The clock is ticking for the seven Colorado River basin states to come to an agreement on how to manage the river under the worst drought in 1,200 years.
“The Law of the River,” a set of longstanding agreements between river stakeholders, was last updated in a 2007 plan that’s set to expire at the end of 2026. Since then, climate change has taken its toll on the river, reducing flows faster than earlier projections anticipated.
Now, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada argue that the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming should face mandatory cuts to their water allocations post-2026. The Upper Basin states counter that they shouldn’t have to because they already collectively use less than their allocated amounts.
If state negotiators can’t reach consensus on a new water management framework by February 14, the federal government could step in and impose its own guidelines as early as this summer, which experts say could lead to lengthy litigation and an uncertain future for the 40 million Americans who rely on the river for drinking water, agriculture and hydroelectric power.
Nevada negotiator and Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager John Entsminger summarized this stalemate at a December Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) conference at Caesars Palace.
“If you distill down what my six partners just said, I believe there’s three common things: Here’s all the great things my state has done, here’s how hard—slash impossible—it is to do anymore, and here are all the reasons why other people should have to do more. As long as we keep polishing those arguments and repeating them to each other, we are going nowhere,” Entsminger said.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has accused Upper Basin states of “complete refusal to implement water conservation commitments.” Upper Basin negotiators fired back at this claim at the CRWUA conference.
“The upper basin states haven’t been insulated from this reality, and we aren’t ignoring it either,” Wyoming’s Brandon Gebhart said. “Suggestions to the contrary fail to recognize what’s actually happening.”
California negotiator JB Hamby contested that his state stands to lose the most, noting it has already made significant cuts the state wasn’t obligated to make.
“We have the greatest [agriculture] production in the basin, and half of the population lives within our state. If the river fails, no one feels it harder than California,” Hamby said. “The Lower Basin cannot solve this problem alone.”
Amid this impasse, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released a 1,600-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on January 9, outlining five possible paths forward. They range from no action—reverting to pre-2007 rules and risking infrastructure—to alternatives that better protect reservoirs from being emptied but require unprecedented cuts to water allocations, especially for the Lower Basin.
Nevada has by far the lowest allocation—now under 300,000 acre-feet, or less than 2% of total Colorado River water allocated. But as a world leader in water efficiency, the state does not use its entire allotment thanks to technology that treats and recycles all indoor water use back into Lake Mead.
As a human-made reservoir that is part of the Colorado River, Lake Mead provides about 90% of Southern Nevada’s water supply. But it has reached critical levels in recent years.
Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Nevada-based conservation nonprofit Great Basin Water Network, notes that none of the five alternative scenarios presented in the EIS would absolutely guarantee that Lake Mead’s water levels would remain above a benchmark required to continue producing hydroelectric power.
“In every option put forth [in the Bureau of Reclamation’s draft EIS], there are likelihoods that Mead could get to really scary elevations for us,” he says, adding that the primary question negotiators have to answer is how to best balance storage levels at both Lake Mead and Lake Powell to avoid an energy catastrophe.
The Bureau of Reclamation is now accepting public comments on the EIS through March 2. Meanwhile, if state negotiators can’t agree by Valentine’s Day, the agency could explore federal interventions before the “new water year” begins on October 1.
Although the document states that U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum “intends” for a potential deal to last for 20 years, it also left the door open for a short-term solution.
Entsminger also touted that possibility at the CRWUA conference, noting that he no longer believes a 20-year deal is possible. Instead, he thinks a five-year operating plan is the next best option “to keep us out of court.”
Negotiators met again this month in Salt Lake City, where they discussed the five-year option but left without making a deal. Roerink says openness to this possibility is a step in the right direction.
“The short-term band-aid, however imperfect, could be an opportunity for everyone to see one of the alternatives in practice. It would provide an escape hatch, which might be the best way to bring people to the table,” he says.
In the absence of any deal, costly litigation could prove detrimental for everyone. In a different CRWUA panel, Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, said the average length of Colorado River litigation in the 20th century was about eight years.
“I don’t think we have two years—or any time—to waste,” New Mexico negotiator Estevan López said in response. “If we sink into litigation here, that’s probably the absolute worst outcome we could have. There will be no certainty for perhaps a decade.”
In the latest federal effort to avoid that fate, Burgum’s team recently invited the seven basin state governors and negotiators to Washington, D.C. to discuss the matter in person on January 30. Entsminger and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo plan to attend.
