From the Colorado Water Conservation Board (Katie Weeman):

Introduction

Good morning. My name is Becky Mitchell and I am proud to be joining you as Colorado’s first, full-time Colorado River Commissioner. This change took effect on July 1st. With thanks to the General Assembly and Governor Polis, I stepped out of the CWCB Director role – which is now in Lauren’s very capable hands – and have dedicated myself full-time to protecting our state’s significant interests in the Colorado River. The Commissioner role is a unique one. I am charged by the Governor to represent the state in interstate Colorado River matters, which includes all of our diverse water users, sectors, and geographies. It is not a role that I take lightly. And I truly appreciate the support that so many of you have lent as we shape the future of the Colorado River. I’d like to take “the last word,” as the agenda says, to update you on interstate Colorado River matters; plus, what I’m doing to push everyone in the basin to live within its means –- something we in Colorado have always done.

The past year has been tumultuous for the Colorado River. Last summer, when we gathered here in Steamboat, the Upper Division States had just completed the Five Point Plan in response to Commissioner Touton’s call for the basin states to conserve 2 to 3 million acre-feet. To put that in perspective: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – combined – used three and a half million acre-feet in 2022.

You’ll remember how bad the situation was. The reservoirs were declining quickly, with daily headlines in the papers. The federal government took emergency action to reduce releases from Lake Powell. The Upper Division States provided DROA water from Upper Basin reservoirs to prop up elevations at Lake Powell. You might also remember how the Lower Basin was unable and unwilling to reach agreement to do their part to conserve water.

The Five Point Plan showed the federal government that the Upper Division States are united, committed to being part of the solution, and limited in the scale of what we can do.

One of the five points was a commitment to pursue water conservation on a voluntary, temporary, and compensated basis through the System Conservation Pilot Program (SCPP). After an incredibly fast reauthorization by Congress, the UCRC launched SCPP earlier this year. Contracts were temporary – for just one year; completely voluntary; and fairly compensated – on average, $422 an acre-foot. All conserved water became system water, used to mitigate the impacts of drought in the Upper Basin. In total, the Upper Basin conserved less than 38,000 acre-feet of water in 64 projects; 2,700 acre-feet of which was conserved by 22 projects in Colorado.

A second point in the Five Point Plan was to continue the Demand Management Feasibility Investigation. Like SCPP, Demand Management would be a temporary, voluntary, and compensated program. The difference is that water conserved in a Demand Management program would be stored in a pool to ensure ongoing Compact compliance for the Upper Division States. Each Upper Division State must find that a Demand Management program is feasible for their state, before any such program could be established. We’ve been discussing Demand Management for a few years now. I want to take a quick second to thank you all for your continued engagement on the topic. Regardless of whether Colorado moves forward with any such program, your input – and debates – have shaped our state’s understanding of conservation programs overall.

Then – and now – the Upper Division States recognized that we did not cause and cannot solve the problem. Overuse in the Lower Basin has driven the Colorado River System into crisis. But inaction is not the answer.

COMPACT COMPLIANCE EMPHASIS

I want to pause here to emphasize something that is so, so important to say: even in the driest of years, the Upper Division States have never been out of compliance with the Compact. We are not even close. If flows at Lees Ferry fall below 75 million acre feet over a 10-year period, it would prompt an inquiry into the cause. If the cause is something other than our depletions, we have not violated the Compact. Remember, we are currently using less than half the flows of the River and less than half of what the Compact apportioned to us.

My team takes the importance of protecting Colorado’s legal interests very seriously. The Compact assures us the ability to develop our half of the river into perpetuity – at our own pace, without risk of a Lower Basin giant guzzling up our share.

I can’t say this clearly enough: Colorado is not at risk of Compact curtailment. We do ourselves a disservice by suggesting otherwise and play right into the Lower Basin’s strategies.

COLORADO RIVER UPDATES – SEIS & Post 2026

Now, back to our recap of the last year. Even to those who actively read about the Colorado River, the issues have been complicated by two distinct federal processes

The first process – the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to revise the ‘07 Guidelines – started in late 2022 to provide the Bureau of Reclamation with additional tools to protect Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams between now and 2026. Specifically, the SEIS could change operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead in the near-term to allow for lower releases out of those reservoirs. Last January, I was driving back-and-forth between Water Congress and a Basin States meeting, trying to reach an agreement with our neighbors about what input to provide to the federal government on this process. Ultimately, six states signed a letter urging the Bureau of Reclamation to consider several options for reductions in uses in the Lower Basin, including assessment of evaporation and transit losses. Fast forward to spring, and Reclamation released a draft SEIS with two action alternatives and one no-action alternative. No alternative reached upstream to the Upper Basin – each was focused on reducing uses downstream of the reservoirs. In response, the Lower Basin States negotiated a different proposal, which they say will conserve 3 million acre-feet. The Upper Division States agreed to transmit that plan to Reclamation for analysis. We are expecting their findings in the coming weeks, and a revised Draft EIS should provide this analysis. To be clear: while we applaud our downstream neighbors’ efforts to conserve water, the Upper Division States did not, and cannot, endorse the Lower Basin’s proposal. We have not yet seen enough detail about the conservation efforts.

But please keep in mind: this SEIS would develop a short-term fix for the ‘07 Guidelines, which have proved inefficient to protect the System.

This year’s hydrology has given us a much-needed reprieve, but it has not changed the fundamental challenges we still face. We must re-focus our efforts on developing longer-term solutions for management of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. This is the only way to stop living crisis to crisis on the Colorado River.

That brings me to the second federal process – in June, the federal government announced the Post-2026 Environmental Impact Statement Process, which will develop new operating guidelines for Powell and Mead. To be blunt: this is the process that matters the most for Colorado. The current guidelines, the ‘07 Guidelines, have been gamed by the Lower Basin. They have knowingly maximized releases from Powell for decades, simultaneously draining Mead and ignoring basic physics like evaporation and transit losses. The silver lining is that the ‘07 Guidelines were interim, by design, so that we could learn from their implementation – and we did learn a lot.

IRREFUTABLE TRUTHS

The ‘07 Guidelines have illustrated why Colorado and the Upper Division States must care about sustainable operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead. We cannot have our fate tied to continued Lower Basin overuse.

I met with many of you, with the Tribal Nations, with entities like the Basin Roundtables, IBCC, and conservancy districts, to develop my guiding principles for the post-2026 negotiation.

First, we must acknowledge that climate change is real. We can’t count on decades like the 80s and 90s; we need to be prepared for years like the early 2000s. Our future is going to be drier and more variable.

Second, water users in the Lower Basin are not more important than water users in the Upper Basin. The Upper and Lower Basins have equal apportionments to the river in perpetuity, established by the 1922 Colorado River Compact. We are not re-negotiating the Compact, and any guidelines for post-2026 operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead must be rooted in the Compacts and the Treaty with Mexico.

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Third, the Colorado River is not providing enough to sustain overuse in the Lower Basin. We’ve seen the reservoirs crash to critically low levels. Water use in the Lower Basin cannot continue to exceed available supplies and operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead must better respond to actual hydrology. The Lower Basin must account for all depletions, including evaporation and transit losses.

Fourth, Compact curtailment is not an option. The Upper Basin is apportioned half of the river’s flows in perpetuity, and we are using a lot less that.

Fifth, operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead must respond to actual hydrology and available water supplies. This will be hard for water users in the Lower Basin because it will demand change. Lake Powell releases must be determined by actual hydrology and protecting storage rather than by Lake Mead conditions.

Sixth, the Tribal Nations have federal reserved water rights that must be preserved. The Tribal Nations have water rights that they are entitled to use. Solutions for overuse in the Lower Basin cannot continue to depend on Tribes’ undeveloped federal reserved water righ.

And finally, we need solutions that comply with federal environmental law and advance coordination between the United States and Mexico.

I am honored to be Colorado’s interstate negotiator, and will stand firm by these principles. Future operations must live within the means of the river.

UNITY

We are in difficult negotiations with the Basin States, and I suspect things will get harder before they get easier. From experience, I know we are better when we stand together as seven basin states. But I also know we must be ready to stand alone when necessary to defend our significant interests in the river. The only way that I can stand alone in the basin is if Colorado can stand together as a state.

I have worked hard to facilitate unity across our state – and a huge thank you to you who’ve organized meetings, rearranged agendas, and teed up discussions with me. Unity is a two-way street. While I work to understand the needs and concerns of Colorado’s diverse water users, diverse water users work to understand the needs and concerns of other people in the state. Unity does not necessarily mean agreement. It’s not an echo chamber – Coloradans have never seen eye-to-eye on all of our water issues, and the post-2026 negotiations will be no different. But unity does mean that we’re good-faith actors with one another; that we agree to protect Coloradans’ rights on our namesake river; and that we commit to finding shared values where we can.

As Commissioner, I represent the entire state – all of our diverse interests and needs. It is so important that we put our best foot forward on the matters where we are unified, while leaving room for difficult discussions to continue within our state.

CONCLUSION

The post-2026 negotiations matter to Colorado: we must seek operations that are responsive to climate change and actual hydrology. I hope you’ll stay interested, involved, and committed to a future where all in the basin live within the means of the river. You have heard me say it before, but I am going to say it again: we are at a critical juncture on the Colorado River. We have an opportunity to negotiate a better deal on how Lake Powell and Lake Mead are operated – a better deal for our State and also for the 40 million people who depend on this critical resource. I am bringing all of myself and the State’s resources to this effort, and I will need each of you, too.

Thank you all for your continued support.

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Jake Bittle):

The water shortage crisis on the Colorado River is improving, but it’s far from over.

That was the message from the Biden administration on Tuesday, as officials announced they would loosen water restrictions on the river in 2024. Thanks to robust winter snowpack that provided about 33 percent more moisture than the average year, the water levels in the riverʻs two main reservoirs have begun to stabilize after plummeting over three years. This has lessened the need for states in the Southwest to cut their water usage.

The total cuts will be about 20 percent lighter than they were last year, requiring three Southwest states and Mexico to save around 600,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply roughly 1.2 million homes.

Even so, the administration left some mandatory restrictions in place to account for the fact that the reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are still emptier than they have been at almost any point in history. That’s due in large part to a millennium-scale drought that researchers believe was made much more likely by climate change. And even as federal officials eased up on mandatory restrictions, they were also preparing to dole out billions of dollars to the region’s farmers and cities in an effort to further reduce water usage on the river.

“The above-average precipitation this year was a welcome relief,” said Camille Camimlim Touton, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees the river, in a press release. “We have the time to focus on the long-term sustainability solutions needed in the Colorado River Basin.”

During the past three years, as the Colorado River has dried up, the federal government has used the elevation of Lake Mead as a benchmark to determine what restrictions it needs to impose on Arizona, Nevada, and California, the three states in what’s known as the riverʻs “Lower Basin,” as well as Mexico. In practice, the state that has suffered the most under this system is Arizona, which has junior rights to the river as a result of a compromise it made in the 1960s to secure funding for canal infrastructure; it has borne almost all the early cuts.

The Biden administrationʻs announcement this week, which will move the river from a “Tier 2a” shortage back down to a “Tier 1” shortage, should give Arizona cotton farmers and Phoenix-area cities a little more breathing room next year. But the river’s long-term prognosis means that it may not be wise for farmers to start planting more fields, or for cities to keep adding new golf courses and lawns.

“I’d say it’s probably not going to help that situation much,” said Paco Ollerton, a farmer who grows cotton and other crops outside the city of Casa Grande, south of Phoenix. “The acreage has dropped quite a bit. We’re probably about 25 percent fallow in the district this year.” The easing of drought restrictions might help some farmers increase their acreage, Ollerton added, but many will hold off on replanting because they’re wary of future cuts.

Even as the Biden administration sets a more relaxed standard for 2024, officials are preparing to roll out a larger series of water cuts that will last for the next three years. These bigger cuts, which the administration hopes will lift the river out of the drought-induced crisis of the past few years, were the result of a hard-fought compromise between the seven states that use the river — and in particular between the two largest users, Arizona and California.

The announcement of the compromise plan in May brought an end to a year of tense negotiations between the states and the Biden administration, triggered by unprecedented fears that Lake Powell and Lake Mead would bottom out altogether. In that doomsday scenario, hydroelectric plants that provide power to millions of people would have shut down, and water might not have been able to move past the reservoirs at all. The compromise plan uses about $1.5 billion in drought funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to compensate farmers and cities for using less water over the next three years. 

This was a welcome outcome for farmers in places like Imperial County, California, who had expected to take uncompensated water cuts for the first time in history, as well as for city leaders in Arizona, who had stood to lose a huge share of their Colorado River water during the negotiations. The compromise was only possible because of this year’s wet winter, which deposited enough snow to prop up water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. With reservoirs recovering, the states could get away with more modest cuts — and pay for them with money that Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona secured within the Inflation Reduction Act last year.

Even so, the compromise leaves several questions unanswered. The biggest question is how the states can reduce usage over the long term to account for the gradual aridification of the river. Farmers and cities can save water through techniques like drip irrigation or wastewater recycling, but these technologies are expensive to implement. In all likelihood, some places will have to farm less or build fewer houses. Furthermore, many tribal nations along the river still can’t access the water to which they have legal rights, and satisfying those rights could mean taking water away from other non-tribal users.

The federal government needs to hash out answers to these questions with states and tribes by the end of 2026, when the current operating guidelines for the river will expire. The Biden administration already kicked off that process last month when it asked stakeholders to weigh in on the river’s future. The negotiations won’t kick off in earnest for months or even years, but the administration’s goal is clear: avoid a repeat of the past yearʻs crisis at all costs.

Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):

When last we visited, Lake Mead sat at elevation 1,054.28 feet above sea level. It’s now at 1,058.34, which is up ~13 feet from when I took the above photo last December.

I hope they moved those chairs.

The good news is the current forecast calling for the combined storage of Lake Mead and Lake Powell to end the water year up nearly 5 million acre feet from a year ago.

The bad news is that total identifiable water use reductions in this year of chaotic crisis fire drill total just 1.2 million acre feet, according to the Bureau of Reclamation’s July 14, 2023 forecast.

This is not enough.

Who’s Using What?

Kudos to Southern Nevada, which at ~202kaf is on track for its lowest take on the Colorado River since 1992. Clark County’s population has nearly tripled in that time.

At ~860kaf, the Central Arizona Project is on track to make its lowest draw on the Colorado River since 1995.

At ~803kaf, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s forecast draw on the river is taking 12.5 percent less than its average over the last decade, but Met is weird because of California State Water Project wet year chaos, so I’m not sure I fully understand what they’re up to. (Jump in the comments and explain, Met friends!)

The Imperial Irrigation District is forecast to take ~2.5maf from the river this year, which is basically unchanged from its use over the previous decade.

What is Needed

The analysis by Jack Schmidt et al suggests that, based on 21st century hydrology, we need to cut 1.5 million acre feet per year just to stabilize the system. If we want to actually refill a bit, to provide cushion against the sort of catastrophe that was narrowly averted this year by a big snowpack, the cuts need to be even deeper.

The above graph from their paper shows the problem. I’ve circled the last big snowpack year in red, and you can see the others as well. Every time we got bonus water, we just used it.

We need to avoid making that mistake again.

Thanks

A big thanks to friends of Inkstain for helping support this work.

Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Joshua Partlow). Here’s an excerpt:

When a deal to protect the Colorado River’s water supply finally came together after a year of contentious negotiations and a marathon weekend of last-minute haggling by phone and video calls that ran well past midnight, whatever sense of achievement the participants felt seemed outweighed by relief and fatigue…Within hours, Arizona’s negotiator stressed at a news conference that the deal was simply “an agreement to submit a proposal.” The four northern states along the river signed off on further study of the plan but would concede little else. The negotiations wrapped up with a call to immediately start another multi-year round of talks…

The problems with the negotiations arose partly from the size of the task. The amount of water that the administration was asking states to cut from their farms and cities had never been tried…

In the end, a record-breaking deluge of snow and rain this winter, and a mountain of federal dollars, opened a path to consensus and avoided, at least for now, a battle in the courts…

Negotiating teams kept meeting throughout the winter, as a barrage of atmospheric rivers pummeled the California coast and snows piled up in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, promising a big runoff year into reservoirs. On Jan. 26, they gathered at Woolley’s Classic Suites, a hotel near the Denver airport. Interior had asked for proposals on potential cuts by the following week. Six of the states were coalescing around a plan that would assign cuts based on evaporation of the river, an approach that would hit California particularly hard. California negotiators were caught off guard that lawyers and technical staff from the other states had arrived early and were huddling at the hotel, already writing proposals…

That month, Beaudreau held separate conference calls with Upper and Lower Basin officials to clarify the lines of command. Lower Basin officials related that the turmoil and strife was not helpful, and they wanted clear direction from Interior. Beaudreau informed state officials that he would be in charge, along with Touton, in the months ahead. Trujillo, the assistant secretary, was taken off the Colorado River negotiations.

Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):

I’ve had long conversations this week with smart friends grudgingly supporting of the Lower Basin deal to reduce Colorado River water use over the next few years. Their case for it is simple. Yes, it’s an awful deal in so many ways, but it does have the potential to generate some short term water use reductions and cut the red wire on the ticking time bomb.

SNWA’s John Entsminger made the case this way in an interview Monday with Colton Lochhead at the Las Vegas Review Journal:

My friends making this argument have a crucial credential that I don’t have in making their “sure whatever, it’s terrible but let’s just smile politely and get on with things” argument: they have been or are in the room for negotiations like this. I’m just heckling from the cheap seats.

YAY SAVINGS!

The best thing about the deal is an apparent commitment (see below for my reasons for italicizing) to deeper reductions in Lower Basin water use than folks down at that end of the system have been willing to agree to in the past. Three million new acre feet of savings above and beyond what has already been agreed to falls well short of the two to four million acre feet Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton told us last year would be needed, but with a big snowpack the numbers have changed.

BUT THE SAVINGS FALL SHORT OF WHAT WE KNOW IS NEEDED

It’s been clear for as long as I’ve been writing seriously about the Colorado River that, if the Upper Basin meets its (contested) Lee Ferry delivery obligation, the Lower Basin needs to cut 1.2 million to 1.5 million acre feet per year. Permanently. Three million acre feet from 2023-26 falls well short of that.

For more than two decades, the Lower Basin has been dithering over how to make the cuts and in the meantime draining the reservoir, essentially building the time bomb that we’re now trying to defuse.

To be clear, enormous progress has been made in the last two decades to build the necessary institutional widgets to bring the system into balance.I wrote a whole book about it! My purpose in writing the book was to build a case for three things:

• that fears communities often have about the impact of water reductions are misplaced – that we can all get by with less water
• that successful institutional widgets had been built based on collaboration and sharing that could allow us to adapt
• that a lot more work was needed to cut far more deeply than we had by the time I handed in the book’s manuscript in December 2015

But in the midst of crisis, and with a ticking bomb, we still haven’t been able to come up with even the bare minimum that we’ve all known for decades that we need in Lower Basin cuts.

WE DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT THE DEAL IS

What we’ve got at this point documenting the deal is a “term sheet” and a round of celebratory press releases. We have no official breakdown of the makeup of the 3 million acre feet – what’s California’s share, Nevada’s, Arizona’s – how much is Imperial and Metropolitan and Palo Verde, how much is CAP and Yuma. We’ve got individual state reps telling reporters (shout out to my friends in the fourth estate for trying to push down the path of actually breaking down the numbers). But that’s not the same thing as all of us being able to look at it in writing rather than passing around news site links, to be interpreted like fragments of a Dead Sea scroll.

The deal at this point is a pile of stuff shrouded in a tarp that we’re not allowed to peak under. We’ve just gotta trust the Lower Basin folks that they’ll actually come up with the water.

The reason, as one of my smart “been-in-the-room-where-it-happens” friends pointed out, is that the actual detailed reductions will need to go before the boards of a bunch of water agencies. Which hasn’t happened yet. Which means there are umpty reasons for this to spin out of control.

It crucially depends on federal money flowing to water users to compensate them for water they don’t use, but as Janet Wilson pointed out this week in the Desert Sun, we’ve already missed the chance to save some of that water this year because of bureaucratic stuff. That process is not going well.

We all remember the ducking and diving around the celebrated “500 Plus Plan”. Know, those of you who know what’s under the tarp, why those of us who don’t are legitimately nervous about your approach to cutting the red wire.

So spare me the celebratory press releases and puff pieces about politicians breaking roadblocks.

YO, UPPER BASIN HERE, REMEMBER US?

The “seven state letter” is comical, but also revealing.

One imagines federal officials desperate to somehow fly a seven-state flag over the deal, and the last-minute phone calls and emails over the weekend aimed at drafting a letter that says something.

At this point, Upper Basin communities (That’s me! Hi!) are just hostages in the next room, unable to help defuse the bomb and hoping y’all down there can figure out how to cut the right wire.

It’s even worse that y’all in the Lower Basin are demanding that the federal taxpayers kick in a billion dollars or you won’t cut any wire at all.

WAIT. WHICH WIRE WAS IT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO CUT?

Oh shit. Was it the red wire we were supposed to cut? The blue one?

Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Joshua Partlow). Here’s an excerpt:

After nearly a year wrestling over the fate of their water supply, California, Arizona and Nevada — the three key states in the Colorado River’s current crisis — have coalesced around a plan to voluntarily conserve a major portion of their river water in exchange for more than $1 billion in federal funds, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The consensus emerging among these states and the Biden administration aims to conserveabout 13 percent of their allocation of river water over the next three years and protect the nation’s largest reservoirs…But thorny issues remain that could complicate a deal. The parties are trying to work through them before a key deadline at the end of the month, according to several current and former state and federal officials familiar with the situation…

State officials have suggested they could make a deal on their own and are resisting a May 30 deadline to comment on the alternatives the federal government has laid out in that process, according to people familiar with the talks. The review process is intended to define Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s authority to make emergency cuts in states’ water use, even if those cuts contradict existing water rights. These developments represent a new phase in the long-runningtalks about the future of the river. For much of the past year, negotiations have pitted California against Arizona, as they are the states that suck the most from Lake Mead and will have to bear the greatest burden of the historic cuts that the Biden administration has been calling for to protect the river. But these states now appear more united than ever and are closing their differences with the federal government, even as significant issues remain unresolved…

Some water authorities in the West want to ensure that any deal that emerges would entail binding commitments among the Lower Basin states, which draw from Lake Mead and consume more of the river each year than the states of the Upper Basin: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

“We want to support the Lower Basin if they have significant additional reductions, verifiable, binding and enforceable,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner for the negotiations. “Are we going to make a choice to do better? If we don’t want the secretary to manage us, can we show we can manage ourselves?”

[…]

But the bleak reservoir levels outlined in that review date back to September and the weather has improved markedly since then. Abundant snow cloaked the Rocky Mountains over the winter and atmospheric rivers doused California’s drought. Water levels in the big reservoirs have started to rise. Colorado River experts have grown increasingly confident that the most draconian cuts in fact wouldn’t be needed, at least this year. And the $4 billion in federal funding from the Inflation Reduction Act pledged to this problem meant that those that voluntarily gave up their rights to water would be well-compensated for it. Those conditions helped the Lower Basin negotiators come up with a plan to volunteer about 3 million acre-feet of cuts total until 2026, when a major renegotiation of the rules of the river is scheduled to begin. This scale of cuts is smaller than some of the most dire scenarios outlined in the environmental review if reservoirs had continued to plummet.

Click the link to read “Western states and feds are closing in on a landmark deal to prevent Lake Mead from plummeting further” on the CNN webslite (Ella Nilsen). Here’s an excerpt:

Top water negotiators from California, Arizona and Nevada have discussed leaving 3 million acre-feet of water in Lake Mead over the next four years, the sources said – while cautioning negotiations with the US Interior Department were fluid and could change. The tentative amount would be around 10% of the states’ normal water allocation and would be in addition to previously agreed-to cuts that were negotiated in 2019 and 2007. The federal funding being offered for water cuts was part of $4 billion in drought relief funding passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. States and the US government are trying to clinch a framework agreement ahead of May 30, the end of the comment period for a dramatic environmental analysis released by federal officials last month. That analysis could force the three states to cut nearly 2.1 million additional acre-feet of their Colorado River usage in 2024 alone. At the time, top federal officials said publicly they hoped their proposal would spur discussion among states who have spent the past year sparring over cuts. Even though the states have struck an agreement among themselves, finalizing the details with the federal government could prove tricky. Outstanding issues include a proposal that some of the water cuts go uncompensated by the feds, and whether the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming will go along with the agreement…

Western water officials say a key goal this year is to build water elevation at Lake Mead. Some of that will be refilled naturally from the good winter runoff, but state officials said more should come from farmers, cities and tribes reducing their water use in exchange for federal dollars.

“What I’m hoping happens is people who were considering putting their water into the (federal water cut) program still do,” Arizona’s top water official Tom Buschatzke told CNN in April. “It’s a bit easier to do the conservation when you can be compensated and when it’s really wet, versus when it’s really dry and you’re looking at forced cuts – a lot more uncertainty about how far down Lake Mead could go and how big those cuts might get.”

[…]

Before this month’s breakthrough, California, Arizona and Nevada struck an agreement among themselves, which was unveiled to Deputy Interior Sec. Tommy Beaudreau and Touton at an April 21 meeting in Nevada, one source told CNN. But some new tensions between the states and feds have cropped up over the analysis produced by the Interior Department last month. States were hoping their plan for voluntary, compensated cuts could essentially happen in the place of federal action on the river, an idea federal officials pushed back on, according to one source familiar with the meeting. And there has also been haggling over what level Lake Mead would have to drop to in order for the federal government to be able to step in and make additional unilateral cuts.

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

The 24-Month Study projects future Colorado River system conditions using single-trace hydrologic scenarios simulated with the Colorado River Mid-term Modeling System (CRMMS) in 24-Month Study Mode. Three Studies, the Most, Minimum, and Maximum Probable 24-Month Studies, are released monthly, typically by the 15^th day of the month.

• Initial Conditions: The 24-Month Study is initialized with previous end-of-month reservoir elevations.
• Hydrology: In the Upper Basin, the first year of the Most Probable inflow trace is based on the 50^th percentile of Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) forecasts and the second year is based on the 50^th percentile of historical flows. To represent dry and wet future conditions, the Minimum Probable and Maximum Probable traces use the 10^th and 90^th forecast percentiles in the first year and the 25^th and 75^th percentiles of historical flows in the second year, respectively. The Lower Basin inflows are based only on historical intervening flows that align with the Upper Basin percentiles.
• Water Demand: Upper Basin demands are estimated and incorporated in the unregulated inflow forecasts provided by the CBRFC; Lower Basin demands are developed in coordination with the Lower Basin States and Mexico.
• Policy: Reservoir operations are input manually in the 24-Month Study by reservoir operators and align with Colorado River policies.
• Drought Response Actions: CRMMS projections contain actions undertaken with the 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan, 2022 Glen Canyon Dam operational adjustment, and the 2023 operations described in the 24-Month Study.
  • The 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan includes an additional release of 500 kaf from Flaming Gorge from May 2022 through April 2023.
  • The reduction of releases from Lake Powell from 7.48 maf to 7.00 maf in water year 2022 will result in a reduced release volume of 0.480 maf that normally would have been released from Glen Canyon Dam to Lake Mead as part of the 7.48 maf annual release volume, consistent with routine operations under the 2007 Interim Guidelines. The reduction of releases from Glen Canyon Dam in water year 2022 (resulting in increased storage in Lake Powell) will not affect future operating determinations and will be accounted for “as if” this volume of water had been delivered to Lake Mead. The August 2022 24-Month Study modeled 2023 and 2024 operations at Lakes Powell and Mead as if the 0.480 maf had been delivered to Lake Mead for operating tier/condition determination purposes for the Lower Basin States and for Mexico.
  • Because the 2022 operations were designed to protect critical elevations at Lake Powell, Reclamation will implement Lower Elevation Balancing Tier operations in a way that continues to protect these critical elevations, or preserves the benefits of the 2022 operations to protect Lake Powell, in water year 2023. Specifically, Reclamation modeled operations in WY 2023 as follows in the 24-Month Studies:
    • The Glen Canyon Dam annual release has initially been set to 7.00 maf, and in April 2023 Reclamation will evaluate hydrologic conditions to determine if balancing releases may be appropriate under the conditions established in the 2007 Interim Guidelines;
    • Balancing releases will be limited (with a minimum of 7.00 maf) to protect Lake Powell from declining below elevation 3,525 feet at the end of December 2023;
    • Balancing releases will take into account operational neutrality of the 0.480 maf that was retained in Lake Powell under the May 2022 action. Any Lake Powell balancing release volume will be calculated as if the 0.480 maf had been delivered to Lake Mead in WY 2022; and
    • The modeling approach for WY 2023 will apply to 2024.

Consistent with the provisions of the 2007 Interim Guidelines, and to preserve the benefits to Glen Canyon Dam facilities from 2022 Operations into 2023 and 2024, Reclamation will consult with the Basin States on monthly and annual operations. Reclamation will also ensure all appropriate consultation with Basin Tribes, the Republic of Mexico, other federal agencies, water users and non-governmental organizations with respect to implementation of these monthly and annual operations.

Reclamation will continue to carefully monitor hydrologic and operational conditions and assess the need for additional responsive actions and/or changes to operations. Reclamation will continue to consult with the Basin States, Basin Tribes, the Republic of Mexico and other partners on Colorado River operations to consider and determine whether additional measures should be taken to further enhance the preservation of these benefits, as well as recovery protocols, including those of future protective measures for both Lakes Powell and Mead.

For more detailed information about the approach to the 24-Month Study modeling, see the CRMMS 24-Month Study Mode page. All modeling assumptions and projections are subject to varying degrees of uncertainty. Please refer to this discussion of uncertainty for more information.

Projections

The latest 24-Month Study reports for each study can be found at the links below:

• Most Probable 24-Month Study
• Minimum Probable 24-Month Study
• Maximum Probable 24-Month Study

Archived 24-Month Study results are also available. Descriptions of the 24-Month Study hydrologic scenarios are also documented in Monthly Summary Reports. Lake Powell and Lake Mead end-of-month elevation charts are shown below.

For additional information or questions, please contact us via email at: ColoradoRiverModeling@usbr.gov.

Last updated: 2022-08-16