If federal officials want tribal support for Colorado River
deals, they need to pay tribes to conserve, protect their
future water use and include them in negotiations, tribal
leaders said Wednesday at a conference in southwestern
Colorado. Basin states and the federal government are
negotiating a new set of operating rules to replace existing
drought-response agreements that expire in 2026. Tribes weren’t
included when the agreements were originally negotiated in
2007. Basin officials should not make the same mistake again,
tribes say. … Compensating tribes for not using their
water, and for choosing to cut back on the water they do use,
is another key point [for the tribes.]
Hydropower generation in the U.S. West plunged to a 22-year low
last year — dropping 11 percent from the year before, according
to a new federal data analysis. The total amount produced
in the region amounted to 141.5 million megawatt-hours, or
about 60 percent of the country’s total hydroelectricity output
in the 2022-23 “water year,” per the data published
by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
… On the other hand, a series of atmospheric rivers in
California spurred an increase in hydroelectricity production
in the Golden State — nearly doubling it in comparison to the
previous water year, the analysis noted.
Last year, Pacific Gas & Electric announced that it would
demolish the [Eel River's] Scott and Cape Horn dams and
decommission the entire Potter Valley power project.
… Removing the dams will help restore natural river
flows, which will improve fish habitat along the Eel River.
That’s been a longtime objective of the Round Valley Indian
Tribes. The tribes have strong historic and cultural ties to
the river and its bounty. When the dams come down, the Eel
River will become the longest free-flowing river in California
according to fish advocates. Salmon, steelhead and trout all
will benefit. Lake Pillsbury will disappear. Demolition is not
restoration, though, and there will be ripple effects on other
nearby natural areas.
Near the California-Oregon border, reservoirs that once
submerged valleys have been drained, revealing a stark
landscape that had been underwater for generations. A thick
layer of muddy sediment covers the sloping ground, where
workers have been scattering seeds and leaving meandering
trails of footprints. In the cracked mud, seeds are sprouting
and tiny green shoots are appearing. With water passing freely
through tunnels in three dams, the Klamath River has returned
to its ancient channel and is flowing unhindered for the first
time in more than a century through miles of waterlogged lands.
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.
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”
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.
California’s Yurok Tribe, which had 90% of its territory taken
from it during the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, will be getting
a slice of its land back to serve as a new gateway to Redwood
National and State Parks visited by 1 million people a year.
The Yurok will be the first Native people to manage tribal land
with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of
understanding signed Tuesday. … Much of the property was
paved over by a lumber operation that worked there for 50 years
and also buried Prairie Creek, where salmon would swim upstream
from the Pacific to spawn. … The ’O Rew property represents
just a tiny fraction of the more than 500,000 acres of the
ancestral land of the Yurok, whose reservation straddles the
lower 44 miles of the Klamath River. The Yurok tribe is
also helping lead efforts in the largest dam removal
project in U.S. history along the California-Oregon border
to restore the Klamath and boost the salmon population.
After decades of advocating, tribal members cheered as a blast
at JC Boyle Dam this year kicked off the process of drawing
down the reservoirs behind three Klamath River dams. The
removal is expected to restore the river and reopen spawning
habitat that salmon haven’t been able to reach for more than a
century. OPB science reporter and editor Cassandra Profita
brings us the perspective of the tribes living along the
Klamath River: what the country’s largest dam removal project
means to them and their hopes for the future.
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.
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.
The Environmental Protection Agency has granted approval to a
North County tribe to administer a water quality standards
program on its reservation. The Rincon Band of Luiseño
Indians has become the 11th tribe to secure the right to uphold
its own water quality standards out of the 148 federally
recognized tribes in the Pacific Southwest region, which is
comprised of Arizona, California and Nevada. The move
means the tribe can operate in a manner akin to a state,
allowing it to implement and manage specific environmental
regulatory functions and the ability to secure grant funding to
support its programs.
… 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.
… Verlon Jose is one of several tribal leaders nationwide who
are growing frustrated with the Biden administration and its
ambitious plans for clean-energy projects that could affect
their ancestral lands. While the White House has worked to
repair the federal government’s relationships with Indigenous
peoples, that effort is conflicting with another Biden
priority: expediting projects essential for the energy
transition.
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 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.
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.
According to a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as the
Winters Doctrine, Native American reservations are entitled to
enough water to meet their tribe’s needs. That doctrine was
recently invoked during a push by tribes to restore the Klamath
River, which flows through Oregon and California. The goal, in
part, is to restore the spawning grounds for fish for the first
time in more than 100 years. Indigenous Affairs Reporter Debra
Krol from the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network,
joins The Excerpt to discuss the ongoing battle over Indigenous
water rights.
CalTrout, McKinleyville Community Services District, the Wiyot
Tribe, Redwood Community Action Agency, and local artists
collaborated to design and install interpretive signage at the
site of a recently completed restoration and public access
project at Baduwa’t estuary. Baduwa’t is now known as the Mad
River but is not a direct translation. The signage was
installed on Monday, February 12, 2024 at the western end of
School Road in McKinleyville. The new installation includes
three interpretive signs with artwork by Alme Allen and Jullia
Finkelstein. Over the past eight years, the sign’s narrative
was cultivated with the Wiyot Tribe, CalTrout’s project manager
Mary Burke, and Denise Newman with RCAA – whose designs
artfully thread interpretive themes together.
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.
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.
Iron Gate, the lowest of the Klamath dams, was breached first
on Jan. 9, followed by J.C. Boyle in Oregon, and finally, Copco
1. Draining the three reservoirs marks another milestone toward
the removal of dams in the Lower Klamath
Project. … In total, KRRC expects 5 to 7 million
cubic yards of sediment — the same amount that the Klamath
River would normally drain in a single year — to wash
downstream over a short period of time. The material, composed
mostly of very fine silt and dead algae, has imbued the river
with a dark coffee color. For several days last week,
dissolved oxygen levels in the first 20 miles below Iron Gate
dam hovered close to zero. Decomposing algae rob water of
oxygen, as do oxidizing minerals. As the last of the reservoirs
drained, they released oxygen-poor water, as well.
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.