The Bureau of Reclamation on Friday released a draft of options for how to manage the Colorado River water supply for years to come — one that could break a logjam in negotiations among states over the river’s future.
The federal agency, seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico — along with environmental, industrial, recreational and other groups — have been debating for years how to manage the Colorado River’s key reservoirs once the current management rules end in August. Friday’s draft report is the next major step in deciding how to replace those rules.
“Colorado looks forward to reviewing the report. Questions about the draft EIS should be directed to the Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation,” the state’s Colorado River team said in an email to The Colorado Sun.
“The Department of the Interior is moving forward with this process to ensure environmental compliance is in place so operations can continue without interruption when the current guidelines expire,” Andrea Travnicek, the department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said in a news release Friday. “The river and the 40 million people who depend on it cannot wait. In the face of an ongoing severe drought, inaction is not an option.”
The more than 1,600-page report, called a draft environmental impact statement, is a required step in a yearslong process under the National Environmental Policy Act to replace the expiring management rules. It details five alternatives for how to manage the water supply, including one required “no action” option.
These options come from the feds — not basin states. The Department of the Interior and its subagency, the Bureau of Reclamation, called on the seven basin states, including Colorado, to agree on a management plan. If they can agree, it would become the preferred alternative, i.e., the final game plan for the basin, federal officials have said.
Those state leaders, however, have been at an impasse since early 2024, when they released competing management proposals. They missed a deadline in November to share high-level glimpse of a unanimous proposal, and they failed to share updates on progress again in December.
They have disagreed over everything from which reservoirs should be managed under the post-2026 rules to how long the rules will last. One major sticking point: How will the basin cut back on water use in its driest years, and who will feel the pain the most?
The four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have been operating as a single bloc. They’ve repeatedly asserted that they are already forced to make cuts in dry years and should not be required to cut back more.
These states are closer to the headwaters of the Colorado River and its major tributaries and their water users often do not have large upstream reservoirs to help pace the flow of water downstream.
Colorado’s largest reservoir, Blue Mesa, is dwarfed by the immense reservoirs further downstream — Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona border, and Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border.
Lake Powell and a downstream reservoir, Lake Mead, can store up to 53.9 million acre-feet (Blue Mesa’s capacity is about 940,000). Both lakes Powell and Mead, which make up about 92% of the reservoir storage capacity in the entire Colorado River Basin, have fallen to about a third of their individual capacities because of prolonged drought, a changing climate and persistent human demands.
One acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons of water, or roughly the annual water use of two to four urban households.
The three Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — have said they’ve also cut back on their water use and future shortages need to be shared among all seven basin states.
In the basin’s driest years, these water shortages could force large cities like Phoenix to dip into other water supplies and farmers and ranchers to end seasons early. They could impact hydroelectric power generation, local economies and even the nation’s food system.
State officials were still firm on their disagreements at the basin’s largest gathering, the Colorado River Water Users Association conference last month in Las Vegas.
“As long as we keep polishing those arguments and repeating them to each other, we are going nowhere,” John Entsminger, the governor-appointed negotiator for Nevada, told the gathering.
Historically, the federal agencies have stepped in to facilitate agreements among states on water issues. In 2023, they released a similar draft of management alternatives for the basin before 2026. The options showed the water cuts the federal government was willing to consider — and encouraged states to agree on their own solution after months of disagreement.
Water watchers around the basin will have a chance to comment on the post-2026 alternatives during a public comment period from Jan. 16 to March 2. The federal agency will also host two virtual meetings to share more details on the draft Jan. 29 and Feb. 10.
What’s in the draft?
The draft alternatives are designed to cover a broad range of potential outcomes after 2026, the executive summary said. The five alternatives are:
- “No action” alternative
- Basic coordination alternative
- Enhanced coordination alternative
- Maximum operational flexibility alternative
- Supply driven alternative
Some options include water cuts in the Lower Basin of up to 4 million acre-feet. Several call for conservation in the Upper Basin of 200,000 acre-feet each year or up to 350,000 acre-feet over the first 11 years.
Lower Basin officials have already offered to conserve 1.5 million acre-feet per year and proposed cuts of up to 3.9 million acre-feet per year to balance the basin’s water supply in its driest years.
The Upper Basin officials have emphatically opposed mandatory conservation amounts, committing instead to voluntary conservation efforts.
“Colorado is committed to protecting our state’s significant interests in the Colorado River and continues to work towards a consensus-based, supply-driven solution for the Post-2026 operations of Lake Powell and Mead,” the state’s prewritten statement said.
The basic coordination alternative outlines what could be implemented in 2027 if states cannot agree, according to the executive summary of the alternatives.
Under this option, Lake Powell would primarily release between 7 million and 8.23 million acre-feet per year, even if much less water flows into the reservoir. (In the 2025 water year, about 5.4 million acre-feet of water entered Lake Powell.)
The Lower Basin states could face shortages of up to 1.48 million acre-feet under this alternative.
The alternatives reflect input gathered during more than 100 meetings. The enhanced coordination option, for example, draws from tribal and federal input. The maximum operational flexibility analysis pulls from proposals shared by conservation organizations, and the supply driven option incorporates elements of competing state proposals.
In some cases, the draft analysis sets up guidelines for how water should be managed. In others, the federal plans walk the line, offering broad parameters to give states wiggle room to negotiate.
Interior’s proposal is for the post-2026 agreement to last for about 20 years. That would cut out discussions of longer periods, like 50 years, that have been floated.
More recently, state officials have suggested a shorter, ramp-up period to help them adapt to whatever cuts and water management changes are finalized. The Secretary of the Interior is open to that option if it helps states reach consensus, the executive summary said.
It focused on lakes Mead and Powell — although it kept the door open for other upstream and downstream actions.
(Which reservoirs are included has long been a contentious issue among states. Upper Basin states don’t want upstream reservoirs to be drained to supply thirsty downstream metropolises. Lower Basin states want water in all federal reservoirs to be counted as part of the basin’s water supply.)
The federal report did not identify a preferred option because it did not have a joint agreement from the basin states, the report said.
Looking ahead, time is ticking down to find a way to balance the basin’s supply and demand.
Water savings accounts at lakes Mead and Powell are critically low — and the amount of water flowing into them varies widely from year to year. Climate models show the basin is looking at a drier future.
The basin is facing a central trade-off: balancing the potentially profound impacts of water cuts with the need to maintain reservoir storage, the federal report said.
“If conditions do not improve, achieving a balance is more difficult, and, under critically dry futures, even large and unprecedented reductions may not be enough to stabilize storage,” the report said.
Type of Story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.