BOULDER, Colo. - The federal government has officially run out of patience with the seven states that share the Colorado River, and is now prepared to impose a 10-year operating framework for managing water use by the end of this summer if they can't reach an agreement themselves, said Scott Cameron, acting commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation, at a water conference Thursday.
This announcement comes during the worst water year ever recorded on the Colorado River, which is saying something given the river's recent track record. The states have already missed November and February deadlines to hash things out, and the current drought mitigation guidelines expire at the end of September - meaning new rules must be in place by Oct. 1 or everyone gets to play a very high-stakes game of chicken.
State and tribal leaders are less than thrilled with the federal proposal, which would be reevaluated every two years. They argue it will create more uncertainty by requiring constant renegotiation and potentially conflicting with the existing legal framework - which, to be fair, is already a century of complicated compacts and court decisions that the states themselves can't agree on.
In mid-summer, Cameron said, the Bureau of Reclamation will release the final Environmental Impact Statement detailing its preferred plan for managing the river after 2026, with a final decision shortly after. "The preferred alternative provides a 10-year framework," he said. "We would love to have a 20-year deal or a 30-year deal, but frankly, we haven't even been able to get seven states to agree on what a two-year deal would look like, so we're using a 10-year framework that the department would use to issue operational guidelines at two-year intervals."
Negotiations remain deadlocked between the upper basin (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico) and lower basin (Arizona, California, Nevada). Consultation with the 30 tribes in the basin and Mexico - where the river ends - is also ongoing. Meanwhile, flows on the Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million people and irrigates over 5 million acres of cropland, have declined by about a third over the past century, with demand outpacing supply and reservoirs dropping to historic lows.
Recent studies suggest another dry winter could leave lakes Mead and Powell - the two largest reservoirs in the nation - nearly dry. This fall, water levels could fall so low at Lake Powell that Glen Canyon Dam can no longer generate hydropower. At that point, water can only bypass the dam via four lower outlets, but sustained use of those pipes could damage the dam. If levels drop much further, the lake could reach "dead pool," where the dam can't release any water downstream at all.
Cameron held out a sliver of hope: "Oh, by the way, if peace breaks out and we have a seven-state agreement on something a year and a half from now, or four and a half years from now, we're happy to take that agreement and have it supplant this 10-year framework."
Becky Mitchell, Colorado's negotiator, said negotiating every two years under the federal framework will be incredibly challenging. She worries about how communities can fund and plan projects with constant uncertainty, and that ongoing negotiations will entrench competing legal theories, leading to lengthy litigation. "The lawyers will get rich," Mitchell said, but "we still have to figure out how to work with a river that is producing less than we planned."
John Entsminger, Southern Nevada Water Authority's general manager and Nevada's lead negotiator, agreed that a new plan every two years "is not a good plan." He was less opposed to litigation but recognized lawsuits would be lengthy. "If the seven states can't agree on what the Law of the River is, then I don't know if it's the federal courts, I don't know if its Congress, I don't know who it is, but a different set of humans is going to make decisions," he said.
Carlos de la Parra, an advisor during previous U.S.-Mexico water talks, compared Mexico's situation to being invited to dinner at someone's house but the meal isn't ready because the hosts are fighting. U.S. tribes that depend on the river are also sovereign nations but have been allowed limited engagement. "There can be no real or durable solution without the full and active engagement of tribal nations who account for over 25 percent of the adjudicated water in this basin," said Amelia Flores, chairwoman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes.
This year is on track to be the worst water year on record for the Colorado River. At Lees Ferry, the dividing line between the upper and lower basins, 20th-century flows averaged just over 15 million acre-feet per year. The 21st century has seen flows of around 12 million acre-feet, and the last seven years averaged 10.2 million acre-feet. (One acre-foot is enough water for two to three homes, or about 326,000 gallons.)
The effects are personal. With tears in his eyes, Donald Whyte of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe noted his tribe is receiving just 8 percent of its water allocation this year. Two hundred years ago, his people lived at the headwaters of the Colorado River's tributaries in the southern Rocky Mountains; now, the reservation sits in the arid Four Corners region. "I wonder, how did we go from the headwaters of all these streams to where on my reservation I have no continuous water source traveling across my land?" he asked.
The cause of declining flows is greenhouse gas emissions, said Brad Udall, a senior water and climate researcher at Colorado State University. "Climate change has had really big impacts around the planet, but oftentimes these are one-offs - big floods, big hurricanes - and people rebuild," he said. "This is a completely different situation... we are going to get to redo, like it or not, 100 years of law and policy around how we manage a critical resource."
The federal government's solution? "Bribery," according to Cameron. Reclamation has put $100 million on the table for the Upper Basin to conserve water, and another $354 million for the Lower Basin. To raise Lake Powell's level this year, the feds are releasing between 600,000 and 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming and limiting releases from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. "I think we have succeeded in making everyone unhappy and everyone mad, which maybe means we're doing the right thing," Cameron said.