No deal on Colorado River despite Trump administration deadline

from Rachel BeckerCalMatters

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After two years of tense negotiations in the middle dire predictions on Colorado River reservoirs, California and six other states that rely on the river’s water have again failed to reach a deal — despite a federal deadline.

“While more work remains to be done, collective progress has been made that warrants continued efforts to define and approve details of a finalized agreement,” the states said. The written statement released Tuesday did not include details on how they plan to manage the river after the current rule expires at the end of next year.

Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of the Interior’s federal river stewards, have threatened to impose their own plan in the absence of a deal.

“Two years. And the lack of progress in light of how dangerous Colorado’s conditions are — that’s unacceptable,” said Mark Gold, former director of Water Scarcity Solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a board member of Southern California’s giant water importer, the Metropolitan Water District.

The federal government often sets deadlines for the Colorado River, but almost never imposes them.

Negotiations now continue ahead of another February deadline for a seven-nation deal. Scott Cameron, acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, said in June that the goal was to “parachute” state consent into the current federal planning process, in time to finalize a plan by May or June of next year.

Yet states remain at an impasse, even as the agreements that currently govern the river are close to expiring.

Elizabeth Kobele, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, suspects that the relationship between the states have become too brokenand water too scarce, for deadlines to effectively motivate warring states.

“We have less water and that causes more problems with waves,” Koebele told CalMatters. “Cut a smaller pie for more people.”

Federal pressure or state cooperation?

A major conflict is over how much each basin must reduce its excessive river use to close the ever-widening gap between shrinking supply and insatiable demand.

California, Arizona, and Nevada in the lower basin available in March 2024 to reduce their use by up to 1.5 million acre feet of water per year, depending on reservoir conditions. They urged upstream Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico to share in any belt-tightening beyond that, but the upstream states balked — saying their water users already have to conserve water when dry conditions shrink river flows.

Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s Upper Colorado River commissioner, said the states “remain committed to collaboration based on the best available science and respect for all Colorado River water users. We are taking a significant step toward long-term sustainability and demonstrating a shared determination to find supply-oriented solutions.”

But Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs pressed the Trump administration to be more forceful in negotiations with the state. In a letter Tuesday to Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Hobbs and Arizona legislative leaders called the upstream states’ negotiating position “extreme.”

“We find it troubling that the upper basin states have repeatedly refused to implement any binding, verifiable reductions in water supply,” the letter said.

Experts say there is no time to waste; even the time it takes to develop a new plan for the river may be too long for its dwindling reservoirs. The Colorado River Basin is suffering from a megadrought fueled by climate change, and the basin’s main reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are each less than one-third full.

Use of the Colorado River in California is about to hit its peak this year lowest since 1949. however forecasts show another dry winter could still cause Lake Powell to fall below the levels needed to generate power by December 2026.

The problem is that even when it rains or snows, the runoff disappears into thirsty soils before reaching the river. The net outflow continues to increase assessments of required conservation to stabilize the basin and its reservoirs.

Jack Schmidtdirector of the Colorado River Research Center at Utah State University, and others called more urgent conservation to protect dam operations and ensure water can be released from Lakes Mead and Lake Powell.

“We continue to hold back on not implementing additional cuts right now. That’s our fear: If we don’t get snow this winter, we’re really going to compromise the system,” Schmidt said. “We may be saved from a more decent winter, but that’s holding out a lot of hope.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.