Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

May 26, 2026

Dissonance exists between life-close-to-normal policies regarding urban water use and the growing crisis on the river

Casually surveying the urban landscapes in much of Colorado’s Front Range, you’d never know that the Colorado River — the source for roughly half the water of the cities — has deteriorated to its most pitiful shape of perhaps the last century.

Oh, yes, some utilities — notably Denver Water and Aurora Water, which together serve 1.9 million residents — have imposed rigorous stage-one drought watering restrictions. Outdoor irrigation is allowed twice per week and never during the heat of day. Other water utilities that tap Colorado River water, however, have asked only for voluntary cutbacks, if any at all.

Jeff Lukas, a water consultant with several decades invested in climate change work, says this seeming aloofness of some cities will not persist indefinitely. That is certainly true if the record heat and abnormal dryness of the past winter continues into 2027. They may have no choice.

“I think Front Range cities will be asked, whether nicely or not, to reduce their Colorado River diversions,” said Lukas in a May 11 webinar. “The mechanism for that is unclear, but I think it’s going to happen.”

Water rights of the Front Range cities — and many of those on the Western Slope, too — are junior to the Colorado River Compact. It was negotiated in 1922, making diversions more recent than that junior.

Problems in the basin were becoming apparent in the 1990s. The warming climate in this century has provoked changes. By all accounts, they have not been enough.

Lukas, as a dendrochronologist at the Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research in Boulder 20 years ago, was teasing out evidence from tree rings to understand the climates of the Colorado River Basin during the last 1,200 years.

Later, as a scientist with the Western Water Assessment, Lukas co-authored (with Liz Peyton) a 2020 report called Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology: State of the Science. That 500-page report integrated more than 800peer-reviewed studies to help water managers understand physical processes, climate risks, and forecasting tools across the basin.

In 2024, with the state climatologist, Russ Schumacher, and several others, Lukas turned out the 100-page volume called “Climate Change in Colorado.”

Based in Lafayette, Lukas now works as a consultant. At Lukas Climate Research and Consulting, he specializes in the overlapping areas of climate hazards, water resources, and ecosystems.

Lukas, in a presentation he titled “Running dry on the Colorado River: The roots of the crisis & its implications for the Front Range,” explained the big picture and Colorado’s Front Range part in it.

Defined by the Continental Divide, Colorado has an inverse relationship between its eastern and western slopes. About 90% of the state’s residents live to the east, nearly all at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, whereas 80% of the state’s precipitation originates on the west side, in the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries.

Colorado itself provides 50% to 60% of the water in the entire Colorado River, depending upon the year. This year has been a terrible year everywhere in the basin, Colorado included.

Lukas explained that “islands of moisture” provide nearly all the water in this 244,000-square-mile basin. The high mountains constitute these islands. Some places deliver more than others. Buffalo Pass, near Steamboat, famously has had prodigious volumes of snow. This snow, when melted, can produce 50 inches of water.

It takes 20 inches or more of precipitation in these mountain islands to produce meaningful runoff. Even then, it doesn’t all end up in the Colorado River. In Colorado and the three upper-basin states, he said, 16% of the rain and snow that falls becomes water in the Colorado River. In the hotter lower basin, the figure is 3%.

“The atmosphere takes back most of what it giveth, even in the wetter upper basin,” he said.

Evaporation and transpiration are the pickpockets of this water. Heat produces evaporation, and we’ve had plenty of that this year.

Temperatures during November through April were the warmest on record in Colorado for that span of months. March heat was exceptional. This produced runoff in the rivers that in most cases may surpass that of May or June, the traditional times for peak runoff. Peak runoff has been trending earlier by several weeks during the last few decades, but this was a leap of about two months.

Runoff for April through July — a time that normally accounts for 70% to 80% of annual streamflows — this year will likely deliver no better than 20% to 40%. In its May report, the Bureau of Reclamation said April flows into Lake Powell were 40% of the average during the last 30 years and it expects flows in May to sink to 9% of that average.

Can it get any worse? Count on it, said Lukas.

“We should expect not every year to look like 2026 from here on out, but more years in the future will look like 2026. And somewhere down the pipe, not as far in the future as we would like, there will be a year worse than 2026 for the Colorado River.”

This is so very different from what was assumed by the delegates from the seven basin states who gathered in 1922 in Santa Fe to apportion the Colorado River.

The role of reservoirs

Taking the big, long-term view, Lukas pointed out that the overall story of the Colorado River is one of modifications needed to suit human uses. “It’s all about smoothing out the natural variability in the availability of water over space and over time.”

Reservoirs are the primary means by which humans have been able to “smooth out the natural variability.”

The Colorado River Basin has 60 million acre-feet of storage. That’s four times the annual flow. Five-sixths of the storage capacity is found in the desert in two vessels: lakes Mead and Powell. The headwaters have many reservoirs but they are relatively small. The total storage capacity is 2,000 times more than the volume of Dillon Reservoir.

Since 2000, stored water in those two big buckets, Mead and Powell, has declined from 49 million acre-feet to 16 million acre-feet as of May. Of that, 9 million lies at elevations below the lowest outlets. These are called dead pools.

Those delegates in 1922 who crafted the Colorado River Compact, the legal document that provided the basis for nearly all these dams and aqueducts subsequently built, assumed annual flows of 17 million to 18 million acre-feet. They were overly optimistic. The 20^th century average was 15.2 million acre-feet.

Now comes the 21^st century, and the average at Lee Ferry has dipped to 12.2 million acre-feet. This has implications for the Front Range cities but also farms. If Colorado must reduce its diversions to accord with the compact, those rights dated before 1922 will be exempt from reductions. The giant transmountain diversions have come more recently, as have many of the diversions for towns and cities on the Western Slope.

Accumulating evidence fingers human-caused climate change with large amounts of responsibility for declined flows. Lukas said his rule of thumb is that the role of greenhouse gases overall are responsible for two-thirds of lower flows.

As for the mechanics of this shift, rising heat is one important “knob,” said Lukas. As the atmosphere warms, it reduces “runoff efficiency” even more, sending water into the atmosphere instead of into streams and then rivers. Accumulating evidence fingers human-caused climate change with responsibility for most and possibly all of increased temperatures.

Precipitation has declined about 5% since 2000, with a larger reduction in spring, an important time of year to get moisture. Here, the link to the warming climate is less clear. “It seems increasingly likely that climate change is changing the dynamics of storm tracks and the persistence of, say, high-pressure systems over the interior West,” said Lukas. “That is, at least in part, responsible for why we’ve had less precipitation since 2000.”

The Colorado River, though, had problems even before the warming climate began throwing sharp elbows in water volumes. The reservoirs of the Colorado River Basin were 92% full in 1999, a wet decade overall. Even then, however, the Colorado River had ceased to reach the Pacific Ocean. There were too many straws inserted.

Less than 12% of the river’s flow goes to urbanized and industrial uses. Lukas pointed out that cities have become more efficient in their use of water. The rule of thumb for Denver and other Western cities is that one acre-feet of water meets the needs of a three households on an annual basis. That compares with two households a few decades ago.

Mining of fossil fuels and minerals uses a small amount. Evaporation from reservoirs and rivers and other “system losses” accounts for about 15%.

That takes us to agriculture. It uses 75% of the river’s water in the Colorado River for irrigation on 5 million acres. Some of that land lies outside the basin itself. That includes the South Platte and Arkansas River valleys of eastern Colorado.

Over half of that water — about 9 million acre-feet — gets used to grow feed for livestock, mainly alfalfa and pasture grass.

Might cities want to cut deals with farmers to “share” the water? This discussion has been underway for at least 15 to 20 years. Some pilot projects in Colorado and elsewhere have been launched to see what this might look like. A strong proponent has been James Eklund, a water attorney in Denver. Others question how this is done and, for that matter, whether we want to do it. But certainly, water for urban uses has higher monetary value than growing hay to feed cattle.

Why the restraint of cities?

As for the Front Range cities, the big question is whether they are planning for a river that produces even less than it does now.

In 2024, Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, suggested the need to start planning for a river that may deliver less than 10 million acre-feet in coming decades. Some thought then that the state engineer, Jason Ullman, needed to start sorting through this matter of junior vs. senior rights. Jim Lochhead, a former water attorney on the Western Slope and later CEO of Denver Water, pushed back, saying it was premature given the huge amount of work that would be required. See: “Heading for the Colorado River Cliff,” Big Pivots, Oct. 20, 2024.

At the Zoom session on May 11, I asked Lukas about the modest watering restrictions by Front Range water providers. He had previously described mixed signals from the water utilities. If 2027 is dry again, expect more uniformity around drought restrictions. “But it’s pretty weird right now,” he said.

With the attention to the Colorado River in the news media, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for the water utilities to mount more aggressive campaigns. Any idea why they had not, I wondered.

The utilities, he said, are reluctant to deliver regulations that produce discomfort around outdoor water-use restrictions. They don’t want to do this unless absolutely necessary.

Part of this is because of experiences during the covid epidemic. A lesson to public servants during that time made them more reluctant to push the public to do things they don’t want to do. “You only want to exercise that authority, that public legal authority, sparingly and only when it’s clear that is what is really necessary.”

Revenue was another consideration. Water infrastructure is expensive, and the money to pay for it comes from charges for water use. By imposing limits, you reduce revenue and hence must charge more for water. The conundrum is that reducing use doesn’t necessarily mean you pay less. In some cases, less water may require more infrastructure. This is a hard message to convey.

“What you’re seeing is a dissonance between the circumstances and what’s happening, at least this year,” he said.

Or at least right now. We have had rainy weather in May. Some meteorologists think we may end up with healthy rainfall this summer. If instead the summer is like the winter, very hot and dry, I expect the utilities might pick up their game.

Jeff Lukas presented in a session called Zoom at Noon. You can see the hour-long presentation here. The passcode is %ACg9*XU

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

May 26, 2026

This is the cover of a new book I’ve just published, Storm in My Head, a collection of poetry written over the 60 years I’ve been living in the headwaters of the Colorado River, since 1966. My 60-year celebration. Those of you who prefer your literature in sprints and strolls over the marathon essays I impose on you might enjoy this book. I’m in the process of getting it distributed, and it may eventually be in a bookstore near you or on Amazon; but for the time being, if you are interested, an email to me, george@gard-sibley.org, will initiate a response on how to get a little money to me (10 bucks plus shipping) to get an inscribed copy wending its way to you.

End of advertisement – back to the river….

Romancing the River – Elephants in the River

The Colorado River situation is moving toward replacing the existing ‘Interim Guidelines’ for managing the river system with a new set of interim guidelines for managing the river system. This new set is devised mostly by the Bureau of Reclamation, which is growing a little desperate to avoid the embarrassment of having its river system cause the flow of the river to stop – ‘dead pool’ – behind one or another of its big dams, in a river management system built for a considerably larger Colorado River – now as mythic a river as the biblical four that flowed out of the Garden of Eden.

All this makes me think I’ll briefly abandon my historical update of Frederick Dellenbaugh’s Romance of the Colorado River, and try to sort through what has been happening recently in the present, most of which we’ve been reading or hearing about in the media.

Reports on the river’s flow after the Weirdest Winter Ever (at least in recorded time) have just gotten worse and worse; now the anticipated inflow to Powell Reservoir is 13 percent of the thirty-year average, from tributary runoffs that peaked as much as two months earlier than the usual early June. The Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month projection indicates that, if last year’s releases from Powell were replicated this year, they might have to stop generating power by late summer to protect the power turbines – which in effect declares the remaining quarter of the reservoir’s potential storage ‘dead pool,’ since the only other way past Glen Canyon Dam is through four outflow tubes of questionable viability that the Bureau would like to use as little as possible.

The Bureau will address this with two emergency measures: first, by bringing a large quantity of stored water down the Green River from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and second, by cutting releases from Powell Reservoir by close to two million acre-feet (maf) – which in turn will leave Mead Reservoir lower and diminish its power generation. This is an emergency plan that can nowise be considered long-range planning.

The Lower Basin states in turn have bumped up their willingness to take more shortages for the next couple years by roughly doubling shortages they have already agreed to accept – if the feds will pay them something for not using water that is not there. Their earlier cuts were basically just enough to finally start taking out of their individual allotments the system losses (mostly evaporation) they have been dismissing, with Bureau cooperation, as being met through ‘surplus flows’ that effectively disappeared when the Central Arizona Project came online in the 1990s.

The four Upper Basin states have responded by suggested that it might be time to bring in a facilitator or mediator to conduct the seven-state negotiations on future management planning. This launched an episode of fussing between the Lower and Upper Basins as to who first had that idea, with the other basin objecting to it. But no one seems to be totally opposed to the idea at this point, and it might happen. 

But basically it all seems to be in reaction to an ‘emergency’ water year, with no advance on more long-range planning – and there is no reason to believe that this year in just a one-shot emergency like the 1977 water year. It is just the most extreme year in an extreme period – the past quarter century – that is probably the shape of the future in the Colorado River region, and there are no more Flaming Gorge reservoirs to draw down for the next emergency year….

It’s probably important to remember a distinction: there is a river, the Colorado River, and we have overlaid on that river a management systemfor managing the river’s water for its human uses, a system whose parts either store water or distribute stored water to users. But we do not directly ‘manage’ the river itself, which runs according larger ‘operators’ – to global climate factors that we can inadvertently change but do not directly control, to what is happening to precipitation that falls in the river’s watersheds, and to how much what lives on the land (including us) interacts with the flow both on and below the land surface.

That last point – the water ‘on and below the land surface’ – strikes me as very important but largely ignored in the stalemated negotiations. You remember the metaphor of ‘the elephant in the room’: a big thing that everyone in the room is trying to ignore because to acknowledge it is to open a can of worms? (Sorry, mixing metaphors here.)

Well, we have ‘elephants in the river’ – or rather maybe in the ‘box’ containing the sacred Law of the River, through which we try to manage to the river. That’s the box that we’re all supposed to be ‘thinking outside of.’ Beginning to work ‘outside the box’ on anything will open a can of worms, but… are we going to have any choice, further down the road when it will be even harder if the elephants in the river continue to be ignored?

Trying to think in an integrated way of the water under the land as well as that on the land is one of our elephants in the river. We need to keep in mind the distribution of the freshwater all land-based life depends on (basically a solar-distilled three percent of the ocean’s water). In our times more than half of the freshwater on the planet is ‘banked’ in mountain glaciers and the ice sheets of the polar regions and Greenland – although this fraction is gradually diminishing under the changing climate. Of the remaining 35-40 percent, most of it is groundwater – water that soaks into the land, nurturing nearly all of the plant life that is the foundational food, fuel and housing supply for the animal kingdom (including us). This leaves only a small fraction of the water on the surface – lakes, wetlands, streams and rivers – and this is also a diminishing fraction, as the warming climate increases sublimation and evaporation from all waters exposed to the sun’s increasing power.

Yet that is also the fraction of freshwater over which nearly all the human squabbling is happening. For a long time, until the last century-plus, that was all the water that most of the animal kingdom could access, but now we have – and use, not wisely – pumps that make the groundwater accessible too.

We also know that most of that small fraction of surface water is pretty intimately connected to the groundwater. A river is not just a drain for water that failed to soak into the ground; as a river runs through its low-elevation course in a watershed, it constantly interacts with the groundwater, gaining water when the land is wet and the ground is full of water, and giving water to the land, as gravity permits, when the land is dry.

This knowledge ought to drive us toward thinking of groundwater and surface water as a single water source – not just our awareness that pumping the land dry will also diminish the river, but also our awareness that irrigating the chronically dry lands from the streams and rivers not only grows more plants and animal foods that the dry land could – but some of that irrigation water also sinks below the root zone to recharge the groundwater. The city of Gunnison, where I live, bought a ranch adjacent to the city because the city leaders knew enough about alluvial water to know that their groundwater supply (several relatively shallow wells) depended on keeping that ranch under irrigation from the river — water mostly cleaned by the ground it passes through.

But back to the Colorado River, the fraction of the water that does not soak into the land is a larger fraction than you would find in gentler lands primarily because most of the water falls on mountains in winter as snow, which melts in a relatively short time period as the weather warms, too fast for all of it to sink into land that is often too steep or too rocky for absorbing it anyway. But even in that ‘runoff period,’ scientists are learning that a lot of the water in the stream in the ‘spring flood’ season is groundwater flowing in from saturated lands.

Despite knowing all this, however, we persist in fighting over the fraction of freshwater that flows in the river’s watersheds through the year in the Colorado River region (natural basin plus out-of-basin extensions), and pay little in a basin-wide way to the use and abuse of groundwater. Only Colorado – to the best of my knowledge – has tried statewide to legally integrate the use of surface waters and groundwater: since 1969 all groundwater users had to acquire water rights, in the same priority system with surface water users. And – before there was easy access to computers and spreadsheets – all groundwater uses going back almost a century were also integrated into that priority system, a massive ‘can of worms’ to negotiate.

What’s been happening in Colorado for 35 years then is the beginning of the intelligent management of an integrated surface-and-groundwater supply – apparently far too intelligent for the Trumpish agri-industrialists of the two largest Colorado River water users, Southern California and Arizona. Arizona was forced to develop a groundwater management plan (1970) for the areas of Arizona that would be served by the federal Central Arizona Project, in order to get Congress to pass the project; but the rest of the state has been pumping groundwater at prodigious rates, with surface subsidence as evidence of collapsing emptied aquifers that are lost forever. Most of California’s groundwater overpumping is up in the Central Valley, not ‘served’ by the Colorado River, but as Colorado River flows inexorably diminish in a warming world, there will be growing temptations to pump in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys.

I have not found figures for the amount of unregulated groundwater ‘mining’ that goes on in the Colorado river region, but the number and volume of aquifers that have collapsed and been lost due to water-mining would probably go a long way toward filling Mead and Powell Reservoirs. And if you pause for a second and think about it, storing water underground is probably better than storing it in open reservoirs under a desert sun.

That is not the only elephant in the Colorado River – and most of them lead back, one way or another to the Colorado River Compact. The ‘temporary’ two-basin division that has clearly become toxic. Acknowledgement that the compact commission’s original goal of a seven-state division is not just possible now, but has been realized, to everyone’s discontent, making the two-basin division nothing but a battleground. Acceptance of the fact that the diminished river will continue to diminish so long as we continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than the planet can absorb them. Acknowledgment of the fact that as the planet warms, surface storage in big desert reservoirs is a bad idea that will get worse. Acceptance of the fact that the reconvening of a compact commission is overdue, to formalize the seven-state division and its appropriative consequences. And maybe the biggest worm-can of all: are some reasonable, even moral, limits on the appropriation doctrine possible?

We’ll look at some of these other elephants in future posts here – which I think is where the ‘romance of the Colorado River’ is today. I also think we will never have a workable resolution to our current river-system problems until we take on the elephants and bump our own consciousness of water in the arid regions up a notch from the naive ‘conquest of the desert.’

Click the link to read the article on the KVNF website (Brody Wilson). Here’s an excerpt:

May 19, 2026

A special mid-year West Slope Water Summit brought together water managers and community leaders to address a dire water year. Projected inflows into Lake Powell are expected to be well below half of normal — and negotiations over the river’s future remain unresolved.

A special mid-year West Slope Water Summit convened this week in Montrose — called early because the situation couldn’t wait until November. Montrose County Commissioner Sue Hansen organized the gathering after attending the Colorado River District’s State of the River address. She told attendees it was time to step up the urgency.

“This year is the first year that I am not optimistic,” Hansen said. “This is unprecedented and perhaps sobering for all of us.”

[…]

“The Lower Basin has put out, maybe you guys have heard of this, bridge proposal a couple weeks ago that in my opinion is a joke,” she said.

Her frustration centers on the math. The proposal calls for reducing water use by 3 million acre-feet over two years. But Flinker says that’s nowhere near enough — the river needs cuts of at least that much every single year. At the heart of the standoff is a hard reality. There is currently much less water in the river than we have been using, and no one anticipates that changing any time soon.

As Flinker puts it, “Well, I can speak for myself and you probably have the same opinion. Who wants to reduce their water usage? Right? No one. And the Lower Basin has used over 10 million, close to 11 million, acre-feet out of this river every year, much above their allocation. They don’t want to use less – especially when it’s not a little less – it’s like half, right?”

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):

May 12, 2026

An environmental organization is floating a concept that could help the Colorado River system during extremely dry years like this one and keep the nation’s two largest reservoirs above critical thresholds.

Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates has released a concept paper that explores the idea of a flexible pool of water that can be moved wherever it’s needed most among the basin’s biggest reservoirs.

Water users in the Lower Basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — currently have about 3.2 million acre-feet stored in Lake Mead through voluntary conservation and efficiency measures. Water users bank water in this pool, known as the Intentionally Created Surplus, and can take this water back out again to use under certain circumstances.

The paper’s authors — John Berggren, a regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, and Kevin Wheeler, principal and engineer with Water Balance Consulting — used the ICS pool as an example to explore how the idea would work. They say that if the ICS pool could be moved from Lake Mead to Lake Powell, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation could have a buffer to more easily protect Glen Canyon Dam infrastructure, minimize the need for large releases from upstream reservoirs and reduce the risk of litigation among the seven basin states that share the Colorado River. 

“If you took a million or two million acre-feet out of Mead in the form of a conservation pool and moved it to Powell, then you could protect Powell without having to do all the DROA and the 6e releases,” Berggren said. “This is a perfect year where we would like to have the flexibility to move this water wherever it’s needed most, in this case in Powell.”

Berggren is referring to the actions that the federal government is taking this year: releasing up to 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to prop up Powell, as well as reducing releases down to just 6 million acre-feet from Powell instead of the originally expected 7.48 million acre-feet. Projections from Reclamation show the reservoir falling below 3,500 feet by this summer if these actions aren’t taken, jeopardizing the ability to make hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam.

This is a pivotal moment for the Colorado River Basin’s 40 million water users, with a historically bad snowpack and streamflows pushing reservoir levels to new lows and management into crisis mode. The seven states that share the river have not been able to reach an agreement for how reservoirs will be operated and shortages will be shared after the current framework expires this year. The feds are poised to step in with their own management rules, but the actions they are allowed to legally take may not go far enough to keep the system from crashing.

An invisible pool

Berggren’s paper lays out a surplus pool that would be flexible and “operationally neutral,” and would be separate from the rest of the stored water in both reservoirs. That means it wouldn’t count toward calculations of how much water is in Lake Powell or Lake Mead for the purpose of determining how water shortages would be shared. 

There isn’t a way to physically move water upstream, but according to WRA, water could be transferred between reservoirs through adjustments to dam releases and careful accounting. A pool could be “moved” from Mead to Powell by holding back water in Powell. It could be moved back to Mead by increasing releases from Powell.

The concept paper does not advocate for taking such actions this year, presenting them as a potential strategy to be used under a new river management framework that is being hashed out between the states that share the river and the federal government.

“There are a lot of concerns about operational neutrality, but we’re trying to show that it’s actually not that scary and can provide benefit with less risk than the current options,” Berggren said.

Reservoir levels in Mead currently determine how deep cuts to the Lower Basin states are; as Mead is drawn down, it triggers deeper cuts. Some water experts have said the ICS pool allows Lower Basin water users to game the system. By leaving their water in the ICS pool, it keeps reservoir levels artificially high and lets water users avoid taking deeper cuts. If the ICS pool had remained separate from the rest of Lake Mead, shortage triggers and mandatory conservation would have happened earlier. 

Making this pool “operationally neutral,” or invisible to reservoir operations, fixes this issue.

In a proposal submitted to the federal government May 1, the Lower Basin states expressed support for this concept, but they did not lay out a plan to implement it. 

“The goal is to achieve operational neutrality of ICS,” the submittal reads. “The Lower Division States will continue to determine when and how to convert ICS to operational neutrality at higher elevations in Lake Mead.” 

They also said the long-term goal is to create an operationally neutral common pool of new water savings to be strategically deployed at low elevations to help delay and offset additional reductions to the Lower Basin. 

Some experts say there are concerns and unanswered questions about these types of pools. The dividing line where water delivery is measured from the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) to the Lower Basin is Lee Ferry, just downstream of Lake Powell. Water measured at this location determines whether the Upper Basin remains in compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Moving water between reservoirs would have to deal with this issue.

“You would just have to agree on the rules of when is it considered a delivery at Lee Ferry and when isn’t it a delivery at Lee Ferry,” said Colorado River expert and author Eric Kuhn.

Another problem is that removing the ICS pool from reservoir accounting would leave a 3.2-million-acre-foot hole in Lake Mead that would need to be filled. 

“It’s hard to get there because there isn’t a way to make ICS operationally neutral unless you impose the shortages that would occur if the ICS weren’t there,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research and professor of practice at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “I don’t know how else you can do it. You have to pay the piper.”

Lower Basin proposal

Last week, the Lower Basin states submitted a proposal to Reclamation to operate the reservoirs through 2028 that includes more conservation. This short-term deal could provide a temporary fix while states continue to hammer out a long-term strategy to share the river. 

The Lower Basin states are proposing to cut another 700,000 acre-feet of water per year through 2028, on top of the 1.5 million acre-feet they had already promised. California and Arizona will each take another 300,000 acre-feet of cuts and Nevada will take a cut of 100,000 acre-feet. The proposal does not include any mandatory conservation from the Upper Basin. 

“It was a monumental undertaking in a very short time frame to come up with all of this,” said JB Hamby, California’s lead negotiator. “We need a bridge to the future, and we welcome and look forward to an opportunity for a full seven-state deal where all states are part of the solution.”

The Lower Basin proposal also says that this year’s release from Flaming Gorge to prop up Powell should be as close to the maximum amount of Reclamation’s range of 1 million acre-feet as possible. The proposal also calls for increasing releases from Lake Powell if hydrology and projected reservoir levels improve.

“The intent under improved hydrology is to share the benefits of improved hydrology between both basins,” the proposal reads. 

Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, said in a prepared statement that the Lower Basin’s proposal for water-use reductions is a good first step but they still call for too much water to be released out of Lake Powell and other Upper Basin reservoirs.

“The Lower Division States’ proposal would also drain the Upstream Initial Units with limited opportunities for recovery,” Mitchell’s statement reads. “Lake Powell should properly be viewed as a savings account for the Lower Basin: The Lower Basin’s own resiliency depends upon it. The entire Basin should support sustainable, supply-driven operations at Lake Powell that rebuild storage.”

Upper Basin officials have proposed a mediator to help move the needle on talks about future management to try to get to a seven-state deal.

Berggren said that although the concept of a flexible, floating pool doesn’t solve the basic supply-and-demand problem on the Colorado River, it’s still an important tool for future management. 

“There are a bunch of other things needed, including Lower Basin users and Upper Basin users using less water overall,” Berggren said. “This is just one component. But it helps provide some benefit in dry years like this one.”

Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Brandon Loomis). Here’s an excerpt:

May 14, 2026

Key Points

• The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is now seeking a 10-year water-sharing plan for the Colorado River states, adjusting cutbacks every two years.
• A worst-case scenario being modeled could slash water shares for Arizona, California and Nevada by 40%.
• The Lower Basin states have proposed their own conservation plan, which could cover the first two years of the new federal framework.

Unable to get Colorado River states to hash out a new 20-year deal to share in worsening water shortages, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has told them it’s now aiming for a 10-year plan with prescribed cutbacks to be reassessed every two years. Federal officials informed the seven states of their new preference late last week, and Arizona’s lead negotiator made it public on Wednesday, May 13, during a meeting of a committee representing the cities, tribes and other water users who meet to develop a unified state position.

The shift to what could effectively become five two-year plans carries both opportunities and risks for Arizona. On the one hand, state Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said, it means a proposal that the Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — recently submitted to boost their conservation through 2028 could cover the first two-year term if federal officials agree. That would keep water moving through the Central Arizona Project Canal, an economic lifeline that is at risk under some other scenarios. On the other hand, a move to bite-size plans “has us in a room negotiating for the next 10 years,” Buschatzke said at a meeting of the Arizona Reconsultation Committee. “That’s not something that creates the certainty that we’ve heard some people desire.”

[…]

New rules are necessary because the shortage-sharing guidelines that covered the last 20 years expire this fall — and because the river keeps shrinking along with a paltry snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. A deepening shortage has increased the stakes, keeping a consensus deal out of reach…In pitching their new 10-year “framework,” federal officials also informed the states that they intend to at least model the potential effects of a 3 million acre-foot annual reduction to what the three Lower Basin states could pull from Lake Mead. That worst-case scenario would slash 40% from what the century-old Colorado River Compact promised those Lower Basin states, and it could dry up the CAP Canal. It’s nearly twice the reduction that those states offered in their recent proposal…A 10-year program with a broad menu of potential guidelines that update every two years allows flexibility to adapt to both the changing hydrology and the potential for a political breakthrough on a consensus deal, [Alex] Smith said.

Click the link to read the release on the Western Resource Advocates website (John Berggren):

May 4, 2026

A new concept paper from experts at Western Resource Advocates and Water Balance Consulting shows that flexible water conservation pools can help get the Colorado River through dry years like this one.

• The Colorado River’s two major reservoirs are approaching historic lows, threatening the infrastructure that delivers water and hydropower to communities across the West. The current tools to address the problem are limited.
• The guidelines for managing the river expire this year. There are several management alternatives being considered that incorporate new flexible conservation pools. 
• A new concept paper shows how these pools can protect the Colorado River Basin and minimize conflict in critically dry years.

Imagine that you’re about to overdraw your checking account. Would you transfer money from your savings to avoid overdraft fees? Cut back on your spending?

Water managers on the Colorado River are faced with a similar problem, and few people are happy with the options available.

The Colorado River Basin just experienced its warmest winter on record. Snow water equivalent, or the amount of water in snowpack, is on track to be one of the lowest on record. An unprecedented March heat wave quickly melted much of what little snow was available to feed the river. And the West is projected to continue getting hotter and drier in the coming years.

The Colorado River Basin isn’t dealing with a temporary water shortage, it’s bankrupt.

The river’s two major reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — were constructed with a much bigger river in mind. Today, these reservoirs are approaching historic lows, threatening the infrastructure that delivers water and power to communities across the West. The Bureau of Reclamation forecasted that Lake Powell could drop below 3,500 feet, or the level needed to protect hydropower production, this summer if no actions were taken.

We are about to overdraw the account, resulting in significant consequences for the West.

Under current management guidelines, Reclamation only has two options to put more water in Lake Powell, and both come with drawbacks. The first is to release water from upstream reservoirs into Lake Powell. This is a stopgap measure — like drawing on your savings account to cover an unexpected expense. There are limits to how much water can be moved and how often. Upstream reservoirs must be allowed to refill after the water is transferred to Lake Powell.

The second option is to reduce Lake Powell releases. However, holding too much water in Lake Powell could trigger litigation from the Lower Basin states as soon as this fall, claiming that the Upper Basin is violating the Colorado River Compact.

Reclamation announced in late April that it will be using both options simultaneously keep water levels in Lake Powell from dropping below 3,500 feet. The agency plans to release between 660,000 and 1 million acre-feet of water from an upstream reservoir while reducing Lake Powell releases by 1.48 million acre-feet. While Reclamation is trying to protect the river with limited tools, the Basin states are not thrilled with the plan. The Upper Basin was quick to point out that increased releases from upstream reservoirs will have significant impacts on local economies and is not an action that can be taken year after year. Meanwhile, the Lower Basin says withholding additional water in Lake Powell could lead to the Upper Basin violating the Colorado River Compact.

The plan also might not work. It is expected to keep Lake Powell just above 3,500 feet — dangerously close to the hydropower intakes. This could potentially draw air into the intakes, damaging equipment and resulting in a complete loss of hydropower production.

The river’s current management guidelines are clearly no match for climate change. We are drawing down our savings in the hope of just barely making ends meet. It might not be enough, and it’s not something we can afford to do every year.

A NEW WAY FORWARD

The river is undergoing dramatic changes. What if we had a new management tool that allowed us to change with it?

WRA worked with Kevin Wheeler at Water Balance Consulting to find out.

We found that flexible water conservation pools can help maintain critical reservoir elevations and minimize the need to release large volumes of water from upstream reservoirs, while also not exasperating compact compliance issues.

We looked at the Intentionally Created Surplus (ICS) program — an existing water conservation program in the Lower Basin — to explore how this might work.

Currently, the ICS program allows water users in the Lower Basin to save water and store it in Lake Mead through actions like increasing irrigation efficiency or fallowing farmland. There is a little over 3 million acre-feet of ICS water currently being stored in Lake Mead.

This water has the potential to provide enormous benefit to Lake Powell as well, but there are institutional barriers to moving it. The water level in Lake Mead is currently used to determine how much water is released to the Lower Basin. Under the current guidelines, moving ICS water out of the reservoir would lower Lake Mead and impact Lower Basin shortages.

The key to solving this problem is creating a conservation pool that is “operationally neutral,” allowing saved water to be moved between reservoirs without impacting Lower Basin shortages or affecting compact compliance. This would allow ICS water to be stored in Lake Mead or Lake Powell — wherever it is needed to protect infrastructure and river health.

There is no infrastructure on the Colorado River to physically move water upstream; however, water can be transferred between reservoirs through adjustments to dam releases and careful accounting. For example, reservoir releases from Lake Powell could be physically reduced by 1 million acre-feet to “move” 1 million acre-feet of ICS water upstream from Lake Mead to Lake Powell. Releases from Lake Powell could later be increased by 1 million acre-feet to physically transfer the water downstream back to Lake Mead.

Because this water is operationally neutral, it would not be considered when calculating Lake Mead water levels and so moving it would not affect Lower Basin shortages. It also would not affect the 10-year Lee Ferry average. On paper, it would be as though there was no reduction in Lake Powell releases to “move” water upstream. This avoids exasperating compact compliance issues. This is in contrast to the operations Reclamation is undertaking this year, which will result in actual decreased Lake Powell releases, affect the 10-year Lee Ferry average, and bring compact implications as a result.

Our analysis shows that if a flexible conservation pool had been available this year, it could have significantly reduced the need to pull additional water from upstream reservoirs — helping to address concerns raised by the Upper Basin states. It also would have minimized compact compliance implications — helping to address issues raised by the Lower Basin.

The guidelines for managing the river expire this year, and there are several new management alternatives on the tablethat incorporate flexible conservation pools. Our analysis shows how these pools could work to protect the river and our communities in critically hot and dry years like this one.

Drawing down our savings isn’t going to work in the long term. We need sustainable solutions to ensure the infrastructure that delivers water and power to the West can function in dry years.

Download the concept paper.

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

May 5, 2026

The federal government has agreed to pump more than $450 million into programs to carry out additional Colorado River water conservation, Arizona Department of Water Resources chief Tom Buschatzke said Monday. The spending is necessary to make the new proposal from Arizona, Nevada and California work, Buschatzke and other water officials said Friday in releasing their offer to save 700,000 to 1 million acre-feet of river water through 2028. A million acre-feet is the equivalent of approximately 10 years’ worth of Colorado River deliveries to Tucson Water. The U.S. Interior Department proposed that the money be spent, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which must sign off on all federal expenditures, approved it, Buschatze said at a news briefing Monday afternoon on the new plan from the three Lower Colorado River Basin states…J.B. Hamby, California’s Colorado River commissioner, said later Monday that what Buschatzke said is also his understanding of the federal government’s position. The federal funding offer would require the Lower Basin states to engage in a cost-sharing effort to contribute money to the water-saving scheme, Buschatzke said.

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

May 1, 2026

⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️

If someone were to be dropped from another planet into the North Fork Valley in western Colorado today, they would be forgiven for assuming there is not a water crisis. A thick carpet of green covers the valley floor, the irrigation canals are filled to the brim, trees are leafing out, the river is running and Paonia Reservoir is almost full, and the mountains are still graced with snow.

I didn’t even come from outer space — I think — and I find the contrast between the news reports of water shortages and restrictions and the on-the-ground situation here to be quite jarring. Is it possible that April precipitation has averted the calamity?

Yes, a series of storms, some quite abundant, have moved through the Upper Colorado River Basin, boosting snowpack and soothing the desiccated earth. It has certainly felt cooler and wetter than normal, but that was mostly an illusion brought on by the abnormally dry winter and the searing March heatwave. And it hasn’t been nearly enough to offset the warm winter and the lack of snow, as the graphs below indicate.

As for the full ditches, I guess you could attribute that to a “make hay while the water is available” sort of ethos. You might as well douse the fields and fill ponds while spring runoff is in full swing and the river still runs, knowing that it may not last beyond June. Meanwhile, Paonia Reservoir’s relatively healthy levels are the result of the Fire Mountain irrigation canal — which relies on reservoir water — being shut down for emergency repairs.

Meanwhile, there is a conspicuous absence here in this agricultural hotspot: There are no blossoms or fruit on apple, cherry, peach, or pear trees. The March heatwave sparked a spectacular orchard super-bloom. That was followed by a devastating freeze that killed all of the fruit, even in orchards where extreme preventative measures were taken, and even “burned” the leaves on some trees. Wacky weather indeed.

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

Phil Lyman, the former and hopeful Utah politician, recently posted this on Facebook:

Just to sum it up: He’s knocking a federal program that pays willing farmers to voluntarily cut off irrigation to their fields in order to conserve water in an effort to balance Colorado River demand with the shrinking supplies. And he’s blaming it all on California. 

Lyman’s general sentiment is not new, nor is it uncommon among water users in the Upper Basin states. In fact, it’s basically a cliché. Since I was a kid I’ve heard folks saying something along the lines of: If we don’t use the water, it’ll just run on down to California, where those L.A. folks will guzzle it up to fill their swimming pools and water their golf courses. It’s a rather simplistic view, and one that doesn’t account for the realities of water law or the way the Colorado River system works. In other words, it’s just plain wrong, and a candidate for Congress — as Lyman is — should know better.

The Colorado River and its users have a problem: Demand for the water exceeds supply, and the supply is continually shrinking. Since boosting supply is not a feasible option, demand — i.e. consumptive use — must be reduced significantly. While everyone must make cuts, agriculture is the river’s largest water user by far, meaning that sector is going to have to make the largest cuts, by volume. This isn’t about demonizing farmers or alfalfa, it’s not about whether Californians or Utahns are more deserving of the water. It’s simple math.

The farm fallowing program is one way to cut consumption quickly by paying willing farmers to voluntarily forego irrigating some or all of their fields on a year-by-year basis. It’s not ideal, but it is legal, voluntary, and can save junior water rights holders, including cities and towns throughout the watershed, from being forced to shut off their water intakes. And in no way is farm fallowing exclusive to Utah. It’s occurring all over the place.

Let’s do a little fact-check of Lyman’s other points:

• Farm fallowing in Utah is being done to benefit California, which “demolished its water storage infrastructure.” No and no. The goal here is to leave a little more water in the river, to keep the whole system from collapsing. Any amount conserved in one place will potentially benefit all other river users, as well as the river itself. Foregoing irrigation on a Utah farm, for example, could help keep the taps on in St. George or some other Utah community that relies on the river. Dams have been removed in California, most significantly four structures on the Lower Klamath River. But those were primarily for hydropower production, not irrigation or water storage, and they are far removed from the Colorado River or any associated water storage.
• “Paying farmers not to feed us to bail out California’s failures …” Actually, the feds and state and other programs mostly are paying farmers not to grow alfalfa or hay, which feed cattle, and it has nothing to do with California’s “failures.” Indeed, California grows a lot of alfalfa, too, but it also grows all kinds of vegetables — far more than in Utah.
• If the water saved in Utah does make it to the Lower Basin and California, then the biggest beneficiary would be … farmers. Most of the water in the Lower Basin goes to the Imperial Irrigation District, where it is used for farming. Those farmers have also been part of the federal fallowing program, and have managed collectively to reduced their Colorado River water consumption by about nearly 1 million acre-feet since 2003.
• Lyman calls for eliminating or restructuring federal farm fallowing programs. I’m curious if he’s talked to the farmers about this, especially the ones who may lose their water and be forced to fallow anyway. Isn’t it better to get paid not to grow something than to not get paid for it?
• “… fight to end federal policies that separate water from the people who depend on it. Water rights are property rights.” We all depend on water; the California farmers depend on water just as much as Utah farmers do. Furthermore, the California farmers also own their land, they have some of the most senior water rights on the Colorado River, and according to the “Law of the River,” they could likely go to court to force many Utah farmers to stop irrigating altogether, without compensation. The farm fallowing program does not separate water from the farmers, it simply pays them to temporarily forego irrigation.
• “… end the war on farm water.” Look, there is not enough water in the Colorado River for everyone. Everyone will have to take cuts, but irrigated agriculture is the biggest user by far, and therefore will have to make cuts in order to balance supply and demand. It’s simple math: All of Las Vegas and southern Nevada use less than one-tenth of the water that goes to the farms in the Imperial Irrigation District.
• “… propose that the federal government build and operate desalination plants in California to free up Colorado River water for Utah …” Desalination will likely be a part of the West’s water future, especially for coastal urban areas. But building the plants, and processing and transporting these kinds of volumes of water, would be outrageously expensive and energy-intensive, which would be especially harmful to farmers, who rely on cheap water.

***

The Bureau of Reclamation recently decreased Glen Canyon Dam releases from about 8,200 cfs to a steady 7,000 cfs (without the usual nighttime reductions). This appears to be the lowest sustained releases since the dam was built, and if continued throughout the entire year would lead to only 5 million acre-feet of annual releases, which would make the Lower Basin states even more grumpy and litigation-happy than they already are.

But not to worry, the feds are still on course to release 6 MAF for the water year, because they released about 10,000 cfs during January and February. Still, it’s going to change the complexion of rafting in the Grand Canyon, for sure, and it is certainly pushing the boundaries of the Grand Canyon Protection Act.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado River Board of California website:

May 1, 2026

The Lower Basin States of Arizona, California, and Nevada today advanced a plan to stabilize the Colorado River through 2028, responding to declining reservoir levels, record low inflows to Lake Powell, and increasing risk of reaching critical elevations at both Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Earlier in the post-2026 process, the Lower Basin took a significant step by proposing 1.25 million acre-feet in annual reductions, with an additional 250,000 acre-feet from Mexico, totaling approximately 1.5 million acre-feet per year.

This proposal builds on that foundation with an expanded system conservation program across the Lower Basin with an estimated contribution of at least 700,000 acre-feet. In total, the plan identifies up to 3.2 million acre-feet of water savings to the system through 2028.

The proposal is an integrated package addressing Lake Powell releases, Upper Initial Unit operations, Lower Basin reductions, additional conservation, use of Intentionally Created Surplus, and system infrastructure improvements. Lower Basin contributions are contingent on these coordinated operations to ensure system stability as well as appropriate funding.

“With this proposal, the Lower Basin is putting forth real action to stabilize water supply along the Colorado River. We’re putting forward additional measurable water contributions for the system. Without that, the system will continue to decline,” said JB Hamby

“This proposal is about moving from ideas to implementation,” said John Entsminger. “It pairs real measurable water contributions with sensible dry-condition operations at Lake Powell and across the Upper Initial Units. Now is the time for every water user in the Basin to double down on water conservation as we face historically dry hydrology.”

“This proposal reflects the creativity and commitment of water users across the Lower Basin who continue to step forward with solutions that support the river,” said Tom Buschatzke. “We have shown that collaborative, voluntary efforts and reductions that are certain can produce meaningful water savings.”

The Lower Basin states recognize the Upper Basin’s call for mediation and are open to that process. However, current conditions require immediate, measurable water reductions from every state. The Lower Basin states stand ready to engage in a meaningful process for long-term solutions while encouraging the Upper Basin to step forward now with verifiable water contributions to help stabilize the system and support a near-term, seven-state bridge.

The Lower Basin states confirmed that the proposal preserves legal accountability under the Colorado River Compact, including Upper Basin delivery obligations, while maintaining a clear path toward a broader agreement among all seven Basin States.

The plan has been advanced to the federal government for consideration as part of the ongoing post-2026 planning process and is intended to provide a near-term bridge through 2028 while long-term operating guidelines are finalized.

Implementation of key elements of the proposal, including expanded system conservation, will require federal partnership. The proposal remains subject to approval by the Arizona Legislature and relevant California and Nevada water agency governing boards.

Press Contacts: 

Arizona: Doug MacEachern, dmaceachern@azwater.gov

Nevada: Bronson Mack, bronson.mack@snwa.com

California: Fernando Castro-Alvarez, fscastro@iid.com

Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton):

April 29, 2026

This story was produced by Circle of Blue, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

KEY POINTS

• Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963, was not designed to be operated at extremely low water levels in Lake Powell.
• The decline of Lake Powell is putting hydropower generation and downstream water deliveries at risk.
• The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal water manager, is studying options for retrofitting Glen Canyon Dam.

In the span of U.S. history certain years are turning points, milestones in the nation’s story. 1776. 1865. 1929. 1968. Circumstance and consequence conspire to make it so.

For the Colorado River and those who rely on it, 2026 is on the verge of similar prominence. Circumstances in the basin today are that urgent.

A slow-developing water supply calamity, decades in the making, has boiled over, like a cold war turning hot. Extreme heat in March – triple-digit temperatures never witnessed that early in the year – obliterated a meager snowpack. The basin’s big reservoirs, the supposed buffers against short-term drought, were already uncomfortably low after a quarter-century of declining river flows. They will drop even lower. The amount of water flowing this summer into Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, will be one of the smallest ever measured, barely a trickle.

“This is unprecedented, but it’s not unpredicted,” said Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. “I like to say that this is the most predicted disaster of all time.”

Lake Powell is formed by Glen Canyon Dam, a striking 710-ft tall concrete arch braced against ruddy sandstone walls. It plugs the Colorado just after the river enters Arizona. Meant to ensure water deliveries to the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963 to complement the Colorado River’s audacious engineering that distributes water through mountains and uphill to the largest cities in the Southwest and to the region’s most productive farmland. When full, Lake Powell holds enough water to flood the entire state of Virginia to the depth of one foot.

Climate change and water demand that still exceeds supply have flipped the engineering script. Lake Powell is less than 25 percent full today. Glen Canyon Dam, instead of being a guarantor of water, is now the most significant water chokepoint in the basin. The hard-won asset has become a glaring liability.

The reversal of fortune is because of how Glen Canyon Dam was designed. The dam was never meant to be operated at the extremely low water levels that Lake Powell is rapidly approaching. Doing so for extended periods of time could damage the pipes that move water through the dam, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the structure.

Reclamation is now studying its options for retrofitting Glen Canyon Dam to accommodate a lower Lake Powell. It expects to release those findings later this year or in early 2027. As any home remodeler knows, renovating an aging structure is neither quick nor cheap, especially when failure could have disastrous consequences.

In the short term, Reclamation is relying on operational band-aids for Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. With the consent of the seven states in the basin – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – the agency took unprecedented action this month to prop up the reservoir. Releasing more water from upstream reservoirs and holding back more in Powell will delay Glen Canyon’s infrastructure reckoning. But that day will soon come, and Reclamation’s answer to the dam’s engineering problems will have far-reaching implications – not only for the reliability of the basin’s water supply, but also for its power customers, ecology, and recreation economy.

An Assessment Deferred

Dams are difficult to manage under any circumstance. Management is even more troublesome when operators must balance multiple, conflicting objectives. In Glen Canyon’s case those objectives are water supply, flood control, hydropower generation, and releasing water to protect the ecology downstream in the Grand Canyon – namely, beach-building and threatened native fish like the humpback chub. This is in addition to ensuring the safe operation of the dam itself.

How to operate Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, its larger downstream sibling, is what the seven basin states and Reclamation are attempting to figure out right now. The current agreement covers operations through 2026. Reclamation published a draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, in January that would impose severe cuts on water users in the lower basin, particularly Arizona, in part to protect Glen Canyon Dam’s fragile infrastructure.

For that reason, water users in the lower basin and elsewhere support an engineering fix for Glen Canyon Dam. Many were incredulous that Reclamation did not include an assessment of dam modifications in its draft environmental analysis.

“This EIS could have been a great avenue to look at real changes at Glen Canyon Dam that could solve the water delivery problem and some of the ecological problems, too,” Balken said. 

Patrick Dent is the assistant general manager for water policy at the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which delivers Colorado River water to the densely populated center of the state. He said that CAP does not favor any particular fix – only one that provides dam managers with more flexibility.

“Our primary interest is that they could release water at a lower lake level,” Dent said.

The Gila River Indian Community, which receives Colorado River water through CAP, told Reclamation that the agency has a duty to safeguard the tribe’s water rights, which are at risk if the dam cannot release enough water. “The United States must take action to fix Glen Canyon Dam,” Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis wrote in a March 2026 letter.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board, which represents that state’s water interests, said it supports a reevaluation of Glen Canyon Dam, but “in a separate action” from the EIS.

Becki Bryant, a Reclamation spokesperson, said the agency will release an appraisal study assessing three dam modification alternatives at the end of this year or in early 2027. Any action beyond the study, she said, requires congressional authorization and funding.

‘Antiquated Plumbing’

The tool for managing the dam’s multiple objectives, which are a legislative requirement as well as a practical necessity, is the water held in Lake Powell, said David Wegner, a scientist who has worked on Glen Canyon policy for more than four decades. But even water has limits when the engineering is inadequate. “Sadly, these dams were not built for multiple objectives,” Wegner said. And Glen Canyon was certainly not built for extremely low water, he added.

The problem with Glen Canyon is what a coalition of environmental groups calls the dam’s “antiquated plumbing.” The groups – Glen Canyon Institute, Great Basin Water Network, and Utah Rivers Council – published a report in August 2022 that outlined these engineering deficiencies.

Water can exit Glen Canyon in only three ways. One is the spillways, a pressure-release valve for flooding, which are located at elevation 3,648 feet, near the top of the dam. They are irrelevant today. Lake Powell rests 122 feet below them.

The main exit point is through the eight penstocks, the 15-foot diameter tubes that move water through the turbines to generate hydroelectricity. The penstocks are incapacitated when Powell drops below 3,490 feet. (The lake today is 36 feet higher than that level.) If the lake falls below what is known as minimum power pool, hydropower generation also ceases.

If that happens, water must be released through four 8-foot diameter pipes called the river outlet works. Smaller than the penstocks, the river outlet works are located at elevation 3,370. Below that elevation water cannot be released from Powell, a status known ominously as “dead pool.” (Functionally, the river outlet works may be useless at elevation 3,394, Reclamation says.)

The environmental groups identified two limitations with the river outlet works. One is that they were not designed to be operated full-time. They are a role player, not the star. The other is that their smaller size means less water can pass through them. That’s a problem because the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming are required to send a set amount of water downstream to the lower basin, according to the 1922 Colorado River Compact that divided the river.

The flow restrictions imposed by the river outlet works, if they had to be used full time, means that the upper basin could violate the compact, which could mean water cutbacks imposed by the lower basin.

“It’s just so counterintuitive that the tool that was designed to meet this delivery obligation” – the construction of Glen Canyon Dam – “is now going to be the roadblock that may prevent the delivery obligation from being met,” said Balken of the Glen Canyon Institute.

The engineering problems are not a new discovery. Wegner, who was with the Bureau of Reclamation at the time as its Grand Canyon environmental studies manager, helped lead a 1987 National Academies report on Glen Canyon. The report recommended that the Interior Department consider the “installation and operation of multiple outlet structures” at Glen Canyon, which would give dam managers more flexibility with water releases.

Glen Canyon’s structural problems were substantiated in 2023, when Reclamation used the river outlet works during an experimental “high-flow” release of water to flush sediment downstream and rebuild eroding Grand Canyon beaches.

The high-volume release caused pitting, or cavitation, within the river outlet works, a risk that was heightened due to the physics of water when Lake Powell is low. Reclamation coated the pipes with epoxy as a temporary fix to prevent more damage, a process that took several months. The agency has since used two small-scale physical models at its Technical Service Center in Denver to test dam operations at low water levels and the effect on infrastructure.

Reclamation acknowledged the limitations of the river outlet works in a technical memopublished in March 2024 by Richard Lafond, director of the agency’s Technical Service Center. The memo’s conclusions were endorsed by the top decision-makers in Reclamation’s Upper Colorado River Office.

“Long term operation of the river outlet works will result in accelerating regular operation and maintenance tasks,” LaFond wrote. Reclamation should “not rely on the river outlet works as the sole means for releasing water from Glen Canyon Dam.”

Wegner put it in starker terms. If the river outlet works had to be relied upon and the pipes began to erode again, then Reclamation could potentially lose control of water flows.

“Potentially that could fail,” Wegner said, meaning an inability to control water releases through the dam if the pipes are structurally compromised. “And if that fails, now you have a catastrophe on your hand and you have limited options to manage that catastrophe.” 

In other words, there would be no way to release water downstream into the Grand Canyon and into the lower basin.

Neither Quick Nor Easy

What fixes are possible? Reclamation received $2 million from Congress in the fiscal year 2022 budget for an appraisal study.

Reclamation outlined three engineering possibilities in a 2023 presentation, most of which centered on preserving hydropower generation as Lake Powell declines.

One possibility is a new, lower intake that uses the existing power generation turbines. An intake located deeper in the reservoir would allow Glen Canyon to pass water in what is currently dead pool. But it would entail “increased risk from penetration through the dam.”

The second would connect new power generation equipment to the river outlet works.

The third option is tunneling through the canyon wall and installing a new underground power station. This would also provide more flexibility for water releases.

Reclamation also included three operational or policy changes for power production, including investing in wind and solar to offset hydropower declines.

Other ideas that seemed kooky and fringe just a few years ago – draining Lake Powell and filling Lake Mead first; changing the basin’s water accounting system – are now being discussed throughout the basin with more seriousness and candor.

Beyond that presentation, Reclamation has not said much publicly about dam modification. The agency declined an interview request to discuss Glen Canyon Dam’s engineering problems.

Whatever direction Reclamation chooses – an option outlined above or something new – the process will not be quick or easy. Any change to Glen Canyon must go through an environmental analysis and public comment period. Congress will have to authorize actions and appropriate the funds. Construction alone will take years.

Wegner, who was the staff director for the House Natural Resources Water and Power Subcommittee from 2008 to 2014, knows the difficulty and sees a lack of leadership. “There’s nobody in Washington who has been willing to lead the charge trying to get Congress to provide authorized funding to do this sort of work.”

‘Reservoir Triage’

Because Reclamation is not confident it can operate the river outlet works for an extended run, the agency is focused on keeping Powell above elevation 3,500 feet.

Protecting 3,500 feet comes with all sorts of baggage. It preserves hydropower generation, which power customers appreciate. But in effect the redline at that elevation strands some 4.4 million acre-feet in Lake Powell. (Only 3.7 million acre-feet is technically accessible with the current plumbing.) Some have called this elevation a “de facto” dead pool. Thus, the agitation in the lower basin for a plumbing system within the dam that provides access to this water.

Balken said that downstream water deliveries, not preserving hydropower, should be Reclamation’s biggest concern.

“When these decision makers are talking about Glen Canyon Dam from only a hydropower perspective, I think it’s missing the larger point, which is the dam is about to become the biggest roadblock of water deliveries that the basin has ever seen,” Balken said.

To avoid the infrastructure risks of dropping below 3,500 feet, Reclamation has started to take extraordinary action. The agency has two emergency levers it is pulling. One is to hold more water back in Lake Powell. Reclamation cut water releases to the legal minimum this year, something it has never done. The other is releasing more water from Flaming Gorge, a reservoir upstream that is in better shape.

As Balken describes it, “This is reservoir triage.”

These emergency actions have serious side-effects. Upstream, Flaming Gorge is expected to lose 35 feet of elevation by next spring, once the extra water has been released. That will hurt the recreation economy of northeastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming – fewer boat ramps in the water, less fishing access.

These upstream releases have limited utility, Wegner said. “You can do that once or twice. But you got to then depend upon Mother Nature refilling those reservoirs upstream.”

Downstream, Lake Mead will drop quickly and it too will approach a level in which hydropower generation at Hoover Dam severely drops. Algal blooms in a warmer, shallower lake could be a problem. “They’re going to be robbing Mead to pay Powell,” Balken said.

Trying Not to Hit Bottom

The idea of dead pool – when Lake Powell can no longer release water – was almost inconceivable when the reservoir was designed and filled. The official device for measuring Lake Powell’s elevation ends at the top of the penstocks, at elevation 3,477.5 feet. According to Reclamation’s 2024 technical memo, “This is an indication that reservoir elevations below minimum power pool” – 3,490 feet – “were not anticipated.”

Reclamation finished filling the reservoir in 1980. Three years later, after an intense El Niño winter, the dam’s upper limits were tested. Floodwaters in the summer of 1983 nearly broke the dam. Such volumes are almost inconceivable now.

In a typical year, Lake Powell would be rising in late April, flush with the deposits of snowmelt from headwater basins in the Rocky Mountains. Not this year. The snowpack peaked in many basins in late February or early March. What little snow there was has already melted. As of April 28, Lake Powell inflows are projected to be just 16 percent of average. Lake level forecasts from mid-April showed a long downward slope for the next 12 months. Those projections were what triggered the emergency release of water from Flaming Gorge and the reduction in Lake Powell releases.

Scientists have been warning about circumstances like this for years. In a defining period for the basin, all the predictions of water supply shocks in the Colorado River from the past two decades are coming to pass.

“We should have been prepared for this,” Balken said.

Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

April 20, 2026

With a historic drought hitting the Colorado River basin, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is making preparations to slow releases from the river’s largest reservoir while increasing withdrawals from an Upper Basin reservoir. 

“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife and recreational uses across the region,” said Andrea Travnice, the Bureau of Reclamation’s assistant secretary of water and science in a Friday, April 17 news release…

As a result, the Bureau of Reclamation is anticipating that inflow to Lake Powell will be 29% of the historical average, which it reports is one of the lowest on record. If water levels fall below a certain elevation — below 3,490 feet or roughly 15% of its capacity — it can impact operations, regional power and water supplies as well as reduce hydroelectric power generation. The Bureau is projecting it could hit this minimum power pool level by August. As of April 19, Lake Powell and Lake Mead were 24% and 32% full, respectively. 

Click the link to read the article on The Water Desk website (Annie MacKeigan):

April 23, 2026

The Colorado River basin has been here before. 

This year’s historic winter of low snow might feel novel. But recent years give some insight into just how dry the West’s most important river system can get. This season’s scant snowpack is melting rapidly, and turning up memories of other notably dry years. 

Prolonged drought conditions and warming temperatures since 2000 have produced severe single-year droughts in 2002, 2012, 2018 and 2020 in the river’s headwaters states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. As severe drought years continue to put the Southwest’s water infrastructure to the test, communities in the region are grappling with how best to understand and adapt to a changing climate. 

2002 stands as the worst drought on record for the Colorado River, measured as the flow into one of its biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border. It’s possible 2026 could break that record. Back then the year acted as a wake-up call to the region’s water leaders, spurred important policy changes, and reshaped attitudes around conservation. 

We asked Colorado River experts Eric Kuhn, Jeff Lukas and Jim Lochhead to share five important takeaways from the 2002 drought, and what to know as we enter the warmer, drier months of 2026.  

1. Reservoirs have memory

Reservoirs act as batteries for water availability, charged by inputs such as snowmelt, streams, rivers and precipitation. 

“What you did two or three years ago can affect your water supply now,” said Eric Kuhn, former general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “So in a good year, if you are conserving, you are actually helping the system out for the next drought.” 

The 2002 drought prompted municipal utilities to rethink their reservoir usage. 

“Water managers and agencies have absorbed several lessons from 2002, including holding something back. They’re operating the reservoirs a little differently,” said Jeff Lukas, an independent climate and water researcher who has lived on Colorado’s Front Range for 40 years. 

By conserving reservoir water, municipal utilities can maintain water storage for less abundant water years of the future. But as dry conditions have dogged the entire Colorado River basin for more than a quarter-century, the system’s buffer is gone. 

“The biggest issue is that Lake Powell and Lake Mead were relatively full in 2002,” Kuhn said. Now, both Lake Powell and Lake Mead are at critically low levels, and the water scarcity is increasing the likelihood of multi-state litigation.

In 2002, drought was dealt with on a local level; water utilities were not thinking about drought in terms of the entire river system, but instead how to regulate municipal water use. This year’s dry conditions are pushing the whole region to the brink. 

2. Conservation can make a big difference, if it is mandatory

Individual contributions to water conservation, adhering to local outdoor watering restrictions for example, can make a difference. Prompted by the 2002 drought, a 2004 University of Colorado study aimed to measure the effectiveness of water restrictions put in place by water providers on the state’s populated Front Range. 

The study followed municipal water providers Thornton, Aurora, Westminster, Fort Collins, Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette and Denver Water, comparing 2002 usage to average water usage in 2000 and 2001. Researchers determined that water restrictions are most effective when mandatory. Mandatory restrictions in Lafayette reduced water usage by as much as 53%, according to the study. 

The same study found that under mandatory restrictions, savings of expected water use per capita was as successful as 56%, while voluntary restrictions only measured up to 12%. 

Outdoor watering represents a big slice of a city’s water budget, and 2002 showed utilities that in times of crisis people can rein in their use. 

“Everyone should realize that they can make a small contribution to the solution,” Kuhn said. “Even though their individual contribution might be miniscule, when you add up all their neighbors and other people, it’s not miniscule. It’s very, very big.” 

Watering a lawn once or twice a week, and not during peak hours, is a practical way to conserve water while keeping grass alive. 

3. This is not a one-off year

It’s easy to shrug off a dry year and hope for wet weather’s return. But the long-term trends are concerning. 

“This is really the 26th year of extreme drought,” said former Denver Water CEO Jim Lochhead. On a larger scale, the seven Colorado River basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—have been preparing for worsening drought conditions since the shock of 2002. But river policy hasn’t kept pace with the aridification, leaving the region’s largest reservoirs at near record lows. 

“This has been a slow moving train that I think the states have known was coming, and they have frankly failed to do anything about it,” said Lochhead, who also represented the state of Colorado amid interstate Colorado River negotiations in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The Colorado Climate Center anticipates droughts to increase in severity and frequency, a trend that is only expected to continue in Colorado and across the Southwest as warming temperatures upend the water cycle. 

“We should be managing and thinking about water, using water, as though it were always a drought,” Lukas said. 

4. Communities have more practice dealing with drought, but still struggle  

Drought conditions in 2002 led some municipal water utilities to organize and create incentives for conservation, and transformed the urban landscape, swapping grass for more drought-tolerant plants. Those water restrictions allowed municipal water providers to curb water demand while steadily growing in size. However, there is still room for improvement in disproportionately affected communities.  

According to Lochhead, urban areas need to prioritize heat reduction in neighborhoods that have fewer trees in order to lessen the impacts of drought and warming temperatures. Using scarce water supplies to encourage tree-planting and increase shade should remain a priority. 

“I think we need to work with those communities to enhance some landscaping,” Lochhead said. “Whether it’s the homeless population, whether it’s just kids that are out, whatever it may be, those areas are where they’re pretty hard hit by heat.” 

Farmers and ranchers are used to riding the highs and lows of western weather. But extremely dry years like 2002, and now 2026, can push their operations to the limits. 

“This is going to be a really tough year,” Lukas said. “You’re going to have a lot of people selling off their herds and taking insurance out because of low crop yields.”

The majority of Colorado’s annual water supply is used for irrigation, so any proposed restrictions can be costly for the agricultural community. “There are going to be a lot of farms and ranches that just can’t operate because they don’t have any water,” Lochhead said. “There are going to be some significant economic consequences.” 

5. Stay aware, even if things seem bleak 

For Lukas, this year and its predecessors test our expectations about what nature can provide.

Even in periods of prolonged drought, there are wet years. “Judging from history, that tends to put everyone back on their heels, a little complacent,” Lukas said, but maintaining water storage relies on year-to-year vigilance, not complacency.  

Another primary concern during drought years is wildfire. With less moisture in the soil, dry vegetation acts as fuel for wildfire, which becomes harder to contain under hot and dry conditions. 

“I worry a lot less about municipal water supply than I do about wildfire,” Lukas said. Many of Colorado’s notably dry years have also recorded severe and destructive wildfires. 

It comes at no surprise that worsening drought falls in line with worsening wildfires. “Climate change is delivered to people through changes in the hydrologic cycle,” Kuhn said, so being aware of water usage now is just as, if not more important as it was in 2002.

This story was produced and distributed by The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.