Colorado River water

Colorado River water debacle intensifies amid risk 'human systems failing'

Federal officials stepped in after states missed a deadline to endorse a new management plan

By Amanda Heidt

After a coalition of seven states failed to reach a consensus on how to jointly manage the Colorado River watershed, the federal government has stepped in to help select a plan that will guide decisions about water use in the region over the next 20 years. The intervention comes just a day after the newest spring runoff projections, which paint a dire picture of conditions in the West.

The Colorado River watershed — a sprawling network of waterways that supplies water to 40 million people and power to 700,000 homes — is today jointly managed by California, Nevada and Arizona (which make up the lower basin) and Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico (which represent the upper basin). Together, the two groups make management decisions guided by a set of compacts, laws, court decisions and regulatory guidelines collectively known as the “Law of the River.”

The last agreement, established in 2007, is set to expire at the end of the year, leaving states to come up with a new set of guidelines. Ideas hashed out in more than 100 meetings underpinned the development of five alternative proposals, which were released in January as part of a draft environmental impact statement that remains open for public comment until March 2.

The seven states have failed to reach a consensus, however, and Interior Department officials decided to intervene after the collective missed a second deadline on Feb. 14. But according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the states continue to negotiate.

“We believe that a fair compromise with shared responsibility remains within reach,” Burgum said in a statement.

The delays are largely rooted in disagreements over how water reductions should be distributed. Large swathes of the West remain in the grip of the worst drought in at least 1,200 years, and years of low rainfall and poor snowpack mean that the Colorado River’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are at risk of dipping so low that water can no longer move through the system. 

Lower basin states have advocated for more equal cuts, while upper basin states say that they’re already facing natural reductions due to low snowpack. They therefore argue that lower basin states, which pull the most water, should shoulder a larger burden. California is allotted the largest portion of Colorado River water — at 4.4 million acre-feet of water per year, or about one-third of the river’s total flow — and was recently declared drought free for the first time in 25 years. Some stakeholders have therefore suggested that the state could weather water cuts better than places like Arizona, which has faced devastating heat waves over the past few years.

Despite these setbacks, both groups have released statements reaffirming their support of a seven-state agreement, although state officials are also reportedly preparing for litigation.

Cynthia Campbell, the director of policy innovation for the Arizona Water Innovation Institute at Arizona State University, said that the “honest but unspoken truth” is that the 2007 compact likely overestimated the amount of water that can be reliably drawn. As a consequence, she added, we’ve repeatedly overdrawn so much that we’re now facing very difficult choices. She’s doubtful that states will manage to agree, and that even if they do, their cuts won’t be nearly drastic enough. During prior negotiations, states in the lower basin have offered to cut their water usage by between 10% and 27%.

But based on the environmental impact statement, Campbell said it seems likely that the federal government is leaning toward one of the proposals called the basic coordinational alternative. In that proposal, cuts would be made only in lower basin states, but they’d be much larger, amounting to up to 69% for Arizona, 67% for Nevada, and 33% for California. Campbell, who previously oversaw Phoenix’s municipal water, said that such cuts would be disastrous for her state, and would only go a little way toward replenishing the West’s water resources.

“I think they’ll only leave enough water for what they think is basic human health and safety, and I’ll tell you right now, it won’t guarantee that at all,” she said.

Such a decision will not only threaten millions of people, but risk disrupting ecosystems along the entirety of the river, which wends through 11 national parks, seven national wildlife refuges, and four national recreation areas. What’s more, Campbell said, is that even these drastic cuts probably won’t be enough to stop the system from collapsing in the next few years.

“We’re risking the chaos of human systems failing,” Campbell told SFGATE. “If we want this system to work, we have to figure this out. It’s not something that’s simply a good idea, it’s something that Mother Nature is demanding.”