basin states, this could put the upper-basin out of compliance. As such, this could be the year that puts the basin states on long road to a U.S. Supreme Court review.
A meager runoff this year will also put the Department of Interior into an uncomfortable position of having to make decisions. Kuhn says the federal agency’s water officials have traditionally tried to mediate disputes among the seven basin states. This year the agency might have to make decisions that leave people upstream and down unhappy.
“They could sit back (in former days) and say we are not going to take a position because we don’t want to upset either side. We have to work with both sides. Those days have come to an end, unfortunately.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Celeste Maloy, both MAGA Republicans from Utah, have formally introduced legislation to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke the Biden-era management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. If successful, the move would also bar the feds from developing a new management plan that resembles the current one.
The current management plan is not draconian by any means. It was fashioned over years, with oodles of input and compromise, and is far less restrictive than the preservation-oriented alternatives It allowed for motorized vehicle use on designated routes and added almost no new restrictions for livestock grazing. Revoking it is not the same as rescinding the national monument or shrinking its boundaries, and will not open up any of the monument to new mining claims or oil and gas leases.
So it’s not clear what Lee and Maloy hope to achieve, except to strike a blow to a national monument that they don’t like and to throw oversight of 1.9 million acres of public land into disarray. Or maybe they’re just trying to build up their anti-public-land credentials to head off challenges from even more extreme candidates such as, say, Phil Lyman, who just challenged Maloy for her 3rd District congressional seat.
You still have time to let your representatives in Congress know how you feel.
Ugggg.
While well-intentioned greens are parsing BLM director nominee Steve Pearce’s words for indications he might be inclined to sell off public land, the Trump administration is orchestrating a massive de facto transfer of public lands to oil and gas companies.
I’m talking about oil and gas leasing. And no, it’s not an actual transfer of public land; the lessee does not take title to the land, nor can they block public access, but they do get the rights to drill that land and preclude other uses on it. And, once it is drilled, the land is scraped of all vegetation, covered with heavy equipment, poked with a massive drill, hydraulically fractured, and becomes an industrial-scale, methane-, hydrogen sulfide-, and VOC-oozing hydrocarbon factory for many decades to come.
On the auction block this June is a good chunk of slickrock-studded landscape northwest of Moab, between Hwy. 191 and the Green River, along with some parcels in the Lisbon Valley. All in all, the BLM proposes selling off 39 parcels covering some 71,600 acres. You have until March 30 to give your two cents. https://eplanning.blm.gov/Project-Home/?id=6fad61fa-a7f2-f011-8407-001dd80bcf93
***
Of course, sometimes the BLM holds an oil and gas auction and no one comes. That was the case with the Big Beautiful Cook Inlet Oil and Gas Lease Sale (yes, that is the official name) held March 4 in Alaska, in which more than 1 million acres of offshore leases were put on the block. There were zero bids. Zilch. Nada. Someday, maybe every oil and gas lease sale will be like that.
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A federal judge has halted construction of the Northern Corridor Highway through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area near St. George, Utah, while an advocates’ lawsuit proceeds.
The BLM approved the contested project earlier this year. The Utah Department of Transportation, apparently wanting to get started before a legal challenge could take hold, began erecting fencing along the project, even though their development plan hadn’t been approved. This activity would have disturbed desert tortoise habitat.
The court did not approve, blocking further work until the lawsuit is resolved.
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In other Utah road news, Garfield County began chip-sealing the first ten miles of the Hole-in-the-Rock Road in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, drawing protest and a lawsuit from environmental groups.
The county has been aching to pave the gravel road, which often becomes riddled with potholes and washboards, for years, but failed to gain BLM approval. Environmental groups have resisted, saying that improving the road could lead to more paving or widening of primitive byways in the area, and would increase the number of people and their impacts on the fragile landscape.
The county has also wielded RS-2477 — an 1866 statute — in an attempt to wrest control over the byway, which leads to the famed Colorado River crossing of the 1879 Latter Day Saint expedition to Bluff. Last July, a federal court granted Garfield County quiet title to the section of the road within the county.
Garfield County interpreted that as a green light to chip seal the road.
That triggered a lawsuit from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, pointing out that because the road crosses BLM land, the county must still get the agency’s go-ahead for major improvements. It didn’t, but the BLM has done nothing to stop the action, which SUWA says violates federal environmental laws.
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
I was accused recently of being all “doom and gloom” when it comes to this year’s snow levels, so I set out to find some good news to report. It didn’t go so well, but I did uncover a few tiny nuggets, including:
After the February storms, the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies reported: “This is rare, but currently we do not have any dust on the snowpack.” That’s good news because dust on the snow decreases albedo (reflectivity), leading to faster snowmelt. We need what little we have to stick around as long as possible. Buzzkill: The really big dust events tend to come in the springtime.
I tend to rely on a handful of high-elevation SNOTEL sites as indicators of how the mountain snowpack is doing. One of them is in Columbus Basin in the La Plata Mountains. Like everywhere else, the snow water equivalent there is way below normal. However, it’s still above 2002 levels for early March, so that’s kind of heartening. I guess?
Hope lies in 1990: That year, snowpack levels in the Animas River watershed were lower on March 6 than they are today. But beginning in mid-March, storms pummeled the region, resulting in a May 3, 1990, snowpack peak that was 94% of normal and bringing runoff up to decent levels. We could see a repeat of that March-April-May miracle!
And … oh. I’ve just been informed that there is no more good news.
As grim as this may be, it also offers a glimmer of hope: The snowpack could still recover like it did in 1990. Source: NRCS.
Now back to our regularly scheduled doom and gloom, bullet style.
The late February-early March heat wave across most of the West shattered thousands of daily high temperature records and dozens of monthly ones, topping off the West’s warmest winter on record. Monthly records (121 tied or broken nationwide during the last week of Feb.) include:
Dinosaur National Monument in Utah hit 68° F on 2/26;
Imperial County, California’s airport reached 97° on 2/28;
Albuquerque airport, 77° on 2/25;
Hovenweep National Monument in Utah, 70° on 2/28;
Havasu, Arizona, and Malibu Hills, California, were both 93° on 2/27;
Sampling of daily records (845 broken or tied during the last week of Feb) include:
Mancos, Colorado, hit 50° F on 2/28; the aforementioned Columbus Basin (elev. 10,784 feet) reached 48° and Mineral Creek, Colorado, hit 51° that same day;
McClure Pass, Colorado, reached 49° on 2/28;
Needles, California, and Phoenix both hit 92° on 2/28;
South Lake Tahoe airport, 60° on 2/28.
Those kinds of temperatures melt the snow, even on north faces, causing this year’s snow water equivalent graph lines to uncharacteristically dip during a time of year when they normally would be shooting upward. They also heighten risk of wildfires in the low country. On the last day of February, a blaze broke out in Chautauqua Park in Boulder, forcing some evacuations before it was contained. Another one was sparked west of Boulder on March 4.
The North Fork of the Gunnison, which feeds the ditches in and around Paonia and Hotchkiss and the orchards, vineyards, and farms there, is in trouble. This year’s snowpack so far is in the same boat as it was on this date in 2002 and 2018, two very dry years when irrigation ditches were shut off early in the growing season.
Aside from the entire Upper Colorado River watershed, I’m also especially concerned about the North Fork of the Gunnison. Snowpack levels are at a record low for this date, or about the same as they were in 2018, and Paonia Reservoir is currently utilizing just 22% of its storage capacity (note the record high temp on McClure Pass above, at the headwaters of Muddy Creek, which feeds the reservoir). This does not bode well for the many small farmers who rely on the river for irrigation. In 2018, downstream senior rights holders made a call on the river in June, forcing junior irrigators in the North Fork to lose water perilously early in the season.
This bad situation could be exacerbated if the feds were to decide to release water from Paonia Reservoir in an attempt to buoy Lake Powell water levels. While this is hypothetical, it is not beyond the realm of possibility by any means.
And, saving for some sort of April-May miracle, the Colorado River runoff will be extraordinarily scant this spring and summer, almost certainly pushing Lake Powell to critically low levels.
***
That demands a plan, and the Bureau of Reclamation came up with several alternatives last month. Most of the major players have commented on the alternatives, and it’s safe to say that almost no one is satisfied with any of them — albeit for different reasons.
One of the more universal critiques is that none of the alternatives adequately address dry and critically dry scenarios on the river, like the one that is likely to occur this summer. The draft environmental impact statement itself states, “In critically dry periods, all alternatives have unacceptable performance.” That leaves many wondering what, exactly, the Bureau of Reclamation plans to do to keep the system from collapsing over the next nine months.
There is a lot here, and it gets pretty darned deep in the wonk weeds. Still, what I’ve included is a mere sampling of some of the comments from just a few of the commenters in the hope that it will give readers a better idea of where different stakeholders stand, and how complicated and difficult this situation really is.
For those who don’t like weeds, here’s the short version: It’s a tangled mess with a bunch of moving pieces and stakeholders who are digging in their heels to ensure that their constituents get the water they need to drink, irrigate crops, run industries, or whatever. And they’re all butting up against the reality that there simply isn’t enough water in the river to go around.
Arizona is understandably displeased because they would take the greatest hit under any alternative. This is not because they are somehow inferior, but because the water rights to the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, are junior to most other big users in the Lower Basin. “… each alternative, though broad in scope, will translate in practice specifically as drastic reductions to Arizona’s water supply.”
“We are deeply troubled that Reclamation all but abandons its increasingly critical role in ensuring the Upper Basin States fulfill their delivery obligations under the Colorado River Compact of 1922 (Compact).” This refers to the non-depletion or minimum-delivery obligation that I’ve written about before.
“The DEIS itself acknowledges that ‘widespread impacts on social and economic conditions may also be possible,’ including circumstances in which municipalities may need to pursue alternative or even hauled water sources to maintain basic services. Drastic cuts could have cascading consequences for human health and safety and destabilize the lives and livelihoods of Arizonans, tribal communities, and critical industries that rely on Colorado River supplies.”
They say the cuts will damage the state’s agriculture, manufacturing, and aerospace industries and that it will put at risk: “… the largest concentration of advanced semiconductor manufacturing investment in the country, representing roughly $200 billion in announced projects since 2020.” Semiconductor production is extremely water-intensive, with the average factory consuming up to 10 million gallons of ultra-pure water daily.
They call on any plans to “include verifiable Upper Basin conservation measures commensurate with Lower Basin conservation measures, including identifying tangible metrics that demonstrate Upper Basin water conservation.”
“We believe that Reclamation must institute bold and meaningful changes but that those changes must be implemented in a manner that is consistent with the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the 1944 binational treaty with Mexico, the 1948 Upper Basin Compact, and the other foundational elements of the Law of the River.”
“Reclamation must prioritize hydrologic reality over predictability for Lower Basin users. The Draft EIS places undue emphasis on predictability1 for water users, a goal that is unattainable under future climate conditions unless system storage is replenished and overall demands are permanently reduced to match the supply.”
“… several alternatives include Upper Basin water conservation ranging from zero to 500,000 acre-feet annually … <but> … fails to analyze the environmental or socioeconomic impacts associated with these conservation volumes.” It adds that a 200,000 acre-feet reduction in the Upper Basin would require fallowing 52,000 acres on the Western Slope.
“Lower Basin water use must be reduced by 1.5 million acre-feet at all times, regardless of the alternative. This amount represents system losses (i.e., transit losses and reservoir evaporation) and should not be classified as shortage.” This is a longstanding issue. Reservoir evaporation and other such losses are counted against the Upper Basin’s consumptive use, in part because of the non-depletion obligation. The same is not true for the Lower Basin; when they say they use 7.5 million acre-feet, that does not include evaporation or seepage or other system losses, only what they pull out of the river.
“The range of alternatives must include option(s) that perform under critically dry hydrology. Currently, none of the alternatives in the Draft EIS perform under critically dry hydrology. At least one alternative must protect critical infrastructure and respond effectively to significantly lower river flows than historically observed.” We are approaching a critically dry situation this summer, when the feds will have to decide whether and how to keep Lake Powell from dropping below minimum power pool. So far there is no plan for this.
“Hydrology must drive Post-2026 operations. Operating guidelines based upon comparative reservoir elevations which do not factor in real time hydrology have been disastrous for protecting storage in Lake Powell and thus, have failed to provide the water supply certainty for the Upper Basin intended by the Law of the River …”
“Interbasin transactions must not be allowed in the proposed action.” That is, Upper Basin users with senior rights should not be able to sell their water to Lower Basin users.
The team of Anne Castle, John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Katherine Tara, and Kathryn Soren, river experts and academics who aren’t representing any specific water user, state, or basin, also weighed in. Their comments, as Fleck put it in his Inkstain blog, could be summed up as: “Tell us what you’re going to do.” And, also:
The group calls on Interior to “primarily focus on the Dry and Critically Dry scenarios. … We think it important to be mindful of the underlying year-to-year hydrology of the 21st century as we look to the future. … we are struck by the fact that 50% of the individual years of the 21st century have been Dry or Critically Dry, and only 27% of the years (including 2017, 2019, 2023) have been Moderately Wet or Wet.”
“We suggest that the DEIS include a description of an alternative that performs sufficiently well during Dry scenarios and an alternative that performs sufficiently well during Critically Dry scenarios.”
“ … it is imperative that Reclamation provide a clear picture of what actions will be implemented in the near term (i.e., next year, next 3 years, next 5 years) to protect critical infrastructure, and to protect public health and safety.”
Noting that lawsuits are inevitable regardless of which alternative the feds choose, they urge them to avoid “safe” options and go with a plan with “… the broadest possible interpretation of Reclamation’s and Interior’s authority to provide a predictable and resilient Colorado River so that the system can continue to operate in a reasonable manner while the lawsuits proceed.”
Call on the feds to “… explore these areas for possible inclusion in the preferred alternative:
Reduction of deliveries in the Lower Basin in excess of 1.48 MAF when insufficient water is available for release.
Provision for releases of water from the Colorado River Storage Project initial units as necessary to protect critical elevations in Lake Powell and ensure continued Upper Basin Compact compliance.
Operation of federal projects in the Upper Basin to store or use less water during critical periods.
Continuation, expansion, and modification of Assigned Water programs (such as Intentionally Created Surplus and Mexican Water Reserve) with improvements to ensure operational neutrality and minimize adverse impact to priority water.
Establishing a conservation pool in Lake Powell for storing Upper Basin conserved water to be utilized for Compact compliance purposes. For more on conservation pools, check out the Shannon Mulane’s explainer in the Colorado Sun.
The group finds fault with the plan for not addressing “the need for enforceable reductions in the Upper Basin.” They go with the Lower Basin’s interpretation of the non-depletion/minimum-delivery obligation, saying that the Colorado River Compact does not guarantee that the Upper Basin gets half of the water in the river. Plus, they point out that the plan’s demand forecasts for the Upper Basin are unrealistically high, putting more of the burden for cuts on the Lower Basin.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority and Colorado River Commission of Nevadaare especially critical, writing:
“Since the onset of drought in 2002, <Nevada water users> have reduced their overall Colorado River water consumption by more than 40 percent even as our population grew by more than 875,000 people. And they, unlike so many others, have not ignored the reality facing the basin by making the flimsy argument that our economy cannot prosper while water consumption decreases.”
Like Arizona, they bring up the minimum-delivery/non-depletion clause of the Colorado River Compact and call on the Upper Basin to comply with it.
Interior’s “… approach to protecting the Glen Canyon Dam river outlet works by reducing releases from Lake Powell—rather than making infrastructure repairs and improvements—is shortsighted and harms Nevada and the Lower Basin States.”
The Upper Colorado River Commissionemphasizes the Lower Basin’s history of exceeding its Colorado River Compact allocation and failing to account for evaporation and other system losses. Colorado’s Upper Colorado River CommissionerBecky Mitchell submitted similar, very detailed comments that emphasized the Colorado River Compact’s equitable division of the river between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin. She points out that the Lower Basin’s interpretation of the minimum-delivery/non-depletion clause contradicts and even negates that division.
📖 Reading (and watching) Room 🧐
Must read: Teal Lehto’s and Len Necefer’s speculative fiction take on what might happen on the Colorado River, and to the people who rely on it, in 2030 if current climatic trends continue. It’s dramatic and sensational and catastrophic, but it’s also very well informed, smart, and not at all far-fetched, in my humble opinion.
A screenshot from a new Central Arizona Project video, which says if water deliveries to the canal system are cut too much it will “cripple our state, flatten our economy and weaken our national defense.” Provided by Central Arizona Project
Click the link to read the article the Tucson.com website (Tony Davis). Here’s an excerpt:
March 9, 2026
Arizona will take nearly a $3 trillion total economic hit and lose millions of jobs that would have come to the state by 2060 if Central Arizona Project deliveries are halted by the federal government, a new report from the project’s governing agency says. A CAP consultant’s report said the state’s total economic output would by 2060 be 11% to 14% lower than it otherwise would have been, under two proposed federal alternatives for managing the Colorado River. At worst, the state’s total jobs would shrink by 7.9% if the project’s supplies were eliminated, the report said. In addition, the state would see substantial declines in population and housing growth by then with massive CAP cuts, compared to what would have happened without them, said the report.
The three-county agency that runs the CAP’s canal system, stretching from Lake Havasu on the Colorado River to just south of Tucson, commissioned this report from the consulting firm WestWater Research, based in Boise, Idaho. The agency, known as the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, has managed daily operations for CAP since it was under construction in the 1970s. CAP submitted this report as part of its comments sharply criticizing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s draft environmental impact statement on proposed alternatives aimed at curbing excessive water use by cities and farms in the seven-state Colorado River Basin. It comes out shortly after project officials released a video warning that such cuts would “flatten” Arizona’s economy. At the time the video came out, some outside water experts said it oversimplified and overestimated the impacts of CAP cuts, in part because the state and local governments have already stored huge amounts of CAP water underground to prepare for such emergencies. But the new report says those supplies will eventually be exhausted, forcing many cities to return to groundwater pumping, and that some shortages of groundwater supplies themselves also could begin in some regions as soon as the early 2030s.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
A chart from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center shows projected water supplies for the Colorado River basin compared to normal in 2026. (Provided by Colorado Basin River Forecast Center)
“Right now the hydrology that we have in front of us puts us in a very, very precarious situation,” said Gene Shawcroft, Utah’s Colorado River negotiator. Utah just wrapped up its warmest winter on record. Salt Lake City broke its previous maximum average winter temperature by 2 degrees Fahrenheit — a significant increase, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. While the state received similar precipitation compared to last year, much of that fell as rain, leading to the worst snowpack since 1981 in parts of the state. Now, the water supply outlook is “well below normal,” according to the center. The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest most probable forecast for Lake Powell shows it sinking below “power pool” — 3,490 feet — by December. At that level, water can’t make it through the turbines at Glen Canyon Dam that generate hydropower and keep the lights on across Utah and six other states. Powell could hit that dangerous low even sooner, though. The bureau’s most recent forecast was based on the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s February report. Since then, the center’s projection for water flows into Powell has dropped by 100,000 acre-feet. The bureau’s most probable forecast can also be optimistic. The agency’s minimum probable forecast, which shows a dry scenario that would statistically happen only 10% of the time, sometimes aligns more with reality. Last year, the April 2025 minimum probable study forecasted Lake Powell to hit 3,535 feet in elevation by the end of February 2026. The lake currently sits at 3,530 feet. The bureau’s latest minimum probable forecast shows the lake dropping below 3,490 by the end of August.
“It’s safe for us to assume that, unless Mother Nature is uncharacteristically generous, that Lake Powell elevations are going to fluctuate at elevations that we’re not comfortable with,” Wayne Pullan, Upper Colorado regional director for the bureau, said at a Glen Canyon Dam meeting last week…
To prop up Powell, the bureau will likely rely on another popular Utah reservoir: Flaming Gorge. The reservoir that straddles the border of Utah and Wyoming has the best water outlook in the basin, at 64% of normal, according to the forecast center. The Upper Green River, which flows into Flaming Gorge, is the “lone bright spot” for snow water equivalent — the amount of water snow holds…Under a 2019 plan, the bureau may form an agreement with Utah and the other states in the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming — to release water from Flaming Gorge and a few other reservoirs, such as Blue Mesa in Colorado, to maintain hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. That’s what happened the last time forecasts showed Powell dropping to a dangerous low level in 2022. A record wet winter followed that dry year, though, boosting the reservoirs.
Lake Mead and the big “bathtub ring” as seen from next to Hoover Dam. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Scott Franz):
March 6, 2026
The sluggish Colorado River negotiations have entered a new phase: Long and fiery letter writing.
Politicians, water negotiators and environmental groups recently submitted hundreds of pages of comments on the Interior Department’s playbook for how to manage the waterway. There are currently five possible options to deal with the river in the absence of a deal between the seven states in the basin.
The alternatives were published in January and could result in a variety of scenarios, ranging from significant water reductions in lower basin states to creating new incentives for states to conserve water.
And after the states missed two deadlines for reaching an agreement themselves on how to share and conserve the water, it’s becoming increasingly likely the federal government will piece together its own plan before the current guidelines expire in August.
Public comment on the Interior Department’s menu of alternatives ended Monday. And leaders from both the upper and lower basins are blasting them.
The state is generally calling for a plan that forces states in the lower basin to cut back more of their water use in the face of drought.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
“The Colorado River has changed dramatically over the last two decades, and our operating rules need to change with it,” Colorado River Commissioner Becky Mitchell said 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.”
Mitchell said the river is nearing a crisis point. She wrote that under current operating guidelines for the two reservoirs, which have been in place since 2007, Interior has been releasing water to the lower basin “based on demand, largely ignoring worsening hydrology and dropping reservoir levels.”
Downriver in Arizona, leaders are also blasting the Interior’s list of proposals, saying they would result in disproportional and severe water cuts to the lower basin states.
“Arizona’s agriculture, semiconductor and advanced manufacturing, aerospace and defense industries rely on the Colorado River,” the delegation wrote. “Reductions of the magnitude contemplated in the (feds playbook) would reverberate across rural communities and throughout the domestic food supply chain.”
The lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada are calling for mandatory water cuts in the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah.
Leaders in those states have countered that they already enact water conservation measures during times of drought.
A coalition of conservation groups, including The Nature Conservancy and Trout Unlimited, also weighed in on Interior’s draft proposals. They wrote that stabilizing the Colorado River in the face of drought “depends on early, proactive management; flexible and coordinated use of storage; meaningful Tribal participation; and integration of ecological integrity and mitigation into operational considerations.”
“Frameworks that delay action, rely on rigid rules, or institutionalize emergency operations consistently perform worse under the hydrologic conditions the Basin is most likely to face.
The Interior Department plans to review the public comments and identify which option it prefers to manage the reservoirs sometime this spring.
Environmental groups have warned negotiators in the seven states against taking their fight to court, saying that path could hold up conservation plans that are needed to protect places like the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon.
General Manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District Andy Mueller speaks at the district’s annual seminar in 2018. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
The general manager of the Colorado River District says that despite blown deadlines, a deal between states is still possible and needed to deal with the crisis regarding the river’s management. But Andy Mueller says time is running short to do so with an existing agreement due to expire later this year and drought and Lower Basin overuse of the river putting water levels in Lake Powell at perilously low levels.
“The best alternative from our perspective is still to have the seven states find an agreement that provides certainty. It’s really hard to do that in the middle of a really terrible drought. It’s a multi-decadal drought,” Mueller said…
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Mueller said everyone has been good at pushing off the crises in the Colorado River. But the buffer at Powell and Mead in terms of stored water has disappeared due to the Lower Basin’s overuse and failure to account for system loss, and a changing river hydrology coming amidst warming temperatures, and as a result “we don’t have that buffer anymore, so it truly is hitting a crisis,” he said. The river has been beset by long-term drought for much of this century, reflecting what some refer to as aridification resulting from a warming climate…While Mueller remains hopeful that the states will continue to talk and keep the federal government from having to act on its own, the government needs to be prepared to move forward, he said. He said the next-worst alternative it is analyzing, which is called the basic coordination alternative but he considers to be the federal authorities’ alternative, imposes cuts first on Arizona, and specifically its Central Arizona Project as a junior water right in the Lower Basin. Mueller said that alternative also says the goal will be to deliver at least 7.5 million acre feet a year from Powell. He said that under most reasonably foreseeable hydrologies, that will put Powell’s infrastructure at risk. The water level would be in danger of falling below the intake tubes used to make power, which would leave the dam’s bypass tubes as the only way of getting water out of Powell and down into Grand Canyon. Those tubes have proven structurally problematic, subject to what is known as cavitation when a lot of water is moving through them, which has resulted in damage to them. Mueller said Reclamation has done a lot of work to try to repair them but no one he has talked to wants to rely on those tubes to get water below the dam..,Mueller said the federal alternative says that, to keep levels in Powell high enough to keep producing power and delivering water to the Lower Basin, it might have to take unspecified actions in the Upper Basin.
“Everybody in the Upper Basin, everybody in western Colorado should be very concerned about that statement because the question is, what do they mean by that?” he said.
He said that if the environmental impact statement is going to refer to contemplated actions, by law it needs to identify them and analyze their environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Because it doesn’t, the entire EIS process is legally flawed when it comes to the alternative most likely to be adopted by the federal government, and if it goes that route it could get sued not just by Arizona, which is facing the biggest cuts, but by the Upper Basin, Mueller said. He said the unspecified actions probably would start with massive releases of water from primarily Flaming Gorge Reservoir but also Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
March 7, 2026
Key Points
A warm, dry winter has resulted in a disappointing snowpack across the intermountain West, affecting the Colorado River’s water supply.
Projected inflow to Lake Powell is at a near-historic low, complicating efforts to manage water shortages among states.
Arizona’s local water supplies, on the Salt and Verde rivers, are in better condition than last year, though still below average.
The federal government’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s March report noted much of the drainage, especially in the mountains of Colorado and Utah, had experienced their worst snowpack since at least 1981. When meteorological winter ended on March 1, both Phoenix and Salt Lake City had broken records for maximum mean winter temperatures by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The warmth that pervaded the West had melted much of the existing snowpack or caused it to fall as rain instead, encouraging evaporation and plant uptake and reducing the amount that will reach reservoirs this spring and summer.
“It’s not a pretty picture here,” forecast center hydrologist Cody Moser said while reviewing a color-coded watershed map emblazoned with red to indicate vast areas projected to deliver relatively little runoff.
The result, as of early March, was a projected Colorado River inflow to the critical storage pool in Lake Powell of just 2.3 million acre-feet, or 36% of the 1991-2020 average. If that projection holds up, it would be the lowest April-July boost for Lake Powell since the disastrous year of 2002 firmly entrenched this age of megadrought...This profound snow drought comes at an especially awkward time, compounding a quarter-century of regional aridification that has drained the nation’s two largest reservoirs to precarious depths. Lake Powell started March at just 24% of capacity, with much of that water functionally unavailable to flow downstream to Lake Mead and the Southwest because it’s below Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower and bypass intakes. Lake Mead began the month at 34% of capacity. Both began this century essentially full. The lack of storage complicates the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s efforts to adopt new dam-operating and shortage-sharing guidelines without triggering a lawsuit from states and water users. Unless they do that by October, the current rules imposing cutbacks on Arizona and others will lapse, potentially worsening the shortage. Yet Arizona has panned the options that the agency initially studied because, officials say, they unfairly target the state for bigger losses while not enforcing the Colorado River Compact’s call for upstream states to let a minimum amount of water pass through.
Coyote Gulch’s Leaf in Byers Canyon, cut by the Colorado River, on the way to Steamboat Springs August 21, 2017.
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.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
With little progress in the Colorado River negotiations, some water experts are looking to a conservation program — featuring pools of invisible water and some accounting magic — as a possible path forward.
The seven Colorado River states, including Colorado, remain deeply divided over how to manage the nation’s largest reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, after the current management rules expire this fall. But other water users have put forward several innovative ideas for how to manage the water supply for 40 million people after 2026 as the basin’s two-decade drought continues.
One idea, known as a conservation pool, is generating a lot of conversation. Some water experts say it’s the wave of the future. A path toward, finally, some agreement among basin states.
Others say it’s a flawed concept that could hurt economies, especially in rural, agricultural areas.
“They hold great promise. They do incentivize conservation. They do create tremendous operational flexibility,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. “I think people want to see them go forward. They just also know that there’s some things that need to be fixed.”
Under a conservation pool program, water users in Colorado River states would cut back on water use, track the saved water, store it in Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border and/or Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border, and use it to help create a more secure water supply in the river basin.
Colorado River officials are worried about the state of the basin. The river’s average flow has declined, and scientists have attributed 10 trillion gallons in water loss to higher temperatures and climate change. Lakes Mead and Powell, which together make up about 92% of the reservoir storage capacity for the entire basin, are each around one-third full.
A pool of conserved water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell could help maintain higher water levels in the reservoirs and defer drastic cuts, Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, said during an early February meeting.
It could help bring the two subbasins — the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin — closer together in their negotiations, he said.
“In our view, it offers really the only path forward that we can see that addresses the core challenge of risk each basin is facing, and provides a shared tool to manage uncertainty … in the years ahead,” Lewis said.
So how would it work?
There are lingering questions around who can participate in such a program, who would control the pool, how (and whether) people would be paid to conserve, and how the water would be used.
In Colorado, the conservation pool idea would likely start with a water user, say, for example, a farmer who grows hay near Kremmling on the Western Slope.
Colorado River water users, like farmers and ranchers, have legal rights to use water for specific purposes, at certain times and from certain places. The legal water-sharing system, called prior appropriation, gives older, more senior, rights priority. In dry years, these senior rights get water first, while more recent, or junior, rights holders might get cut off earlier than usual.
This system, however, doesn’t incentivize conservation, Sorensen said. But conservation pools would change that.
The Kremmling farmer might normally divert 5 acre-feet of water each summer, sending it through rotating sprinklers to saturate soils and grow crops.
One acre-foot is enough to cover an acre of cropland a foot deep, or roughly the annual water use of two to three urban households.
Colorado River Basin. Credit: USGS
When that farmer joins a conservation program, he or she might decide to cut their use down to 3 acre-feet one summer by not growing crops on certain fields.
The difference, 2 acre-feet, would be “conserved” water, but where does it go? Under the current water-sharing system, it would simply flow downstream, and any downstream farmer could use it on their fields.
This was one of the inherent problems in the Upper Basin’s recent pilot conservation program. In 2023, Colorado farmers and ranchers received almost $1 million to cut their use by about 2,000 acre-feet. In 2024, the estimated cuts totaled about 14,200 acre-feet and the cost was about $7 million.
Under a conservation pool program, Colorado farmers could rest assured that their conserved water would actually end up in Lake Powell.
The problem is that Upper Basin states don’t actually have ways to track that water — yet.
To reach Lake Powell, Colorado and its sister states would need to be able to shepherd conserved water past headgate after headgate, through different water districts and divisions — each with their own systems for managing water — and across state lines before it would reach Lake Powell.
“There are challenges for sure,” said John Berggren, regional policy manager for the healthy rivers department at Western Resource Advocates. “But you can overcome those challenges, and there’s a broader need to, which is to actually stay out of the courts and have an agreement.”
Once water reaches Powell, different groups want it to be used for different purposes. The Colorado River District, for example, says they will only support the idea if the water protects Upper Basin states from forced water cuts that could happen under water law if the basin’s supply falls to extreme lows.
“We do think a conservation program in the Upper Basin could be part of the solution and part of our future, but these programs should be designed and implemented in a thoughtful manner that minimizes and mitigates negative impacts,” said Raquel Flinker, the district’s director of interstate and regional water resources.
Berggren and other environmental groups are pushing for conservation pool water to be used to help Colorado River ecosystems in the Grand Canyon. The dam impacts sediment flow and water temperatures downstream from Lake Powell, which helps non-native fish species thrive and outcompete native fish.
The Bureau of Reclamation could take to their computers and “move” conserved water between Lake Mead and Lake Powell in the accounting books to make more of those releases, he said.
The art of invisible water
Many of the conservation pool ideas aim to keep the water “invisible” when the Bureau of Reclamation decides how much water to release from each massive reservoir.
The conserved water would physically be in a reservoir to keep the water levels from falling too low. At certain elevations, the dams can’t generate electricity or release water for millions of people across the West.
But when Reclamation officials look at the water accounting records, they would ignore the conserved water when calculating how much water to release and what kind of water shortages the basin states could face in dry years.
This approach would address one of the critical flaws in a similar program that has been happening in the Lower Basin since 2007, experts said.
That Intentionally Created Surplus program allows water users in Arizona, California and Nevada to cut their use and keep the water in Lake Mead to be used at a later date. In some cases, they can even divert water from other watersheds and import it into the reservoir, Sorensen said.
One of the biggest flaws of the Lower Basin program was that it artificially kept the physical water levels at Lake Mead higher than they would have otherwise been. Water levels have dictated Lower Basin shortages for the past 20 years, and the higher levels insulated the states from deeper water cutbacks, which delayed steps to adapt to the overstressed water supply in the basin.
The new conservation pools would try to correct this and expand the effort. Upper Basin, Lower Basin and tribal water users could also conserve water and use that water to help flows in rivers, protect infrastructure, and many other uses, Berggren said.
“That’s new. We didn’t have that ability before. That’s why it’s innovative,” he said.
The wave of the future?
The Department of the Interior in January laid out five options for managing the river. Three included some form of a conservation pool.
“Conservation pools are the way of the future for the Colorado River Basin,” Berggren said. “They allow for so much more flexibility in managing our reservoirs, managing our water. You’re able to respond to changing conditions quicker.”
Not everyone agrees. The Colorado River District said conserving up to 500,000 acre-feet of water in Colorado and other Upper Basin states, which is proposed in the federal options, would shrink agricultural land use and require water cuts in cities and towns.
“Conservation at this scale would have significant and potentially permanent adverse consequences, including economic impacts to communities,” Flinker of the Colorado River District said.
But — and this is a big caveat — the conservation pool concept cannot move forward without support from all of the basin states.
To set up a conservation pool program, states would need to launch new water-tracking systems. Someone would have to compensate the people conserving water. The way federal officials track, store and release water in the immense reservoirs would change.
And under its current legal authority, the federal government cannot move forward with conservation pools without risking expensive lawsuits that would tie up water management for years. But with a seven-state agreement, the feds could take action.
Arizona and Colorado, which often find themselves on opposite sides of Colorado River discussions, are open to the conservation pool idea.
The concept has merit, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water negotiator, said during an Arizona Reconsultation Committee meeting Feb. 2.
It is “something we should continue to pursue because I do believe that just formulaic attempts to deal with how you split up the water have been failing us so far,” he said.
Colorado and its sister states in the Upper Basin — New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have been consistently willing to do a conservation program that involves saving water in a pool within Lake Powell and potentially other upstream reservoirs, Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top negotiator said.
“The particulars of the program and potential pool would depend upon the operational framework and/or other components of a seven-state consensus,” she said.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Mineral & Land Records System seems like a strange place to get trolled. But I think it just happened. I was looking through the MLRS to try to get an idea of whether insanely high gold and silver prices, and relatively strong uranium prices, had inspired companies or speculators to stake new mining claims n southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, when I came across something that seemed almost satirical.
Late last year, Kimmerle Mining Company staked four 20.66-acre lode claims in Garfield County, Utah, on the east slope of the Henry Mountains (just east of Mt. Pennell). The claim’s names? Trump I, Trump 2, Trump 3, and Trump 4.
The Kimmerle family, of Moab, control hundreds of mining claims across southeastern Utah. But they generally don’t mine them, except, it seems, to make a point.
The Kimmerles are the ones who staked mining claims on a mesa just east of Hideout Canyon inside Bears Ears National Monument just months just before the Obama administration withdrew the area from new mining claims. After Trump shrunk the monument to exclude the White Canyon area in 2017, and just before Biden restored the boundaries in 2021, Kimmerle Mining staked five new claims in the area and acquired additional claims from another mining company. Kimmerle Mining promptly filed for a permit to do exploration work there, but the BLM said they had to demonstrate the claims “validity,” or show that they contained “valuable minerals.” The process for doing so would cost up to $100,000.
Shortly thereafter, Kimmerle joined the state of Utah’s lawsuit seeking to eviscerate the national monument, claiming that its establishment had caused him to lose out on mining profits.
No word on whether the firm plans on drilling or mining its Trump claims, but at least we know these folks’ political leaning.
There have been a handful of other notable mining claim locations in the area in the past six months, including:
Platoro West Inc., located in Durango, staked twelve 20.66-acre lode claims southeast of Ouray, Colorado, in the Bear Creek drainage near Darley and Engineer Mountains. The company is registered under the name of William Sheriff, who was recently named executive chairman of Verdera Energy, which has interests in in-situ uranium mining in New Mexico.
CCKC Inc., of Philadelphia, located three 20-acre placer claims in Dolores County along the Dolores River upstream of Rico.
Roughead Resources of Moab (but which has also been associated with a Houston address) staked fifteen 20.66-acre lode claims in the Lisbon Valley of southeastern Utah near the Mi Vida Mine and the Lisbon Valley Copper Mine. At the same time, the company also staked dozens of claims in Beaver County, Utah.
Fermi Metals of Cocolalla, Idaho, staked twenty-three 20.66-acre claims on the southern slope of the La Sal Mountains, just north of the settlement of La Sal. This is near Energy Fuels’ La Sal Complex uranium mines.
Geobrines International, of Littleton, Colorado, staked twenty-five 20-acre placer claims in Grand County, Utah, along I-70 between Green River and Cisco. This adds to a cluster of previously filed claims in the same area. They are probably looking to do lithium extraction.
Utah Brine Corporation, of Omaha, Nebraska, staked seventy 20-acre claims southwest of the community of La Sal in the Lisbon Valley. UBC appears to be a subsidiary of Omaha Value Inc., which has partnered with an Australian critical materials firm Neometals on its Utah Brine Project, which aims to extract lithium and potash.
Antimony Canyon Sovereign Reserve Inc, a division of Australia firm American Tungsten & Antimony, staked nineteen 20.66-acre lode claims near Antimony, Utah, in Garfield County. The plan is to develop an antimony mine here.
In other mining news:
Metallic Minerals has been eyeing and drilling into a copper deposit in the La Plata Mountains of southwestern Colorado. While actual mining may be a long ways off, concerned locals are already coming together to keep an eye on the project and push back, if necessary. The La Plata Mountains and Public Lands Coalition now has about 225 members from the region, according to Dan King, the coalition’s administrator. Metallic Minerals’ proposal was just one of the catalysts for the coalition, and its mission is much broader and more regional in scope.
Gold and silver prices have shot up tremendously over the last year, probably due to the Trump-effect on the economy and the U.S. dollar, which is stuck at a ridiculously low exchange rate. Gold is now around $5,000/oz, while silver is hovering around $100/oz., compared to just $30 when Trump took office. Uranium’s doing well, too, sitting consistently in the $80/lb to $90/lb range.
Which is to say, mining companies suddenly have a lot more incentive to invest in reopening existing, idle mines or even building new ones (assuming they have faith that the high prices will endure). So far, however, it doesn’t seem to have sparked a surge in new mining activity. Even the Revenue-Virginius silver mine near Ouray, which is purportedly ready to produce ore, remains idle.
The uranium sector does appear to be emerging from its long slumber, but mostly in the form of exploratory drilling, smaller companies selling claims to bigger ones, and staking mining claims on the increasingly sparse sections of public land that aren’t already claimed. Anfield continues work on constructing its Velvet-Wood mine in the Lisbon Valley, but it’s still a ways away from production (and its Shootaring mill is still mothballed and unlicensed).
Energy Fuels is about the only firm actually producing conventional ore. According to their SEC filings, they pulled about 1.5 million pounds of uranium from the Pinyon Plain mine near the Grand Canyon and 155,000 pounds from their La Sal Complex in 2025. Their White Mesa Mill recovered 1 million pounds of uranium, which is a heck of a lot more than in the past, but still is far short of the facility’s 8-million-pound annual capacity. Despite all of this, the company still lost $86 million in 2025.
Meanwhile, the silver and gold mining corporations raked in massive profits, including:
Canadian corporation Barrick, which owns major gold mines in Nevada (Fourmile and Nevada Gold Mines) reported an attributable EBITDA of $8.16 billion last year, the “highest shareholder returns” in the company’s history.
Newmont (which jointly owns Nevada Gold Mines with Barrick) reported an adjusted EBITDA of $13.5 billion.
Kinross, owner of Bald Mountain and Round Mountain in Nevada, Fort Knox and Manh Choh in Alaska, and Kettle River-Curew Project in Washington, reported adjusted net earnings of $2.2 billion
Rio Tinto’s “profit after tax attributable to owners of Rio Tinto (net earnings)” $10 billion.
SSR Mining, which owns a big mine in Nevada, only had a net income of $362 million; but that compares to 2024’s loss of $350 million.
Speaking of commodity prices and profits: American oil and gas companies are poised to make out like bandits thanks to the Trump-Netanyahu war on Iran.
Iran produces some oil and gas. But more importantly, it borders the Strait of Hormuz and has threatened any oil and gas tankers that try to pass through it, effectively closing the passage. That could stanch the flow of oil and gas to the global market, causing prices to rise. The West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude oil price has shot up to about $76, the highest it’s been since before Trump took office. This will cause gasoline prices to climb, but also make drilling in the U.S. more profitable, and could spur companies to start using the stockpile of public land drilling permits they’ve amassed over the last year or so.
Liquefied natural gas tankers also are unable to get through the Strait to European markets, which will cause prices of the fuel to skyrocket. It could also force European countries to turn to U.S. LNG exporters, which could echo back to natural gas producing states like New Mexico and Wyoming (and also may increase U.S. natural gas prices if the conflict drags on).
Glen Canyon Dam Must Be Modified to Avoid Draconian Water Supply Disruptions
A guest post by Ron Rudolph
Glen Canyon Dam with the river outlets in use as part of the high-flow experimental release. The outlets are only used occasionally and are not engineered for sustained use. Usually, all of the releases go through the penstocks and the hydroelectric turbines. But that won’t be possible if the lake drops below the level known as minimum power pool. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Glen Canyon Dam, which impounds the Colorado River to form Lake Powell, is a single point of failure that poses an unacceptable risk to the functioning of the entire river system. Modifying the dam to allow more water to pass through or around it is an essential component of any plan for allocating the river’s dwindling supply.
The dam’s structural flaw limits the amount of water that can pass from Lake Powell downstream to Lake Mead. Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is the primary repository of water for the Colorado River’s so-called Lower Basin states: California, Arizona, and Nevada. A paucity of water released from Lake Powell would eventually force reductions in the amount of water extracted from Lake Mead, diminish drinking water supplies for millions, harm agricultural productivity throughout the southwest, and embroil the federal government, seven states, more than two dozen Tribal Nations, Mexico, and others that share the river’s water in a cascade of costly court cases.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
Due to Glen Canyon Dam’s physical limitations, when the elevation of Lake Powell reaches “minimum power pool” or lower, the only way to release water from the dam is through its river outlet works.1 The persistent drought in the southwest, and continued demand for the river’s reduced water supply, makes it highly likely Lake Powell will fall to minimum power pool this year. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimated this month that Lake Powell could fall to minimum power pool by late July, and remain there or lower through 2027.2
The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast for the Colorado River predicts Lake Powell will “most probably” drop below the critical minimum power pool level before the end of this year, jeopardizing Glen Canyon Dam’s structural integrity. In the worst-case scenario, it would do so before summer’s end. This could force the feds to operate the dam as a “run-of-the-river” operation to preserve the dam’s infrastructure and hydropower output, which would significantly diminish downstream flows and threaten Lower Basin water supplies.
In addition, the agency’s February forecast estimates that under “most probable inflow” conditions, Lake Mead would drop below elevation 1,040 in June. If conditions do not improve by the agency’s August forecast, mandatory reductions in water use would be required in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Mexico.3 If the annual amount of water let out from Lake Powell is restricted to the dam’s outlet works, it would result in less water reaching Lake Mead than any year this century, and could trigger even larger reductions in Lower Basin water consumption.4 Releasing water from reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell could forestall the reservoir reaching minimum power pool, however, that is a non-sustainable solution, that fails to address Glen Canyon Dam’s fundamental plumbing problem.
In January, the Bureau of Reclamation’s draft environmental impact statement — Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead —proposed several options for managing the Colorado River for the next 20 years. None of the alternatives includes remedying Glen Canyon Dam’s structural flaws.
The Bureau’s proposals have been criticized by some of the largest consumers of Colorado River water who have signaled a willingness to challenge the agency in court. For example, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves nearly 19 million people, noted the Bureau’s proposed alternatives “would likely lead to lengthy litigation.”5 The Central Arizona Project, the second largest consumer of Colorado River water, has identified several “legal deficiencies,” including non-compliance with the Colorado River Compact, and failure to adequately disclose and analyze the environmental, economic and socioeconomic impacts.6
Depending exclusively on the river outlet works to release sufficient water through Glen Canyon Dam is bound to fail, like relying on rainfall to grow crops in Arizona or southern California. The Bureau has warned relying on the outlet works would risk water supply disruptions to those who depend on Lake Powell and Lake Mead.7 The Director of the Bureau’s Technical Service Center has advised against using the outlet works as the sole means for releasing water from the dam,8 as previous high-capacity use of them for only 72 hours caused structural damage, which required nine months to repair. Despite the remedial effort, the Bureau concluded the repairs will not prevent future damage.9 The dam’s design flaw led the Arizona Department of Water Resources to conclude the structural limitations of Glen Canyon Dam must be alleviated.10
The calculus for equitably apportioning the diminishing water in the Colorado River is extremely complicated. But one variable in the equation is as obvious as the bathtub ring surrounding Lake Powell: a new system for conveying water sustainably through or around Glen Canyon Dam must be built. Without it, risks to the Colorado River system, and the communities, agriculture and ecosystems reliant on it, will escalate, as will pressure to impose compulsory reductions in consumptive uses throughout the basin.
Ron Rudolph, a former assistant executive director of Friends of the Earth, spent 35 years in various engineering companies, including MWH Global, CH2M Hill, Jacobs Engineering, and Cardno with a career focused on infrastructure development and environmental remediation.
1 U.S.Bureau of Reclamation, Technical Decision Memorandum, Establishment of Interim Operating Guidance for Glen Canyon Dam During Low Reservoir Levels at Lake Powell, March 26, 2024, page 9
3 When Lake Mead drops below elevation 1,040, a “Level 2 Shortage Condition,” mandatory reductions in water use by Arizona, California, Nevada, and Mexico are required by the 2007 Interim Guidelines for managing Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and the 2019 Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan
4 The Bureau’s guidance for maximum release of water from each river outlet work (ROW) at minimum power pool elevation is 3,185 cubic feet/second (cfs). The agency has determined only three ROWs would be available simultaneously. If three ROWs operate at full capacity, they would release 9,555 cfs. 1 cfs sustained for a year = 724.acre-feet/year. 9,555 x 724.45 = 6,922,000 acre-feet/year. The maximum releases are specified in USBR, Technical Decision Memorandum, Establishment of Interim Operating Guidance for Glen Canyon Dam During Low Reservoir Levels at Lake Powell, March 26, 2024, page 2. The determination that only three ROWs would be available simultaneously in based on USBR, Near-term Colorado River Operations, Final Supplemental Impact Statement, March 2024, page 2-3. The least amount of water released this century was 7 million acre-feet in 2022, based on data from U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado River Accounting and Water Use Report: Arizona, California and Nevada, 2000-2024
5 Statement of Metropolitan Water District’s General Manager, Shivaji Deshmukh, January 9, 2026
6 Patrick Dent, Assistant General Manager, Water Policy, Central Arizona Project, Report on Post-2026 Draft Environmental Impact Statement, February 5, 2026
7 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Near-term Colorado River Operations, Final Supplemental Impact Statement, March 2024, page 1-9, footnote 10
8 USBR, Technical Decision Memorandum, Establishment of Interim Operating Guidance for Glen Canyon Dam During Low Reservoir Levels at Lake Powell, March 26, 2024, page 9
Central Arizona Project map via Mountain Town News
Click the link to go to the Central Arizona Project website Colorado River Operations where you can find links to the relevant documents with respect to the DEIS.
On behalf of the Central Arizona Project and twenty-two Arizona Participating Entities that rely on the Colorado River, I am submitting the attached comments that express our deep concerns regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead and the devastating impacts the alternatives therein would impose on Arizona.
All the alternatives proposed in the DEIS disproportionately harm Arizona and are unacceptable. Specifically, the Basic Coordination alternative proposed in the DEIS that Reclamation claims could be imposed without Arizona’s consent all but severs much of Central and Southern Arizona from Colorado River supplies that have been relied upon on for four decades, betraying the promise of sustainable water supplies that underly Arizona’s economy and potentially causing “widespread impacts on social and economic conditions. . . .”that may forcecities and townsto“haul water . . . as an alternative to support continued services.”1 Arizona will not tolerate devastation and destabilization, particularly when the DEIS allows other Basin States to increase their water use.
The waters of the Colorado River are foundational to the economy and people of Central and Southern Arizona, supporting 6 million Arizonans, many tribal communities, a thriving advanced microchip manufacturing industry, and critical mineral and agricultural production. Arizona has cultivated a flourishing desert society over the past 40 years through careful and prudent use of Colorado River water supplied by the Central Arizona Project—more than doubling the State’s population while managing at the same time to use less water. The DEIS alternatives threaten to tear apart a generation of careful water management and topple the architecture supporting Arizona’s economy which is home to the heart of the American semi-conductor manufacturing and AI infrastructure industries.
The DEIS alternatives are not just a failure of policy but also include fatal legal deficiencies, and we respectfully request that the Department of the Interior withdraw the document. The United States must implement a decision that is consistent with the Colorado River Compact of 1922 (Compact), the Law of the River, and wise water policy—the DEIS fails on all counts. The enclosed comments highlight several critical flaws in the DEIS, including but not limited to:
Inconsistency with the Compact and the Law of the River: Absent agreement by the Basin States, the operating criteria for the Colorado River must comply with the foundational authority on the Colorado River: the Compact. All subsequent statutes, regulations, contracts, and other agreements are subject to compliance with the Compact and the DEIS ignores this foundational issue by proposing alternatives that would result in a breach thereof.
Failure to Analyze Upper Basin Delivery Obligations: The DEIS fails to consider or model the impacts of Upper Basin delivery obligations due to a Compact deficiency, including required releases from Colorado River Storage Project Act Upper Initial Units and curtailment in the Upper Basin necessary to prevent a breach of the Compact. This analysis is particularly important at this time, as a breach of the Upper Basin’s Compact delivery obligations could occur within the next 12 months.
Failure to Analyze the Devastating Socioeconomic Impacts to Arizona: The DEIS fails to analyze the widespread destabilizing social and economic impacts on Arizona that would be caused by the deep cuts to Arizona’s Colorado River supplies proposed in the document and could cause Arizona’s economy to lose over $2.7 trillion.
Failure to Evaluate Reasonable Alternatives: The range of alternatives is too narrow and neglects to evaluate the reasonable and feasible Lower Basin Alternative which would equitably share cuts needed to stabilize the Colorado River System among all seven Basin States and Mexico.
Illegal Implementation of the so-called “Junior Priority” on the Central Arizona Project: Arizona never agreed and the law does not make the Central Arizona Project a junior user to the Upper Basin. The DEIS fails by proposing deep cuts to Arizona’s water supplies without Compact compliance or required reductions to the Upper Basin. Further, the “junior priority” described in the Colorado River Basin Project Act and used to distribute the DEIS cuts to the Lower Basin is a facially unconstitutional imposition on Arizona’s sovereignty and illegally attempts to make Arizona a second-class citizen among the other Lower Basin States.
For these reasons and others described in the attached comments, the current DEIS does not provide the “hard look” at environmental consequences required by law. Proceeding with this document is highly likely to lead to legal challenges and long-term environmental damage that has not been analyzed.
We welcome the opportunity to work with the Department of the Interior to ensure the revised DEIS is robust and legally durable. Arizona has been a willing partner in attempting to negotiate a consensus solution to the management challenges facing Colorado River operations and continues to stand ready to find a compromise with the Secretary, the other Basin States, and additional Colorado River stakeholders based on shared sacrifice and a recognition that everyone must reduce their uses to stabilize the system. A revised DEIS is essential to comply with NEPA and properly inform the public and decision-makers and to avoid protracted litigation.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Interior Department overhauls its environmental review procedures.
GAO says NOAA, which has oversight authority, should do a better job of tracking cloud seeding and other weather modification.
Senate passes a bill to allow southern Nevada’s water authority to build a water-supply pipeline beneath a national conservation area.
EPA staff decreased 7 percent in the nine months through June 2025, GAO found.
Army Corps directive aims to speed up infrastructure work, prioritize projects.
House Democrats from the D.C. region ask Congress to fund the repair of a major sewer pipe break.
And lastly, Bureau of Reclamation officials outline options for propping up a shrinking Lake Powell.
“I think it’s safe for us to assume that unless Mother Nature is uncharacteristically generous, that Lake Powell elevations are going to fluctuate at elevations that we’re not comfortable with.” – Wayne Pullan, Bureau of Reclamation Upper Colorado regional director, speaking about the possibility that Lake Powell drops low enough later this year that Glen Canyon Dam cannot generate hydropower.
7 Percent: Decrease in EPA staff between September 2024 and June 2025, according to a Government Accountability Office audit.
10: States that have weather modification programs, typically cloud seeding to induce rainfall, according to a GAO report.
News Briefs
Interior NEPA Changes The Interior Department overhauled its environmental review procedures, aligning them with recent court decisions, congressional action, and Trump administration priorities.
The final rule sets page limits (150 pages in most cases, up to 300 for actions of “extraordinary complexity”) and time limits (generally two years) on environmental impact statements.
The new rules do not require public comment on draft environmental impact statements. The only mandatory opportunity for public comment is after the department issues a notice that it intends to prepare an EIS.
Reviews already in progress, those with “applications that are sufficiently advanced,” will be held to the previous standard.
Illustration from the report, “Antique Plumbing & Leadership Postponed” from the Utah Rivers Council, Glen Canyon Institute and the Great Basin Water Network. Courtesy of Utah Rivers Council
Lake Powell Options Officials at the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages Colorado River dams, outlined several actions they are considering in the coming months to boost water levels in a rapidly shrinking Lake Powell, which could drop to a record low later this year that would halt hydropower production from Glen Canyon Dam for the first time.
The Colorado River’s second-largest reservoir behind Lake Mead is entering one of the most difficult periods in its six-decade history. The basin is drying due to a warming climate. Powell is just a quarter full, and projected to drop lower this year. Winter has been a dud, with warm temperatures and a historically bad snowpack in the Colorado mountains that feed into the reservoir.
Reclamation officials discussed their options during a meeting last week of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group, an expert committee that advises on the dam’s ecological impacts.
A 2024 decision allows Reclamation to “consider all tools that are available” to keep Powell from dropping below 3,500 feet, an elevation that provides a little wiggle room for maintaining hydropower production. Powell today sits at 3,531 feet.
The tool from the 2024 decision is Section 6(E), which grants Reclamation the authority to restrict water releases from Powell to as low as 6 million acre-feet. The planned release this year is 7.48 million acre-feet, so the Section 6(E) authority represents a potential 20 percent reduction.
A cut of that magnitude might not be necessary because Reclamation has another tool it can use in tandem.
That option is releasing more water from Flaming Gorge and other smaller reservoirs located higher in the watershed. This is called a DROA release after its authorizing document. Pullan said this action, which states in the lower basin are advocating for, is being discussed and the volume of those releases would be determined in the spring, around April or May.
Southern Nevada Water Pipeline The Senate passed a bill that allows southern Nevada’s water provider to tunnel beneath Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area in order to build a pipeline to increase the water-supply system’s reliability. The bill now goes to the president’s desk.
Studies and Reports
‘Army Mode’ for the Army Corps Adam Telle, head of the Army Corps of Engineers, issued a collection of directives aimed at reducing paperwork and speeding up water infrastructure construction.
In one memo, Telle called for an “Army Mode” mobilization. He ordered a bottom-up approach whereby officials will select at least 20 projects nationally to prioritize. The list is due March 20.
A separate memo lists seven focus areas for infrastructure work. In descending order of importance: human life and safety, economically or strategically important infrastructure, efficient navigation and supply chains, human property, aquatic ecosystems, state-level infrastructure, and municipal infrastructure.
In yet another memo, he said that project investigations – part of the planning phase – should take no more than three years and $3 million.
Cost of Natural Hazards for the Defense Department The Defense Department lacks data to understand fully the costs of natural hazards to its installations, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The GAO made five recommendations, including resilience planning, data collection standards, guidance, and procedures. The Defense Department agreed with all of them.
Weather Modification The GAO also looked into NOAA’s tracking of activities to induce rainfall or otherwise change the weather.
Thanks to a 1972 law, NOAA has oversight authority over weather modification and any entity that shoots silver iodide into clouds to make it rain is required to file a report with the agency. Solar geoengineering, which attempts to reduce air temperatures, is far less common but also covered under this authority.
The GAO found that NOAA’s database is incomplete, inconsistent, and unreliable. One fifth of interim and final reports had at least one error, the GAO estimates.
“Consequently, NOAA is not fully aware of the extent of weather modification activities that have occurred and are occurring within the U.S., how they are being conducted, or potential effects,” the GAO concluded.
On the Radar
How to Sue the EPA The EPA is proposing to change the process for filing citizen lawsuits, moving from mail delivery to electronic submissions.
Public comments are due March 26. Submit them via http://www.regulations.gov using docket number EPA-HQ-OGC-2024-0557.
Water Infrastructure Funding In the wake of a large-diameter sewer line rupture along the Potomac River, House Democrats from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia wrote to leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee asking for funding for repairs.
The letter also asked for the Army Corps of Engineers to prioritize a study of a backup drinking water source for the capital region, which relies on the Potomac.
“Unlike other major metropolitan areas, the region lacks a secondary water supply, which would provide critical redundancy in the event of a future crisis.”
Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Last week, the Colorado River District submitted comments and specific recommendations to the Bureau of Reclamation on the recently released Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). In its comments, the River District calls for future operational decisions that reflect hydrologic realities, address Lower Basin overuse, and move the Colorado River System beyond constant crisis management.
“A core part of our mission is safeguarding, for all Coloradans, the waters of the Colorado River to which our state is entitled under the various laws, agreements and compacts that govern the river,” said Raquel Flinker, Director of Interstate and Regional Water Resources at the Colorado River District. “Our water users have adapted to the reality of variable hydrology. We are living with a river that has 20% less water and this trend is expected to continue. It is past time that our neighbors in the Lower Basin learn how to live within the means provided by the river.”
“What is very clear in these proposals is that we still have a basic math problem,” said Colorado River District General Manager Andy Mueller. “Every year, around 1.5 million acre feet of Colorado River water disappears due to evaporation and transit loss in the Lower Basin, yet this amount is unaccounted for in the Bureau’s water deliveries. If we want to move out of crisis response mode, every proposal must begin by reducing consumptive use in the Lower Basin by this amount every single year before discussing shortages. If we had fixed the math to align with the laws of nature twenty-five years ago, we would have almost 30-million-acre feet of storage still available in the system today.”
The River District’s letter includes 13 specific recommendations organized around several key themes. First, it calls for post-2026 operations that align demand with available supply and put hydrologic reality, not predictability for the Lower Basin, at the center of decision-making. The River District urges Reclamation to evaluate alternatives that perform under critically dry hydrology, provide a fair, transparent analysis of actions and impacts, and clearly disclose Upper Basin shortage risks in the main body of the analysis.
The letter also stresses that Lower Basin use must be reduced by roughly 1.5 million acre-feet at all times, defined as system losses rather than “shortage,” and that Upper Basin conservation assumptions and scale must be re-evaluated. In addition, the River District calls for clear, durable guidelines and definitions, including fully defining and analyzing “gap water” and “additional Upper Basin actions,” and for CRSP initial unit water to remain in Lake Powell. Finally, it raises Law of the River concerns, including that inter-basin transactions must not be allowed.
The River District’s full comment letter is available here:
Reclamation formally published the DEIS on January 16, 2026, opening a 45-day public comment period. The Bureau of Reclamation must consider public feedback when developing a preferred alternative for management of the system, and the basin states will continue their negotiations alongside this process with the hope of reaching a seven-state consensus. The current guidelines expire at the end of September 2026.
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I lived in Silverton, Colorado, elevation 9,318 feet, we often experienced a “January thaw.” It was a period of a few sunny, warm days between storms that usually fell in January but could also occur in February. If you could find a south-facing deck that was protected from the wind and free of dangling, skull-piercing icicles, you could sit out in shirtsleeves, soak up some vitamin D, and maybe even get a little bit of a suntan. Then winter, below zero temperatures, and super snowy San Juaners would return, finally and grudgingly departing sometime in late May.
A pretty big swath of the Southwest is about to experience a February thaw of its own, according to National Weather Service forecasts, including in these hot spots:
Phoenix’s mercury could climb into the low- to mid-90s this weekend [February 28 – March 1, 2026], with overnight lows in the 60s.
Durango, Colorado, is expecting to hit 66° F on Sunday (with lows staying above freezing).
It will be prime bike-riding weather in Moab, where the highs could climb into the low 70s.
And even Silverton will get up into the 50s, with the overnight lows dipping only a few degrees below freezing — bad news for the snow.
Denver is under a red flag warning for fire danger today, and will see temperatures in the high 60s.
During a “normal” winter, this wouldn’t be alarming in the slightest. In fact, it would be a welcome respite from winter. Now it threatens to wipe out any indication that it even is winter by potentially erasing the snowpack gained during last week’s storms. The Upper Colorado River Basin’s snowpack is exactly at the same level as it was on this date in 2002. Ohhh boy, if those March storms don’t arrive it’s going to be a long, dry summer.
As a deal between the seven Colorado states for how to divvy up massive consumption cuts seems less and less likely, Arizona is getting a bit more aggressive.This week the Protecting Arizona’s Lifeline Coalition launched a PR campaign, complete with videos, attempting to pressure the Upper Basin states to let more water flow downstream to its Lower Basin neighbors.
Arizona is understandably worried: The Central Arizona Project’s water rights are junior to most of the other large users in the Lower Basin, meaning they would be among the first to take cuts if there were a shortage. The window for a dramatic improvement in Upper Basin snowpack is rapidly closing, thereby increasing the likelihood of a shortage later this year.
The campaign includes a series of videos with various officials making their case. There are also a few educational ones that do a nice job of explaining the Colorado River Compact, and are really worth a watch. However, I should warn you that they are coming from a Lower Basin perspective, meaning they interpret one clause of the Compact, Article III(d), significantly differently than the Upper Basin states. And yet, that’s what their entire argument relies on.
That clause states that the Upper Basin must “not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75 million acre-feet” for any 10-year period.
The Upper Basin sees this as a “non-depletion obligation,” meaning it blocks them from exceeding their 7.5 MAF/year allocation if it causes the Lee Ferry flow to fall below a 7.5 MAF/year average. The Lower Basin sees it as a “minimum delivery obligation,” meaning that the Upper Basin is obliged to send an average of 7.5 MAF past Lee Ferry no matter what, even if that means draining all of its reservoirs and drying out its fields and cities.
In a comment on Tuesday’s dispatch, reader Steve Harris suggested a story on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection fast-tracking a 200-mile segment of border wall through Big Bend National Park.
This is a super important issue. And it’s not only in Big Bend: The entire border wall is an environmental disaster, slashing through biologically diverse, beautiful country and cutting off migratory routes and movement for mountain lions, javelina, coyotes, ocelot, deer, desert bighorns, and even jaguars. Keep in mind that it’s not just a fence, it’s a giant piece of infrastructure that requires bulldozing all the vegetation and even blasting through the landscape. Besides that, we taxpayers are forking out billions of dollars for something that isn’t all that great at doing what it’s supposed to do.
For me it’s especially heartbreaking to see the wall cut through the borderlands south of Tucson, down in the Patagonia Mountains. Many years ago my dad took my brother and I along some little road through there right up against the border, which at the time was just a barbed wire fence. It was incredible country, so quiet and mostly humanity-free.
The stakes are equally as high in the Big Bend area, where both ecological and cultural treasures are at risk. Unfortunately I’ve never been to Big Bend, and it’s a little ways outside the region I normally cover, so I’m not going to try to pretend to know what’s going on there. But a lot of other smart folks have written about it and are trying to block the new stretch of wall, so I’ll share some of that here:
Border Patrol map of existing, planned, and awarded segments of wall, including the stretch through Big Bend — which consists of about 100 miles of actual physical wall plus segments of “detection technology” in the most rugged areas.
The Texas Observer has a good story on the wall plans and the way the “Big Beautiful Bill” not only allocates $46.5 billion to build the monstrosity, but also erased existing protections for some areas.
Environmental groups and environmentally-oriented media outlets are making a pretty big stink over the confirmation hearings for Steve Pearce, Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management. There’s a good reason for this: Pearce is well known for his hostility toward the BLM and the public lands it oversees, and he has also indicated a desire to sell off public land — a stance he failed to renounce during this week’s hearings.
Pearce is a bad choice for this job. But is it worth spending a lot of resources to get him ousted? Probably not.
If the Senate does not confirm Pearce, then the administration will just find some other bozo to do the job, which in this case is basically a middle manager tasked with carrying out the agenda of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Burgum, in turn, is merely executing the Trump administration’s, i.e. Project 2025, policies.
Which I have to say is disappointing and sad. Before he was a cabinet member, Burgum seemed like a reasonable enough guy. Sure he has ties to oil and gas interests, but he also appeared to be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican — an old school conservative and conservationist who valued public lands. He even managed to garner the endorsement of outdoor retailer REI’s board along with that of the hook and bullet crowd.
Instead, he has prostrated himself to the extractive industries, embraced coal mining and oil and gas drilling, and shattered environmental protections for public lands left and right. His distinguishing features as a cabinet member have been his unwavering sneer-like grin and his tendency to fawn over Trump — and coal.
***
Your energy and outrage might be better spent on convincing Congress to shoot down Sen. Mike Lee’s, R-Utah, attempt to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument management plan. If the “resolution of disapproval” passes both chambers of Congress with a simple majority vote, it would erase the plan and bar the Bureau of Land Management from issuing another plan that is “substantially the same” in the future.
Republicans in the current Congress used the CRA — which allows Congress to revoke recently implemented administrative rules — to do away with resource management plans in Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota. That’s in spite of the fact that RMPs are not considered “rules,” according to a January 2025 opinion by the Interior Department’s Solicitor. National monument management plans aren’t rules, either, but that’s not a hindrance for Lee.
This wouldn’t change the boundaries of the monument, but would likely cause management of the area to revert back to the 2020, Trump I-era plan. That plan was not only less protective than the newer one, but only applied to a much smaller area, since in 2017 Trump had significantly shrunk the national monument. Revoking the current management plan, then, would leave vast areas of the monument in a sort of management limbo.
It would also open the door to revoking other national monument management plans (e.g. Bears Ears), allowing the GOP to carry out Project 2025’s goal of shrinking or eliminating national monuments in a less visible, more underhanded manner.
Just a couple reminders from a few years ago that it does snow, and it will snow again — just maybe not this spring. Jonathan P. Thompson photos.
Evening light hits the bluffs above the Green River at Fontenelle Reservoir in June 2021. (Ryan Dorgan/WyoFile)
Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Dustin Bleizeffer):
February 18, 2026
Historically bad snow and water conditions raise stakes for Colorado River basin states as feds prepare to intervene.
Wyoming water officials are desperately hoping to avoid a federal intervention into the high-stakes deadlock among Colorado River stakeholders seeking a compromise on shared water appropriation cuts.
Wyoming and the six other Colorado River basin states blew through another deadline Saturday to come to an agreement, raising the possibility that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will dictate a new drought response plan — a situation that could dash cooperation and spawn intense legal entanglements, observers say.
Making matters worse is an intense “snow drought” so far this winter that’s compounding a “mega drought” across much of the seven-state basin region that’s lingered for more than two decades. It’s so dry that federal water managers warn Lake Powell — for the first time in 63 years — could drop 50 feet, low enough to no longer produce hydroelectric power at the Glen Canyon dam, according to the Bureau’s latest projections.
The intense situation was a topic of discussion Tuesday as a legislative committee considered a bill — Senate File 84, “Voluntary water conservation program.” The Wyoming State Engineer’s Office hopes it will give the state some negotiating leverage and protection over the state’s share of Colorado River-bound water.
Jim Magagna, the executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, speaks at a September 2025 Wyoming Game and Fish Commission meeting in Lander. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
“Our governor traveled back and met with other governors in D.C. and gave a somewhat favorable report,” Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna told the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee. “The day after that, the state engineer in Arizona announced that they’re willing to go to court and fight to the death to get the water they think they’re entitled to from the upper basin, [which includes Wyoming].
“I would love to be able to sit here and tell you this is totally unnecessary,” Magagna said, adding he’s in favor of the bill. “Unfortunately, the scenario we’re facing in the Colorado River today is that we do believe that the state needs to show some good faith in attempting to address some of those water issues.”
The committee also heard from representatives of Wyoming’s prolific trona and soda ash producers, who rely on water that is subject to the Colorado River Compact.
“We have 2,300 employees at risk in southwest Wyoming if we don’t find a solution,” Jody Levin told the committee, speaking on behalf of the trona industry and the Wyoming Mining Association.
Divvying up shrinking water
Water forecasts were already so dire in January that the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office warned that Colorado River water managers will likely call for a significant drawdown of Flaming Gorge Reservoir this spring. The reservoir, straddling the Wyoming-Utah border, is one of the primary backups in the upper Colorado River system to ensure operational water levels at Lake Powell.
Flaming Gorge’s function as a backup is merely one piece of a complex Drought Response Operations Agreement among Colorado River stakeholders, and it expires later this year. Renewing the DROA, along with other binding agreements that dictate appropriations throughout the river system, requires determining how to share a shrinking water resource that serves 40 million people from the Cowboy State to Mexico. Though Wyoming and other Colorado River stakeholders say they prefer their own compromise over a federal one, they have yet to strike a deal — despite years of negotiations.
The Bureau of Reclamation in January published its own draft environmental impact statement for a new plan, and last week the agency hinted that time is running out for a compromise among states.
The Blacks Fork, a tributary to the Green River, near its confluence at Flaming Gorge Reservoir in May 2018. (Ryan Dorgan/WyoFile)
“The basin’s poor hydrologic outlook highlights the necessity for collaboration as the Basin States, in collaboration with Reclamation, work on developing the next set of operating guidelines for the Colorado River system,” Acting Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Scott Cameron said in a prepared statement Friday.
Gov. Mark Gordon, along with fellow Colorado River upper basin states’ Govs. Jared Polis, Michelle Lujan Grisham and Spencer Cox, issued a joint statement Friday ahead of the unmet deadline.
“Upper basin water users live within the means of the river by adapting our uses every year based on available supplies,” the governors said. “We continue pursuing a seven-state consensus, which would provide greater opportunity to pursue federal funding supporting conservation efforts and innovative water-saving technologies across the basin.”
The Platte River is formed in western Nebraska east of the city of North Platte, Nebraska by the confluence of the North Platte and the South Platte Rivers, which both arise from snowmelt in the eastern Rockies east of the Continental Divide. Map via Wikimedia.
Though not part of the Colorado River system, the North Platte River, stretching from south-central to eastern Wyoming, is also parched. The State Engineer’s Office issued a “priority administration” order earlier this month, requiring junior rights water holders along the river system to immediately cease diverting water. The order could remain in effect through April.
Water conservation bill
Senate File 84 cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee Tuesday [February 17, 2026] unanimously, with strong support from stakeholders beholden to the Colorado River Compact and some doubters.
It would enshrine a water conservation strategy that’s already been tested for several years in the state. It would allow ranchers and other Colorado River system users in Wyoming to voluntarily use less water without losing their appropriation rights, according to the bill.
“It helps avoid mandatory and uncompensated water use reductions, whether by court order or curtailment, to satisfy compact obligations,” State Engineer Brandon Gebhart said. “It provides a tool for Wyoming to be part of a compromise to address historic drought that has plagued the Colorado River Basin for the last 25 years.”
Kemmerer Republican Sen. Laura Pearson said she has doubts about the practical water conservation claims related to the strategy. For instance, if an irrigator foregoes flooding a field and allows their water to stay in the stream, that means less recharge for aquifers.
Welcome to the Landline, a monthly newsletter from High Country News about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States. Screenshot from the High Country News website.
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When I was growing up in southwestern Colorado along the banks of a tributary to a Colorado River tributary, I was immersed not only in the quirks of water law, but also in Western water culture — the peculiar mores and customs that come from constantly looming scarcity. One oft-repeated maxim, usually used to justify building a new dam or encouraging inefficient irrigation practices, was: If we don’t use the water, it will just flow downstream to California — where it would presumably be used to water golf courses, fill LA’s swimming pools and serve other nefarious West Coast purposes.
I’m sure the idea arose partly from the animosity — and envy — the Interior West has long harbored toward its largest and wealthiest coastal neighbor. But I also think it comes from our idiosyncratic laws governing water use and the way they pit the headwaters communities against their downstream neighbors.
Whatever its origin, the sentiment endures and in fact has only grown stronger as the river and its reservoirs reach critically diminished levels, while the seven states that rely on them fail to agree on how to manage the issue going forward. Maybe the maxim needs an update. The big question today is: How much of the Colorado River’s water should be allowed to flow downstream to California, Arizona and Nevada?
How did we get here?
Western water law is based on the prior appropriation doctrine, which gives the first entity to make “beneficial use” of water the right to keep on using that amount, even if that means that upstream “junior” users’ spigots will get shut off. By the early 1900s, a rapidly growing California was enthusiastically diverting the Colorado River, with huge irrigation districts gobbling up the senior water rights. Less-populous Colorado, Wyoming and Utah were forced to watch in increasing dismay as downstream users gained control over larger and larger shares of “their” river.
Upper Basin States vs. Lower Basin circa 1925 via CSU Water Resources Archives
To appease these headwaters states — and to garner their support for huge dams and other water projects on the lower river — the seven Colorado River Basin states hammered out the Colorado River Compact of 1922. It divided the states into an Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) and a Lower Basin (Arizona, California and Nevada), with the dividing line at Lees Ferry, Arizona. It aimed to share the river’s water equally between them, giving each basin the exclusive use of 7.5 million acre-feet (MAF) of water per year.
Climate change causes turbulence
The compact was far from perfect, but the concept of dividing the water equally generally held up, even if the reality didn’t always follow suit: The Upper Basin states have always used far less than their allotted amount (around 4 MAF), while the Lower Basin for years has consumed far more than its share (as much as 11 million MAF). That wasn’t a problem as long as the river had enough water to go around. But for the last 26 years, it hasn’t.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Since around the turn of the century, warming temperatures and abnormally dry years have severely diminished the headwaters states’ snowpack, thereby shrinking the river. The annual “natural flow” at Lees Ferry, or the estimated amount of water the river would hold without any upstream diversions or human consumption, has been about 12 MAF on average since 2000, dropping below 6 MAF in 2002, or just over half of what the Lower Basin alone consumed at the time.
The meager flows simply do not jibe with the numbers in the compact. And that makes it virtually impossible for the Upper Basin to comply with the compact’s “non-depletion clause,” which dictates that the Upper Basin “will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre feet for any period of ten consecutive years.” There are different interpretations of this provision, but it appears to say the Upper Basin states has no option but to allow the water to flow down to California — even if it means they come up short themselves.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell were supposed to make things easier by acting as an Upper Basin savings account that could be drawn from during dry years. But withdrawals have greatly exceeded deposits more often than not in recent decades, leaving Lake Powell at about one-third of its full storage capacity and bringing its surface level critically close to hitting minimum power pool, the point at which water can no longer be released through the hydroelectric turbines.
When this happens — possibly as early as this fall, according to current federal forecasts — the dam will stop generating hydropower for Southwestern utilities. It will also force all releases to go through the outlets lower in the dam, which were not engineered for such sustained use. This would compromise the outlets and possibly the dam itself, and Bureau of Reclamation engineers have strongly warned against it, meaning that minimum power pool becomes the de facto deadpool.
If current climate trends continue, the only way to avoid reaching minimum power pool — aside from re-engineering the dam on a very short timeframe — is either to substantially increase flows into Lake Powell by curtailing Upper Basin water use and draining upstream reservoirs, or else significantly reduce releases from Glen Canyon Dam, forcing the Lower Basin — and the river through the Grand Canyon and its endangered native fish — to take major cuts.
On a day in late May [2022] when wildfire smoke obscured the throat of an ancient volcano called Shiprock in the distance, I visited the Ute Mountain Ute farming and ranching operation in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
The solution is simple; consensus is not
In 2022, the Interior Department told the seven states to broker a plan to balance demand with diminishing supplies by cutting overall consumptive use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year. So far, however, the states have failed to reach consensus.
The Lower Basin states, which have maxed out their allotment and then some, have taken some cuts already and have agreed to accept more, if the Upper Basin agrees to mandatory, verifiable cuts of its own. Meanwhile, the Lower Basin wants to see some version of the non-depletion provision remain in place.
Upper Basin negotiators argue that they haven’t even come close to using all of the water they’re entitled to, and besides, they don’t use nearly as much as the Lower Basin does anyway. So why should they be forced to reduce even more? Furthermore, Upper Basin water users, especially those with junior water rights, are already struggling with drastic reductions during dry years because the region lacks large reservoirs for storing water, meaning their water use is dictated by the rivers’ flows. In 2021, for example, many southwestern Colorado farms had their ditches cut off as early as June, forcing them to sit the season out, while the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe received only about 10% of its allocation.
It’s also simpler logistically to reduce consumption in the Lower Basin, where huge water users are served by a handful of very large diversions, such as the Central Arizona Project canal, which carries water to Phoenix and Tucson; the All-American Canal, which serves the Imperial Irrigation District (and its gigantic alfalfa fields) — the largest single water user on the entire river — and the California Aqueduct, which serves Los Angeles and other cities, all of which are fed by Lake Mead and other reservoirs. The Upper Basin, on the other hand, pulls water from the river and its tributaries via hundreds of much smaller diversions. Achieving meaningful cuts would require shutting off thousands of irrigation ditches to thousands of small water users under uncertain authority.
The Upper Basin negotiators have suggested a “supply driven” plan that would base releases from Lake Powell on the amount of water in the river and the reservoir, thereby honoring the spirit — if not the actual figures — of the Colorado River Compact. While Lower Basin negotiators have expressed interest in the idea, the two sides have yet to agree on details, such as the percentage of flows that would be released or whether a non-depletion minimum-flow requirement would remain in place.
Deadpool doesn’t care about deals or deadlines
In the end, the river basin’s climate and hydrology are likely to decide the issue. As Lake Powell inevitably sinks this summer, the BuRec will probably drain upstream reservoirs — Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo — to delay its decline. But when the reservoir drops to minimum power pool, dam operators must decide whether to release water through the river outlets and hope they don’t fail, or else shift Glen Canyon Dam to a “run-of-the-river” operation, which would keep the reservoir level from falling further by making releases equal to reservoir inflows minus evaporation and seepage. The relatively scant outflows from the dam would cause Lake Mead’s levels to plummet, forcing the Lower Basin states to accept potentially calamitous cuts. The Central Arizona Project, one of the basin’s most junior rights holders, would almost certainly lose some of its water, imperiling all the cities and farms that rely on it.
If the diminished releases were to persist for several months or more, it would likely put the Upper Basin in violation of the non-depletion clause, triggering litigation from downstream users, and throwing the entire watershed back in time to the anxious and combative pre-compact days.
The end of a boat ramp in Antelope Canyon was high above the water of Lake Powell in May 2022, Photo/Allen Best
I used to wonder why folks worried so about Colorado’s water running downstream to California, as if letting it go were some sort of sin. I can understand not wanting to lose the water that originates in your state, but to prefer wasting it or locking it up in reservoirs to sharing it didn’t seem right. After all, every drop that Colorado sends to California and Arizona is another drop that stays in the river for that much longer, benefiting fish and the other critters and boaters that rely on its waters.
I suspect that the most egregious flaw of the Colorado River Compact wasn’t that it overestimated the amount of water in the river, but that it pitted one group of states, tribes and other water users against another, rather than creating a framework in which they could all work together for the benefit of the entire watershed. Maybe it’s time to scrap the compact altogether and, while we’re at it, do away with the whole prior appropriations doctrine on the Colorado River — starting over again from scratch, in other words.
After all, as the climate keeps getting warmer and drier, there will be less and less water to argue about. If there’s nothing left to send downstream, the Colorado River Compact will soon be worth less than the paper it’s printed on.
The Colorado River Compact, signed in 1922. Public domain
Officials at the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages Colorado River dams, outlined several actions they are considering in the coming months to boost water levels in a rapidly shrinking Lake Powell, which could drop to a record low later this year that would halt hydropower production from Glen Canyon Dam for the first time.
The Colorado River’s second-largest reservoir behind Lake Mead is entering one of the most difficult periods in its six-decade history. The basin is drying due to a warming climate. Powell is just a quarter full, and projected to drop lower this year. Winter has been a dud, with warm temperatures and a historically bad snowpack in the Colorado mountains that feed into the reservoir.
Decisions in the next three months about how much water to release from Powell and how much to hold back will reverberate across the basin, affecting hydropower production, legal obligations, watershed ecology, threatened species, and millions of people who use its water and energy.
“Things are happening in parallel and not in sequence,” said Wayne Pullan, Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Basin regional director. “We’re going to be doing everything all at once.”
Pullan and other Reclamation officials discussed their options during a meeting Wednesday of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group, an expert committee that advises on the dam’s ecological impacts.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
The number that federal officials are paying attention to is 3,490 feet. Below that point, Glen Canyon Dam cannot produce hydropower. Powell would be too low for water to flow through the power-generating turbines.
A 2024 decision allows Reclamation to “consider all tools that are available” to keep Powell from dropping below 3,500 feet, an elevation that provides a little wiggle room for maintaining hydropower production. Powell today sits at 3,531 feet.
“I think it’s safe for us to assume that unless Mother Nature is uncharacteristically generous, that Lake Powell elevations are going to fluctuate at elevations that we’re not comfortable with,” Pullan said.
The tool from the 2024 decision is Section 6(E), which grants Reclamation the authority to restrict water releases from Powell to as low as 6 million acre-feet. The planned released this year is 7.48 million acre-feet, so the Section 6(E) authority represents a potential 20 percent reduction.
A cut of that magnitude might not be necessary because Reclamation has another tool it can use in tandem.
That option is releasing more water from Flaming Gorge and other smaller reservoirs located higher in the watershed. This is called a DROA release after its authorizing document. Pullan said this action, which states in the lower basin are advocating for, is being discussed and the volume of those releases would be determined in the spring, around April or May.
“It’s important to remember that this is all in flux,” Pullan said. “This cake is being mixed and isn’t baked in any way yet.”
A previous DROA release in 2022-23 moved 463,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge into Lake Powell. Flaming Gorge today is 82 percent full, holding almost 3 million acre-feet.
Note the dotted red line. If says that it’s possible that power production at Glen Canyon Dam could end by August.
Reclamation’s current projections show Powell dropping below hydropower production level by December, in an average water supply scenario. If snowpack and runoff continue to run below average, then that threshold could be breached, barring interventions, in August.
Katrina Grantz, Reclamation’s deputy regional director, said that in the most probable water supply scenario the agency has the tools to be able to keep Powell above 3,500 feet over the next 12 months. But it is still analyzing how and when to deploy them.
“Reclamation is working on various scenarios of how this could play out,” Grantz said.
There are other considerations in the mix. Powell is the source of cold-water releases to help native fish. The water this year could be record warm. Powell is also the source of high-volume flows to move sediment that rebuilds Grand Canyon beaches and steadier flows that assist aquatic insects. Releases have implications for boating and recreation, too.
A shrinking Lake Powell has implications for water supply, recreation, fisheries, hydropower generation, watershed ecology, and legal requirements. Photo J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue
The basin’s abysmal hydrology coincides with deep political and legal uncertainty. Current reservoir management guidelines expire at the end of the year, and the seven basin states have not been able to agree on their replacement. Reclamation instead is forging its own path, aiming to finalize a decision this summer.
Reduced releases from Powell could also cause the four upper basin states – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – to violate the Colorado River Compact, which requires a certain volume of water to move downstream. This requirement and its legal ramifications are not clear and could be litigated.
It all amounts to an unsettling time for those working in the basin.
“We have to work with the resources we have,” Pullan said. “Wishing will not make things so.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
February 23, 2026
Key Points
A coalition of cities and water providers, led by the Central Arizona Project, has launched a media campaign targeting proposed Colorado River cuts.
The campaign includes a TV ad that claims Arizona “is being unfairly targeted” by some water management alternatives outlined in a federal document.
After the seven Colorado River states failed to reach an agreement on shortage sharing, the federal government turned to its own set of proposals.
A Central Arizona Project-backed advocacy group called the Coalition for Protecting Arizona’s Lifeline has begun rolling out television ads and online videos defending the water supplier’s rights to a Colorado River that is under serious hydrological and political strain.
“Arizona is being unfairly targeted for reductions of Colorado River water that would cripple our state, flatten our economy and weaken our nation’s defense,” an ad aired by the coalition warns. It goes on to note that Arizona communities have done their part, committing more water for conservation in Lake Mead than those in other states, and that several options that the federal government is weighing for managing the river would fall hardest on the state.
One such alternative under review, CAP General Manager Brenda Burman recently said, would essentially dry up the agency’s canal from the river to Phoenix and Tucson…The alternatives Burman was referring to were never stated as the Trump administration’s preference, but rather as ideas from which the seven states that share the river water might draw from in writing an agreement for sharing in its worsening shortages. Now that the states have failed to reach such an agreement, though, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is faced with either enacting something like them or rapidly developing a new federal plan in time to replace river guidelines that expire this autumn…While the materials don’t directly state members’ intended method of securing water, some of the videos lean heavily on the so-called Law of the River and its guarantee of water from the four headwaters states to Arizona, California and Nevada. This theme reiterates a point that CAP and Arizona water officials have stressed over the last year or so, that if push comes to shove in a legal battle, they have the 1922 Colorado River Compact on their side.
“The Lower Basin has paper water, uses wet water, and wants the Upper Basin to deliver ghost water” — Kevin Pilgrim
Water levels were low at Lake Powell’s Wahweep Marina in November 2021. Recent worst-case projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show the reservoir declining below power pool by July. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
The Colorado River crisis is no longer part of some hypothetical future — it’s here.
Fueled by one of the worst snowpacks on record, the “most probable” February projection from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates 5 million acre-feet flowing into Lake Powell this year, which is 52% of average. A more grim estimate puts that number at just 3.5 million acre-feet, or 37% of average.
Forecasts show the nation’s second-largest reservoir could fall below the minimum level needed to make hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam as soon as July under the worst-case scenario, or by December under the “most probable” forecast. Reservoir levels are projected to fall to their lowest elevation on record in March 2027, threatening the water supply for millions in the Southwest.
But the increasingly dire projections, this winter’s historically bad snowpack and the growing gap between supply and demand haven’t yet pushed the seven states that share the river to come to an agreement on its future management.
Last week, state negotiators blew past a second federally set deadline to find a consensus plan on how to share shortages and manage Lake Powell and Lake Mead after the current guidelines expire at the end of the year. They have been stuck at an impasse for two years.
The need for a new management paradigm that adapts to a shrinking water supply has never been more urgent. So why isn’t the crisis forcing a deal?
“We’re at a moment where we really need something different that responds to our current hydrology, our current demands, and we’re not seeing a development of that kind,” said Elizabeth Koebele, a professor of political science and associate director of the graduate program of hydrologic sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno. “You’d think that all of these signals would be pointing to the fact that we really need to do something different, but we’re not.”
Anne Castle, a former federal representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission and a Colorado River expert, co-authored a paper in 2021 that said successful negotiations of new Colorado River agreements tend to be triggered by very dry conditions, and that federal directives and deadlines also play an important role. But the current stalemate amid worsening drought throws those findings into question.
“Our premise was that a crisis in terms of water supply and reservoir levels and snowpack and expected runoff can prompt creative compromise,” Castle said. “But we have all those underlying conditions, and we don’t have a compromise.”
The scale of the problem could be part of what’s making consensus difficult between the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and the Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada). As a junior water user on the river, the Central Arizona Project, which supplies the metro Phoenix and Tucson areas, could face the deepest cuts.
“I think if this had been a 2 million-acre-foot problem, the states probably could have solved it, but it’s potentially a 4 million-acre-foot problem,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a researcher and professor at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. “There’s so little water to go around that positions have become hardened as a result. We’re not just talking about inconvenient cuts; we’re talking about severe pain to economies at this point.”
Federal involvement
Some of the normal levers that have been pulled to force action in the past — such as directives and deadlines from the federal government — don’t seem to be effective in the current situation. There have been no apparent consequences for the states missing both the Feb. 14 deadline and an initial Nov. 11 deadline set by the feds for the states to present the outline of an agreement.
The seven state negotiators and their governors were summoned to Washington, D.C., the last week of January for a meeting with Department of Interior officials. That, too, failed to result in a deal.
In a Feb. 14 news release, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum thanked the governors for their engagement and said a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach.
Koebele said when the states were hashing out the 2007 guidelines, which currently govern the river and are just months from expiring, the threat of federal action was part of what spurred the states to come up with a plan.
“There’s a little bit less of this idea of a single or central federal leader in the negotiation process,” Koebele said. “And they’re also still saying, ‘Hey, states, please come up with your own option too.’ I’m not really sure how credible threats are from the federal government when we’re in this sort of context.”
Reclamation has presented five options for managing the river, but although the federal government owns and operates the infrastructure such as dams and reservoirs, it doesn’t have the authority to implement all of the actions outlined in the options. The new, innovative and collaborative actions would need an agreement among the states.
Absent that, federal officials believe the only tools at their disposal, which allocate cuts based on prior appropriation and existing water law, could see Arizona take up to 77% of total shortages, yet they “may not provide adequate protection of critical infrastructure or the system and may be viable only in the short term given current reservoir conditions,” according the bureau.
The federal management options are part of a draft environmental impact statement, which is required as part of the National Environmental Policy Act review for new guidelines. This process is moving forward on a separate, parallel track to negotiations among the states. If the states agree on a plan, it could be plugged into the EIS and become the “preferred alternative.”
“We’re sort of at a key moment for those two processes coming together,” Koebele said. “But the EIS and the state negotiations are not really intersecting in a way that we have seen them intersect in the past or that we hoped they would.”
Federal officials are accepting comments on the draft EIS until March 2.
Lake Pleasant, seen in April 2025, is a storage bucket for Colorado River water and is part of the Central Arizona Project that delivers water to the Phoenix and Tucson areas. According to one river management option from the federal government, Arizona would take the majority of shortages in dry years. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Blame to go around
In a series of news releases on February 13, 2026Upper Basin and Lower Basin officials blamed each other for the continuing standoff.
“We’re being asked to solve a problem we didn’t create with water we don’t have,” Colorado’s representative, Becky Mitchell, said in a prepared statement. “The Upper Division’s approach is aligned with hydrologic reality, and we’re ready to move forward.”
The crux of the issue is who should take shortages in drought years. The Lower Basin has committed to 1.5 million acre-feet of reductions annually and wants cuts beyond that to be shared by the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin says their water users already take cuts in some years because streams run dry by midsummer and any contributions they make through conservation must be voluntary.
Water managers upstream of Lee’s Ferry would note that they were promised an equal amount of water as the Lower Basin was in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, although they use about 4 million acre-feet a year, while the Lower Basin — whose flows are backed up by releases from the country’s two largest reservoirs — regularly uses all of the annual 7.5 million acre-feet to which it’s entitled. The Lower Basin’s position points to its larger population and economic output, and that their water users, already subject to mandatory cutbacks, tend to be more aggressive in their conservation measures.
“It’s the fundamental disagreement that we’ve had for the past many years,” Castle said. “The Upper Basin doesn’t want to agree to any enforceable reductions in use. And that is something that the Lower Basin, and Arizona in particular, don’t feel like they can live with.”
The states appeared to be on the verge of a breakthrough last summer, when representatives from both basins indicated a willingness to consider a supply-driven approach, where reservoir releases are more directly tied to the natural flow of the river. But hashing out the details is complicated, and a plan that all parties can agree to has yet to emerge.
Note the dotted red line. If says that it’s possible that power production at Glen Canyon Dam could end by August.
A new management plan would need to be in place by the start of the new water year on Oct. 1. And if the states can’t reach an agreement by then, the federal government will impose its own management rules, doling out cutbacks that could trigger lawsuits from the states but would not go far enough to prevent the system from crashing.
Even if the states come to an eleventh-hour agreement, federal action will be needed in the immediate future to protect levels at Lake Powell and the ability to produce hydropower. The dire projections showing Powell dropping below minimum power pool assume that the feds would release 7.48 million acre-feet from Powell this year, but under a short-term agreement that also expires at the end of the year, they could reduce releases down to as little as 6 million acre-feet. The Bureau of Reclamation is also holding back about 600,000 acre-feet in Lake Powell through April, which will be released later in the year.
The last time Lake Powell was projected to drop below system-critical thresholds after the 2021 spring runoff, Reclamation conducted emergency releases from upstream reservoirs. The chance that the bureau will again release additional water from those federally controlled reservoirs — Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo — to boost Powell in the coming months is “about 100%,” according to Colorado River expert and author Eric Kuhn.
“Just how much is going to be up in the air, but right now, it looks like they need a million to a million-and-a-half acre-feet based on the current projections,” Kuhn said.
John Fleck, an author, writer and University of New Mexico professor, was the co-author with Castle on the 2021 paper, titled “Green Light for Adaptive Policies on the Colorado River.” He said that in previous negotiations, state representatives not only had a sense of responsibility to protect water for their own communities, but were also looking out for the health of the entire interconnected basin.
“What we have seen in the last few years is a shift to a leadership that is made up of people who are solely looking out for the interests of their own community,” Fleck said.
Experts say the Colorado River needs a new and different management plan that responds to dwindling flows, rebuilds reservoir storage and creates a resilient system in the face of climate change. The current leadership is failing to provide that, Fleck said. The solution is a shift in mindset for water managers to start playing not for the Upper Basin or Lower Basin, but for Team Colorado River Basin, he said.
“There’s a moral question involving the obligations we have to one another in shared river basins,” Fleck said. “I would not be at all happy to win the litigation and see the Central Arizona Project shut down. I would see that as a failure even though my community’s water supply might be protected.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Glen Canyon downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
February 17, 2026
Sitting in the audience at the Colorado Water Congress in January, I was reminded of the days, weeks and months after 9/11. The impulse –– fueled by rage, was to punch back — at somebody, somewhere. The result, as we saw in Afghanistan after 20 years and three presidents, was far from satisfying. Osama bin Laden died, but the Taliban prevailed.
At the conference, a new state legislator from the Western Slope was full of righteous indignation about the Colorado River dispute. Colorado and other upper basin states were right, and those in the lower basin were wrong. We will prevail in court, he insisted. That would be the Supreme Court, where all disputes among states must go. And Colorado, legislators had been told, is preparing for just that possibility.
Much is at stake here. It’s not just ranches on the Western Slope but nearly all the water rights allocated since 1922. Roughly half of water for Front Range cities comes from the Colorado River headwaters and for towns on the eastern plains as far east as Fort Morgan. The mountains towns at the Colorado River headwaters, most of their water rights are post-1922. The list goes on and one.
No wonder Colorado has its fur up.
Speaking later in the morning, Jim Lochhead, a figure prominent in Colorado water affairs since the 1970s, did not disagree with Colorado’s fundamental position.
Colorado insists that Arizona and California, especially, have caused the big reservoirs, Powell and Mead, to decline. The states — together, with Nevada, they constitute the lower basin — have reduced their water use substantially since 2002 — but not in proportion to the declines caused by warming temperatures and declining snowfall. The lower-basin states created the problem of the reservoirs now at perilously low levels. They bear the heaviest burden of refilling reservoirs by simply agreeing to take less water.
Lochhead also warned of inflexibility. “The upper basin cannot bail out the lower basin,” he said. “But (negotiators) have to be given room to compromise.”
“If the negotiators are forced to focus only on protecting what each of them thinks is legally theirs on paper, they can’t work on identifying and building the tools and strategies needed to make sure we can get away from crisis management and secure our future,” he said that January morning in Aurora.
Upper-basin states say that because they are at the headwaters, they have nothing equivalent to Powell and Mead upstream to provide certainty. If it rains and snows, there is water. If not, then water users have less or none. Colorado water officials say some with water rights dating to the 1880s have already had to go without.
My kids and their friends built a small terrain park in front of their house near Sloans Lake after the March 2003 St. Patrick’s Day blizzard.
The year 2002 was seminal. Modest snowfall was followed by an early and unusually warm spring. Peak runoff was barely noticeable. In Denver, a city that gets half its water from the Colorado River headwaters, sprinklers were turned off, green grass turned brown. Aurora, also heavily dependent upon Colorado River water, was within a few months of crisis in 2003 when a miracle occurred –– three feet of snow on St. Patrick’s Day.
Downstream in Arizona and California, far from this drama in the headwaters, life continued with no fear and little change. The upstream reservoirs, Powell and Mead, had water.
We have another dry year, and the Colorado River right now is expected to deliver less than the 3.8 million acre-feet at Lee Ferry, just below Glen Canyon Dam, than it did in 2002. Flows were 17 to 18 million acre-feet in the 1920s, when the Colorado River Compact was created and adopted. The long-term average was less, 14.6 to 15.1 million acre-feet. In this century, it has dipped to 12.1 to 12.5 million acre-feet. Some expect this trend to continue amid the warming and drying now underway in the basin. Might it go below 10 in a few more decades?
The lower basin until relatively recently used 10 to 11 million acre-feet. As for the upper basin, states — Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, in addition to Colorado —they have used 3.5 to 4.5 million acre-feet. It depends upon whether it snows.
The end of a boat ramp in Antelope Canyon was high above the water of Lake Powell in May 2022, and water levels have dropped more now. Photo/Allen Best
“Everyone knows Lake Powell is now in a dire situation,” said Lochhead in a panel after the state legislators had left. “We have gone from 86% full to I think around 25% full today. Powell is in danger of being over a million acre-feet below deadpool next year. That should scare all of us.”
Deadpool is when the water level in a dam-created reservoir drops so low that water cannot be released and used for drinking, irrigation and power. In the last several years, at least one book, Zak Podmore’s Life After Dead Pool, has been written about the Colorado River with that threshold in mind. Other books and thousands and thousands of newspaper, magazine and website postings have mentioned it.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
Lochhead warned against hardened positions that put the Colorado River problems in front of the Supreme Court. Colorado has not fared well in water cases there the last 100-plus years.
For several decades, Lochhead was a water attorney for Holland and Hart, working from an office across from the post office in Glenwood Springs. It was a good place to raise a family of skiers, he once told this writer.
During that time on the Western Slope, Lochhead represented Colorado on Colorado River affairs in several capacities. Then, from 2010 until 2023, he was CEO of Denver Water, the state’s largest water utility. In the last few years, his life has been lower profile. But, as his remarks at the Water Congress demonstrated, he is still paying close attention.
Litigation in the Colorado River Basin, said Lochhead, is a “worst-case scenario, resulting in economic and political disruption and uncertainty no matter the outcome.” This message, he said, would be the same whether given to audiences in Arizona or Colorado.
“There are tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars that will be spent on litigation over a 10- or 20-year period, and the outcomes will be uncertain. The upper basin has a lot of good arguments, and so does the lower basin.”
Colorado appeared before the Supreme Court in 1907. It claimed full use of the Arkansas River. The Supreme Court disagreed.
Delphus Carpenter. Picture courtesy Colorado State University library
In 1922, Colorado lost to Wyoming in a case involving the North Platte River. Colorado has insisted upon prerogatives because it was the source of the water. That defeat caused Colorado’s lead negotiator, Delph Carpenter, to conclude it must shelve the idea that being at the headwaters would trump the claims of downstream states on the Colorado River. Carpenter became the most important figure in crafting the Colorado River Compact of 1922.
“But of course, litigation under the compacts continued, and Colorado was ordered to pay some $34 million to Kansas in 2001 and to dry up Bonnie Reservoir and undertake the process of drying up 25,000 acres of farmland in the Republican River Basin,” Lochhead continued.
The headwaters of Whiskey Creek, between Minturn and Avon, in the Eagle River Valley, had plentiful snow in the mid-1990s. Photo/Allen Best
Lochhead described several layers of complexities.
“This isn’t litigation just between two or three states. This is litigation between four states that have a common obligation under the compact (the Upper Basin) versus three other states requiring coordination on strategy, negotiating remedies and settlement between the states,” he said.
Nor is it simple a matter of the two basins, upper and lower, in conflict. The 30 federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin have their interests, and they are not all the same. They also have rights that in most cases supersede those of the states. Public interest groups can have different interests. And, if the federal government makes the decisions about future uses of the Colorado, each and all may “sue the federal government over any unilateral federal action or decision, and that litigation can take all kinds of different forms.”
“Other entities may seek to intervene in the litigation. The United States certainly would, as we have seen in Texas versus New Mexico. But when tribes seek to intervene, if the country of Mexico seeks to intervene — what happens during litigation?”
Mexico, under a 1944 compact, is to get 1.5 million acre-feet annually.
Plus, the three other upper-basin states may disagree with Colorado. Colorado uses by far the most water of the four, as a compact among them reached in 1948 specified. Alone, though, it has pushed that limit.
In other words, going to water war sounds vaguely patriotic. The reality of the courtroom may be less heart-thumping.
Boulder has very good water rights but depends somewhat on imported Colorado River water. Photo/teofilo and Wikimedia Commons
Consider what if Colorado did lose? Here’s where the story gets grim. The Front Range cities, the ski towns, even farmers in the South Platte and Arkansas valleys to the Nebraska and Kansas borders.
Lochhead described the stakes involved, the gamble of letting the black-robed justices in D.C. decide the fates of the seven base states. “Do we find ways to work together across the basin to address the crisis together?”
He asked that question more than two weeks before Valentine’s Day, the deadline set by the Bureau of Reclamation without obvious irony. Without agreement by the seven states about how to share the diminished river, it is now up to the federal government to step in. On Friday, after the states had reported still no break-through, I asked Lochhead by e-mail if his remarks from January were still appropriate. They were, he said.
“It seems as I write this, that — as for the last two years — the states remain stuck in political talking points and the federal government is not applying necessary pressure. And, in the meantime, Lake Powell is headed toward run-of-the-river operations, which precipitates crises on all kinds of different levels,” he replied. “This will lead to the federal government having to make decisions that will severely impact both upper and lower basin economies and the environment, not to mention endless, expensive and risky litigation. This all could have been avoided but here we are.”
“Wow!” said Eric Kuhn, a former general manager of the Colorado River District in Glenwood Springs, in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. “The secretary (of Interior) needs to step up and make some hard decisions!”
Sparking Kuhn’s remarks was a new Bureau of Reclamation report on Friday of probable flows in the next two years. The best of them leaves Powell in bad shape. In fact, the bureau’s “probable” flows have frequently been too optimistic. The dimmer view, called “probable minimum,” sees Powell levels dropping below the elevation needed to produce hydropower as early as August. Minimum power pool is above deadpool.
Note the dotted red line. If says that it’s possible that power production at Glen Canyon Dam could end by August.
From a Colorado perspective, lower-basin states have a sense of entitlement that defies common sense. Whether it defies the law is another matter. Kuhn told me years ago that the key provision in the 1922 compact that can be interpreted in two very different ways.
It says: “The States of the Upper Division will note cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre feet for any period of ten consecutive years…”
But as to that disagreement: Upper-basin states see this meaning that they have no control over the weather. They did not cause the reduced flows. Hang the weather, says the lower-basin state. The “do not cause” clause means that if only 7.5 million acre-feet is all that is in the river, it all has to flow downstream.
Typo or not, the lower-basin perspective sees this as a cut-and-dried issue. If Denver must go without transmountain diversions or taps in Winter Park or Vail must go dry, so be it. Not their problem.
JB Hamby, California’s representative on Colorado River affairs, articulated exactly that sentiment on Friday. “The 1922 Colorado River Compact requires the Upper Basin to deliver an average of 8.25 million acre-feet annually to the Lower Basin and Mexico,” he said in a statement. “That delivery obligation is fixed in law, even when the river produces less water.”
At the January forum, Amy Ostdiek, who heads the legal team for the Colorado Water Conservation Board in interstate and federal matters, laid out the basic numbers Colorado puts front and center: The 1922 compact laid out a split of roughly 7.5 million acre-feet for each, the lower and upper basins, with the upper basin required to allow another one million acre-feet to flow down river to account for evaporation and losses.
“We have to be honest about what has caused the threat that Lake Powell might not be able to make the releases that the lower-basin states believe they are entitled to. It was directly caused by their overuse of Lake Mead, which drew down Lake Powell to the point it is today,” said Ostdiek.
Again, the upper-basin states insist upon lower-basin states sharing the uncertainty of snow and rain. To rebuild the storages will mean they take less water.
“This is going to be hard for those who are not accustomed to taking less in dry years, but the benefit of reaching a state-state deal is that if we’re able to do that, it provides an opportunity or a gradual and softer landing — and more likely federal dollars for those who need that support as they adapt to this reality.”
The upper basin, though, refuses to budge on the idea that it can develop all 7.5 million acre-feet of water apportioned it by the compact — if the water is there, of course.
In their January remarks, neither Lochhead nor Ostdiek offered thoughts about on-the-ground solutions. Ostdiek pointed to programs in both the upper and lower basin with varying success. In their defense, they only had an hour.
Can the lower-basin negotiators truly misunderstand Colorado’s position? Ken Neubecker, of Glenwood Springs, formerly of environmental groups, thinks so.
“They have been accustomed, some would say addicted, to the reliable delivery of stored water for all their needs since Hoover Dam was built and began releasing stored water some 90 years ago,” he wrote in a post on Substack. “Only until very recently, even in the face of an unrelenting drought, have they had to deal with shortages. For the Upper Basin, shortage is an annual reality.”
Arizona Navy photo via California State University
Rod Proffitt, from Pagosa Springs, (and a board member for Big Pivots) points to Arizona’s history of going to courts to resolve river issues. “They even sent out the National Guard one time” (in a dispute with California),” he observed. And now Arizona, more than any other state, has its back to the wall.
Phoenix had native water, but expansive growth, among the fastest in the nation, has been enabled by imported Colorado River water since the 1990s. Photo/Allen Best
Most instructive, at least as understanding Arizona, may be George Packer’s 25,000-word piece, “What Will Become of American Civilization,” in the July/August 2024 issue of The Atlantic. During the prior year, Packer had spent several weeks or more, winter and summer, primarily in the Phoenix metropolitan region, to analyze its politics and people.
Most perplexing, he found, was the perfervid belief in population and commercial expansion that defies limitations of a climate where a simple fall onto concrete during summer can produce second-degree burns.
Colorado, of course, has its own love of economic expansion. It is dwarfed by Arizona. The latter grew 824% in population from 1950 to 2016 while Colorado grew 318%.
Water is crucial to these expansions, and Arizona has tried to disregard limits. Packer explicitly uses “water” 158 times in his report and implicitly so elsewhere. He started out with a description of the Hohokam Indians and their water infrastructure that can still be seen in Phoenix. He barely mentioned climate change but did use “heat” 32 times. He talks about water for data centers and the suburban sprawl.
“Phoenix makes you keenly aware of human artifice—its ingenuity and its fragility,” he says.
We’ve seen the ingenuity of water delivery systems in the broader Colorado River Basin, a region that extends from Colorado’s borders with Nebraska and Kansas to the Pacific Ocean. We now understand the fragility, and it makes us very, very uncomfortable.
Anything that forces change can bring out our worst, but then sometimes it can bring out our best. Can it get any worse on the Colorado River?
And also:
The five alternatives
The Bureau of Reclamation issued five alternatives in its draft environmental impact statement for how it will operate Glen Canyon Dam. The federal government, said Lochhead, can only implement two of them.
The first two, said Lochhead, are deeply flawed: No action and the second would impose shortages on Arizona and Nevada approaching 7 million acre-feet. Both alternatives would almost certainly be challenged in court. Both would quickly result in Powell reaching deadpool with compact litigation and unspecified federal actions in the upper basin to protect Powell.
The three other alternatives contain the essential elements of an agreement among the states, he said, including up to four million acre-feet of shortages in the lower base, but not by priority, and leaving pools in the two big reservoirs for conserved water by both upper and lower basins.
“Not surprising, the alternatives with the highest shortages in the two basins and the greatest flexibility perform the best again potential hydrology that illustrates the magnitude of the problem we’re in, and the actions required by both upper and lower basins to address it,” he said. For any of this to work, he added, “we need long-term funding to mitigate the impacts and build resilience in both basins.
A brief recent history:
Lochhead also sketched a brief history of agreements during recent decades on the Colorado River. His excerpted comments follow:
This slide shows the combined contents of lakes Powell and Mead for the last 25 years juxtaposed against some of the key events and agreements that have occurred during that 25-year period.
Despite the best efforts of the states, reservoir levels have continued to decline over time. The states, though, have made important agreements and have significantly reduced uses in response to changing conditions on the river. But clearly, much more needs to be done.
Starting in the early 1990s we had 10 years of negotiations that led to Federal Surplus Guidelines in 2001. You can see, at the beginning of this century, the reservoirs were virtually full, and we were arguing about surpluses.
Those guidelines also contained a deadline for California to finalize and implement the Quantification Settlement Agreement among California agencies to define priorities and implement ag-urban transfers necessary to get California’s water use from 5.3 million acre-feet a year down to 4.4 million acre-feet a year. The negotiations were driven by the direct involvement and pressure from Secretary (Bruce) Babbitt and his team at the Department Interior. That’s a theme — federal pressure being necessary to agreements of the Basin States over the last 25 years.
The California agencies had to come together and agree on how they were going to reduce their use by 800,000 acre-feet. They couldn’t reach agreement, and so Interior imposed limitations on water use in the Imperial Valley, prompting litigation that was eventually settled in 2003.
Lochhead credited Interior Secretary Gayle Norton and Bennet Raley, the assistant secretary for water, for pushing California to this agreement. Both, incidentally, were Colorado natives, Norton from Denver’s northern suburbs and Raley from southwest Colorado. Upon Raleys’ departure from the Interior in 2004, the Los Angeles Times had this to say:
“Raley may be remembered best as the folksy but firm bureaucrat who finally made good on the federal government’s long-standing threat to put California on a water diet. He did it by forcing the state to agree to stop using more than its share of the Colorado River, freeing up water for other Western states.”
Despite the arguments about surplus waters in the 1990s, some observers could see troubles ahead of a river overcommitted. Troubles arrived in a big way with the water-poor year of 2002 — a runoff that may turn out better than this year’s.
Lochhead recalled that the upper-basin states, wanting to maintain storage in Lake Powell, asked the Interior Department — the operator of the dam — to release less than 8.23 million acre-feet from the reservoir. Lower-basin states, primarily Arizona, resisted. Difficult meetings ensued, litigation was threatened, legal war chests were readied — then Norton interceded, issuing a deadline by the end of 2007 for an agreement about lower basin shortage guidelines and operational guidelines for releases of water from Powell and Mead.
The states met that deadline — unlike those of the last year — and the guidelines helped. But, said Lochhead, they have proven, over time, to be inadequate. It seemed like every year we were one foot over or under, those triggers that caused distrust and accusations between the upper and lower basins of gaming the system.
Meanwhile, the river produced less than anybody had expected. The states agreed to additional interim measures, and they, too, proved inadequate.
In 2019, the states agreed to a drought contingency plan and drought response agreement, more interim measures designed to protect the system’s major reservoirs from falling to critically low levels. The lower-basin states agreed to plan that added an extra layer of protection. The goal was to maintain a half million acre-feet of water in Lake Mead.
Declines in lower basin
Lochhead showed a chart of water use in the lower basin but with caveats. It did not include the tributaries, including the Gila River —- a conversation unto itself. Nor does it show reservoir evaporations and losses, which add up to about 1.5 million acre-feet annually, what is often called the structural deficit.
The blue line at the top showed a significant reduction in use starting in 2001, then a fairly steady use of about 7.5 million acre-feet until about 2017, when withdrawals begin to drop due to shortages.
Uneven use in upper basin
The next slide showed the variations of use by the upper-basin states. The chart shows ups and downs, which can be attributed to wetter and dryer cycles. Overall, though, water use in the upper-basin states has remained fairly constant. Those uses, he added, do not include reservoir evaporation — because those losses are explicitly included in upper-basin consumptive use.
“Part of the argument, part of the confusion, comes from these different accounting methodologies in the upper and lower basins,” he said.
The upper basin has made a couple of arguments. One is that the upper basin has the right to develop more water, up to 7.5 million acre-feet, but also that hydrology is the limiting factor. Users suffer shortages every year. I’m not sure you can have both.”
Again, hydrology is the limiting factor.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The rules that control releases from Lake Powell and Lake Mead are very different. Lake Powell’s releases are determined by an Annual Operating Plan that has little flexibility during the year. Lake Mead’s releases change each month in response to changing delivery requirements to Lower Basin users. The impact of these different release rules on each reservoir’s storage was illustrated this autumn and early winter when Lake Powell steadily declined and Lake Mead steadily increased. The magnitude of Powell’s decline and Mead’s increase compensated for one another, and the total combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead did not change.
During the four months between October 1 and February 1, Lake Mead’s releases were reduced in response to decreasing Lower Basin demands, but Lake Powell’s releases were not similarly reduced. Lake Powell lost 615,000 af during the four-month study period, and Lake Mead gained the same amount.
On February 1, Lake Mead had 2,714,000 af more water than Lake Powell, the largest difference between the two reservoirs since April 2022.
Modest flood inflows in early October delayed drawdown of Lake Powell by six weeks. Releases during the four-month study period were the second smallest since at least 2010[1]. Releases from Lake Mead were the smallest since at least 2010. Despite the small inflows to Lake Mead, the increase in storage in Lake Mead during the study period was the largest since 2019.
The four-month delay in depletion of the combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead saved between 400,000 to 900,000 af.
Forecasts for spring snowmelt inflow to Lake Powell are not encouraging and have been declining all winter, because Rocky Mountain snowpack remains meager.
[1]We compared the inflows, outflows, changes in storage, and Lower Basin consumptive uses between 2010 and 2026.
Briefly
In mid-September 2025, we noted that if the 2026 snowmelt was as little as in 2025, the total realistically accessible combined storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs (hereafter referred to as Powell+Mead) would likely fall to less than 4 million acre-feet (af) by early autumn 2026, less than the 21st century minimum of March 2023. At the mid-point of winter 2025-2026, where do we stand?
Despite the bad news associated with this winter’s meager Rocky Mountain snowpack and the prospect of insignificant spring inflow to Lake Powell, unusually large autumn rainfall, alongside involuntary shortages and compensated system conservation efforts, reduced the need for deliveries to Lower Basin users, resulting in a significant increase in storage in Lake Mead that matched the drawdown of Lake Powell. As a result, total combined storage In Powell+Mead did not change in October, November, December, and January[1]. This is a helpful and important outcome.
Total inflow to Lake Powell and from sources between Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Mead totaled 1.72 million af during the four-month study period (Table 1). Outflows from Lake Mead, including consumptive use by Nevada and estimated evaporation losses from Lake Powell and Lake Mead, were 1.75 million af. Because the combined storage of Powell+Mead did not change, the Inflows and the outflows, including losses must have been equal. The small discrepancy between inflows and outflows from this two-reservoir system (last two rows of Table 1) remind us of the inherent uncertainty and imprecision of some measurements. In this case, the sources of uncertainty include unmeasured inflows, unmeasured gains and losses of bank storage, and uncertainty in measurements, especially of evaporation.
Table 1. Inflows, outflows, and evaporation losses in Powell+ Mead between October 1, 2025, and February 1, 2026. Blue colors highlight terms used to calculate inflows to the Powell+Mead system. Red colors highlight terms used to calculate outflows and losses from Powell+Mead.
Even though the total amount of water in Powel+Mead did not change, Lake Powell dropped and Lake Mead rose during the study period resulting in transfer of water from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. Lake Powell lost 615,000 af during the four-month study period, and Lake Mead gained the same amount. Autumn rains modestly augmented inflows to Lake Powell, and Reclamation significantly reduced releases at Hoover Dam, such that inflows and outflows to Powell+Mead approximately balanced each other.
On February 1, Lake Mead had 2,714,000 af more water than Lake Powell, the largest difference between the two reservoirs since April 2022[2] (Fig. 1). Divergence in the amount stored in each reservoir resulted from different operating rules. Releases from Lake Powell in the Upper Basin are established in an Annual Operating Plan intended to meet the Upper Basin’s delivery obligation to the Lower Basin. This plan has little flexibility to adjust releases in response to unexpected changes in inflow. In contrast, releases from Lake Mead are adjusted to the changing delivery requirements to Lower Basin users. As demand in the Lower Basin decreased in autumn and early winter, releases from Lake Mead were significantly reduced.
Figure 1. Graph showing active storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell since January 1, 2022.
Details
Although October flood inflows to Lake Powell were modest, this short period of augmented inflow delayed the long-term decline in storage by six weeks, an important respite for the reservoir. Inflow to Lake Powell from the Colorado River, the largest source of inflow, was only 75% of average in November, December, and January but exceeded the three-year average between October 12 and 19[3]. Inflow from the San Juan River, the second largest inflow source, exceeded the long-term daily average between October 11 and 22 and between November 15 and 24[4]. As a result, storage in Lake Powell increased by 105,000 af between October 9 and 20, the period when inflow exceeded reservoir release (Fig. 2). The rate of subsequent reservoir decline was much slower than the initial rise, and it was not until late November that Lake Powell returned to the elevation it had been just before the onset of the October floods.
Figure 2. Graph showing Lake Powell inflows and releases. Inflows were calculated as the sum of stream flow measured at USGS gages on the Colorado River above Gypsum Canyon, the Dirty Devil River above Poison Springs Wash, the Escalante River near Escalante, and the San Juan River near Bluff. Releases measured at Lees Ferry represent the sum of actual releases and ground-water seepage from Lake Powell.
The drop in Lake Powell that began in late October occurred despite Reclamation’s decision to delay release of approximately 600,000 af until summer 2026.[5] Total release from Lake Powell during the study period was 2.106 million af, the second smallest fall and early winter release since 2010 (Table 2).
Table 2. Releases from Lake Powell and inflow, change in storage, and releases from Lake Mead in October, November, December, and January.
1Colorado River at Lees Ferry 2Colorado River above Diamond Creek near Peach Springs 3Reclamation, Lower Basin Accounting Reports. Hydrodata for 2025-26.
Reclamation reduced releases from Lake Mead beginning in mid-November. In response, storage increased, because inflows exceeded releases (Fig. 3). Recovery of Lake Mead during these months was the largest since 2019 and was 5% greater than the median autumn and early winter recovery since 2010 (Table 2). Releases from Lake Mead were the smallest since at least 2010 and were 30% less than the median total release for those years. The increase in Lake Mead occurred despite the small releases from Lake Powell.
Figure 3. Graph showing Lake Mead inflows and releases since October 1, 2025. Inflows were calculated as the sum of stream flow measured at USGS gages of the Colorado River upstream from Diamond Creek, Diamond Creek, and the Virgin River downstream from Muddy Creek.
The small demand for water from Lake Mead was due to a combination of significantly reduced agricultural demand caused by abundant autumn precipitation in California’s Imperial and Coachella Valleys, the Yuma area, and elsewhere in Arizona and southeastern California as well as ongoing Lower Basin programs including involuntary shortage cuts (mostly) to Arizona, Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) contributions, and reductions in water use from compensated system conservation. Although agricultural consumptive use in Arizona and the Imperial Valley is always smallest between November and February, demand in fall 2025, especially in November, was unusually small (Table 3). Withdrawal of water by the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD) into the Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal and consumptive use by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) in November 2025 was less than in any previous November since at least 2010 and was 26% and 54% of the median November use[6], respectively, by those districts. Consumption in October and November by other Arizona users of mainstem Colorado River water was the second smallest since at least 1979 and CAWCD use in October was the second smallest since 1995. Only in 2024 was use less. Use by the Metropolitan Water District in January was the second smallest of the study period.
Table 3. Monthly consumptive use in parts of the Lower Basin in October, November, December, and January.
1Lowest monthly use since at least 2010 2 Second lowest monthly use since at least 2010 3Median monthly use computed for 2010-2026
A Bit of a Silver Lining
What was the significance of the four-month delay in depletion of Powell+Mead? Combined Powell+Mead storage increased between October 1 and February 1 twice since 2010, in the large runoff years of 2011 and 2019 (Table 4). In all other years, storage declined during these four months, and this year’s decrease of 200 af was the smallest decline among those 12 recent years of decline. The median drawdown of the 12 years of decline was 660,000 af and ranged between this year’s tiny drawdown and drawdown of more than 1 million af in 2012 and 2020. It is beyond the scope of this paper to estimate what the drawdown of Powell+Mead would have otherwise been, but a reasonable estimate of the water savings caused by the delayed drawdown of Powell+Mead this year is between 400,000 to 900,000 af[7]. To this small degree, the autumn rains and programs and policies to reduce Lower Basin demand allowed the Basin’s water managers to take one small step back from the edge of the cliff.
Table 4. Change in the combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead between October 1 and February 1 in indicated years.
1The combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead began to increase on January 13, 2016. Between October 1 and January 13, the two reservoirs lost 655,000 af.
But, the Bad News
Bad news looms in the future, especially for Lake Powell. The January 2026 24-Month Study’s most probable forecast predicts that in March 2027, storage in Lake Powell will drop to 4,382,000 af of active storage, of which only 150,000 af is realistically accessible (3 ft above reservoir elevation 3500 ft).[8] When Lake Powell is at or below elevation 3500 ft, reservoir releases are complicated by the risk of cavitation in the Glen Canyon Dam turbines and the inability to constantly use the river outlet works. Under the minimum probable inflow forecast, the predicted elevation of Lake Powell is 3476 ft in March 2027, an elevation in which no water could be released through the penstocks and no hydropower would be produced.
Even the minimum probable forecast may be overly optimistic, because the forecast for April – July unregulated inflow to Lake Powell has been progressively decreasing, because the winter’s snowpack remains meager. The Colorado River Basin Forecast Center’s official February 1 forecast is that the 50th percentile prediction (considered the most probable forecast) is 2.4 million af, significantly less than the January forecast of 3.65 million af (Fig. 4). The 90th percentile prediction (considered the minimum probable forecast) has dropped from 2.1 million af to 950,000 af. If the actual unregulated inflow were to be that of the minimum probable forecast, 2026 would replace 2002 as the lowest April to July inflow on record. Reclamation’s February 24-Month Study will be released in mid-February, and those results will certainly draw considerable attention.
Figure 4. Graph showing forecast of unregulated inflow to Lake Powell made by NOAA’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. The dark blue line is the median forecast. The downward trend of the forecast means that more recent forecasts are predicting smaller inflows to Lake Powell. The redlines are the official CBRFC forecasts that the USBR uses as input for the 24- Month Studies.
Unless the snowpack significantly improves between now and early April, Reclamation will have difficult choices to make. Ideally, the agency could use a combination of a large release from Flaming Gorge Reservoir coupled with an additional reduction in releases from Lake Powell to keep the elevation of Lake Powell above 3500 ft. Unless Flaming Gorge Reservoir releases are implemented using the Secretary of the Interior’s emergency authority, however, consultation and agreement with the Upper Basin states will be required. This was the strategy used in 2022, and Reclamation has indicated that even with a release of water from upstream reservoirs, there may still be a need for reductions in Lake Powell releases.[9] However, if the annual release from Lake Powell is reduced to 7 million af or less, the 10-year delivery of water from the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin will be less than what some states consider the delivery obligation of the Upper Basin (i.e., the Compact tripwire). In such a circumstance, interstate litigation might ensue.
Until basin-wide uses are reduced to meet the available supply, there are no good choices!
[1] Combined active storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell was 14,974,197 on October 1, 2025. Combined storage on February 1, 2026, was 14,973,991af. [2] The disparity between storage in the two reservoirs has continued to increase. On February 8, Lake Mead had 2,810,000 af more water in storage than Lake Powell. [3] Average flow of the Colorado River at Gypsum Canyon near Hite was calculated between June 30, 2023, and January 31, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-09328960/statistics/. [4] Average flow of the San Juan River near Bluff was calculated between October 30, 1914, and January 31, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-09379500/statistics/. [5] The goal of delayed release was to protect a target elevation at Lake Powell of 3525 feet. Adjustments to Glen Canyon Dam monthly releases were adjusted to hold back 598,000 af in Lake Powell between December 2025 and April 2026 (Reclamation, January 2026 24-Month Study). https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/24mo.pdf. [6] 2010-2025 [7] This is the interquartile range of the 12 years when Powell+Mead declined in storage. [8] For an explanation of “realistically accessible storage” see Schmidt et al., Analysis of Colorado River Basin Storage Suggests Need For Immediate Action, Sep. 11, 2025, https://www.inkstain.net/2025/09/analysis-of-colorado-river-basin-storage-suggests-need-for-immediate-action/. [9] Reclamation, 2024 SEIS ROD: Section 6(E) Monthly Meeting, Jan. 22, 2026.
Authors:
[1] Director, Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University, former Chief, Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center. [2] Retired General Manager, Colorado River Water Conservation District. [3] Getches-Wilkinson Center, University of Colorado Law School, former US Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission, former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, US Dept. of the Interior. [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.
You’ve seen that quote here before – and you’ll probably see it again; if this were a Wagnerian opera, that line would be a lietmotif, a recurring musical thread associated with a particular character or place or idea in the story being told musically. And who’s to say, ‘The Romance of the Colorado River,’ Frederick Dellenbaugh’s title, might make a grand opera.
But before launching into the next chapter in the ‘Romance of the Colorado River,’ there are some items of news to note. The no-news item of course continues to be the ongoing stalemate in the ongoing negotiations between the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins. On the eve of their Valentine’s Day deadline, there is talk of new ‘interim interim guidelines,’ two to five years, for at least a nominal state presence as the Bureau of Reclamation tries to keep the lights on and some water flowing.
The bigger news is the extent to which the Colorado River Basin continues this winter to experience the reality we have created: an ongoing anthropogenic ‘heat drought’ (February temperatures in the 50s to 8,000 feet elevation this past week), coupled with a ‘dry drought’ – probably also caused by anthropogenic warming-induced changes over the Pacific Ocean. Snowpacks in the mountains from whence the river’s waters flow range from 35 to 85 percent of normal in mid-February; we may be heading for new records in low runoff.
The biggest news, but probably less noted, is a new take on the larger reality we have created globally. Late in January, the United Nations headquarters came out with a fairly astounding announcement:
“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.” (Emphasis added)
This announcement was generally ignored, in the world’s morbid fascination over ‘what the Trumpsters are breaking today.’ But the scientists who generated this report claim that phrases like ‘water stress’ and ‘water crisis’ are too hopeful, suggesting deviations from a normalcy that we might somehow be able to get back to. Today, they say, ‘many rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands, and glaciers have been pushed beyond tipping points and cannot bounce back to past baselines.’ Bankruptcy.
A short list of global ‘hotspots’ included the American Southwest, where ‘the Colorado River and its reservoirs have become symbols of over-promised water,’ with no reasonable hope of ever fulfilling those promises. Nothing new there – but calling it a state of bankruptcy bumps the desperation level up a little.
Now, back to the ‘Romance of the Colorado River.’ Do remember that when we talk about ‘romancing’ here, we are not talking about a sappy love story; we are talking about people muscling up to take on a challenge that is beyond or below the mundanity of life. In the last post on this site, we looked at ‘the Colorado River and the Romance of Exploration.’ Dellenbaugh’s Romance of the Colorado River was published in 1903, and covered the adventures of everyone from the early Spanish conquistadores trying to sail up the river from its delta, to the trappers strip-mining the beavers from its upper tributaries, with a final focus on the explorations of John Wesley Powell who first sketch-mapped the unknown area between the upper river and the lower.
Dellenbaugh pulled no punches in describing his sense of the river and the challenge it represented. After noting in his introduction that ‘in every country, the great rivers have presented attractive pathways for interior exploration—gateways for settlement,’ serving as ‘friends and allies’ – he launches into his initial impressions of the Colorado River:
“By contrast, it is all the more remarkable to meet with one great river which is none of these helpful things, but which, on the contrary, is a veritable dragon, loud in its dangerous lair, defiant, fierce, opposing utility everywhere, refusing absolutely to be bridled by Commerce, perpetuating a wilderness, prohibiting mankind’s encroachments, and in its immediate tide presenting a formidable host of snarling waters whose angry roar, reverberating wildly league after league between giant rock-walls carved through the bowels of the earth, heralds the impossibility of human conquest and smothers hope.“
Opposing utility everywhere? Refusing absolutely to be bridled by Commerce? Heralding the impossibility of human conquest, smothering hope? Could he have said anything more stirring in throwing down the gauntlet to an adolescent civilization?
Dellenbaugh’s Romance does sort of follow the formula of today’s sappy romance novel, but on the grand scale of the romantic adventure: first you establish the object of the protagonist’s ‘dangerous’ love as arrogant or disturbed or otherwise undesirable or unattainable – but therefore… irresistibly attractive. Why are we drawn to such hard cases? Why wouldn’t we leave such an angry and extreme river alone, like countless generations of First Peoples had done, settling riparian along its tributaries and even the mainstream, but just living with the ‘veritable dragon’ as it was, and doing nothing to confront or challenge it? Or to bend it to their perceived needs? But we Euro-Americans are a civilization in which ‘love conquers all’ – or else. Love or its simulacra – lust for wealth, for power, for knowledge, whatever. Come not between a woman and her lust for impossible men – or a civilization and its lust for everything it doesn’t already control.
So it almost seems more destiny than coincidence that when Dellenbaugh wrapped up the ‘Romance of Exploration’ in 1903, that was also the year the U.S. Reclamation Service went to work, following the Reclamation Act of 1902, to reclaim and conserve the river.
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point. By Underwood & Underwood – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g04698. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3517191
We call Theodore Roosevelt ‘the father of American conservation,’ but he did not have the commonly accepted sense of conservation that we have today. Conservation to Roosevelt and his sidekick Gifford Pinchot was the full and efficient development of resources otherwise wasted. Freshwater running off to the ocean in an unmanageable spring flood was a prime example of profligate ‘waste’; they took it on through a Reclamation Service charged with working with farm communities, to develop irrigation systems to get water out of the rampant river and on to the dry land, thus conserving for human use both the land and water, each ‘useless’ until combined with the other.
The Reclamation Service was created as a division of the U.S. Geological Survey, which was still a bulwark of John Wesley Powell’s disciplined science in the otherwise freewheeling Interior Department, aka General Land Office, charged primarily with privatizing the public lands through the Homestead Act and other laws. From the start, the Reclamation Service was filled with idealistic young engineers infused with the spirit of Rooseveltian conservation – the kind of idealism that could gradually transmogrify into the unconscious arrogance of those who Know They Are Doing Good and are therefore Always Right.
Their idealism is reflected in an article written in 1918 by C.J. Blanchard of the U.S. Reclamation Service, for The Mentor, an educational publication:
“A vein of romance runs through every form of human endeavor…. In the desert romance finds its chief essentials in adventure, courage, daring and self-sacrifice. For more than half a century man has been writing a romance of compelling interest upon the face of the dusty earth. Irrigation, with Midas’ touch, has changed the desert’s frown to smiling vistas of verdure.“
In a section titled ‘The Romance of Reclamation,’ Blanchard described the reclamation engineers as men not concerned about ‘large emoluments, for government salaries are notoriuously meager’; instead, ‘as they toiled in the fastness of mountains, an abysmal canyons or far out in the voiceless desert, through the blazing heat of the Southwest or the fierce blizzards of the northern plains, this thought was uppermost, “By this work we shall make the desert bloom.”’
But the reclamation engineers quickly found working at the farm end of irrigation systems drawing water from the wildly varying flows of the Colorado River frustrating at best, impossible at worst. And they were engineers, not scientists – engineers with a brave new world of technology unfolding; fellow engineers were building the Panama Canal (1904-1914) using steam trains and steam shovels that could move more dirt in an hour than a hundred farmers with shovels could move in a day. Scientists just figure out how the world works; engineers figure out how to make it work better. (or so they hope).
So within their first half-decade the Reclamation Service engineers were drawn toward larger projects that, in effect, would ‘correct’ the inefficiency and maddening variability of the river: the Roosevelt Dam up in the Salt River canyons storing the spring flood for release to irrigators throughout the whole growing season; a concrete weir dam all the way across the lower Colorado River to keep the late summer flows up to the headgate of the Laguna Irrigation Project near Yuma; a five-mile tunnel from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River to the water-short (or over-developed) Uncompahgre Valley – all three projects begun in 1905-6.
Gunnison Tunnel via the National Park Service
Evolving concrete technology, and the evolving internal combustion engine made them dream of even larger projects, addressing all the natural challenges posed by Dellenbaugh’s ‘veritable dragon.’ In 1907 the Reclamation Service separated from the U.S. Geological Survey and became an independent bureau in the Department of Interior. This separation was more than just a name change; they also began to work independently of John Wesley Powell’s scientific rigor practiced in the Geological Survey.
U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist Eugene Clyde La Rue takes notes (top) while in camp on Diamond Creek, a tributary to the Colorado River in Arizona, in 1923. La Rue (bottom; standing in water) measures river discharge along Havasu Creek, another tributary in Arizona, also in 1923. Click image for larger version. Credit: Both: U.S. Geological Survey
This became a background issue when the seven states of the Colorado River Basin gathered in 1922 to try to work out an equitable division of the river among themselves. Knowledge of the actual flow of the river was sketchy. Rough measures of the flow at a Yuma gauge only went back to the mid-1890s, and gave an average in the wild annual fluctuations of just under 18 million acre-feet (maf). But a Geological Survey scientist, E. C. LaRue, had studied tree rings and other evidence, and argued that the river was just in a very wet spell, that the longer-term average flow of the river was probably well under 15 maf, maybe as low as 10-12 maf (what it appears to be today). He also cautioned that extensive storage in desert reservoirs would exact a large toll in reservoir evaporation; there would be more water available for use, but the tradeoff would be less water overall.
LaRue – John Wesley Powell’s kind of scientist – offered to consult with the Compact Commission; but nobody really wanted to hear what he was known for saying, and his offer was ignored by Chairman Herbert Hoover (an engineer). But a constant advisory presence at the compact planning meetings was Reclamation Commissioner Arthur Powell Davis, another engineer and an active participant in discussion leading to the commission accepting the Bureau figures, and deciding that a ‘temporary equitable division’ of 15 maf between an upper and lower basin was a reasonably conservative division, leaving enough uncommitted water for ‘those men who may come after us, possessed of a far greater fund of information, [to] make a further division of the river.’
Current water mavens Eric Kuhn and John Fleck wrote a well-researched book,Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River, detailing this decision to ignore solid USGS science in drafting the compact. A more mythic summary of what happened probably lies in desert poet Mary Austin’s recollection of a legend about the Hassayampa River, a Colorado River tributary; if anyone drinks its water, according to the legend, they will ‘no more see fact as naked fact, but all radiant with the color of romance.’ Whatever was in the Hassayampa’s water may have infiltrated the entire Colorado River in the 20th century.
Basically, the Bureau of Reclamation, with all the emerging technology and its vision of ‘making the desert bloom,’ was itching to take on the ‘veritable dragon.’ The ‘Romance of Exploration’ had uncovered a rampaging river whose waters were needed for American advancement; the ‘Romance of Conquest’ was the obvious next step, and science just based on the ‘naked facts’ no longer seemed to dictate the limits of the possible. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. That may not have been so baldly stated until 2004, but it was the driving theme of the 20th century – first in America, then globally.
President Franklin Roosevelt at dedication of Boulder (now Hoover) Dam, September 30, 1935
The Romance of Conquest began with the three 1905-6 projects, but shifted into high gear with the Boulder Canyon Project, created by Congress in 1929 following ratification of the Colorado River Compact – almost simultaneously with the onset of the Great Depression. The Project became practically the nation’s only bright light in the early 1930s, and became a template for much of Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal.’
The centerpiece of the Boulder Canyon Project was Hoover Dam, the largest dam project ever undertaken anywhere, capable of storing almost two years of the river’s flow, and as it released water on demand from the ‘desert bloomers’ downstream, it would generate enough electricity to handle most of the Southwest’s power demand at that time. But while the big dam was being built, the Bureau was also building the Imperial Weir Dam 180 miles downstream, to diverting more than three million acre-feetof water into the All-American Canal for an 80-mile trip to the Imperial Valley where crops could be grown year round. And between those two huge works, the Bureau was also overseeing construction of Parker Dam (not officially part of the Boulder Canyon Project) to pool up water for a 250-mile aqueduct a Metropolitan Water District was building to carry domestic water to California’s burgeoning south coast cities.
All of that was completed by 1941 – a massive coordinated regional development: food, water and power for cities that quickly became an industrial force in the winning of World War II. And it was all done on budget, and on time, organized by an agency created only forty years earlier to help small new farming communities build local irrigation systems.
And I’m going to pause there, at the moment of the Bureau’s triumph, and pick up the rest of the story of the Romance of Conquest in the next post here. Stay tuned.
The California Aqueduct, San Joaquin Valley, California. Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast for the Colorado River predicts Lake Powell will “most probably” drop below the critical minimum power pool level before the end of this year, jeopardizing Glen Canyon Dam’s structural integrity. In the worst-case scenario, it would do so before summer’s end. This could force the feds to operate the dam as a “run-of-the-river” operation to preserve the dam’s infrastructure and hydropower output, which would significantly diminish downstream flows and threaten Lower Basin water supplies.
Lake Powell could receive only half the normal amount of water from upstream rivers and streams this year, according to a recent federal study.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation releases a monthly study that forecasts good, bad and most likely storage conditions for the Colorado River Basin’s key reservoirs over the next two years. The February forecast expects about 52%, or about 5 million acre-feet, of the normal amount of water to flow into Lake Powell by September. The more grim outlook says Powell’s inflows could be 3.52 million acre-feet or 37% of the average from 1991 to 2020.
It’s enough to spike concerns about hydropower generation at Glen Canyon Dam — which controls releases from Powell — prompt discussions about emergency releases from upstream reservoirs and trigger federal actions to slow the pace of water out of the reservoir.
“I think they’re going to be nervous about operating the turbines,” said Eric Kuhn, former general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District.
In January, about 79% of the 30-year average flowed into Lake Powell — which is on the Utah-Arizona border — from upstream areas of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, according to the federal February 24-month study, released Friday.
The February projections also showed even less water flowing into Lake Powell, a decline of about 1.5 million acre-feet since January.
The Colorado River Basin, which provides water to 40 million people, has been plagued by a 25-year drought that drained its main reservoirs — the largest in the nation — to historic lows amid unyielding human demands.
And that stress is going to continue. The most probable forecast shows nothing but below-average flows in February — 71% of the 30-year average — and for April through July, when flows are likely to be 38% of the norm.
Feds take action to boost Powell
Upstream states like Colorado do not get a drop of water from Lake Powell, Kuhn said. Coloradans rely mostly on local reservoirs to help pace the spring runoff and support year-round water use.
But the reservoir’s status can impact whether upstream reservoirs, like Flaming Gorge in Wyoming and Blue Mesa in Colorado, will have to make emergency releases to elevate water levels in Lake Powell.
In response to the dry and warm winter, the federal government is trying to keep the water in the reservoir above certain critical water levels, according to the study.
At 3,490 feet in elevation, Glen Canyon Dam can no longer send Powell’s water through its penstocks and turbines to generate hydroelectric power — that would remove a cheap, renewable and reliable power source for communities across the West.
Lake Powell is projected to drop below the critical elevation by December, or as soon as August in one scenario, according to the 24-month study.
Federal officials are likely to call for emergency water releases from upstream reservoirs to keep Powell’s water level from falling to that point. They’re working to maintain a cushion by keeping Powell’s water level above 3,525 feet, or at the very least 3,500 feet in elevation, according to the study.
Lake Powell’s elevation was just over 3,532 feet as of Monday, but it’s expected to drop to 3,497 feet by Sept. 30 under the most likely forecast. (The minimum forecast puts it closer to 3,469 feet.)
Putting himself in the Bureau of Reclamation’s shoes, Kuhn would be looking upstream to fill that gap.
“Where do they plan for it?” he said. “I would be looking to get a lot of water if I’m going to keep Lake Powell above 3,500. … 3,525 may not be possible. There just may not be enough water in the system.”
Facing new lows
That is partly because the Bureau of Reclamation is required by a 2007 agreement, which expires this fall, to release certain amounts of water each year based on reservoir elevations. Replacing these rules is the focus of ongoing high-stakes — and deadlocked — negotiations among states.
Powell’s releases are expected to be 7.48 million acre-feet between Oct. 1, 2025, and Sept. 30, according to the February 24-month study.
To try to keep reservoir levels up, the Bureau of Reclamation has adjusted its normal releases since December to keep about 600,000 acre-feet of water in the reservoir. That water will eventually be released downstream as required by the 2007 rules.
Federal officials could also release less than 7.48 million acre-feet this year to keep more water in Lake Powell, according to the study. A 2024 short-term agreement allows the officials to release as little as 6 million acre-feet of water this year to avoid Lake Powell falling below 3,500 feet.
Lake Powell’s lowest release was about 2.43 million acre-feet in 1964, when the reservoir was first being filled. Since 2000, when the basin dipped into the ongoing 25-year drought, Powell’s average annual release has been 8.69 million acre-feet, according to The Sun’s analysis of water release data.
“I don’t think they’re going to release 7.48 this year. I think they have to cut the flow down to 7 (million acre-feet) or even below,” Kuhn said.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast for the Colorado River predicts Lake Powell will “most probably” drop below the critical minimum power pool level before the end of this year, jeopardizing Glen Canyon Dam’s structural integrity. In the worst-case scenario, it would do so before summer’s end. This could force the feds to operate the dam as a “run-of-the-river” operation to preserve the dam’s infrastructure and hydropower output, which would significantly diminish downstream flows and threaten Lower Basin water supplies.
Valentines Day wasn’t so lovey-dovey on the Colorado River.
First, the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) released a grimmer-than-ever spring runoff forecast for the Colorado River and its two big reservoirs. Then the seven Colorado River Basin states announced that they once again had failed to reach an agreement on a plan to bring demand into line with diminishing supplies by the Feb. 14 deadline. While the states have blown by other deadlines since negotiations began in 2022, this time was different in that it triggered the federal government to move forward to impose a post-2026 management plan of its own.
On paper, the states still have until the end of the water year, or Oct. 1, to come up with a deal or to implement an alternate plan. But that may be too little too late to keep Lake Powell’s surface level from dropping below minimum power pool — otherwise known as de facto dead pool — later this year. While the negotiations are over the Colorado River, or rather the water in the river, in many ways they pivot around the need to keep Lake Powell’s surface level above 3,500 feet in elevation. That can only be done by releasing less water out of Glen Canyon Dam, or increasing flows into the reservoir, or a bit of both.
The sticking point in the negotiations hinges upon whether the Upper Basin states will take mandatory and verifiable cuts in water use. The Lower Basin states have already taken cuts, and have agreed to take more, but only if the Upper Basin does the same.
The Upper Basin (aka the Headwaters states) points out that while the Lower Basin has maxed out and even exceeded its Colorado River Compact allocation of 7.5 million acre-feet per year, the Upper Basin hasn’t even come close to using all of the water it’s entitled to. Furthermore, Upper Basin water users, especially those with more junior water rights, have grappled with drastic reductions during dry years because the Upper Basin lacks large reservoirs for storing water, meaning their water use is dictated in large part by the rivers’ flows. In 2021, for example, many southwestern Colorado farms had their ditches cut off as early as June, forcing them to sit the season out.
The Lower Basin states long used their entire 7.5 MAF allocation and then some, while the Upper Basin states use only about 4 MAF per year. In recent years, Arizona and California have cut consumptive use. Source: Bureau of Reclamation.
It’s also far simpler logistically to reduce consumption in the Lower Basin, where huge water users are served by a handful of very large diversions, such as the Central Arizona Project canal (which carries water to Phoenix and Tucson), the All-American Canal (serving the Imperial Irrigation District — the largest single water user on the entire river), and the California Aqueduct (serving Los Angeles and other cities), all of which are fed by Lake Mead and other reservoirs. Dialing back those three diversions alone could achieve the necessary water use reduction. The Upper Basin, on the other hand, pulls water from the river and its tributaries via hundreds of much smaller diversions; achieving meaningful cuts would require shutting off thousands of irrigation ditches to thousands of small water users under dubious authority. (ed. emphasis mine]
Also, proposals to divert and consume more of the Colorado River’s water — such as the Lake Powell pipeline — remain on the table, albeit tenuously. If that project were to be realized, which is a big if these days, it would further drain Lake Powell and result in even less water flowing down to the Lower Basin.
The Imperial Irrigation District is the largest single water user on the Colorado River by far. Most of that water goes to irrigating agriculture, including a fair amount of alfalfa and other forage crops. Las Vegas uses about one-tenth the amount of water as the IID. Source: Bureau of Reclamation.
Environmental groups tend to side with the Lower Basin on this issue. If the Upper Basin is forced to pull less water from the river, it would leave more water for the river, riparian ecosystems along the river, and aquatic critters. The Upper Basin’s proposal to release a percentage of the river’s “natural flow” from Glen Canyon Dam would leave less water in the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, possibly imperiling endangered fish and rafting.
Meanwhile, the states’ lack of consensus pushes Glen Canyon Dam closer to the brink of deadpool.
The BoR’s “Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead” offers five alternative scenarios for how to run the river. While it doesn’t give a “preferred” alternative, officials have indicated that without all of the states’ approval or congressional action, they are only authorized to go with the Basic Coordination Alternative. That would include a minimum annual release of 7.0 million acre-feet from Glen Canyon Dam, with the largest mandatory cuts being borne by Arizona. But according to the BoR’s latest 24 month projection, that release level would lead to Lake Powell’s surface level dropping below minimum power pool by the end of this year, which is a really big problem.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
Back in 2022, as climate change continued to diminish the Colorado River’s flows and Lake Powell shrunk to alarmingly low levels, the dam’s operators were faced with the prospect of having to shut down the penstocks, or water intakes for the hydroelectric turbines, and only release water from the river outlets lower on the dam. Not only would this zero out electricity production from the dam, along with nixing up to $200 million in revenue from selling that power, it might also compromise the dam itself. “Glen Canyon Dam was not envisioned to operate solely through the outworks for an extended period of time,” wrote Tanya Trujillo, then-Interior Department assistant secretary for water and science, in 2022, “and operating at this low lake level increases risks to water delivery and potential adverse impacts to downstream resources and infrastructure. … Glen Canyon Dam facilities face unprecedented operational reliability challenges.”
In March 2024, a BoR technical decision memorandum verified and clarified those risks, and recommended that dam operators “not rely on the river outlet works as the sole means for releasing water from Glen Canyon Dam.”
The only way to do that is to keep the water level above 3,490 feet in elevation, which could mean shifting Glen Canyon Dam to a run of the river operation — where releases equal Lake Powell inflows minus evaporation and seepage — as soon as this fall. That, most likely, will lead to annual releases far below 7 million acre-feet, which will then lead to Lake Mead’s level being drawn down considerably as the Lower Basin states rely on existing storage to meet their needs, thereby threatening Lower Basin supplies. Such a scenario is clearly not sustainable, would put the Upper Basin states in violation of the Colorado River Compact1, and would almost certainly lead to litigation.
An irony here is that Glen Canyon Dam’s primary purpose is to allow the Upper Basin to store water during wet years and release it during dry years, enabling it to meet its Compact obligations. Hydropower, silt control, and recreation were secondary purposes. Now the need to preserve the dam could cause the Upper Basin to run afoul of the Compact. Aridification is rendering the dam obsolete, at least as a water storage savings account. Meanwhile, low levels are diminishing hydropower and recreation. It seems that soon, the dam’s main purpose will be to prevent Lake Mead from filling up with silt. [ed. emphasis mine]
Mother Nature, or Mother Megadrought, if you prefer, has left few options for moving forward. The states still could come to an agreement, but it’s difficult to see how, given the long-running stalemate so far. The feds could reengineer Glen Canyon Dam to allow for sustained, low-water releases. That would only be a temporary fix, however, unless climatic trends reverse themselves and the West suddenly becomes much wetter and cooler. Somehow, that doesn’t seem too likely.
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Is all of this Colorado River talk a bit confusing? Do you find yourself lost in the water-wonk weeds? Yeah, me too. That’s why I put together the Land Desk’s Colorado River glossary and primer. It’s not behind the paywall yet, so even you free-riders can take a look for the next few days. It’s worth looking at even if you already received the email edition last month, because it is now updated with new terms and more graphics (it didn’t all fit in the email version). I’ll keep updating it, too, as new questions about what it all means come up. And if you’re not already, you should consider becoming a paid subscriber and break down the archive paywall, allowing you to read the whole list of analysis, commentary, and data dumps I’ve done on the Colorado River over the last five years.
1 The Upper Basin and Lower Basin generally disagree on how to interpret the Colorado River Compact’s provision dictating that the Upper Basin “not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75 million acre-feet” for any 10-year period. The Upper Basin sees it as a “non-depletion obligation,” meaning they can’t exceed their 7.5 MAF/year allocation if it causes the Lee Ferry flow to fall below a 7.5 MAF/year average. The Lower Basin believes it’s a “delivery obligation,” and that the Upper Basin must deliver 7.5 MAF/year no matter what. Which interpretation is correct determines whether run-of-the-river would violate the Compact or not.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
The Government Highline Canal, near Grand Junction, delivers water from the Colorado River, and is managed by the Grand Valley Water Users Association. Prompted by concerns about outside investors speculating on Grand Valley water, the state convened a work group to study the issue. CREDIT: BRENT GARDNER-SMITH/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
February 17, 2026
Negotiators from the seven states along the Colorado River blew past yet another federal deadline over the weekend without reaching a compromise on how to share its water — even as this winter’s dismal snowpack could spell immediate disaster for the river system.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map February 18, 2026.
Years-long discussions about how to split the river’s shrinking water supply, which is relied upon by 40 million people, remained deadlocked as the Saturday deadline for a final deal came and went. It was a deadline set by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The seven basin states are split into two factions that have not agreed on how to divvy up cuts to water supplies in dry years. The Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada lie downstream of Lakes Powell and Mead and rely on releases from those reservoirs for water. The Upper Basin states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — are upstream of the reservoirs and primarily depend on mountain snowpack for their water supplies. Leaders from each basin pointed fingers at the other as the deadline passed. Lower Basin negotiators have repeatedly said that Upper Basin states must “share the pain” and take mandatory cuts in dry years, which have become increasingly common in recent decades. But the Upper Basin states say their water users already take cuts every year because their supplies depend on the amount of water available and are not propped up by supplies in Lakes Powell and Mead. Repeated overuse in the Lower Basin has drained the two reservoirs, they’ve argued.
“We’re being asked to solve a problem we didn’t create with water we don’t have,” Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, said in a statement Friday. “The Upper Division’s approach is aligned with hydrologic reality and we’re ready to move forward.”
The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest forecast for the Colorado River predicts Lake Powell will “most probably” drop below the critical minimum power pool level before the end of this year, jeopardizing Glen Canyon Dam’s structural integrity. In the worst-case scenario, it would do so before summer’s end. This could force the feds to operate the dam as a “run-of-the-river” operation to preserve the dam’s infrastructure and hydropower output, which would significantly diminish downstream flows and threaten Lower Basin water supplies.
As political leaders unleashed a series of pointed statements Friday, the Bureau of Reclamation released new projections that show one of the river system’s major reservoirs could be in peril as soon as this summer. The bureau’s new projections show that, if drought conditions remain dire, Lake Powell could fall so low by the end of July that water would no longer flow through Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower system — a level called “dead pool.” Even if snow conditions improve, the reservoir could still reach dead pool in November — a scenario the bureau dubbed its most probable outcome. The Colorado River District, an agency created by the Colorado legislature that’s based in Glenwood Springs and advocates for Western Slope water needs, said it was disappointing that Lower Basin negotiators walked away from discussions on the day the projections were released.
“With Lake Powell now quickly approaching dead pool, that decision reflects a continued disconnect from hydrologic reality and a clear refusal to confront the core problem: longstanding Lower Basin overuse,” the district said Monday in a statement.
Snowpack across the mountains that feed the Colorado River remained dismal in early February. Above Lake Powell, snowpack on Feb. 1 sat at 47% of the median recorded for that time of year between 1991 and 2020. The water year — which began Oct. 1 — has so far featured record-setting warmth and limited precipitation, according to the National Weather Service’sColorado Basin River Forecast Center. That could translate to water supplies at 38% of normal, according to the center. Current projections show inflow into Lake Powell will total a meager 2.4 million acre-feet — far less than the 7.5 million acre-feet allocated to the Lower Basin in the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
In the 1950s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built the Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal dams west of Gunnison as part of the massive regional Colorado River Storage Project. The Bureau of Reclamation is currently in the process of replacing all four original valves at Blue Mesa Dam for the first time. (Photos/National Park Service)
For the first time since its completion in 1966, the Bureau of Reclamation is replacing all four original valves at Blue Mesa Dam, the largest of the three dams that make up the Aspinall Unit on the Gunnison River. This multi-year, $32 million federally funded project is a major milestone in ensuring the reliability and safety of one of Colorado’s most important water and power facilities.
Standing 390 feet tall, Blue Mesa Dam creates Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water in Colorado, with a capacity of nearly 941,000 acre-feet. Together with Morrow Point and Crystal dams, the Aspinall Unit provides water storage, flood control and hydropower generation. Blue Mesa’s power plant alone produces 86 megawatts of electricity, helping power homes and businesses across the region.
Crews help guide the removed ring follower gate to a flatbed truck so it can be transported to California for refurbishment. Reclamation photo
The project will replace two ring follower gate valves and two butterfly valves, critical components that control how water moves through Blue Mesa Dam.
Ring follower gates, located in the dam’s outlet works, allow water to bypass the turbines during maintenance or emergencies, ensuring uninterrupted flows to the Gunnison River.
Butterfly valves, located inside the penstocks, act as flow-control and isolation devices for water entering the turbines to generate hydropower.
Work began in January with the removal of the first ring follower gate, a massive assembly measuring 18 feet long by 7 feet wide and weighing about 14 tons. The hydraulic hoist system adds another 12 tons. Before safely removing the gate, crews first installed a blind flange, a heavy steel plate that temporarily seals the opening and holds back water.
The gate and its components are now in California for refurbishment and will return for installation in August. Later this fall, once irrigation demands ease, the blind flange will be removed and normal operations restored. After this first gate is complete, crews will move on to the second ring follower gate, followed by the two butterfly valves.
“This work is complex,” said Blue Mesa Plant Supervisor Eric Langely. “We must maintain minimum river flows downstream, avoid disruptions at Morrow Point and Crystal dams, and manage drought-related constraints—all while working inside a dam built nearly 60 years ago.”
The project is being led by a skilled team of Reclamation engineers, plant operators, and technical specialists. Their expertise ensures this upgrade will keep Blue Mesa Dam operating safely and efficiently for decades to come.
Crews weld the temporary blind flange into place inside Blue Mesa’s penstock. Courtesy photo/USBR)
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral.com website (Branson Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
February 13, 2026
Key Points
The seven Colorado River Basins states failed to reach a shortage-sharing agreement in time for a Feb. 14 deadline set by the federal government.
State officials say negotiations have yielded “almost no headway” toward a compromise over who will give up water.
The Interior Department has said it will impose its own plan, but that prospect could trigger a lengthy legal battle as states move to protect their water allocations.
The prospect of a costly and prolonged interstate lawsuit over rights to the Colorado River looms now that the states using the water are blowing past a Valentine’s Day deadline with no water-sharing deal in hand. With no agreement among the states, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the federal government could no longer delay action and would move forward with work on a set of alternatives outlined late last year.
“Negotiation efforts have been productive,” Burgum said in a statement Feb. 14. “We have listened to every state’s perspective and have narrowed the discussion by identifying key elements and issues necessary for an agreement. We believe that a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach.”
[…]
The dispute has largely hinged on whether states in the headwaters region would agree to mandatory cuts [ed. no one has the authority to order mandatory cuts in Colorado and likely in the entire upper basin] to their overall supply in especially dry years — a commitment they have so far rejected in part because they do not use their full allocation as the more developed Southwest does…
“As I talk with people throughout Southern Nevada, I hear their frustration that years of negotiations have yielded almost no headway in finding a path through these turbulent waters. As someone who has spent countless nights and weekends away from my family trying to craft a reasonable, mutually acceptable solution only to be confronted by the same tired rhetoric and entrenched positions,” [John] Entsminger said, “I share that frustration.”
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has released a February 24-month study showing inflow to Lake Powell declining by 1.5 million acre-feet since January as the federal agency highlights the worsening hydrologic conditions across the Colorado River Basin.
The study of the most probable forecast for the Colorado River under current conditions was released on Friday, just as the seven compact states remained at a stalemate and failed to meet a Feb. 14 deadline for agreement on how to reduce their own usage of water to save the river.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Saturday, Feb. 14, that the federal government is moving forward with finalizing operating guidelines for the Colorado River reservoirs by Oct. 1. His announcement adds pressure to Colorado and the other compact states to find compromise or face guidelines forced onto them by the federal government.
“While the seven Basin States have not reached full consensus on an operating framework, the Department cannot delay action,” the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said in its announcement that the federal government was moving forward.
Colorado River Basin. Credit: USGS
The lack of agreement among the compact states and the idea of federal intervention raises the prospect of litigation that would be drawn out and ultimately end with the U.S. Supreme Court. The current Rio Grande Compact dispute between Texas and New Mexico that has taken 12 years to reach a proposed settlement, now filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, gives an indication to the slow-evolving nature of U.S. water law.
“I am disappointed that the seven Basin States could not reach a consensus agreement on the future management of the Colorado River by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Feb. 14 deadline,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who added that Colorado is prepared for litigation to protect Colorado’s rights and interests.
“Colorado will continue to work with our fellow Upper Division States to provide comments on the federal government’s draft environmental impact statement, which sets forth a range of possible solutions. The Upper Division States will have to cut back their usage of water from the Colorado River — by 40 percent or more — in the face of an historic drought,” he said.
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper said the low snowpack this winter is adding an exclamation point to the dire conditions of the Colorado River Basin. “If we don’t address this problem together — head-on and fast — our communities, farms, and economies will suffer,” Hickenlooper said.
“The best path forward is the one we take together. Litigation won’t solve the problem of this long-term aridification. No one knows for sure how the courts could decide and the math will only get worse.”
BLM’s February 24-month study shows a loss of 1.5 million acre-feet is equivalent to approximately 50 feet in elevation in Lake Powell.
“The basin’s poor hydrologic outlook highlights the necessity for collaboration as the Basin States, in collaboration with Reclamation, work on developing the next set of operating guidelines for the Colorado River system,” said Acting BLM Commissioner Scott Cameron. “Available tools will be utilized and coordination with partners will be essential this year to manage the reservoirs and protect infrastructure.”
The water year inflow is now estimated at just 52 percent of average, and as a result, the February 24-Month Study projects, for the first time, that Lake Powell could decline (based on most probable projections) to:
“The basin’s poor hydrologic outlook highlights the necessity for collaboration as the Basin States, in collaboration with Reclamation, work on developing the next set of operating guidelines for the Colorado River system,” said Acting BLM Commissioner Scott Cameron. “Available tools will be utilized and coordination with partners will be essential this year to manage the reservoirs and protect infrastructure.”
The water year inflow is now estimated at just 52 percent of average, and as a result, the February 24-Month Study projects, for the first time, that Lake Powell could decline (based on most probable projections) to:
3,490 ft – minimum power pool in December 2026; below this level Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to release water is reduced and it can no longer produce hydropower.
3,476 ft – in March 2027; the lowest elevation on record since filling further constraining the ability to release water from Glen Canyon Dam.
Colorado River managers estimate that around 4 million acre-feet of cuts are needed to bring the basin back into balance – an amount equal to more than a quarter of the Colorado River’s annual average flow.
“There needs to be unbelievably harsh, unprecedented cuts,” Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Center, told The Guardian media outlet.
“Mother Nature is not going to bail us out,” Udall said.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Flows in the Colorado River are down 20 percent over the last century and precipitation has shrunk by about 7 percent with rising temperatures as aridification takes hold across the southwest.
“The chickens are coming home to roost,” Udall said. “Climate models have underestimated how much warming we are going to get, and humans are not stepping up.”
Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, likened the negotiations among the seven compact states to the final scene in “Thelma and Louise.” “Seven people have their hands on the steering wheel driving toward the edge of a cliff — and no one is working the brakes,” he reportedly said.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
The Department of the Interior is moving forward with the Post-2026 NEPA process to finalize operating guidelines for Colorado River reservoirs by Oct. 1, 2026. While the seven Basin States have not reached full consensus on an operating framework, the Department cannot delay action. Meeting this deadline is essential to ensure certainty and stability for the Colorado River system beyond 2026.
“Negotiation efforts have been productive; we have listened to every state’s perspective and have narrowed the discussion by identifying key elements and issues necessary for an agreement. We believe that a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. “I want to thank the governors of the seven Basin States for their constructive engagement and commitment to collaboration. We remain dedicated to working with them and their representatives to identify shared solutions and reduce litigation risk. Additionally, we will continue consultations with Tribal Nations and coordinate with Mexico to ensure we are prepared for Water Year 2027.”
Prolonged drought conditions over the past 25 years and the most recent forecast showing inflow to Lake Powell declining by 1.5 million acre-feet since January underscore the ongoing challenges. The inflow reduction could result in Lake Powell dropping to an extremely low level, threatening water delivery and power generation.
The Colorado River is managed and operated under compacts, federal laws, court decisions and decrees, contracts and guidelines known collectively as the “Law of the River.” This apportions the water and regulates the use and management of the river among the seven Basin States – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – and Mexico. The Colorado River Compact is the cornerstone of the “Law of the River.” The 1944 Treaty with Mexico governs the sharing of the Colorado River between the two nations.
The Colorado River is a vital resource as it provides economic stability and enhances the quality of life across the basin. The river:
provides water to approximately 40 million people for municipal use.
supports the generation of hydroelectric energy, producing more than 8 billion kilowatt-hours annually powering the needs of approximately 700,000 homes.
sustains 5.5 million acres of farmland and agricultural communities where a significant share of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the United States are grown.
serves as a vital resource for 30 Tribal Nations and two Mexican states.
supports seven National Wildlife Refuges, four National Recreation Areas, and 11 National Parks.
“Through collaboration among the Department and Reclamation, states, Tribal Nations, Mexico and other key partners, we can create more opportunities for innovation and develop stronger tools to address drought and growing water demands,” said Assistant Secretary – Water and Science Andrea Travnicek. “Working together ensures that we combine expertise and resources to build solutions that benefit everyone and secure the future of the Colorado River.”
To learn more about this initiative, please visit the Colorado River Post-2026 website.
Meadows in north Routt County, Colorado, were bare in spots on Feb. 9 after a slow start to this winter’s snowpack. Scott Franz/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Scott Franz):
February 13, 2026
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
Jay Fetcher and other ranchers in northwest Colorado measure snowpack each winter using their barbed wire stock fences.
A healthy level is called a three wire winter, when the snow piles up past the third wire above the ground. But on Feb. 9, the region was experiencing a zero wire winter.
“We just have no snow, and I have never seen it, in my 75 years here, I have never seen this,” Fetcher said Monday as he navigated patches of mud on his ranch in the Elk River valley north of Steamboat Springs.
Jay Fetcher poses on his ranch in northwest Colorado on Feb. 9. Low snowpack is adding pressure to negotiations on how to conserve the dwindling Colorado River. Scott Franz/KUNC
Many of the hills and meadows surrounding his ranch were brown and bare. The thermostat on Fetcher’s truck read 50 degrees, and the last patch of snow was melting fast off the roof of a barn.
This year, Fetcher’s ranch is on the frontlines of record-low snowpack across the West that is adding a sense of urgency among seven states to finalize a plan for how to conserve the dwindling Colorado River.
The snow in the nearby Zirkel wilderness melts into the Elk River and irrigates Fetcher’s fields before the water eventually joins the Colorado River and flows to millions of people downstream.
But things have been changing near Fetcher’s ranch over the past decade, and it could have implications for states competing for the water supply.
Since 1951, the Fetchers have tracked how long the snow stays on their meadows by marking the date in a little red journal. The data shows the snow is melting sooner in the valley.
“In the past 10 years, the snow leaving the meadow has moved up by 12 days,” he said. “This winter is a real indication of climate change, with bare meadows in the middle of February. I mean, what date am I going to write down for (when) snow left the meadow this year? Did it ever come?”
Jay Fetcher walks through a barn door on his ranch in Routt County, Colorado. Scott Franz/KUNC
The dwindling water supply in the Colorado River basin is driving intense negotiations among the seven states over how to share it in the future. Some forecasts predict water levels at Lake Powell could get so low this year that its dam would stop producing electricity. States have until Saturday to come to an agreement and the pressure has been building.
If they don’t, they might end up fighting each other in the Supreme Court.
Downstream states, including California and Arizona, say Colorado and states in the upper basin should pitch in with mandatory water restrictions during dry years.
But leaders in the Rocky Mountains are digging in.
They say ranchers and cities are already enacting conservation plans, and more cuts should not be forced on them.
“If we don’t choose how to live within the river’s limits, the river will choose it for us, and she will not be gentle,” Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top river negotiator, said in a speech to a water conference in January. “Operations (of the river’s reservoirs) must be supply based, not demand based, not entitlement justified, and not built on a hope that the next big year will save us.”
Negotiators in the lower basin are calling for compromise. J.B. Hamby is California’s water negotiator.
“It’s going to take everyone chipping in and making the necessary (water) reductions to balance the supply with the demand we have moving forward,” he said during a speech last month.
The Yampa River in downtown Steamboat Springs was mostly ice free on Feb. 9 as temperatures rose above 50 degrees. Scott Franz/KUNC
Sitting on a patio on his ranch in northwest Colorado, Fetcher said Monday he’s not confident the lower and upper basins will resolve their differences anytime soon.
He said he’s willing to donate some water he doesn’t use each year downstream to California, but under current regulations, he would risk losing his water rights under a ‘use it or lose it’ system.
“I know that we will be able to irrigate these meadows just fine, because of our water rights, because of where we are, because of the ranch being on the Elk River. So from a personal standpoint, I’m okay with it,” he said. “The challenging question is, what happens with the lower basin? They’re just going to have to think about how to get by with less water and not have so many golf courses out there.”
The deadline for the seven states to agree on a long-term plan for how to conserve the Colorado River is Saturday.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map February 12, 2026.
A photo of Glen Canyon Dam from 2022, when the dam’s intake points were 33 feet away from minimum power pool. The top of the grate-like penstocks can be seen in this photo. Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
Floyd Dominy, the commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation in the 1960s, was largely responsible for the construction of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. In 1963, when the dam was completed, he could not have foreseen the climate situation we find ourselves in today, with declining snowpack, record-high temperatures and alarmingly low water levels in Lake Powell, year after year. But he and his engineers could have, and should have, foreseen that the way they designed the dam would leave little room to maneuver should a water-supply crisis ever impact the river and its watershed.
Indeed, a state of crisis has been building on the Colorado for decades, even as the parties that claim its water argue over how to divide its rapidly diminishing flows. Lately, things have entered a new and perilous phase. Last Nov. 11 was a long-awaited deadline: Either the states involved — California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming — would have to agree on a new management plan, or else the federal government would impose its own, something none of the parties would welcome. Meanwhile, the 30 tribes that also hold claims to the river have historically been and continue to be excluded from these negotiations.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
That deadline came and went, and instead of acting, the government punted, this time to Feb. 14. Nobody was surprised: Unmet deadlines and empty ultimatums have been business as usual on the river for years. Decades of falling reservoir levels and clear warnings from scientists about global warming and drought have prompted much hand-wringing and some temporary conservation measures, but little in the way of permanent change in how water is used in the Colorado River Basin.
The downstream face of Glen Canyon Dam, which forms Lake Powell, America’s second-largest water reservoir. Water is released from the reservoir through a hydropower generation system at the base of the dam. Photo by Brian Richter
For decades, the seven Basin states have used more water than the river delivers by drawing their entitlements from surpluses banked in reservoirs during the wet 1980s and ’90s, chiefly in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Never mind that those entitlements were based on an over-estimate of river flows in 1922, when the Colorado River Compact was established, rendering the “paper” water of the entitlements essentially a fiction, not to mention a source of continual conflict. That savings account has now been drained: Mead and Powell are each below 30% full, and the trend is steadily downward. Global warming has only accelerated the decline: So far this century, the river’s flow has fallen 20% from its long-term annual averages, and scientists forecast more of the same as the climate continues to heat up.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
Meanwhile, the physical infrastructure that enables Colorado River water management is on the verge of its own real and potentially catastrophic crisis — and yet Reclamation has barely acknowledged this, with the exception of an oblique reference in an unposted technical memorandum from 2024. The falling reservoir levels reveal another, deeper set of problems inside Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back the Colorado and Lake Powell. The 710-foot-tall dam was designed for a Goldilocks world in which water levels would never be too high or too low, despite the well-known fact that the Colorado is by far the most variable river in North America, prone to prodigious floods and extended droughts. But the Bureau, bursting with Cold War confidence — or hubris — chose to downplay the threat. In the record-breaking El Niño winter of 1983, the Bureau almost lost the dam to overtopping, due to both its mismanagement and its design, because the dam lacks sufficient spillway capacity for big floods. Only sheets of plywood installed across its top and cooler temperatures that slowed the melting of that year’s snowpack saved Glen Canyon Dam.
The four 96-inch diameter steel pipes of the River Outlet Works. If the dam’s penstocks are closed, these pipes are the only remaining way to pass water through the dam, and are unsafe to use for extended intervals. Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
Gus Levy, Glen Canyon Dam’s plant facility manager, walks past hydropower turbines. In 2022, due to the low water level of Lake Powell, only five of the eight turbines operated on a daily basis, though all eight were kept in working order. Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
Today, the dam is threatened not by too much water but too little. In March 2023, the water level of Lake Powell dropped to within 30 feet of the minimum required for power generation, known as “minimum power pool.” At 3,490 feet above sea level, minimum power pool is 20 feet above the generators’ actual intakes, or penstocks, but the dam’s eight turbines must be shut down at minimum power pool to avoid cavitation — when air is sucked down like a whirlpool into the penstocks, forming explosive bubbles which can cause massive failure inside the dam.
Even more worrisome is what would happen next. At minimum power pool, the penstocks would have to be closed, and the only remaining way to pass water through the dam is the river outlet works, or ROWs: two intakes in the rear face of the dam leading to four 96-inch-diameter steel pipes with a combined maximum discharge capacity of 15,000 cubic feet per second. However, the ROWs, also known as bypass tubes, have a serious design flaw: They are unsafe to use for extended intervals, and start to erode when the reservoir is low.
In 2023, when the ROWs were used to conduct a high-flow release into the Grand Canyon at low-reservoir levels, there was, in fact, damaging cavitation, and the Bureau has warned that there would likely be more in the event of their extended use. In practice, safe releases downstream may only be a fraction of their claimed capacity — and if the tubes begin to experience cavitation, flows may need to be cut off entirely. Such a scenario would compromise the dam’s legal downstream delivery requirements, or, to put it bluntly, its ability to deliver enough water to the 25 million people downstream who rely on it — as well as the billions of dollars’ worth of agriculture involved. This means that Lake Powell — and with it, the entire Colorado River system — is perilously close to operational failure.
If reservoir levels drop to the ROWs’ elevation of 3,370 feet above sea level, Lake Powell would reach “dead pool,” where water would pass through the dam only when the river’s flow exceeded the amount of water lost to evaporation from the reservoir. No other intakes nor spillways exist below the ROWs. There is no “drain plug.” Yet there is more dam — 240 feet more before the bottom of the reservoir, effectively the old riverbed. This not-insignificant impoundment — about 1.7 million acre-feet of water — would be trapped, stagnant and heating in the sun, prone to algal blooms and deadly anoxia. The lake would rise and fall wildly, as much as 100 feet in a season, because of the martini-glass shape of Lake Powell’s vertical cross section.
Illustration from the report, <a href=”https://utahrivers.org/blog-post/2022/8/9/lenapost“>Antique Plumbing & Leadership Postponed</a> from the Utah Rivers Council, Glen Canyon Institute and the Great Basin Water Network. Courtesy of Utah Rivers Council
Insufficient or no flows through Glen Canyon Dam would be a disaster of unprecedented magnitude, affecting vast population centers and some of the biggest economies in the world, not to mention ecosystems that depend on the river all the way to the Gulf of California in Mexico. The Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada warned as much in a recent letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, saying that Reclamation’s failure to mention the dam’s plumbing problems in its current environmental impact statement for post-2026 operations is against federal law. The letter reads: “Addressing the infrastructure limitations may be the one long-term measure that would best achieve operation and management improvements to the Glen Canyon Dam.”
To date, however, the Bureau has made no formal response.
One thing is clear: Glen Canyon Dam will need to be modified to meet its legal and operational requirements. In the process, the health of the ecosystems in Glen Canyon, above the dam, and in Grand Canyon, below it, must be considered. The best way to avoid operational failure and the economic and ecological disasters that would follow is to re-engineer the dam to allow the river to run through it or around it at river level, transporting its natural sediment load into the Grand Canyon.
Sketches by Floyd Dominy show the way he’d end the Glen Canyon Dam. From the article “Floyd Dominy built the Glen Canyon Dam, then he sketched its end on a napkin” on the Salt Lake Tribune
As it happens, Floyd Dominy himself provided us with a simple and elegant plan for how to do it. In 1997, the former commissioner sketched on a cocktail napkin how new bypass tunnels could be drilled through the soft sandstone around the dam and outfitted with waterproof valves to control the flow of water and sediment. What it prescribes is treating the patient — the Colorado River, now on life support — with open-heart surgery, a full bypass. Dominy’s napkin, which he signed and gave to my colleague Richard Ingebretsen, the founder of Glen Canyon Institute, is effectively a blueprint for a healthier future for the Colorado River and the people and ecosystems that depend on it.
But the window for action to avoid dead pool is dauntingly narrow and closing fast, especially given the time that would likely be required for the government to study, design and implement a fix. The Trump administration’s gutting of federal agency expertise and capacity adds yet more urgency to the issue. Whatever may or may not get decided on Feb. 14, the feds and the basin states need to look beyond the water wars and start building a lasting, sustainable future on the Colorado River.
The seven states that take water from the Colorado River have a deadline of February 14 to come up with a river management plan that they can all agree on. And every day that passes it looks as if that deadline, not the first one they have faced, will also be missed. Valentines Day may not be one of shared love by all.
The Colorado River basin is experiencing the greatest drought and loss of flows in the past 1200 years and the various agreements crafted to deal with deepening drought, particularly the 2007 Interim Guidelines and subsequent Drought Contingency Plans, are set to expire at the end of this year.
The major sticking point is centered around how water diversions from the river will be cut, and there will be substantial cuts. Most of that burden will fall on the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada. They are the largest users of Colorado River water. Cuts for the four Upper Basin states; Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico are not considered in either the previous guideline and agreements nor in the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead by the Bureau of Reclamation. The DEIS only looks at the river below the upper reaches of Lake Powell.
This has the Lower Basin up in arms. They are demanding mandatory, verifiable and enforceable cuts by the river diversions in the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin is refusing this demand, and Arizona in particular is threatening to unleash its historical use of litigation to try and get what it wants.
Underlying this, however, is a very fundamental misunderstanding of how water diversions work between the Lower and Upper Basins. I’m starting to think that misunderstanding is deliberate, primarily to mislead the public constituents within the Lower Basin states. [ed. emphasis mine]
Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona’s Department of Water Resources, has said, “We need certainty there are reductions in upper basin usage because that is one of the two tools that we have… You can’t make it snow or rain. But you can reduce your demand”.
But in the Upper Basin that is not as easy as it sounds.
I have read that the true skill of a good negotiator is in being able to truly understand the other sides position. There are skilled and knowledgeable negotiators in the Lower basin, but I don’t think that they truly understand the Upper Basins position. They have been accustomed, some would say addicted, to the reliable delivery of stored water for all their needs since Hoover Dam was built and began releasing stored water some 90 years ago. Only until very recently, even in the face of an unrelenting drought, have they had to deal with shortages. For the Upper Basin shortage is an annual reality.
The Lower Basin takes water from the Colorado River mainly through a small handful of very large diversions such as the All American Canal, which provides water for Imperial and Coachella Valley agriculture, the Central Arizona Project (CAP) providing water for Pheonix, Tucson, Tribes, and Arizona agriculture and the California Aqueduct, which provides water for Los Angeles, San Diego and most Southern California cities. While distribution from these few large diversions to individual contract uses may be complicated by drought, reducing the intake at their diversion points isn’t.
That situation is very different in the Upper Basin. In Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico there are many thousands of small diversions taking water from the Colorado River, the Green River and their myriad headwater tributaries. There are a few large diversions in the Upper Basin, primarily for water taken out of the basin to Colorado’s East Slope cities and farms and to Utah’s Wasatch Front, but these diversions are still quite small compared to those in the Lower Basin.
The largest reservoirs in the Upper Basin are those built through the Colorado River Storage Act (CRSP, 1956), such as Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo. These reservoirs were not built to supply Upper Basin water needs, but to provide a “bank account” for Colorado River Compact compliance. In other words, for the benefit of the Lower Basin. Releases from these reservoirs are contemplated in the Post-2026 DEIS to maintain water elevations in Lake Powell that protect vital dam infrastructure and hydropower generation.
Lake Powell is also an Upper Basin reservoir in the CRSP Act of 1956. It was built entirely for Compact compliance and water deliveries to the Lower Basin. It has no water supply benefit to the Upper Basin other than as a Compact savings account.
A major wrinkle in any mandatory curtailments in Upper Basin diversions is simply in administrative logistics. It would be a complete nightmare for water administration and the State water engineers offices. And in Colorado it would be in the Water Courts as well.
A little legal background is needed here as well.
See Article 6.
All of the Colorado Basin states have Prior Appropriation as the bedrock doctrine for their water laws. California has a bit of a mix with Riparian law, but as far as the Colorado River diversions are concerned prior appropriation rules. Prior appropriation is the doctrine of “first in time, first in right” to divert the available water. Colorado was the first to codify prior appropriation in its state constitution, in 1876. Article 16, Section 6:
“The right to divert the unappropriated waters of any natural stream to beneficial uses shall never be denied. Priority of appropriation shall give the better right as between those using the water for the same purpose; but when the waters of any natural stream are not sufficient for the service of all those desiring the use of the same, those using the water for domestic purposes shall have the preference over those claiming for any other purpose, and those using the water for agricultural purposes shall have preference over those using the same for manufacturing purposes.“
In Colorado you don’t actually need a court decreed right to divert water to a beneficial use. Just a shovel and a ditch. However, you are still subject to prior appropriation and can be the first cut off if a call is placed on the stream. There are a lot of such small diversions without an adjudicated right. I used to water my lawn in Eagle that way.
The Colorado River Compact of 1922 was created to avoid prior appropriation between the states. The US Supreme Court had decided that when there is a dispute over water between States that held prior appropriation as their foundational water law, seniority applies across state lines. Southern California was starting to grow at a much more rapid pace than the other states, greatly alarming the headwater, Upper Basin states. The Compact was crafted so that water from the river could be allocated “equitably”, allowing each state to grow and develop its water at its own pace. The Compact became the foundation of what is now known as the Law of the River. Laws based on prior appropriation still govern water use and administration within each State.
Arizona and California began arguing and litigating almost immediately, with Arizona usually on the losing end. That changed in 1963 when the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that once and for all set the water allocations for the Lower Basin, based on the allocations created in the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act, which finally ratified the Compact and paved the way for Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and the All American Canal.
Then the seniority picture between states changed with the passage of the 1968 Colorado River Projects Act that authorized construction of Arizona’s long fought for dream of the Central Arizona Project. To get passage, Arizona had to subordinate its water rights to California, making it the junior and first to take cuts in times of drought.
Upper Colorado River Basin map via the Upper Colorado River Commission.
None of that extended into the Upper Basin, where the States had been getting along just fine, mostly, since the Compact was signed. These four states drafted their own Upper Colorado River Basin Compact in 1948, mainly so they could get more money from the Federal Government to build water storage and delivery projects. They did something novel, allocating each states share by a percentage of the rivers flow, not by set volumes of water as the 1922 Compact had done.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Everything was fine so long as the major reservoirs of Lakes Mead and Powell were full. That has changed considerably since the onset of the current mega, or Millennial drought began in 2000. The two reservoirs have dropped to very low levels, levels never anticipated or planned for.
Here is the crux of the matter. The Lower Basin is demanding mandatory cuts from Upper Basin uses so that more water can flow downstream for their use. The 1922 Compact says clearly that the Upper Basin states “will not cause the river flow at Lee Ferry to be depleted below and aggregate of 75,000,000 acre feet for any period of ten consecutive years…”. The Lower Basin states argue that this constitutes an “obligation” to deliver that much water to them. The Upper Basin states say no, there is no delivery obligation. It is a non-depletion requirement, that through diversions and actual consumption the states can’t let those flows drop below 75 million acre feet (maf) in a ten year running average.
That has never been a problem, until now. The 1922 Compact and its non-depletion requirement is a priority right in itself. Any water right in the Upper Basin that was adjudicated, perfected by actual use and consumption, after 1922 is subject to curtailment for fulfilling the non-depletion requirement. Any and all rights perfected prior to November 1922 are exempt.
So far, as of 2026, the required flows over a ten year running average have not yet hit that non-depletion trigger of 75 maf running average over ten years. Not yet, but it could be getting close.
The Upper Basin states live by a “run of the river” system as there are no large storage units dedicated to their use as the Lower Basin has with Powell and Mead. There are many small reservoirs used for a single irrigation season, filled with the spring runoff and then empty by the end of the growing season. But they also are subject to how much water comes in the spring and downstream senior calls.
Every year, especially since this mega drought and increased aridification began, Upper Basin irrigators are curtailed each summer as the streams shrink and the small reservoirs are drained. Some years this curtailment includes water rights that are senior to the Compact as well.
The Upper basin, in short, is forced to live within its means, with what it has and no more than Mother Nature provides with the winter snowpack. As Tom Buschatzke said, “You can’t make it snow or rain. But you can reduce your demand”. The Upper Basin does exactly that every year, especially in years like this with a record low snowpack.
The mandatory, verifiable and enforceable cuts demanded by the Lower Basin would be more than difficult to achieve. And again, it would be an administrative and legal nightmare for those assigned the task on the thousands of relatively small, individual diversions that make up the Upper Basin’s water use from the Colorado River. There are those larger trans-basin diversions to the Colorado East Slope and cities, but even if they took substantial cuts, it would still be a pretty small amount of water. No where near the amounts that the Lower Basin has become accustomed to.
Right now the Upper Basin uses roughly half their Compact allocation, roughly around 4 maf a year, while the Lower Basin has historically used more than their full Compact allocation. To their credit, the Lower Basin has made substantial cuts, some voluntary and some enforced by agreements and obligations. California was forced to cut their water use by 800,000 acre-feet with the 2007 Interim Guidelines, back to their actual decreed limit, a cut some claim as an example of how much “sacrifice” they have made. They and Arizona have made additional cuts as well, now taking around 6 maf, from a historic high near 10 maf per year.
I agree that the Upper basin needs to work harder at conservation, and they have been trying hard over the last few years. They haven’t been hording water or ignoring the needs of the Lower Basin or those spelled out in the Compact and subsequent agreements as some in the Lower Basin claim. But “mandatory” cuts beyond those already happening each and every summer will require significant changes with state water law and administration. In Colorado’s case it could well require a change to Article 16, Section Six, of the state’s constitution which has held unaltered since 1876.
We live now in a very different world from the 1800’s and 1922 when the Compact was drafted, using highly optimistic flow calculations that they already knew were wrong. But the men who drafted it were boosters, as were their fathers, seeing the West as they wanted to, not as it really was. America’s westward expansion has always been driven by dreams of abundance, and for a while the river was able to provide that through massive engineering, a still small but growing population and some pretty wet years. Many still hold on to that misguided dream of abundance in an increasingly arid region.
That has all evaporated. All water users in the West, especially the Colorado River basin, expect certainty and reliability, as Tom Buschatzke declared. We’ve built an entire system, and an entire economy based on those principals. Certainty and reliability are now fading rapidly in the rear view mirror, if we dare to look. Many won’t. The Colorado River has made the desert bloom and let us build great cities. But its dwindling supply is placing all that in jeopardy. We need to adapt. The only certain and reliable future is one with less water, greater aridity and warmer and much drier climate.
Maybe our great civilization built on a desert river will go the way of the Hohokam who filled the valley Pheonix now inhabits with irrigation canals and a thriving population. Maybe. We can change that scenario if we adapt to the new reality. That will be both hard and painful. Parochial self-interest must be balanced with regional ties and interests, and that is never easy. Nor is it politically palatable. The Lower Basin is railing against the Upper Basin’s refusal to provide water it just doesn’t have. The Upper Basin is living within its means while honoring its commitments to the Compact as best it can.
The Bureau of Reclamation in its DEIS for Post-2026 river management introduced a new concept, at least new for Colorado River management. Decision making under Deep Uncertainty, or DMDU. Many, seemingly, aren’t familiar with that concept. Even the Bureau’s recommendations may not go far enough with that concept. They don’t seriously engage the reality that both Powell and Mead are headed for deadpool, meaning that the only water available from either reservoir will be what flows in. There will be no storage to rely on. None. That will have far more devastating impacts than what any of the alternatives contemplate. [ed. emphasis mine]
But when the well runs dry there isn’t much we can do. A few years ago the concept of stationarity in climate norms, basing predictions within the parameters of historical extremes, was declared dead. The ideas of certainty and reliability are now headed for the same graveyard.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
