Federal water managers recently announced a 10-year plan to manage the critical Colorado River that opens the door to unprecedented water supply cuts to three states and will require near-constant negotiation between water users in the river basin.
The report is the culmination of years of intense and divisive negotiations to replace the 2007 operating guidelines, which governed the river for the last two decades and expire this year.
But unlike previous long-term operating guidelines, the report does not prescribe specific management rules. Instead, it sets parameters for specific operation plans that will be re-negotiated every two years.
Those two-year plans will determine how much water will be released from the system’s two major reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — and how large water cuts will be to users downstream of those reservoirs.
Near Las Vegas, Lake Mead is 27% full. Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona border, is at just 23% of capacity. If it drops an additional 32 feet, water won’t reach its intakes to generate hydroelectric power.
Nearly every year since 2000, water users below the reservoirs have consumed more water than flowed into the river system’s primary water storage banks.
This year, the upper portion of the river’s watershed in the Rocky Mountains had the least snow on record.
THE DECISION marks the first time federal authorities have implemented such a broad management plan for the Colorado River, which provides water for about 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland from the Rocky Mountains to northern Mexico. It was originally divided among the states under a 1922 agreement.
For a century, the seven basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, California, Nevada and Arizona — have successfully worked together to negotiate long-term plans for the river. But this time, the states failed to reach an agreement after three years of negotiation, forcing the federal government to step in.
Federal leaders repeatedly urged the states to find agreement on how to divvy up the shrinking river, but said they would implement their own plan as a last resort. State negotiators for years said they did not want to cede decision-making to the federal government, which could heighten the risk of litigation and mire the basin in legal proceedings and uncertainty.
Federal officials in their announcement said the framework balances water managers’ need for certainty so they can plan their operations with the flexibility needed to manage the river as drought and climate complicate predicting its flows. If the states can find consensus, those agreements can also be worked into the two-year planning process.
“The Department has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s plan has already raised hackles in at least one basin state.
The plan opens the door for major cuts to water supplies for the three Lower Basin states downstream of the reservoirs: Arizona, California and Nevada. Reclamation officials described the potential reductions as “large and unprecedented,” but said even the most drastic cuts might not be enough in critically dry years to stabilize the basin’s two declining reservoirs.
About three-fourths of the water that’s taken out of the river is for agriculture, producing hay, lettuce, broccoli and other crops.
IN DRY years or when reservoir levels fall critically low, those two-year operational plans can include cuts to water supplies in the Lower Basin states of up to 3 million acre-feet, the framework states.
