Colorado River Talks Must Continue as Deadlines Loom

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The Colorado River and its tributaries are ribbons of life in the arid West, providing water to more than 35 million people, irrigating millions of acres of farms and ranches, a resource for the 30 Tribes in the basin, and sustaining habitat for more than 70 percent of all wildlife in the region, including hundreds of bird species. 

This is a crucial moment in the Colorado River’s history—the rules governing how it is managed expire in 2026. The federal government, which operates the major dams and reservoirs on the Colorado River, initiated a process to revise these rules in 2022, and decision makers from the seven states that share the Colorado River water supply (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) have been deadlocked in negotiations ever since.  

The central challenge is how to divide a water supply that simply has less to give.  

Extended drought and warming temperatures in the 21st century have reduced the Colorado River’s water by about 20 percent compared to the 20th century. Lake Powell and Lake Mead—giant reservoirs that store Colorado River water behind Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, respectively—were full in the year 2000, but today are two-thirds empty, as water users and evaporation have chipped away at the stored water over the past 25 years, with less and less snow melt reaching the river to compensate. New rules are urgently needed to avoid draining the reservoirs. 

While a shrinking Colorado River is a slow-moving disaster, we’re nearly out of time.  

The good news is that solutions do exist that can help urban and rural communities thrive, provide greater opportunity for Tribes to benefit from their water rights, and maintain a healthier river.  

These solutions rely on securing an improved long-term water management framework, additional innovative policy and technological adaptations, and coordination and funding that: 

• Adjust in real-time to changing water conditions. Over the past 25 years, we learned that our water management does not adequately anticipate changing climate conditions. Rules that tie water supply to actual river flows can help limit that uncertainty. 

• Rebuild water storage and raise water levels in the major reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead. Two successive dry years will put these reservoirs dangerously close to dead pool, a status that means water cannot be released from the dams to downstream. More water in reservoir storage will provide greater predictability in the available water supply and prevent the recurrence of having to manage from crisis to crisis. 

• Provide flexibility in the form of a conservation reserve in Colorado River reservoirs to benefit water users, river operations, and the environment. Benefits include infrastructure protection, improved water supply reliability for municipal and agricultural water users, increased opportunity for Tribes to realize value from their water rights, and improved outcomes for environmental resources. 

• Fund and incentivize durable water conservation solutions to build resilience to help water users adjust to and live with what Mother Nature provides; fund and incentivize projects to improve the health of the watershed (where the water supplies for the Colorado River and its tributaries originate). 

• Protect remaining habitat relied on by hundreds of species of birds and other wildlife by rigorously analyzing the impacts that reduced river flows may have on habitat and identify adequate mitigation strategies. Most of the natural heritage of the arid West depends on wetlands and rivers. If we want this region to sustain hunting and fishing, birdwatching, and the awe that comes from seeing a wild animal unexpectedly from the car window or the trail, we need to take care of the places they need to live. 

• Include stewardship targets for flows in the Colorado River where water conserved in reservoirs can be managed in a way that benefits multiple users—including the environment. For instance, water stored in Lake Powell, upstream of the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead, could be released strategically not only for downstream water users like agriculture, cities, and hydropower, but also to address water temperature targets (to help native fish over nonnative fish, for example), invasive species management, and flows (high flow water releases from Glen Canyon Dam into the Grand Canyon help move sediment and mimic natural flood events that help restore the riparian and aquatic ecosystems). When water users request access to their stored water, it can be released.  

• Maintain opportunities for negotiations with Mexico to ensure that binational dialogue, which will take place in parallel to U.S. interstate negotiations, can be successful. Past United States – Mexico agreements have resulted in Mexico committing to share water shortages with U.S. Colorado River water users, to voluntarily conserve additional water and store it in U.S. reservoirs, and to work collaboratively with the U.S. to restore flows and habitat in the Colorado River Delta in Mexico. 

For the last couple of years, the seven states that share the Colorado River have been mired in zero-sum-game discussions about who gets how much water. The “Law of the River”—the Treaties, Compacts, laws, and regulations that form the legal framework for Colorado River management—is based on math to divide the waters that cannot hold up in light of a diminishing water supply. This gives ample ammunition for disagreeing parties to each point to language in the Law of the River proving they are right, and others are wrong.  

Arizona’s stake in this negotiation is substantial. In 1968, Arizona accepted the potential “junior status” water rights to secure support for developing the Central Arizona Project, the 336-mile-long canal that delivers Colorado River water to the central, populous parts of the state. Consequently, existing law may require that Colorado River shortages apply first to Arizona’s water rights that the state developed after 1968. Arizona’s opportunity in the Colorado River basin state negotiations is to find other water users who see the human and political risk in forcing Arizona to absorb the full brunt of the shortage and can help mitigate that risk by facilitating flexible water sharing transactions or conserving water themselves.  

The Lower Basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada) have offered to reduce use by 1.5 million-acre feet (California’s full share of the Colorado River is 4.4 million acre feet; Arizona’s is 2.8 million acre feet; and Nevada’s is 300,000 acre feet). Because of Arizona’s junior rights (discussed above), that looks like a consistent 760,000-acre-foot water reduction, which is roughly 10 percent of Arizona’s total water use. Yet even this substantial commitment to reduce water use may not be enough to stabilize the water supply. We hope that continued dialogue will yield an agreement that is acceptable to both the Lower Basin and the Upper Basin states.  

Should the states not come to agreement, risks in the event of interstate litigation over Colorado River management are substantial. There are legal uncertainties in how courts might decide on a host of unsettled issues, including: whether Upper Basin States must ensure Colorado River deliveries to the Lower Basin in the face of increasingly uncertain water supplies or else absorb shortages similar to the Lower Basin; the degree to which Upper Basin States must provide half the Colorado River water the United States delivers to Mexico; whether use of Lower Basin tributaries to the Colorado River inform allocations between the Upper and Lower Basin States; and whether evaporation should be considered part of and imposed on the Lower Basin state's allocations of Colorado River water.  

There is a real chance that states could go to court over these disputes, and that could be devastating. Litigation limits problem solving at the scale needed to address the challenges facing the Colorado River, sacrificing information sharing for legal posturing, denying the full bench of Colorado River Basin players an opportunity to have their interests identified and factored into the decision-making process. Litigation may block water users from effectively preparing for the uncertainties to come, offering little clarity on how to adjust and adapt to a changing system. Litigation may constrain the willingness to address problems and limit the range of possible solutions to the challenges confronting the Colorado River Basin. Litigation is likely to reduce control of local and regional authorities to identify solutions to steer their own destinies and leaves little room to come back to the table to adjust based on experience, new information, and actual conditions.  Finally, litigation would take years (if not decades) and vast legal fees, and the outcomes are decidedly uncertain.  

What is certain is that solutions for managing an increasingly variable water supply are needed now. It is also certain that the states’ negotiators and Colorado River water users and stakeholders know the Colorado River much better than the Supreme Court (where lawsuits would immediately land in the event of state versus state litigation).  

Over the past quarter-century, the Colorado River Basin’s policy- and decision-makers have prided themselves on developing collaborative solutions for the water users and environmental resources dependent on this river and its tributaries. There have been major accomplishments, such as the passage of the Drought Contingency Plan and binational collaboration with Mexico that has yielded habitat restoration projects in the Colorado River Delta.  

That legacy cannot be allowed to fail at this critical time in history.   

We need to develop innovative water management tools, policies, and programs that recognize the unique conditions and differing needs of water use sectors, the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin, Tribes, and the environment.  

The Colorado River is a living river—not just plumbing and pipes to move water. There is a cultural connection to place that only this river provides. It sustains habitat for birds, fish, and other wildlife, from the headwaters in the Upper Basin to the river’s end in the Colorado River Delta in Mexico. Let’s keep this in mind as negotiations continue and (hopefully) come to a satisfactory consensus resolution.