House lawmakers should move quickly to adopt nine new water
settlements for Native American tribes across the West, along
with updates to a handful of others, or risk seeing the $12
billion price tag grow even larger, a subcommittee chair warned
Tuesday. The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water,
Wildlife and Fisheries reviewed a dozen bills that would enact
new agreements or update existing settlements for tribal water
resources across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Montana.
“Few issues in the American West are as pressing or vexing as
the escalating water crisis,” subcommittee Chair Cliff Bentz
(R-Ore.) said. “As the water in the West continues to dry up
and become more and more dear, tribal water issues are becoming
more and more critical.”
Recent federal investments in climate resilience for Indigenous
communities in Nevada have included funds to modernize tribal
power grids against wildfires, build water storage for people
reliant on well water and bring electricity to homes. U.S.
Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and Matthew Dannenberg, a senior
tribal liaison for the U.S. Department of Energy, gave a
glimpse Monday into infrastructure upgrades that will help
Nevada’s tribal nations better cope with climate change. Nevada
tribal communities have access to more than $813 million
between the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law and the American Rescue Plan, all of which
were passed by Congress and signed into law during the
Biden-Harris administration.
The Medicine Lake Highlands complex of public lands, some 30
miles northeast of Mt. Shasta in California’s Cascade region,
is a truly remarkable place. … This area has been
called Sáttítla for time immemorial by the Pit River
Tribe. It is remote and hardly a blip on most people’s radar.
Yet it is on the radar of resource developers. The Pit River
Tribe has been fighting for three decades to safeguard this
landscape and the waters, cultural values and habitats it
provides from proposed development. Last November, the
Tribe launched a new initiative to permanently protect the
Sáttítla region as a national monument. Trout Unlimited,
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and other conservation-oriented
angling and hunting groups are supporting this campaign.
The newly formed Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy
Clinic at Yale Law School is partnering with the Delta
Tribal Environmental Coalition (DTEC) to restore and protect
the Delta – a resource that is intrinsically connected to the
livelihood and traditions of their communities. The coalition
consists of the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians,
Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Winnemem Wintu Tribe,
Little Manila Rising and Restore the Delta. The Yale Clinic
represents community-based organizations, Tribal Nations, and
non-profit coalitions, providing high quality legal services
for issues at the intersection of environmental, social, and
Indigenous justice concerns. The Clinic aims to tackle issues
such as inequitable distribution of environmental benefits and
burdens, exclusion of impacted communities from environmental
decision-making processes and repair for communities that have
been alienated from environmental resources and governance.
A House Natural Resources subcommittee will review a $5 billion
deal to ensure tribal water rights in northeastern Arizona,
including funds for a new pipeline connecting Lake Powell to
tribal reservation in the Colorado River Basin. In the Senate,
the Indian Affairs Committee will also take up water rights
legislation, along with tribal forest management legislation.
The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and
Fisheries will hold a hearing Tuesday to review the
“Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act of
2024,” along with nearly a dozen other measures addressing
Native American water rights.
One in 3 households on the Navajo Nation lacks access to safe
drinking water, but a $5 billion deal reached in May could
change that by giving the sprawling reservation’s 175,000
residents rights to the highly prized Colorado River. The
agreement needs Congress’ blessing, though. And there are
plenty of reasons for pessimism. Those include the eye-popping
price tag, as well as controversial provisions granting the
tribe the right to move water across legal boundaries and lease
its supplies to cities or farms. Those issues inject the
settlement squarely into the heated negotiations over how to
parcel out the Colorado River’s diminishing flows among the
seven states that rely on it.
Last Sunday marked the 2024 Trinity River Clean Up in Hoopa.
The clean-up is an on-river and land effort to clean up, and
share information about protecting, the Trinity River. This
year at least 65 people collected over two truckloads of trash,
while also swimming and rafting. The local Rios to Rivers 2024
Paddle Tribal Waters cohort and Warrior Institute were among
them, along with many local youth. “The river clean-up was a
great success. It gave our community an opportunity to take
pride in our valley and keep our rivers clean,” explained new
Hoopa Valley Tribe councilman and longtime clean-up supporter
Joseph Marshall.
The U.S. Geological Survey published its annual accounting of
the Navajo aquifer which underlies Black Mesa on the Navajo
Nation. The aquifer supplies drinking water to Kayenta, Tuba
City and the Hopi villages. The USGS has monitored the levels
in several dozen wells tapped into the Navajo aquifer since the
1970s. Hydrologist Jon Mason, who authored the report, says the
data show the aquifer is “healthy.” “It’s really high-quality
water, too, which is unusual for a desert, so it’s a really
amazing aquifer. And it’s still intact. There’s still a lot of
water there to be used if they want to use it,” he says.
… When flames finally came for the old Lahaina town in
August, they killed at least 101 people and destroyed thousands
of homes. … The fire has forced a reckoning over the
ways outside interests have historically exploited the island’s
natural environment. But for those who want change, Lahaina’s
wholesale destruction has presented an unprecedented
opportunity to reimagine the town from the groundwater up, a
chance to restore the wetlands and the hallowed site at their
heart. … Such a project might take years, and it would have
to clear many practical and political hurdles. But with Lahaina
reduced to ashes, some of the state’s most influential voices,
from politicians to tourism groups, are signaling their support
for restoration, an early indicator that the effort may have
more momentum than ever. In the burn scar, the water itself is
already making a statement. Freed from the constrictions that
long suppressed its flow, it is seeping back. In once-dry
ditches and abandoned fields, beneath piles of twisted metal,
rubble and charred ruins, the water is returning all on its
own, a sign, experts say, that restoration is ecologically
possible.
Two college buddies who spent a day fly fishing on the
Sacramento River came home with more than fish tales. For
retired city planners Greg Collins and James Holloway, it
prompted a new book, “Seven Generations: The Past, Present and
Future of the Tulare Lake Basin,” published in May. This might
beg the question, what does the Tulare Lake Basin have to do
with the Sacramento River? On that fishing trip, Collins
and Holloway wondered if the four rivers that feed Tulare Lake
— the Kings, Kaweah, Tule and Kern — ever resembled the
Sacramento with its lush green banks, abundant birdlife, and
currents full of fish such as salmon and sturgeon. … The
Tulare Lake Basin encompasses parts of Fresno, Tulare, Kings
and Kern counties. Collins and Holloway explore the region’s
history, beginning with how Native American tribes lived off
the land. They also discuss its future through environmental
and economic lenses, offering point and counterpoint strategies
indicative of their college degrees (biology and economics,
respectively), lengthy careers in city planning, and volunteer
roles.
Lawmakers from both parties have introduced legislation in
Congress after three Arizona tribal nations came together to
successfully negotiate a sweeping Indian water settlement. …
The settlement will resolve the most significant outstanding
water claims in Arizona and bring water to residents of the
Navajo, Hopi and Southern San Juan Paiute tribes, among many
other benefits. Leaders say it’s critical to move the
legislation forward, not only because of the political
situation, but because talks are underway to reduce water use
on the Colorado River. … The legislation will
authorize $5 billion in federal funding for water
infrastructure on the sovereign territories of the Navajo
Nation, the Hopi Tribe, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe,
the largest water project for an Indian settlement.
Members of Arizona’s congressional delegation introduced
legislation Monday that would authorize a water rights
settlement with three Native American tribes in the Southwest,
providing more certainty for the arid region. The proposal
carries a price tag of $5 billion — larger than any such
agreement enacted by Congress. Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly
of Arizona said the legislation marks a historic step forward
in resolving what has been a decades-long dispute with the
Navajo Nation as well as the Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute
tribes. The legislation would ratify a settlement agreement
that was approved by each of the tribes in May. In all, the
tribes would be guaranteed access to more than 56,000 acre-feet
of Colorado River water along with specific groundwater rights
and protections. The legislation also would establish a
homeland for the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.
In 2022–23, the state of California allocated $100 million to
the University of California to fund research grants supporting
climate change resilience in communities across the state.
Three of the California Climate Action Seed Grant-funded
research projects are establishing collaborations between
academic institutions and Tribal nations to support climate
change resilience through tribal resource management. The
projects involve investigating pinyon pine forest ecology and
cultural values in the Eastern Sierra, monitoring fisheries on
the North Coast, and surveying the changing landscapes of
California Indian Public Domain Lands.
Stephen Roe Lewis grew up seeing stacks of legal briefs at the
dinner table — often, about his tribe’s water. His father, the
late Rodney Lewis, was general counsel for the Gila River
Indian Community and fought for the tribe’s rights to water in
the Southwest, eventually securing in 2004 the largest Native
American water settlement in U.S. history. Years later, Stephen
would become governor of the tribe, whose reservation is about
a half-hour south of downtown Phoenix. Amid his tenure, he’s
been pivotal in navigating a water crisis across the
seven-state Colorado River basin caused by existential drought
made worse by climate change and decades of Western states
overdrawing from the river. Lewis, 56, has leveraged the Gila
River tribe’s water abundance to help Arizona, making his tribe
a power player in the parched region. His fingerprints are on
many recent, high-stakes decisions made in the West about the
future of the river that supports 40 million people, and the
tribe’s influence is only growing.
The Biden administration released a report last week
acknowledging “the historic, ongoing, and cumulative damage and
injustices” that Columbia River dam construction caused
Northwest tribal nations starting in the 20th century,
including decimation of the salmon runs that Indigenous people
were entitled to by government treaty. Across 73 pages, the
report from the U.S. Department of the Interior concludes “the
government afforded little, if any, consideration to the
devastation the dams would bring to Tribal communities,
including to their cultures, sacred sites, economies, and
homes.” But here’s what’s not in the report: The injuries to
Native people were not just an unforeseen byproduct of federal
dam building. They were, in fact, taken into account at the
time. And federal leaders considered that damage a good thing.
In government documents from the 1940s and 1950s, obtained by
Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica, government officials
openly discussed what they called “the Indian problem” on the
Columbia River, referring to the tribes’ fisheries that were
protected under federal treaties.
The Biden administration is preparing to set water standards
for rivers, streams and lakes on hundreds of Native American
reservations for the first time, a move welcomed by tribes as
key for safeguarding natural resources. EPA proposed a rule
last spring to establish “baseline” water quality standards for
the majority of tribes that do not already have standards of
their own. The standards already exist in every state and are
the foundation of efforts to control pollution from wastewater
treatment plants, energy projects, and manufacturing and
chemical industries.
After years of work by the Tule River Tribe, a family of seven
beavers has been released into the South Fork Tule River
watershed on the Tule River Indian Reservation as part of a
multi-year beaver reintroduction effort done in partnership
with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).
Beavers play a critical role in the ecology and stewardship of
the land. They build dams that retain water on the landscape,
extending seasonal flows, increasing summer baseflows,
improving drought and wildfire resilience and better conserving
the Tribe’s drinking water supply, of which about 80% comes
from the Tule River watershed. CDFW wildlife biologists also
expect to eventually see better habitat conditions for a number
of endangered amphibian and riparian-obligate bird species,
including foothill and southern mountain yellow-legged frogs,
western pond turtle, least Bell’s vireo and southwestern willow
flycatcher.
More than a century has passed since members of the Shasta
Indian Nation saw the last piece of their ancestral home — a
landscape along the Klamath River where villages once stood —
flooded by a massive hydroelectric project. Now more than 2,800
acres of land that encompassed the settlement, known as
Kikacéki, will be returned to the tribe. The reclamation is
part of the largest river restoration effort in U.S. history,
the removal of four dams and reservoirs that had cut off the
tribe from the spiritual center of their world. … With the
decommissioning of the dams and draining of the reservoirs,
miles of river valley are visible once more, and the return of
free-flowing water has fueled hopes of reviving the salmon runs
that had sustained the valley’s tribes since time immemorial.
A new law, rooted in a contentious land dispute in southwestern
Colorado, says municipalities that want to annex land within a
reservation must get tribal approval first. While the
idea made good sense to Colorado’s lawmakers — it breezed
through this year’s legislative session — the law might pose a
problem for Durango. The city has contemplated plans to spur
economic growth and tap water stored in Lake Nighthorse, a
federal reservoir south of the city. … If Durango could
access that water, it would increase the city’s storage
capacity to over four months of water, according to a December
2023 analysis outlining three alternatives to draw water from
the federal reservoir. The Southern Ute Indian Tribe also has
rights to water stored in Lake Nighthorse but has not built a
pipeline system to access the supply in part because of costly
fees and infrastructure costs. The Ute Mountain Ute Indian
Tribe, which also has reservation land in Colorado, is also
working to access its water stored in the reservoir.
As work proceeds to remove four dams along the Klamath River,
more than the salmon runs will be restored: The lands long buried
by the now-drained reservoirs will be reclaimed by the people who
were robbed of them more than 100 years ago. The Shasta Indian
Nation will celebrate Tuesday as California Gov. Gavin Newsom
returns about 2,800 acres of the tribe’s most sacred and
culturally important lands that were drowned by the Copco I dam
in the early 20th century. The date also marks the fifth
anniversary of a historic apology made to California tribes by
Newsom. It’s the latest chapter in the nation’s largest-ever dam
removal.
The vast territory known as the Owens Valley was home for
centuries to Native Americans who lived along its rivers and
creeks fed by snowmelt that cascaded down the eastern slopes of
the Sierra Nevada. Then came European settlers, and over time,
tribe members lost access to nearly all of that land.
Eventually, the water was lost, too: In the early 20th century,
the developers of Los Angeles famously built a 226-mile-long
aqueduct from Owens Lake to the city. … Owens Lake is now a
patchwork of saline pools covered in pink crystals and wetlands
studded with gravel mounds designed to catch dust. And today,
the four recognized tribes in the area have less than 2,000
acres of reservation land, estimated Teri Red Owl, a local
Native American leader. But things are changing, tribal members
say. They have recently reclaimed corners of the valley, buoyed
by growing momentum across the country to return land to
Indigenous stewardship, also known as the “Land Back”
movement.
Dave Bitts can bring in over 100 salmon by himself. “That’s an
exceptionally good day. If I catch 20 fish it’s worth the
trip,” says Bitts. At 76, he still fishes for salmon alone.
Standing in the cockpit on the stern deck of his wooden
trawler, Elmarue, he can keep an eye on all six wires; when one
of the lines starts to dance, he brings the fish in, stunning
it with his gaff while it’s still in the water. Then he uses
the tool to hook the salmon behind the gills and swings it onto
the deck. … The California Department of Fish and
Wildlife cited “ongoing issues associated with drought and
climate disruption” as factors leading to the closure of this
year’s salmon fishery, which generates $1.4 billion in a normal
year. In fact, salmon stocks along the West Coast have been in
steep decline for decades, and along with it, the industry that
relies on them. In its heyday, California issued over 7,000
commercial salmon fishing permits. Now there are fewer than
1,000, and only half of those boats are active.
Six tribes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including two in
Colorado, have gained long-awaited access to discussions about
the basin’s water issues — talks that were formerly
limited to states and the federal government. Under an
agreement finalized this month, the tribes will meet every two
months to discuss Colorado River issues with an interstate
water policy commission, the Upper Colorado River Commission,
or UCRC. It’s the first time in the commission’s 76-year
history that tribes have been formally included, and the timing
is key as negotiations about the river’s future intensify.
… Most immediately, the commission wants a key number:
How much water goes unused by tribes and flows down to the
Lower Basin?
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But
demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital
water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the
region – particularly from the Colorado River – was top of mind
at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference, an
event organized by the Bill Lane Center for the American West
that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and scholars
to discuss solutions to urgent problems facing rural Western
regions.
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
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.
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 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.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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
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 American River, with headwaters
in the Tahoe and Eldorado national forests of the Sierra Nevada,
is the birthplace of the California Gold Rush. It currently
serves as a major water supply, recreational destination and
habitat for hundreds of species. The geologically diverse
North, Middle and South forks comprise the American
River or the Río de los Americanos, as it was called during
California’s Mexican rule.
This 109-page publication details the importance of protecting
source water – surface water and groundwater – on reservations
from pollution and includes a step-by-step work plan for tribes
interested in developing a protection plan for their drinking
water. The workbook is designed to serve as a template for such
programs, with forms and tables for photocopying. It also offers
a simplified approach for assessment and protection that focuses
on identifying and managing immediate contamination threats.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 30-minute DVD explains the importance of developing a source
water assessment program (SWAP) for tribal lands and by profiling
three tribes that have created SWAPs. Funded by a grant from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the video complements the
Foundation’s 109-page workbook, Protecting Drinking Water: A
Workbook for Tribes, which includes a step-by-step work plan for
Tribes interested in developing a protection plan for their
drinking water.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
This beautiful 24×36-inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
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.
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.
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 Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The Klamath River Basin is one of the West’s most important and
contentious watersheds.
The watershed is known for its peculiar geography straddling
California and Oregon. Unlike many western rivers, the
Klamath does not originate in snowcapped mountains but rather on
a volcanic plateau.
A broad patchwork of spring-fed streams and rivers in
south-central Oregon drains into Upper Klamath Lake and down into
Lake Ewauna in the city of Klamath Falls. The outflow from Ewauna
marks the beginning of the 263-mile Klamath River.
The Klamath courses south through the steep Cascade Range and
west along the rugged Siskiyou Mountains to a redwood-lined
estuary on the Pacific Ocean just south of Crescent City,
draining a watershed of 10 million acres.
A bounty of resources – water, salmon, timber and minerals – and
a wide range of users turned the remote region into a hotspot for
economic development and multiparty water disputes (See
Klamath River
timeline).
Though the basin has only 115,000 residents, there is seldom
enough water to go around. Droughts are common. The water
scarcity inflames tensions between agricultural,
environmental and tribal interests, namely the basin’s four major
tribes: the Klamath Tribes, the Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Yurok.
Klamath water-use conflicts routinely spill into courtrooms,
state legislatures and Congress.
In 2023, a historic removal of four powers dams on the river
began, signaling hope for restoration of the river and its fish
and easing tensions between competing water interests. In
February 2024, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland
announced a “historic” agreement between tribes and farmers
in the basin over chronic water shortages. The deal
called for a wide range of river and creek restoration work and
modernization of agricultural water supply infrastructure.
Water Development
Farmers and ranchers have drawn irrigation water from basin
rivers and lakes since the late 1900s. Vast wetlands around
Upper Klamath Lake and upstream were drained to grow crops. Some
wetlands have been restored, primarily for migratory birds.
In 1905, the federal government authorized construction of the
Klamath Project, a network of irrigation canals, storage
reservoirs and hydroelectric dams to grow an agricultural
economy in the mostly dry Upper Basin. The Project managed by the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation irrigates about 240,000 acres and
supplies the Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake national wildlife
refuges managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Water Management
Since 1992, federal mandates to restore populations of fish
protected by the Endangered Species
Act have led in some dry years to drastic cuts in
water deliveries to Klamath Project irrigators.
Water in Upper Klamath Lake must be kept above certain
levels for the endangered shortnose and Lost River suckers. Lake
levels and Klamath River flows below Iron Gate Dam also must be
regulated for the benefit of threatened coho salmon (See
Klamath Basin
Chinook and Coho Salmon).
Conflict
In 2001, Reclamation all but cut off irrigation water to hundreds
of basin farmers and ranchers, citing a severe drought and legal
obligations to protect imperiled fish. In response, thousands of
farmers, ranchers and residents flocked to downtown Klamath Falls
to form a “bucket brigade” protest, emptying buckets of water
into the closed irrigation canal. The demonstrations stretched
into the summer, with protestors forcing open the irrigation
headgates on multiple occasions. Reclamation later released some
water to help farmers.
In September 2002, a catastrophic
disease outbreak in the lower Klamath River killed tens of
thousands of ocean-going salmon. The Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen’s Associations sued Reclamation, alleging the Klamath
Project’s irrigation deliveries had violated the Endangered
Species Act. The fishing industry eventually prevailed, and
a federal court ordered an increase to minimum flows in the lower
Klamath.
Compromise
The massive salmon kill and dramatic water shut-off set in motion
a sweeping compromise between the basin’s many competing water
interests: the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the
Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. The 2010 agreements
included:
Removal of four hydroelectric dams
$92.5 million over 10 years to pay farmers to use less water,
increase reservoir storage and help pay for water conservation
and groundwater management projects.
$47 million over 10 years to buy or lease water rights to
increase flows for salmon recovery.
Dam Removals
Congress never funded the two agreements, allowing the key
provisions to expire. The restoration accord dissolved in 2016.
The hydroelectric pact, however, was revived in an amended
version that did not require federal legislation.
The new deal led to the nation’s largest dam removal project ever
undertaken.
California and Oregon formed a
nonprofit organization called the Klamath River Renewal
Corporation to take control of the four essentially obsolete
power dams – J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2 and Iron Gate –
and oversee a $450 million dam demolition and river restoration
project.
Taking out the dams will open more than 420 miles of river and
spawning streams that had been blocked for more than a century,
including cold water pools salmon and trout need to survive the
warming climate.
Demolition crews took out the smallest dam in 2023 and the others
were scheduled to come down by the end of 2024.
The images of yellow heavy machinery tearing into the dam’s
spillway gates prompted a cathartic release for many who have
been fighting for decades to open this stretch of the Klamath.
“I’m still in a little bit of shock,” said Toz Soto,
the Karuk fisheries program manager. “This is actually
happening…It’s kind of like the dog that finally caught the car,
except we’re chasing dam removal.”
The Coachella Valley in Southern California’s Inland Empire is
one of several valleys throughout the state with a water district
established to support agriculture.
Like the others, the Coachella Valley Water District in Riverside
County delivers water to arid agricultural lands and constructs,
operates and maintains a regional agricultural drainage system.
These systems collect drainage water from individual farm drain
outlets and convey the water to a point of reuse, disposal or
dilution.
Every five years the California Department of Water Resources
updates its strategic plan for managing the state’s water
resources, as required by state law.
The California Water Plan, or Bulletin 160, projects the
status and trends of the state’s water supplies and demands
under a range of future scenarios.
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 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 issue of Western Water examines the challenges facing state,
federal and tribal officials and other stakeholders as they work
to manage terminal lakes. It includes background information on
the formation of these lakes, and overviews of the water quality,
habitat and political issues surrounding these distinctive bodies
of water. Much of the information in this article originated at
the September 2004 StateManagement Issues at Terminal Water
Bodies/Closed Basins conference.