Seven western states are now at an impasse over how to keep the Colorado River from collapsing due to climate change and overuse.
On Wednesday, the states of California, Arizona and Nevada released their plan outlining how they’d like to manage the river over the next twenty years. The states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico have released a separate, competing plan.
The two factions — known as the Lower and Upper Basin states respectively — vehemently disagree over many of the most important details, including which states should reduce their water use to account for climate change, and by how much.
Current agreements expire in 2026. Beyond that, there’s no certainty for farmers, cities and businesses that rely on Colorado River water for growing food, supporting rural economies, and supplying drinking water to millions of people.
"The two plans are diametrically opposed," said Pat Mulroy, a Colorado River policy expert and the former lead negotiator for the state of Nevada on Colorado River issues. But, she still believes there is a "glimmer of hope" for the seven states to come to an agreement.
Dispute puts economies at risk
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Colorado River in the American West. If you take a shower in Los Angeles, eat broccoli in New York City in January, or see Cirque Du Soleil in Las Vegas, you have used Colorado River water. The 1450-mile long river provides drinking water to 40 million people from Wyoming to Mexico, and its water irrigates nearly all the vegetables Americans eat in the winter.
In Southern California alone, 25% of drinking water comes from the Colorado River. The rest comes from the Sierra Nevada and local sources.
Why the river is shrinking
The current crisis on the Colorado River began in the early 2000s, when water experts began to realize the so-called “Millennium Drought” wasn’t going away. Over the next few years, they realized that climate change was dramatically shrinking the river’s flow. Rising temperatures meant less snowfall in the Rocky Mountains, which is the source of the Colorado River’s water, and more evaporation from big reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell — essentially, a hot drought.
Scientists now believe that for every degree Celsius the climate warms, the Colorado River shrinks by 8%. They predict the river’s flow to continue shrinking by up to 30% by mid-century.
Where current negotiations stand
Management of the Colorado River is generally left to the seven states that use the river and the federal Bureau of Reclamation. Mexico and thirty tribal nations also have rights to Colorado River water, but do not have a formal seat at the negotiating table.
The seven states come together to hash out a deal whenever a new problem on the river presents itself, like increasing use by cities, drought, or — currently — climate change.
The current management plan, which regulates things like how much water gets released from major dams, and how water shortages are shared, expires in 2026.
The competing plans released today would cover the next few decades beyond 2026, during which the river is expected to continue to shrink.
The threat of "deadpool"
In order for Colorado River water to be used by millions of people downstream, it must first pass through two large dams.
But in 2022, water levels in the reservoirs behind those dams dropped to their lowest levels ever — prompting fears that the waterline would fall below the holes on the dams, and get stuck in the reservoirs, cutting off water to everyone in Arizona, Nevada and California.
To avoid this scenario, called “deadpool,” negotiators from California and Arizona – which use the most Colorado River water of any states — agreed last summer to massive temporary cuts in water usage.
Those cuts, plus last year's extraordinarily wet winter, seem to be enough to avoid deadpool in the near future, the Bureau of Reclamation announced Tuesday.
Now, negotiators are trying to figure out how to make some of those cuts permanent, and how much more they need to cut in the future.
Both basins agree the amount of water they use needs to be more responsive to real-time snowpack and reservoir levels, instead of using a set amount every year. But they disagree how exactly to calculate that, and who should be taking the cuts.
The Upper Basin’s proposal
The Upper Basin states — which use far less water than the Lower Basin — think the Lower Basin should shoulder all the responsibility for cutting back in the future.
Their argument has two parts:
First, they argue that lower snowpack and reservoir levels have already forced cities and farmers in the Upper Basin to use less water, so they should not have to cut back any further.
Second, they argue that because the Upper Basin has never used all of the Colorado River water that it’s legally entitled to, they’re not obligated to make any further cuts to address climate change.
“We don't know how much water we're going to have each year. We can't make promises we can't keep,” said Amy Ostdiek of the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
Ostdiek said the Upper Basin may be willing to make some cuts on a voluntary basis, but did not go into specifics.
The Lower Basin’s proposal
California and Arizona have already committed to slashing their water use dramatically, and say they’ll continue to do so in the future. But they think any further cuts to respond to the effects of climate change should be shared by all seven states.
“Adapting to climate change is not just the responsibility of one state or one basin or just the cities or farms,” said JB Hamby, the lead negotiator from California. “It is all of our collective responsibility. Putting the entire burden of climate change on one person or another will result in conflict, and we can do better than that.”
The Lower Basin argues that when reservoir levels drop dangerously low, all seven states need to do their part to avoid deadpool.
"It's a very big gap," said Eric Kuhn, a former water manager for the Upper Colorado River Basin who now writes about the river. "Similar numbers, similar concepts, but who's responsible is a very big difference."
What happens now?
Negotiators from both the Upper and Lower Basin say they still hope to come up with a plan that they all can live with.
Mulroy, the former lead negotiator for Nevada, said she was "pleasantly surprised" to see that the Upper Basin had offered to make voluntary cuts, and that she thought it provided an opening for continuing the negotiations.
"Do I think it's a long road to resolution? Yes. But the fact that last year was a great winter, and this one's a relatively decent winter, I think it buys them some time," she said.
If the seven states can't agree on a compromise, the federal Bureau of Reclamation may propose its own plan, which may not be popular with anyone. And depending on the results of this fall’s election, a new administration could throw out anything proposed by the current Bureau of Reclamation.
There’s also a risk that the disagreement could end up in the Supreme Court — which many experts say would be a disaster, as the case could drag on for years and in the interim, there would be little clarity about how to manage the river.
