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New Data About Colorado River Raise Specter of Significant Water Use Cuts
John Adams famously said, “Facts are stubborn things.”
The facts about the Colorado River Basin, and the effects of a prolonged dry phase – including half-full reservoirs year after year – are causing concern about drastic future cuts in allowable water usage in Colorado and throughout the Mountain West.
According to media reports during a recent briefing for the Upper Colorado River Commission, conditions – including expected spring runoff levels – reservoirs are expected to continue to be below normal, and the reservoirs along the Colorado River remain less than half full.
The briefing indicated that the average levels across all Colorado River reservoirs were 42 percent of capacity.
Blue Mesa Reservoir in Gunnison County sits at 62 percent full.
While the current snowpack in the Upper Basin States of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico sits at about average, close observers remain troubled about the long-term trends.
Experts studying current data warn that, absent a major turnaround, significant cuts throughout the Colorado River basin are likely to be imposed.
Reductions in Colorado in some scenarios could reach 200,000-acre feet.
“We have to acknowledge that cuts (in water use) are probable, possible and likely,” Rebecca Mitchell, who is the lead negotiator for Colorado, told the Colorado Sun.
For years, a number of status-quo oriented voices along the Front Range, including in Douglas County, have resisted calls to get serious about current water supplies – and future water needs.
Very often, they have criticized even the most-modest forward-looking efforts to gather data about current water resources as “alarmist.”
They may have their own opinions, but as data continues to show concerning trends that are causing many areas to augment their water resources, it’s time for them to realize they aren’t entitled to their own facts.
Recent Headlines
Colorado River states stare down the ‘looming specter’ of a Supreme Court battle
When it comes to the Colorado River, a court battle between the states that use its water is sometimes referred to as “the nuclear option.” But now, as those states are locked in disagreement about how to share its water, they are tiptoeing closer toward litigation.
State leaders insist they want to avoid a trip to the Supreme Court, but some are quietly preparing for that outcome.
…Water managers from the seven states that use the Colorado River are caught in a standoff about who exactly should use less water, and they appear to have made little progress ahead of a 2026 deadline for new rules about how to share.
In January, Arizona’s government made headlines when a proposed state budget included up to $3 million for litigation related to the Colorado River.
…Arizona’s {Tom] Buschatzke said that other states, such as New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado were also preparing money for Colorado River litigation.
KUNC reached out to each of the seven states that use the Colorado River. Arizona was the only one that indicated it had a specific pool of money for Colorado River work.
A spokeswoman for Colorado’s negotiating team pointed to a “long-standing litigation fund” that could be used for the Colorado River, and a division of the Colorado Attorney General’s office that has been focused specifically on the Colorado River since 2006.
February storms offer some relief from dry Colorado River conditions, but water outlook remains poor
February snowstorms are bringing some relief to parched landscapes in the Colorado River Basin, but the river’s reservoirs remain less than half full heading into a spring runoff season that is expected to be lower than normal, according to a briefing this week at the Upper Colorado River Commission.
The dry conditions underline water concerns in the drought-strapped river basin and come as high-stakes negotiations over new, post-2026 operating rules continue. If similar conditions occurred under any of the options for the new operating rules, it would mean deep cuts for Lower Basin states, which include Arizona, California and Nevada, officials said during the commission’s meeting Tuesday.
It was a “stark” report, said Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado’s representative on the commission and the state’s lead negotiator on Colorado River issues.
“We have to acknowledge that cuts (in water use) are probable, possible and likely,” she said.
…These shortages have real impacts on communities, the officials said during the meeting.
Farmers get two cuttings of hay instead of three, which reduces their profits. Ranchers, facing higher hay prices or hay production challenges, end up raising smaller cattle herds, impacting beef and dairy production.
People hire fewer ranch hands. Cities tighten their summer watering restrictions. Local recreation economies take a hit — as do ecosystems that are overstressed by higher temperatures and drought.
Tensions rise between community members who need water for different reasons and are trying to share an uncertain supply, said Commissioner Brandon Gebhart of Wyoming.
“And trying to do that without completely destroying one or the other,” he said. “Oftentimes, this means that everyone is suffering.”
Northern Water may be nearing settlement of lawsuit filed to stop $2 billion reservoir project
More than a year after an environmental group sued to stop a $2 billion northern Colorado water project, whispers of a settlement are being heard as the case winds its way through U.S. District Court in Denver.
The Bureau of Reclamation has outlined five ways the Colorado River could be managed after 2026.
If any of those alternatives governed water in the basin right now, the three Lower Basin states would need to cut their use by 1.8 million to 2.8 million acre-feet based on the conditions in February, said Chuck Cullom, the commission’s executive director. In the worst possible scenarios, the cuts would deepen to between 2.1 million and 3.2 million acre-feet.
How such cuts would play out among the four Upper Basin states, like Colorado, is less clear. Some options include cutting use by 200,000 acre-feet.
