Less water, more problems – California, 6 states miss key Colorado River deadline

Drought-stricken Lake Mead on the Colorado River in August File photo by Christopher Clark U S Bureau of Reclamation After two fraught years of negotiations amid dire projections for the Colorado River s reservoirs California and six other states that rely on the river s water have yet again failed to reach a deal despite a federal deadline While more work necessities to be done collective progress has been made that warrants continued efforts to define and approve details for a finalized agreement the states reported The written declaration distributed Tuesday included no details about how they plan to manage the river after the current rulebook expires at the end of next year Agents at the U S Bureau of Reclamation the federal stewards for the river under the Department of the Interior have threatened to impose their own plan in the absence of a deal Two years And the lack of progress in light of how perilous the conditions are on the Colorado it s unacceptable revealed Mark Gold former director of Water Scarcity Solutions at the Natural Information Defense Council and a board member of the Southern California water import giant the Metropolitan Water District The federal regime frequently sets deadlines on the Colorado River but it almost never enforces them Negotiations now continue in advance of another deadline in February for a seven-state deal Scott Cameron acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation explained in June that the goal is to parachute the states agreement into the ongoing federal planning process in time to finalize a plan by May or June next year Yet the states remain deadlocked even as the agreements that in the present govern the river near expiration Elizabeth Koebele a political science professor at the University of Nevada Reno persons that relationships between the states have become too fractured and water too scarce for deadlines to effectively motivate them We have less water and it s caused more rippling problems Koebele described CalMatters You re cutting a smaller pie for more people Federal pressure or state collaboration A major conflict has been over how much each basin must cut back their use of the overtapped river to close the ever-growing gap between dwindling supply and ravenous demand California Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin offered in March to cut their use by up to million acre-feet of water per year depending on reservoir conditions They urged Colorado Wyoming Utah and New Mexico upstream to share any belt-tightening beyond that but the upstream states balked saying that their water users must already conserve water when dry conditions shrink the river s flows Becky Mitchell Colorado s Upper Colorado River Commissioner reported that the states remain committed to collaboration grounded in the best available science and respect for all Colorado River water users We are taking a meaningful step toward long-term sustainability and demonstrating a shared determination to find supply-driven solutions But Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has pressed the Trump administration to be more forceful in state negotiations 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 alarming that the Upper Basin States have repeatedly refused to implement any volume of binding verifiable water supply reductions the letter reported Experts say there s 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 a atmosphere change-fueled megadrought and the basin s major reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead are each less than one-third full California s Colorado River use is on track this year to hit its lowest since Still projections show another dry winter may yet send Lake Powell plunging below the levels needed to generate power by December The challenge is that even when it rains or snows runoff is disappearing into thirsty soils before it reaches the river The paltry runoff keeps driving up estimates of the conservation required to stabilize the basin and its reservoirs Jack Schmidt director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University and others have urged more urgent conservation in order to protect operations at the dams and ensure that water can be issued from Lake Mead and Lake Powell We continue to drag our heels on not implementing additional cuts right now That s our fear if it doesn t snow this winter we ll really compromise the system Schmidt commented We might get bailed out by a more decent winter but that s betting on a whole lot of hope