LAS VEGAS — The 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River will continue to wait for a long-term plan for its management as negotiations between the seven states in the river basin remain stalled.
One illustration of that impasse: The seven negotiators did not meet during this week’s three-day Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference, despite representatives from each state spending that time in the same windowless Las Vegas hotel.
“All seven of us have been in this city, yet we were not able to meet,” Colorado’s negotiator, Becky Mitchell, said during a panel discussion. “That is a lost opportunity.”
Instead, negotiators from the Lower Basin — California, Arizona and Nevada — and those from the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico presented their proposed plans in separate panels. That is a break from years past when they sat on a panel together.
Policymakers, academics, irrigators and water attorneys gathered in the Nevada desert this week to discuss the future of the highly contentious river that makes modern life possible for so many people across a vast swath of the American Southwest. The current guidelines that dictate how water is shared among the seven Colorado River basin states are set to expire at the end of 2026, and government leaders must create a new plan before then.
To do so, they must decide who will get less water — and when — as climate change shrinks the river’s flows.
“The tensions are extremely high this year,” said Tanya Trujillo, water policy advisor and deputy state engineer for New Mexico. “Of the 20 years I’ve been coming to this conference, this is the one with the least-good relations among the states.”
In their separate panels, representatives from both basins pledged cooperation and continued hope for compromise. But they pointed fingers at negotiators from the opposite basin for the communication breakdown.
“The enemy that we’re battling right now is not the Upper Basin, it’s not the Lower Basin — it’s hydrology,” said Brandon Gebhart, Wyoming’s negotiator, who decried “all of the rhetoric, the saber rattling and other distractions going on right now. … It needs to stop.”
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Lakes Mead and Powell, must create a new operating plan for the reservoirs before current guidelines expire at the end of 2026. The bureau is halfway through the process, said Carly Jerla, senior program manager at the agency. The bureau must complete environmental analyses of potential operating guidelines, take public comment and make a final decision by August 2026, she said.
“We need to be moving, as a basin, a lot faster in this second half than we did in our first half” of the process, Jerla said.
Each side seeking cooperation
Each basin in the spring presented its separate proposal for how the two major reservoirs on the Colorado River should be operated. The plans dictate when mandatory water cuts should be imposed, how large those cuts should be and, most importantly, which basin should bear the shortages.
The proposals presented Thursday by each basin did not differ from the plans presented earlier this year, though state negotiators said some productive conversations were happening around areas of disagreement.
But several major differences remain between the basins’ proposals, including whether the Upper Basin should be forced to cut water use in the driest years.
The seven negotiators last met a month ago but did not schedule a meeting during the Las Vegas conference, said Arizona negotiator Tom Buschatzke. Attempts to schedule a meeting during the conference fell through and there is no meeting planned between the seven for the immediate future, he said.
Negotiators from both sides, however, said in interviews that they were optimistic a consensus could be reached before the federal deadline. The negotiators still generally get along and are committed to finding a solution, Buschatzke said.
“We’re not sitting in a room yelling at each other, by any means. … We just haven’t made a lot of progress,” he said.
The “bathtub ring” around Lake Mead can be seen in the distance near Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 26, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Upper Basin negotiators believe their basin should be exempt from mandatory water-use cuts imposed by the federal government because water use in the basin is already restricted by the amount of precipitation. While the Lower Basin can use water stored in Mead and Powell in dry years, Upper Basin states do not have large upstream reservoirs and must instead rely on snowpack and rainfall.
Historically, the Upper Basin has never been able to use its full allocation of water, negotiators from the basin said. Water users in Colorado have their water cut off every year because there is not enough, Mitchell said.
The Lower Basin must acknowledge those losses and recognize that the Upper Basin has been living with the impacts of climate change for years, she said.
“In the Upper Basin, it’s the ‘Hunger Games,’ ” Mitchell said. “We are hungry all the time. There is never enough. And that’s what we’re asking to be acknowledged.”
Related Articles
Colorado River debate puts thirsty alfalfa in the crosshairs. Could alternatives to the “queen of forage” save water?
Feds release options for future of Colorado River as negotiations between states stall
Romer and Ritter: Keep Shoshone flowing by letting the Colorado River District purchase Xcel’s rights
Climate change is a concern for many voters. Here’s what the presidential election could mean for Colorado.
Where to find climate change on your ballot if that’s a top voting concern
Lower Basin negotiators, however, said the entire basin must take water cuts in the driest years. Representatives noted that water use in the Lower Basin has declined over the last 20 years due to mandated cuts as well as water-saving programs implemented by the states.
California negotiator JB Hamby said Thursday that it was unfair to put all of the cuts on the Lower Basin, which has far more people and agricultural production than the Upper Basin. He had sharp words for the Upper Basin, saying the idea that the Upper Basin cannot conserve more water was “patently absurd” and calling paper handouts given to conferencegoers by the Upper Basin “propaganda.”
But like their Upper Basin counterparts, the Lower Basin negotiators called for renewed cooperation between the groups.
“I want everyone from the Upper Basin to hear from Nevada that we believe compromise is possible,” said John Entsminger, Nevada’s negotiator on Colorado River operations. “We believe it is the first-, second- and third-best option. But we need a dance partner. So let’s get back to the table and make this happen.”
What if consensus can’t be found?
The Bureau of Reclamation will impose its own operation plan if the states cannot come to a consensus, potentially opening a Pandora’s box of costly litigation that could stretch for years.
The federal agency last month published summaries of four potential plans it is considering but said none of them are final.
Neither the states nor the federal government want to go to court. Litigation is a risk to the Colorado River system and disrupts the certainty of water deliveries, said Mike Connor, a former deputy secretary of the Interior Department and a former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. The risk of high-stakes litigation can also serve as a motivator for consensus, he said.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Connor said while speaking on a panel, urging continued negotiations. “I know tensions are high. Relationships are frayed.”
Litigation is expensive, resource-intensive and strains the trust between states, federal officials and tribes in the basin, said Jeff Wechsler, a New Mexico-based attorney with Spencer Fane who has argued interstate water cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The money and time would be better spent finding solutions instead of drafting briefs, he said.
Ceding decision-making to a court also would mean all sides lose control of the outcome, said Jeff Kightlinger, a former general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. For example, neither California nor Arizona got what they wanted when they took a disagreement over Colorado River water to court.
“Both sides lost in pretty spectacular fashion after 30 years of litigation,” he said.
Water cases can also drag on for decades, like litigation between New Mexico and Texas over water rights on the Rio Grande. Since the case began in 2013, it has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court twice, had three special masters appointed and involved more than 150 depositions.
“I guess we can say we’re halfway through the first phase of trial,” Wechsler said.
Litigation over the Colorado River negotiations could easily stretch for more than a decade, Wechsler said. It’s a sobering timeline to consider, he said.
“(Retired) folks like me — on the one hand, you sit here and think you wish (you) were still in the game because it would be a chance to live in interesting times,” Connor said. “And then other times you think, ‘By God, am I glad that I’m out of that game.’ Because these folks currently seem like more of a handful than the folks I worked with a while back.”
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.