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.
Gov. Jared Polis and Dan Gibbs, Executive Director,
Colorado Department of Natural Resources announced Jason
Ullmann as the next Colorado State Engineer and Director of the
Division of Water Resources (DWR). … Jason brings over 20
years of experience in water resources engineering, 14 years of
which have been at DWR, most recently as the Deputy State
Engineer. Before his time with DWR, he gained valuable
experience in water resources management as a City Engineer for
the City of Montrose and as a consulting engineer for various
ditch and reservoir companies throughout Colorado.
Southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which
supplies water to farmers who grow most of the nation’s winter
vegetables, planned to start a conservation program in April to
scale back what it draws from the critical Colorado River. But
a tiny, tough fish got in the way. Now, those plans won’t start
until at least June so water and wildlife officials can devise
a way to ensure the endangered desert pupfish and other species
are protected, said Jamie Asbury, the irrigation district’s
general manager.
… Lake Powell’s levels have fallen throughout the winter, but
as the weather warms, the snowpack that has accumulated in the
mountains over the winter will begin to melt. That water will
feed rivers and streams across the West — including the
Colorado River, which fills Lake Powell on Arizona and Utah’s
shared border. … The National Weather Service Colorado
Basin River Forecast Center predicts that 5.4 million acre-feet
of unregulated runoff will spill into the reservoir between
April and July. … According to the Colorado Basin River
Forecast Center, spring runoff this year will be 85% of the
average runoff between 1991 and 2020.
A new research paper published recently in Annual Review of
Earth and Planetary Sciences, coordinated by scientists from
The University of New Mexico and collaborating institutions,
addresses the complex nature and societal importance of Grand
Canyon’s springs and groundwater. The paper,
“Hydrotectonics of Grand Canyon Groundwater,” recommends
sustainable groundwater management and uranium
mining threats that require better monitoring and
application of hydrotectonic concepts. The data suggest an
interconnectivity of the groundwater systems such that uranium
mining and other contaminants pose risks to people, aquifers,
and ecosystems. The conclusion based on multiple datasets is
that groundwater systems involve significant mixing.
The Colorado River is relied upon by roughly 40 million people.
That includes members of 30 federally-recognized tribes, as
well as residents across seven states. Four of those are in the
region known as the Upper Basin – that includes Colorado, Utah,
Wyoming, and New Mexico – and the other three are in the Lower
Basin – California, Arizona, and Nevada. In Colorado alone,
half of Denver’s supply – as well as half of Colorado Springs’
supply – rely on the river. Tribal nations in Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have been left out of key
agreements involving the Colorado River for well over a century
now.
… The two impacts of data centers drawing the most concern in
Colorado are the growing demand for power and impact it could
have on the power grid and the need for millions of gallons of
water by data centers, primarily for cooling. … While
Colorado and the West have suffered a 20-year drought and there
is haggling over the future of the dwindling Colorado River, a
hyperscale data center with evaporative cooling can, according
to Dglt, use more than 200 million gallons of water a year,
about 550,000 gallons a day — enough to supply 1,200 households
of four to five people for a year.
Two-thirds of the tribes with lands and water rights in the
Colorado River Basin are calling for equal status in developing
new river management guidelines and protection of their senior
water rights against proposed cuts or caps on developing their
water. Leaders from 20 tribes, including eight in Arizona, sent
a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation March 11. In the
letter, obtained by The Arizona Republic, the tribes outlined
what they expect in new river management guidelines that will
take effect when the current guidelines expire Dec. 31, 2026.
The two tribes with Arizona’s largest river allocations — the
Colorado River Indian Tribes, which holds senior rights to
720,000 acre-feet of water, mostly in Arizona, and the Gila
River Indian Community, with 653,000 acre-feet of Colorado
River and other waters — did not sign the letter.
Birds and people need clean and abundant water in rivers,
lakes, streams, wetlands, and marshes in landscapes throughout
the country. Today, the White House is announcing several
new initiatives to celebrate World Water Day and protect
waterways, and access to clean water, across the country.
… The announcements are paired with updates from
previous water-related commitments from the Administration,
including historic levels of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
funding for conservation in places like the Everglades, the
Great Lakes, and the Delaware River basin, safeguarding
wilderness and cultural areas to protect them from pollution
and development, and building resilience to climate change in
places threatened by flooding, drought, and wildfires like the
Colorado River Basin.
Colorado’s “housing crisis” is essentially unsolvable by simply
building more market-rate housing, at least if we care about
our quality of life here in Colorado. … Colorado does,
however, have a real “water crisis.” The arguments between the
seven states working on sharing the Colorado River revolve
around Article III(d) of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which
requires the Upper Basin states to deliver 7.5 million
acre-feet per year on average to the Lower Basin states,
plus multi-million acre-feet/year obligations to Mexico,
Native American tribes, and pre-Compact water rights
holders. There just isn’t enough water for all that, plus
serving many millions more people in the Front Range cities
that depend on trans-mountain diversions of the Colorado
River. -Written by Steve Pomerance, who served 10 years on the
Boulder city council and 6 years on the DRCOG
board.
In what has been a years-long fight to fend off efforts to mine
sites and areas the Quechan Indian Tribe say are culturally
significant, the tribe was victorious in preserving those sites
this week with an unexpected win against Canada’s SMP Gold
Corp. … The federally protected land, under the
U.S. Bureau of Land Management, is culturally significant and
important to the Quechan Indian Tribe and its members have been
vehemently fighting the Oro Cruz mining project for years, with
the support of other tribes, and numerous environmental and
social justice groups and concerned residents behind them.
… After the hearing, White elaborated further and told
the Calexico Chronicle that the tribe is trying to dedicate the
Cargo Muchacho Mountains area as the “Kw’tsán National
Monument”
Outrage over the Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court rolling back
federal reproductive rights has in some ways overshadowed the
now 6-3 conservative majority’s relentless assault on
environmental regulations that for decades protected Colorado’s
clean air and water. … Now Colorado lawmakers are trying
to step into that regulatory void with Wednesday’s filing of
the Regulate Dredge and Fill Activities in State Waters bill
(HB24-1379). If passed, it would require a rulemaking process
by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s Water
Quality and Control Division to permit dredge and fill
activities on both public and private land. -Written by contributor David O. Williams.
The Cocopah Tribe and two other Arizona tribal communities are
working with new money and tools to address climate change
after receiving grants from the U.S. Department of the Interior
and several private funders. In 2023, the 1,000-member Cocopah
Tribe, whose lands lie along the Colorado River southwest of
Yuma, received $5 million from the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation’s America the Beautiful Challenge to support two
riparian restoration initiatives. During the four-year project,
the tribe will remove invasive species and replant 45,000
native trees, like cottonwood, willow and mesquite to restore
390 acres of the river’s historic floodplain close to the
U.S.-Mexico border. The Cocopah Tribe also received $515,000
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bonneville
Environmental Foundation for the restoration effort.
Lake Powell remains at the center of attention as the seven
Colorado River Basin states figure out how much water is
withdrawn from it this year and beyond. But those who rely on
it for water and electricity — and the millions who enjoy
recreating on the reservoir — are equally focused on how much
Lake Powell receives this spring. The good news is, it is
expected to receive a decent bump in the coming months. The bad
news is, it’s not expected to reach the same levels it peaked
at before the region’s latest severe drought. Lake Powell
is projected to receive about 5.4 million acre-feet of water
based on conditions this winter, National Weather Service’s
Colorado Basin River Forecast Center officials said on Friday.
That would hoist the reservoir from 32% to 37% capacity after
the snowmelt process wraps up in the early summer.
Colorado lawmakers say they want Congress to do its job and
fund repairs to a deteriorating irrigation system in
southwestern Colorado. The irrigation system, called the Pine
River Indian Irrigation Project, is one of 16 federal projects
in the West that have fallen into disrepair. The maintenance
backlog is extensive and would cost more than $2.3 billion to
address. … Southern Ute representatives focused on the
Indian Irrigation Fund during Colorado River Drought Task Force
meetings in 2023.
Can Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado agree to a new
apportionment of the Rio Grande’s waters without the U.S.
government’s approval? The Supreme Court of the United States
is set to hear a case next week that may affect access to water
for millions of Americans — and set a precedent that could
impact millions more, as increased usage and climate change
further strain supply of the precious resource. … If
[the court sides with the states], the government might be
understood to have less weight to throw around in other
negotiations, such as the one that is also happening about the
Colorado River.
Snowfall this week in the Rockies has improved the water
picture for the Colorado River, but one expert says she’s not
counting her chickens before they’re hatched. Current
information on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s website shows
that snowpack levels in the Upper Colorado River Basin are at
110% of normal for this time of year. That’s an improvement
over March 1 when it was at 101%. … important weeks are
still ahead, even though the snowpack peak is typically
measured on April 1 each year.
This half-hour special dives into the troubles and triumphs at
the Salton Sea. The sea is the largest body of water in
California. It formed after a levee at the Colorado River burst
in the early 1900s, and after the levee was fixed, it cut off
the flow of fresh water. Since then, the sea has become
polluted with chemical runoff from nearby farms. It’s also
slowly evaporating. The chemical-filled water releases gases
that trigger asthma in nearby communities, and toxic dust from
around the shoreline acts as an irritant as well. Despite
all of the negatives, there are a few positives. New wetlands
are forming as the sea slowly pulls away from the shoreline,
playing host to thousands of migrating birds. Developing
wetlands make the sea an important stop along the Pacific
Flyway.
The states that use the Colorado River have put out their
latest proposals on how to manage the river’s shrinking amount
of water, and the two plans reveal that there are still big
differences in how upstream and downstream states want to divvy
up future cuts to their water consumption. While state water
negotiators say they’re committed to figuring out how they can
compromise in the age of climate change when there is less
water available to the 40 million people who rely on it, the
Southern Ute tribal government in southwestern Colorado doesn’t
believe either proposal addresses their concerns or helps them
secure their water future.
A dog-killing parasite that was believed to only exist in Texas
and other Gulf Coast states has been discovered as far west as
California for the first time, scientists have warned. Experts
at the University of California Riverside found the
Heterobilharzia americana parasite, a flatworm commonly known
as a liver fluke, in spots along the Colorado River where it
runs through Southern California. According to the university,
the flatworm has never before been seen outside of Texas and
surrounding areas, and other studies have found most infections
occur in Texas and Louisiana, though some have occurred in
North Carolina, Texas, and Kansas.
The Gila River Indian Community says it does not support a
three-state proposal for managing the Colorado River’s
shrinking supply in the future. The community, which is located
in Arizona, is instead working with the federal government to
develop its own proposal for water sharing. The tribe is among
the most prominent of the 30 federally-recognized tribes that
use the Colorado River. In recent years, it has signed
high-profile deals with the federal government to receive big
payments in exchange for water conservation. Those deals were
celebrated by Arizona’s top water officials. But now, it is
diverging from states in the river’s Lower Basin — Arizona,
California and Nevada. Stephen Roe Lewis, The Gila River Indian
Community’s Governor, announced his tribe’s disapproval of the
Lower Basin proposal at a water conference in Tucson, Ariz.,
while speaking to a room of policy experts and water
scientists.
Monday marked a key cutoff time by which Colorado River states
had been tasked with proposing a consensus-based plant for
long-term water conservation in the overtaxed system. But
with the arrival of that deadline, set by the Department of the
Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, no such agreement was on the
table. Instead, the river system’s two main contingents — the
Upper and Lower basins — submitted their own competing
plans. The proposals pertained to an upcoming update of
the rules — known as the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower
Basin Shortages — that govern where, when and how much the
seven basin states must conserve water from the 1,450-mile
river.
Ahead of a deadline next week, the seven states that share the
Colorado River have revealed competing plans for how the river
should be managed in the future. They’re split into two
factions, with the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah, and Wyoming on one side, and their Lower Basin
counterparts—California, Arizona and Nevada—on the other. Those
two camps have been at odds over water management many times
over the past century. Now, with climate change shrinking the
Colorado River’s supply, they’re under intense pressure to rein
in demand. While the current guidelines for sharing the
river don’t expire until 2026, the Biden Administration set a
mid-March deadline for proposals for new guideline, in part
because the upcoming election in November could bring a change
of presidential administration that could complicate the
implementation of new rules.
In 2012, one of the driest years in Colorado in recent memory,
the Crystal River practically dried up. Ken Neubecker, a
now-retired Colorado projects director at environmental group
American Rivers and former member of the Pitkin County Healthy
Rivers board, recalls the stream conditions. … These
extremely low-water conditions returned in the drought years of
2018, 2020 and 2021, with river flows near the fish hatchery
just south of Carbondale hovering around 8 to 10 cfs — not
enough to support aquatic life and nowhere near the 100 cfs
that the state of Colorado says is the minimum needed to
maintain a healthy stream.
People born in 1994 will be turning 30 this year — and so will
the drought in Arizona. Groundwater is the primary source of
water for the state, along with allotments from the Colorado
River. But due to a population that has nearly doubled since
the drought began in 1994, groundwater is drying up. In
response, Gov. Katie Hobbs put a moratorium on new housing
developments last year unless developers can prove they have
safe access to non-groundwater sources for 100 years before
they can begin construction. Along with efforts to encourage
home water use reduction, another solution being considered is
a bit greener: direct potable reuse (DPR), known colloquially
as “toilet to tap.” But the issue is far more complex than a
catchy tagline.
Water conservation is a top issue for cities across the
Southwest. Now, Phoenix continues plans to reduce water use and
prepare for the future. Phoenix City Council approved a water
conservation ordinance for “big water users” this week. “It is
Phoenix making sure that when a large volume user comes along,
there is a sufficient benefit,” said Sarah Porter, director of
the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU. It only impacts new
developments. Under the ordinance, companies that use more than
250,000 gallons of water per day will have to submit water
conservation plans to the city. This could impact some
hospitals, resorts, and manufacturers. Then, companies that use
more than 500,000 gallons of water per day need to submit a
conservation plan and ensure 30% of their water usage comes
from recycled water.
What goes up must come down — perhaps even for things as
massive as Lake Powell. That’s the topic of the Glen Canyon
Institute’s March 15 event, “Glen Canyon Rises.” Featuring
artists, musicians and writers, the event celebrates the
re-emergence of the legendary canyon as the water table keeps
dropping in the massive reservoir shrouding the canyon, Lake
Powell. The Moab Times-Independent spoke with two of the
event’s participants, writer (and former Salt Lake Tribune
reporter) Zak Podmore and photographer Dawn Kish, about their
work to document the return of the southern Utah canyon
sometimes called America’s lost national park.
With climate change compounding the strains on the Colorado
River, seven Western states are starting to consider long-term
plans for reducing water use to prevent the river’s reservoirs
from reaching critically low levels in the years to come. But
negotiations among representatives of the states have so far
failed to resolve disagreements. And now, two groups of states
are proposing competing plans for addressing the river’s
chronic gap between supply and demand. In one camp, the three
states in the river’s lower basin — California, Arizona and
Nevada — say their approach would share the largest-ever water
reductions throughout the Colorado River Basin to ensure
long-term sustainability.
Facing rising costs and rates, the leaders of San Diego’s water
lifelines are looking to sell some of its most expensive
supply: de-salted ocean water from a massive plant in Carlsbad.
But, at the same time, they’re also trying to make more of
it. Dan Denham, the San Diego County Water Authority’s new
general manager, says he wants to expand seawater desalination
not because he thinks San Diego needs more water, but because
he thinks they can sell it and recoup at least a little of the
massive investment local rate payers have made on the plant.
… “We’re looking to expand the plant as an opportunity for
users, whether that’s in southern California or the lower
Colorado River basin,” Denham said.
As water supplies come under more stress across the West, some
states are seeing increased legal activity related to water
rights. Bloomberg has reported some states, including Utah, are
setting up specific water courts, or judges who deal mainly in
water law. Colorado has had this kind of a setup for more than
50 years. Holly Strablizky is a water referee for
the Water Court in Colorado. The Show talked with her
about what her job entails.
The seven U.S. states that draw water from the Colorado
River basin are suggesting new ways to determine how the
increasingly scarce resource is divvied up when the river can’t
provide what it historically promised. The Upper Basin and
the Lower Basin states, as neighbors, don’t agree on the
approach. Under a proposal released Wednesday by Arizona,
California and Nevada, the water level at Lake Mead — one of
the two largest of the Colorado River reservoirs — no longer
would determine the extent of water cuts like it currently
does. The three Lower Basin states also want what they say is a
more equitable way of distributing cuts that would be a 50-50
split between the basins once a threshold is hit.
… On Monday, the Upper Colorado River Commission — an
interstate agency composed of one federal representative and
commissioners from the Upper Colorado River Basin states of
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — took a step toward
greater collaboration between the states and the
tribes. The commission unanimously approved
a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with six Colorado
River tribes: the Jicarilla Apache Nation, Navajo Nation, Ute
Mountain Ute Indian Tribe, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Ute
Indian Tribe and the Shivwits Band of Paiutes. The
agreement states that the Upper Colorado River Commission and
the six tribes will meet about every two months to discuss
shared interests on the Colorado River. Other tribes are
welcome to join the agreement. The MOU does not give the
tribes a permanent seat on the Upper Colorado River Commission,
like the states and federal government.
After a wet year and a push to conserve water in the Southwest,
federal officials say the risk of the Colorado River’s
reservoirs declining to critically low levels has substantially
eased for the next couple of years. The Biden administration’s
top water and climate officials said the rise in reservoir
levels and the ongoing conservation efforts will provide some
breathing room for the region’s water managers to come up with
new long-term rules to address the river’s chronic
overallocation problem and the worsening effects of climate
change. … The states proposed the short-term cuts to
deal with water shortages through 2026, when the current rules
for managing the river expire. The Bureau of Reclamation
released its final analysis of the water reductions
on Tuesday …
When the San Juan River flows out of the San Juan Mountains in
Southwestern Colorado, it contributes 15% of Lake Powell’s
water. But there’s a problem: The river carries a hefty 55% of
the sediment entering the reservoir, and that mud is piling up.
… Now, as the San Juan River flows toward Lake Powell, it
rambles over a huge pancake of mud that’s 49 miles long, a mile
wide in some places, and as much as 120 feet deep in the final
reaches of the San Juan River. Unique hydrology has contributed
to this plug, a relatively wide canyon and multiple waterfalls
slow down the river, allowing sediment to drop out. Though the
San Juan is the muddiest tributary, all the Colorado’s
tributaries drop a good deal of mud 100 miles or more upstream
of Glen Canyon Dam. It’s a Western phenomenon caused by damming
swift rivers … -By Dave Marston, publisher of the independent
nonprofit Writers on the Range.
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.
The Salton Sea is shrinking. The sea formed about 120 years ago
when a Colorado River levee burst, creating an extremely large
body of water and a thriving resort town. But as agriculture
runoff and evaporation impacted water quality, the sea slowly
became toxic, turning the once vibrant area into a ghost town.
However, local groups are working together to change that
narrative. The Sonny Bono Salton Sea Wildlife Refuge is an
example of what life at the sea looks like when its supported
and managed. At sunrise, coyotes run along berms, snowy egrets
forage for food and thousands of snow geese travel as a noisy
flock. Award-winning wildlife photographer Paulette Donnellon
spends her time capturing life at the refuge.
One the most closely watched water bills in the Wyoming
Legislature this session moved decisively through committee
this week in a sign of hope for some of the state’s
water-dependent industries. The bill, SF 66, seeks to address
heightened anxiety around the Colorado River, whose diminishing
flows have set off a scramble by its seven user states to draft
new rules and contingency plans ahead of a 2026 deadline from
the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency charged with overseeing
water management in the west. In the meantime, the amendments
aim to provide a sense of security to junior water rights
entities who depend on water transfers, including
municipalities, trona mine operators and oil refineries in the
Green River Basin.
Kevin Guadalupe walked along the banks of the stream as Montana
Stevens, outfitted in snorkel gear, popped his head out of the
water to report how many fish he’d seen. “Two adults, two
juveniles,” … Both were among the group of surveyors from
several different agencies who recently snorkeled while inching
forward in essentially a flat crawl in the warm, shallow
streams and springs that comprise the headwaters of the Muddy
River, about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas near
Moapa. The count showed that the population of the fish,
which only exists in these waters — about six miles worth of
streams and springs in the Southern Nevada desert — appears to
be stable and similar to the numbers over the past few years.
… [Denise] Moreno Ramírez wasn’t surprised when she heard an
Australian mining company, South32, planned to open a
manganese, zinc, lead and silver operation in the same area
where her family had worked. … The grasslands, woodlands,
swamps and prairies of south-east Arizona’s Sky Islands are
home to more than 100 species of large mammals: the greatest
number north of Mexico. Residents from the borderlands area
have long dealt with the health impacts of pollution linked
with earlier industrial activity, including mining – from lupus
to cancer. And in spite of it all, they have managed to
preserve a patch of one of the most biodiverse, and imperiled,
ecosystems in the world. … The lithium
boom has received the bulk of attention amid calls to
electrify everything – but another mineral, manganese, has
been earmarked by the US as a critical element to ramp up
the production of electric vehicle batteries.
In the past 10 days, nearly 2,000 people have signed an online
petition opposing a proposal that asks President Joe Biden to
designate a national monument around western Colorado’s Dolores
River. “I think it absolutely, positively could be a threat,”
petition organizer Sean Pond told The Colorado Sun.
… Pond once had a career in the nuclear industry in the
West End of Montrose County, home of the Uravan Mineral Belt,
which is one of the country’s richest caches of uranium and
vanadium. Now he rents paddleboards and off-road vehicles to
tourists. He says a monument designation would bring crowds
that could lead to future bans on motorized travel, which would
hinder grazing and hunting. He worries a monument would ban
mining in an area where residents have spent almost half a
century waiting for a nuclear revival that would resuscitate
uranium mining and milling.
The Navajo Nation is nearing completion of a settlement of
water rights claims in Arizona, ending decades of negotiations
and giving hope for thousands of people who have long gone
without running water. For the past 60 years, Navajo leaders
have worked to settle water claims in Arizona. The aim of the
Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement
is to affirm and quantify the nation’s rights to water in the
state and to secure funding to build much needed water delivery
infrastructure to homes on the Navajo Nation, according to a
summary of the agreement. … The U.S. Supreme Court held
last summer that the United States did not have an
affirmative treaty or trust obligation to identify and
account for Navajo Nation water rights on the Colorado River.
Curley said that ruling was a pivotal moment that led the
Navajo Nation and its water rights negotiation team to focus on
completing on the settlement.
A Native American tribe with one of the largest outstanding
claims to water in the Colorado River basin is closing in on a
settlement with more than a dozen parties, putting it on a path
to piping water to tens of thousands of tribal members in
Arizona who still live without it. Negotiating terms outlined
late Wednesday include water rights not only for the Navajo
Nation but the neighboring Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute
tribes in the northeastern corner of the state. The water would
come from a mix of sources: the Colorado River that serves
seven western states, the Little Colorado River, and aquifers
and washes on tribal lands. The agreement is decades in the
making and would allow the tribes to avoid further litigation
and court proceedings, which have been costly.
Negotiations among the seven states that share the
drought-stricken Colorado River have stalled ahead of a March
target date to propose new operating plans for the waterway, as
officials split over which states should absorb the brunt of
cuts triggered by the region’s ongoing drought. The states —
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the Upper Basin and
Arizona, California and Nevada in the Lower Basin — are now
expected to submit separate plans to the Biden administration
early next month, rather than a single cohesive plan, according
to representatives of states from both regions. “If there
is interest in getting to a seven-state consensus compromise,
all seven states have to actually compromise and recognize this
is a massive problem that needs solving, not a party primary or
campaign rally,” J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board
of California, told E&E News.
One of Colorado’s leading urban water conservation strategies —
turf replacement — could require up to $2.5 billion to save
20,000 acre-feet of water, according to a recent report
commissioned by the state’s top water policy agency. Colorado
communities are facing a drier future with water shortages and
searching for ways to cut down water use. … This
turf-focused strategy has gained new momentum since 2020 and
2021, when the water crisis in the Colorado River Basin became
shockingly apparent (to more than just water experts)
as two enormous reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, fell to
historic lows.
It has been far too dry for far too long in Mexico as a
combination of drying reservoirs and increasing population has
caused concerns of a water crisis. According to data from
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, most
of Mexico, including areas around and to the north of Mexico
City, are in a long-term drought. … Local media
reports that reservoirs could completely be out of water
by late August if conditions don’t improve. … Elizabeth
Carter, an assistant professor of civil engineering and earth
sciences at Syracuse University … notes … that the U.S
engineering projects in rivers that feed many of Mexico’s
northern freshwater sources run dry before reaching Mexico. She
cites the Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, and the Central Arizona
Project (Colorado River) as examples.
Like a lot of homeowners in neighborhoods with decades-old
plumbing, Ken Hoag experienced a leak in the pipe leading under
his yard from the curbside city meter to his house. Only this
was no trickling stream, but a gusher that would cost him more
than $1,000. City meter readers must check meters manually or,
at homes with updated meters, they must at least drive through
the neighborhood for it to ping their equipment with current
water volumes. In Hoag’s case last fall, that took long enough
that no one from the city alerted him of unusual readings until
160,000 gallons had drained away under his yard over parts of
two billing cycles. He hadn’t noticed so much as a puddle to
suggest a problem and was shocked when he got the first of
those bills on Nov. 22.
The Colorado River’s water serves 40 million people — including
2 million Utah residents. … The states
are negotiating their preferred plan for those
operations for Reclamation to consider. Their plan has to
consider extreme drought and climate change in the American
West, which make for a shrinking river. Reclamation asked
the states to submit their plan in March so the agency would
have time to analyze it. But now, Amy Haas, executive director
of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, told The Salt Lake
Tribune that she thinks it is unlikely that the seven states
will have a unified plan by then — which means the feds won’t
yet be able to consider their proposal.
Quechan tribal members Elan and Donald Medart were excited for
the opportunity to see some of their tribe’s most significant
lands along Haquita — known to the greater world as the
Colorado River — from the air. The day was especially
noteworthy for Elan, who’s 14, because it was his first-ever
flight over the rugged peaks and washes of Indian Pass, about
30 miles north of here. The six-passenger Cessna took load
after load of tribal members and other interested people over
the Colorado River Valley in Imperial County, California, to
see Indian Pass, Picacho Peak and the nearby Picacho Peak
Wilderness, the Colorado, and glimpses of trails, sleeping and
prayer circles and an occasional geoglyph that hasn’t yet been
ground to death under the wheels of ATVs and RVs.
For five years, a $24 million water transfer agreement has
threatened to establish a potentially dangerous precedent, and
turn the Colorado River into a commodity. Now that deal will be
put on hold under a decision in U.S. District Court. U.S.
District Judge Michael Liburdi ruled against that water
transfer agreement on Wednesday. It was a decision made on the
grounds that federal Reclamation officials’ approval of the
agreement last year, absent an environmental impact study in
that agreement, may have been “arbitrary and capricious.”
After this winter’s faltering start, the snowstorms in January
and February boosted Colorado’s snowpack from around 10% to
nearly 100% of normal accumulation for this time of year.
… The Colorado River Basin, which provides water to 40
million people across the West, receives much of its water
supply from the mountain snowpack in Colorado and other Upper
Basin states. The snowpack conditions generally range
between 75% and 105% of normal across the Upper Basin, which
includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Modeling of
the Lower Colorado River Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada
— indicates that snowpack conditions are much higher than
usual, ranging from 120% to 250% of normal.
…Local artists and curators…have taken on the task of
remembering the [Mexicali] region’s departed waters. Since
2020, [they] have overseen the Archivo Familiar del Río
Colorado, or Colorado River Family Album, a project that brings
together contemporary art, environmental education and
historical research to document bodies of water that are
disappearing or are already gone … In 2024, an
exhibition at Planta Libre will collect archival documents and
artwork that engages with water and its loss. Local artists
will lead a series of walks in the surrounding region so that
visitors can develop their own relationship with it
… the absence of the Colorado River and the waters it
nourished forms a cartography of loss that is written on the
landscape. Their mission is to make those absences visible — to
keep their memories alive, and to imagine possibilities for the
future.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently awarded $20.9
million for six projects along the Colorado River aimed at
reducing the costly amount of salt in its water. Five of the
projects are in Colorado. In a Feb. 12 press release, the BLM
estimated economic damages currently caused by excess salinity
in the Colorado River water at about $332 million per year.
That economic damage mostly comes from the inability to plant
certain types of crops which need the river’s water for
irrigation, as well as costs associated with treating the
river’s water for residential and commercial usage, according
to a BLM report released six years ago. ”This funding will
prevent approximately 11,661 tons of salt each year from
entering the Colorado River,” the BLM announced in its press
release.
For the first time in the United States, a tribe in Arizona is
building a solar farm over an irrigation canal to produce clean
energy and save water at a time of unrelenting drought. The
Gila River Indian Community has broken ground on a project to
put solar panels over nearly 3,000 feet of the Casa Blanca
canal south of Phoenix. It’s one phase of a pilot project
designed to eventually help the tribe reach its goal of using
100% renewable power. The idea is modeled after a similar
project in India, says David DeJong, director of the
Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project. … The Turlock
Irrigation District in California’s Central Valley is
expected to start a project of its own soon. DeJong
says money from the Inflation Reduction Act funded
the solar farm, and it will eventually produce enough
electricity to power several thousand homes.
The U.S. Forest Service withdrew its record of decision and
amendment that would have allowed the Utah Seven County
Infrastructure Coalition to build and operate a railway on 12
miles of National Forest System lands on Jan. 17. The activity
required a project-specific Forest Plan amendment to reflect
the railway’s visual impact on the landscape in order to move
forward. The Uinta Basin Railway project has faced significant
backlash from Colorado communities and organizations, including
Grand County’s chapter of Trout Unlimited. The withdrawal of
the permit is a victory for opponents of the railway who say
the approval process “did not properly account for the
project’s full risks.”
Federal energy officials denied permits for a controversial
hydropower project on The Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. In
its decision to deny those permits, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) said it was establishing a new
policy about cooperation with Tribes. … The hydropower
company Nature and People First was seeking permits for a
“pumped storage” project in the Black Mesa area of Arizona to
generate electricity for nearby cities such as Phoenix and
Tucson. That kind of facility holds water from high-elevation
reservoirs, then allows gravity to carry it down through
turbines to generate power. Then, when electricity demand is
lower, that water is pumped back up to the upper reservoir to
start the process over again.
More than 70 percent of Nevadans consider water supply and
lowering river levels a serious issue, but only a little more
than half believe climate change is, a Colorado College poll
released Wednesday shows. Water continues to be a hot-button
issue for voters who are looking for leaders who can best
address diminishing water availability as the Colorado River
faces historic challenges. Nevada, the driest state in the
nation, is second only to Arizona among Western states for
concern about water. … Though water appears to be at the
top of most Nevadans’ priority lists, only 56 percent of state
residents feel climate change is an extremely or very serious
problem.
A bill that allows farmers and ranchers who optimize their
water use to sell their conserved water for conservation
purposes without losing their water rights cleared the Utah
Legislature on Wednesday, as efforts to better track “saved”
water intensifies. The Utah House of Representatives voted 66-3
on Wednesday to adopt SB18 after the Senate approved
the measure with a 27-0 vote last month. The bill will head to
Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk for his signature. The vote happened
after members of the House Natural Resources, Agriculture and
Environment Committee unanimously voted to
advance HB448 earlier in the day. That bill would
require the Utah Division of Water Resources to monitor state
legislative water optimization efforts along the Great Salt
Lake, Colorado River and Sevier River basins, and report its
findings back to the state.
The seven Colorado River states face a quickly approaching
deadline to present a unified plan for how to manage the
drying river that provides water for 40 million people
across the West. But major disagreements remain ahead of next
month’s target — and the Upper Basin states, including
Colorado, say they may submit their own proposal to the federal
government instead. … The Upper Basin states are
creating their own proposal to present to federal officials in
case a seven-state consensus is not reached in time, according
to the basin’s statement.
Another company has given up on trying to develop oil shale in
the Uinta Basin, faced with legal battles, environmental
concerns and money going down the drain. Estonia’s national
energy company announced that it was wrapping up its fruitless
oil shale venture in Utah at the end of last month. Estonia
Finance Minister Mart Võrklaev said that the company’s project
in Utah was “neither profitable nor promising” in a news
release. … Oil shale is a hard sedimentary rock that can
be heated to release synthetic crude oil. It’s a thirsty and
expensive process that threatens air quality, water quality and
endangered species, and exacerbates global warming, according
to nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust staff attorney
Michael Toll.
A much-anticipated water bill brought by one of the most
powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill became public Thursday.
Senate President Stuart Adams’s SB 211, titled “Generational
Water Infrastructure Amendments,” seeks to secure a water
supply for decades to come. It forms a new council comprised of
leadership from the state’s biggest water districts that will
figure out Utah’s water needs for the next 50 to 75 years. It
also creates a new governor-appointed “Utah Water Agent” with a
$1 million annual budget that will “coordinate with the council
to ensure Utah’s generational water needs are met,” according
to a news release. But combing through the text of the bill
reveals the water agent’s main job will be finding an
out-of-state water supply. … The bill also notes the
water agent won’t meddle with existing water compacts with
other states on the Bear and Colorado rivers.
Moab is a growing town of 5,300 that up to 5 million people
visit each year to hike nearby Arches and Canyonlands national
parks, ride mountain bikes and all-terrain vehicles, or raft
the Colorado River. Like any western resort town, it
desperately needs affordable housing. What locals say it
doesn’t need is a high-end development on a sandbar projecting
into the Colorado River, where groves of cottonwoods, willows
and hackberries flourish. “Delusional,” shameful” or
“outrageous” is what many locals call this Kane Creek
Preservation and Development project. - Written by Mary Moran, a contributor to Writers on
the Range
The attention is on Southern California right now, but an
atmospheric river’s path will extend inland with potential
flooding — and possible drought relief. If you’re watching the
weather, it’s still a little early to tell whether these storms
will go where they can hope Las Vegas the most. That’s anywhere
in the Upper Colorado River Basin, where there’s a chance they
could produce snow to help the river that supplies 90% of the
water used in Southern Nevada. … The paths of this
year’s atmospheric rivers are unlike the ones that slammed
the Sierras last year. Those storms carried snow straight
east through Northern Nevada and Utah, feeding the Rocky
Mountains with snowpack levels that reached 160% of normal by
the end of winter.
Water regulation in Arizona has devolved into a game of
chicken. The governor and farmers are rivals revving their
engines, hoping their opponent will flinch first. Caught
in the middle is Gila Bend, a groundwater basin south of
Buckeye, where the state could decide to impose its most
stringent form of regulation, whether folks like it or not.
Both sides are using Gila Bend as a bargaining chip to win
support for competing legislative proposals. But to what
end? - Written by Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic digital
opinions editor
Colorado legislators in 2022 passed a bill that delivered $2
million to programs across the state for removal of turf in
urban areas classified as nonfunctional. By that, legislators
mean Kentucky bluegrass and other thirsty-grass species that
were meant to be seen but rarely, if ever, otherwise
used. Now, they are taking the next step. The Colorado
Senate on Tuesday, Jan. 30 voted in favor of a
bill, Senate Bill 24-005, that would prevent thirsty turf
species from being planted in certain places that rarely, if
ever, get foot traffic, except perhaps to be mowed.
The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an
important hearing Thursday on S. 2385, a bill to
refine the tools needed to help Tribal communities gain access
to something that most non-Indian communities in the western
United States have long taken for granted: federally subsidized
systems to deliver safe, clean drinking water to our homes.
… This is the sort of bill (there’s a companion on the
House side) that makes a huge amount of sense, but could easily
get sidetracked in the chaos of Congress. The ideal path is for
the crucial vetting to happen in a process such as Thursday’s
hearing, and then to attach it to one of those omnibus things
that Congress uses these days to get non-controversial stuff
done. Clean water for Native communities should pretty clearly
be non-controversial.
For as long as he can remember, Rob Sowby has heard people call
Utah the second-driest state in the nation. Over the years,
that claim has become nearly inescapable, echoed by everyone
from state departments, city governments and water conservancy
districts to national news outlets without a clear citation for
what data it’s based on. … Now a Brigham Young
University civil engineering assistant professor focused on
sustainable water supplies, he decided to get to the bottom of
it. Using precipitation data, he found that Utah is actually
the nation’s third-driest state, behind Nevada and
Arizona.
The Topock Marsh has seen a significant drop in water levels
recently, with dry patches visible and locals concerned about
the effects on wildlife. The 4,000-acre Bureau of Reclamation
marsh is adjacent to the Colorado River in the Havasu National
Wildlife Refuge. Managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
it serves as a recreation area and wildlife habitat for the
Tri-state.
Apply for our 2024 Colorado River Water
Leaders program to deepen your knowledge
of the inconic Southwest river, build leadership
skills and develop policy ideas with a cohort to improve
management of the region’s most crucial natural resource.
Our biennial Water Leaders program, part of our Colorado River Project,
selects rising stars from the seven states that rely on
the river – Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada,
Utah and Wyoming.
Get an overview of the program and tips on applying by watching
this virtual Q&A
session. Applications are due Jan. 22,
2024 and you can find
application materials here along with mandatory
program dates.
“I highly recommend the program to emerging water leaders.
The program’s immersive experience, relationship building and
mentorship opportunities cultivate leadership and collaborative
skills crucial for addressing complex challenges faced by all
those who rely upon the Colorado River now and into the
future.”
– JB Hamby, Class of ‘22 and Chair of the
Colorado River Board of California
After more than two decades of
drought, water utilities serving the largest urban regions in the
arid Southwest are embracing a drought-proof source of drinking
water long considered a supply of last resort: purified sewage.
Water supplies have tightened to the point that Phoenix and the
water supplier for 19 million Southern California residents are
racing to adopt an expensive technology called “direct potable
reuse” or “advanced purification” to reduce their reliance on
imported water from the dwindling Colorado River.
Join a
virtual Q&A session Dec. 7 to learn more about
applying for our 2024 Colorado River Water
Leaders cohort.
The biennial
program, which will run from March to September next
year, selects about a dozen rising stars from the
seven states that rely on the river – California, Nevada,
Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.
The climate-driven shrinking of the
Colorado River is expanding the influence of Native American
tribes over how the river’s flows are divided among cities, farms
and reservations across the Southwest.
The tribes are seeing the value of their largely unused river
water entitlements rise as the Colorado dwindles, and they are
gaining seats they’ve never had at the water bargaining table as
government agencies try to redress a legacy of exclusion.
The application window is now open
for our Colorado River Water
Leaders program, which will run from March to
September next year.
Our biennial program, part of our Colorado River Project,
is patterned after our highly successful California Water Leaders
programand selects rising stars
from the seven states that rely on the river -
California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New
Mexico – to take part in a cohort.
During the seven-month program designed for working
professionals, the cohort members explore issues surrounding the
iconic Southwest river, deepen their water knowledge and build
leadership skills.
“I highly recommend the program to emerging water leaders.
The program’s immersive experience, relationship building and
mentorship opportunities cultivate leadership and collaborative
skills crucial for addressing complex challenges faced by all
those who rely upon the Colorado River now and into the
future.”
– JB Hamby, Class of ‘22 & Chair of the Colorado River
Board of California
The states of the Lower Colorado
River Basin have traditionally played an oversized role in
tapping the lifeline that supplies 40 million people in the West.
California, Nevada and Arizona were quicker to build major canals
and dams and negotiated a landmark deal that requires the Upper
Basin to send predictable flows through the Grand Canyon, even
during dry years.
But with the federal government threatening unprecedented water
cuts amid decades of drought and declining reservoirs, the Upper
Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are
muscling up to protect their shares of an overallocated river
whose average flows in the Upper Basin have already dropped
20 percent over the last century.
They have formed new agencies to better monitor their interests,
moved influential Colorado River veterans into top negotiating
posts and improved their relationships with Native American
tribes that also hold substantial claims to the river.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
With 25 years of experience working
on the Colorado River, Chuck Cullom is used to responding to
myriad challenges that arise on the vital lifeline that seven
states, more than two dozen tribes and the country of Mexico
depend on for water. But this summer problems on the
drought-stressed river are piling up at a dizzying pace:
Reservoirs plummeting to record low levels, whether Hoover Dam
and Glen Canyon Dam can continue to release water and produce
hydropower, unprecedented water cuts and predatory smallmouth
bass threatening native fish species in the Grand Canyon.
“Holy buckets, Batman!,” said Cullom, executive director of the
Upper Colorado River Commission. “I mean, it’s just on and on and
on.”
As water interests in the Colorado
River Basin prepare to negotiate a new set of operating
guidelines for the drought-stressed river, Amelia Flores wants
her Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) to be involved in the
discussion. And she wants CRIT seated at the negotiating table
with something invaluable to offer on a river facing steep cuts
in use: its surplus water.
CRIT, whose reservation lands in California and Arizona are
bisected by the Colorado River, has some of the most senior water
rights on the river. But a federal law enacted in the late 1700s,
decades before any southwestern state was established, prevents
most tribes from sending any of its water off its reservation.
The restrictions mean CRIT, which holds the rights to nearly a
quarter of the entire state of Arizona’s yearly allotment of
river water, is missing out on financial gain and the chance to
help its river partners.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
There is just about a week left to
apply for our inaugural Colorado River Water Leaders
program in 2022, which marks the 100th anniversary
of the Colorado River Compact.
The biennial program is modeled after our highly successful
Water Leaders
program in California, now 25 years strong.
Our Colorado River program will select rising stars from the
seven U.S. states and tribal nations that rely on the river -
California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New
Mexico – to participate in the seven-month class designed for
working professionals. Class members will explore issues
surrounding the iconic Southwest river, deepen their water
knowledge and build leadership skills.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
Known for our popular Water Leaders
program in California – about to mark its 25th anniversary – we
are now launching a Colorado
River Water Leaders program in 2022, the 100th
anniversary of the Colorado River Compact.
The biennial program will select rising stars from the seven
U.S. states that rely on the river – California, Nevada, Arizona,
Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – to participate in the
seven-month class designed for working professionals. Class
members will explore issues surrounding the iconic Southwest
river, deepen their water knowledge and build leadership
skills.
Water is flowing once again
to the Colorado River’s delta in Mexico, a vast region that
was once a natural splendor before the iconic Western river was
dammed and diverted at the turn of the last century, essentially
turning the delta into a desert.
In 2012, the idea emerged that water could be intentionally sent
down the river to inundate the delta floodplain and regenerate
native cottonwood and willow trees, even in an overallocated
river system. Ultimately, dedicated flows of river water were
brokered under cooperative
efforts by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
Las Vegas, known for its searing summertime heat and glitzy casino fountains, is projected to get even hotter in the coming years as climate change intensifies. As temperatures rise, possibly as much as 10 degrees by end of the century, according to some models, water demand for the desert community is expected to spike. That is not good news in a fast-growing region that depends largely on a limited supply of water from an already drought-stressed Colorado River.
When you oversee the largest
supplier of treated water in the United States, you tend to think
big.
Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California for the last 15 years, has
focused on diversifying his agency’s water supply and building
security through investment. That means looking beyond MWD’s
borders to ensure the reliable delivery of water to two-thirds of
California’s population.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Managing water resources in the Colorado River Basin is not for the timid or those unaccustomed to big challenges. Careers are devoted to responding to all the demands put upon the river: water supply, hydropower, recreation and environmental protection.
All of this while the Basin endures a seemingly endless drought and forecasts of increasing dryness in the future.
Practically every drop of water that flows through the meadows, canyons and plains of the Colorado River Basin has reams of science attached to it. Snowpack, streamflow and tree ring data all influence the crucial decisions that guide water management of the iconic Western river every day.
Dizzying in its scope, detail and complexity, the scientific information on the Basin’s climate and hydrology has been largely scattered in hundreds of studies and reports. Some studies may conflict with others, or at least appear to. That’s problematic for a river that’s a lifeline for 40 million people and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland.
The Colorado River Compact of 1922
marked the first time in U.S. history that more than three states
negotiated an agreement among themselves to apportion the waters
of a stream or river.
The compact is the cornerstone of the “Law of the River” – a
complex set of interstate compacts, federal laws, court decisions
and decrees, contracts and federal actions that regulate use of
the Colorado River.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.
Colorado is home to the headwaters
of the Colorado River and the water policy decisions made in the
Centennial State reverberate throughout the river’s sprawling
basin that stretches south to Mexico. The stakes are huge in a
basin that serves 40 million people, and responding to the water
needs of the economy, productive agriculture, a robust
recreational industry and environmental protection takes
expertise, leadership and a steady hand.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
Every other year we hold an
invitation-only Colorado River Symposium attended by various
stakeholders from across the seven Western states and Mexico that
rely on the iconic river. We host this three-day event in Santa
Fe, N.M., where the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, as
part of our mission to catalyze critical conversations to build
bridges and inform collaborative decision-making.
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years
of drought and the dramatic decline in water levels at the
river’s key reservoirs have pressed water managers to adapt to
challenging conditions. But even more extreme — albeit rare —
droughts or floods that could overwhelm water managers may lie
ahead in the Basin as the effects of climate change take hold,
say a group of scientists. They argue that stakeholders who are
preparing to rewrite the operating rules of the river should plan
now for how to handle these so-called “black swan” events so
they’re not blindsided.
Dates are now set for two key
Foundation events to kick off 2020 — our popular Water 101
Workshop, scheduled for Feb. 20 at McGeorge School of Law in
Sacramento, and our Lower Colorado River Tour, which will run
from March 11-13.
In addition, applications will be available by the first week of
October for our 2020 class of Water Leaders, our competitive
yearlong program for early to mid-career up-and-coming water
professionals. To learn more about the program, check out our
Water Leaders program
page.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things.
~John Wesley Powell
Powell scrawled those words in his journal as he and his expedition paddled their way into the deep walls of the Grand Canyon on a stretch of the Colorado River in August 1869. Three months earlier, the 10-man group had set out on their exploration of the iconic Southwest river by hauling their wooden boats into a major tributary of the Colorado, the Green River in Wyoming, for their trip into the “great unknown,” as Powell described it.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
As stakeholders labor to nail down
effective and durable drought contingency plans for the Colorado
River Basin, they face a stark reality: Scientific research is
increasingly pointing to even drier, more challenging times
ahead.
The latest sobering assessment landed the day after Thanksgiving,
when U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate
Assessment concluded that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly
compared to the pace of natural variations that have occurred
throughout its history, with greenhouse gas emissions largely the
cause.
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
Water means life for all the Grand Canyon’s inhabitants, including the many varieties of insects that are a foundation of the ecosystem’s food web. But hydropower operations upstream on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, in Northern Arizona near the Utah border, disrupt the natural pace of insect reproduction as the river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically. Eggs deposited at the river’s edge are often left high and dry and their loss directly affects available food for endangered fish such as the humpback chub.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
As California embarks on its unprecedented mission to harness groundwater pumping, the Arizona desert may provide one guide that local managers can look to as they seek to arrest years of overdraft.
Groundwater is stressed by a demand that often outpaces natural and artificial recharge. In California, awareness of groundwater’s importance resulted in the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 that aims to have the most severely depleted basins in a state of balance in about 20 years.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
Dramatic swings in weather patterns
over the past few years in California are stark reminders of
climate variability and regional vulnerability. Alternating years
of drought and intense rain events make long-term planning for
storing and distributing water a challenging task.
Current weather forecasting capabilities provide details for
short time horizons. Attend the Paleo Drought
Workshop in San Pedro on April 19 to learn more about
research efforts to improve sub-seasonal to seasonal
precipitation forecasting, known as S2S, and how those models
could provide more useful weather scenarios for resource
managers.
A drought has lingered in the
Colorado River Basin since 2000, causing reservoir storage to
decline from nearly full to about half of capacity. So far this
year, a meager snowpack in the Rocky Mountains hasn’t helped
much.
In fact, forecasters say this winter will likely go down as the
sixth-driest on record for the river system that supplies water
to seven states, including California, and Mexico.
On our Lower
Colorado River Tour, April 11-13, you will meet with water
managers from the three Lower Basin states: Nevada, Arizona and
California. The three states are working to finalize a Drought
Contingency Plan to take voluntary cuts to keep Lake Mead, the
nation’s largest reservoir, from hitting critical levels and
causing a shortage declaration.
California’s 2012-2016 drought
revealed vulnerabilities for water users throughout the state,
and the long-term record suggests more challenges may lie ahead.
An April 19
workshop in San Pedro will highlight new information about
drought durations in Southern California watersheds dating
back centuries.
Most people see the Grand Canyon from the rim, thousands of feet above where the Colorado River winds through it for almost 300 miles.
But to travel it afloat a raft is to experience the wondrous majesty of the canyon and the river itself while gaining perspective about geology, natural beauty and the passage of time.
Beginning at Lees Ferry, some 30,000 people each year launch downriver on commercial or private trips. Before leaving, they are dutifully briefed by a National Park Service ranger who explains to them about the unique environment that awaits them, how to keep it protected and, most importantly, how to protect themselves.
They also are told about the pair of ravens that will inevitably follow them through the canyon, seizing every opportunity to scrounge food.
Tickets are now on sale for the Water Education Foundation’s April 11-13 tour of the Lower Colorado River.
Don’t miss this opportunity to visit key sites along one of the nation’s most famous rivers, including a private tour of Hoover Dam, Central Arizona Project’s Mark Wilmer pumping plant and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge. The tour also visits the Salton Sea, Slab City, the All-American Canal and farming regions in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.
Drought and climate change are having a noticeable impact on the
Colorado River Basin, and that is posing potential challenges to
those in the Southwestern United States and Mexico who rely on
the river.
In the just-released Winter 2017-18 edition of River
Report, writer Gary Pitzer examines what scientists
project will be the impact of climate change on the Colorado
River Basin, and how water managers are preparing for a future of
increasing scarcity.
Rising temperatures from climate change are having a noticeable
effect on how much water is flowing down the Colorado River. Read
the latest River Report to learn more about what’s
happening, and how water managers are responding.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
The Colorado River Delta once spanned nearly 2 million acres and
stretched from the northern tip of the Gulf of California in
Mexico to Southern California’s Salton Sea. Today it’s one-tenth
that size, yet still an important estuary, wildlife habitat and
farming region even though Colorado River flows rarely reach the
sea.
Since 2000, the Colorado River Basin has experienced an historic,
extended drought causing reservoir storage in the Colorado River
system to decline from nearly full to about half of capacity. For
the Lower Basin, a key point has been to maintain the level of
Lake Mead to prevent a shortage declaration.
A healthy snowfall in the Rockies has reduced the odds of a
shortage this year, but the basin states still must come to terms
with a static supply and growing demands, as well as future
impacts from climate change.
On our Lower
Colorado River Tour, April 5-7, you will meet with water
managers from the three Lower Basin states: Nevada, Arizona and
California. Federal, state and local agencies will update you on
the latest hydrologic conditions and how recent storms might
change plans for water supply and storage.
A troublesome invasive species is
the quagga mussel, a tiny freshwater mollusk that attaches itself
to water utility infrastructure and reproduces at a rapid rate,
causing damage to pipes and pumps.
First found in the Great Lakes in 1988 (dumped with ballast water
from overseas ships), the quagga mussel along with the zebra
mussel are native to the rivers and lakes of eastern Europe and
western Asia, including the Black, Caspian and Azov Seas and the
Dneiper River drainage of Ukraine and Ponto-Caspian
Sea.
This issue of Western Water examines the ongoing effort
between the United States and Mexico to develop a
new agreement to the 1944 Treaty that will continue the
binational cooperation on constructing Colorado River
infrastructure, storing water in Lake Mead and providing instream
flows for the Colorado River Delta.
As vital as the Colorado River is to the United States and
Mexico, so is the ongoing process by which the two countries
develop unique agreements to better manage the river and balance
future competing needs.
The prospect is challenging. The river is over allocated as urban
areas and farmers seek to stretch every drop of their respective
supplies. Since a historic treaty between the two countries was
signed in 1944, the United States and Mexico have periodically
added a series of arrangements to the treaty called minutes that
aim to strengthen the binational ties while addressing important
water supply, water quality and environmental concerns.
Lake Havasu is a reservoir on the Colorado River that supplies
water to the Colorado River
Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project. It is located at
the California/Arizona border, approximately 150 miles southeast
of Las Vegas, Nevada and 30 miles southeast of Needles,
California.
Situated in southwest Riverside County near the Santa Ana
Mountains – about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles – Lake
Mathews is a
major reservoir in Southern California.
As one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world,
the Imperial Valley
receives its water from the Colorado River via the
All-American Canal. Rainfall is scarce in the desert region at
less than three inches per year and groundwater is of little
value.
This issue looks at the historic drought that has gripped the
Colorado River Basin since 2000 and discusses the lessons
learned, the continuing challenges and what the future might
hold.
The dramatic decline in water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell
is perhaps the most visible sign of the historic drought that has
gripped the Colorado River Basin for the past 16 years. In 2000,
the reservoirs stood at nearly 100 percent capacity; today, Lake
Powell is at 49 percent capacity while Lake Mead has dropped to
38 percent. Before the late season runoff of Miracle May, it
looked as if Mead might drop low enough to trigger the first-ever
Lower Basin shortage determination in 2016.
Read the excerpt below from the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here to subscribe to Western
Water and get full access.
This issue looks at the dilemma of the shrinking Salton Sea. The
shallow, briny inland lake at the southeastern edge of California
is slowly evaporating and becoming more saline – threatening the
habitat for fish and birds and worsening air quality as dust from
the dry lakebed is whipped by the constant winds.
The shallow, briny inland lake at the southeastern edge of
California is slowly evaporating and becoming more saline –
threatening the habitat for fish and birds and worsening air
quality as dust from the dry lakebed is whipped by the constant
winds.
(Read this excerpt from the May/June 2015 issue along with
the editor’s note. Click here to
subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
After much time, study and investment, the task of identifying
solutions to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Colorado
River is underway. People from the Upper and Lower basins
representing all interest groups are preparing to put their
signatures to documents aimed at ensuring the river’s vitality
for the next 50 years and beyond.
This 3-day, 2-night tour followed the course of the
lower Colorado River through Nevada, Arizona and California, and
included a private tour of Hoover Dam.
This issue updates progress on crafting and implementing
California’s 4.4 plan to reduce its use of Colorado River water
by 800,000 acre-feet. The state has used as much as 5.2 million
acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, but under pressure
from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and the other six states
that share this resource, California’s Colorado River parties
have been trying to close the gap between demand and supply. The
article – delayed to include the latest information from
Babbitt’s Dec.
This issue updates progress on California’s Colorado River Water
Use Plan (commonly called the 4.4 Plan ), with a special focus on
the Salton Sea restoration/water transfer dilemma. It also
includes information on the proposed MWD-Palo Verde Irrigation
District deal, the Colorado River Delta, and the legislative
debate in the national and state capitals.
With passage of the original Dec. 31, 2002, deadline to have a
Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) in place for the
Colorado River, California suffered a cutback in the surplus
Colorado River flows it had relied upon by years. Further
negotiations followed in an attempt to bring the California
parties to an agreement. This issue examines the history leading
to the QSA, the state of affairs of the so-called 4.4 Plan as of
early March, and gives readers a clearer crystal ball with which
to speculate about California’s water future on the Colorado
River.
This issue of Western Water provides the latest information on
some of the philosophical, political and practical ideas being
discussed on the river. Some of these issues were discussed at
the Water Education Foundation’s Colorado River Symposium, “The
Ties that Bind: Policy and the Evolving Law of the Colorado
River,” held last fall at The Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe, New
Mexico – site of negotiations on the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
This issue of Western Water explores the issues
surrounding and the components of the Colorado River Basin
seven-state proposed agreement released Feb. 3 regarding sharing
shortages on the river, and new plans to improve the river’s
management. The article includes excerpts from the Foundation’s
September 2005 Colorado River Symposium held in Santa Fe, New
Mexico.
This issue of Western Water marks the 85th anniversary of the
Colorado River Compact and considers its role in the past and
present on key issues such as federal funding for water projects
and international issues. Much of the content for this magazine
came from the Foundation’s September Colorado River Symposium,
The Colorado River Compact at 85 and Changes on the River.
This card includes information about the Colorado River, who uses
the river, how the river’s water is divided and other pertinent
facts about this vital resource for the Southwest. Beautifully
illustrated with color photographs.
In 1997, the Foundation sponsored a three-day, invitation-only
symposium at Bishop’s Lodge, New Mexico, site of the 1922
Colorado River Compact signing, to discuss the historical
implications of that agreement, current Colorado River issues and
future challenges. The 204-page proceedings features the panel
discussions and presentations on such issues as the Law of the
River, water marketing and environmental restoration.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch map, which is
suitable for framing, explains the river’s apportionment, history
and the need to adapt its management for urban growth and
expected climate change impacts.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
The 20-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Marketing provides
background information on water rights, types of transfers and
critical policy issues surrounding this topic. First published in
1996, the 2005 version offers expanded information on
groundwater banking and conjunctive use, Colorado River
transfers and the role of private companies in California’s
developing water market.
Order in bulk (25 or more copies of the same guide) for a reduced
fee. Contact the Foundation, 916-444-6240, for details.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
This 3-day, 2-night tour follows the course of the lower Colorado River through Nevada, Arizona and California, and includes a private tour of Hoover Dam.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA), signed in 2003,
defined the rights to a portion of Colorado River water for San
Diego County Water Authority, Coachella Valley Water District,
Imperial Irrigation District and the Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California.
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.
The Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program aims
to balance use of Colorado River water resources with the
conservation of native species and their habitat. A key component
of the program is the restoration and enhancement of existing
riparian and marsh habitat along the lower Colorado River.
Lee Ferry on the Arizona-Utah border is a key dividing point
between the Colorado River’s Upper and Lower basins.
This split is important when it comes to determining how much
water will be delivered from the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin
[for a description of the Upper and Lower basins, visit the
Colorado River page].
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam
in 1964 created Lake Powell. Both are located in north-central
Arizona near the Utah border. Lake Powell acts as a holding tank
for outflow from the Colorado River Upper Basin States: Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The water stored in Lake Powell is used for recreation, power
generation and delivering water to the Lower Basin states of
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was historic and heroic for being
first to lead an expedition down the Colorado River in 1869. A major
who lost an arm in the Civil War Battle of Shiloh, he was an
explorer, geologist, geographer and ethnologist.
California’s Colorado River Water Use Plan (known colloquially as
the 4.4 Plan) intends to wean the state from its reliance on the
surplus flows from the river and return California to its annual
4.4 million acre-feet basic apportionment of the river.
In the past, California has also used more than its basic
apportionment. Consequently, the U.S. Department of
Interior urged California to devise a plan to reduce its water
consumption to its basic entitlement.
In 2005, after six years of severe
drought in the Colorado River Basin, federal officials and
representatives of the seven basin states — California, Arizona,
Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — began building a
framework to better respond to drought conditions and coordinate
the operations of the basin’s two key reservoirs, Lake Powell and
Lake Mead.
The resulting Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and
the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead (Interim
Guidelines) identified the conditions for shortage determinations
and details of coordinated reservoir operations. The 2007 Interim
Guidelines remain in effect through Dec. 31, 2025.
The turbulent Colorado River is one
of the most heavily regulated and hardest working rivers in the
world.
Geography
The Colorado falls some 10,000 feet on its way from the Rocky
Mountains to the Gulf of California, helping to sustain a range
of habitats and ecosystems as it weaves through mountains and
deserts.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study and what its
finding might mean for the future of the lifeblood of the
Southwest.
The Colorado River is one of the most heavily relied upon water
supply sources in the world, serving 35 million people in seven
states and Mexico. The river provides water to large cities,
irrigates fields, powers turbines to generate electricity,
thrills recreational enthusiasts and serves as a home for birds,
fish and wildlife.
This printed issue of Western Water explores the
historic nature of some of the key agreements in recent years,
future challenges, and what leading state representatives
identify as potential “worst-case scenarios.” Much of the content
for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the Colorado River Symposium. The Foundation
will publish the full proceedings of the Symposium in 2012.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River drought, and the ongoing institutional and
operational changes underway to maintain the system and meet the
future challenges in the Colorado River Basin.
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Colorado River
Delta, its ecological significance and the lengths to which
international, state and local efforts are targeted and achieving
environmental restoration while recognizing the needs of the
entire river’s many users.
This issue of Western Water asks whether a groundwater
compact is needed to manage this shared resource today. In the
water-stressed West, there will need to be a recognition of
sharing water resources or a line will need to be drawn in the
sand against future growth.
“In the West, when you touch water, you touch
everything.” – Rep. Wayne Aspinall, D-Colorado, chair,
House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, 1959-1973
Rapid population growth and chronic droughts could augur dramatic
changes for communities along the lower Colorado River. In
Arizona, California and Nevada, a robust economy is spurring
communities to find enough water to sustain the steady pace of
growth. Established cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix continue
their expansion but there is also activity in smaller, rural
areas on Arizona’s northwest fringe where developers envision
hundreds of thousands of new homes in the coming decades.
With interstate discussions of critical Colorado River issues
seemingly headed for stalemate, Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton stepped in May 2 to defuse, or at least defer, a
potentially divisive debate over water releases from Lake Powell.
With interstate discussions of critical Colorado River issues
seemingly headed for stalemate, Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton stepped in May 2 to defuse, or at least defer, a
potentially divisive debate over water releases from Lake Powell.
In a letter to governors of the seven Colorado River Basin
states, Norton preserved the status quo of river operations for
five months, giving states and stakeholders a chance to move back
from the edge before positions had hardened on two key issues:
(1) shortage guidelines for the Lower Basin and (2) Upper Basin/
Lower Basin reservoir operations, particularly at Lake Powell.
But Norton served notice that she wants discussions on those two
issues to continue, possibly outside of the annual operation plan
(AOP) consultation process, which at least one observer described
as unwieldy.
Drawn from a special Colorado River stakeholder symposium held in
January 2002 at The Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this
article provides an overview of several Colorado River issues
that may or may not be resolved through consensus. Some of these
issues include providing water for the Colorado River Delta,
endangered species, dam re-operation and potential future trends
around the basin as they relate to the California 4.4 Plan,
drought and governance.
The situation is true anywhere: when resources are stretched,
tensions rise. In the arid Southwestern United States, this
resource is water and tensions over it have been ever present
since the westward migration in the 18th Century. Nowhere in this
region has the competition for water been fiercer than in the
Colorado River Basin. Whether it is more water for agriculture,
more water for cities, more water for American Indian tribes or
more water for the environment – there is a continuous quest by
parties to obtain additional supplies of this “liquid gold” from
the Colorado River. Sometimes the avenue chosen to acquire this
desert wealth is the court system, as exemplified by the landmark
Arizona v. California dispute that stretched for over 30 years.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies. Specific topics
addressed include the role of the Interior secretary in the
basin, California’s 4.4 plan, water marketing and future
challenges identified by participants.
Drawn from a special stakeholder symposium held in September 1999
in Keystone, Colorado, this issue explores how we got to where we
are today on the Colorado River; an era in which the traditional
water development of the past has given way to a more
collaborative approach that tries to protect the environment
while stretching available water supplies.