“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
What do you call a situation that remains a crisis, but has ever so slightly improved?
I’m asking myself this as I look at the latest water level data for Lake Powell, the reservoir in Arizona and Utah that feeds the Glen Canyon hydropower plant and is a conduit for drinking water for parts of several states.
The level on Monday was 3,568 feet above sea level, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the reservoir and the power plant.
On the same day last year, the water was at 3,525 feet—a difference of 43 feet. That was close to the reservoir’s lowest level since it was initially being filled in the 1960s.
Both the current level and last year’s are much lower than is optimal, following years of drought and overallocation of the reservoir’s water. But officials have some breathing room thanks to last year’s wet winter, which led to an above average, and in some areas, record snowpack that helped replenish some of what had been lost.
“We’ve kind of been digging ourselves out of a hole,” said Bart Miller, the healthy rivers director at Western Resource Advocates, a conservation nonprofit based in Boulder, Colorado. “The one wet year that we had is only getting a part of the way there … We still have a lot of work to do to put our demands for water back into balance with what the river provides.”
He’s talking about the Colorado River, which passes through Lake Powell. The Colorado River Basin is a source of water and hydropower for about 40 million Americans.
The lake and its 1,320-megawatt power plant get a lot of attention because of their importance to millions of water and electricity consumers, and because the water level has gotten perilously close to shutting off the flow to the power plant.
Lake Powell key elevations. Credit: Reclamation
If the level falls to 3,490 feet—78 feet below this week’s reading—water will be too low to spin the turbines that generate electricity.
If the level falls to 3,370 feet—198 feet below this week’s reading—it would reach “dead pool” status, when the water is too low to flow downstream from the dam. The results would be catastrophic for communities south of the dam, as David Dudley explained last year in Sierra magazine.
The Bureau of Reclamation does regular forecasts to have an idea of these risks. A report issued in August projects that there is essentially a zero percent chance that the power plant will be forced offline this year, but a 3 percent chance the water level will drop enough to force a shutoff in 2028.
Lake Powell is one several prominent examples of water resources that are at risk because of drought that climate change has exacerbated and the overallocation of the Colorado River. Downriver is another example, Lake Mead, whose low water levels have led to heightened concerns about the Hoover Dam power plant, as Rhiannon Saegert wrote for the Las Vegas Sun in August.
The Biden administration is working with states that rely on the Colorado River to find ways to conserve water and maintain adequate flow through Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The administration revised the operating guidelines for the lakes in April, including measures to better give notice to operators of irrigation systems and water utilities about water delivery reductions, and giving the Bureau of Reclamation more flexibility to conserve and store water.
“Failure is not an option,” said Tommy Beaudreau, who was then deputy secretary of the Interior, in an April statement.
Hydroelectric Dam
Let’s take a few steps back. Hydropower plants have long been some of the most reliable sources of carbon-free electricity. The country gets 6 percent of its electricity from hydropower, which is more than any other utility-scale renewable source except for wind.
But drought and other extreme weather events are making hydropower increasingly volatile. The ups and downs show up in national figures; 2021 and 2022 were two of the three lowest years for hydropower generation since 2010, according to the Energy Information Administration. (This doesn’t include 2023, for which full-year records are not yet available.)
The shifts look ever more drastic at the state level.
From October 2022 to September 2023, hydropower generation in Washington State—the national leader in hydropower—was down 23 percent compared to the previous 12-month period.
In that same timeframe, California increased its hydropower generation by 72 percent.
Credit: Inside Climate News
The “why” comes down to local factors such as drought or recovery from drought. For grid operators, the takeaway is that hydropower isn’t as steady as it used to be.
There also is a growing view among environmental and justice advocates that hydropower has harmful effects on plants and animals, and can lead to an increase in methane emissions. And, construction of reservoirs has often displaced Indigenous communities.
Some of those advocates, with support from farmers, are saying the Colorado River should be allowed to flow freely through the area where the Glen Canyon Dam now stands in order to improve the availability of water south of the dam, among other benefits. Ian James of the Los Angeles Times wrote about this in September.
While the idea doesn’t have widespread support, it’s not being dismissed in the way it might have been a decade ago, when the problems with the dam were less apparent.
Federal officials have resources to prepare for declining water levels on Lake Powell, but they are dealing with symptoms of larger problems: climate change and a demand for water that exceeds a shrinking supply.
For now, the news is better than it was last year at this time, but Miller isn’t treating this like a victory.
“We haven’t solved the problem,” he said. “We’re still in this place where we need to do a lot of work.”
Black Canyon July 2020. Photo credit: Cari Bischoff
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
The next coordination meeting for the operation of the Aspinall Unit is scheduled for Thursday, January 18th2024, at 1:00 pm.
This meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn Express in Montrose, CO. There will also be an option for virtual attendance via Microsoft Teams. A link to the Teams meeting will be emailed next week along with the meeting handouts.
The meeting agenda will include a review of operations and hydrology since August, current soil and snowpack conditions, a discussion of hydrologic forecasts, the weather outlook, and planned operations for this water year. There will also be a presentation by American Whitewater on the development of the Environmental & Recreational Flow Tool.
Most of us have a slate of hope for the New Year. Denver Water does too!
We’re hoping for a bump in the snowpack as winter unfolds.
A half-frozen North Saint Vrain creek gurgles through Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park, where warm temperatures and spotty snowpack in early January signaled a slow start to the snow season. Photo credit: Denver Water.
We entered January with ho-hum conditions, with snowpack in the mid-60s in terms of percentage of normal in Denver Water’s two water supply river basins — the South Platte and the Colorado.
That is not a banner start to the 2024 snowpack.
The last time the Colorado River snowpack started off near the current level was in 2013. For the South Platte however, snowpack is close to where it was last year.
“I’d rather be ahead than behind, but there’s still plenty of time for improvement,” noted Nathan Elder, Denver Water’s manager of supply. “The deficits we see currently can still be made up with one big storm.”
In the mountain watersheds where Denver Water collects its water supply, the percentage of water held in the snowpack (called the snow water equivalent or SWE), was far below normal as of Jan. 7, 2024, but additional mountain snow is in this week’s forecast. Image credit: USDA National Resources Conservation Service.
Another way to look at the snowpack so far this season is by plotting current snow water equivalent percentages against the normal trajectory through the winter and spring. This graphic looks at Colorado’s snow water equivalent percentages in early January 2024 compared to normal.
This image shows the natural rhythm of Colorado’s snowpack, the state’s frozen water reservoir, as it builds from winter to spring and then melts in the spring runoff. The black line shows Colorado’s snow water equivalent, or SWE, on Jan. 3, 2024, as compared to normal (the green line), and the historical minimum and maximum of snowpack peaks in the spring. Image credit: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
There’s another point that can be made to push back on any early pessimism: Reservoir storage levels are the best since 2019 for Denver Water, at 86% of average versus the 83% that is typical this time of year. Statewide, too, reservoirs are in good shape following a good snow (and rain!) year in 2023.
Last year’s boost in reservoir levels is critical, as the extra water could help nurse water providers through a tough year should conditions remain underwhelming during the next four months of 2024.
Notably, reservoir conditions on the Eastern Plains are strong, too, boosted by a snowstorm that hit northeast Colorado the day after Christmas. Having high water storage levels for farmers and ranchers is always important because that reduces the potential that Denver Water might need to send more water downstream to meet the demands of older, more senior water rights holders.
“Below-normal snowpack is always concerning. Recent storms brought a little improvement and we continue to watch the weather and plan for this year’s spring runoff — while hoping for more snow,” Elder said.
Now is a good time to check for water leaks inside your home, because indoor use in the wintertime matters. Every bit we save in these colder months is water available to us when the warm months arrive.”
Under skies made hazy by wildfire smoke, flows in the Crystal River near Carbondale dipped to around 8 cfs in 2018. A new report on climate change in Colorado projects more frequent and intense wildfires and reduced streamflows in the future. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Scientists predict with high confidence that Colorado’s future spring runoff will come earlier; soil moisture will be lower; heat waves, droughts and wildfires will be more frequent and intense; and a thirstier atmosphere will continue to rob rivers of their flows — changes that are all driven by higher temperatures caused by humans burning fossil fuels.
These findings are according to the third Climate Change in Colorado Assessment report, produced by scientists at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University and released Monday. Commissioned by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the report’s findings have implications for the state’s water managers. Borrowing a phrase from climate scientist Brad Udall, climate change is water change — which has become a common maxim for those water managers.
The report focuses on 2050 as a planning horizon and projects what conditions will be like at that time. According to the report, by 2050, the statewide annual temperatures are projected to warm by 2.5 to 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared with a late-20th-century baseline and 1 to 4 degrees compared with today. Colorado temperatures have already risen by 2.3 degrees since 1980. By 2050, the average year is likely to be as warm as the hottest years on record through 2022.
This warming, which scientists are very confident will come to pass, will drive the other water system changes that Colorado can expect to see. As temperatures rise and streamflows decline, water supply will decrease.
According to the report, by 2050 there will be an annual reduction of 5-30% in streamflow volume; a 5-30% reduction of April 1 snow-water equivalent (a measure of how much water is in the snowpack) and an 8-17% increase in evaporative demand (a measure of how “thirsty” the atmosphere is). A hotter, drier atmosphere can fuel dry soils and wildfire risk. Peak snowpack, which usually occurs in April, is also predicted to shift earlier by a few days to several weeks.
“Streamflows are primarily driven by snowpack that melts in the spring,” said Becky Bolinger, CSU research scientist, assistant state climatologist and lead author of the report. “When you are warming your temperatures, you are first changing the timing of when that snowpack will melt. And because we’re losing more to the atmosphere, that means we have less to run off in our rivers and be available for us later.”
Scientists are less certain about whether precipitation will increase or decrease in the future. Dry conditions have persisted across the state over the past two decades, with four of the five driest years occurring since 2000. Most climate models project an increase in winter precipitation, but they suggest the potential for large decreases in summer precipitation. But even if precipitation stays the same, streamflows will dwindle because of increased temperatures.
This graph shows the projected monthly streamflows for the Colorado River at Dotsero for 2050. A report on climate change in Colorado projects a 5-30% reduction in annual streamflow volume by 2050.
Planning for less water
CWCB officials hope water managers across the state will use the report to help plan for a future with less water. Many entities have already shifted to developing programs that support climate adaptation and resilience.
“I think we can say with confidence that it is more likely that we will have water shortages in the future,” said Emily Adid, CWCB senior climate adaptation specialist. “I think this report is evidence of that and can help local planners and people on the ground plan for those reductions in streamflow.”
Denver Water is one of those water providers that will use the report’s findings in its planning. The utility, which is the oldest and largest in the state, provides water to 1.5 million people and helped to fund the report. Denver Water has been preparing for a future with a less-reliable water supply through conservation and efficiency measures, reservoir expansion projects and wildfire mitigation.
“Projected future streamflows is a huge challenge for the water resources industry,” said Taylor Winchell, Denver Water’s senior planner and climate adaptation specialist. “The same amount of precipitation in the future means less steamflow because temperatures will continue to warm. … All this leads to this concept of uncertainty. We really need to plan for a variety of ways the future can happen essentially.”
Another finding of the report is that temperatures have warmed more in the fall than other seasons, with a 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit increase statewide since 1980, a trend that is expected to continue. Although it’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause of fall warming, Bolinger said it may have to do with the summer monsoons pattern, which can bring moisture with near-daily thunderstorms, but which have been weaker in recent years. That precipitation is critical, she said.
“First, you’re keeping the temperatures from getting too hot because you’re clouding over and getting storms,” Bolinger said. “And generally, with higher humidity, you’re going to have less evaporative loss from the soil. What we’ve been seeing in recent years is that we’re not getting that moisture in the late summer and into the fall.”
Less moisture and higher temperatures in the fall also leads to lower soil moisture and kicks off a vicious cycle of decreased water supplies. The dry soil gets locked in under the winter’s snowpack, and when spring melting begins, the water must first replenish the soils before feeding rivers and streams. This is what occurred in the upper Colorado River basin in 2021 when a near-normal snowpack translated to just 31% of normal runoff and the second-worst inflow ever into Lake Powell.
Some water-use sectors already experience shortages, especially those with junior water rights. Initiatives set up to support the environment and recreation are also at risk with shortages. And those shortages are likely to get worse in the future. In addition to grant programs, one of the ways CWCB aims to help these water users adapt is with a future avoided cost explorer (FACE) tool, which is outlined in the 2023 Water Plan. This modeling tool can help water managers figure out the costs of addressing — or failing to address — hazards such as wildfires, droughts and floods.
According to the report, extreme climate-driven events such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires are expected to be more frequent and intense.
“That gives you a little bit of perspective to say, ‘Well, what if I invest to mitigate this now, how can I lessen the potential impact in the future?,’” said Russ Sands, chief of CWCB’s water supply planning section. “I’m not trying to scare people; what we’re trying to do is motivate change and help them invest early.”
Despite the near-certainty of continued warming and resulting changes to the water system, Bolinger said there is a bright spot. Since the last time that a Climate Change in Colorado report was issued, in 2014, the world has begun to take action on reducing fossil fuel use and has shifted away from the worst-case scenario. Earlier projections were based on a “business as usual” assumption, with no climate mitigation.
“We do have things that have been put into place internationally like the Paris Accord,” Bolinger said. “We are more along the lines of a middle-case scenario. As long as we continue to take the actions that have been planned out, we are going to follow that middle scenario, which does show warming, but it’s not as bad.”
Click the link to read the release on the USGS website:
Measuring streamflow is critical for assessing the health and status of river systems. One of the longest continuous records of streamflow is just north of Yellowstone National Park, at Corwin Springs!
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
Map of SNOTEL snowpack telemetry sites (blue dots) and streamgages (red dots) in and around Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week’s contribution is from Blaine McCleskey, research chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
John Wesley Powell, the second Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 1881 to 1894 and explorer of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon, recognized that water availability was a significant challenge in the western United States. During Powell’s USGS tenure, systematic inventorying of streams and their flows in the USA began in earnest.
In January 1889, the first USGS streamgage was established along the Rio Grande near Embudo, New Mexico. Streamgages typically contain equipment to continuously measure the rate and volume of streamflow. Streamgages in the western USA are particularly challenging to install and maintain because the river stage (or height) and flow can vary greatly between the dry months (late summer-winter) and periods of snowmelt, and in many cases the riverbeds are soft and unstable. The equipment and techniques developed at the Embudo gage site became the foundation of USGS streamgaging methods. Since the establishment of the Embudo gage site, there has been a consistent increase in the number of established gages in the United States.
Currently, the U.S. Geological Survey measures discharge at approximately 8,500 sites across the United States. Most of the streamflow data are delivered in near real-time via the USGS National Water Dashboard(https://dashboard.waterdata.usgs.gov/app/nwd/en/?region=lower48&aoi=default). These flow data are used for planning, forecasting, and warning about floods and droughts; managing water rights and transboundary water issues; operating waterways for power production and navigation; monitoring environmental conditions to protect aquatic habitats; describing impacts to streamflow from changing land and water uses; assessing water quality and regulating pollutant discharges; determining if streams are safe for recreational activities; designing reservoirs, roads, bridges, drinking water and wastewater facilities; and many scientific investigations. Users of these data include water, utility, environmental, and transportation managers. More than 880 million requests for streamflow or water level information were fulfilled during the 2020 water year (which runs from October 1 to September 30 of the following year)!
There are currently 15 streamgages in and around Yellowstone that are used to monitor hydrothermal activityfrom the more than 10,000 thermal features, manage water supplies, and that are used to prepare for and investigate the impacts of floods.
Hydrograph showing discharge in cubic feet per second for Corwin Springs streamgage site on the Yellowstone River, MT, spanning 1889-2023. The spike in 2022 is from the June floods of that year. Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
While the Embudo streamgage site in New Mexico was the first USGS gage site, the gage on the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs, just north of the national park boundary, is nearly as old! Daily average discharge at the site was first reported on August 1, 1889 and continued through October 31, 1893. Discharge measurements started again in 1910 and continue today. The discharge record at Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs is one of the longest in the United States! The hydrograph, which plots the level of stream flow over time, from the site appears to be saw-toothed, with the peaks generally representing higher flows in the spring as a result of snowmelt.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
Plot of specific conductance, discharge, and temperature measured at the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs, Montana, during early-mid 2023. The anomalous spikes in temperature and specific conductance on May 23, 2023, are thought to be when a large sand and bar was deposited at the site. May 23 is also the peak flow in 2023.
The highest instantaneous discharge measured at the Corwin Springs’ gage was during the June 2022 flood, when the maximum discharge was determined to be 54,700 cubic feet per second (CFS) (1,549 cubic meters per second), compared to a median peak during snowmelt of 12,000 CFS (340 cubic meters per second). The June 2022 flood is estimated to be a 500-year flood event, meaning that an event like this is likely to occur only once in 500 years.
The gage house at Corwin Springs narrowly escaped serious damage from the 2022 flood, as the streambank about 164 feet (50 meters) downstream eroded away. However, the gage did not emerge completely unscathed. During the flood, monitoring equipment was washed away and the streambed changed its shape. In addition, the site continues to see changes to the bank and stream bed after the flood. During the 2023 spring high-flow runoff, a large unconsolidated sand and gravel bar migrated downstream and was deposited on top of the newly installed monitoring equipment at the gage! Approximately 2–3 feet (60–90 centimeters) of debris was deposited along the bank covering the piping that housed scientific monitoring equipment. The new gravel bar was probably deposited at the site on May 23, 2023, which corresponds to the highest flow in 2023, based on anomalous temperature and specific conductance measurements.
Streamgage site and profiling tool on the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs, Montana. The gage house narrowly avoided damage during the June 2022 flood, which eroded the downstream bank. The river profiling instrument helps to map the river bottom to assess streamflow rates and conditions. USGS photo by Mike Poland, July 31, 2023. Sources/Usage: Public Domain.
Clearly the riverbeds and banks are still unstable as a result of the June 2022 flood! But the Corwin Spring gage keeps on measuring, continuing one of the longest continuous records of stream flow in the United States!
Negotiators are seeking an agreement that would prepare for extraordinary cuts in the amount of river water that can be tapped.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
“How do we live with the river that we have, not the river that we hope and dream for?” said Becky Mitchell, the lead negotiator for the state of Colorado…
The rules that govern the distribution of Colorado River water expire at the end of 2026. Negotiators are trying to reach a deal quickly, in case the White House changes hands. It’s not the prospect of a Republican administration that is particularly concerning, negotiators said, but rather a change in personnel and the time required to build new relationships between state and federal officials…
“Whenever there’s an administration change, that significantly disrupts things,” said JB Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California and that state’s lead negotiator. “If we can get a draft ready and in place by the end of the year, that will ensure that we get the hard work done.”
From left, J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona Department of Water Resources; Becky Mitchell, Colorado representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission. Hamby and Buschatzke acknowledged during this panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference that the lower basin must own the structural deficit, something the upper basin has been pushing for for years. CREDIT: TOM YULSMAN/WATER DESK, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER
From left, J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona Department of Water Resources; Becky Mitchell, Colorado representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission. Hamby and Buschatzke acknowledged during this panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference that the lower basin must own the structural deficit, something the upper basin has been pushing for for years. CREDIT: TOM YULSMAN/WATER DESK, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral.com website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:
December 14, 2023
The seven states that share the Colorado River’s water celebrated some conservation wins at their annual meeting here this week but quickly began sparring over who will bear the brunt of future pain that they agree a drying climate will dole out. Talk of cutbacks has long focused on the three states collectively known as the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — and on Wednesday, representatives of California water districts and tribes signed federally funded deals to leave more water in the river’s largest reservoir over the next two years. On Thursday, interstate rivalries re-emerged as officials from the Upper Basin made clear they expect the Lower Basin to cut back much further before coming after their water. Farmers and other users in the headwaters states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico already go without in dry years because they don’t have a giant storage pool like the Southwest’s Lake Mead to augment nature…
September 21, 1923, 9:00 a.m. — Colorado River at Lees Ferry. From right bank on line with Klohr’s house and gage house. Old “Dugway” or inclined gage shows to left of gage house. Gage height 11.05′, discharge 27,000 cfs. Lens 16, time =1/25, camera supported. Photo by G.C. Stevens of the USGS.
Source: 1921-1937 Surface Water Records File, Colorado R. @ Lees Ferry, Laguna Niguel Federal Records Center, Accession No. 57-78-0006, Box 2 of 2 , Location No. MB053635.
The upper and lower basins split just downstream of Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam, at Lees Ferry in Arizona, though Lake Powell’s storage is primarily used to ensure the Upper Basin has enough water to fulfill its yearly obligations to the Lower Basin. The Upper Basin states use roughly half as much, and less in years when mountain streams dry up, and concerns over that disparity surfaced Thursday.
“We can’t accept something that continues to drain the system, that puts 40 million people at risk,” Colorado’s river commissioner, Becky Mitchell, told her interstate colleagues at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference…
“The one person that you cannot negotiate with is Mother Nature. She will win every time. She’s been telling us what to do,” Mitchell said. “I want an agreement that lessens the pain for all of us, not just some of us.”
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
From left, J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona Department of Water Resources; Becky Mitchell, Colorado representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission. Hamby and Buschatzke acknowledged during this panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference that the lower basin must own the structural deficit, something the upper basin has been pushing for for years. CREDIT: TOM YULSMAN/WATER DESK, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER
LAS VEGAS — Around 8 a.m. Dec. 13, Becky Mitchell swapped flip-flops for heels, donned a blazer and headed out of her Las Vegas hotel room to fight for Colorado’s right to water in a drier future at the biggest water gathering of the year.
At the 2023 Colorado River Water Users Association meeting last month, Mitchell, 49, would glad-hand and spar with 1,700 of the Colorado River’s most powerful water users. As Colorado’s first full-time Colorado River commissioner, Mitchell’s job is to make sure Coloradans don’t lose out as the seven basin states vie for the critical, and limited, resource.
“There’s always some tension within the seven states whether we portray it or not,” Mitchell said. “It’s good for people to see that. We’re dealing with important issues.”
Mitchell, originally from Hawaii, is a Colorado School of Mines graduate who has worked on Colorado water issues for the state since 2009. In addition to serving as Colorado’s representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission, she has also been the director of the state’s top water agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
Instability in the basin, which provides 40% of Colorado’s water, is just adding to the pressure. Cities, industries and farms could face more severe water shortages by 2050, according to the state’s water plan.
“If you’re not passionate about this, you’re not paying attention,” Mitchell said. “When you look at the science and the history, I don’t know how it doesn’t move you.”
For the federal government and the seven state commissioners the main task at hand is to plan how water is stored and released from the basin’s two largest water savings banks, lakes Mead and Powell, after 2026, when the current operating rules expire.
Based on their decisions and climate conditions, the river and its reservoirs could continue to dry up, as they nearly did in 2021 and 2022, or they could be brought back into balance, with demands for water reduced to match the river’s shrinking supplies.
“Everyone is intent on protecting the interests of their particular constituency,” said Estevan López, New Mexico’s Colorado River negotiator. “Things can get tense at times in these discussions. These are difficult issues for all of us.”
Becky Mitchell. Photo credit: Colorado Department of Natural Resources
Mitchell in action
A typical day for Mitchell involves a steady flow of meetings, either in Colorado or across the basin states, with the political leaders, experts, utility managers, water users and others in the water community. The conference represented all of that, on hyperspeed, crunched into one windowless, enormous conference hall.
“These things are overwhelming. I think people think I’m more of a people person than I am. I actually like to definitely recharge as much as I can,” Mitchell said, which mostly involved a U2 concert, karaoke and family time at the conference.
The annual gathering offers a chance to hammer home key points in a public forum with attendees from across the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada, Mitchell said.
Her main point: There’s only so much Upper Basin states can do when water users are already getting cut off each year, she said, while walking, coffee in hand, past slot machines and French-themed shops at Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.
She headed into the first big conference meeting, where she and other state representatives on the Upper Colorado River Commission delivered prepared remarks and state updates to the audience. For Mitchell, that meant rehashing her “irrefutable truths,” a set of standards by which she’ll vet any agreement the basin states propose.
Occasionally, someone stopped her in the hallways or at meals for sidebar conversations. (“Xcel accepted!” one person shared, referencing a historic agreement to purchase some of the oldest water rights in Colorado from Xcel.)
The next morning, tensions flared at the panel as she spoke stridently about her concerns about the negotiations and limitations on the water supply in Colorado, where at least some farmers, ranchers and other water users see their water shut off early as supplies shrink.
Several Coloradans said they felt well-represented by Mitchell during the conference, including leaders of the two tribes with reservation land in Colorado, the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain Ute.
“She’s strong in heart and mind to get the message out. Being blunt sometimes takes that,” Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart said. Mitchell has advocated for tribes on a whole new level, and without her, they’d be stuck in the status quo, Heart said.
“She’s letting everybody else know: She stands with the tribes, and Colorado stands with the tribes,” said Lorelei Cloud, acting chairwoman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. “That’s a big statement to make.”
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
Working outside of the mold
Mitchell doesn’t fit the traditional mold of a water buffalo in Colorado. Some attendees privately groused that Mitchell’s approach at the panel was too aggressive or her tone too scolding.
Several Coloradans said they loved Mitchell’s spirited and fiery manner. Many Coloradans at the conference were proud of her, said Ken Curtis, general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District.
“She did have to earn some respect over some time, and I think she’s earned it,” Curtis said. “Anytime there’s somebody new appointed to a position like this, that pretty much the whole state water community is watching, it’s got to be rough.”
The slowly changing stereotype of a “water buffalo,” an insider term for negotiators of Colorado River agreements, is that of an older, white and male figurehead.
Mitchell is not those things. In her home life, she is the mother of five adult children, three of whom she adopted from Ethiopia where she frequently returns to work on water issues.
At the conference, her big laughs occasionally came with a slight snort, and once or twice, she broke out a Running Man-style dance move in the conference halls. She was frequently the most forceful speaker on the stage, and in past speaking events, she’s gotten choked up while talking about water issues.
“People really see her sincerity, speaking from the heart, and they’re willing to do the same,” said Robert Sakata, a Colorado farmer and member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
Mitchell said she has made a conscious decision to not shrink herself in the face of criticism. It is an example taught to her by her mother, she said, and one that she tries to teach to her daughters.
“There’s been a couple times when I’ve tried to be quieter or politer to make myself heard, and it hasn’t worked,” Mitchell said. “I’ve had to make a choice to be in a place that’s more uncomfortable for me. … What we’re fighting for is too important to make myself small to make myself feel comfortable.”
Fresh Water News was launched in 2018 as an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
2023’s above average snowpack gave a boost to Lake Powell’s dwindling water levels, and provided water managers more time to contemplate long-term policy changes. Photo: Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk
After years of dry conditions throughout the West, 2023 gave the region’s water managers the greatest gift of all: a hefty snowpack.
This year’s winter snow eventually melted and boosted the Colorado River’s beleaguered reservoirs. The Hail Mary winter storms came just in time. Without the savior snows, the river’s second-largest reservoir, Lake Powell, was on a glide path toward losing the ability to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam, not to mention the harm to the long-term ecological health of the river and its main tributaries.
But the more nightmarish scenarios of quiet turbines, empty reservoirs, and dry river beds were put on hold this past year, as more snow also means more time. When wet weather returned to the basin, the river’s top negotiators quickly turned their attention away from the short-term emergency in front of them, and toward a more long-term set of solutions. Talk of not “squandering” the gift of time became a standard talking point of decision-makers along the river that supplies more than 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 tribal nations and communities in northern Mexico.
One snowy year does not make for a lasting fix for the Colorado River’s fundamental gap between water supply and demand. A new year means new uncertainties over the river’s future. And as it looks now, 2024 promises to be more consequential than the last.
Here at The Water Desk, these are the top things we’re paying attention to in 2024:
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map January 13, 2023 via the NRCS.
1. Reimagining how we manage the Colorado River
The snowy respite in 2023 gave both federal and state-level water managers the brain space to think long-term. A set of 2007 guidelines for the river’s management expire in 2026. In October, the federal Bureau of Reclamation released its preliminary report on what should be included in the talks to renegotiate them. They’ve given the various users — states, tribes, environmental and recreation groups — until March 2024 to submit their preferred plans for analysis and eventual inclusion in a draft set of guidelines later next year.
The current guidelines have quite a few detractors across the river’s Upper and Lower Basins. And what should or shouldn’t be in the new rules has contributed to significant tension among river negotiators.
The various state leaders recently got the chance to publicly posture at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference, held annually in December in Las Vegas. All seven state-level negotiators, including representatives from California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, sat beside each other on stage and made clear there was still distance between their positions on the big-picture problems plaguing the river and how to deal with them. The Arizona Republic’s Brandon Loomis has this excellent recap of what went down.
Leaders from California water agencies and districts signed funding agreements with federal officials at the 2023 Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas. Photo: Luke Runyon/The Water Desk
The panel’s biggest news was a public commitment from the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada to address what’s known as the structural deficit. This is the well-documented supply and demand gap that would exist even without climate change sapping snowpack and runoff. The deficit is estimated to be between 1.2 and 1.5 million acre-feet annually, and it has contributed greatly to the dwindling water levels at Lakes Mead and Powell. Who has to take the necessary cuts to account for that amount of water has always been an open question. Now, we have an answer: the Lower Basin states.
The structural deficit refers to the consumption by Lower Basin states of more water than enters Lake Mead each year. The deficit, which includes losses from evaporation, is estimated at 1.2 million acre-feet a year. (Image: Central Arizona Project circa 2019)
“That makes sense. That’s our responsibility,” said J.B. Hamby, California’s river negotiator, at the Vegas gathering. “This is a historic thing coming. It’s on our shoulders to be able to resolve it.”
But in a basin that in recent months has grown increasingly reliant on injections of federal cash to incentivize temporary conservation deals, how state leaders plan to find the funds and the political will to permanently deal with the structural deficit will be something to watch. Any commitments made by those state-level negotiators will need to be sold to a broad range of constituents, who at this point will expect to be handsomely compensated for a permanent cut to their supplies, as POLITICO’s Annie Snider explained in this November piece.
An additional layer of basinwide tension can be summed up in one word: equity. It’s thrown around a lot in discussions of the Colorado River and the economic and social sacrifices needed to bring it onto a more sustainable path. Who should bear the greatest burden of the eventual cutbacks is still unclear. Upper Basin leaders, from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, often point the finger toward the Lower Basin.
“We’re not interested in striking a deal that allows the continuation of depleting the storage and dragging the system into crisis,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top river negotiator. Mitchell made clear she felt users in her state were already feeling pain, while those downstream of the large reservoirs have mostly been made whole, even in the driest of years. But with Lower Basin users willing to take on big, intractable issues like the structural deficit, moving forward it will likely be more difficult for Upper Basin leaders to continue to cast all the blame downstream.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
One more idea from the Las Vegas conference that’s still largely conceptual, but is gaining some interest from those in power, is to use annual measures of basic hydrology — like snowpack levels and streamflows — to determine how much water ends up being delivered to the basin’s varied users. It sounds simple: only use what nature provides.
But that idea flies in the face of the river’s foundational governing document, the Colorado River Compact, which put fixed volumes of water use on paper, regardless of whether it was a dry or wet year. For now, the idea seems to be more of a talking point than a specific policy proposal, and we will see if proponents can turn it into something Lower Basin users can get behind.
In recent years, the Colorado River’s 30 federally recognized tribes have grown their influence in the basin’s political landscape. Calls for a more formal tribal role in basinwide negotiations are being amplified by the tribes themselves, and by both state and federal leaders, such as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
2023 presented some significant tribal successes. The Gila River Indian Community became a key player in negotiations over the Lower Basin’s conservation plan to secure federal dollars last spring. Federal officials promised the tribe $150 million over three years to leave water they were legally entitled to in Lake Mead.
A canal delivers Colorado River water to the Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix. Photo by Ted Wood/Water Desk
But in the long-term, deciding what that tribal role, or tribal seat at the negotiating table, could be and should be is unsettled. In June, at a Colorado River symposium at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center, Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis called for leaders from all 30 sovereign tribes to be included in talks between federal and state officials. That idea received immediate pushback from state leaders on the feasibility of expanding the table by 30 seats.
Creating a single representative seat for all of the tribes is another option. But that, too, presents challenges. Is it fair or feasible to reduce the varied economies, cultures, geographies and spiritual practices of 30 sovereign nations into a single seat?
While basinwide tribal inclusion still happens in an ad hoc rather than institutional way, a draft agreement to formalize a governing relationship among six tribes and the four Upper Basin states has taken shape. The Upper Colorado River Commission has started inviting representatives from six Upper Basin tribes to participate in regular meetings. Commissioners could formalize the new agreement this February, as The Colorado Sun’s Shannon Mullane recently reported.
There appears to be broad agreement that more formally including tribes in the river’s complex, multi-layered decision-making processes is the most just path to take. Deciding what type of basinwide governance structure will make tribal inclusion more than a talking point could make some progress in 2024 as the basin’s leaders say they finally have the brain space to take on longer-term issues, as KUNC’s Alex Hager reported in his piece from the Las Vegas conference.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map January 5, 2024 via the NRCS.
3. Winter snowpack can make or break
Snowpack in the southern Rockies entered 2024 with a weak start. There is still a lot of winter left to go, but beginning a new year with a significant snowpack deficit always brings a certain amount of hand-wringing from skiers and water managers alike.
Upper Basin snowpack stands at just 64% of the long-term median. The snowiest months are still to come, but it’s much harder to get to an above-average snowpack after a slow start.
2023 was a stark example of what a wet winter can do. The sense of urgency among the river’s policymakers diminished as the snow piled high. Headlines turned from documenting record lows at the big Colorado River reservoirs, to cheering modest gains in water levels.
The past year’s heavy snows and subsequent rushing rivers came after three successive meager runoff seasons. The gains were significant, but not a total game-changer. As scientists often note, it takes multiple consecutive years of wet conditions to allow large reservoirs like Lakes Mead and Powell to fully recover.
The return of El Niño tipped the scales toward a warmer and wetter winter in the Colorado River basin’s headwaters states. So far, we’ve just been getting the warm, not the wet. No matter how you look at it, we’re having a dry start to winter, as my Water Desk colleague Mitch Tobin lays out in his latest Snow News post.
In 2023, Lower Colorado River leaders said their deal to conserve up to 3 million acre-feet between now and 2026 was enough to bring needed stability to the river’s reservoirs. But that same point was used to justify agreements like the Drought Contingency Plans in 2019 and the 500+ Plan in 2021, which did not provide the long-term stability and certainty that water managers crave.
Scientists, such as Colorado State University’s Brad Udall, say we haven’t been imaginative enoughin envisioning just how bad things could get along the river. Another series of dry winters, the likes of which we’ve seen in the past 25 years, is plausible.
2023 brought a reprieve. How the winter of 2024 will play out is still unclear. Its outcome will undoubtedly have ripple effects, and either amplify or ease the existing tensions playing out across the basin.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.
A below-average runoff this year could mean that reservoirs in Colorado and Wyoming would have to release water downstream to keep the lake from hitting levels that would threaten the Glen Canyon Dam’s energy generation and make delivering water to Arizona, California and Nevada nearly impossible. Colorado River water managers have implemented similar emergency measures in recent years to keep Lake Powell from reaching crisis levels. Utah reaches its typical peak snowpack in early April, and the state gets about 95% of its water supply from snow.
At this time last year, conditions in the Colorado River Basin were dire. We knew we were heading into the first Tier 2a shortage for 2023. But we also knew that more needed to be done to stabilize the critical levels of the Basin’s two main reservoirs – Lake Powell (held back by Glen Canyon Dam) and Lake Mead (held back by Hoover Dam). Lake Powell was set to release the lowest volume since filling and Mead was anticipated to head into a Tier 3 shortage or greater in 2024. The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) was considering additional protection measures as part of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) that would modify Powell and Mead operations.
So, what happened this year – and where are we headed for 2024 and beyond?
2023: Mother Nature and the Lower Basin States step up The Basin experienced excellent snowpack last winter and above average runoff in 2023. That helped forestall an immediate crisis, but more actions were necessary. In April, Reclamation released the Draft SEIS, with action alternatives that were unacceptable to the Lower Basin States. In May, Arizona, California and Nevada announced a consensus proposal to conserve historic volumes of Colorado River water in Lake Mead. With this proposal in hand, Reclamation withdrew its Draft SEIS and in October released the revised Draft SEIS with the Lower Basin States’ consensus proposal designated as an Action Alternative. We anticipate a final decision in spring 2024.
Historic conservation in Arizona Arizona has already made significant progress toward the Lower Basin States proposal, conserving those historic volumes of water in Lake Mead. In 2023, we’ve conserved nearly 950,000 acre-feet, including our mandatory 592,000 Tier 2a shortage reduction, plus an additional voluntary contribution of more than 356,000 acre-feet. A big thank you to our 2023 conservation champions.
2024: A return to Tier 1 shortage The combination of favorable basin-wide hydrology and conservation efforts across the Lower Basin have improved the reservoir contents to the point that in August, Reclamation announced a Tier 1 shortage reduction for 2024 and not the Tier 3 or greater reduction that was anticipated earlier in the year. This still requires a heavy lift from Arizona with a 512,000 acre-foot reduction, just 80,000 acre-feet less than the Tier 2a shortage reduction we’ve taken this year. This represents about 30 percent of CAP’s normal supply; about 18 percent of Arizona’s Colorado River supply; and just under 8 percent of Arizona’s total water use.
Looking toward the future The 2007 Shortage-Sharing Guidelines and the Drought Contingency Plans expire in 2026. The good hydrology and additional voluntary conservation in the Lower Colorado River Basin have resulted in a relatively stable Colorado River Basin system in the short-term, giving the Basin states and Mexico a bit of breathing room to negotiate the next set of guidelines that will go into effect post-2026.
In June of this year, Reclamation formally announced its intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for post-2026 operations and solicited public comments on the scope of specific operational guidelines, strategies and related issues. In October, Reclamation released its post-2026 Scoping Report, which summarized the more than 24,000 comments received and identified its anticipated purpose, need and proposed federal action.
Arizona has been working with the Lower Basin states to come up with concepts that would lead to a sustainable river system. The Lower Basin’s stated primary objectives are to: • Improve the sustainability of the Colorado River over a broad, but plausible range of future conditions • Increase the predictability of reductions • Address the structural deficit by sharing reductions among the Lower Basin states and Mexico • Share the risks and benefits of the system equitably within and between the basins
At the Arizona Reconsultation Committee meeting in November 2023, a new system contents approach was presented, basing shortage reductions on the volume of water available within Lake Mead, Lake Powell and the other major reservoirs in the system (Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge, Havasu, Mohave and Navajo).
Unlike the current approach, which is based on the elevations of only Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the new dynamic approach is based on water available in all major reservoirs in the Colorado River system. This approach helps provide a clearer picture of the health of the system, as well as achieve supply/demand balance by triggering reductions based on the health of the system. To provide as much certainty as possible to water users, and with the understanding that drier futures are likely, the intent is to keep the reservoir contents in a range that ensures a less variable reduction volume. Of course, the primary goal is to avoid crashing the system with this approach. We anticipate a draft EIS in late 2024 with a public comment period to follow.
We anticipate that other alternatives will be put forward and that Reclamation will issue a draft EIS in late 2024 with a comment period to follow.
Federal forecasts for the Colorado River’s water supply — the water source for 40 million people — predict a substantial drop as the snow season limps into the new year.
Water flowing into Lake Powell is forecasted to be 79% of its historical average, according to a December monthly report from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. One major cause is the poor showing of snow in the Rocky Mountains, but it’s not time to panic yet, water experts say.
Credit: Colorado Basin River Forecast Center
“It’s December, we still have several months of accumulation potential,” said Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist. “There’s no reason to freak-out about solely the fact that snowpack is low at this point because there’s still time to make that up. But we also know that, as the climate has been warming, the snowpack that we do get doesn’t go quite as far.”
In the Colorado River Basin, which stretches across seven Western states, a system of reservoirs catches water and meticulously times releases to provide a steady flow to farms, cities, industries and ecosystems around the basin.
The largest reservoirs are Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border and Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border. Together, they can store up to 53.9 million acre-feet of water, or about 92% of the reservoir storage capacity in the entire Colorado River Basin.
Both were drawn down to historic lows in the early 2020s. The good water year in 2023, when the basin saw above-average snow and rain, brought the reservoirs back from the brink of a crisis, but neither is close to its average conditions, let alone near full capacity.
Lake Powell key elevations. Credit: Reclamation
A bad water year — with below-average precipitation and hotter conditions — could send the reservoirs back toward dangerous lows, experts say. At Lake Powell, Glen Canyon Dam can no longer generate hydroelectric power when the water level falls below 3,490 feet or release water at all when the level falls below 3,370 feet.
The outlook for Lake Powell has grown more grim since the start of the water year in October. The Bureau of Reclamation estimated that a total of about 9.4 million acre-feet of water would flow into Lake Powell between October 2023 and September 2024.
That estimate has dropped by nearly 2 million acre-feet. The December forecast estimates the reservoir will receive about 7.62 million acre-feet of water by September, about 79% of the 30-year average from 1991 to 2020.
Two million acre-feet is enough water to fill Blue Mesa twice over — the largest reservoir in Colorado — or to supply one year of water for about 4 million typical urban households.
For reference, last year’s record snowpack sent more than 12 million acre-feet of water into the immense reservoir.
Even with just 7.62 million acre-feet expected to flow into Powell, Glen Canyon Dam is set to release 7.48 million acre-feet of water downstream to Lake Mead, an amount set by interstate agreements that govern how the reservoirs operate.
Graphic via Holly McClelland/High Country News.
Some projections indicate that the reservoir levels could fall low enough to trigger more emergency releases into Lake Powell from Upper Basin reservoirs, like Blue Mesa, which sits on the Gunnison River near the city of Gunnison.
River officials called on Blue Mesa to send water down to Lake Powell in 2021 to boost the reservoir’s water levels. That debt will be repaid by the end of December, said Chuck Cullom, executive director for the Upper Colorado River Commission, an interstate body that helps manage the Colorado River’s water.
“Between now and 2026, I would just highlight for folks that it could be Groundhog Day in the early spring and summer about declining towards critical elevations,” Cullom said during an Upper Colorado River Commission meeting Dec. 13 in Las Vegas.
The accumulation of snow in the mountains of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah provides much of the water for the Colorado River Basin. So far, that snowpack is off to a poor start, Schumacher said.
Federal data shows that the snowpack in the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — is the third lowest for the end of December since 1986, he said.
It’s similar to 2018, a year no one wants to repeat in the Southwest, Schumacher said.
“That was a year that started off bad and never recovered,” he said.
This year, warmer water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are causing El Niño weather patterns, which normally bring slightly more precipitation to the Southwest and slightly less moisture to the mountains in northern Colorado.
“At this point in the winter, the way bigger uncertainty is that we just don’t know what’s going to happen with the weather for the next few months,” Schumacher said.
More by Shannon MullaneShannon Mullane writes about the Colorado River Basin and Western water issues for The Colorado Sun. She frequently covers water news related to Western tribes, Western Slope and Colorado with an eye on issues related to resource management, the environment and equity. She can be reached at shannon@coloradosun.com.
A man fishes along Blue River. The federal government Dec. 19, 2023, announced a $1.8 million grant for a habitat restoration on a section of the Blue River. Blue River Watershed Group/Courtesy photo
Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Ryan Spencer). Here’s an excerpt:
December 25, 2023
A tributary of the Colorado River, Summit County’s Blue River has seen fisheries decline due to unnatural conditions associated with the Dillon Reservoir, which provides water to Denver
The federal government earlier this month announced $1.8 million in grant funding for habitat restoration along a stretch of the Blue River downstream from the Dillon Reservoir in Summit County. The funding will support a local environmental group’s efforts to restore Gold Medal fishing on the Blue River, a status the river lost in 2016, according to Blue River Watershed Group advancement director Vanessa Logsdon.
“We’re incredibly excited,” Logsdon said. “This is one of the largest grants we’ve received, and this project is going to be an expensive project. It’s a large area of the river, and it’s basically bank-to-bank restoration.”
Blue River Watershed Group has partnered with Trout Unlimited to create an Integrated Water Management Plan for the Blue River watershed, Logsdon said. A tributary of the Colorado River, “the Blue River faces quite a few threats and issues because of the dam,” she said. On Dec. 19, the Biden Administration’s Department of the Interior announced $1,857,570 in funding to complete the engineering and design for a habitat restoration project laid out in the management plan. The stretch of river where the work will focus is impacted by its proximity to the outflow from the Dillon Reservoir, according to the Interior Department news release announcing the Bureau of Reclamation WaterSMART grant awards. In the Blue River, the dam has contributed to an unnatural flow regime, below-average water temperatures due to cold-water releases from the bottom of the reservoir, and a lack of natural sediment and nutrient transport, the release states. The Integrated Water Management Plan is the culmination of years of scientific studies and research that aims to provide a roadmap for solving environmental issues on the Blue River, Logsdon said. The plan focuses on the stretch of river from its release at the Dillon Reservoir to Columbine Campground north of Silverthorne, she said.
The distinctive “bathtub ring” around Lake Mead is evident in this view overlooking Las Vegas Boat Harbor and Lake Mead Marina in August 2022. Credit: Christopher Clark/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, CC BY-SA 2.0
The 1922 Colorado River Compact ignored available science and overallocated the river’s water, a decision whose effects reverberate today. Now there’s an opportunity to get things right.
On 24 November 1922, the Colorado River Commission officially allocated water rights to the seven U.S. states of the Colorado River Basin. The Colorado River Compact and subsequent agreements, collectively known as the Law of the River, eased years of dispute among these states, and they constitute a milestone in the history of the American West.
The 1922 compact provided regulatory certainty for water management. It called for water to be stored and released as needed (most notably with the construction of Hoover Dam), thus supporting a robust era of reservoir building. The reservoirs, in turn, unleashed huge potential for electric power generation and stimulated economic growth throughout the West.
The terms of the compact, however, were largely the product of development aspirations and political dealmaking, and they relied on optimistic estimations of the amount of water the river could supply that were not supported by existing surveys or science. One hundred years later, a lasting water shortage crisis has brought the governance structure outlined in the compact to its knees, and the effects reverberate far beyond the Colorado River Basin. The two largest reservoirs in the United States, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have reached historic lows, threatening both the water supply and the hydropower generation capacity for tens of millions of users, as well as the nation’s food supply and flows critical to maintaining ecosystems.
This comparison of satellite images of the Glen Canyon–Lake Powell region on the Colorado River shows the dramatic change in water level between 1999 and 2021. Credit: Modified from NASA images
Municipalities are considering drastic water-saving measures. Farmers and ranchers, who as a group are by far the largest consumers of Colorado River water, face unprecedented challenges and uncertainty. So do the economies and environmental systems that depend on reliable stream discharge for aquatic life and recreation.
It is tempting to place responsibility for the water shortages on climate change, which has resulted in reduced precipitation across the basin, and on population growth that outpaced planners’ anticipation of water demands. Indeed, these are important exacerbating factors. A root cause of the dire situation today, however, lies in the commission’s choice to ignore the best available hydrologic science as it negotiated the original compact. As discussions over the availability of Colorado River water continue and a new compact is negotiated over the next few years, planners must not make this mistake again.
The Law of the River
Even before the Colorado River Compact was established, the vast American West was a bustling frontier for mineral exploration, agricultural development, and westward expansion. California already had been diverting water from the Colorado River to irrigate the fertile Imperial Valley since around 1901. Agriculture in sunny but dry southern Arizona was also booming. Other states envisioned securing more water for future irrigation of farmlands and for urban development.
Herbert Hoover presides over the signing of the Colorado River Compact in November 1922. Members of the Colorado River Commission stood together at the signing of the Colorado River Compact on November 24, 1922. The signing took place at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover presiding (seated). (Courtesy U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation)
Members of the commission included eight men, one each representing the Colorado River Basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—plus the commission’s chair, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who later became president of the United States. All parties realized the paramount importance of agreeing on consistent apportionments of the river’s water to the states, which would provide needed certainty into the future [Kuhn and Fleck, 2019]. That meant estimating the magnitude of the river’s discharge.
The main elements of the compact included the following:
The Colorado River Basin was divided into the Upper and Lower basins at Lee Ferry, Ariz. The Upper Basin includes four states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The Lower Basin includes three: Arizona, California, and Nevada (Figure 1).
Consumptive water use was divided evenly between the Upper and Lower basins, with each allowed 7.5 million acre-feet (~9.2 billion cubic meters) per year. The Upper Basin states were obligated to “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.”
The river’s average discharge at Lee Ferry was assumed to be 16.4 million acre-feet per year. Allocating a total of 15 million acre-feet per year would leave the remaining water for future development and for Mexico.
Fig. 1. The Colorado River Basin covers parts of seven U.S. states as well as part of Mexico. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
The allocation of 7.5 million acre-feet per year of consumptive use for each basin was grounded neither in the best available hydrologic calculations nor in climate variability projections. Rather, it was a compromise Hoover proposed between two endmember figures [Kuhn and Fleck, 2019]. One end was 8.2 million acre-feet per year, half the assumed annual average discharge at Lee Ferry of 16.4 million acre-feet per year, which itself was derived from a report by the U.S. Reclamation Service (now the Bureau of Reclamation) [Fall and Davis, 1922]. The other end was 6.5 million acre-feet per year, a figure proposed and advocated by the Upper Basin commissioners that reflected a roughly 50-50 split of the river discharge at Yuma [Kuhn and Fleck, 2019].
In the decades following the 1922 compact, a plethora of acts, orders, and agreements were written and signed to fine-tune the compact’s provisions, to authorize construction of dams for water storage and power generation, to build water transfer infrastructures, and to resolve interstate and intrastate disputes. Particularly significant was the 1944 treaty between the United States and Mexico—still in effect today—that guaranteed 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually for Mexico, bringing the total allocation to 16.5 million acre-feet per year.
September 21, 1923, 9:00 a.m. — Colorado River at Lees Ferry. From right bank on line with Klohr’s house and gage house. Old “Dugway” or inclined gage shows to left of gage house. Gage height 11.05′, discharge 27,000 cfs. Lens 16, time =1/25, camera supported. Photo by G.C. Stevens of the USGS.
Source: 1921-1937 Surface Water Records File, Colorado R. @ Lees Ferry, Laguna Niguel Federal Records Center, Accession No. 57-78-0006, Box 2 of 2 , Location No. MB053635.
How Much Water Was There?
In the early 1900s, there were only a few stream gauges in the United States measuring river discharge. The middle section of the Colorado River Basin was one of the most remote and inaccessible regions in the nation at the time. In particular, the canyon region from the mouth of Green River in Utah to the Grand Wash in Arizona, covering a water course of approximately 840 kilometers (520 miles), was accessible to wheeled vehicles at only three points [La Rue et al., 1925]. Because of the inaccessibility, no stream gauges were established there until about 1920. The gauge station at Lee Ferry was established only in summer 1921.
The estimate of Colorado River discharge at Lee Ferry adopted in the compact originated with stream discharge measurements at Laguna Diversion Dam (Figure 2) near Yuma in southern Arizona, a water course of approximately 1,002 kilometers (622 miles) downstream of Lee Ferry. Fall and Davis [1922] derived the value by subtracting the discharge from the Gila River, which enters the Colorado at Yuma, from the measured discharge at Laguna Dam. The commission simply assumed that the volume gained by the Colorado from tributaries between Lee Ferry and Laguna Dam was about the same as the volume lost to evaporation over that same stretch of river corridor (black curve in Figure 2).
Fig. 2. Colorado River discharge at Lee Ferry, Ariz., from 1895 to 2022. From 1895 to 1920, the data show the difference between La Rue et al. [1925] and Fall and Davis [1922] estimates (data are from La Rue et al. [1925, Table 3] and Fall and Davis [1922, Table 6]). The long-term data show the natural discharge and its 20-year running average from 1906 to 2022 (data from U.S. Bureau of Reclamation). Abbreviation maf = million acre-feet.
Even today, it is challenging to estimate water loss due to evaporation and plant transpiration over a vast area of dry land influenced by seasonal floods and varying vegetation covers. It’s clear that the commission’s assumption, and therefore the 16.4-million-acre-feet-per-year estimate, was informed by grossly optimistic considerations and ignored the more conservative science and more reliable hydrologic data available at the time.
A lower estimate of Colorado River discharge had emerged prior to the compact on the basis of a more rigorous scientific approach by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) hydrologist Eugene Clyde La Rue [Kuhn and Fleck, 2019]. Between 1914 and 1924, La Rue traveled hundreds of miles of the Colorado River and its tributaries to survey dam sites and conduct river discharge measurements. He probably collected more firsthand hydrologic data than anyone and was considered the most knowledgeable Colorado River expert of his generation [Langbein, 1975].
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
La Rue calculated the average discharge at Lee Ferry between 1895 and 1920 to be 15.0 million acre-feet per year using records from stream gauges and tributary contributions upstream of Lee Ferry. Specifically, he used upstream gauges near Green River, Utah, on the Green River and near Fruita, Colo., on the Colorado River (Figure 1), combined with his records from several other tributaries, to estimate the discharge at Lee Ferry (red curve in Figure 2).
How significant is this difference? It represents nearly 10% of the river discharge assumed in 1922, and it is not far below the estimated reduction in demand needed to meet the current shortage. At a U.S. Senate committee hearing in 2022 examining short- and long-term solutions to extreme droughts in the western United States, Bureau of Reclamation commissioner Camille C. Touton testified, on the basis of a bureau analysis, that Colorado River Basin states would need to reduce consumption by 2–4 million acre-feet in 2023 to protect hydropower generation at Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
La Rue argued that decisionmakers should use longer-term averages in estimating river discharge. Prior to 1899, there were no stream discharge measurements in the Colorado River Basin. La Rue creatively used water level records from Great Salt Lake in Utah, calibrated against later records of river discharge and lake levels, to infer earlier annual Colorado River discharges back to 1895 [La Rue and Grover, 1916; La Rue et al., 1925] (dashed red curve in Figure 2). Decades later, La Rue’s inferred discharges for those early years were found to be consistent with discharge values estimated from tree ring studies [Meko et al., 2007]. The different approaches of La Rue and Fall and Davis led to a disparity in their discharge estimates of approximately 1.4 million acre-feet per year.
Ignoring Available Science
Data and science characterizing the Colorado were limited in the 1920s, but La Rue’s river discharge estimate was known ever since he first published it in a USGS report in 1916. Yet his work only hovered in the background of the commission’s negotiations. La Rue made a series of attempts to let the commission know that its perception of how much water was in the river was overly optimistic [Kuhn and Fleck, 2019]. In 1920, he tried but failed to facilitate a meeting between USGS and the Reclamation Service because of his concerns over the difference between his estimate, published in the 1916 USGS report, and Fall and Davis’s estimate, which first appeared in a preliminary Reclamation Service report in 1920.
As the preparation of the compact was gathering steam, La Rue took the unusual step of writing directly to Secretary Hoover. He received only a thank-you note in return. The commission refused to be distracted by any lower estimate of river discharge and forged ahead with the compact based on Fall and Davis’s estimate. The higher estimate, of course, meant more perceived water for everyone, which understandably would make negotiations easier. Whether the commission fully recognized the potential consequences of its inattention to and dismissal of La Rue’s lower estimate at the time is unclear.
Short-Term Measures
In 2007, the Colorado River Basin was experiencing the worst 8-year period of drought in more than a century of continuous recordkeeping. The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) issued interim guidelines to address issues related to Lower Basin water shortages and the management of the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs. These guidelines encouraged voluntary water conservation measures but did not attempt to reallocate water deliveries to compact states.
More than a decade later, as the drought continued, the combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead reached its lowest volume since the 1960s. In 2019, the Bureau of Reclamation then established a Drought Contingency Plan, setting an example of collaboration across the Colorado River Basin. The plan required Upper and Lower basin states to work together to address the imminent water crisis and better manage the Colorado River system in the future.
The Lower Basin approach in the Drought Contingency Plan focused on reducing water demand to stabilize water levels in Lake Mead, while the Upper Basin approach focused similarly on maintaining water levels in Lake Powell. The plan also offered recommendations for voluntary water conservation programs to compensate farmers and other water users for reducing their water use without losing their water rights under the Prior Appropriation doctrine.
In May 2023, DOI announced a deal agreed upon by the three Lower Basin states to conserve at least 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026 to maintain reservoirs above critical levels. Of that amount, 2.3 million acre-feet will be compensated through funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to support water conservation efforts and enhancements to water system efficiency. The remaining conservation needed for sustainable operation will come from voluntary and uncompensated reductions by the Lower Basin states.
Bring Science—and All Parties—to the Table
The interim management guidelines established in 2007 are set to expire in 2026, the date set for review and reauthorization of the 1922 compact. Between now and 2026, there is a window of opportunity to rebalance the allocation and availability of water. It is time to confront the fact that the combination of natural flow and reservoir storage on the Colorado does not provide enough water to meet current demands, as La Rue recognized 100 years ago. It is time to bring science to the negotiating table.
There is no shortage of examples where science has successfully informed water management policy [Loucks, 2021]. Consider the collaboration between Canada and the United States to manage Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. In response to changing needs of various sectors (e.g., recreation, commercial fishing) and natural hydrologic conditions, the International Lake Ontario–St. Lawrence River Board [2006] conducted a comprehensive multiyear study to guide revisions to the existing 50-year-old regulations on water levels and river flows for hydropower generation, river navigation, and flood controls.
The board engaged the public and experts, addressed issues pertinent to affected Indigenous communities as an integral part of the process, and applied state-of-the-art scientific knowledge to inform the discourse over new regulations.
For example, the 2006 study found that shoreline communities preferred lower lake levels, which minimize damages from flooding and erosion, whereas recreational users preferred higher levels. Meanwhile, scientific research considered in the study indicated that widely varying lake levels in the Great Lakes are favorable for healthier ecosystems [e.g., Wilcox et al., 2007]. Together the findings required the board to rethink the interests of shoreline communities and recreational users and of how to maintain reliable water intakes for hydropower. The board then devised regulation options that would benefit a greater number of interest groups than the current regulations did and minimize losses for any single group or geographical area. The study also developed adaptation alternatives to help manage climate change–driven uncertainties in future conditions.
There is no doubt that climate change, droughts, and population growth have exacerbated the Colorado River water shortage crisis. It is also obvious that the best available science was ignored 100 years ago and water from the Colorado River was overallocated. Negotiators today must learn from history and embrace state-of-the-art science to help reallocate the Colorado River sustainably.
Long-term up-to-date natural discharge data at Lee Ferry are available (Figure 2). As of 2022, the 20-year running average stands below 13 million acre-feet per year, a 20% reduction from what was assumed in the original compact. Further decreases are expected.
Milly and Dunne [2020], considering a moderate greenhouse gas emission scenario (i.e., Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5), predicted that average discharge from the Upper Colorado River Basin between 2016 and 2065 could be 5%–24% less than it was in 1903–2017. Miller et al. [2021] projected a 5% decrease at Lee Ferry for the period 2040–2069 relative to 1975–2005. Li and Quiring [2022] projected that discharge in the Upper Colorado River Basin will decrease 2.3%–21.0% due to climate and land use change from 2040 to 2069. The 16.4-million-acre-feet-per-year figure, an overestimate in 1922, is far from realistic today and in the foreseeable future.
In addition to considering the best available science, all stakeholders—notably including those left out of the 1922 compact—must have seats at the negotiating table. Twenty-nine Native American tribes in the Colorado River Basin were granted rights to water for their reservations by the United States Supreme Court in Winters v. United States (1908). And the 1922 compact states: “Nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes.” Yet the agreement made no explicit allocations because tribal representatives were not present during the negotiations, and no subsequent water deliveries were made because there was no infrastructure to convey water to tribal lands.
Formally incorporating tribal water rights is a necessity in the challenge of reallocating the Colorado River. A 2018 study conducted jointly by the Colorado River Basin Ten Tribes Partnership and the Bureau of Reclamation found that the 29 tribes have enforceable rights to as much as 2.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year [U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2018], or more than 20% of the 13-million-acre-feet-per-year recent average flow.
Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR
Similarly, the treaty rights of Mexico to Colorado River water also must be included. These rights are mandated by a standing international agreement and are a model for needed bilateral collaboration on allocating the water of the Rio Grande River, which has tributary headwaters in Mexico and the United States.
Realistic Reallocation
Reducing long-term regional allocations will be unpopular, but it is a necessity that negotiators need to accept. The reduced allocations must be embedded in the new compact, and whether as percentages of the natural discharge or of specific volumes, they must be based on robust estimates grounded in the best hydrologic and climate science available.
The total allocation also must account for all stakeholders and reflect expected declines in discharge over the coming decades. Furthermore, decisions and agreements on reallocation should precede regional- and local-scale actions taken to reduce water use, such as conservation, land use changes, water reuse, and water transfers, so that these actions can be implemented according to revised allocations.
Existing tools used to confront the water crisis, which have been used mostly on a volunteer basis and/or on local scales, have achieved limited success, attesting to the difficulty of the choices ahead and to the need for broader, more enforceable regulations. Remembering E. C. La Rue’s science-based approach and thinking long term will bring much to current negotiations and help sensibly reenvision the Colorado River Compact.
Kuhn, E., and J. Fleck (2019), Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River, 288 pp., Univ. of Ariz. Press, Tucson.
Langbein, W. B. (1975), L’Affaire LaRue, U.S. Geol. Surv. Water Resour. Div. Bull., April–June, 6–14.
La Rue, E. C., and N. C. Grover (1916), Colorado River and its utilization, U.S. Geol. Surv. Water Supply Pap., 395, 231 pp., https://doi.org/10.3133/wsp395.
La Rue, E. C., H. Work, and N. C. Grover (1925), Water power and flood control of Colorado River below Green River, Utah, U.S. Geol. Surv. Water Supply Pap., 556, 176 pp., https://doi.org/10.3133/wsp556.
Li, Z., and S. M. Quiring (2022), Projection of streamflow change using a time-varying Budyko framework in the contiguous United States, Water Resour. Res., 58(10), e2022WR033016, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033016.
Meko, D. M., et al. (2007), Medieval drought in the upper Colorado River Basin, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34(10), L10705, https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL029988.
Miller, O. L., et al. (2021), Changing climate drives future streamflow declines and challenges in meeting water demand across the southwestern United States, J. Hydrol. X, 11, 100074, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hydroa.2021.100074.
Milly, P. C. D., and K. A. Dunne (2020), Colorado River flow dwindles as warming-driven loss of reflective snow energizes evaporation, Science, 367(6483), 1,252–1,255, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay9187.
Wilcox, D. A., et al. (2007), Lake-level variability and water availability in the Great Lakes, U.S. Geol. Surv. Circ., 1311, 25 pp., https://doi.org/10.3133/cir1311.
Author Information
Shemin Ge (shemin.ge@colorado.edu) and Joann Silverstein, University of Colorado Boulder; James Eklund, Sherman & Howard LLC, Denver; Patricia Limerick, University of Colorado Boulder; and David Stewart, Stewart Environmental Consulting Group, Fort Collins, Colo.
Citation: Ge, S., J. Silverstein, J. Eklund, P. Limerick, and D. Stewart (2023), Fixing the flawed Colorado River Compact, Eos, 104, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EO230232. Published on 16 June 2023.
California’s recent water cuts are a positive sign of cooperation and a step in the right direction, Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
“But one of my concerns, from a Utah perspective, is an over-reliance on compensated conservation,” she said. “This money is going to go away. So, what do we need to do to be prepared for in the way of reductions after 2026? And what happens if some of those reductions are not compensated?”
Haas referred to the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding. Those laws provided billions of dollars for water infrastructure projects, but eventually, that funding will run out…
“[The water cuts are] predicated on the unspoken assumption that this whole reduction in flows is temporary, that this is a drought and we’re going to get out of it, so let’s just spend some money to overcome it,” Zachary Frankel, executive director of the nonprofit Utah Rivers Council, told The Tribune…
Wednesday’s agreement follows on the heels of a deal made last week between the Biden administration and California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which receives 3.1 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year. The federal government will send $77.6 million worth of new investments to the district, and the district will cut 100,000 acre-feet of its Colorado River water in 2023.
“At the end of the day, from an Upper Basin standpoint, we’ve got to make sure that conservation is really going to happen,” Haas said.
Lake Powell Photo credit: Center for Colorado River Studies
From left, J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona Department of Water Resources; Becky Mitchell, Colorado representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission. Hamby and Buschatzke acknowledged during this panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference that the lower basin must own the structural deficit, something the upper basin has been pushing for for years. CREDIT: TOM YULSMAN/WATER DESK, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
December 15, 2023
The future of the Colorado River is being hashed out behind closed doors, and negotiators appear far from a long-term solution to the wide gap between water supply and water demand. At the Colorado River Water Users Association annual meeting in Las Vegas, representatives from the seven states that use the river spent three days opining on the progress of ongoing talks to determine how water will be managed after 2026, when the current set of rules expires…In a massive ballroom at the Las Vegas Paris Hotel, John Entsminger, Nevada’s top water negotiator, forecasted that the next river-sharing agreement will be “a messy compromise that will be judged harshly by history.” He and delegates from six other states that use water from the Colorado River are trying to agree on a new set of rules for sharing the dwindling supply. The current guidelines expire in 2026. Entsminger said a final agreement may join a patchwork of deals that have incrementally, but perhaps insufficiently, tweaked water use in response to two decades of dry conditions fueled by climate change.
“If you look at the last 25 years of the Colorado River, you know these imperfect, messy compromises step by step by step have gotten us much closer to equilibrium than we were at the turn of the century,” he said…
The structural deficit refers to the consumption by Lower Basin states of more water than enters Lake Mead each year. The deficit, which includes losses from evaporation, is estimated at 1.2 million acre-feet a year. (Image: Central Arizona Project circa 2019)
Some experts rallied for updates to the way water is measured. The Lower Basin states have come under fire for failing to account for “system loss,” or the water lost to evaporation and leaky canals, and critics say the official tally of how much water is in the Colorado River needs to account for that. Those losses total about 1.5 million acre-feet each year, mostly due to evaporation from the surface of Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill one acre of land to a height of one foot. One acre-foot generally provides enough water for one to two households for a year.
“I don’t think the Lower Basin is going to agree to call it what it is, because there are a lot of political and legal issues around it,” said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District. “But if they would just permanently reduce their use, including that 1.5 million, I think we’d be a whole lot better off as a system.”
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
DALL-E thinks we need a very large table for this, suggesting a broad need for “collective agency” to go along with our “collective action” via InkStain (John Fleck).
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
December 20, 2023
The news out of last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association is that, behind the scenes, a deal is taking shape with the potential to bring Colorado River Basin water use into balance with water supply.
The deal would eliminate the “structural deficit”, and creates a framework for a compromise over the Upper Basin’s Lee Ferry delivery/non-depletion obligation.
This is huge. But so are the caveats – in terms of both the challenges remaining for a deal, and the definition of the problem we are trying to solve.
The U.S. Lower Basin states – California, Arizona, and Nevada – have converged on a set of numbers to permanently reduce their use on a year-in, year-out basis by a minimum of 1.25 million acre feet per year, eliminating the “structural deficit” – the year-in, year-out gap between inflows and outflows that has drained Lake Mead over the last two decades.
If separate negotiations with Mexico lead to additional reductions south of the border (which is how this has played out in the last two rounds of basin scheming), total durable, permanent Lower Basin reductions on the order of 1.5 million acre feet a year appear to be within reach.
If more cuts than that are needed to balance the system, the Lower Basin states at CRWUA made it pointedly, publicly clear that they are asking the Upper Basin states to share in the additional pain.
Implicit in that final point is the opportunity for a version of what we used to call the “Grand Bargain” – a Lower Basin concession that the river’s flow may not be sufficient to deliver 82.5 million acre feet per year. That would require even deeper cuts in the Lower Basin. To avoid interstate litigation over a Colorado River Compact delivery shortfall, the Lower Basin is offering a “Modest Bargain” of a sort – an Upper Basin contribution of water matching in some way (it’s not clear in what proportion to the additional Lower Basin cuts) in return for the Lower Basin not wading into a legal fight over the meaning of Article III(d) of the Colorado River Compact.
To the extent that this moves from the meeting rooms and hallway conversations of CRWUA to public view, the seven states need to come together on something that can be put down in writing, publicly, by (I think) March in order for the Bureau of Reclamation wizards to begin the modeling work. So this is on a very fast track.
This is a very big deal, and very good news. But….
SOME TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY
There are a bunch of caveats.
The final AZ-CA-NV split of the 1.25-ish million acre feet is not fixed, but it is close, converging on a set of numbers that make sense, respecting some of California’s senior priority status, but not insisting on it as thoroughly as the state’s proposal of last February.
Suffice to say that the remarkable Lower Basin use numbers this year – currently at 5.8 million acre feet for the three U.S. states, the lowest total U.S. draw on Lake Mead since the modern record-keeping regime began in 1964 – shows that cuts like this are totally doable without wrecking the economies of the three states.
If we don’t have three-state numbers yet, we’re a lot farther from figuring out how each of the three states will divvy up the cuts among their users. This will be hard. Well for two of the states, anyway, Nevada just has one major user to do the divvying.
But will voluntary cuts of the scale needed be possible without the big inflow of federal cash that has helped so much this year? The precedent set by all the money sloshing around the Lower Basin right now poses a challenge.
And what of the Upper Basin’s relentless “it’s a Lower Basin over-use problem!” rhetoric over the last year. Now that the Lower Basin folks have basically said “Yup, and here’s what we’re gonna do about that”, have the Upper Basin folks painted themselves into a corner that makes the broader compromise needed on the next steps that much harder?
WHO’S AT THE TABLE RIGHT NOW?
All of this is predicated on a narrow definition of the problem we are trying to solve, which is basically a mass balance problem – figuring out how to match our use of water with the supply available, rather than over-using and draining the reservoirs. This is important! But it’s not the only thing.
This is a process dominated by the economically and politically powerful current water users. If we have a collective action problem here, we also have a “collective agency” problem. It is a system under which “agency” – the power to influence outcomes – is tightly controlled and narrowly distributed.
What about interests other than the big water agencies and their representatives in state government? This is clearly a state-to-state conversation right now, heading toward a desire for a seven-state proposal come March. In the last two rounds of this – the 2007 Interim Guidelines and the Drought Contingency Plan – the states’ proposals have carried the day.
What about the Colorado River Basin’s 30 Tribal Sovereigns? It’s not clear to me how their needs and interests are being incorporated into this process. In this regard, one is reminded of Neil Gorsuch’s dissent in this year’s Navajo decision, where he analogized to the tribe standing in line after line again and again at the DMV, only to be told that this isn’t the right line. Then which is?
What about non-water-consuming environmental values, which have similarly had a hard time figuring out which process might be the right one? The states could, in theory, act on behalf of those non-water agency interests in the deal they’re so furiously negotiating. Will they? Will the federal government step in and insist if the states don’t?
There was hope as we headed into the negotiation of the post-2026 river management regime that broader interests and values would be represented. It will be interesting to see what else beyond a seven-state proposal gets consideration in the discussions to come.
A note on sources and methods: I spent last week resting, looking at art, watching falling snow, reading a book (actually several), and not going to CRWUA. My deep thanks to my many friends who attended and filled me in what they heard and saw. All errors are mine. (Also, is that a Cocker Spaniel in the picture, a couple of seats to the chair’s left?)
The structural deficit refers to the consumption by Lower Basin states of more water than enters Lake Mead each year. The deficit, which includes losses from evaporation, is estimated at 1.2 million acre-feet a year. (Image: Central Arizona Project circa 2019)
From left, Hollie Velasquez Horvath, regional vice president for state affairs and community relations for Xcel, Kathy Chandler-Henry, president of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and Eagle County commissioner and Andy Mueller, general manager of the River District, at the kickoff event Tuesday for the Shoshone Water Right Preservation Campaign in Glenwood Springs. The River District has inked a nearly-$100-million deal to acquire the water rights tied to the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Water managers, state and county elected officials and representatives from environmental and recreation organizations all gathered in Glenwood Springs on Tuesday to mark a historic deal intended to keep water in the Colorado River.
The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District has inked a nearly $100 million deal with Xcel Energy to buy one of the oldest and biggest non-consumptive water rights on the main stem of the Colorado River, a first step in ensuring the water continues flowing west.
“How does history feel?” Marc Catlin, vice president of the River District and state Representative from District 58, asked the audience. “Feels pretty good today, doesn’t it?”
At a packed meeting at the Hotel Colorado, River District President and Eagle County Commissioner Kathy Chandler-Henry signed a purchase and sale agreement with Xcel Energy for water rights associated with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. The River District and other partners will pay $98.5 million for two water rights: a 1902 right for 1,250 cubic feet per second and another from 1929 for 158 cfs.
River District board members on Tuesday approved the purchase and sale agreement with Public Service Company of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, and approved spending $20 million from River District’s Community Funding Partnership grant program toward the deal.
The move represents the culmination of years of work on the part of the River District to secure the rights.
“Over the past few decades, 19 western Colorado entities have been working together tirelessly to find a permanent way to preserve these flows, which served as the backbone of western Colorado’s economy and environment,” River District General Manager Andy Mueller said.
Shoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWeb
When the Shoshone plant is operating, it draws 1,408 cfs of water downstream, which adds up to about 1 million acre-feet each year, according to the River District. Upstream junior water rights holders, some of which are Front Range diverters that take water from the headwaters across the Continental Divide, must leave enough water in the river for Shoshone to receive its full amount. It also means that the water is available for other downstream users on the Western Slope, including for endangered fish in the critical 15-mile reach of the Colorado River in the Grand Valley.
In recent years, the Shoshone plant has been down often for maintenance and has been damaged or made inaccessible by ice jams, wildfires, rockfall and mudslides in the disaster-prone canyon. A 2016 agreement known as the Shoshone Outage Protocol (SHOP) allows the plant to continue calling for water even when it’s not operable. But SHOP is not permanent, which made Western Slope water managers uneasy. They worried that if Xcel sold or stopped operating the plant permanently, that water would no longer continue flowing downstream or another entity would seek to purchase the water rights.
According to Hollie Velasquez Horvath, regional vice president for state affairs and community relations for Xcel, the River District approached the utility four times about purchasing the rights.
“While we have no plans to not operate the Shoshone plant, we also understand the critical risk if there is ever a point in which that plant does not operate for our customers,” Horvath said. “This deal is important to our customers and I know our communities on the Western Slope.”
Xcel will continue to lease the hydropower rights from the River District for as long as the plant is in operation. The reach where the instream flow rights tied to the deal would be used would run about 2.4 miles from the point of diversion at the Shoshone Dam at the Hanging Lake Tunnel to the outfall of the powerplant penstocks.
Commissioners through whose counties the Colorado River and its tributaries flow — Grand, Summit, Eagle, Garfield, Mesa — each got a few minutes at the podium.
“Grand County is the most heavily diverted … in the state and this is a big deal for us,” said Merrit Linke, commissioner from Grand County, much of whose headwaters are taken eastward to the Front Range. “From tourism to ag and everything in between, Grand County relies on the Colorado and its tributaries. Just to name a few: Williams Fork, Willow Creek, the Fraser, the Muddy, the Blue. For all of those tributaries of the Colorado that flow west, thank you.”
The penstocks and main building at the Shoshone hydropower plant, which is owned by Xcel Energy and uses water diverted from the Colorado River to produce electricity. The plant has often not been operable in recent years because of ice jams, rockslides and wildfires. CREDIT: BRENT GARDNER-SMITH/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Funding needed
According to the purchase and sale agreement, the River District must pay $1 million by Jan. 1, but that is just the start. Closing the deal is contingent on four more conditions that must be fulfilled by the end of 2027: negotiation of an instream flow agreement with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, (the only entity allowed to hold instream flow rights); a change of water right decree that would allow the rights to be used for instream flow in addition to hydropower; approval of the deal by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission; and securing the remaining funding.
The River District has asked the CWCB to contribute $20 million; $10 million is expected to come from the Western Slope coalition, a group including the River District and 18 other local governments and water entities, and the remaining $49 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation through the Inflation Reduction Act that made available $4 billion in funding for drought mitigation.
At Tuesday’s event, which also served as the kick-off for the Shoshone Water Right Preservation Campaign, elected officials vowed to raise their share of the money.
“Garfield County is committed to this project, not only in heart and soul, but in money,” said Garfield County Commissioner John Martin. “We’re going to raise as much as possible and we’re challenging each one of you. … Don’t give me $100, don’t give me $1,000, don’t just give me $1 million.”
State Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat from District 8, which includes Clear Creek, Eagle, Garfield, Gilpin, Grand, Jackson, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt and Summit counties, committed to working to secure the funding from the CWCB.
“I applaud you on your excellent work and express my solemn and steadfast commitment to make sure that the state of Colorado does its part in making sure that we can preserve the Shoshone water rights forever,” Roberts said.
Mueller told Aspen Journalism in an earlier interview that securing the Shoshone water rights has been a goal of the River District since the organization’s inception in 1937. He said the deal is a permanent solution to keep water in the river, whose flows have been diminished by drought and climate change.
“While $99 million seems like a lot, in terms of its value to the river and in the communities that depend on it, it’s worth vastly more than that,” he said.
This historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photo
Figure 1. Graph showing reservoir storage in 2023 in three parts of the watershed, as well as the total storage. Note that most of the loss in basin-wide storage was due to decreases in storage upstream from Lake Powell. Credit: Jack Schmidt
Nature offered the Colorado River Basin states a reprieve last winter after a heavy snowpack and generous rainfall saved the region’s two largest reservoirs from collapse.
But one good year won’t solve decades of drought in the West, and the deadline for a new set of rules to manage the Colorado River looms over seven states dependent on its flow.
Top water officials for the seven Colorado River Basin states met last week during this year’s Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas. With a few more years of stability secured for the river, state representatives resumed negotiating a new compromise for how they will share — and cut back on — water use after 2026.
States will begin crafting their proposals by March of 2024 before finalizing a new agreement by the 2026 deadline. Negotiators acknowledged they have three options to decide how states will share the river’s waning water supply going forward: litigation, legislation or negotiation.
Negotiations are the preferred option, state water commissioners agreed.
“The only option that reduces the risk to our water users is a consensus solution. Anything else is taken out of our hands, likely by people who understand the situation much less than we do,” said Brandon Gebhart, Wyoming’s river commissioner. “Russian roulette sounds like an interesting, sometimes lucrative game, until it doesn’t work out for you any longer. That’s what the Supreme Court and the Congress is for us.”
The federal government has told states they will need to reduce water use on the Colorado River by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year to address the unresolved water shortfall and the effects of climate change. State water commissioners agreed that the longer it takes to compromise and conserve the water needed to keep the river stable, the more likely reservoir levels will continue to plummet, leaving states with fewer and fewer options.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the two largest reservoirs in the nation — fell below critical thresholds in 2021 and 2022, triggering emergency cuts and federal action to protect the lakes.
“Tensions are seeping through. That’s good. It should be tense. These are serious things and these are serious people,” said John Entsminger, Nevada’s top water official Thursday.
Those tensions were reflected on the panel as water managers in the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — reminded other states that they don’t have structures on the scale of Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon to store their water and can only take what nature gives them.
Entsminger agreed the Lower basin states — Nevada, Arizona, and California — have long failed to live within the means of what the river provides. Year after year, Lower basin states have used nearly all their 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River allocation compared to the 4.5 million acres-feet used by the upper basin states.
“We can’t accept something that continues to drain the system, that puts 40 million people at risk,” said Colorado’s river commissioner Becky Mitchell.
Lower Basin officials acknowledged that their overuse has outpaced the river’s supply and the need to significantly cut their use.
“There is a supply-demand imbalance in the Lower Basin,” said JB Hamby, California’s top negotiator and vice president of the Imperial Irrigation District. “Where we’re at in the Lower Basin is a recognition that we have to solve and own that supply-demand imbalance. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be challenging. But it’s absolutely necessary.”
In recent months, California and Arizona have signed conservation agreements with the federal government, made possible thanks to massive federal funding.
During the conference, California water agencies committed to conserve up to 643,000 acre-feet of water through 2025 under an agreement with the federal government, more than double Nevada’s total annual water allocation. Federal water managers also announced they reached an agreement with the Quechan Indian Tribe to save up to 39,000 acre-feet of water in the reservoir through 2025.
Earlier this month, the Imperial Irrigation District — the Colorado River’s largest water user — signed an agreement with the federal government to conserve about 100,000 acre-feet of water in 2023, enough to support upwards of 300,000 single family homes for a year.
Arizona recently pledged to conserve up to 348,680 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead in 2023, and up to 984,429 acre-feet through 2026, in exchange for hefty federal funds.
Lake Mead water users have already conserved up to 348,680-acre feet of water in the reservoir this year— that’s more water than has been conserved in a single year over the past 30 years, according to federal officials.
Water conservation agreements signed this year between the federal government, states, and tribes will conserve more than 1.5 million acre feet through 2026, including up to 984,429-acre feet of water in Lake Mead through 2026.
Still, hydrologists say climate change will require more cuts to water use in the west in order to stabilize the river in the long-term. A Nevada study in 2022 estimated that about 1.5 million acre-feet of water is lost per year because of evaporation and transit loss in the Lower Basin, which remains unaccounted for in official counts.
State water officials say their new reality will only complicate negotiations, but Entsminger said that he still has hope that “compromise on this river system is still possible.”
“The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the post-2026 guidelines will deliver a messy compromise that will be judged harshly by history. That’s the cold reality,” Entsminger said.
The Imperial Irrigation District in southern California uses more Colorado River water than the entire state of Colorado. The Southern Nevada Water system’s consumptive use (shown here) is the difference between total withdrawals from Lake Mead (404,065 af) and Las Vegas Wash return flows (227,809 af). Source: USBR. Credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
Back in 1996, the town of Silverton, Colorado had a rude water awakening. It had been a sparse winter and spring, snow-wise, in the San Juan Mountains, though nothing compared to what would come over the next couple of decades. By mid-summer the streams were running fairly low, and downstream irrigators began to worry that they might not be able to divert enough water for their uses. That prompted rumblings of a possible “call” on the river, in which senior water rights holders force junior rights holders — including Silverton — to shut off their spigots.
Silverton, Colo., lies an at elevation of 9,300 feet in San Juan County, and the Gold King Mine is more than 1,000 feet higher in the valley at the left side of the photo. Photo/Allen Best
Silverton, which sits near the headwaters of the Animas River, gets its municipal water from Boulder and Bear Creeks, two small streams that have remained mostly unsullied by acid mine drainage and heavy metal loading, natural or otherwise. The creeks weren’t in danger of running dry that year, and continued to carry plenty of water to supply the town and then some. But a call could very well force the town to shut off its pumps and to watch all of that water flow by. Why? Because under Colorado water law, usually summed up as “first in time, first in right,” Silverton’s right to pull water from the streams are inferior — or junior — to many downstream users.
Silverton was founded in 1874 and settler-colonial miners had been diverting water for a few years by then. That, theoretically, would have put them near the top of the “first in time” list for beneficial users of Animas River water (behind the Ute, Navajo, and Pueblo people who preceded them by centuries, of course). The earliest appropriation dates on the Animas River (and southwestern Colorado, in general) are in 1868, which is probably tied to the Ute Treaty of that same year. The Animas Ditch, diverted from the river south of Durango, has an 1868 date, while the Animas Consolidated, Reid, and Wallace Ditches north of Durango have mid-1870s dates.
But Silverton’s founders — perhaps believing their proximity to so many streams’ headwaters would guarantee unfettered access to all the water they’d need in perpetuity — failed to secure their water rights. As a result, their earliest appropriation date, for the Boulder Creek diversion, is 1883, and the Bear Creek diversion is in 1904. That puts both of Silverton’s main water sources way down the priority line (number 123, in fact), meaning if downstream senior rights holders were not getting their allocated water, they could put Silverton into a pickle.
This 1916 map shows how the Upper Basin provides all of the water. I added a few red arrows showing the river’s largest users, all in the Lower Basin. The arrows in southern Nevada show the 404,065 acre-feet withdrawn from Lake Mead along with the 227,809 acre-feet of return flows via Las Vegas Wash (which is credited against their total withdrawals). So they end up with a consumptive use of 177,276 acre-feet. If the map is blurry, go to LandDesk.org and click on this post to see the larger photo. Source: USGS.
This small town’s woes came to mind recently when I stumbled upon this 1916 map of the Colorado River, which shows the approximate amount of water each tributary contributes to its total flow. The takeaway? Nearly every drop of water in the river originates in the Upper Basin States, or Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. (This isn’t a surprise, but seeing it laid out so simply on a map really drives the point home.) And yet the river’s largest users and most senior water rights holders are in the Lower Basin States, namely California. So basically it’s a macro version of the Silverton situation: The Upper Basin produces the water, and the Lower Basin uses it and controls it.
Okay, that’s a rather crude way of explaining a rather complicated situation, but it’s really not that far off. For example, in 2023, the Imperial Irrigation District in Southern California consumed 2.3 million acre-feet of Colorado River water; the entire state of Colorado used just 2.1 million acre-feet (MAF).2
And what about the downstreamers controlling the water?
Upper Basin States vs. Lower Basin circa 1925 via CSU Water Resources Archives
The Colorado River Compact divided the presumed 15 MAF in the river equally, with 7.5 MAF going to the Lower Basin and 7.5 MAF going to the Upper Basin. That sounds fair, right? Thing is, the Compact doesn’t just cut the total annual flow of the river in half, which would be fair. Nor does it allow the Upper Basin to withdraw its 7.5 MAF, leaving the remainder to flow downstream. Nope. It requires that the Upper Basin leave enough water in the river to ensure that 7.5 MAF flows past the Lee (or Lee’s or Lees) Ferry gage into the Lower Basin each year.3 That mandate holds regardless of how much water is actually in the river, meaning that if there is anything less than 16.5 MAF, the Upper Basin’s gotta eat it (and it also forces the Upper Basin to include evaporative losses into its total water use, since it leaves that much less water to send downstream). That potentially puts the entire Upper Basin into the same boat as Silverton, just on a much larger level.
That’s where reservoirs, especially Lake Powell, come in. The Upper Basin can save surplus water during wet years and release it during dry years to comply with the Compact’s downstream delivery mandate. And it also explains why Lake Powell is in danger of hitting dead pool: The Upper Basin has been burning up its savings to make its annual payment to the Lower Basin.
And that brings us to today’s second map: a profile of the entire Colorado River Basin with existing and proposed dams, circa 1946. I’m including this here for a couple of reasons. First off, I think it’s a really cool way to map a river system in quasi-3D without a bunch of technology. Second, the number of dams that might have been built if the mid-century water buffaloes had their way is mind-blowing.
This is from 1946, more than a decade after Hoover Dam had been completed but before construction had begun on Glen Canyon Dam. It may have been the peak for potential dam Viewing the picture works best on the website at LandDesk.org. Source: USBR
Zoom in on the profile and you’ll see that Glen Canyon Dam was still only an itch in Floyd Dominy’s proverbial pants. It got built not long afterward, though. Also proposed: The Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon Dams in the upper and lower Grand Canyon, respectively; a whole series of dams on the lower San Juan River; the Echo Park Dam on the Green and Yampa; the Dark Canyon, Moab, Dewey, and Whitewater Dams on the Colorado River between Grand Junction and Glen Canyon; and the Desolation and Rattlesnake Dams on the Green River.
Had all those structures been built, there’d only be a handful of stretches of actual river remaining. Yikes!
General view of the Sunnyside Mine and Lake Emma, southwestern Colorado photo via the Denver Public Library
Silverton’s 1996 water scare died down after the rains came that year. Had the call actually gone through, though, the town would have had an interesting way of keeping its water taps from going dry. The Sunnyside Mine would open up the valve on its American Tunnel bulkhead and release the required volume of water from the mine pool — a 1,200-foot-deep underground reservoir of water backed up inside the byzantine workings of the Sunnyside Mine.
It just goes to show you that water in the West is important and that Western water law is weird.
Greg Hobbs rehearsing his presentation for the 2017 CRWUA Annual Conference.
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
The biggest water policymakers in the arid West (and Coyote Gulch) will soon convene at the Colorado River’s marquee annual event – the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas. Ahead of this year’s conference, leaders say they have more bandwidth to find a solution to the growing supply-demand imbalance that is straining the river. The event brings together hundreds of scientists, politicians, tribal members, farmers and others with a stake in the future of the water supply for roughly 40 million people across the Southwest. While they’re still facing the daunting challenge of agreeing on cutbacks to water use by farms, ranches and cities from Wyoming to Mexico, many say last year’s wet winter helped clear the way for more productive talks…
Since the earliest days of Colorado River management, Indigenous people have been on the fringes of talks about how to share its water. Some of the 30 federally-recognized tribes which use water from the Colorado River say they’re still being kept out of the rooms where important decisions are made about water policy. Calls for greater inclusion of tribes have been a staple of recent annual meetings in Las Vegas, but tribal water advocates say there’s still a need for more.
“We want our participation to be institutionalized,” said Lorelei Cloud, acting chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. “That is going to be key.”
Cloud, whose tribe sits in the southwest corner of Colorado, said she and other Indigenous water leaders are pushing for legally-protected seats at the table in post-2026 water management. Those seats, she said, should be designed to withstand changes in tribal, state or federal administrations. Tribal leaders say some progress has been made to give them a larger role in water talks. Cloud, who recently became the first Native American person to serve on the Colorado Water Conservation Board, praised the efforts of her state and the Upper Colorado River Commission. That body helps give Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico a unified voice in region-wide water talks.
“We’ve had to hash out a lot of historical traumas and things that have happened to us, preventing us from being a part of those conversations,” she said. “In the Upper Basin, I think we’re blazing that trail right now. We’re ahead of the game.”
[…]
“As we listen to the agreements, you would think that our rate of consumption was significantly less than it had ever been after any other wet year, and that is not the case,” said Jack Schmidt, who directs the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. “We are sort of using water at a similar rate as in other years.”
Schmidt wrote about the current status of reservoir storage around the Colorado River basin in a blog post showing that the boost from last winter has been relatively modest and is being depleted in a way that could quickly erase any temporary gains. He said the region is currently using water at a rate that is “unexceptional,” comparing the current situation to 2011, 2017 and 2019, when big winter gains were consumed or lost to evaporation within two years.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
As competition grows for Colorado’s limited water resources, Front Range cities are disproportionately vulnerable to interstate water cuts on the beleaguered Colorado River, according to a recently updated study. The study found that 96% of Front Range water use from the Colorado River is subject to possible cuts under an interstate agreement. Updated this year by Hydros Consulting, the study was conducted on behalf of the Colorado River Water Conservation District. It is part of a seven-year effort to analyze the potential impacts of water cuts under the Colorado River Compact in Colorado…
While the vast majority of Front Range water use is theoretically subject to compact curtailment, only 30% of Western Slope water use — consumptive use, not diversions — shares the same vulnerability. In addition, the Front Range accounts for 48% of the state’s curtailable Colorado River water use, despite only making up 23% of the state’s overall use of the river. The majority of Front Range water rights on the Colorado River are vulnerable to curtailment because they are newer than the Colorado River Compact, which was signed in 1922. In Colorado water law, water rights receive priority during shortages according to their age, meaning the compact trumps any water rights newer than it…
The study found that under current hydrologic trends and reservoir operations, Colorado’s growing water demand is not likely to trigger this situation. [ed. emphasis mine] A sustained period of severe drought, however, could make it happen. In the last 20 years, the Colorado River’s average flow dropped to 11 million acre-feet for a period of seven years (the longer-term norm has been 13 million). Study facilitators say that if that seven-year stretch were to become the new normal, river flows would drop below the lower basin’s entitlement, even if Colorado’s water demand stays flat. If Colorado’s water demand follows future growth projections, it would likely speed up that process, potentially decreasing annual flows by an additional half-million acre-feet. Even without a natural drop in river flows, rising Colorado water demand could cause other interstate issues on the river outside of the Colorado River Compact. Under Colorado water demand projections for 2050, created by the Upper Colorado River Commission, the upper basin could fail to meet its obligation of sending an additional .75 million acre-feet downstream to Mexico.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
State Engineer Kevin Rein is retiring at year’s end and agreed to join The Valley Pod podcast for an interview with host Chris Lopez before he departs. We’re calling it an exit interview.
In it, Rein talks about the importance of bringing sustainability to the unconfined aquifer of the Rio Grande Basin, how the economic future of the San Luis Valley and its agricultural industry is at stake without a sustainable aquifer system, the unique nature of the Rio Grande compared to the Colorado River Basin and others, and the urgency of achieving sustainability in the face of prolonged drought and climate change.
“I wish there was enough water for everybody, but we developed agricultural and municipal uses in a state that is largely a desert and it often has an abundance for a couple months out of the year,” Rein said. “I think it’s good for us to at least feel comfortable that we have that structure in place. But the other thing we need to know, as I alluded to, is that that structure is going to cause us to make difficult decisions, especially as we see climate change, the effects of climate change reducing our water supply, and we see our demands grow.”
Here’s an edited version of the conversation. The full Valley Pod episode is here.
ALAMOSA CITIZEN: Thank you again for giving us some of your time as you exit. And again, congratulations on your retirement. Is the stress of the job starting to subside?
KEVIN REIN: No. The stress, if we can call it that, is not subsiding at all. This trepidation that I face with the idea of retirement and ending a job that I really love doing, weighs pretty heavily on me and wanting to get in every last bit of good work I can do. That’s weighing on me. Yes. Yeah, it’s very important for me to try to finish this. We’re doing as much as I can.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
AC: We want to start with some local issues with you of the Rio Grande Basin and then stretch more into the role of the state engineer for Colorado, if you don’t mind. First, can you sum up the importance of the upcoming year 2024 and the influence upcoming water court trials will have on the Rio Grande Basin? And we’re thinking specifically of the water trial around Subdistrict 1 Plan of Water Management, the alternative plan for operating in that particular subdistrict with the Sustainable Water Augmentation Group court filing, and then the idea of the U.S. Supreme Court weighing in on a new settlement between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado when it comes to the Rio Grande Compact. 2024 seems like a significant year in water court.
REIN: It’s going to be very significant that affects the people in the Valley to greater or lesser degrees depending on those three items that you just mentioned. And so that is critical. And Chris, I’ll apologize to you and the listeners that I’m going to be very cautious about my comments on these because of the legal implications and the fact that it’s really active litigation in three areas and regarding the lawsuit on the Rio Grande Compact with Texas and New Mexico. And then as you mentioned the United States, I will probably not say much at all about that because the facts are there and I don’t want to step in front of our good legal staff and say something that is not quite true to the case in terms of the legal implications of what’s going on. But when it comes to SWAG and that case and the groundwater management plan containing the plan of water management for Subdistrict 1, those are very important issues. And I will admit that I’m going to be a little guarded in my comments about those two because pardon me, as you know, the SWAG case was dismissed, but they have re-filed and we may see that play out in a similar fashion. And without saying too much about that and the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict, from my perspective as a state engineer, there’s one critical aspect of that for both cases and that is the sustainability of the unconfined aquifer. As we know, that’s a difficult component of groundwater management in the Valley because we have a statutorily required sustainability objective. And that has found its way into the rules and into the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict. And I’ll speak to the existing groundwater management plan that’s in place right now that has a deadline of 2031 to meet the objectives, the sustainability objectives, that that very plan sets out. As we all know, and I’ve been on record through letters and public comments, that it’s going to be very difficult to meet that sustainability objective under that existing plan of water management. And I know that the subdistrict has worked hard toward an alternative in this current plan that I approved and is before the court and the way that plays out is going to be so important to the irrigators in the Valley under the rules under their annual replacement plans. And I look forward to seeing the resolution of that. Obviously I won’t be the state engineer at the time and I’m not certain to what extent I personally will stay involved in that, but it is critical to get resolution on that for the irrigators. And since we are under active litigation, if I can use that term for the groundwater management plan component of the plan of water management, I’ll stop right there, but I will mention that as we know, the SWAG applicants have also attempted to address sustainability, at least in their previous application they did. That was dismissed. And for this upcoming application, I’ll admit that I have not reviewed that in detail yet, but that will be also very important to properly review and respond to sustainability objectives in the upcoming SWAG case.
AC:Why is it important for the water court to be dealing with these particular issues now? Can you address the importance of the court doing its work in 2024 and what’s the best scenario in terms of how the court adjudicates these trials or deals with these cases?
REIN: The importance of the water court’s involvement now is because the issue is important now in 2024. The reason it’s important right now is because we’re currently working under the 2031 deadline, and that seems, it doesn’t just seem it is seven years away, it seems like a lot of time, but as we know, we’re under sustained drought in the valley and obviously the economic future is at stake. We can’t just shut down production. So we need to find that way to address sustainability now. And as I said, we’re under sustained drought. There’s no confidence I think from anyone in saying that that will turn around and end. You have to assume a difficult case scenario. And with that seven years is not a lot of time to make up the perhaps 1 million acre-foot gain that would be necessary to get to the sustainability standard. Therefore it is timely.
AC: Do you think groundwater users as a whole in Division Three are making good or reasonable enough progress in solving our water security challenges and what stands out for you there?
REIN: Yeah, so a broader water groundwater availability use challenges, and I need to break away from this sustainability discussion for a minute and just talk about the efforts of all the water users through seven subdistricts under the rules in the Rio Grande Basin. And as we know, the rules that became final in 2019 and are now completely applicable do hold the water users to a high standard. It’s a standard that we have statewide. It’s a standard that came out of our 1969 water right Determination and Administration Act that we need to administer groundwater in conjunction with surface water in the prior appropriation system. That’s what came upon the water users in the Rio Grande gradually over the last 10 to 15 years, but again, in 2019 and certainly a couple years later, finally hit them. And what they have done is developed very comprehensive, very complex annual replacement plans that allow them to pump and comply with the law. What is compliance with the law? Basically it means replacing depletions to the stream system in time, location and amount to prevent injury to senior surplus water rights, and obviously the stay of compliance with a compact. And let me just say quickly, we have a unique situation in Division Three, the Rio Grande Basin, that instead of replacing depletions, they can enter into forbearance agreements to just compensate financially for that. But that’s what they have done to respond to this groundwater challenge is they have developed these annual replacement plans, they have gotten their sources of replacement water, they operate according to the Rio Grande decision support system to ensure that their depletions are properly recognized at the time, location, and the amount so that they can be replaced. I think it’s very gratifying. I wish I could take more credit, but I think it’s very gratifying that the water users, excuse me of the basin, have responded as they’ve needed to, but responded in such a complete and detailed and verifiable way. And I really can’t say that without also addressing the division of water resources staff in our Alamosa office, Craig Cotton and his highly competent staff, they’ve just put in countless hours to analyze and verify and approve these annual replacement plans. Without those, the wells just simply are not pumping.
AC: I want to ask you one more question about 2024 and the Rio Grande Compact because there’s a lot of people scratching their heads around the federal government’s opposition to the negotiated agreement between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado is also a party, too. And I just wonder if you’ve figured out the federal government’s motivation in that case?
REIN: Chris, that’s a very good question and if you don’t mind, I’d like to just not answer that because of the legal implications and I leave those questions to our attorney general staff.
AC: No, I appreciate that. One of the issues or one of the programs right now is the Groundwater Compact Compliance Fund and the $60 million that was put into that fund through Senate Bill 28. What should be the overall outcome of that $60 million for both the Rio Grande Basin, the Republican River Basin as it’s spent? What’s the expectation and what is the advantage gained by spending that money on those two basins?
REIN:The ultimate outcome for both basins is similar but distinct and the mechanism by which those outcomes are realized is also pretty similar. But let me just start with the end game. The outcome for the Republican River Basin, first of all, is to assist in the retirement of irrigated acres to comply with a 2016 resolution entered into by the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. And it’s tempting to get into great detail, but just let me say at a high level that part of compact compliance in the Republican River Basin is operating a compact compliance pipeline to deliver water at the state line to make up for overuse of Colorado’s allocation in the Republican River Basin. That works well except for a detail that not all the water is delivered exactly where it should be. And to deal with that, the three states entered into a resolution that among other things, allows a consideration that Colorado is meeting the compact. If Colorado retires 25,000 acres, this began in 2016, by the year initially 2027 but now 2029, with that background, how to retire 25,000 acres, it’s very difficult because people own land, they have water rights, they want to continue irrigating. So it’s through funding. The funding is difficult, you’re assessing fees, you are asking people to help fund this out of their economic development. Senate Bill 28 for the Republican (River Basin) then brought that $30 million in to help fund the irrigated acres, the reduction of irrigated acres, and it’s just purely economic incentive. People want to do the right thing, but it’s very helpful to have that economic incentive. So thank you for letting me go into some detail, but that is the outcome. The desirable outcome is to stay in compact compliance by tying that 25,000 acres in the south port and it’s working well. We’ve met an intermediate goal for the Rio Grande. It is a similar situation as you know, with great interest toward meeting sustainability obligations in the unconfined aquifer, but in general throughout the basin, reducing groundwater usage. And then to do that, and let me just go back specifically to our sustainability discussion in the unconfined aquifer. Subdistrict 1, reduce those irrigated acres. Their current plant of water management has a goal of reducing 40,000 irrigated acres. Reduce that and then you’re going to reduce groundwater consumption. That helps the water balance so that the aquifer can begin to, and they can meet their sustainability obligation. But we have to say that it’s not limited to Subdistrict 1 or the unconfined if we are reducing groundwater usage throughout the basin. The endgame again is to meet the sustainability obligations and also it makes it easier to comply with a compact if we do that, but reduce the pumping from the aquifers and reduce that groundwater usage.
AC: Does it look to you now that that money, all $60 million, $30 million for each basin will get appropriated at this point? Does it look like the conservation districts have put in place enough of the programs for that money to get spent?
REIN: I believe first of all on the Republican (River Basin) that since they had a structure in place and were already retiring acres in the south, just not at the pace they wanted, that with that structure in place, they are on a good pace to use that funding. For the Rio Grande, they did not have as much of a structure in place and have developed that. But with that development, I believe they have the interest, the applications, I can’t quantify that or go into detail on that, but they certainly will have the interest. And I believe that I would have to really check in with some of the district and subdistrict folks to see what their projection is. But certainly the need is there and the funding is there. So we would hope those come together to see the effective use of all that funding to accomplish the goals.
AC: When you think of the work that’s been done and being done both on the Rio Grande Basin and then Colorado River Basin, what lessons, if any, can be learned from those efforts as we work to bring sustainability to our water resource, our water supply? What are the lessons or what is the work that stands out for you now.
Map credit: AGU
REIN:My role as state engineer, I like to keep my eyes on a few different things just to ensure balance. And we need to look in both the Rio Grande Basin and the Colorado River Basin, first and foremost at the importance of agriculture and how important that is in the Rio Grande Basin. It’s the culture, it’s the economy, it’s a way of life. That’s what sustains that basin. And that’s also true in the Colorado River Basin, but in different ways for the Rio Grande. We just need to balance that attention to the importance of agriculture, to compliance with the law, balance those and balance the importance of agriculture with a compact. And that’s why we have to make these difficult decisions to reduce irrigated acreage because with drought and with demands, the water is just not there. We can’t achieve a water balance. And so that’s how we do that. And I can’t therefore go to the Rio Grande Basin and encourage as much beneficial use as they can possibly accomplish because that would run counter to this effort to comply with the Arps and to achieve sustainability in a slightly different way. I have to deliver a message to the Colorado River Basin that says, yes, our balance is important to the way we regard agriculture and it’s important. And my message to them is, if you have water available and you have a beneficial use and you have the right to water as your water administrator, I’m going to tell you to divert it. I don’t have a basis to tell you to try to conserve, to try to curtail because this is important. I deliver a message of beneficial use on the Colorado River Basin. Now that’s within their water right. And within our system of prior appropriation and in consideration of the fact that in the Colorado River Basin, those tributaries in Colorado and the other three upper basin states, we use less than our allocation under the compact. But there’s no basis to tell people as the state engineer, I want you to conserve. That might be a message from someone else, but not from me. And that’s the message I have to deliver there. But at the same time, we need to be mindful of what other obligations could be put on Colorado in the future. And perhaps you or others who’ve heard me talk about that in the Colorado River Basin right now, we are well in compliance with a compact 75 million acre-feet over every running 10 years. Well in compliance. I spoke to the task force about it just a couple days ago, and we have to be mindful of that number. And if we ever do drop below that number as four upper basin states, the next question is ‘Did we cause it?’ Which really goes to the language of the compact. So it’s very complex and it’s inquiry based. I can’t really project in the near future that we would be out of compliance with a compact. So that’s that different message. But still responsible water usage is the same.
AC: I want to switch to another general topic here, and that’s water for the state of Colorado and the Front Range communities as a whole. In your judgment, have Front Range communities secured enough water for their future or what has to happen for the Front Range to be able to maintain any of its population growth?
REIN: I’m going to give you some quick background as far as our role, and then I’ll be giving you a couple of thoughts on your question. But first of all, it’s good to understand that the role of the Division Water Resources from a statutory standpoint is somewhat limited. And certainly when there’s a development in an unincorporated area, we have a statutory responsibility to provide an opinion to the county, whether the water supply for that developing area is adequate and can be delivered without causing injury. So we do that and that really helps the developments incorporated areas take the steps to ensure that they don’t overextend themselves so that they don’t develop land that has no reliable water supply. When we look at the big municipal and quasi-municipal water providers along the Front Range, it’s a different approach because we don’t have that role or that authority to review their portfolio, review their developments, and ensure that they have enough water. And my observation, even though it’s not a statutory obligation, is that their approach is to develop their water supplies, look closely at their developments, and then they have their role, to things like water and restrictions or other steps. They might take incentives for turf removal, conservation measures, funding conservation measures, or encouraging conservation measures. And that’s how they, and by they I mean greater minds than mine, run municipal water systems. That’s how they keep that balance and ensure that they’re able to provide the water they need to, for their communities in the future.
AC: We’re used to associating you with the enforcement of groundwater rules in the San Luis Valley and Rio Grande Basin. But in reality, that’s just a portion of what the state engineer’s responsible for. Explain the larger role and where the majority of the focus is in the state engineers position.
REIN:The state engineer’s role is just so interesting, and I can’t help but go back about 140 years to 1881 when the position of the state hydraulic engineer was created. And that was created largely to major stream flows so that we could implement these tenets of our prior appropriation system and know the stakes of our 10 newly appointed water commissioners, how to administer water rights that called for the state hydraulic engineer. And over time some of those responsibilities developed to approving bridge design and highway design and reviewing county surveys. But it has both narrowed and expanded in the last 140 years and actually, beginning a hundred or more years ago, to administering these water rights in prior appropriations statewide and supporting our local staff that does that. And of course our dam safety and our water information program. But to answer your question more directly, it is that oversight and support of on-the-ground, bread-and-butter water administration. We have a hundred, 120 water commissioners on the ground that do this work and do it well. What do we need to do to support them? That’s often engineering and technical support. And that comes to a large degree through our involvement in water court, ensuring that we have decrees that are administrable that can be implemented through proper accounting. And then one other facet of that that is very significant, Chris, that I’d like to highlight is what I call or what are known as administrative approvals. And those administrative approvals substitute water supply plans or in the case of the Valley, annual replacement plans, or in the case of the Arkansas, replacement plans. And these are plans that allow water users to use water out of priority, which otherwise would just be disallowed, and recognize their efforts to quantify their impacts to the stream and mitigate those impacts usually through replacement water. This is a significant matter, particularly in the South Platte, the Arkansas and the Rio Grande Basin, and it’s much of what we talked about earlier.It is recognition that groundwater, our formal recognition in 1969, groundwater impacts surface water diversions and we need to account for that in prior appropriation. So since we talked about that in depth before, I will say that much of our staff is actively reviewing the engineering and the administration and the legal aspects of these plans to use groundwater out of priority with replacement to the stream to keep the stream and therefore the other water users whole.
AC: What should the general public know about water as a resource when you think of the years ahead?
REIN: First, I would say that we’re very fortunate in Colorado that we started 150, 160 years ago with a structure in the system called prior appropriation that although it can be very rigid and very harsh, gives us structure and order in what we do so that people have a reasonable ability to project how their water supply may or may not be affected by future conditions and how it might be administered. That structure is so important. I wish there was enough water for everybody, but we developed agricultural and municipal uses in a state that is largely a desert and it often has an abundance for a couple months out of the year. I think it’s good for us to at least feel comfortable that we have that structure in place. But the other thing we need to know, as I alluded to, is that that structure is going to cause us to make difficult decisions, especially as we see climate change, the effects of climate change, reducing our water supply, and we see our demands grow.Those two curves have unfortunately crossed and when they cross, we call it over-appropriation. So we’ve got to implement that. But I think people should also know that Coloradans are smart, they’re creative, they’re solution-oriented. So a lot of these areas where we do see that crossing of those curves, that conflict of the water balance between demand and supply, we’re trying to solve that in ways that address people’s needs. And that may be, or it is so well articulated in our Colorado water plan, but it also is what you see daily on the ground as people maybe seek new initiatives to the general assembly on ways to do things or just creative ways to share water with each other all within the legal structure of our prior appropriation system. Of course. And that’s what I see for the future of Colorado water. We’ve got a difficult balance to achieve, but people are being creative within the system to achieve it.
Water sustains the San Luis Valley’s working farms and ranches and is vital to the environment, economy and livelihoods, but we face many critical issues and uncertainties for our future water supply. (Photo by Rio de la Vista.)
AC: What is the effect of these drought periods and the warming temperatures that we definitely are feeling in the San Luis Valley and across Colorado?
REIN:Let me be very specific and then work my way out to a more geographically diverse answer to that. But let’s go back to the unconfined aquifer again. Why are we struggling? The fact is that with the prolonged at this point, 20-plus year drought, oh, we’ve had a couple of good years, but the trend is, it’s a 20-year drought that reduced inflows into the unconfined aquifer. There are sources that recharge either through import or through natural inflow. These sources recharge the unconfined aquifer and provide water for the wells to pump, plain and simple. When that inflow is reduced, there’s less water to pump. And that’s also made more difficult by the fact that under these drought conditions, higher temperatures, drier climate, then those crops are going to demand more water. So we get hit twice by that climate impact, and that’s just the unconfined aquifer. If we look at the Rio Grande Basin in general and the reduced snowpack and the San Juans and the Sangres, then we’re going to see less water in the rivers available for diversion. And of course, the compact is somewhat complex in the way that flows are indexed within the state and result in the need to deliver a certain amount to the state line. That’s of course more difficult because of the prolonged drought and the climate change. That’s the impact in the Rio Grande statewide, because we are this headwater state, because we rely so heavily on snowpack that occurs in our central mountains and flows out of the state, then that reduced snowpack is a big part of what’s going to impact us and we’ll get less runoff typically. And that reduced runoff also may occur later, earlier in the season, more likely earlier, and that changes the dynamics. But then the crops are going to demand irrigation at different timing. And again, like I said, for the Rio Grande, the crops have a higher demand if we have a hot or drier climate, so we get hit twice. Again, all in all, it’s that reduced supply generally from snow, excuse me, generally from snowpack that’s going to impact our water users. Now you’ve noticed my focus is really on agriculture because as most Coloradoans know around 85 percent of our diversions go toward agriculture. Now consumption is always a different, more complex matter, but at least 85 percent or so of our diversions go toward agriculture. The municipal supplies are being managed, but that’s where we see the big impact, our lion’s share of diversions.
AC: What is the most worrisome aspect you see when it comes to water as a natural resource?
REIN: I would say that the most worrisome aspect is, again, watching your irrigators. Let me say our irrigators in the Valley. I’ve spent enough time and I seem to know those folks and have a high regard for them. So hopefully they’ll let me say our irrigators in the Valley and the impacts it has on them as they try to deal with this reduced water supply. It’s happening in the Republican River Basin, it’s happening on the South Platte, all of our irrigators in their diversions in the Colorado River Basin. And when I say that, I mean all the tributaries from the YM of the white, the Colorado main stem, the Gunison, the San Juan Animas, La Plata, Dolores, all those areas on the west slope that contribute to the Colorado River. Their irrigation diversions are incredibly important to them. They’re necessary. It’s part of the economy on the west slope. So I spent a lot of time thinking about their need for solutions and strategies and initiatives. That’s an answer to your question of what is worrisome to me. But again, I need to go back to what I said earlier, it’s worrisome but then I also watch creative people with creative solutions. So maybe that takes away some of my worry.
AC: Are there improvements that have to happen so Colorado and the Division of Water Resources get a better at reading snowpack levels with what we’re seeing in the changes of the environment? Because you hear different things about the snowpack itself and is it really as strong as it appears?
REIN:I think that Colorado can benefit from more measurement. I won’t say that Colorado has to get better because Colorado does so many things so well, but I’ll be geographically specific and address the Rio Grande Basin. Due to the nature of the compact and the way Craig Cotton has to administer the compact, I know that he is uniquely interested in good snowpack data because he needs literally to forecast amounts of water so that he knows how much will need to be delivered to the state line on a year-to-year, sorry, maybe I should say on a month-to-month basis. And in order for him to do that, he is actively curtailing water rights again, just to ensure that he comes close to hitting that target and that target is so dynamic based on the types of flows that are occurring. So he has that unique interest in being able to see what’s up in the mountains early on and what could occur as runoff around the state in general, we do have an interest in that. It helps our water users, our municipalities, our producers, forecast what they’re going to see and maybe they can make their own economic decisions too. More data is always good, so I won’t deny that, but I’ll fall short of saying Colorado needs to do better.
AC: Fair enough. Again, we really appreciate all the time you’ve given us. Let me ask you, what’s the advice you leave for your successor when dealing with the Rio Grande Basin and Colorado River issues moving forward?
REIN:My advice for my successor in the Rio Grande and the Colorado River Basin probably applies statewide, but you are right on target that those are two very sensitive areas. And my advice is we really need to give our water users the assurance that the structure I described – prior appropriation, water court decrees – are in place and they’re there for a reason. They’re there for us to abide by them, but we also need to keep one eye on solutions that are based on flexibility, technical innovation that you described, new ways of looking at old problems and being very thoughtful and deliberative about those potential solutions. Can we, under our very rigid system, entertain those solutions? And of course, the answer should be yes, but it requires a character that is willing to say, let me look at that. Let me consider, even though I have concerns right now, let me consider whether there are ways that we can make that work and not injure other water users and not step outside of our very important legal tenants that we have to follow.
AC: What’s next for you?
REIN:Oh boy. I am so looking forward to doing more things with my wife, who, of course, she’s my bride all that time and love in my life, and I have kids and a grandson. And so to have so much of my time opened up to do that is important. Will I step away from water? That would be very hard to do. Do I have a specific plan? No, but I do intend to, either as an observer or something beyond a passive participant, I plan to stay mentally engaged in water.
“I can’t downplay the frequency of the ‘bad water years’ and the fact that persistent drought has impacted both surface water users and groundwater users; that impact is felt across the Basin.” – Kevin Rein, director of the Colorado Division of Water Resources. Photo credit: Alamosa CitizenKevin Rein, Colorado state water engineer, explains why Colorado needs stepped-up measuring of water diversions in the North Park and other rivers in Northwest Colorado while Erin Light, Division 6 engineer, looks on during a meeting in Walden on Oct. 22, 2021. Credit: Allen BestThe Colorado Water Conservation Board is hoping the nine basin roundtables adopt their code of conduct. From left, back row: Steve Anderson, Dan Gibbs, Kevin Rein, Jim Yahn, Heather Dutton, Russell George, Curran Trick, Greg Felt; front row: Jessica Brody, Gail Schwartz, Celene Hawkins, Jaclyn Brown, Becky Mitchell.
CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISMKevin Rein. Photo credit: Aspen Journalism
Residents and river lovers may have noticed weeks of river cleanup and streambank restoration work that took place this fall along the Yampa River in south Steamboat Springs at the site of a former concrete batch plant of decades past. For about five weeks this fall, workers removed dozens of dump truck loads of concrete, rebar, debris and an old concrete truck, said Mitch Clark, owner of Snow County Nursery, who purchased the 10-acre site located off Dougherty Road just south of the current southern end of the Yampa River Core Trail. Heavy machinery could be seen in the river this fall moving huge boulders…
Clark purchased the land on either side of the Yampa River adjacent to his existing nursery, garden center and landscape company. The business owner received a floodplain development permit to clean up the river bank, stabilize the bank, prevent erosion, increase sediment transport and provide habitat, according to Alan Goldich with Routt County Planning. The river work was designed by Landmark Consultants in Steamboat..
“The floodplain permit does allow for that type of activity, and he did receive an Army Corps permit as well,” Goldich noted.
Clark received significant grant support for the restoration project through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services EQIP program, or Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers, said Vance Fulton, NRCS engineering tech in Steamboat…Fulton said the Yampa River through the property was too wide and too shallow, so material was being deposited in that section of the river during high water runoff in the spring.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
By the end of November 2023, storage in the reservoirs of the Colorado River watershed had been reduced 1.73 million acre feet from the high of mid-July. We’ve used 21% of the gains from the exceptional 2023 runoff, a drawdown slower in the annual cycle than in it has been in all but one year of the previous decade. New policies to reduce basin-wide consumptive use may be working. To date, about one-third of losses were from Lake Powell and Lake Mead, one third from CRSP reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell, and one-third from other Upper Basin reservoirs. Losses in the combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead specifically have been much less than in previous years.
Farview Reservoir Mesa Verde NP
Reservoirs are the ultimate buffer between water use and a water crisis, especially during extreme dry spells, such as occurred in 2002-04 and 2020-22. Although the runoff in 2002-04 was worse than the later event, the later one caused relatively more alarm, as reservoir storage was already low. Then the exceptional water year in 2023 provided the second largest runoff of the 21st century and restored some lost storage in the reservoirs. We still have a long way to go to return the reservoir system to full conditions (see blog post, Water Year 2023 in Context: a cautionary tale). There is an imperative to retain as much of the 2023 runoff as possible to create a buffer, especially if another dry spell occurs.
During the 1983 Colorado River flood, described by some as an example of a “black swan” event, sheets of plywood (visible just above the steel barrier) were installed to prevent Glen Canyon Dam from overflowing. Source: Bureau of Reclamation
Some Context
The last time the basin’s reservoirs were completely full (in fact, a bit overfull) on July 15, 1983, they held 63.6 million acre feet (af) of water, as reported in Reclamation’s basin-wide reservoir database. Today, the maximum capacity of the reservoir system is a bit extended, due to completion of few new reservoirs (e.g., McPhee and Nighthorse). Reclamation’s database, although quite complete, and reporting the status of 42 reservoirs, does not include every reservoir in the basin (for example, Wolford Mountain, Stagecoach, and Elkhead reservoirs). The data as it stands is still useful for assessing the present condition of basin reservoir storage.
During the 21st century, 60-80% of all reservoir storage (not including storage on Lower Basin tributaries) has been in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the United States. Further downstream on the mainstem river, 4-8% of the basin’s storage occurs in Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu. These reservoirs are typically maintained near full pool. Lake Havasu is operated to provide a stable pumping forebay for California’s Colorado River Aqueduct and for the Central Arizona Project, and Lake Mohave is operated to maximize hydroelectric power generation and to reregulate releases from Lake Mead. These four reservoirs – from Lake Powell to Lake Havasu — store water to meet the needs of the Lower Basin and Mexico. Because there are no significant withdrawals from Lake Powell or in the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell and Lake Mead can be considered one integrated reservoir unit, even though the reservoirs are in the Upper Basin and Lower Basin, respectively. The reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell provide storage for Upper Basin agriculture and trans-basin diversions and account for 16-32% of the total storage in the watershed.
The amount of water in a reservoir is a result of the difference between the amount of water that flows in, and the amount released downstream, as well as the amount that evaporates or seeps into the regional ground water. For ease of writing, “loss” here means the amount of reservoir storage decline—loss results from changes in reservoir inflows, reservoir releases, and evaporation.
How are we doing this year?
Conditions this year are “so far, so good.” Between July 13, 2023, when total storage reached its maximum — 29.7 million af — and November 30, 2023, storage declined by 1.73 million af (Fig. 1). The total gain in storage that occurred from the 2023 snowmelt runoff was 8.38 million af. We have now lost 21% of that original gain. Losses between mid-July and November 30 were only 68,000 af greater than the total losses between mid-July and October 31 (see blog post, Protecting Reservoir Storage Gains from Water Year 2023: how are we doing?), and 79% of the total reservoir storage gained in the 2023 runoff season remains.
Since mid-July, the loss in storage has occurred in three places:
Total storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell between mid-July and November 30 has declined by 540,000 af;
Total storage in other Upper Basin reservoirs of the Colorado River Storage Project (Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, Crystal, Fontenelle, Flaming Gorge, Navajo) during the same period declined by 500,000 af; and,
Total storage in other Upper Basin reservoirs, such as Granby, Dillon, McPhee, Strawberry, Starvation, and Nighthorse, declined by 620,000 af.
Figure 1. Graph showing reservoir storage in 2023 in three parts of the watershed, as well as the total storage. Note that most of the loss in basin-wide storage was due to decreases in storage upstream from Lake Powell. Credit: Jack Schmidt
The rate of loss this year is much lower than in any other of the previous ten years (except for 2014 when there were large monsoon season inflows), suggesting that current policies of reducing consumptive use may be working. I calculated the loss in each of the last ten years, beginning on the day of maximum basin storage (Fig. 2). Each curve in this graph represents the loss in storage from the peak of each year. For example, on November 20, 2020, reservoir storage was 4.42 million af less than the peak storage that had occurred on June 18, 2020. In contrast, storage on November 30, 2023, was only 1.73 maf less than the peak storage that occurred on July 17, 2023.
Figure 2. Graph showing loss in basin-wide storage from the maximum storage of each year. Note that the losses in 2023 have been less than in any other year except 2014. Credit: Jack Schmidt
Management policy concerning where storage is retained and where storage is reduced appears to be in transition. In contrast to previous years, storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is being reduced very slowly (Fig. 3). Today, storage in these two reservoirs is only 544,000 af less than the mid-July peak, whereas storage in these reservoirs in 2020 was 2.85 million af less than the maximum storage of that year.
Figure 3. Graph showing loss in the combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead from the maximum storage in each year. Note that the losses in 2023 have been less than in any other year, indicating that the combined water storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead remains relatively high. Credit: Jack Schmidt
Next week, Colorado River water users and managers will gather for the 2023 Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas. The river’s stakeholders are in the midst of negotiating new agreements on how to share the pain of water shortage during the ongoing Millennium Drought, and there is significant interest centered on this event.
Although we ought to feel good about our collective effort to retain desperately needed storage, we must remain vigilant to continue the hard work to reduce consumptive use. Today’s total watershed reservoir storage of 28.0 million af is the same as it was in early May 2021 in the middle of the 2020-2022 dry period (Fig. 4). Let’s hope for a good 2023/2024 winter and spring snowmelt.
Figure 4. Graph showing reservoir storage in the 21st century in three parts of the watershed, as well as the total storage. Note that conditions on 30 November 2023, at the far right hand side of the graph, are similar to conditions in early May 2021 and less than during most of the 21st century. Credit: Jack Schmidt
Acknowledgment: Helpful suggestions to a previous draft were provided by Eric Kuhn.
As we near the end of another impactful year, we are delighted to present our 2023 Annual Report, titled “Power of Progress.” This report embodies our focus on delivering results with a commitment to diverse and equitable outcomes for communities across the North American West.
Inside our 2023 Annual Report, you’ll learn how our more than two decades of work restoring and reconnecting communities to the Colorado River Delta is now a proposed state park that protect as much as 85,000 acres from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Upper Gulf of California for generations to come. Our $4.3 million partnership with California Water Boards promises to reshape the lives of more than 200,000 people in Mexicali and Calexico and improve water quality in the New River. Our award- winning program Growing Water Smart has expanded from Colorado and Arizona into California and along the U.S.-Mexico border to provide tools for the Colorado River communities to address the worst drought in modern history. Our One Basin initiative has assessed the water needs of 19 Tribal Nations, setting the stage for accessing much-needed capacity building partnerships. The Santa Cruz River Program’s three decades of restoration have revitalized the river, drawing diverse communities to a thriving ecosystem. In Tucson, volunteers collected 11,000 pounds of trash during river cleanups, turning these events into vibrant community celebrations.
Your support has been instrumental in these accomplishments. As the year ends, consider making a meaningful year-end gift to continue powering our progress and inspiring positive change.
Thank you for being a part of the Sonoran Institute’s journey and mission.
The Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) would like to congratulate the Colorado River Drought Task Force, who voted today to recommend a number of drought mitigation concepts for consideration by the Colorado General Assembly for potential legislation.
“The 17 members of the task force, representing diverse interests throughout Colorado, worked diligently on a short timeline to come together and support thoughtful and impactful ideas on how we can protect Colorado’s most precious resource– our water,” said Dan Gibbs, Executive Director, Department of Natural Resources. “I want to thank the Task Force for their hard work and conscientious consideration of drought, water supply and infrastructure, and wildlife issues these past few months. I also want to thank the engagement and initiative of the Colorado legislators who formed the Task Force, particularly Senator Dylan Roberts and Speaker Julie McCluskie. Their leadership has elevated these critical issues and we look forward to working with them and continuing conversations on relevant legislative proposals in the upcoming 2024 legislative session.”
“The Colorado River Drought Task Force’s representation gave a voice to those who have and will be most directly affected by our challenges on the Colorado River,” said Kate Greenberg, Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture. “The grim hydrologic reality that Colorado’s farmers and ranchers in particular have been living with for the past several decades has now reached a crisis point for others. The agricultural community will continue to lead the effort to live within the means of the river. Along with the recommendations of the task force, we hope that their example and efforts will see tangible, impactful results in the coming years for the Colorado River Basin.”
In addition, the Sub-Task Force on Tribal Matters has worked collaboratively to understand the barriers preventing the Southern Ute Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe from fully developing their water rights.
“I want to thank Letisha Yazzie with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Lisa Yellow Eagle with the Southern Ute Tribe for this valuable opportunity to identify solutions and funding that will undoubtedly benefit each Tribal Nation,” said Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado’s full-time Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission, and member of the Sub-Task Force. “I look forward to when the Sub-Task Force finalizes its recommendations on Dec. 8.”
The work of the Drought Task Force comes at a time when the Colorado River faces significant challenges. Decades of unprecedented climate change-fueled drought, coupled with years of overuse in the Lower Basin States, means there’s now less water in the reservoirs. The Tribes and States that share this vital resource are confronted with the extraordinary challenge of creating new operating rules for Lake Powell and Lake Mead to sustain and share this dwindling resource.
Many final recommendations of the Drought Task Force align with the ongoing work of the Colorado Water Plan, which conserves and protects Colorado’s water for present and future generations. The Colorado Water Conservation Board oversees the Colorado Water Plan, and DNR is excited to see the Drought Task Force support items like prioritizing forest health and wildfire-ready watersheds, increasing funding for the state’s turf removal program, and expanding tools to support environmental streamflows.
The CWCB’s proposed 2024 Projects Bill, which makes recommendations to the legislature to support water projects and loans, includes more than $23.3 million for Water Plan Grants, $2 million for turf replacement efforts, $4 million for programs aimed at improving drought resiliency, and $1.8 million for high-tech water measurement.
For Rebecca Mitchell, it is clear that the responsibility to live within the means of the river, and to build healthy reservoirs to see us through dry years, starts with the states downstream of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Last year, the three Lower Basin states used an estimated 10.3 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado River. The four Upper Basin States only used an estimated 4 million acre-feet. It is obvious that any durable solution needs to begin with addressing this systemic overuse.
At this critical juncture, Commissioner Mitchell is focused on negotiating a sustainable path forward for the post-2026 operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, one that is protective of both Colorado’s significant interests in the Colorado River and the 40 million people who rely on it. Commissioner Mitchell has developed priorities that will serve as her North Star throughout these negotiations. One of them is that water users in the Upper Basin are just as important as those in the Lower Basin. The hard work of the Drought Task Force has made this clear.
One of DNR’s top priorities is to help Colorado build resiliency in the face of challenging hydrologic conditions in the Colorado River Basin so that we have vibrant communities, robust agriculture, and thriving watersheds. We are better able to make long-term, viable decisions when we work together. DNR and CDA appreciate the Task Forces and legislature’s recognition that, to make this future a reality, we need to unite around consensus-based solutions that do not hinder Colorado’s ability to protect its interests in the Colorado River at this pivotal time.
DNR and CDA look forward to working with legislators, water providers, municipalities, agricultural interests, conservation organizations, and other stakeholders on drought resiliency solutions that provide for long-term sustainable solutions that benefit Colorado’s economy, communities, and environment.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
Colorado could spend millions more to replace water-hungry lawns, keep extra water in streams to protect fish and their habitats, and repair water-wasting farm and city delivery systems, according to a list of potential fixes from a state task force hoping to drought-proof the Colorado River.
The 17-member panel finished its preliminary list of recommendations [December 1, 2023]. It will finalize the list Thursday and hone it for a final report to lawmakers due December 15, 2023.
The task force’s job has been to identify new policies and tools to help save water and ensure neither Colorado water users nor the environment are adversely affected by any new federal Colorado River agreements designed to protect the drought-strapped river across the seven-state region where it flows.
Created by lawmakers last spring when they approved Senate Bill 23-295, the task force includes representatives of environmental and agricultural groups, urban and rural water users, and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, among others.
In all, 24 recommendations will be voted on this week, covering a broad range of options, including small storage projects, more flexibility in sharing water stored in reservoirs, and new tools to measure water so that conservation programs can operate effectively.
“It has been a very short timeline, but it has been concentrated time,” task force chair Kathy Chandler-Henry said. “People showed up every other week in far-flung places for five-hour meetings and we have worked well together. It has felt as if it was a common goal to do something positive for drought in Colorado and get something useful to the legislature.”
The recommendations could make their way to lawmakers next year, or could be addressed by water agencies if no legislation is required to make the changes.
Among the proposals is a request to dramatically boost funding for a new state program that gives cities, water districts and nonprofits cash to help residents and businesses tear out thirsty lawns and replace them with water-saving landscapes. Last year, lawmakers provided $2 million for the work, including $1.5 million in actual grants. But some task force members would like to see that number rise significantly, perhaps as high as $5 million, according to Randi Kim, utilities director for the City of Grand Junction. Nevada spends $24 million on such programs, according to the task force.
“The current levels are helpful,” Kim said. “We received a $25,000 grant and we can do about 50 single-family homes. More money would have a broader effect.”
Also on the list are several proposals that would bolster tools used to keep water in streams, including a state program that allows water to be loaned to a stream for a certain period of time. Under one task force recommendation, the loan program could be operated for longer periods of time.
In another proposal, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is asking that water rights it controls, which are used to help run its coal plants in the Yampa River Valley, be preserved once the plants are shut down, a process that is scheduled to occur between 2025 and 2028. The recommendation isn’t specific only to Tri-State, but could include other utilities with coal-fired power plants and creates a pilot program in the Yampa Valley.
Under Colorado law, the rights to water that is no longer used must be transferred or sold to another user or the water must be returned to the river. Traditionally, the idea has been to prevent water right holders from hoarding water they are not using. But the utility is asking that its water rights be protected and left in the river even if they are not being used through 2050, in case they are needed for future green power projects.
Such proposals have won the support of environmental groups, including Conservation Colorado, which maintain that finding ways to leave additional water in streams offers more protection for the environment, and the communities and recreation economies that rely on the waterways.
“The Western Slope in particular has been threatened by drought, by river closures due to low flows, and fish kills due to low flows. These measures could help Colorado become more resilient,” said Josh Kuhn, senior water campaign manager for Conservation Colorado.
There also are recommendations to provide more funding to improve leaky water systems for irrigators and cities. Though water funding has increased from some sources, such as tax revenue from sports betting in Colorado and from the federal government, task force members said funding is still difficult to come by and needs to be prioritized.
Steve Wolff, a task force member representing the Southwestern Water Conservation District in Durango, said it’s unclear how many of the recommendations will turn into on-the-ground drought fixes.
“I certainly think it’s been a good discussion,” Wolff said. “But a lot of these things involve more funding. We need to understand if by doing these things, are we taking money from elsewhere and is that fair? I think it would be helpful to start prioritizing, whether it should be for aging infrastructure, or more storage, or other things.”
More by Jerd SmithJerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
Romancing the River – I am aware, as you are probably aware, that when I title these posts ‘Romancing the River,’ I am talking about the life work of the kinds of people who do not usually think of themselves as ‘romantics,’ or of their water-related work as ‘romancing the river.’
Engineers, lawyers, politicians, managers, career bureaucrats, scientists – they all see themselves as rational beings just doing what must be done to rationalize a random force of nature, to put the river to beneficial use feeding, watering, powering and even entertaining us. That’s‘romancing the river’? It’s almost an insult to call these serious public servantsromantics, a term which resonates with most people today as not really very serious, just ‘love stories’ – so unserious it’s hardly worth them answering me when I call them romantics (which they don’t); easier for them to just dismiss me as some kind of nut (which they might).
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
So let me try again to explain myself – and why I believe it is neither criticism nor praise to suggest that the army of engineers, lawyers, politicians, career bureaucrats, scientists who have remade the Colorado River have been ‘romancing the river.’ It is a perspective to get up on the table and think about, as we find ourselves at a kind of still point: trying to figure out how to go forward from a century of river development that has ended uncomfortably close to a systemic collapse. It is hard to see 2022-23 as anything other than that, and we’ve only been temporarily reprieved with a wet winter and Biden’s infrastructure bucks giving us time to figure out how to do better for the future.
A stopover during Powell’s second expedition down the Colorado River. Note Powell’s chair at top center boat. Image: USGS
My thinking on this started with the book, mentioned here in posts more than a year ago, by Frederick Dellenbaugh, who came right out and said it in his title: The Romance of the Colorado River. Dellenbaugh, remember, first encountered the Colorado River as seventeen-year-old, in a boat with Major John Wesley Powell, on the scientist’s second trip down the canyons of the river in 1871-2.
Major Powell was better prepared and more experienced on that second trip, and actually able to accomplish some scientific work rather than just trying to survive. But for young Dellenbaugh, it was a big eye-opening experience – life-shaping, really: he spent the rest of his life exploring other unknown parts of the still-wild West, and collecting the stories of other adventurers.
He published The Romance of the Colorado River in 1902, thirty years after his formative trip with Powell – and the year the federal Reclamation Service was created as a branch of the U.S. Geological Survey, within 20 years the organization orchestrating the river’s development.
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 impression of the Colorado River:
THE GRAND CANON,
LOOKING EAST FROM TO-RO-WEAP
From “Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries” By J. W . Powell, 1875
‘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.’
There’s Dellenbaugh’s ‘romance of the river’ – an adventure story of rising to meet a challenge, a call to action to overcome obstacles. A veritable dragon refusing to be bridled? Impossible? Prohibiting encroachment? Smothering hope? We would see about that!
And while it’s not a conventional love story, passion is involved, the kind that can turn on a dime between love and hate. We loved the presence of water in a dry land – but the water was fickle at best, destructive at worst. Every farmer trying to irrigate from its two-month flood that turned into a trickle when they most needed it knew that love-hate relationship; it became the century-long (thus far) story of a strong and ornery people testing some new-found technological strength through picking a fight with a strong and ornery protagonist: we would teach the river to stand in and push rather than cutting and running.
Dellenbaugh was not the only one turning it into a romantic adventure. When the Colorado River Compact had been hammered out in 1922, the Commission Chair and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover announced that ‘the foundation has been laid for a great American conquest.’ In a 1946 report cataloging all the possible developments for the Colorado river’s upper tributaries, the Bureau of Reclamation carried forward Dellenbaugh’s assessment in its subtitle: ‘A Natural Menace Becomes a National Resource.’ These were the official public perceptions guiding our relationship with the Colorado River.
For three-quarters of the century that followed publication of Dellenbaugh’s Romance, America embraced that romantic challenge, answering the call to conquest, taking on those obstacles, not just individually but as a national project, a big last step in the ‘Winning of the West.’ And fueled by the power unleashed by buried carbon fuels, we were ready for the fight; it was the Early Anthropocene, and it was our planet to reform.
Graphic via Holly McClelland/High Country News.
Remarkable things were done to the river as a result. The ‘veritable dragon’ has been broken and bridled for commerce and ‘utility everywhere.’ Its breaking and taming for commerce and utility is so massive that it practically requires the satellite view to take it in – the vast new ‘desert delta’ where the waters of the former desert river are spread from Phoenix and Tucson on the east, around through large squared-off green agricultural developments spotted with towns and cities, through the Imperial and Coachella valleys to Los Angeles and San Diego on the west…. And that’s just downriver; upriver are the tunnels through the mountains, taking water from the headwaters into the Platte, Arkansas, Rio Grande Basins, and into the Great Basin itself – how long will it be before Anthropocene math calculates that there might be enough water left in the Green River to move some through the Central Utah Project workings to help recharge the Not-So-Great Salt Lake?
For me, the ‘utility’ that cements the idea that this has been a big romantic adventure is the way we have kept significant reaches of river ‘wild’ enough for industries replicating Dellenbaugh’s formative adventure. Slipping onto the tongue and into the thrashing maw of Lava Falls, it is still easy to imagine a ‘veritable dragon,’ and millions of people from all over the planet come out of the Grand Canyon having relived Dellenbaugh’s romantic adventure.
But at the same time…. We also have to face some things that are less to be celebrated. Which brings me to Mary Austin again, another writer of the southwestern deserts mentioned here before, and her skeptical observation on Arizona’s ‘fabled Hassayampa,’ an intermittent tributary of the Gila River west of Phoenix, ‘of whose waters, if any drink, they can no more see fact as naked fact, but all radiant with the color of romance.’ Phoenicians have been drinking from the Hassayampa for a century now, wrapped up in the romance of the happy golden years in green and sunny places – and the underlying standard American romance of great wealth to be harvested fulfilling such romantic dreams.
But the ‘naked facts’ don’t go away just because we don’t want to see them, and there’s a kind of cosmic irony in the fact that, right where the Hassayampa flows into the Gila (when it’s actually flowing), two big developments, Buckeye and Teravalis, have been shut down at least temporarily on further development because they can’t present evidence of a hundred-year water supply. (See this post last spring.)
The mayor of Buckeye, Eric Orsborn, who also owns a construction business, is not discouraged by this. ‘My view is that we’re still full steam ahead,’ he said in an article in The Guardian. ‘We don’t have to have all that water solved today…. What we need to figure out is what’s that next crazy idea out there’ for bringing in a new water supply. An idea under consideration currently is a desalinization plant down in Mexico on the Gulf of California, and a pipeline to bring the desalted water a couple hundred miles uphill to central Arizona. Crazy, and very expensive – but we’ve been saying in Colorado for decades now, as though it were a mother truth, ‘Water flows uphill toward money.’
But other naked facts have also been dimming the radiance of the Anthropocene conquest of the Colorado River. Water users have been coping for half a century with water quality issues stemming from using water over and over to irrigate alkaline soils. We also didn’t really know – and some states continue to refuse to acknowledge – how much water would be lost to evaporation from big reservoirs, hundreds of miles of open and unlined canals, and flood or furrow irrigation on subtropical desert lands. About a sixth of the river is vaporized annually.
The basic explanation for why CO2 and other greenhouse gases warm the planet is so simple and has been known science for more than a century. Our atmosphere is transparent to visible light — the rainbow of colors from red to violet that make up natural sunlight. When the sun shines, its light passes right through the atmosphere to warm the Earth.
The warm Earth then radiates some of its energy back upward in the form of infrared radiation — the “color” of light that lies just beyond red that our eyes can’t see (unless we’re wearing infrared-sensitive night-vision goggles). If all of that infrared radiation escaped back into space, the Earth would be frozen solid. However, naturally occurring greenhouse gas molecules, including not just CO2 but also methane and water vapor, intercept some of it — re-emitting the infrared radiation in all directions, including back to Earth. That keeps us warm.
When we add extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, though, we increase the atmosphere’s heat-trapping capacity. Less heat escapes to space, more returns to Earth, and the planet warms.
But the biggest, most unforeseen collateral fact diminishing our conquest of the river is the turbulence we’ve wrought in the climate – increasingly an unignorable ‘naked fact.’ All the heavy technology and concrete we’ve invested in controlling the river, as well as all the technology of daily living that depends on burning carbon fuels, not to mention the methane from livestock and human waste – all our gaseous carbon emissions have increased the heat-holding capacity of the atmosphere, which in turn increases the heat energy driving our weather systems. We’ve seen this just this past year: how that changing balance can result in ‘atmospheric rivers’ of vapor forming over the ocean and dumping huge snowpacks when it condenses over the mountains – but then being back on the ‘abnormally dry’ edge of drought within a few months of the day-to-day water-sucking aridification that is the shape of the future.
So we Anthropocenes have conquered the river, bridled the dragon – but as we saw in the previous post here, we lost a full third of the river as the collateral consequences, unforeseen or just ignored, of the conquest. And all responsible prognosticators project that we will lose maybe another sixth of the river by mid-century to our drying out of the planet.
There are a number of ways to look at this. One would be to say, like Eric Orsborn, okay, there have been setbacks, but we can’t stop now; we need to finish the job. And he is far from the only Phoenician saying that. The state has a governor now and a Water Resources Department who know when it’s time to call a halt, but the state also has a Water Infrastructure Finance Authority charged with creating new water supplies for the state. The Mexican desal plant and megamile pipeline is just one idea in WIFA’s portfolio of possibilities; the old unkillable idea of bringing water over from the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers is still on their list.
‘Those are big, audacious ideas, but I don’t think any are off the table,’ WIFA director Chuck Podolak told The Guardian. ‘We’re going to seek the wild ideas and fund the good ones.’ The romance of conquest throbs on; Hoover Dam was a wild idea a century ago, so why stop now?
A water policy analyst at Arizona State University, Kathryn Sorensen, toldThe Guardian that ‘the degree of [Buckeye’s] success will depend on the degree to which people are willing to pay for those more expensive solutions. But it’s absolutely feasible. We pave over rivers, we build sea walls, we drain swamps, we destroy wetlands, we import water supplies where they never would have otherwise gone. Humans always do outlandish things, it’s what we do.”
There is diminishing enthusiasm today, however, for the romance of conquest; dwellers in the megacities are increasingly reluctant to embrace higher water bills in order to finance more growth, more people, more traffic, longer lines everywhere – San Diego is an example today. The same is true for urban/suburban water conservation; there is a romantic appeal to helping one’s city by conserving in an emergency situation, a drought period or a maintenance shutdown; but conservation-in-perpetuity just to make more water available for growth lacks that romantic appeal.
For many of us, the ‘romance of the river’ has probably shifted 180 degrees over the past half century to a belated appreciation for the ‘natural river’: the Colorado River that once flowed to the ocean in a two-month flood and watered a beautiful wild delta, the river that would flow through a resurrected Glen Canyon if the dam were taken down, et cetera. This eco-rec perspective nurtures the belief that the world would be a better place if we would ‘just stop digging’ and leave it to nature to heal itself from our efforts. This idea has the ‘radiant color of romance’ for many of us, but it also has its underlying naked facts – not least of which are nature’s extreme remedies for a swarming species overpopulating its resource base.
I tend to think, myself, that, yes, we can’t stop now with our tinkering and meddling; we are all too deeply into this love-hate relationship with nature. Just as we will continue to thwart nature with vaccines against its leveling pandemics, we will continue to try to keep passable water in the pipes and faucets, on the fields, and in the recreational reaches for an ever-growing population because that is who we are; it’s what we do.
For many of us, the ‘romance of the river’ has probably shifted 180 degrees over the past half century to a belated appreciation for the ‘natural river’: the Colorado River that once flowed to the ocean in a two-month flood and watered a beautiful wild delta, the river that would flow through a resurrected Glen Canyon if the dam were taken down, et cetera. This eco-rec perspective nurtures the belief that the world would be a better place if we would ‘just stop digging’ and leave it to nature to heal itself from our efforts. This idea has the ‘radiant color of romance’ for many of us, but it also has its underlying naked facts – not least of which are nature’s extreme remedies for a swarming species overpopulating its resource base.
I tend to think, myself, that, yes, we can’t stop now with our tinkering and meddling; we are all too deeply into this love-hate relationship with nature. Just as we will continue to thwart nature with vaccines against its leveling pandemics, we will continue to try to keep passable water in the pipes and faucets, on the fields, and in the recreational reaches for an ever-growing population because that is who we are; it’s what we do.
November 7, 2023: In what’s been described as “the largest aquatic habitat connectivity project ever undertaken in state history,” crews successfully tested the new Colorado River Connectivity Channel (CRCC) at the end of October. The new channel around Windy Gap Reservoir hydrologically and ecologically now reconnects two segments of the Colorado River for the first time in approximately 40 years.
Northern Water staff were joined by Grand County officials, Windy Gap Project Participant Representatives, Colorado Parks and Wildlife representatives and others to watch the first flows go through the long-awaited channel. This new video captures the historic day and includes comments from the project participants and stakeholders who were present to witness the occasion.
While water is now running through the new channel, there is still construction work to be done. Crews will continue putting the finishing touches on the project’s new dam embankment, diversion structure and other elements before winter weather brings activity to a stop in the upcoming weeks. Construction is expected to resume
next spring and wrap up later in 2024. Vegetation establishment along the channel will continue into 2025 and 2026, before the area is anticipated to open for public recreation in 2027.
The new channel will enable fish and other wildlife to move freely upstream and downstream around what is now a smaller Windy Gap Reservoir. Meanwhile, the reservoir will continue providing a diversion point on the Colorado River for the Windy Gap Project during the high flows of spring and early summer.
The CRCC is part of a package of environmental measures, valued at $90 million, associated with construction of Chimney Hollow Reservoir, which is ultimately where Windy Gap Project water will be stored once reservoir construction is completed.
What a great learning experience yesterday in Greeley at the 2023 South Platte River Forum. The panels were all excellent as were the speakers (even the presentation by Brent Young about crop insurance 😊).
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser this week expressed reservations about the Colorado River District’s proposal to acquire major senior water rights associated with the Shoshone hydroelectric power plant in Glenwood Canyon, voicing discomfort with the idea of a proposed instream flow right not being owned by the state. Speaking at a Colorado Water Conservation Board meeting, Weiser told river district General Counsel Peter Fleming that the ordinary structure in Colorado is for the state, through the state board, to own instream flow rights…
The proposal is for the river district to lease the acquired water rights back to Xcel for operation of the plant. The river district proposes that it and the CWCB would apply to state water court to get an alternate beneficial purpose of an instream flow added to the Shoshone water rights, to ensure the ability to keep the water in the river when it isn’t used for power generation, such as when the power plant is undergoing repairs. Although water entities already have agreed to generally keep water flowing as if the plant is in operation even when it is shut down, the river district and partners are seeking to protect those historic flows permanently, including in the case of the plant closing…
Fleming said the river district’s position is that the river district would assign the state the right to use the water rights for instream flows. He said that effectively the state would hold the right to use the water for instream purposes, but the only caveat is that Xcel wants to use the water for hydropower as long as the plant is operating, and the river district as the owner of the water rights would lease to Xcel the right to use the water…
Fleming said that although the CWCB ordinarily owns instream flow rights, state law also lets water users loan water to the CWCB for instream flows on a temporary basis, and other types of agreements also are in place. He said state law contemplates the state board using any means of acquiring the right to use instream flows, whether it be via loans, donations, acquisitions or obtaining “any sub-interest in the water right.”
[…]
Said Weiser, “What I don’t understand is why you’re talking at all about owning a title for something that’s use is in perpetuity and ordinarily managed by the state. That is not quite making sense to me as something that is outside of the way we tend to operate.” Weiser said the river district’s goal of getting to a status quo that’s sustainable for the Western Slope “seems to be accomplished by an instream flow right that is owned by the state and this body (the CWCB).”
Rio Grande at Albuquerque, November 2023. Photo credit: John Fleck
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
Finishing the new book has thrown me into a time warp.
We’re about to hand in a manuscript for a book that traces a century and a half of the evolution of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande, leading up to now. But the now of the act of writing (November 2023) is different from the now that will exist when the book first emerges in 2025, and the now in which readers experience it in the years that follow.
This conceptual muddle is crucial for the book. We are trying to describe the process of becoming that made Albuquerque what it is. That process of becoming, we argue at some length, cannot be understood without understanding how we as a community came together to act collectively to manage our relationship with the river that flows through our midst.
But – and this is the crucial thing, because it explains why we are writing this book – the process of becoming is never done. We hope to help inform Albuquerque’s discussion of what happens next.
There’s less water. What do we do? We will never stop negotiating our complex relationship as a community with the Rio Grande.
I spent a delightful afternoon yesterday that stretched well into the evening, listening to a series of enormously consequential discussions of these issues at the monthly meeting of the board of directors of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. One of the district’s senior folks recently pointed out how often, during the most difficult of discussions, they look at me sitting in the audience and see me grinning. Those most difficult discussions are the most fascinating to me.
I found myself leaning forward in my chair frequently, shifting my position to see the faces of the board members and staff as they wrestled with this stuff.
I grinned a lot.
Three things from yesterday’s meeting stood out. All three are things that would have merited a significant newspaper story back in my Albuquerque Journal days. This blog post is not that, but if you’re paying attention to Middle Valley water you should keep an eye out for these three incredibly important developing issues.
1) NEW MEXICO’S RIO GRANDE COMPACT DEBT IS LIKELY TO RISE
The Rio Grande Compact, an agreement among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas to share the waters of the compact’s eponymous river, has a tricky sliding formula determining how much water each state is allowed to consume (through human use as well as riparian evapotranspiration), and how much it must pass to its downstream neighbor. It’s got some wiggle room – states can run a debt, as long as it doesn’t get too large and they catch up in subsequent years. But the changing hydrology of the Middle Valley has made it increasingly difficult for New Mexico to meet its downstream delivery obligations.
New Mexico is currently 93,000 acre feet in debt because of under deliveries in recent years. The hole’s likely to get a lot deeper this year, thanks to a big spring runoff (which increases New Mexico’s required deliveries) and a lousy monsoon (good summer rains can help make up a deficit – this year they did not). If our debt rises above 200,000 acre feet, bad things happen.
El Vado Dam and Reservoir. Photo credit: USBR
2) EL VADO DAM RECONSTRUCTION IS TAKING A LOT LONGER THAN IT WAS SUPPOSED TO TAKE
El Vado Dam was built in the 1930s to store water for Middle Rio Grande Valley irrigators, allowing storage of spring runoff to stretch the growing season threw summer and into fall. But it’s kinda broken. Contractors working for the US Bureau of Reclamation began work a couple of years ago to fix it, with the expectation that it would take a couple of years. It is now widely understood that it may not be done and in operation again until 2027. Or later.
This would be devastating to the portion of irrigators in the Middle Rio Grande Valley that farm for a living. As our book will deeply argue, it’s critical to understand that this represents a minority of irrigated land in the valley. Much of the farming here is non-commercial, “custom and culture” farming, a supplemental income (or even, for the affluent, a delightful money loser) for people whose livelihood doesn’t depend on it. But for either class of irrigators, a lack of late summer and fall water makes things incredibly hard.
El Vado’s problems have not been publicly announced yet, but all the cool kids are talking about them. Expect something more substantive at December’s MRGCD board meeting.
Side channels were excavated by the Bureau of Reclamation along the Rio Grande where it passes through the Rhodes’ property to provide habitat for the endangered silvery minnow. (Dustin Armstrong/U.S. Bureau Of Reclamation)
3) FALLOWING
We could see a substantial expansion of acreage fallowed, with a big chunk of federal money paid to irrigators to forego their water in the next few years. MRGCD has been building the institutional widget to do this for several years, with federal money flowing to irrigators to lay off watering their land for either a partial or full season as part of a federally funded program to generate water to meet Endangered Species Act requirements for our beloved Rio Grande silvery minnow. In 2023, that generated (in accounting terms, be skeptical of the four-digit precision) 3,615 acre feet of water.
For 2024, the MRGCD, working with federal money funneled through the state, will push for a dramatic increase. Price per acre will double, to $400 an acre for a split season (irrigate in spring and fall, but not in summer when demand is highest) and $700 an acre for a full season. It’s a voluntary program, so all depends on how much irrigators want to join in, but I can imagine a lot of people looking at the El Vado shitshow and taking the money.
There was a very confusing board discussion that involved an actual invocation of Roberts Rules of Order by the district’s legal counsel and a vote that I still don’t understand with people who support the program voting “no” and people who oppose it (I think) voting “yes”. If I was still a reporter I would have had to sort all of this out while an editor hovered barking about deadlines, but thankfully it’s just a blog that no one actually reads, written by an old guy in pajamas still working on his morning coffee and breakfast.
The bottom line is the possibility of the compensated fallowing of as much as 8,000 acres next year, ~15-ish percent of all irrigated land. I think. As I said it was a pretty confusing thing, and I’m not done with breakfast.
The Rio Grande Basin spans Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. Credit: Chas Chamberlin
Official opening of the Gunnison Tunnel by President Taft at the west portal
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
Releases from the Aspinall Unit will be decreased from 850 cfs to 350 cfs on Tuesday, November 14th. Releases are being decreased in response to the end of irrigation diversions to the Gunnison Tunnel. The Gunnison Tunnel will be shut down on November 14th.
Flows in the lower Gunnison River are currently above the baseflow target of 1050 cfs. River flows are expected to remain above the baseflow target for the foreseeable future.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations Record of Decision (ROD), the baseflow target in the lower Gunnison River, as measured at the Whitewater gage, will be 1050 cfs for November and December.
Currently, Gunnison Tunnel diversions are 500 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon are around 320 cfs. After this release change Gunnison Tunnel diversions will be 0 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon will still be near 320 cfs. Current flow information is obtained from provisional data that may undergo revision subsequent to review.
Sunrise March 10, 2023 Alamosa Colorado with the Rio Grande in the foreground. Photo credit: Chris Lopez/Alamosa Citizen
From email from the Alamosa Citizen (Chris Lopez):
Colorado figures it over-delivered on the Rio Grande Compact this year by 10,000 to 15,000 acre-feet and as such extended the irrigation season for some Valley farmers to Nov. 8. The over delivery on Rio Grande Compact water is another reason why the Rio Grande has so little flow this fall and likely won’t pick up without some natural moisture. “It’s probably not going to happen for any time soon because we are actually over-delivered on our compact obligations,” said Craig Cotten, division engineer in the San Luis Valley for the Colorado Division of Water Resources. “We will have delivered a little bit too much to downstream states.” Cotten made the comments during a taping last week of The Outdoor Citizen podcast hosted by Marty Jones. You can hear his full remarks on the over delivery of Rio Grande Compact water inthis episodeof The Outdoor Citizen.
The chair of a special task force set up in Colorado to help protect in-state interests on the Colorado River told lawmakers Tuesday that it would deliver its final report to them Dec. 15.
Lawmakers created the Colorado River Drought Task Force when they approved Senate Bill 23-295 last spring. It includes representatives of environmental and agricultural groups, urban and rural water users, and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, among others. It is charged with developing policy recommendations and new tools to help save water, and ensuring neither water users nor the environment are adversely affected by any new Colorado River programs and agreements.
The 17-member task force has drawn fire from some, who worry that its public discussions of in-state Colorado River water issues could weaken Colorado’s position as it negotiates with the other states in the basin on how to rescue the drought-strapped river system.
“Last year we put a lot of money into our Colorado River negotiating team,” said Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Arapahoe County. “And what I have heard from them is that this work is not necessarily helpful. I hope you are taking this into account.”
Bridges’ comments came at a meeting of the Colorado Legislature’s Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee on Oct. 31 in Denver. Bridges is a member of the committee.
Task force chair Kathy Chandler-Henry said the group was aware of those concerns but did not share them. “As a task force, we have talked about how we can best support our negotiators … Our plan is to do no harm, protect Colorado, and tell the Lower Basin to clean up its act,” she said. Chandler-Henry is also an Eagle County Commissioner and president of the board for the Colorado River District, which protects local water interests within the 15 counties on Colorado’s Western Slope within its boundaries.
The broader Colorado River system includes seven states, with Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming comprising the Upper Basin, and Arizona, California and Nevada making up the Lower Basin. Chandler-Henry was referring to years of overuse in the Lower Basin, which most experts believe contributed to the current crisis on the river.
Colorado River headwaters tributary in Rocky Mountain National Park photo via Greg Hobbs.
The Colorado River system has its headwaters within Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. As it flows west, Colorado’s massive mountain snowpack generates roughly two-thirds of the water that eventually serves cities from Denver to Los Angeles and millions of acres of productive farmland from Colorado to California.
But a 22-plus-year drought, widely believed to be the worst in more than 1,200 years, as well as a sharp decline in flows due to climate change nearly drained the river’s two major reservoirs, lakes Powell and Mead, last year. The crisis prompted the federal government to order the states to dramatically cut back their water use.
This year, negotiations among the states and the federal government have begun on how to stabilize the river. Suggestions include reducing water use in the Lower Basin, finding new ways to grow food using less water, and improving water delivery systems so that less water is lost to leakage and evaporation.
Interest remains high within Colorado on how to protect water users’ interests in the river here at home as well as how to protect its ecology as climate change continues to sap its flows.
Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, current chair of the Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee, who was also a co-sponsor of the bipartisan bill that created the drought task force, said he believed the group’s report would prove useful and that it would be important to be prepared for what may lie ahead on the river.
“We are having conversations now so that tools are in place when we need them,” Roberts said.
Task force staffer Kelsea Macllroy said the group will have its draft report ready for public review Dec. 1 through Dec. 7 and that public comments could be submitted during that time via its website. Once the final report is completed, lawmakers will evaluate the recommendations and determine how to proceed prior to the start of the 2024 General Assembly Jan. 9.
Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.
Maybe by now you’ve heard that the collective users of the Colorado River have come together in harmony and agreed to cut water consumption significantly to avoid further depletion of Lakes Powell and Mead. Well it’s true! And the feds even seem ready to sign onto the plan. Maybe you’ve also heard this means the crisis is over and we can all relax and go home now.
I don’t think so.
A refresher: The 1922 Colorado River Compact divvied up the river between the Upper and Lower Basin states (Mexico was added later). They assumed at least 16.5 million acre-feet ran down the river each year, when in fact it was more like 14 million acre-feet. This discrepancy became clear over the last two decades as the water users’ giant savings accounts — Lakes Mead and Powell — were depleted to critically low levels.
The “Natural Flow” is an estimate of how much water would flow past Lees Ferry if there were no diversions or dams upstream. Basically it’s the amount of water available for all of the river’s consumers. Source: USBR
That prompted federal water officials to call on the states to cut consumption by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year, or else they would implement the cuts themselves. After a lot of wrangling, the Lower Basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada) finally relented and proposed 3 million acre-feet of cuts. Perfect, right?
Wrong. Their cuts would be spread out over three years, meaning their reductions only amounted to 1 million acre-feet per year, which is far less than needed. The deal seemed to many of us like a non-starter — or at least like very faulty math.
But it so happens that the proposal came on the heels of an extraordinarily wet winter in the Colorado River Basin, giving a bit of a boost not only to the reservoirs, but also to forecasters’ optimism regarding river flows over the next few years. Also, water users have responded to mandated cuts and done some voluntary cuts of their own, and the wet year meant they had to irrigate less, bringing Lower Basin water consumption to its lowest point in decades.
“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall
All of that was enough to prompt the feds to include the proposed Lower Basin cuts in an updated environmental impact statement and to make it the preferred alternative. They seem to think it will be enough to fend off the crisis, for now. And maybe it will be. But here are some numbers to consider:
Lake Powell currently holds about 8.7 million acre-feet of water, which is higher than the last two years, but 2.2 million AF less than on this date in 2020.
Lake Mead currently holds about 8.8 million acre-feet, which is less even than in 2021.
Lake Powell, alone, lost 136,550 acre-feet — or about 44.5 billion gallons — to evaporation between July 1 and Nov. 1 of this year.
The combined storage of Lake Meads and Powell is currently at about 17.5 million acre feet, which is less than a third of the total capacity. In other words, the reservoirs are still two-thirds empty — even after the big winter.
Crisis averted? Probably, at least for now. And with an El Niño pattern likely in coming months, we might get another big winter. Still, it seems somewhat imprudent to relax efforts to cut consumption — and to discount more drastic plans for dealing with the diminishing Colorado River.
New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
The chances that water levels will fall below critical elevations before 2027 are now 8% at Lake Powell and 4% at Lake Mead, according to the new analysis. Previous estimates, based on September 2022 data and an assumption that nothing would change in the management of the reservoirs, had found a 57% chance of critically low elevations at Lake Powell and 52% at Lake Mead. With the improved forecasts, the federal government appears poised to move forward with a plan by the seven states in the Colorado River Basin to reduce use for the next three years. Earlier this year, federal officials proposed forcibly cutting the amount of water sent downstream to the Lower Basin if the states could not find a compromise on reducing use. On Wednesday, the officials said they had ruled out those forced cuts…
The Bureau of Reclamation now will undertake a more thorough analysis of the states’ plan. The plan, created by the three Lower Basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — would reduce water use by those states by 3 million acre-feet over the next three years. Most of that reduced use would be achieved through projects paid for by federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act, including conservation projects in Tucson and Phoenix. The four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — signed onto the plan this spring.
Colorado’s top negotiator for the river said in a news release Wednesday that she and her team were reviewing the revised federal analysis and considering whether the analysis can “provide meaningful and enforceable reductions in use to address near-term challenges facing the Colorado River System.”
“If there’s a lesson to be learned from the last few years, it is that we must live within the means of the river if we hope to sustain it,” said Becky Mitchell, the state’s Colorado River commissioner.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Grand opening of the Gunnison Tunnel in Colorado 1909. Photo credit USBR.
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
Releases from the Aspinall Unit will be decreased from 1100 cfs to 800 cfs on Thursday, November 2nd. Releases are being decreased in response to a decrease in diversions at the Gunnison Tunnel. Tunnel diversions will be reduced by 300 cfs on November 1st, so there will be a short period of higher flow in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon before the release change at Crystal Dam.
Flows in the lower Gunnison River are currently above the baseflow target of 1050 cfs. River flows are expected to remain above the baseflow target for the foreseeable future.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations Record of Decision (ROD), the baseflow target in the lower Gunnison River, as measured at the Whitewater gage, will be 1050 cfs for November through December.
Currently, Gunnison Tunnel diversions are 800 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon are around 320 cfs. After this release change Gunnison Tunnel diversions will be 500 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon will still be near 320 cfs. Gunnison Tunnel diversions are expected to stay near 500 cfs for the first 2 weeks of November for late season irrigation of the winter wheat crop. Current flow information is obtained from provisional data that may undergo revision subsequent to review.
In response to reduced irrigation demand and sufficient forecast flows in the San Juan River Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 450 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 400 cfs for tomorrow, October 31st, at 8:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
The Colorado River in McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area, near Grand Junction, Colorado, on April 26, 2019. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk
Negotiations are underway in Colorado to purchase one of the oldest, largest water rights on the Colorado River within state lines, expanding that water’s legal use to include environmental benefits, and creating one of the most significant opportunities in the state to protect streamflows for fish, habitat and wildlife.
Led by the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River District, the proposed $98.5 million deal would allow a coalition of West Slope entities to purchase from Xcel Energy the most senior water right on that segment of the river and lease it back to Xcel’s Shoshone Hydropower Plant eight miles east of Glenwood Springs.
“It feels like the biggest investment we could make for water security for this side of the mountain,” said Kathy Chandler-Henry, chair of the river district board and an Eagle County Commissioner. She was referring to the Western Slope of the Continental Divide.
“I know it’s a big price tag, but in the future it will feel like a bargain,” she said.
That’s true in part because the volume of water is so large. According to Colorado River District documents, the water right generates anywhere from 41,000 to 86,000 acre-feet of water in a dry year. An acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons. For comparison, Cheesman Reservoir, a Denver Water reservoir 50 miles southwest of the metro area, holds 79,000 acre-feet.
Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant back in the days before I-70 via Aspen Journalism
West Slope water interests have been trying for decades to find a way to purchase or at least control the Shoshone plant water right because it provides an important buffer for the river itself and for West Slope water users, Chandler-Henry said. If another electric company or water utility won control of the water right, West Slope interests worried that the water would not be managed in their interests.
Willing partner?
But Xcel has never agreed to a sale of the water right and as recently as 2018 has said it wasn’t interested in changing the status quo.
Xcel declined to comment on this proposed purchase, but Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District, said a draft agreement with the utility is in place and that Xcel is ready to support the change, in part to help protect the crisis-ridden Colorado River system.
“Xcel has shown a renewed interest in the health and viability of the Colorado River,” Mueller said via email.
In Colorado, water rights are tied to a particular stream segment and are regulated, or administered, based on the date they were first legally established. The Shoshone water right has a 1902 date.
Under the terms of the current proposal from the River District and its West Slope partners, which include 17 local governments and water entities, Xcel would continue to use the water to drive the turbines in the hydropower plant. When the plant isn’t operating, if it’s temporarily shut down for repairs for instance, the water would remain in the river, protected from upstream diverters by its 1902 water right.
Denver Water is one of those upstream diverters and, in years past, when the power plant wasn’t operating, has been able to use water it would otherwise need to leave in the river to flow downstream to fulfill the plant’s more senior water right. Whether the utility will back the purchase isn’t clear. Denver Water declined to comment, saying it was waiting to learn more about the proposal.
In or out of the stream?
In the water arena, a water right can have one of several designated rights to use, including agricultural, industrial, municipal and, just since the 1970s, instream or environmental.
Water rights are also classified based on whether they take water out of the stream for the intended use, termed a consumptive use, or whether they protect water from diversion so it can continue flowing in the stream for a prescribed benefit, which is referred to as a nonconsumptive use. Most uses fall in the consumptive use category. But the Shoshone water right, because the water returns to the stream once it passes through the hydropower plant, is nonconsumptive, as are environmental and recreational flow water rights, which keep water in the stream for the benefit of fish, wildlife, habitat and recreation.
“The whole state benefits from having a good, strong environment. And because this is the most senior nonconsumptive water right on the Colorado River, its ecological and environmental benefits are huge, especially with drought and climate change,” Chandler-Henry said.
The river district has agreed to contribute $20 million to the $98.5 million purchase, and is asking the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) for an additional $20 million grant. Another $10 million would be contributed by 17 governments and water agencies. The river district is seeking another $48 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which has $4 billion set aside for drought resiliency in the Colorado River Basin, according to the grant proposal submitted to the CWCB.
Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River District, speaking at the district’s annual seminar on the Colorado RIver, on Sept. 14, 2018 in Grand Junction. Muller expressed concerns about how the state of Colorado might deal with falling water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
The negotiations are likely to take months, Mueller said, and will require approvals from the CWCB and potentially state legislators, as well as the Bureau of Reclamation and eventually a state water court, which will have to approve the expansion of legal uses from industrial to both industrial and environmental.
Another benefit of the Shoshone Water right is that its bountiful flows help support the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, a federal initiative that works to protect four endangered fish species on the river. Water utilities are obligated to help support the program as well and can face harsh penalties if there isn’t enough water in the stream to support the fish.
“Importantly, upstream and downstream water users all benefit from Shoshone’s contributions to the Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Recovery Program,” Mueller said.
A unifying effect
Environmental groups such as American Rivers see the proposed purchase as a major opportunity to help stabilize the Colorado River within state lines and across its seven-state basin.
Matt Rice is southwest regional director for American Rivers. “I see this as a real opportunity to do a really big transformative thing for the river and the state, and an opportunity to unify the state around the river. A big thing like this has a way of bringing people together,” he said.
Chuck Ogilby is a long-time river advocate and former member of the Colorado (River) Basin Roundtable, a public group that represents local water users reliant on the Colorado River mainstem within Colorado and that helps decide how state funding is spent within the basin.
“It’s the best news the Western Slope could ever have,” Ogilby said. “All we can do now is cross our fingers and hope the West Slope gets those water rights.”
New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019.
New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019.
Also from Brad in email:
“You asked about Social Media. I’m disgusted with Elon and have been completely quiet on Twitter. It is only a matter of time before I delete my account for good. I have both BlueSky and Threads accounts but both have only about 10 followers as I have not posted. Mostly the world gets me down these days and I have a hard time thinking Social Media is a force for the good. Feel free to post this.”
Click the link to read the guest column on the Vail Daily website (James Dilzell). Here’s an excerpt:
What are we to do in those years when we’re up against poor snowpack, warmer summers and a lack of a monsoon season? Our fisheries will still need water. Our recreation-based economy relies on the river for both its whitewater and rafting season and its role in snowmaking at resorts. Ranchers will still need to irrigate. Locals, visitors and wildlife across Colorado will need to access clean drinking water. How can we better protect our community’s values when it comes to our rivers? Enter the Colorado River Drought Task Force. Senate Bill 23-295, which passed this spring, created a task force of diverse stakeholders — including representatives of agriculture, recreation, conservation, natural resources, the environment, municipal water providers, state and local agencies, and Colorado’s Indigenous Peoples. The group of 17 stakeholders is tasked with providing recommendations for programs to assist Colorado in addressing drought in the Colorado River Basin and the state’s interstate commitments related to the Colorado River and its tributaries…
Ultimately, the goal is to come up with creative and proactive policies and programs that can benefit river users, the environment, and all Coloradans. Our state has been hard at work to conserve water and find reasonable solutions, but the policies that this group creates will strengthen our abilities and options when it comes to managing water. This group is meeting biweekly on Thursdays, with public comment on the agenda at every meeting. Rivers are at the mercy of Colorado River Water users’ willingness to work together and collaborate to find solutions that benefit the environment and all of us now, and well into the future. To learn more about the Colorado River Drought Task, its members, and meeting topics, visit CRDroughtTaskForce.com. If you’d like to get more involved, reach out to me at ERWC.org.
WASHINGTON – The Biden-Harris administration today announced next steps in the Administration’s efforts to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System and strengthen water security in the West. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation released a revised draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) as part of the ongoing, collaborative effort to update the current interim operating guidelines for the near-term operation of Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams to address the ongoing drought and impacts from the climate crisis.
In order to protect Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam operations, system integrity, and public health and safety through 2026 – at which point the current interim guidelines expire – an initial draft SEIS was released in April 2023. Following a historic consensus-based proposal secured by the Biden-Harris administration in partnership with states – which committed to measures to conserve at least 3 million-acre-feet (maf) of system water through the end of 2026 enabled by funding from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda – Reclamation temporarily withdrew the draft SEIS to allow for consideration of the new proposal.
Today’s revised draft SEIS includes two key updates: the Lower Basin states’ proposal as an action alternative, as well as improved hydrology and more recent hydrologic data. The release of the revised draft SEIS initiates a 45-day public comment period.
“Throughout the past year, our partners in the seven Basin states have demonstrated leadership and unity of purpose in helping achieve the substantial water conservation necessary to sustain the Colorado River System through 2026,” said Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau, who led negotiations on behalf of the Administration. “Thanks to their efforts and historic funding from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we have staved off the immediate possibility of the System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production.”
“The Colorado River Basin’s reservoirs, including its two largest storage reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead, remain at historically low levels. Today’s advancement protects the system in the near-term while we continue to develop long-term, sustainable plans to combat the climate-driven realities facing the Basin,” said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. “As we move forward in this process, supported by historic investments from the President’s Investing in America agenda, we are also working to ensure we have long-term tools and strategies in place to help guide the next era of the Colorado River Basin.”
Key Components of Revised Draft SEIS
Reclamation conducted updated modeling analyses using June 2023 hydrology for the No Action Alternative, Action Alternatives 1 and 2 from the initial draft SEIS, and the Lower Division proposal. The results of that modeling indicate that the risk of reaching critical elevations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead has been reduced substantially. As a result of the commitment to record volumes of conservation in the Basin and recent hydrology, the chance of falling below critical elevations was reduced to eight percent at Lake Powell and four percent at Lake Mead through 2026. However, elevations in these reservoirs remain historically low and conservation measures like those outlined by the Lower Division proposal will still be necessary to ensure continued water delivery to communities and to protect the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River System.
Based on these modeling results, Reclamation will continue the SEIS process with detailed consideration of the No Action Alternative and the Lower Division Proposal. The revised SEIS designates the Lower Division Proposal as the Proposed Action. Alternatives 1 and 2 from the initial SEIS were considered but eliminated from detailed analysis.
Historic Funding from Investing in America Agenda
President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is integral to the efforts to increase near-term water conservation, build long term system efficiency, and prevent the Colorado River System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production. Because of this funding, conservation efforts have already benefited the system this year.
This includes eight new System Conservation Implementation Agreements in Arizona that will commit water entities in the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas to conserve up to 140,000-acre feet of water in Lake Mead in 2023, and up to 393,000-acre feet through 2025. Reclamation is working with its partners to finalize additional agreements. These agreements are part of the 3 maf of system conservation commitments made by the Lower Basin states, 2.3 maf of which will be compensated through funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests a total of $4.6 billion to address the historic drought across the West.
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Reclamation is also investing another $8.3 billion over five years for water infrastructure projects, including water purification and reuse, water storage and conveyance, desalination and dam safety.
To date, the Interior Department has announced the following investments for Colorado River Basin states, which will yield hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water savings each year once these projects are complete:
$281 million for 21 water recycling projects that are expected to increase annual water capacity by 127,000 acre-feet annually;
$71 million for 32 drought resiliency projects to expand access to water through groundwater storage, rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge and water treatment;
$50 million over the next five years to improve key water infrastructure and enhance drought-related data collection across the Upper Colorado River Basin; and
The process announced today is separate from the recently announced efforts to protect the Colorado River Basin starting in 2027. The revised draft SEIS released today would inform Reclamation’s ongoing efforts to set interim guidelines through the end of 2026; the post-2026 planning process advanced last week will develop guidelines for when the current interim guidelines expire.
Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160
The end of September marked the end of Water Year 2023 (WY2023). This is a good time to take stock of the year’s runoff and to understand how much reservoir storage improved. What kind of a year was WY2023? How long will any added storage last? Can we ease our collective effort to reduce consumptive uses and losses in the basin?
In Summary
The short answer is that WY2023 was certainly a good year for runoff, reservoir inflow, and increases in reservoir storage—but the same amount of inflow would have to occur for several additional years to fully recover storage to what it was in summer 1999 when the system was last full. Such a string of high flow years has not occurred in the 21st century and is unlikely in the future.
History also warns that we should work to conserve the gains of WY2023. In notably wet WY2011, WY2017, and WY2019, extra storage that accumulated during each year’s snowmelt runoff was totally consumed in approximately two years. Thus, our past shows that there is potential to quickly consume the benefits of a good water year. We’ve done it before. It is imperative to keep a keen eye toward accomplishing significant reductions in water use throughout the basin to save what we have gained. We should not expect Mother Nature to bail us out again.
The Details
Estimates of WY2023 unregulated inflow and natural flow indicate that the year’s runoff was the second largest in the 21st century, exceeded only by WY2011. The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center estimates that the April to July unregulated snowmelt inflow to Lake Powell was 10.6 million acre feet (maf) and that the total unregulated inflow for the year was 13.4 maf. Reclamation estimates that natural flow at Lees Ferry in WY2023 was 17.7 maf (Table 1). Unregulated inflow is the estimated stream flow if little of this year’s runoff had been stored in reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell, and natural flow is the estimated flow at Lees Ferry if there were no reservoirs in the basin and no upstream consumptive uses.
Table 1. Natural flow and total basin consumptive use in the five largest runoff years of the 21st century. Total basin consumptive use includes reservoir evaporation and use by Mexico but does not include use in Lower Basin tributaries.
Data concerning reservoir storage are made available by Reclamation at their comprehensive basin-wide hydrologic data base. Daily water storage data are available for 46 reservoirs in the basin including all the large reservoirs and many small ones.
Figure 1 shows how reservoir storage changed during the 21st century. Total storage in all the reservoirs reported in Reclamation’s database is shown in blue, and storage in the three different parts of the watershed are distinguished. Between 60 and 80% of all reservoir storage in the basin occurs in Lake Mead and Lake Powell (orange line). Between 16 and 32% of basin reservoir storage occurs in the many reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell (green line), and between 4 and 8% of basin storage occurs in Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu (red line) that are downstream from Hoover Dam. Graph showing daily storage contents of reservoirs of the Colorado River basin, as reported by Reclamation, between 1 January 1999 and 30 September 2023. Data do not include reservoirs on Lower Basin tributaries.
The most striking trend in these data is that reservoir storage decreased greatly between August 1999 and October 2004 when total storage decreased by 27.4 maf and storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell decreased by 24.5 maf. There was a small amount of recovery in storage between October 2004 and August 2019; total basin storage increased by 4.1 maf, and storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell increased by 0.9 maf. Between August 2019 and March 2023, storage plunged again, decreasing by 14.8 maf in the entire watershed of which 11.4 maf was lost from Lake Mead and Lake Powell. These trends were described in more detail by Schmidt, Yackulic, and Kuhn (2023, The Colorado River water crisis: its origins and the future. WIREs Water).
On 30 September 2023, the total storage in the watershed’s reservoirs was 28.4 maf, of which 62% was in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The storage in all reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell was 8.6 maf and comprised 30% of the total basin storage. Total basin storage in WY2023 peaked on 13 July at 29.7 maf, and the combined storage in Mead and Powell peaked on 16 July at 18.0 maf (Table 2).
How does this year’s increase in storage compare to increases in other years of large inflow? At the beginning of the WY2023 runoff season in mid-March, total reservoir storage in the basin had dwindled to 21.3 maf (Table 2), which is approximately 18 months of supply, based on the average basin-wide water consumption rate for 2016-2020. The combined storage contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell was 12.7 maf.
Between mid-March and mid-July, total basin-wide storage increased by 8.4 maf, of which 5.3 maf accumulated in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. In comparison, the other four large runoff years of the 21st century — 2005, 2011, 2017, and 2019 – resulted in increases in basin reservoir storage between 5.2 and 8.8 maf and increases in storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell between 3.7 and 6.9 maf (Table 2). Not only was WY2023 the second largest runoff year of this century, but reservoir storage increase was also the second largest of the century.
Nevertheless, the increase in reservoir storage in WY2023 was small in comparison to the total loss in storage that had occurred since summer 1999. Between August 1999 and March 2023, the reservoir system lost 38.1 maf, and the increase in storage in WY2023 was only 22% of that amount. It would take another 3 to 6 years of very large runoff to fully recover the basin’s reservoirs to what they had been at the turn of the 21st century.
It is unrealistic to expect that the next several years will be similar to the remarkable winter of 2022-2023. No other high flow year of the 21st century was immediately followed by another high flow year. Our best hope for achieving sustainability in water supply is for the Basin States and the federal government to reach new agreements to greatly reduce basin-wide water use so that the modest recovery in reservoir storage in WY2023 might be preserved. Otherwise, our gains may quickly disappear.
Historical data from the previous wet years of this century provide a cautionary tale about how slowly the political process responds to the opportunity provided by a wet winter. Table 3 summarizes the duration of months it took to consume the increased supply of each of the previous years of large runoff. Half of the supply provided by the largest inflow year of WY2011 was gone 11 to 13 months after peak storage had occurred in early August 2011; 8 to 10 months after that, all of WY2011’s large runoff had been consumed (Table 3). The historical story is the same for WY2017 and WY2019.
Since mid-July when the snowmelt season had ended, reservoir storage has begun to decline. The basin’s reservoirs lost 1.3 maf of storage between mid-July and 30 September of which 0.3 maf was lost from Lake Mead and Lake Powell and 0.9 maf from the reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell. The total consumption in these 2.5 months was 16% of the “benefit” of WY2023. Today, the contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell are about the same as what they were in mid-June 2021.
A Last Thought
One strategy for maintaining a public focus on water conservation would be to widely report—every month—changes in total reservoir storage. The Basin States, and the basin’s citizens, would benefit from knowing the rate at which we are consuming the bounty of the WY2023 supply. It would be especially useful to know the point in time when we consume half of what we gained this year. If we reach that point in less than a year, we would have fair warning that the political process by which we now seek to reduce water consumption is too slow. Hope for a secure and sustainable water supply must rely on nimble and adaptable strategies for reducing water consumption and saving the gains of each wet year.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
The Rio Grande is one of the longest rivers in North America, running some 1,900 miles (3,060 kilometers) from the Colorado Rockies southeast to the Gulf of Mexico. It provides fresh water for seven U.S. and Mexican states, and forms the border between Texas and Mexico, where it is known as the Río Bravo del Norte.
The river’s English and Spanish names mean, respectively, “large” and “rough.” But viewed from the Zaragoza International Bridge, which connects the cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, what was once mighty is now a dry riverbed, lined ominously with barbed wire.
The Rio Grande is one of the largest rivers in the southwest U.S. and northern Mexico. Because of drought and overuse, sections of the river frequently run dry. Kmusser/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA
In the U.S., people often think of the Rio Grande mainly as a political border that features in negotiations over immigration, narcotics smuggling and trade. But there’s another crisis on the river that receives far less attention. The river is in decline, suffering from overuse, drought and contentious water rights negotiations.
Urban and rural border communities with poor infrastructure, known in Spanish as colonias, are particularly vulnerable to the water crisis. Farmers and cities in southern Texas and northern Mexico are also affected. As researchers who study hydrology and transboundary water management, we believe managing this important resource requires closer cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico.
A hidden water crisis
For nearly 80 years, the U.S. and Mexico have managed and distributed water from the Colorado River and the Lower Rio Grande – from Fort Quitman, Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico – under the 1944 Water Treaty, signed by presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Manuel Avila Camacho. The Colorado River was the central focus of treaty negotiations because officials believed the Colorado basin would have more economic activity and population growth, so it would need more water. In fact, however, the Rio Grande basin has also seen significant growth.
For the Rio Grande, the treaty allocates specific shares of water to the U.S. and Mexico from both the river’s main stem and its tributaries in Texas and Mexico. Delivery of water from six Mexican tributaries has become the source of contention. One-third of this flow is allocated to the U.S., and must total some 76 million cubic feet (2.2 million cubic meters) over each five-year period.
The treaty allows Mexico to roll any accrued deficits at the end of a five-year cycle over to the next cycle. Deficits can only be rolled over once, and they must be made up along with the required deliveries for the following five-year period. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ym6m2rZeXPw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Farmers as far north as Colorado rely on water from the Rio Grande for irrigation.
These five-year periods, called cycles, are numbered. Cycles 25 (1992-1997) and 26 (1997-2002) were the first time that two consecutive cycles ended in deficit. Like the Colorado River, the Rio Grande has become over-allocated: The 1944 treaty promises users more water than there is in the river. The main causes are persistent drought and increased water demand on both sides of the border.
Much of this demand was generated by the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated most border tariffs between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. From 1993 through 2007, agricultural imports and exports between the U.S. and Mexico quadrupled, and there was extensive expansion of maquiladoras – assembly plants along the border. This growth increased water demand.
Ultimately, Mexico delivered more than the required amount for Cycle 27 (2002-2007), plus its incurred deficit from cycles 25 and 26, by transferring water from its reservoirs. This outcome appeased Texas users but left Mexico vulnerable. Since then, Mexico has continued to struggle to meet its treaty responsibilities and has experienced chronic water shortages.
In 2020, a confrontation erupted in the state of Chihuahua between the Mexican National Guard and farmers who believed delivery to Texas of water from the Rio Conchos – one of the six tributaries regulated under the 1944 treaty – threatened their survival. In 2022, people lined up at water distribution sites in the Mexican city of Monterrey, where the population had doubled since 1990. As of 2023, halfway through Cycle 36, Mexico has only delivered some 25% of its targeted amount.
Border politics overshadow water shortages
As climate change makes the Southwest hotter and drier, scientists predict that water shortages on the Rio Grande will intensify. In this context, the 1944 treaty pits humanitarian needs for water in the U.S. against those in Mexico.
It also pits the needs of different sectors against one another. Agriculture is the dominant water consumer in the region, followed by residential use. When there is a drought, however, the treaty prioritizes residential water use over agriculture.
The Rio Grande is affected by nearly the same hydroclimate conditions as the Colorado River, which flows mainly through the southwest U.S. but ends in Mexico. However, drought and water shortages in the Colorado River basin receive much more public attention than the same problems on the Rio Grande. U.S. media outlets cover the Rio Grande almost exclusively when it figures in stories about immigration and river crossings, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2023 decision to install floating barriers in the river at widely used crossing points.
The compact that governs use of Colorado River water has widely recognized flaws: The agreement is 100 years old, allocates more rights to water than the river holds, and completely excludes Native American tribes. However, negotiations over the Colorado between compact states and the U.S. and Mexico are much more focused than decision-making about Rio Grande water, which has to compete with many other bilateral issues.
Dry, cracked mud along the banks of the Rio Grande at Big Bend National Park in Texas, March 25, 2011. In the spring and early summer of 2022, up to 75 miles of the river went dry in the park. AP Photo/Mike Graczyk
Adapting to the future
As we see it, the 1944 water treaty is inadequate to solve the complex social, economic, hydrological and political challenges that exist today in the Rio Grande basin. We believe it needs revision to reflect modern conditions.
This can be done through the minute process, which permits Mexico and the U.S. to adopt legally binding amendments without having to renegotiate the entire agreement. The two countries have already used this process to update the treaty as it pertains to the Colorado River in 2012 and again in 2017.
These steps allowed the U.S. to adjust its deliveries of Colorado River water to Mexico based on water levels in Lake Mead, the Colorado’s largest reservoir, in ways that proportionally distributed drought impacts between the two countries. In the Rio Grande basin, Mexico does not have similar flexibility.
The U.S. also has the ability to proportionally reduce deliveries under a separate 1906 agreement that outlines water delivery from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez. In 2013, for example, Mexico received only 6% of the water it was due under the 1906 Convention.
Enabling Mexico to proportionally reduce Rio Grande deliveries according to drought conditions would distribute drought and climate change impacts more fairly between both countries. As we see it, this kind of cooperation would deliver human, ecological and political benefits in a complex and contentious region.
The federal government will fight the 11th hour settlement that came down last year, and will stretch into 2024 at least.
Whether the water is low or high, the Supreme Court fight over Rio Grande water stretches on.
The latest iteration of the legal fights that span decades, is the Texas claim before the U.S. Supreme Court that New Mexico groundwater pumping below Elephant Butte Reservoir shorts the downstream state its rights to the river’s water.
This would be a violation of the 1938 Rio Grande Compact, which splits the water between Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.
A recent settlement proposal between the three states was accepted by a federal judge overseeing the case as special master in July.
Not everyone is on board.
The federal government officially laid out its objections to the special master’s recommendation that the U.S. Supreme Court adopt a compromise to end the lawsuit over the Rio Grande’s water between Texas and New Mexico.
In a 96-page document, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and other Department of Justice attorneys lay out three legal arguments arguing why the high court should reject the deal.
First and foremost, they argue, settlement is impossible without the federal government’s consent.
A settlement requires consent from each party, and the agreement adds a “host of obligations,” on the federal operation of the Rio Grande Project, which delivers water in a series of canals and ditches to two regional irrigation districts and to Mexico.
Finally, the federal government argues the settlement violates the compact by moving the location of water deliveries, and fails to recognize a “1938 baseline,” of minimal groundwater pumping.
Creating a balance of water that’s taken from aquifers and water that replenishes aquifers is an important aspect of making sure water will be available when it’s needed.
Image from “Getting down to facts: A Visual Guide to Water in the Pinal Active Management Area,” courtesy of Ashley Hullinger and the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center
The proposed settlement uses a mathematical model to determine splitting the water, based on drought conditions from 1951 until 1972, when drought and development pushed pumping to increase significantly. Much of the region’s agriculture and its entire residential use is pumped from groundwater.
The federal government argues using the model violates the Compact.
“But the baseline on which the Compact was predicated was the baseline that existed when the Compact was signed — not decades later, after groundwater pumping in New Mexico had greatly increased and drawn water away from the Project,” the federal government wrote.
The region is already expecting the state government to curb pumping – with the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer announcing the need to cut 17,000 acre feet to meet the settlement using the proposed model.
TheElephant Butte Irrigation District and El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 supported the federal government’s position in legal briefs of their own.
They agreed that the state compacts have no authority over the operation of the Rio Grande Project.
The Supreme Court has accepted the federal government’s arguments over a special master’s recommendation in this case before. In 2018, justices unanimously admitted the Department of Justice as a party into the case.
Additional responses and replies from the party will be collected into 2024, and there’s no expectation of scheduling a hearing with the Supreme Court until then.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
This historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photo
The Colorado River District is leading a coalition in what would be a history-making purchase involving historic water rights that are pivotal to Colorado River flows and water uses in western Colorado. The district and others in the Western Slope coalition are proposing spending potentially $98.5 million to acquire the rights from Xcel Energy for operation of the Shoshone hydroelectric power plant in Glenwood Canyon. According to the river district, Shoshone holds the most senior major water rights on the river, dating back to the early 1900s and totaling 1,408 cubic feet per second…
When river flows drop below 1,408 cfs the plant puts a “call” on the river, preventing access to water by many junior rights holders above the plant to ensure flows to it. That also keeps more water flowing for recreational purposes such as fishing and whitewater boating, and to benefit the environment. Because the flows used by the plant return to the river, they continue downstream, along with the benefits they provide, which also include access to the water by junior water rights holders downstream, and improved water quality for communities and water utilities that rely on the river for their supply. The improved water quality results from higher river flows that dilute pollution. Critically, the water also helps shore up flows in what is called the 15-mile reach of the river starting in the Palisade area, which is important habitat for fish federally listed as endangered or threatened.
”Preserving the Shoshone call permanently secures the flow of the Colorado River and the health of that river for our economies and our environment, literally from the headwaters in Grand County all the way down to the border with Utah,” said river district General Manager Andy Mueller.
Shoshone Hydroelectric plant. Photo credit: The Colorado River District
The Shoshone hydro plant in Glenwood Canyon, captured here in June 2018, uses water diverted from the Colorado River to make power, and it controls a key water right on the Western Slope. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismThe Shoshone plant and boat ramp on the Colorado River. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismThe penstocks feeding the Shoshone hydropower plant on the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon.Xcel truck at Shoshone plant. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismThe blown-out penstock in 2007 at the Shoshone plant. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismShoshone Hydroelectric Plant back in the days before I-70 via Aspen JournalismShoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWebShoshone hydroelectric generation plant Glenwood Canyon via the Colorado River District
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
Editor’s note: Today (Oct. 11, 2023) is the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact. The following is an excerpt from Revisiting the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact on its Diamond Anniversary, a forthcoming analysis by Eric Kuhn and John Fleck, co-authors of the book Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.
BY ERIC KUHN AND JOHN FLECK
The Upper Colorado River Basin Compact was signed by representatives from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming on October 11, 1948, after over two years of negotiations. It was an attempt to resolve the allocation of water among the five states, and for three quarters of a century it performed that task well.
But as we approach the middle of the third decade of the 21st century, the challenges of overallocation of Colorado River, over-appropriation of the water we have, and climate change reducing the river’s flows, the Upper Basin Compact and the extended body of rules in which it is embedded are showing their age.
At its simplest, the Upper Basin Compact divided the water use available from the 7.5 million acre-feet per year apportioned to the Upper Basin by the 1922 Colorado River Compact. The compact accomplished two major tasks:
It apportioned the consumptive use of water among the Upper Basin states using percentage allocations. Colorado received 51.75%, New Mexico 11.25%, Utah 23%, and Wyoming 14% of the water available for use in the Upper Basin. Arizona received a fixed 50,000 acre-feet per year.
It defined the obligations of the Upper Division states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) to deliver water to the Lower Basin at Lee Ferry to satisfy the requirements of the Colorado River Compact.
In pursuing a new set of post-2026 Colorado River Operating rules, major water agencies and state leaders have insisted that the “Law of the River” – the suite of rules dating to the 1922 Colorado River Compact and including the Upper Basin Compact – should be a fundamental guiding principle of future river management. “The Post-2026 Operations should reside in a framework consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Law of the River,” the Central Arizona Project wrote, to cite one example among many.[1] But a careful review of the history of the Upper Basin Compact shows how tenuous a foundation the Law of the River provides, and how uncertain any attempt at “reasonable interpretation” might be, because of fundamental uncertainties about what the Law actually says.
When the Upper Basin compact was signed there was agreement on the definition of the “what” to which the percentage allocations apply. Water use in the Upper Basin was limited by water availability after meeting the Colorado River Compact’s Lee Ferry delivery requirements. Today, because of the impacts of climate change on flows, there is no such agreement and there are claims that the intent of the compact was to provide an equal amount of water for use to each basin. This creates deep uncertainty in the actual volumes of water available to each state.
There is still no consensus on how to measure consumptive use basin-wide. The Upper and Lower Basins use different methods, and Lower Basin tributary use is neither well understood nor quantified. This makes managing the river system challenging.
The Upper Division States claim overuse by the Lower Basin based by using one measurement method, while using a different method for their own uses. There is valid dispute over these theories and methodologies.
Tribal water rights remain unresolved and limited in some cases by provisions aimed at preventing tribes from using their full legal entitlements.
Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR
In negotiating the Upper Basin Compact, the states made key decisions on critical compact issues that continue to echo through 21st century water management.
STREAM DEPLETION
Colorado River management has always suffered under controversy and ambiguity around the question of how to measure consumptive use. The Colorado River Compact did not include a definition of “beneficial consumptive use.” In the century since it was signed, two competing (and conflicting) methods have been used: diversions less return flow, and stream depletion. On some scales, they may look the same. But on large enough scales, they do not, in ways that have profound implications for 21st century river management decisions.
Under the stream depletion theory, each basin’s consumptive use is measured as the net reduction in natural flows caused by man-made activities. For example, the Upper Basin’s consumptive use would be calculated as the amount that upstream uses deplete the natural flow of the river at Lee Ferry.
During the Upper Basin Compact negotiations, Colorado and Arizona were the main proponents of this theory. It was ultimately adopted in Article VI of the Upper Basin compact as the method for measuring consumptive use.
But the stream depletion theory is not universally used in river management today. It is, for example, used to quantify reservoir evaporation in the Upper Basin, but not the Lower Basin. It is not used to measure Lower Basin mainstream uses, where the “diversions minus return flows” method is used instead. Uses on the Lower Basin tributaries, which are included in the compact definition of “Colorado River System” are currently not measured at all – using either theory.
ALLOCATING STATE WATER BY PERCENTAGES RATHER THAN ABSOLUTE AMOUNT
The Upper Basin Compact is frequently praised for state-by-state allocations based on percentages (except Arizona), rather than absolute numbers, thus avoiding the mistake in the Colorado River Compact that over-allocated the river’s water.
But modern policy discussions are unsettled on a central issue – percentage of what? On their own, the percentages are meaningless without reference to some sort of underlying total amount of water available to be shared among the states.
When negotiating the Upper Basin Compact, the states’ representatives were clear on what they intended as the basis for using the percentages. They intended to apply the percentages to the amount of water available for consumptive use in the Upper Basin after meeting what they viewed as their compact “delivery obligations” at Lee Ferry.
Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160
Today, there is no such consensus. Climate change has altered the river’s hydrology, putting the burden of impacts on the Upper Basin. Its leaders have responded by arguing that the compact’s negotiator’s intention was to equally divide the water available to each basin for use. Since climate change is causing a decline in natural flows, whatever Lee Ferry obligations the Upper Division States have must now be adjusted to reflect the new hydrologic reality.
Resolving this issue requires either litigation, negotiated settlement, or collectively agreeing on a modified approach – one that appropriately factors in climate change and maintains the benefits of the 1948 flexible percentage allocations.
TRIBAL WATER
While large Native American water needs and legal entitlements were identified before the Upper Basin Compact was negotiated, Tribal communities were excluded from the negotiations. Instead, Indian water use, which the negotiators knew was legally perfected long before 1922, was lumped into state allocations, with each state being responsible for meeting tribal needs from its share of the water. This gamble set up a potential conflict between the apportionments made by the Upper Basin Compact and the protections provided Indian rights under the Colorado River Compact.
A decade after the compact was signed, this conflict became real. In response, Upper Basin leaders took steps to limit tribal water rights and prevent full use of tribal entitlements, by inserting provisions in project authorizing legislation. The implications today are a legacy of intentional discrimination against tribes, unresolved legal questions around tribal water rights, and provisions that treat Native Americans as second-class citizens.
[1] Brenda Burman letter to Bureau of Reclamation, Aug. 15, 2023. See also comments by the state of Wyoming, the Salt River Project, the state of Colorado and the Upper Colorado River Commission.
