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.
The founders of a Colorado company said they’ve found a way to
boost rainfall by at least 10% in certain locations, using
technology that could help mitigate the persistent
Colorado River water crisis. However, an
abiding distaste for “cloud seeding” in Wyoming has hampered
efforts here so far, representatives of Rain Enhancement
Technologies say. Randy Seidl, the company’s CEO, and chief
meteorologist Jeff Chagnon told Cowboy State Daily their system
relies solely on solar-generated electricity, not cloud-seeding
chemicals. They’ve built rain-making facilities in
Utah and Colorado, but when they’ve approached Wyoming
officials their message has been conflated with the
“cloud-seeding umbrella,” Seidl said.
After more than three years of negotiations among the seven
Colorado River Basin states, the federal government is
preparing to release its plan for managing the shrinking river.
The U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of Reclamation
say they expect to release the Final Environmental Impact
Statement for post-2026 Colorado River operations this week.
The document is expected to identify the federal
government’s preferred approach for operating Lake Mead and
Lake Powell after the current guidelines expire.
… An earlier draft examined five possible approaches but
did not identify a preferred alternative. The final document
should provide a clearer picture of the direction the Trump
administration intends to take.
California and two other states have avoided the harshest water
cutbacks the Trump administration could have imposed over the
next two years to deal with the deepening crisis on the
Colorado River. The Times has learned that federal officials
have agreed with an offer made earlier this year by
California, Arizona and Nevadato
reduce what they take from the river by at least 3.2 million
acre-feet between now and the end of 2028. Under the
plan, California will cut its use of Colorado River water by
about 12% through 2028, Arizona will take about 31% less and
Nevada 28% less, according to two officials at state and local
agencies who spoke anonymously since details of an announcement
are still being finalized.
As Lake Mead begins its nosedive toward historic lows, a
bipartisan group of 12 Western representatives in Congress is
calling for emergency funding to help fund solutions. One of
the officials who sent a letter to House leadership on
Wednesday is Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who said in a phone
interview that the measure is in direct response to a
record-low water year. … The letter comes days
after the Trump administration said it would pay a water
district in Southern California up to $65 million in
an effort to keep 3 feet of water in Lake Mead; the reservoir,
which provides about 90 percent of Southern Nevada’s drinking
water, will fall to record lows over the next
two years, according to federal projections.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s two largest
reservoirs, have fallen to their lowest combined levels on
record, a grim marker in the deepening water crisis across
seven states that depend on the Colorado River. The two
reservoirs are now lower than the previous record in
2023. … U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met with
governors of the seven states virtually Tuesday and said his
agency will release a plan to deal with water shortages
next week. … After the meeting Tuesday, Burgum
said he was grateful to the governors for their “leadership and
commitment to finding solutions to address drought conditions
in the Colorado River Basin.” The Trump administration is
focused on “establishing a new operating framework and
continues to work with the states and 30 tribes to get closer
to consensus,” he said.
The water level at Lake Mead is less than 10 feet away
from rendering most of the hydroelectric turbines at the Hoover
Dam inoperable. In a new projection from the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, the water level is expected to fall
below 1,035 feet next April. That figure is critical. Currently
just shy of 1,042 feet, if Lake Mead falls below 1,035 feet — a
level not seen since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s —
it’s expected that 70% of the Hoover Dam’s current hydropower
production will be cut. The Bureau of Reclamation’s
24-month study released last week forecasts a continued decline
in Lake Mead’s water level. The study projects Lake Mead
falling to 1,031.6 feet in April 2027 and 1,010 feet by the end
of June 2028.
For more than a century, Western states have fought to keep the
federal government out of their business when it comes to
water. Now, the Trump administration is about to seize control
of the Colorado River, the region’s most important waterway.
But it’s not the narrative you might think. Interior Secretary
Doug Burgum — himself a former Western governor — has said
repeatedly that he preferred to have the states work out the
shrinking river’s problems. Far from a brash commandeering of
the system, the plan his department is set to finalize
as soon as Monday is effectively a kick-the-can
exercise for managing the drought-riddled river that supplies
water for 1 in 10 Americans. … The river plan, which is set
to be unveiled in the form of a final environmental impact
statement, is less of an actual plan than it is a framework for
future decisions, according to public statements by Interior
officials and the states. It is expected to cover a
10-year period in which the federal government would issue
short-term operating regimes every other year,
potentially with the sign-off of the states.
El Niño is often portrayed as a predictable event that has the
same effect whenever it appears. In reality, however, the
effects of El Niño are not guaranteed. … Classic El
Niño years have historically meant wetter winters for the
Southwest and warmer, drier winters for the Pacific Northwest
and northern continental US. However, judging from the
occasional “drier than average” winters in the Southwest shown
in Figure 5, El Niño is complex and its outcomes are not
guaranteed. … During those periods of time when the
MJO [Madden-Julian Oscillation] is in its “enhancing phase,”
with respect to El Niño: we can expect more precipitation in
the Southwest U.S. (in the Lower Colorado Basin, certainly, but
… how far north into the Upper Basin this might extend is
anyone’s guess).
… As lake levels decline, Hoover Dam’s power generation
capacity decreases. Federal officials plan to cut the dam’s
output by up to 40 percent. Analysts warn that the reduction
will result in higher electric bills for families in the Las
Vegas Valley, compounding long-term concerns about the region’s
water supply. The declining lake levels formed the backdrop of
a more than four-hour Boulder City Council meeting Tuesday
night, where members debated the potential impact of a proposed
data center on the city’s water and power infrastructure. The
data center was approved at the federal level for Bureau of
Land Management-owned land within the city’s
jurisdiction. The council voted unanimously to appeal the
BLM’s approval of the data center, citing concerns that the
project could require the city’s local utilities and emergency
services.
In the culmination of a process that has been years in the
making, Colorado officials Wednesday announced the creation of
a state-run water conservation program. In what officials are
calling a “near-term contribution program,” the Upper Basin
states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) will
pay water users to voluntarily cut back in 2027 and 2028, using
$100 million in promised funding from the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation. Colorado will now join Utah and Wyoming
in setting up a conservation program within their respective
states. … These types of conservation programs have
traditionally targeted agricultural water users, often seen as
the low-hanging fruit for water savings because they use the
majority of Colorado River water. But
officials are hoping this program will have participation
across all water-use sectors, including municipal and
industrial.
A billion-dollar cleanup at one of Utah’s most popular
recreation destinations is almost complete, and a new report
hints at what might be in store. The U.S. Government
Accountability Office spent a year auditing the Moab Mill Site,
a Cold War-era uranium processing facility sandwiched between
the Moab, the Colorado River and Arches National Park.
… The Moab Mill Site operator dumped processed
rocks in an unlined tailings pond, which contaminated the
surrounding groundwater with uranium and ammonia, threatening
the nearby Colorado River. … As of this year, according
to a report released Wednesday, the government has removed 16
million tons of tailings, loading them on rail cars at the Moab
site and shipping them 30 miles away to a landfill near
Crescent Junction specifically designed to house the tailings.
A critical year is ahead for the nation’s two largest
reservoirs, with no relief after a record-low snowpack
and a continuing drought. A comment posted on
the Colorado River Basin’s Facebook page Wednesday
morning might have said it best: “Not enough water in the
Monsoons to help. There’s only 2 things that can save Mead and
Powell right now: 150 percent Colorado Rockies snow pack for 5
consecutive years, or God himself.” Projections released
Wednesday show Lake Mead dropping to the lowest
levels seen since Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s,
falling to 1,035.86 feet in November. That’s about 6½ feet
lower than Lake Mead’s level today at noon — 1,042.52 feet.
Lake Mead is the nation’s largest reservoir,
butit’s currently at 27% capacity.
… Following the Bureau of Reclamation’s release of its formal
Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the post-2026
operational guidelines, the state [Ariz.] is locked in a
strict era of limits. Under federal fallback models analyzed in
the EIS, Arizona faces structural water cuts that could gut its
Central Arizona Project allocation by as much as 77 percent.
Because Arizona holds the most junior water rights on the river
system, it must take the brunt of the reductions
first. The resulting crisis is fundamentally shifting the
state’s economy, forcing a direct collision between traditional
legacy industries and a booming tech sector, while engineering
a historic transfer of socio-political power back to Native
American tribes.
In an effort to address the historic-low water level at Lake
Mead, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Tuesday approved an agreement with the federal government to
help add water to the reservoir. On Tuesday, Metropolitan’s
Board of Directors approved an agreement with the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation, which will provide the agency up to $65
million to keep up to 200,000 acre-feet of its Colorado River
supplies in the lake this year. … The board
also approved two other agreements with the Quechan Tribe and
Bard Water District, allowing the federal government to fund
the addition of up to 19,000 acre-feet of conserved
agricultural water to Lake Mead annually in 2027 and 2028.
As hot temperatures sweep across Utah and water supplies
continue to drop, states and the federal government are
launching a new effort to better measure how much water
evaporates from major reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell. The
Bureau of Reclamation partnered with scientists and Upper Basin
states, including Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, to
launch a new evaporation study at Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and
Navajo reservoirs — key water storage projects in the Upper
Colorado River Basin. … Reclamation is sending up to
1 million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge to prop
up Lake Powell, which forecast models show will reach
levels that threaten hydropower production and could
damage dam infrastructure by early next year.
For more than 150 years, scientists have debated when and how
the Colorado River first carved its way through the Grand
Canyon. Now, a new study led by researchers at The University
of New Mexico offers compelling evidence that the river
developed gradually from north to south between 8 million and
4.8 million years ago. Published in Nature Communications, the
study, “Tectonically driven integration of the 4.8 Ma Colorado
River USA,” tracked with detrital sanidine and fish genetics,
combines geological dating techniques with fish genetics to
reconstruct the river’s ancient history. Rather than forming
through a single catastrophic event, the researchers found
that the Colorado River emerged as a series of smaller
proto-rivers gradually linked together over approximately 3
million years.
In its dash to build President Trump’s signature border wall,
the federal government is drilling unpermitted wells into
already-depleted aquifers in New Mexico, according to state
officials. The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer told
Here & Now it counted at least six wells under development
along the border, but none have the necessary permits required
by state law. … [Rancher Russell] Johnson relies on a
natural spring to supply water for his cattle and his
home. “These wells that they’re drilling for border
wall construction, they’re talking about trying to attain
300-plus gallons a minute, and it’s going to pump us
dry,” he said.
A trial that some say could cripple Nevada’s ability to
regulate water within the state began in a Las Vegas courtroom
this week. For decades now, developers and the state have gone
back and forth over Coyote Springs. That’s a development about
an hour northeast of Las Vegas. No one lives there, and that’s
largely because years ago, the state engineer declared there
wasn’t enough water. That decision was backed by the Nevada
Supreme Court. Now, the Seenos, developers from California who
are the sole owners of the development today, are seeking
restitution for all the money they invested in the project.
They claim the state essentially stole their water rights. The
lawsuit could potentially cost the state billions.
Northern Arizona University researchers are studying how last
year’s Dragon Bravo Fire impacted the water supply at the Grand
Canyon. The blaze, which was ignited by lightning on July 4,
2025, burned more than 145,500 acres on the North Rim, making
it the seventh-largest wildfire in the state’s history. The
Transcanyon Waterline pulls water from Roaring Springs and
delivers it throughout Grand Canyon National Park. Snowmelt on
the Kaibab Plateau feeds the aquifer that supplies Roaring
Springs. … The burn scar on the Kaibab Plateau changed the
hydrology of the landscape and, as a result, changed the
quality of the water that seeps through the ground.
When the Colorado River first filled the country’s largest
reservoirs decades ago, it ushered in a century of optimism in
the West. We planned for abundance. Today, more than 40 million
people across seven states, 30 Tribal Nations and two countries
rely on this river. … We cannot accept a new set
of management rules that deepen hardship for the Upper
Basin while allowing unsustainable water use to continue
downstream. Water conservation cannot decimate Upper Basin
economies to bolster Lower Basin ones. When we use less water,
that water flows downstream to be used elsewhere. Colorado and
the other upper division states have lived on the front lines
of climate change for 25 years; it’s time for the lower
division states to do the same. –Written by Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner on the
Upper Colorado River Commission.
Phoenix-area cities say they want answers about plans for a
pool of water that’s stored underground as a backup during dry
times on the Colorado River. City leaders say the Arizona Water
Banking Authority is keeping them in the dark about how they
might share that water, making it hard for cities to plan for a
dryer future. The Water Bank is holding a special meeting
Tuesday morning to address some of those questions. The Water
Bank was created in 1996 to store excess Colorado River water
underground. … Now, the Colorado River is dry enough to cause
shortages, and cities say the Water Bank isn’t telling them how
much water they can expect to get back.
… At low water levels, more air from the reservoir’s [Lake
Powell] surface can be mixed into the water, ideal conditions
for bubbles to implode with destructive force as the water
travels through tubes and turbines. And this year, the
[Colorado River] reservoir’s water level is extremely low.
Federal reports show that the dam might have to stop
hydropower generation before the end of the year to avoid
catastrophic damage caused, in part, by the
small-but-mighty bubbles. The Bureau of
Reclamation has spent millions of dollars adding protective
layers to some of the dam’s water release valves. State and
federal officials are debating how to manage around the dam’s
limitations as part of high-stakes negotiations this
year.
La Guía para el Público en General sobre el Agua en California,
de 24 páginas, ofrece una visión integral de la historia del
desarrollo de los recursos hídricos en California y de la gestión
de los numerosos desafíos que enfrenta el estado en la
actualidad.
Lake Powell, a key reservoir on the Colorado River, is
shrinking toward “dead pool,” which means water won’t flow
downriver anymore — and that could in turn pinch Wyoming’s
municipal and industrial water supplies with more demand from
Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Lake Powell, on the
Utah-Arizona state line, is in dire condition, USA Today
reported. By next spring, it’s expected to fall into “minimum
power pool,” meaning having barely just enough water to
generate hydroelectric power at Glen Canyon Dam. If it
falls even farther, that could put the reservoir at
“dead pool,” or unable to generate hydroelectric
power, according to reports. That’s despite roughly 1
million acre-feet expected to be pulled from Flaming Gorge
Reservoir on the Wyoming-Utah state line and sent downriver
through Wyoming to replenish Lake Powell.
Arizona’s top water negotiator is working behind the scenes to
avoid “extremely draconian” cuts to the state’s share of the
Colorado River. It’s an eleventh-hour effort
to work with the federal government, which is expected to
release new rules for managing water in late July. Tom
Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water
Resources, briefed the public on the process of negotiations
and the state’s plans to adapt to water cutbacks. … The
three states that make up the river’s Lower Basin — Arizona,
California and Nevada, countered with a proposal to
voluntarily cut back on water use and avoid harsher, mandatory
cuts from the federal government. Now, Buschatzke
is trying to convince the federal government to adopt it.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado River has been operated
under a set of guidelines negotiated between the seven states
that depend on the river. Those guidelines expire this year,
and after five years of grinding negotiations over a new
agreement, the upstream states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and
New Mexico remain deadlocked against the downstream states of
California, Arizona and Nevada. … That has set up a showdown
over a legal time bomb that’s been ticking away at the
heart of the Colorado River Compact since the river’s
guiding document was signed more than 100 years ago. The Lower
Basin states believe the Compact promised them a minimum
delivery of water sent down the river from the Upper Basin. The
Upper Basin states believe the Compact promised them a fixed
amount of water that they could rely on to meet future growth.
As the river’s flows have dwindled, those two supposed
guarantees are proving to be irreconcilable.
Every morning Marisol Winfrey Herrera’s
three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Jo reminds her to turn off
the tap while washing her hands and brushing her teeth.
… It is what prompted Herrera to join No Desert Data
Center, a residents’ group that opposes two large data centres
coming up on either side of Tucson – the $3.6bn project on the
city’s southeast edge and a $5bn project on its northwest side
in the town of Marana, together known as Project Blue. The
group believes these would consume more water and power
than the city set in the Sonoran Desert can afford.
… “Water was a unifying theme in our campaign. The
Colorado River cuts are looming, and this project would take
water away,” Herrera told Al Jazeera.
A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American
communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack
running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught
up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.
The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history —
the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the
Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe —
was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being
codified by Congress. “We have significant unresolved concerns
with the legislation that may affect each of our states’ rights
to and interests in Colorado River water,” negotiators for
Utah and Wyoming wrote in March to the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs in a previously unreported letter.
Lake Powell ‒ the massive Colorado River
reservoir that produces power for millions of homes
across the West ‒ is the emptiest it has ever
been entering the hottest part of the summer. And the
worst is still to come. Although the lake’s levels have briefly
fallen lower in years past, those low-water levels came in the
spring, before melting snow refilled it. This year, that refill
never happened. As a result, Lake Powell will next spring fall
to “minimum power pool,” according to a newly released federal
projection. If the water levels fall below that, the Glen
Canyon Dam would stop generating electricity.
… To learn from a city already in the water reuse business,
Mexican officials toured Oceanside’s Pure Water facility on
Tuesday. … Four years ago, Oceanside becamethe first in San
Diego County and the second in California to open a
state-of-the-art purification facility. It turns 3
million gallons of recycled wastewater per day into drinking
water for residents, accounting for 20% of the city’s drinking
water. Mayor Esther Sanchez said years of severe
drought forced Oceanside and other communities in the
western U.S. to think about creating a local water supply, one
that could help them rely less on the Colorado
River and prepare for future droughts. … Sanchez
said she believes a water-reuse approach for Tijuana will work,
as it has for her city.
For the past 20 years, the Colorado
River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated
between the seven states that depend on the river. Those
guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding
negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against
the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend
on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two
federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of
unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15
percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities
scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for
shortages.
High in the Rocky Mountains, spring-fed streams and ponds have
vanished, leaving patches of cracked mud in what were once
spongy meadows. This year has been so extremely warm and arid
that the mountains have remained largely snowless. The
water-generating source of the Colorado River, its headwaters,
is drying up. … About three-fourths of the
water that’s taken out of the Colorado River is used for
agriculture, producing alfalfa, corn, lettuce, broccoli and
other crops. In Colorado, farmers and ranchers are struggling
with the immediate consequences. They’re leaving many fields
and pastures dry, selling off cows, and bracing for tough
economic times.
The Upper Colorado River Commission welcomed a new
representative from New Mexico at a meeting in downtown Denver
on Tuesday, where it discussed ongoing negotiations over how to
share America’s most over-allocated river. Tanya
Trujillo, deputy state engineer and senior water
policy advisor to New Mexico Gov. Michelle Grisham, replaced
Estevan López as the state’s top negotiator on the Colorado
River, which supplies water to 40 million people across
seven Western states, 30 tribes and Mexico. Trujillo
served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for
water and science under President Joe Biden.
A new caucus has formed in the Utah State Legislature to
monitor bills and advocate for the state’s interests on the
Colorado River. Rep. Scott Chew, R-Jensen, told FOX 13 News he
formed the Colorado River Caucus on Utah’s Capitol Hill
made up of lawmakers whose districts are along the
river and its tributaries.He has run legislation
seeking to defend Utah’s interests in the high-stakes political
negotiations over the water that provides life for more than 40
million people in the West. … Rep. Chew said he wanted
to ensure people in his part of the state are represented on
the Colorado River.
… To many, the functionality of Glen Canyon Dam’s river
outlet works has been a slow-moving crisis. If levels at Lake
Powell fall too low, water deliveries to Lake Mead
could be cut off due to potential damage of those release
tubes, spelling trouble for Southern Nevada and its
neighbor states in the Lower Colorado River Basin. … In
a Friday statement, the Southern Nevada Water Authority said
the uncertainty of Glen Canyon Dam’s infrastructure is another
reason for every state to take swift action to cut water use in
order to protect reservoir storage. “While Reclamation has
acknowledged the engineering feasibility exists to operate at
these levels, the bypass tubes were not envisioned to
be the sole release mechanism,” the statement said.
“Gambling on how much we can safely release while the reservoir
is near empty seems less than prudent.”
Facing a looming water crisis that could slash deliveries from
the Colorado River by hundreds of millions of cubic meters,
agricultural officials in Baja California are urging
local farmers to pivot toward climate-resilient crops.
The warning comes as the region braces for sharp reductions in
its water supply. According to Alfonso Cortez Lara, director of
the El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Colef) in Mexicali, Baja
California expects its annual quota from the Colorado River to
be cut by 350 million cubic meters by 2027, La Voz newspaper
reported. Mónica Vargas Núñez, head of Baja California’s
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER BC), said
the state is working alongside Mexico’s federal agriculture
ministry and the National Water Commission (Conagua) to
mitigate the impact.
… Local fights are flaring over proposed data centers in Kern
and Imperial Counties, some of California’s most
water-parched regions. The ratcheting up of tension
comes as two bills from Assemblymember Diane Papan that would
force earlier disclosure of data centers’ projected and
actual water use are winding their way through
the Legislature, with a first hearing in the Senate
scheduled next Tuesday. AB 2469 would require data
centers to provide more information on water supply, use and
planning before cities or counties can approve new or expanded
data centers. AB 2619 would require data centers to report
projected and actual water use as a requirement for renewing a
local business license.
A compounding environmental crisis is reshaping regional waters
across the Southwest, forcing rural communities to navigate the
dual realities of climate-driven ecological collapse and strict
new public health protections. This week highlighted the stark
contrast between Arizona’s river corridors: the Gila
River system nearly collapsed at San Carlos Lake,
while the Salt River used experimental tech to
address seasonal issues. … State biologists trace the
disaster to a destructive convergence of natural and human
pressures. Months of severe regional drought have drastically
restricted inflows, while mandatory, non-negotiable downstream
irrigation releases systematically drained the reservoir to a
fraction of its operational capacity.
President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Reclamation
has landed at the agency. Aubrey Bettencourt, a Western
water and agriculture expert, is listed as principal
deputy commissioner for the bureau on Interior Secretary Doug
Burgum’s most recent order delegating leadership authorities.
The order also taps her to perform the duties of the
commissioner. The Interior Department did not immediately
respond to a request for comment. Last week, a White House
official confirmed to POLITICO that Bettencourt will be
nominated to lead Reclamation, although it has not yet been
sent to the Senate for consideration. The White House did not
immediately respond to a request for comment on the
nomination’s status.
Jeff Martin couldn’t sleep the night Gross Dam was scheduled
for completion. … Martin, the program manager for the dam
project, had worked for 12 years on the $600 million effort to
replace the old Gross Dam with one that is 131 feet taller,
tripling the reservoir’s storage. Crews still have some
finishing work remaining, he said, but the major work to raise
the dam is now complete. … But it remains unclear
whether Denver Water will ever be able to fill the reservoir to
its new full capacity as a yearslong court battle
lumbers on between the utility and environmentalists. …
Environmental groups argued in court, and in their filings,
that regulators failed to evaluate how siphoning more water
from the drought-stricken Colorado River would
impact the basin as a whole. And the groups charged that they
failed to weigh other project options that wouldn’t require the
clear-cutting of a half-million trees or risk damage to
wetlands.
… Water managers in states that use the Colorado River say
they have plans to make water systems more efficient as
supplies shrink due to drought and climate change. A new
list of potential water infrastructure projects shows the ways
Arizona and its neighbors might adapt to a drier future, and
the massive spending it will take to make them possible. The
list appears to follow an April meeting between Interior
Secretary Doug Burgum and governors from the seven states that
use water from the Colorado River. The secretary requested a
sort of wishlist from those states, and they returned a
wide-ranging collection of more than 80 projects with
ballpark cost estimates that totaled in the tens of billions of
dollars. The list, which was obtained by KJZZ,
outlines more than $25 billion of potential spending in Arizona
alone.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides a
comprehensive overview of the history of water development in
California and management of its many challenges today.
Are you an emerging leader
passionate about shaping the future of the Colorado River Basin?
If so, consider applying for our 2026 Colorado
River Water Leaders program to deepen your
knowledge of the iconic Southwest river, build leadership
skills and develop policy ideas with a cohort to improve
management of the region’s most crucial natural resource.
The application window is now open
for our 2026 Colorado
River Water Leaders program, which will run
from March through September next year.
Our biennial program 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 – as well as tribal nations and Mexico to take part in
the 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.
Acceptance to the program is highly competitive. Get a
program overview and tips on applying by attending our
virtual Q&A session on Dec. 10at 12:30
p.m. (Mountain Time) / 11:30 a.m. (Pacific Time).
Applications
are due by Jan. 26, 2026, no later
than5 p.m. (Pacific Time).
“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
After four years of contentious negotiations, the seven states that rely on water from the Colorado River are racing against the clock to reach agreement on a new long-term operating strategy for the river’s dams and reservoirs. They face a Nov. 11 deadline from U.S. Interior Department officials to signal whether they think a deal among them is likely.
Before the construction of Hoover Dam on the lower Colorado River, as well as a slew of smaller sisters downstream, the stretch downriver served as a biological oasis in the middle of the unrelenting Mojave and Sonoran deserts. The marshes and backwaters along the river’s edge provided sheltered areas for fish to spawn and rear their young, and mesquite and cottonwood-willow forests provided important habitat for numerous species of birds and other animals.
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
A new aquatic invader, the golden mussel, has penetrated California’s ecologically fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the West Coast’s largest tidal estuary and the hub of the state’s vast water export system. While state officials say they’re working to keep this latest invasive species in check, they concede it may be a nearly impossible task: The golden mussel is in the Golden State to stay – and it is likely to spread.
The 2024 Colorado River Water
Leaders cohort completed its seven-month program
with policy recommendations involving ”augmentation” –
projects that increase the availability and supply of water – as
the Colorado River Basin grows hotter and drier.
The cohort of
12 up-and-coming leaders included engineers,
lawyers, resource specialists and others working for public,
private and non-governmental organizations from across the
river’s basin. The cohort had full editorial control to choose
its recommendations.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The All-American Canal delivers
Colorado River water to
the Imperial Valley,
sustaining a desert valley that is one of the most productive
agricultural regions in the world. The canal, about 80 miles
long, joins the Imperial
Dam (and its desilting works) and the 123-mile-long
Coachella Canal to complete the All-American Canal System.
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.
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 historically has been the
largest user of the Colorado
River among the seven states of the Colorado River Basin. And
for many years the state’s use exceeded its apportioned share of
the river’s water. That began changing in the 1990s.
Historically, the Colorado River
Basin swung between flood years and more extended periods of
drought. Massive reservoirs like Lake Powell and
Lake Mead provided a
water-supply buffer for dry years and insurance against damaging
floods in wet years.
Often referred to as the lifeline of
the Southwest, the Colorado River and its tributaries provide
water to nearly 40 million people and irrigate 5 million acres of
farmland in California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah and Wyoming. It also serves about 2.3 million people and
500,000 farmland acres in northern Mexico. The river’s water is
critical for 30 federally recognized Native American tribes,
Grand Canyon National Park and several other units of the
National Park system, and a number of wildlife refuges.
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.
