Serving as the “lifeline of the
Southwest,” and one of the most heavily regulated rivers in the
world, the Colorado River provides water to 35 million people and
more than 4 million acres of farmland in a region encompassing
some 246,000 square miles.
From its headwaters northwest of Denver in the Rocky Mountains,
the 1,450-mile long river and its tributaries pass through parts
of seven states: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico,
Nevada, Utah and Wyoming and is also used by the
Republic of Mexico. Along the way, almost every drop of the
Colorado River is allocated for use.
The Colorado River Basin is also home to a range of habitats and
ecosystems from mountain to desert to ocean.
When a city must find its water 50 miles away and 1,400 feet
underground, in an aquifer whose origins first had to be pegged
to the late Cretaceous and the early Paleogene periods, and
further delineated between Colorado turf on the surface or
Wyoming land just a skosh to the north, while drilling two-way
wells at $1 million each on the way to an eventual price tag
approaching $400 million, and then filter out dissolved
uranium, it would seem a stretch to call this plan the easy way
out. But for Greeley, bent on doubling its current
population of 109,000 by 2060, this is indeed the simpler
choice. Greeley will store and retrieve its biggest future
water supply at Terry Ranch, at the Wyoming border, because
it’s the most convenient way to create a new bucket in a state
where just getting the permit for building a dam takes more
than 20 years.
The Arizona neighborhood that made national news when it lost
its primary water source will soon have a new standpipe at its
eastern edge — but not everyone will be able to use it. … the
utility [Epcor] will soon be holding a lottery to determine who
gets water — and who doesn’t. … The announcement comes
nearly two years after the community, located just east of
Scottsdale in unincorporated Maricopa County, first lost its
reliable water supply. It is partly dependent on hauled water
and was left without a regular source after Scottsdale
officials cut off its access to a city standpipe in January
2023, citing concerns about ongoing drought conditions on the
Colorado River.
… The town of Green River, Emery County — population of about
800 people — is more than just a place along the I-70 corridor
that boasts famous watermelons and some of the most
scenic nearby landscapes in Utah … There is the
Green River itself, with rafting, kayaking … The Green River
is 730 miles long and is the main tributary of the Colorado
River. The Colorado River was once dubbed the country’s most
endangered river by American Rivers because of its many
depletions, the dams it supports in the arid West and a more
than two-decades-long drought that has left a hydrological
imprint that will be hard to overcome. Seven basin states, two
countries and 30 tribes depend on the Colorado River. And for
the Colorado River to be healthy, the Green River has to do its
part.
You’ve heard the news: Farmers and ranchers use roughly 80% of
the water in Colorado and much of the American West. So doesn’t
it make sense that if growers and producers could just cut a
bit of that, say 10%, we could wipe out all our water
shortages? We probably couldn’t water our lawns with wild
abandon, but still, wouldn’t that simple move let everyone
relax on these high-stress water issues? Not exactly. To do so
would require drying up thousands of acres of productive
irrigated lands, causing major disruptions to rural farm
economies and the agriculture industry, while wiping out vast
swaths of open space and habitat that rely on the industry’s
sprawling, intricate irrigation ditches, experts said.
San Diego County is in a good place to meet water demands
through the next water year, which began Tuesday, officials
announced. The 12-month water year cycle begins Oct. 1 for
counts of snowfall and precipitation for the next year.
The San Diego County Water Authority, which brings in new
leadership Tuesday, said that two consecutive wet winters have
the area prepared for water needs, even with La Niña conditions
likely to replace wet El Niño weather this winter. … Climate
change as well as lengthy drought and overuse conditions on the
Colorado River play a part in water management, the SDCWA
leadership said. The authority has invested millions into
infrastructure in an attempt to keep the region’s supply steady
and alleviate stress from the Colorado River.
A bipartisan group of state lawmakers Tuesday urged Colorado’s
two U.S. senators to support federal funding that will help the
Colorado River Conservation District and its partners achieve
their goal of buying the state’s largest and most senior
non-consumptive water right. The project, which dates back to
1902 and is named for the Xcel power plant just east of
Glenwood Springs, is known as the Shoshone water right. The
Colorado River flows through the turbines at the Shoshone power
plant. Tuesday’s letter from the General Assembly was signed by
16 lawmakers, which includes every legislator, Republican or
Democrat, who represents the Western Slope, as well as members
from the rest of the state who sit on the House and Senate
agriculture committees.
In May 2024, the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan
Southern Paiute Tribe approved the proposed Northeastern
Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement (NAIWRSA). If
implemented, this agreement would settle the three Tribal
nations’ water rights claims to the Colorado River, the Little
Colorado River and groundwater sources in Northeastern Arizona.
An Indian water rights settlement is a voluntary multi-party
agreement through which Tribal and non-tribal entities quantify
Tribal and sometimes non-tribal water rights, waive and release
water rights and environmental claims and fund and collaborate
on various water infrastructure projects. An Indian water
rights settlement may contain a variety of other terms, for
example, regulating use of shared groundwater or authorizing
leases of a Tribe’s water resources.
A vast majority of Arizona voters support securing long-term
water supplies and enacting stronger groundwater protections,
but have little faith in Arizona’s current water policies’
ability to sew long term sustainability, according to the
latest survey from the Center for the Future of Arizona.
Voters’ recognition of water as a key issue facing the state is
not new, but has crept closer to the forefront of voters’
consciousness given prolonged drought conditions, lack of
oversight of groundwater supply and general anxiety over the
state’s water future.
When researcher Brian Richter set out to take a close look at
how big cities in the Western U.S. were adapting to water
scarcity, he already knew the story’s basic
contours. Previous studies showed the trend clearly for
some large utilities. As a megadrought has baked the Southwest
since 2000, the region’s biggest cities have reined in their
use to keep pace with the declining supply. But it had
been years since someone took a more region-wide look at who
was conserving and how much. … After gathering data for 28
large and medium-size water utilities dependent on the Colorado
River, Richter and his team were able to see the more modern
trend lines in sharp detail. The results surprised him. It
wasn’t just that cities like Denver, Los Angeles, Tucson and
Las Vegas were using less. They were doing it while growing
rapidly. His 2023 study found that collectively the
region’s cities had grown by 25% from 2000 to 2020, while their
water use dropped by 18%. Per person use rates declined even
more sharply, falling by 30%.
Last week, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly appeared before the
Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to introduce Navajo Nation
President Buu Nygren, Hopi Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma,
Yavapai-Apache Nation Chairwoman Tanya Lewis, and San Juan
Southern Paiute Tribe Vice President Johnny Lehi. These leaders
came to testify in support of two critical tribal water
settlement bills that Kelly previously introduced to secure
long-term water rights and resources for Arizona’s tribal
communities. In July, Kelly introduced the Yavapai-Apache
Nation Water Rights Settlement Act—bipartisan legislation to
secure a sustainable water supply for the Nation by delivering
water from the C.C. Cragin Reservoir, ensuring access to clean
drinking water while protecting the Verde Valley’s vital water
resources. He also introduced the Northeastern Arizona Indian
Water Rights Settlement Act (NAIWRSA) of 2024, which addresses
water claims in the Colorado River Basin, providing significant
water resources to the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan
Southern Paiute Tribe.
Seven states that rely on the Colorado River each got a cut of
its water under a deal struck over a century ago – a deal that
excluded the Hopi, the Navajo and other tribal nations. After
years of pressure and negotiation, Congress is moving to
rectify what the tribes have long seen as an injustice that has
caused enormous hardship. … Representatives from four Arizona
tribes – the Yavapai-Apache Nation, Hopi, San Juan Southern
Paiute and the Navajo Nation – said the settlements, once
approved by Congress, will secure their long-standing claims
and provide more accessible water for their people. Almost a
third of members of the Hopi, Navajo and other tribes have no
running water, and leaders say the water currently available
isn’t sufficient for growing populations.
One of the nation’s oldest environmental groups is suing
Imperial County’s powerful water agency over a recent deal
meant to help conserve the parched Colorado River. Under the
terms of the deal, the Imperial Irrigation District, or IID,
will try to cut back its consumption of Colorado River water by
750,000 acre feet over the next three years. In return, the
agency and farmers who conserve water could receive more than
$600 million from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. But those
cutbacks will also reduce the amount of water flowing into the
Salton Sea, which is slowly drying up. That could accelerate
the release of harmful particles into the air from the exposed
lakebed, according to the Bureau of Reclamation’s own
environmental assessment of the deal. That’s led the Sierra
Club to challenge the deal, arguing it violates state law and
puts residents along the Salton Sea in greater danger of
breathing in toxic, chemical-laden dust. … The group also
alleges that IID didn’t account for the impact on desert
wildlife.
The Biden administration and southwestern Colorado River users
have partnered on a large-scale conservation effort poised to
bring significant relief to the region’s key reservoir,
officials announced Wednesday. The Department of the
Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation and Southern California
stakeholders signed two short-term “Bucket 1”
agreements — funded by the Inflation Reduction Act — to
conserve more than 717,000 acre-feet of water by 2026.
… The deal with the Imperial Irrigation District alone
will provide up to 700,000 acre-feet of system conservation for
Lake Mead, through a total investment of about $589.2 million,
according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Five U.S. Bureau of Reclamation conservation agreements
targeting California farmers were signed on Wednesday with a
big intended impact. … The agreements involving the Imperial
Irrigation District, Bard Water District and the Metropolitan
Water District represent the last conservation efforts from
“bucket one,” or the first round, of funding from Congress’
Inflation Reduction Act. Lake Mead, which provides about 90
percent of Southern Nevada’s drinking water, stands at around
1,063 feet as of September’s end — about 23 feet higher than
the reservoir’s all-time low in 2022. [Reclamation Commissioner
Camille Calimlim Touton] has cited aggressive conservation
as a direct boost to Lake Mead’s outlook, though two heavy
snowpack years in the Rocky Mountains have helped, as well. The
Bureau of Reclamation predicts that the agreements will save
717,000 acre-feet of water in total. One acre-foot of water is
roughly enough to serve two single-family homes for a year.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has seen a decrease in zebra mussel
veligers found in the Colorado River. While there’s been a
decrease in the mussel larvae it doesn’t mean they have been
eradicated entirely. “We have continued to sample and have not
seen them. But that does not mean that they are not present
there in the system. They are just extremely difficult to
detect,” Robert Walters, Invasive Species Program Manager said.
A microscopic organism that’s hard to detect-that’s the trouble
with the zebra mussel veligers. In July of this year zebra
mussel larvae were found in the Colorado River at two different
locations Highline Canal. Walters also said the decrease
in the positive samples could be due to colder water
temperatures.
Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River
across from California, is at the center of a growing fight
over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the
battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right,
to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining
life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in
for the greatest profits? As the West suffers its worst
megadrought in 1,200 years, investors have increasingly eyed
water as a valuable asset and a resource to be exploited.
Polluted water leaking from thousands of abandoned mines in
Colorado’s mountains is turning wetlands orange and dumping
toxic dissolved metals in the headwaters of many of the state’s
rivers. But people who want to fix the problem are hampered by
the very federal laws meant to protect the environment.
Organizations and local governments that want to fix the acidic
drainage from a mine outside of Alma — and the hundreds of
thousands of other abandoned mines across the West — are
hopeful about new legislation under consideration in Congress.
By removing liability burdens, the bill would finally give
them more leeway to stop the pollution seeping into the streams
relied upon for drinking water, recreation, and fish and animal
habitat.
Southern Arizona residents, activists and organizations are
teaming up with federal government officials to designate a
portion of the Santa Cruz River as Arizona’s first urban
national wildlife refuge. The federal designation would ensure
the protection of the critical habitat for years into the
future following its revitalization in recent years.
… The San Xavier District’s Wa:k Hikdan Riparian
Restoration Project on Tohono O’odham land was a model for the
coalition. The Wa:k Hikdan project restored riparian habitat to
the San Xavier District just south of downtown Tucson by using
Colorado River water granted through the Central Arizona
Project. The coalition said the Wa:k Hikdan project resulted in
trees regrowing, plant life becoming abundant again, and
animals returning. The project brought the community together
in the process, making it a model for the Santa Cruz River
refuge proposal.
The state engineer has just doubled down on her approval of
lithium drilling on the Green River, months after protests from
farmers, locals and environmentalists influenced her to
reconsider the decision she made earlier this summer. Now,
those opponents, who believe the decision sets a dangerous
precedent for water use in Utah, are considering whether and
how to challenge it again. … Anson Resources, an Australian
company, claims their extraction method will reinject 100% of
the water they use to draw out the metal back underground, in a
“non-consumptive” use of the water. Opponents are skeptical.
After Utah State Engineer Teresa Wilhelmsen first approved
the project in May, they challenged her call, arguing that
the project poses contamination risks to groundwater,
undermines existing water rights and uses water that the
overtapped Colorado River system doesn’t have to
spare.
Increasingly severe wildfires at high elevations are impacting
snowpack – an important reservoir for the U.S. West. The
altered landscape makes it more challenging to predict when
snow will melt and how much water will be available for
use. Colorado State University researchers studied the
2020 Cameron Peak Fire’s effects on snowpack across mountainous
terrain and found that location is key to melt rate and timing.
… The study, published in Water Resources
Research, is the first to quantify the impact of the full
energy balance – both long- and shortwave energy – on snowpack
in burned areas. The researchers used radiometers to measure
incoming and outgoing long- and shortwave energy. Shortwave
energy comes from solar radiation, and the long-wave form is
thermal energy.
A hot summer in Las Vegas pushed water consumption in August to
the highest it has been all year, but the 2-year outlook for
Lake Mead continues to improve. The U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation’s 24-month study, updated each month with
projections that guide how dams along the Colorado River are
managed, shows continued stability for Lake Mead for the rest
of the year and through 2025. Currently, Lake Mead is at
1,063.77 feet, about the same as it has been since mid-June,
give or take a foot. Lake levels are expressed as feet above
sea level — altitude, not depth. Lake Mead is the nation’s
largest reservoir, and it’s currently about 165 feet down from
“full pool” level — 1,229 feet. It’s down to a third of its
maximum capacity.
Bills focused on water quality, agricultural exemptions and
wolf depredation claims received early legislative support
Wednesday while an effort to prevent water speculation was left
on the chopping block. The Colorado Legislature’s Water
Resources and Agriculture Review Committee met Wednesday to
decide which bills will be introduced in the upcoming
legislative session. The committee supported eight bills, but
five drafted policies did not make it out of the meeting —
including one proposed by Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Summit County
Democrat, whose idea to strengthen transparency in water rights
transactions did not have enough support.
In the Navajo Nation—a sweeping landscape of red-rock canyons
and desert that takes in the Four Corners—water is not taken
for granted. Here, more than 1 in 3 Diné, as Navajo people call
themselves, must haul water to their homes, often across long
distances. The Diné use the least amount of water per person of
anyone in the U.S., and pay the most. Eighty miles away,
residents of Utah’s Washington County rely on essentially the
same water supply, yet pay less for that water than almost
anyone else in the U.S. and, until recently, consumed the most.
The contrast reflects not only inequities of power and access.
It also carries a warning that reaches beyond two arid
communities. A megadrought has desiccated the American West,
which is drier than it has been in 1,200 years. On June 22, the
planet experienced its hottest day in recorded history,
breaking a record set one day earlier. Dust clouds churn on the
horizon. Much of the world may be headed this way.
Water rights to the Colorado River are a notoriously valuable
commodity: The flows support verdant agricultural lands in
Southern California and Arizona, as well as major cities like
Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. So when the federal
government needs to curb use on the 1,450-mile waterway, it has
long opted to open up its checkbook and pay up — such as with a
recent emergency effort to protect hydropower operations on the
river, which cost the Biden administration $1.2 billion for a
three-year deal. But when Mother Nature cuts back on the supply
at its source, it’s a much different story.
Students at a Saint Mary’s University are discovering liquid
treasures in the Colorado River basin all way from Minnesota.
Andy Robertson’s geospatial services team employees more than
50 students, who create high-tech digital maps. “Picture Google
Maps on steroids. And they’re trying to make determinations of
what’s a wetland and what isn’t a wetland,” said Robertson. The
students are so good at it, New Mexico hired them to map all
the wetlands in the state. “We didn’t know where wetlands were.
We didn’t know what type we had.” Maryann McGraw with the New
Mexico Environment Department. Now, New Mexico knows where all
its wetlands are. “We need to know where these things are so we
can protect them,” McGraw continued. But it’s not easy. Many
wetlands in New Mexico disappear from the naked eye during the
dry months.
Monday marked the beginning of crews in Mesa starting to remove
grass from dozens of parks and retention basins in an effort to
conserve water. The City of Mesa is removing about five acres
of turf throughout 54 parks and retention basins that
are “non-functional,” meaning it may be close to walls where
people aren’t using the turf for recreation. The city
estimates it’ll save more than 5 million gallons of Colorado
River water a year. To get an idea of what that’d look like,
it’s about 15 football fields covered in a foot of water.
The state’s top water official is making contingency plans for
a court fight if a deal can’t be worked out with other states
for how to divide up Colorado River water in 2026 and beyond.
Tom Buschatzke wants Gov. Katie Hobbs and state lawmakers to
give him $1 million in what he is calling a “set-aside
appropriation” in case there is no agreement – at least not to
the state’s satisfaction – in the ongoing negotiations
over the river. Ideally, he said, it won’t be necessary and the
seven states, various tribes and federal agencies will work out
a deal. But the director of the Department of Water Resources
told Capitol Media Services that is far from a sure thing.
In southwestern Colorado, Greg Vlaming crouched down to look at
dying remains of an oat crop baking under the July sun. It
wasn’t just a dead plant — it was armor, he said. “This
minimizes wind erosion and surface runoff,” said Vlaming, a
soil scientist, consultant and farmer. “Water can’t run off on
something that’s like this.” Vlaming is working alongside the
state, researchers, farmers and ranchers on a newly expanded
soil health program established by the Colorado legislature in
2021. The goal of the program is to nurture soils in order to
reap rewards — like more efficient irrigation, more carbon
storage and healthier crops. But changing long-standing
growing practices can be a risky, expensive challenge for
farmers already dealing with drought and thin margins.
Drought and decreasing water availability have been ongoing
problems throughout Arizona. In Tucson, drought along with new
land developments are causing decreases in vegetation and
wildlife habitat. Watershed Management Group is a Tucson-based
nonprofit that aims to fix this problem. The group aids in
local water conservation, land restoration and river flow. It
holds regular events to help the environment such as cleanups,
workshops, fundraisers and classes. The group has a club called
the River Run Network, which includes a biweekly email with
invitations to events like creek walks and family education
days to help restore Tucson’s heritage of flowing rivers.
Watershed Management Group worked to remove an invasive plant
from a riparian area in the Tanque Verde community of Tucson on
Nov. 18.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is demanding that state
water officials revoke a deep water well drilling permit issued
to a controversial Saudi Arabian company in rural Arizona. The
Arizona Department of Water Resources in July authorized
Fondomonte to drill a new well for irrigation on the company’s
private land in La Paz County, state records show. The company
previously gained notoriety for its leasing of several tracts
of state land in western Arizona where it had been allowed to
pump groundwater unchecked. One of those leases was canceled by
the State Land Department and 2023, and three others expired
earlier this year. … Mayes’ missive brought a heated
response that evening from the office of Buschatzke’s boss,
Gov. Katie Hobbs. A spokesperson called it “empty
grandstanding” and said Mayes’ earlier rhetoric had been cited
in Fondomonte’s legal appeal of the cancellation of its leases.
Between mid-April and early July 2024, reservoir storage in the
Colorado River basin increased by 2.45 million acre feet (af).
Now we are in the nine-month period of progressive decline as
reservoir storage supports consumptive uses and losses
throughout the basin until the 2025 spring snowmelt season
begins. As of 1 September 2024 basin reservoir storage was 28.9
million af, and the combined storage in Lake Mead and Lake
Powell was 18.0 million af. Those amounts are similar to
conditions from spring 2021 when media outlets began reporting
on the emergence of a water crisis. That crisis continues. It
is useful to monitor changes in basin reservoir storage because
it is the “bank account” from which we can make withdrawals
during dry years. Basin water managers have little control over
each year’s watershed runoff, but they have a continuing
ability to reduce water consumption.
… Today, continued technological advances are needed to
ensure this goal can be achieved even while facing significant
environmental challenges that pose a threat to the future of
essential water resources. One major focus of such an endeavor
is the Colorado River Basin, on which Arizona and six
other states in the U.S. Southwest — California, Colorado,
Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and a sizable swath of
neighboring Mexico depend heavily for water supplies. A
recent article in the Water Resources Research
international hydrology science journal, “On the Sensitivity of
Future Hydrology in the Colorado River to the Selection of the
Precipitation Partitioning Method,” reports that expected
smaller snowpack levels will reduce the basin’s streamflows to
seriously problematic low levels.
The Sierra Club filed a legal challenge Thursday seeking to
halt a huge Colorado River conservation deal between the Biden
administration and the powerful Imperial Irrigation District,
saying that rare desert wildlife and low-income residents near
the shores of the already-fast dwindling Salton Sea would be
further harmed if concrete steps weren’t taken immediately. The
environmental group on Thursday filed a request for an
injunction in California Superior Court in Imperial County,
saying both the water agency and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
had violated a tough state environmental law, the California
Environmental Quality Act, by rushing through cursory approvals
to conserve as much as 900,000 acre feet of water through 2026
— more than the entire state of Nevada receives annually, and
enough to potentially supply 2.7 million households.
A Front Range water distributor is pushing back on a planned
transfer of rights to water from the Colorado River. It has led
to a disagreement between two major water agencies — a minor
flare-up of longstanding tensions between Eastern Colorado and
Western Colorado, which have anxiously monitored each others’
water usage for decades. Northern Water, which serves cities
and farms from Fort Collins to Broomfield, is asking for more
data about the future of the Shoshone water right. Meanwhile,
the Colorado River District, a powerful taxpayer-funded agency
founded to keep water flowing to the cities and farms of
Western Colorado, says Northern Water may be attempting to
stymie its purchase of the water rights.
Utah saw well-above-normal levels of rainfall in August,
helping state water levels after a dry summer. Nearly
double the amount of normal rainfall fell in Utah’s mountains
and valleys last month according to data from the National
Water and Climate Center. That water helped maintain reservoir
levels at 77% capacity statewide. Jordan Clayton, the
Utah Snow Survey supervisor, said the summer started out dry,
but August turned things around. According to Clayton, rainfall
has kept the soil wet and helped with reservoir water
preservation. Reservoir levels are expected to decrease
slightly through September, and then increase again when the
colder months arrive.
… For nine decades, rice farmers who bought water from
the [Lower Colorado River Authority] could open valves and
flood their rice fields when needed. Even during the historic
drought of the 1950s, farmers irrigated their fields from the
Highland Lakes, the chain of dammed freshwater bodies spanning
Central Texas from Lake Buchanan to Lake Austin. Today, 280
Texas farmers raise rice on about 149,000 acres, down from
1,400 who cultivated about 650,000 acres from the 1950s through
the 1970s. … [In] March 2024, the LCRA notified farmers
that they would be cut off again. The soonest
they might be permitted to buy stored water is March
2025, depending on the reservoirs’ water levels. The situation
has gotten so grave that the entire rice farming industry in
Texas is at risk. Water—its high cost and low availability—is
one of a host of challenges facing Texas rice farmers including
escalating costs, urbanization, encroaching solar and wind
farms, and erratic weather conditions.
The Pinyon Plain uranium mine is a decades-old, but recently
activated uranium mine roughly 10 miles from the Grand Canyon
National Park. … The Arizona Department of
Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has said that the rock layer
between the Uranium deposits and the aquifer beneath
is impermeable, so the risk of water contamination from
the mine is unlikely. The surety that contaminated water
will not enter the groundwater is not universal. A
2024 study, looking at decades of data, has come to an
alternate conclusion—that there is little evidence that the
Pinyon Plain Mine will not contaminate groundwater. The risk
that the uranium mine will pollute the springs in the Grand
Canyon and the Colorado River—a waterway
relied on by 40 million people—is too great.
South-central Utah is not your typical farm country. To the
eye, there appears to be more red rock than green fields. To
make a go of it, farms often huddle around the precious few
rivers that snake across the sun-baked landscape. That’s the
case for rancher Andy Rice, who raises hundreds of hungry goats
and sheep in the Garfield County town of Boulder — population
227 — just outside Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument. There’s no mistaking how dry it is. The area averages
less than 12 inches of annual precipitation. … This ranch
draws water from Boulder Creek that would otherwise be on its
way to Lake Powell. Between drought and competition for
the Colorado River, however, Rice knows that Utah’s water
supply faces a precarious future. That means ranches like his
will need to find ways to cut their water use to survive. …
That’s why Rice applied for funding from
Utah’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program — a
big money push to help farmers and ranchers modernize their
irrigation.
Federal water managers will repair a set of little-used pipes
within Glen Canyon Dam after discovering damage earlier this
year. The tubes, called river outlet works, have been a focus
for Colorado River watchers in recent years. If Lake Powell
falls much lower, they could be the only way to pass water from
the nation’s second-largest reservoir to the 25 million people
downstream of the dam. The Bureau of Reclamation will use $8.9
million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to apply a new
lining to all four pipes, which were originally coated more
than 60 years ago. Conservation groups, however, say
Reclamation should turn its attention and finances to bigger,
longer-term fixes for the dam. “Duct tape and baling wire won’t
work in the long run,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of
the nonprofit Great Basin Water Network. “These short-term
efforts are myopic in the grand scheme of things.”
There’s a good chance you’ve heard about the Colorado River
compact because it’s been in the news a lot. But compacts also
govern rivers in southeastern Colorado. The agreements help
guide how water is shared across state lines. Decrees and
treaties also affect our waterways. The Arkansas River flows
nearly 1,500 miles from the mountains near Leadville, through
southeastern Colorado, into Kansas and Oklahoma, eventually
meeting the Mississippi River. At nearly 1,900 miles
long, the Rio Grande River flows out of the San Juan Mountains
through the San Luis Valley into New Mexico and then on to
Texas. Both rivers are critical resources providing water for
homes, farms, industry and recreation. As growth and drought
strain water resources, interstate agreements affecting these
waterways take on more significance.
A Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee will focus
this week on federal water infrastructure, as it reviews a host
of bills addressing the Colorado River Basin and other
waterways. The Subcommittee on Water and Power will meet
Wednesday on 16 separate bills and hear testimony from Bureau
of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. A
half-dozen of the measures on tap are related to the Colorado
River, which supports some 40 million individuals across seven
Western states.
In Utah, farming and ranching soak up 61.5% of the available
water. Much of that water comes from the Colorado River basin,
which some predict will fall far short of meeting growing
demand for water within the next few years. Regulators are
pushing for dramatically lower water usage, a measure putting
the region’s farms at risk. To provide relief to farmers,
Netafim, an Agritech leader based in Tel Aviv that has
pioneered the application of precision irrigation, including
drip irrigation, has launched a local resource hub to connect
growers to the financing and information they need to thrive
despite possible water restrictions. Drip irrigation, including
subsurface drip, has seen increased usage throughout Utah over
the past few years, and is one solution that several farmers
and homeowners in Utah are switching to for efficient watering
of plants and crops.
A New York City-based hedge fund spent $100 million to buy
farmland and water rights in Western Arizona, stirring concerns
about a future “water grab” from that rural area and of
corporate control over a major groundwater source. Water Asset
Management LLC recently bought 12,793 acres — nearly 20 square
miles — in La Paz County’s McMullen Valley Basin, County
Assessor Anna Camacho said Friday. The company paid cash for
the land, a county record shows. … The purchase may well
have been the biggest water deal in Arizona history, Mayes
said, adding it happened without a single public comment
session being held to examine it.
Grand Valley water managers have a plan to nip a potential
zebra mussel infestation in the bud, with one irrigation
district beginning treatment of its water this fall. Officials
are hoping to secure federal funding to treat the water that
irrigators and domestic water providers pull from the Colorado
River with liquid ionic copper, which kills zebra mussels. Mesa
County plans to ask for the money through the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation’s Bucket 2 Environmental Drought Mitigation
program. Microscopic zebra mussel larvae, known as veligers,
were found this summer in the Government Highline Canal, a
crucial piece of irrigation infrastructure for the Grand
Valley’s agricultural producers. If these aquatic invasive
species become established, it could be disastrous for the
region’s farms, vineyards, orchards and Colorado’s famous
Palisade peaches.
Saudi involvement in western Arizona’s rural La Paz County is
already well known. But they are not the only non-local
interest in the area making use of water. Hedge funds, foreign
countries, and green energy interests want to turn rural
groundwater into dollars, and they have a lot of ideas how to
do it.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Wednesday that
the Apache trout — Arizona’s state fish — has been removed from
the federal list of endangered and threatened species following
more than five decades of recovery efforts. Haaland traveled to
Arizona for the announcement, which is considered an important
conservation success marking the first sportfish and the first
trout to be removed from the list. … She credited joint
efforts by federal, state and tribal officials along with $5.1
million from the Biden administration’s Investing in America
program. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, White Mountain Apache Tribe
Chairman Kasey Velasquez, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Deputy Director Siva Sundaresan joined Haaland.
Lorelei Cloud and John Berggren had a really important piece on
Colorado River governance in the Colorado Sun last month that
has not received sufficient attention. The challenge, they
argue, is the lack of the institutional framework we need to
address evolving societal values around the river’s management
in a changing world. Cloud is Vice-Chairman of the Southern Ute
Tribe and has become a major voice in the effort to rethink the
role of indigenous people in management of the Colorado River.
Berggren, now at Western Resource Advocates, is the author of
one of the most insightful analyses of Colorado River
governance we’ve had in recent years. (I hope that link works
for folks, this might also.) They catalog the remarkable
efforts within the last decade or more to create new frameworks
for Tribal involvement in Colorado River governance, notably
the Ten Tribes Partnership and the Water and Tribes Initiative.
If you stood on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in
Colorado after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the rumbling water
may have appeared black. This slurry of ash and charred soil
cascaded toward the reservoirs that supply drinking water for
the downstream city of Fort Collins, home to around 170,000
people. Although the water looked clear again several weeks
later, Charles Rhoades, a research biogeochemist at the US
Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, says he is
still seeing contaminants from the fire in the watershed.
Recent studies have found that while some watersheds begin
to recover within five years of a fire, others may be
fundamentally altered, never fully returning to their pre-fire
conditions. And with wildfires becoming more common, much
larger, and burning for longer as the world warms,
hydrologists, ecologists, and water-management officials are
scrambling to understand and mitigate the consequences
fire-contaminated water can have on humans and ecosystems.
As it cuts across the state on its way to meet the Mississippi,
the Missouri River irrigates crops, cools the systems at
nuclear and coal power plants and quenches millions of
Missourians’ thirst as the largest source of drinking water in
the state. While some may take it for granted, Missouri state
Rep. Jamie Burger is watching the fights over water in the
Western U.S. closely. He worries that eventually people will
come seeking Missouri’s abundant water resources. Last
legislative session, he introduced a bill to ban most exports
of water from the state. … The water compact that has
been generating the most headlines in recent years is the one
governing the Colorado River Basin. The current rules for
sharing river water will expire in 2026, so the parties
are at the negotiating table to rework the agreement. Unlike
the Colorado, the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers don’t have
compacts in place, besides on some of their smaller
tributaries. Some, like CrowGhost and DeKrey, think it would be
beneficial to have a compact to prepare for a more contentious
future.
The California Legislature has passed and sent to Gov. Gavin
Newsom a bill to create the Salton Sea Conservancy to lead
multi-million-dollar efforts to restore the shrinking and
increasingly toxic inland sea. The new conservancy would be the
state’s 11th and the first established in over 15 years. The
goal would be to protect residents’ health, foster ecological
recovery of the area, and empower local stakeholders.
… The Salton Sea formed in 1905 after overflow from the
Colorado River spilled into a basin in the desert, creating the
largest lake in California. Over the past several decades,
evaporation exacerbated by droughts has reduced the sea,
exposing a toxic lake bed.
Pipeline leaks at the Grand Canyon will shut down overnight
hotel accommodations over Labor Day weekend, the National Park
Service announced Thursday. Officials found four significant
breaks in the Transcanyon Waterline, reducing water supplies in
the canyon and forcing multiple hotels inside the park to stop
hosting overnight guests for the foreseeable future, according
to a release. Hotels booked in Tusayan, the town outside the
Grand Canyon, will not be affected. Water will be unavailable
from spigots in South Rim dry campgrounds, but bathroom faucets
will still work. Daytime food and beverage services will still
be in operation.
To help quantify how much water is lost as evapotranspiration
— the biggest unknown in estimating water use — the Upper
Colorado River Commission is installing EC towers across its
basin. For now, the eddy-covariance towers measure the water
lost from soil and plants to the sky and carbon dioxide, a
major component of global warming. The towers take measurements
20 to 40 times every second, and each one costs a half- million
dollars. One is up and running now at the Southwestern Colorado
Research Center in Yellow Jacket. “Come next year, around this
time, we will have 32 operating fully seamless, all of them
communicating in the entire upper basin,” said Kaz Maitaria,
Ph.D., a staff engineer at the Upper Colorado River Commission
and a Fulbright Scholar.
Last August, following a public hearing, the Arizona Department
of Water Resources adopted its management goal for the
citizen-approved Douglas Active Management Area. I objected to
the goal and subsequently filed a “Judicial Review of
Administrative Decision” appeal. Maricopa County Superior Court
Judge Scott Blaney is expected to issue a ruling soon, and the
future of rural Arizona hangs in the balance. Why such a
dramatic statement?
—Written by Christian Sawyer, techno-economic
researcher who lives in the Douglas groundwater basin area in
southeastern Arizona
The main pipeline providing water to the Grand Canyon National
Park has failed after a series of breaks, leading to a sudden
and sweeping shutdown of overnight hotel stays during one of
the busiest times of the year for the famous tourist
destination. Water restrictions will run throughout the Labor
Day holiday when hotels are near or at capacity. It’s an
unprecedented outcome, even for a pipeline with a long history
of frequent failures. Since July 8, the park has faced
challenges with its water supply, and no water is currently
being pumped to either the canyon’s south or north rims,
officials said.
Lake Mead and other national parks in Nevada generated a total
of $385 million in 2023, a new report has found. The Lake
Mead National Recreation Area alone produced $358 million from
visitor spending in and around the national park. Across the
whole U.S., visitors to national parks generated a
mind-boggling $55.6 billion in 2023. According to the report,
visitors to the park spent around $292 million in 2023, 75
percent of which went to Nevada. The Lake Mead National
Recreation Area contributed a total of $358 million in economic
output.
In Colorado, you’re never too far from Rocky Mountain snowmelt,
so it’s no surprise that an annual competition for the state’s
best-tasting water ended in a three-way tie. However, after a
sudden-death sip-off, Denver took home the gold. The taste
test, held at the American Water Works Association Rocky
Mountain Section conference in Keystone, pitted eight
submissions from around the state against one another. Bronze
and silver also went to Front Range cities. Louisville took
second and Broomfield took third.
Irrigators cut off water to a huge portion of the Imperial
Valley’s half-million acres of farmland earlier this month
after the federal government approved a long-awaited program
designed to bolster water levels on the Colorado River. The
conservation agreement, authorized Aug. 12 by the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation and the Imperial Irrigation District, pays
farmers to stop irrigating forage crops such as alfalfa for a
period during the summer. Farmers participating in the “deficit
irrigation” program will be compensated to sacrifice one or two
hay cuttings without—they hope—killing the perennial crops.
Aquatic biologists plan to conduct a reclamation project on
South Mesa Creek in Montrose County during the week of
September 16. The project will apply a piscicide called
rotenone to the creek along P16 road to remove non-native
cutthroat trout. The project goal is to restore native Colorado
River cutthroat trout within the creek. [Colorado Parks and
Wildlife] crews (along with help from the Bureau of Land
Management) will conduct removal efforts of non-native fish.
Historically, Yellowstone cutthroat trout were stocked into
South Mesa Creek and reproduced with the native Colorado River
cutthroat, creating hybridized cutthroat trout, according to
Eric Gardunio, a CPW Area Aquatic Biologist. CPW says that
Colorado River Cutthroat Trout now occupy only about 11% of
their historic habitat. The project aims to remove the
hybridized cutthroat trout and restock the creek with native
Colorado River cutthroat trout.
Big Front Range water players are questioning a $99 million
deal to purchase a historic Colorado River water right on the
Western Slope, according to letters obtained through a public
records request by The Colorado Sun. The Colorado River
Water Conservation District, which is based in Glenwood Springs
and safeguards water resources in western Colorado, is working
with a collection of more than 20 partners to raise money to
buy Shoshone Power Plant’s water rights from Xcel Energy. The
rights are some of the oldest on the mainstem Colorado River in
Colorado, and have supported communities and boosted the
river’s flows for over a century. Northern Colorado Water
Conservancy District says it’s not necessary to spend millions
in taxpayer dollars on the deal, nor is it necessary for the
River District to play such a central role.
A new USU study has shed light on how mountain streams in the
Upper Colorado Basin respond to the compounded disturbances of
wildfire, extreme precipitation and debris flows. The study,
led by Utah Water Research Laboratory graduate student Paxton
Ridgway, USU Professor Belize Lane, and a team of researchers
from USU, Simon Fraser University, and the U.S. Geological
Survey, explored the intricate dynamics that govern river
morphology following wildfire, extreme precipitation and debris
flows. The team utilized an array of methodologies including
repeat field surveys, time-lapse photography, and remote
sensing data. … UWRL doctoral candidate Haley Canham
established the hydrologic monitoring equipment following the
2020 Grizzly Creek Fire wildfire, the focal point of the
research in a steep mountain stream affected by wildfire,
monsoon storms and debris flows throughout Glenwood Canyon,
Colorado.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But
demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital
water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the
region – particularly from the Colorado River – was top of mind
at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference, an
event organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West
that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars
to discuss solutions to urgent problems facing rural Western
regions.
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
A much-anticipated water bill brought by one of the most
powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill became public Thursday.
Senate President Stuart Adams’s SB 211, titled “Generational
Water Infrastructure Amendments,” seeks to secure a water
supply for decades to come. It forms a new council comprised of
leadership from the state’s biggest water districts that will
figure out Utah’s water needs for the next 50 to 75 years. It
also creates a new governor-appointed “Utah Water Agent” with a
$1 million annual budget that will “coordinate with the council
to ensure Utah’s generational water needs are met,” according
to a news release. But combing through the text of the bill
reveals the water agent’s main job will be finding an
out-of-state water supply. … The bill also notes the
water agent won’t meddle with existing water compacts with
other states on the Bear and Colorado rivers.
Moab is a growing town of 5,300 that up to 5 million people
visit each year to hike nearby Arches and Canyonlands national
parks, ride mountain bikes and all-terrain vehicles, or raft
the Colorado River. Like any western resort town, it
desperately needs affordable housing. What locals say it
doesn’t need is a high-end development on a sandbar projecting
into the Colorado River, where groves of cottonwoods, willows
and hackberries flourish. “Delusional,” shameful” or
“outrageous” is what many locals call this Kane Creek
Preservation and Development project. - Written by Mary Moran, a contributor to Writers on
the Range
The attention is on Southern California right now, but an
atmospheric river’s path will extend inland with potential
flooding — and possible drought relief. If you’re watching the
weather, it’s still a little early to tell whether these storms
will go where they can hope Las Vegas the most. That’s anywhere
in the Upper Colorado River Basin, where there’s a chance they
could produce snow to help the river that supplies 90% of the
water used in Southern Nevada. … The paths of this
year’s atmospheric rivers are unlike the ones that slammed
the Sierras last year. Those storms carried snow straight
east through Northern Nevada and Utah, feeding the Rocky
Mountains with snowpack levels that reached 160% of normal by
the end of winter.
Water regulation in Arizona has devolved into a game of
chicken. The governor and farmers are rivals revving their
engines, hoping their opponent will flinch first. Caught
in the middle is Gila Bend, a groundwater basin south of
Buckeye, where the state could decide to impose its most
stringent form of regulation, whether folks like it or not.
Both sides are using Gila Bend as a bargaining chip to win
support for competing legislative proposals. But to what
end? - Written by Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic digital
opinions editor
Colorado legislators in 2022 passed a bill that delivered $2
million to programs across the state for removal of turf in
urban areas classified as nonfunctional. By that, legislators
mean Kentucky bluegrass and other thirsty-grass species that
were meant to be seen but rarely, if ever, otherwise
used. Now, they are taking the next step. The Colorado
Senate on Tuesday, Jan. 30 voted in favor of a
bill, Senate Bill 24-005, that would prevent thirsty turf
species from being planted in certain places that rarely, if
ever, get foot traffic, except perhaps to be mowed.
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an
important hearing Thursday on S. 2385, a bill to
refine the tools needed to help Tribal communities gain access
to something that most non-Indian communities in the western
United States have long taken for granted: federally subsidized
systems to deliver safe, clean drinking water to our homes.
… This is the sort of bill (there’s a companion on the
House side) that makes a huge amount of sense, but could easily
get sidetracked in the chaos of Congress. The ideal path is for
the crucial vetting to happen in a process such as Thursday’s
hearing, and then to attach it to one of those omnibus things
that Congress uses these days to get non-controversial stuff
done. Clean water for Native communities should pretty clearly
be non-controversial.
For as long as he can remember, Rob Sowby has heard people call
Utah the second-driest state in the nation. Over the years,
that claim has become nearly inescapable, echoed by everyone
from state departments, city governments and water conservancy
districts to national news outlets without a clear citation for
what data it’s based on. … Now a Brigham Young
University civil engineering assistant professor focused on
sustainable water supplies, he decided to get to the bottom of
it. Using precipitation data, he found that Utah is actually
the nation’s third-driest state, behind Nevada and
Arizona.
The Topock Marsh has seen a significant drop in water levels
recently, with dry patches visible and locals concerned about
the effects on wildlife. The 4,000-acre Bureau of Reclamation
marsh is adjacent to the Colorado River in the Havasu National
Wildlife Refuge. Managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
it serves as a recreation area and wildlife habitat for the
Tri-state.
Apply for our 2024 Colorado River Water
Leaders program to deepen your knowledge
of the inconic Southwest river, build leadership
skills and develop policy ideas with a cohort to improve
management of the region’s most crucial natural resource.
Our biennial Water Leaders program, part of our Colorado River Project,
selects rising stars from the seven states that rely on
the river – Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada,
Utah and Wyoming.
Get an overview of the program and tips on applying by watching
this virtual Q&A
session. Applications are due Jan. 22,
2024 and you can find
application materials here along with mandatory
program dates.
“I highly recommend the program to emerging water leaders.
The program’s immersive experience, relationship building and
mentorship opportunities cultivate leadership and collaborative
skills crucial for addressing complex challenges faced by all
those who rely upon the Colorado River now and into the
future.”
– JB Hamby, Class of ‘22 and Chair of the
Colorado River Board of California
After more than two decades of
drought, water utilities serving the largest urban regions in the
arid Southwest are embracing a drought-proof source of drinking
water long considered a supply of last resort: purified sewage.
Water supplies have tightened to the point that Phoenix and the
water supplier for 19 million Southern California residents are
racing to adopt an expensive technology called “direct potable
reuse” or “advanced purification” to reduce their reliance on
imported water from the dwindling Colorado River.
Join a
virtual Q&A session Dec. 7 to learn more about
applying for our 2024 Colorado River Water
Leaders cohort.
The biennial
program, which will run from March to September next
year, selects about a dozen rising stars from the
seven states that rely on the river – California, Nevada,
Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.
The climate-driven shrinking of the
Colorado River is expanding the influence of Native American
tribes over how the river’s flows are divided among cities, farms
and reservations across the Southwest.
The tribes are seeing the value of their largely unused river
water entitlements rise as the Colorado dwindles, and they are
gaining seats they’ve never had at the water bargaining table as
government agencies try to redress a legacy of exclusion.
The application window is now open
for our Colorado River Water
Leaders program, which will run from March to
September next year.
Our biennial program, part of our Colorado River Project,
is patterned after our highly successful California Water Leaders
programand selects rising stars
from the seven states that rely on the river -
California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New
Mexico – to take part in a cohort.
During the seven-month program designed for working
professionals, the cohort members explore issues surrounding the
iconic Southwest river, deepen their water knowledge and build
leadership skills.
“I highly recommend the program to emerging water leaders.
The program’s immersive experience, relationship building and
mentorship opportunities cultivate leadership and collaborative
skills crucial for addressing complex challenges faced by all
those who rely upon the Colorado River now and into the
future.”
– JB Hamby, Class of ‘22 & Chair of the Colorado River
Board of California
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
There is just about a week left to
apply for our inaugural Colorado River Water Leaders
program in 2022, which marks the 100th anniversary
of the Colorado River Compact.
The biennial program is modeled after our highly successful
Water Leaders
program in California, now 25 years strong.
Our Colorado River program will select rising stars from the
seven U.S. states and tribal nations that rely on the river -
California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New
Mexico – to participate in the seven-month class designed for
working professionals. Class members will explore issues
surrounding the iconic Southwest river, deepen their water
knowledge and build leadership skills.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
Known for our popular Water Leaders
program in California – about to mark its 25th anniversary – we
are now launching a Colorado
River Water Leaders program in 2022, the 100th
anniversary of the Colorado River Compact.
The biennial program will select rising stars from the seven
U.S. states that rely on the river – California, Nevada, Arizona,
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – to participate in the
seven-month class designed for working professionals. Class
members will explore issues surrounding the iconic Southwest
river, deepen their water knowledge and build leadership
skills.
Water is flowing once again
to the Colorado River’s delta in Mexico, a vast region that
was once a natural splendor before the iconic Western river was
dammed and diverted at the turn of the last century, essentially
turning the delta into a desert.
In 2012, the idea emerged that water could be intentionally sent
down the river to inundate the delta floodplain and regenerate
native cottonwood and willow trees, even in an overallocated
river system. Ultimately, dedicated flows of river water were
brokered under cooperative
efforts by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Managing water resources in the Colorado River Basin is not for the timid or those unaccustomed to big challenges. Careers are devoted to responding to all the demands put upon the river: water supply, hydropower, recreation and environmental protection.
All of this while the Basin endures a seemingly endless drought and forecasts of increasing dryness in the future.
Practically every drop of water that flows through the meadows, canyons and plains of the Colorado River Basin has reams of science attached to it. Snowpack, streamflow and tree ring data all influence the crucial decisions that guide water management of the iconic Western river every day.
Dizzying in its scope, detail and complexity, the scientific information on the Basin’s climate and hydrology has been largely scattered in hundreds of studies and reports. Some studies may conflict with others, or at least appear to. That’s problematic for a river that’s a lifeline for 40 million people and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland.
The Colorado River Compact of 1922
marked the first time in U.S. history that more than three states
negotiated an agreement among themselves to apportion the waters
of a stream or river.
The compact is the cornerstone of the “Law of the River” – a
complex set of interstate compacts, federal laws, court decisions
and decrees, contracts and federal actions that regulate use of
the Colorado River.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.
Colorado is home to the headwaters
of the Colorado River and the water policy decisions made in the
Centennial State reverberate throughout the river’s sprawling
basin that stretches south to Mexico. The stakes are huge in a
basin that serves 40 million people, and responding to the water
needs of the economy, productive agriculture, a robust
recreational industry and environmental protection takes
expertise, leadership and a steady hand.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years
of drought and the dramatic decline in water levels at the
river’s key reservoirs have pressed water managers to adapt to
challenging conditions. But even more extreme — albeit rare —
droughts or floods that could overwhelm water managers may lie
ahead in the Basin as the effects of climate change take hold,
say a group of scientists. They argue that stakeholders who are
preparing to rewrite the operating rules of the river should plan
now for how to handle these so-called “black swan” events so
they’re not blindsided.
Dates are now set for two key
Foundation events to kick off 2020 — our popular Water 101
Workshop, scheduled for Feb. 20 at McGeorge School of Law in
Sacramento, and our Lower Colorado River Tour, which will run
from March 11-13.
In addition, applications will be available by the first week of
October for our 2020 class of Water Leaders, our competitive
yearlong program for early to mid-career up-and-coming water
professionals. To learn more about the program, check out our
Water Leaders program
page.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As stakeholders labor to nail down
effective and durable drought contingency plans for the Colorado
River Basin, they face a stark reality: Scientific research is
increasingly pointing to even drier, more challenging times
ahead.
The latest sobering assessment landed the day after Thanksgiving,
when U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate
Assessment concluded that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly
compared to the pace of natural variations that have occurred
throughout its history, with greenhouse gas emissions largely the
cause.
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
Water means life for all the Grand Canyon’s inhabitants, including the many varieties of insects that are a foundation of the ecosystem’s food web. But hydropower operations upstream on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, in Northern Arizona near the Utah border, disrupt the natural pace of insect reproduction as the river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically. Eggs deposited at the river’s edge are often left high and dry and their loss directly affects available food for endangered fish such as the humpback chub.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
As California embarks on its unprecedented mission to harness groundwater pumping, the Arizona desert may provide one guide that local managers can look to as they seek to arrest years of overdraft.
Groundwater is stressed by a demand that often outpaces natural and artificial recharge. In California, awareness of groundwater’s importance resulted in the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 that aims to have the most severely depleted basins in a state of balance in about 20 years.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
Dramatic swings in weather patterns
over the past few years in California are stark reminders of
climate variability and regional vulnerability. Alternating years
of drought and intense rain events make long-term planning for
storing and distributing water a challenging task.
Current weather forecasting capabilities provide details for
short time horizons. Attend the Paleo Drought
Workshop in San Pedro on April 19 to learn more about
research efforts to improve sub-seasonal to seasonal
precipitation forecasting, known as S2S, and how those models
could provide more useful weather scenarios for resource
managers.
A drought has lingered in the
Colorado River Basin since 2000, causing reservoir storage to
decline from nearly full to about half of capacity. So far this
year, a meager snowpack in the Rocky Mountains hasn’t helped
much.
In fact, forecasters say this winter will likely go down as the
sixth-driest on record for the river system that supplies water
to seven states, including California, and Mexico.
On our Lower
Colorado River Tour, April 11-13, you will meet with water
managers from the three Lower Basin states: Nevada, Arizona and
California. The three states are working to finalize a Drought
Contingency Plan to take voluntary cuts to keep Lake Mead, the
nation’s largest reservoir, from hitting critical levels and
causing a shortage declaration.
California’s 2012-2016 drought
revealed vulnerabilities for water users throughout the state,
and the long-term record suggests more challenges may lie ahead.
An April 19
workshop in San Pedro will highlight new information about
drought durations in Southern California watersheds dating
back centuries.
Most people see the Grand Canyon from the rim, thousands of feet above where the Colorado River winds through it for almost 300 miles.
But to travel it afloat a raft is to experience the wondrous majesty of the canyon and the river itself while gaining perspective about geology, natural beauty and the passage of time.
Beginning at Lees Ferry, some 30,000 people each year launch downriver on commercial or private trips. Before leaving, they are dutifully briefed by a National Park Service ranger who explains to them about the unique environment that awaits them, how to keep it protected and, most importantly, how to protect themselves.
They also are told about the pair of ravens that will inevitably follow them through the canyon, seizing every opportunity to scrounge food.
Tickets are now on sale for the Water Education Foundation’s April 11-13 tour of the Lower Colorado River.
Don’t miss this opportunity to visit key sites along one of the nation’s most famous rivers, including a private tour of Hoover Dam, Central Arizona Project’s Mark Wilmer pumping plant and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge. The tour also visits the Salton Sea, Slab City, the All-American Canal and farming regions in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.
Drought and climate change are having a noticeable impact on the
Colorado River Basin, and that is posing potential challenges to
those in the Southwestern United States and Mexico who rely on
the river.
In the just-released Winter 2017-18 edition of River
Report, writer Gary Pitzer examines what scientists
project will be the impact of climate change on the Colorado
River Basin, and how water managers are preparing for a future of
increasing scarcity.
Rising temperatures from climate change are having a noticeable
effect on how much water is flowing down the Colorado River. Read
the latest River Report to learn more about what’s
happening, and how water managers are responding.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
The Colorado River Delta once spanned nearly 2 million acres and
stretched from the northern tip of the Gulf of California in
Mexico to Southern California’s Salton Sea. Today it’s one-tenth
that size, yet still an important estuary, wildlife habitat and
farming region even though Colorado River flows rarely reach the
sea.
Since 2000, the Colorado River Basin has experienced an historic,
extended drought causing reservoir storage in the Colorado River
system to decline from nearly full to about half of capacity. For
the Lower Basin, a key point has been to maintain the level of
Lake Mead to prevent a shortage declaration.
A healthy snowfall in the Rockies has reduced the odds of a
shortage this year, but the basin states still must come to terms
with a static supply and growing demands, as well as future
impacts from climate change.
On our Lower
Colorado River Tour, April 5-7, you will meet with water
managers from the three Lower Basin states: Nevada, Arizona and
California. Federal, state and local agencies will update you on
the latest hydrologic conditions and how recent storms might
change plans for water supply and storage.
A troublesome invasive species is
the quagga mussel, a tiny freshwater mollusk that attaches itself
to water utility infrastructure and reproduces at a rapid rate,
causing damage to pipes and pumps.
First found in the Great Lakes in 1988 (dumped with ballast water
from overseas ships), the quagga mussel along with the zebra
mussel are native to the rivers and lakes of eastern Europe and
western Asia, including the Black, Caspian and Azov Seas and the
Dneiper River drainage of Ukraine and Ponto-Caspian
Sea.
This issue of Western Water examines the ongoing effort
between the United States and Mexico to develop a
new agreement to the 1944 Treaty that will continue the
binational cooperation on constructing Colorado River
infrastructure, storing water in Lake Mead and providing instream
flows for the Colorado River Delta.
As vital as the Colorado River is to the United States and
Mexico, so is the ongoing process by which the two countries
develop unique agreements to better manage the river and balance
future competing needs.
The prospect is challenging. The river is over allocated as urban
areas and farmers seek to stretch every drop of their respective
supplies. Since a historic treaty between the two countries was
signed in 1944, the United States and Mexico have periodically
added a series of arrangements to the treaty called minutes that
aim to strengthen the binational ties while addressing important
water supply, water quality and environmental concerns.
Lake Havasu is a reservoir on the Colorado River that supplies
water to the Colorado River
Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project. It is located at
the California/Arizona border, approximately 150 miles southeast
of Las Vegas, Nevada and 30 miles southeast of Needles,
California.
Situated in southwest Riverside County near the Santa Ana
Mountains – about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles – Lake
Mathews is a
major reservoir in Southern California.
As one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world,
the Imperial Valley
receives its water from the Colorado River via the
All-American Canal. Rainfall is scarce in the desert region at
less than three inches per year and groundwater is of little
value.
This issue looks at the historic drought that has gripped the
Colorado River Basin since 2000 and discusses the lessons
learned, the continuing challenges and what the future might
hold.
The dramatic decline in water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell
is perhaps the most visible sign of the historic drought that has
gripped the Colorado River Basin for the past 16 years. In 2000,
the reservoirs stood at nearly 100 percent capacity; today, Lake
Powell is at 49 percent capacity while Lake Mead has dropped to
38 percent. Before the late season runoff of Miracle May, it
looked as if Mead might drop low enough to trigger the first-ever
Lower Basin shortage determination in 2016.
Read the excerpt below from the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here to subscribe to Western
Water and get full access.
This issue looks at the dilemma of the shrinking Salton Sea. The
shallow, briny inland lake at the southeastern edge of California
is slowly evaporating and becoming more saline – threatening the
habitat for fish and birds and worsening air quality as dust from
the dry lakebed is whipped by the constant winds.
The shallow, briny inland lake at the southeastern edge of
California is slowly evaporating and becoming more saline –
threatening the habitat for fish and birds and worsening air
quality as dust from the dry lakebed is whipped by the constant
winds.
(Read this excerpt from the May/June 2015 issue along with
the editor’s note. Click here to
subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
After much time, study and investment, the task of identifying
solutions to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Colorado
River is underway. People from the Upper and Lower basins
representing all interest groups are preparing to put their
signatures to documents aimed at ensuring the river’s vitality
for the next 50 years and beyond.
This 3-day, 2-night tour followed the course of the
lower Colorado River through Nevada, Arizona and California, and
included a private tour of Hoover Dam.
This issue updates progress on crafting and implementing
California’s 4.4 plan to reduce its use of Colorado River water
by 800,000 acre-feet. The state has used as much as 5.2 million
acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, but under pressure
from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and the other six states
that share this resource, California’s Colorado River parties
have been trying to close the gap between demand and supply. The
article – delayed to include the latest information from
Babbitt’s Dec.
This issue updates progress on California’s Colorado River Water
Use Plan (commonly called the 4.4 Plan ), with a special focus on
the Salton Sea restoration/water transfer dilemma. It also
includes information on the proposed MWD-Palo Verde Irrigation
District deal, the Colorado River Delta, and the legislative
debate in the national and state capitals.
With passage of the original Dec. 31, 2002, deadline to have a
Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) in place for the
Colorado River, California suffered a cutback in the surplus
Colorado River flows it had relied upon by years. Further
negotiations followed in an attempt to bring the California
parties to an agreement. This issue examines the history leading
to the QSA, the state of affairs of the so-called 4.4 Plan as of
early March, and gives readers a clearer crystal ball with which
to speculate about California’s water future on the Colorado
River.
This issue of Western Water provides the latest information on
some of the philosophical, political and practical ideas being
discussed on the river. Some of these issues were discussed at
the Water Education Foundation’s Colorado River Symposium, “The
Ties that Bind: Policy and the Evolving Law of the Colorado
River,” held last fall at The Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe, New
Mexico – site of negotiations on the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
This issue of Western Water explores the issues
surrounding and the components of the Colorado River Basin
seven-state proposed agreement released Feb. 3 regarding sharing
shortages on the river, and new plans to improve the river’s
management. The article includes excerpts from the Foundation’s
September 2005 Colorado River Symposium held in Santa Fe, New
Mexico.
This issue of Western Water marks the 85th anniversary of the
Colorado River Compact and considers its role in the past and
present on key issues such as federal funding for water projects
and international issues. Much of the content for this magazine
came from the Foundation’s September Colorado River Symposium,
The Colorado River Compact at 85 and Changes on the River.
This card includes information about the Colorado River, who uses
the river, how the river’s water is divided and other pertinent
facts about this vital resource for the Southwest. Beautifully
illustrated with color photographs.
In 1997, the Foundation sponsored a three-day, invitation-only
symposium at Bishop’s Lodge, New Mexico, site of the 1922
Colorado River Compact signing, to discuss the historical
implications of that agreement, current Colorado River issues and
future challenges. The 204-page proceedings features the panel
discussions and presentations on such issues as the Law of the
River, water marketing and environmental restoration.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch map, which is
suitable for framing, explains the river’s apportionment, history
and the need to adapt its management for urban growth and
expected climate change impacts.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
The 20-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Marketing provides
background information on water rights, types of transfers and
critical policy issues surrounding this topic. First published in
1996, the 2005 version offers expanded information on
groundwater banking and conjunctive use, Colorado River
transfers and the role of private companies in California’s
developing water market.
Order in bulk (25 or more copies of the same guide) for a reduced
fee. Contact the Foundation, 916-444-6240, for details.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36-inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
This 3-day, 2-night tour follows the course of the lower Colorado River through Nevada, Arizona and California, and includes a private tour of Hoover Dam.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when
the Colorado River broke
through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years,
creating California’s largest inland body of water. The
Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130
miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
The Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA), signed in 2003,
defined the rights to a portion of Colorado River water for the San
Diego County Water Authority, Coachella Valley Water District,
Imperial Irrigation District and the Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California.
The QSA responded to California consistently using more than its
annual Colorado River entitlement of 4.4 million acre-feet.
Additionally, the water needs of six other Colorado River Basin
states had grown, making the river’s shared use increasingly
crucial.
The Mexican Water Treaty of 1944 committed the U.S. to deliver
1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico on an annual basis, plus
an additional 200,000 acre-feet under surplus conditions. The
treaty is overseen by the International Boundary and Water
Commission.
Colorado River water is delivered to Mexico at Morelos Dam,
located 1.1 miles downstream from where the California-Baja
California land boundary intersects the river between the town of
Los Algodones in northwestern Mexico and Yuma County, Ariz.
The Colorado River Delta is located
at the natural terminus of the Colorado River at the Gulf of
California, just south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The desert
ecosystem was formed by silt flushed downstream from the Colorado
and fresh and brackish water mixing at the Gulf.
The Colorado River Delta once covered 9,650 square miles but has
shrunk to less than 1 percent of its original size due to
human-made water diversions.
In 2005, the Interior Department launched a program to recover 27
species in the lower Colorado
River, including seven the federal government has deemed
threatened or endangered or threatened with extinction. The
species include fish, birds, bats, mammals, insects, amphibians,
reptiles, rodents and plants
The Lower Colorado River Multispecies Conservation Program has a
50-year plan to create at least 8,132 acres of new habitat
and restore habitat that has become degraded.
Lee Ferry on the Arizona-Utah border is a key dividing point
between the Colorado River’s Upper and Lower basins.
This split is important when it comes to determining how much
water will be delivered from the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin
[for a description of the Upper and Lower basins, visit the
Colorado River page].
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam
in 1964 created Lake Powell. Both are located in north-central
Arizona near the Utah border. Lake Powell acts as a holding tank
for outflow from the Colorado River Upper Basin States: Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The water stored in Lake Powell is used for recreation, power
generation and delivering water to the Lower Basin states of
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was historic and heroic for being
first to lead an expedition down the Colorado River in 1869. A major
who lost an arm in the Civil War Battle of Shiloh, he was an
explorer, geologist, geographer and ethnologist.
California’s Colorado River Water Use Plan (known colloquially as
the 4.4 Plan) intends to wean the state from its reliance on the
surplus flows from the river and return California to its annual
4.4 million acre-feet basic apportionment of the river.
In the past, California has also used more than its basic
apportionment. Consequently, the U.S. Department of
Interior urged California to devise a plan to reduce its water
consumption to its basic entitlement.
In 2005, after six years of severe
drought in the Colorado River Basin, federal officials and
representatives of the seven basin states — California, Arizona,
Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — began building a
framework to better respond to drought conditions and coordinate
the operations of the basin’s two key reservoirs, Lake Powell and
Lake Mead.
The resulting Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and
the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead (Interim
Guidelines) identified the conditions for shortage determinations
and details of coordinated reservoir operations. The 2007 Interim
Guidelines remain in effect through Dec. 31, 2025.
The turbulent Colorado River is one
of the most heavily regulated and hardest working rivers in the
world.
Geography
The Colorado falls some 10,000 feet on its way from the Rocky
Mountains to the Gulf of California, helping to sustain a range
of habitats and ecosystems as it weaves through mountains and
deserts.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study and what its
finding might mean for the future of the lifeblood of the
Southwest.
The Colorado River is one of the most heavily relied upon water
supply sources in the world, serving 35 million people in seven
states and Mexico. The river provides water to large cities,
irrigates fields, powers turbines to generate electricity,
thrills recreational enthusiasts and serves as a home for birds,
fish and wildlife.
This printed issue of Western Water explores the
historic nature of some of the key agreements in recent years,
future challenges, and what leading state representatives
identify as potential “worst-case scenarios.” Much of the content
for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the Colorado River Symposium. The Foundation
will publish the full proceedings of the Symposium in 2012.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River drought, and the ongoing institutional and
operational changes underway to maintain the system and meet the
future challenges in the Colorado River Basin.
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Colorado River
Delta, its ecological significance and the lengths to which
international, state and local efforts are targeted and achieving
environmental restoration while recognizing the needs of the
entire river’s many users.
This issue of Western Water asks whether a groundwater
compact is needed to manage this shared resource today. In the
water-stressed West, there will need to be a recognition of
sharing water resources or a line will need to be drawn in the
sand against future growth.
“In the West, when you touch water, you touch
everything.” – Rep. Wayne Aspinall, D-Colorado, chair,
House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, 1959-1973
Rapid population growth and chronic droughts could augur dramatic
changes for communities along the lower Colorado River. In
Arizona, California and Nevada, a robust economy is spurring
communities to find enough water to sustain the steady pace of
growth. Established cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix continue
their expansion but there is also activity in smaller, rural
areas on Arizona’s northwest fringe where developers envision
hundreds of thousands of new homes in the coming decades.
With interstate discussions of critical Colorado River issues
seemingly headed for stalemate, Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton stepped in May 2 to defuse, or at least defer, a
potentially divisive debate over water releases from Lake Powell.
With interstate discussions of critical Colorado River issues
seemingly headed for stalemate, Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton stepped in May 2 to defuse, or at least defer, a
potentially divisive debate over water releases from Lake Powell.
In a letter to governors of the seven Colorado River Basin
states, Norton preserved the status quo of river operations for
five months, giving states and stakeholders a chance to move back
from the edge before positions had hardened on two key issues:
(1) shortage guidelines for the Lower Basin and (2) Upper Basin/
Lower Basin reservoir operations, particularly at Lake Powell.
But Norton served notice that she wants discussions on those two
issues to continue, possibly outside of the annual operation plan
(AOP) consultation process, which at least one observer described
as unwieldy.
Drawn from a special Colorado River stakeholder symposium held in
January 2002 at The Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this
article provides an overview of several Colorado River issues
that may or may not be resolved through consensus. Some of these
issues include providing water for the Colorado River Delta,
endangered species, dam re-operation and potential future trends
around the basin as they relate to the California 4.4 Plan,
drought and governance.
The situation is true anywhere: when resources are stretched,
tensions rise. In the arid Southwestern United States, this
resource is water and tensions over it have been ever present
since the westward migration in the 18th Century. Nowhere in this
region has the competition for water been fiercer than in the
Colorado River Basin. Whether it is more water for agriculture,
more water for cities, more water for American Indian tribes or
more water for the environment – there is a continuous quest by
parties to obtain additional supplies of this “liquid gold” from
the Colorado River. Sometimes the avenue chosen to acquire this
desert wealth is the court system, as exemplified by the landmark
Arizona v. California dispute that stretched for over 30 years.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies. Specific topics
addressed include the role of the Interior secretary in the
basin, California’s 4.4 plan, water marketing and future
challenges identified by participants.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies.
