States miss a big deadline, ending chance for a Colorado River water deal

Lake Powell last July. Officials said that flows into the lake this year are 52 percent less than average, potentially rendering the dam unable to produce hydroelectric power by December.

By SCOTT DANCE

The seven Western states that rely on water from the Colorado River have run out of time for a compromise to share its dwindling supplies, just as new projections show reservoir levels could sink to a critical low by the end of this year.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Saturday that the states had missed a Valentine’s Day deadline to reach consensus on a plan to guide use of the river over the coming decades. He said the federal Bureau of Reclamation would instead soon impose its own plan.

While Burgum said the plan could include “fair compromise with shared responsibility” over significant water-use cuts that will be necessary as the Colorado basin becomes more arid, he acknowledged it may be difficult for states to cooperate without taking disagreements to court. That could eventually lead to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We remain dedicated to working with them and their representatives to identify shared solutions and reduce litigation risk,” Burgum said in a statement, referring to the states.

Previous rules to divvy up water in the river and the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, dated to 1922 and were last updated in 2007. Those rules expired last year and no longer reflected the reality of a river basin that has been steadily warming and drying in recent decades as the climate changes.

In two years of negotiations, the upper basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have resisted any permanent cuts in water use because their water supply, upstream of the massive yet shrinking reservoirs, is more highly variable and, during the driest years, they are already forced to take steep usage cuts. Lake Powell, straddling Utah and Arizona, divides the upper and lower basins.

On Friday, as the missed deadline appeared imminent, the governors of the lower basin states, California, Nevada and Arizona, said in a statement, “Our stance remains firm and fair: All seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation.”

Now, amid one of the driest winters in decades across the mountains that feed the Colorado River and its tributaries, the need for cuts in water usage are more dire than ever. The changes would affect communities of 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of crops. Reclamation Bureau officials said Friday afternoon that they expect flows into Lake Powell during the water year that ends in September to be 52% of average, potentially rendering Glen Canyon Dam unable to produce hydroelectric power as soon as December.

“The basin’s poor hydrologic outlook highlights the necessity for collaboration,” Scott Cameron, the acting Reclamation Bureau commissioner, said in a statement Friday.

Leaders across the river basin have been sharpening their rhetoric around the likelihood of a legal battle in recent weeks, saying they are preparing lawyers to defend their water supplies. Nevada’s chief water negotiator joined them Friday.

“The river doesn’t care about legal interpretations, political comfort zones, or arguments about why a state can’t do more to conserve,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said in a statement. “While I will continue to work with my Colorado River counterparts in hopes of finding a workable solution to this crisis, we must also prepare to fight for our water supply if it comes to that.”

In a joint statement, upper-basin leaders said they would continue to negotiate while also hinting at a belief that they hold the upper hand in any court battles to come. They said they had “proposed serious, implementable solutions grounded in today’s hydrology” even as the dry conditions mean water users across the upper basin would use less than 60% of the water they are entitled to this year.

After the states missed an earlier deadline in November, Reclamation officials set the Saturday deadline to allow time for any water-use plan to pass through federal reviews and be finalized by Oct 1.

The Trump administration in January released several alternatives to manage water sharing and is accepting public comments until March 2.

The scenarios underscore how the lower-basin states — and Arizona, in particular — stand to lose the most water if river management is left up to the federal government. That is because the Reclamation Bureau operates the dams impounding lakes Powell and Mead but has little control over water supplies upstream of the reservoirs.

Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary, said Friday that he expected talks among the states would continue even after the Saturday deadline. Negotiations in recent weeks have centered on a five-year plan during which states share in water cuts while investing in water conservation in hopes of stabilizing the water supply so a longer-term water-sharing deal can be struck.

“I don’t think this is the end of the line for negotiations or communications,” Crowfoot said. “But we have a shrinking window of opportunity even as the hydrology worsens in the basin.”

On Saturday, Burgum declared that window all but closed.