The still perilous Colorado River
The still perilous Colorado River
"What is the worst-case scenario you are willing to plan for?"
Hello! Welcome to a Colorado River edition of Western Water Notes.
First some bittersweet news since my last newsletter. My last week at the Nevada Independent was earlier this month. But I’m not going too far: I’ll still be writing about water, picking up some part-time work and working on my book project. Expect more consistent newslettering from me here. I’ve already got a long list of ideas for posts, Q&As and research dives. If you have issues or topics you want to see covered, email me at danielrothberg@protonmail.com.
I’ve also turned on paid subscriptions for Substack. Don’t worry: You’ll still be able to read most of my posts for free. But if you are able to and want to support my independent reporting on Western water issues, please consider looking at the subscription plans Substack offers.
And I might throw in occasional subscription-only posts and perks down the road!
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-Daniel
The wet winter boosted the Colorado River, for a time being.
Federal water officials avoided having to make deep, painful and unprecedented cuts to water use in Arizona, California and Nevada, all states that draw water from Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir. But one good winter is only one good winter, especially on the Colorado where there exists a gap between demand and supply.
This was a fundamental and unresolved tension at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas last week. The conference is an unusual one — part-panel discussions and part-diplomacy. Many years it is at Caesars Palace. This year, it was across the street at Paris Las Vegas, faux Arc de Triomphe and all.
It was less panicked than last year’s conference, which is not saying too much since last year the river’s water users were staring at deep cuts… before an extremely wet winter offered temporary reprieve. Still, it was not not tense. The system is in debt.
Lake Mead’s elevation, when full, sits at about 1,229 feet above sea level. It is at 1,066 feet above sea level, almost exactly where it was when 2022 started and lower than it was when the seven U.S. states that draw from the Colorado River signed a drought plan in 2019. And it would be even lower if Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico, which all draw from Mead, had not left billions of gallons of water in the reservoir by cutting back and conserving. On the first day of the conference, California water users announced plans to cut use in coming years, with the help of some federal funding.
California’s announcement notwithstanding, the Colorado River remains at risk.
That matters, for one, because about 40 million people in the Southwest now rely on the river and its tributaries, making up an expansive watershed that includes Mexico, 30 federally-recognized tribes and seven states. It also matters because water users are negotiating new operating rules for the river’s future. The current playbook dates back to 2007, and it is set to expire in 2026. This was the backdrop for the conference.
There is a lot to write, and much more than can fit in this one newsletter (so here’s my shameless plug to subscribe to this newsletter if you want to get more in your inbox!)
But a few observations jumped out at me. The first question I couldn’t shake all week was this one: What kind of streamflow do you plan for post-2026? There seemed to be acknowledgment and reckoning that the 2007 playbook was not sufficient to meet the pressures climate-fueled aridification has put on the river in the past two decades.
On the last day of the conference, I heard a federal water official say something to the effect of if any mistake was made in writing the 2007 rules, it was that “our vision was not dark enough.” I quickly scribbled it down, since it was such an honest admission.
The numbers don’t lie though, and the river has flowed well below the 20th Century average and the 1991-2020 30-year average in many of the past ~20 years (see chart).
So what kind of diminished Colorado River hydrology do you plan for going forward remains an underlying question, and a likely source of tension in meetings over the future of the river. When I interviewed John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, before the conference, he said “in a lot of ways, the negotiation comes down to what is the worst-case scenario you are willing to plan for?” Is there agreement on that? He said not quite yet. But he added that the main negotiators for the seven U.S. states are “far more realistic about the types of numbers we should be planning for than they were even just a few short years ago.”
A second takeaway from the conference: There is no question that this is a story about climate change. Much research has gone into documenting the ways in which warmer temperatures are affecting streamflow in the Colorado River Basin. Yet the hundreds of attendees at Paris Las Vegas are deeply affected by 100+ years of human choices, engineering and law that has created structural tensions, which remain unresolved.
Climate change has amplified many of these problems, but it is not only to blame. The Colorado River was over-allocated to start with. Now there is even less to go around.
One structural challenge is literally referred to as a structural deficit, which is laid out nicely in this Aspen Journalism article by Heather Sackett It describes the unaccounted overuse of water by the states drawing water from Lake Mead. As the article explains, the balance sheet for the Lower Colorado River Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — do not account for evaporation or water deliveries to Mexico. And in a show of unanimity for a Lower Basin that has been divided over the past few years, the top negotiations for all three states acknowledged the need to address that gap.
That was a big breakthrough and a major acknowledgment. But it’s hardly the only issue on the table. There remain differing interpretations about how the river should be managed in times of shortage, and the obligations between Upper Basin headwater states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin states below, which have seen more rapid growth and full development of their allocations.
These unresolved questions go back as far as the 1922 Colorado River Compact and the succeeding deals that gave away more rights to the river than there was water.
So it was not too surprising to see tensions spark between the Upper and Lower basin about how to move forward, some of which were captured in this Politico story. They are longstanding issues at the heart of the laws guiding how the river operates. Much of them now come down to who bears the burden of cuts as the river shrinks. This was hard enough before, when water users struggled living within the river’s flow in the 20th Century. It is even harder with less water to go around. And it comes back to the questions: What kind of low streamflow do you plan for? What is the worst-case?
A third major structural issue arose at a panel during the last day of the conference.
The panel featured a tribal nations dialogue, which raised vital questions about who is at the negotiating table. Tribes that have long relied on the Colorado River were left out when the 1922 Compact was adopted, despite a Supreme Court ruling in 1908 (Winters v. United States) stressing the importance of Indigenous water rights on their lands.
In the many negotiations that have created the body of law governing the Colorado River, known as the Law of the River, tribes have been left out. That is in spite of the fact that tribes have settled rights to use about a quarter of the river’s average flow, according to the Water & Tribes Initiative (several tribes still have unresolved claims).
The dynamic is changing, said Amelia Flores, chairwoman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes. In remarks, Flores said the Biden administration “has done more than any other administration to engage tribal nations in a substantive and meaningful way.” But she said tribes still need to be included more directly in the negotiations that the seven states have. Without being directly engaged in negotiations dictating the river’s future, Flores said the livelihoods and traditions of tribes still lack a voice.
“I’ve heard all the arguments as to why it’s not reasonable to have representation of tribes at the negotiation table with the state and federal governments,” she said.
“I’m not buying it.”
A few other threads:
The Biden administration announced major agreements last week with two states and four tribal nations within the Columbia River Basin, deals that could pave the way for breaching four dams on the Lower Snake River, as High Country News reports. Tribes and environmental groups have, for decades, pushed for the removal of the dams in an effort to restore salmon populations. Breaching the dams requires an act of Congress.
California gets its first standards for recycling treating sewage for potable drinking water, CalMatters reports. As the article notes, California is following Colorado and Texas in adopting regulations. The move is being called pivotal, as recycling effluent could boost existing water sources and reduce reliance on uncertain imported water.
Rural Arizona could soon be getting groundwater rules, InsideClimateNews reports.
A lithium miner is eyeing a lot of Colorado River water, via the Salt Lake Tribune.
California extends drought measures on the Klamath. More from CalMatters.
Mining projects near Ash Meadows will get public notice, via Nevada Current.