On the Colorado River, it's climate change
Climate change is shrinking Colorado River and raising tough questions about cuts.
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-Daniel
The Colorado River watershed includes seven states, 30 federally recognized Tribes and two countries. It serves about 40 million people — drinking water for cities and water to irrigate millions of acres of farmland in the Southwest. And it is overused.
There are more legal rights to water than there is water to go around. Climate change, in recent years, has amplified this imbalance. There is simply less and less water to go around, with climate scientists forecasting a smaller river and more uncertainty into the future. So the question becomes: How to adapt? Who bears the burden of the cuts that are needed to bring demand into balance with supply? This week, dueling state-level plans offer some insight into why an answer is so hard to reach.
First, its important to recognize that the way that water is governed across the various boundaries mentioned above is diffuse. There is no president of the Colorado River. There is no one single regulator. Instead, water is governed by what is known as the Law of the River. It’s a series of compacts, legislation, treaties and litigation (more on that later on) that guide allocations and operations for the river’s multiple reservoirs.
If the Law of the River sounds like a definitive operating manual for the river, it is not. There are major questions that it leaves to interpretation. Colorado River experts John Fleck and Eric Kuhn recently pointed to one uncertainty as seemingly basic as how to calculate use. But there are others too. Set against these legal interpretations and ongoing questions about what the Law of the River actually says are tensions over how water is managed and prioritized in times of shortage, not only among the states but among different economic sectors (ag and urban) and levels of government (local vs. state, state vs. federal, etc…). These appear, shift and reappear whenever the river is confronted with a new challenge. Today, that challenge is how to split the river fairly in recognition of the Law of the River, continued demands and on average, less water.
The tension is between the river’s two divisions: an Upper Basin and a Lower Basin.
On Wednesday, the divisions released opposing plans to prepare for a future of less water as part of the negotiation process and environmental review to renew the river’s operating guidelines. The current rules, as well as other agreements, expire in 2026.
In many ways, the two plans can be read as messages to each other.
The message from the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin: Cut back.
The message from the Lower Basin to the Upper Basin: We all have to cut.
The Upper Basin states closest to the headwaters — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — offered a plan to reduce how much water flows downstream in times of extreme shortage. The Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — would get less water, and potentially less than the Law of the River allows. Under the Upper Basin plan, it would be up to the Lower Basin states to make up the difference in cuts.
KUNC’s Alex Hager explains the justification:
The Upper Basin states’ proposal puts one of their most oft-repeated talking points into writing: The four states in the Upper Basin bear the brunt of climate change — which is causing a reduction in the amount of snow in the mountains where the Colorado River begins — and any new rules for the river need to reflect that.
“If we want to protect the system and ensure certainty for the 40 million people who rely on this water source, then we need to address the existing imbalance between supply and demand,” Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, said in a press release.
The Upper Basin has historically used less than its full entitlement of water under the Colorado River Compact, whereas the Lower Basin uses its full share. In addition, the Lower Basin has lived off of a structural deficit, water lost to leaks and evaporation.
Both plans actually agree on this point: The structural deficit, the source of so much tension, has strained the two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Even if you took climate change out of the equation, Lake Mead would decline because of it.
“We must plan for the river we have - not the river we dream for,” Mitchell said.
So where does this leave the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada?
Their plan takes ownership of the structural deficit. They recognize a need to make cuts — mostly shared between Arizona and California — to address the deficit. But in cases where storage drops to lows and there is simply not enough water to go around, their plan would require all of the states, including those in the Upper Basin, to share in the cuts. California negotiator JB Hamby said climate change should fall to all users.
“Each basin, state, and sector must contribute to solving the challenges ahead. No one who benefits from the river can opt out of saving it,” Hamby said in a press release.
On Wednesday, Hamby outlined the deal for reporters with his Arizona and Nevada counterparts, Tom Buschatzke and John Entsminger. That they were all sitting at the same table was notable. Arizona and California have long argued over how to manage the river, most recently with a very public standoff over cuts at the beginning of 2023.
It was notable too because California has started coming to the negotiating table open to taking cuts, beginning with the Drought Contingency Plan and continuing into the most recent talks. That matters because California has a) the largest share of the river and b) agricultural districts hold “senior” rights, giving the state a priority in shortage.
Now back to the Law of the River. Embedded in both plans are different assumptions and interpretations about how essential rules for the river operate. How is the river to be divided when there is not enough water? Should climate change change how 20th Century rules operate? Everyone has a legal argument for everything. But the reality is many of the rules are untested because they haven’t had to be. Now they do, and a looming question is whether all of this ends up in a court or in front of Congress.
John Entsminger, Nevada’s negotiator, warned against that outcome Wednesday, as the Washington Post’s Scott Dance reported: “These decisions will be made, if not by these seven humans, then by humans in black robes or humans sitting in Congress.”
Or, between now and 2026, can the seven-basin states come up with a compromise.
And there is still significant room for negotiation. Despite making big headlines and the exchange of rhetoric among the basins, the plans are only proposals. No action was taken on Wednesday, and no action will be taken tomorrow, next month or likely this year. The plans are one step in an environmental analysis process for the post-2026 rules. There is still time for negotiation, even with a “chasm” between the plans.
KUNC’s Hager quoted UNR assistant professor Elizabeth Koebele, who put it this way:
“We need to think about the whole basin as one interconnected system…I think there are elements of both plans that kind of get at that thought and maybe those are places that we could see come together in a future consensus plan.”
One area of consensus: It’s climate change. The two plans offer very different visions for how to deal with it. They come with different timelines and require different levels of cuts, but they recognize what scientists have been warning of — and documenting — for years in their policy documents. Climate change is not the only problem. The Colorado River was over-allocated to begin with, and framing climate change as the single threat can obscure the human-caused mismanagement on the Colorado River, which has been well-chronicled over the years. But the public recognition that the changing climate adds a new layer of complexity is key step forward in cutting back to adapt. What that adaptation looks like and how to plan for it is still the question.
Some other threads I’m watching:
Known for its permissive attitudes toward industry, Utah takes aim at extraction on the Great Salt Lake with new rules, High Country News’ Brooke Larsen writes.
What is Nevada’s top water regulator saying about the state Supreme Court’s recent decision on groundwater? Jeniffer Solis with the Nevada Current has more on that.
The Atlantic’s Karen Hao looks at AI and water consumption in the desert.
“A massive early March storm has all but restored the snowpack across Nevada to median levels after what started as an abysmally low snow year in many locations,” The Nevada Independent’s Amy Alonzo reported after the big storm in the Sierra.
1. Reduce current allotments across the board based on estimate of the river volume. Now!
2. Reduce the outflow from Powell and Meade to match the inflow.
3. Maintain the current storage volume.
4. Put the feds in charge of the whole system.
5. Cancel the 1922 compact.
6. Develop pumped hydro storage along the river where useful.
7. Do large solar arrays near the dams to supplement the lost hydro power.