What is the Colorado River Management Plan? – Deseret News

Editor’s note: This article was published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a decision journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about the Colorado River’s impact on Utah greatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver.

The Colorado River is managed like a shared bank account—seven states share equal shares of the two basins, and not a drop of water is forgotten. Lake Powell in Utah and Lake Mead in Nevada manage fortunes; when there is a drought and the budget is low, the stress of lack of funds is shared among the partners.

One of the first lessons I learned when trying to make sense of the endless problems surrounding the river was to divide them into one of three categories: people, politics, and ecosystem.

When Colorado River Compact established in 1922, it allocated 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year, or 75 million acre-feet over 10 years, to each of two basins. However, stress on the river due to population growth in certain areas, agricultural demands, and the effects of climate change have greatly reduced the flow, often providing less than originally planned.

“We know the Colorado River is a very variable river and you can’t count on these flows to be available every year. That’s why we built Lake Powell,” said Ann Castle, United States Commissioner for the Upper Colorado River Commission. “That Lake Powell is what protects us from the delivery obligations and the non-depletion obligations is a certain belief in the upper part of the basin.”

In 1956, the Colorado River Storage Project was enacted to provide well-managed water storage for the upper basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) via Glen Canyon Dam. The dam is also the largest facility on the river designed to meet water release requirements for the lower basin states (Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada).

“The idea is that you have this big bucket that’s going to be there to meet your 7.5 for 10 (years) and the upper pool can develop its full compact liability,” Castle added, but ” the upper basin never developed its full compact distribution of 7.5 million acre-feet, probably because there is not enough water in the upper part of the basin to do so.’

According to Glen Canyon InstituteThe reservoir has lost more than 35 million acre-feet of water to evaporation and bank storage since the dam was completed, adding to nearly $9 billion in lost value.

Now near Lake Powell 37% filled and was not in full pool as it was filled to capacity in 1980.

“We need to act differently. And I think there’s a parallel, or maybe it’s that we all know that climate change has completely changed the foundations that we thought we relied on, and now we need laws to catch up to that,” Castle said. “In my opinion, they are not there yet, but they could be.”

Basin states clash over new Colorado River plan

In March, the upper and lower basin states submitted new river management plans to the federal government; the current guidelines, adopted in 2007 and revised in 2022, will expire in 2026. These instructions control how much water passes between Lakes Powell and Mead, and another part of the instructions controls how much water recedes in the basin.

“We can no longer accept the status quo of operations on the Colorado River,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner for the Upper Colorado River Commission. press release after plan of the upper part of the pool was published.

“If we want to protect the system and ensure security for the 40 million people who rely on this water source, then we need to address the current imbalance between supply and demand. This means using the best available science to work with the reality and real conditions of Lakes Powell and Mead. We should plan for the river we have, not the river we dream of,” she added.

The bottom plan of the pool emphasized the struggle for harmony between the two basins.

“While there is agreement among the basin states on the need to ensure the operation of Lakes Powell and Mead under a wide range of potential future conditions of the system due to climate change, at this time the seven basin states have not been able to agree on a consensus alternative.”

States are trying so hard to agree only on water supply and to figure out how to reduce consumption to address climate change, that there is little room to address other issues.

“I would argue that given the sheer scale of the simple physical processes, engineering, and use of water, it doesn’t really matter who cuts, does it,” Jack Schmidt, Janet Quinney Lawson Chair in Colorado River Studies at the University of Colorado and director of the Center for River Studies Colorado said.

“You have one giant bathtub, then you have a national park, and then you have another giant bathtub, and nobody is using the water in the whole area, so it doesn’t matter where,” he said. “But we’re a nation of laws, and we’re probably not going to change those allocations significantly in terms of how reservoirs are operated over the next two years.”

When it comes to water use, Utah Colorado River Commissioner Gene Shawcroft told the Deseret News that all states are relatively aware of water use and conservation. From his perspective, a lot of great and creative work has been done among the seven basin states to ensure the best outcome for the Colorado River.

“We’re in weekly talks, if not more often, with the upper and lower division states to try to come up with a new operating plan to replace the 2007 guidelines because, frankly, they weren’t robust enough to deal with (the) bad hydrology that we had,” he added.

“But when Mother Nature throws us the curveball that she has for the last 20 years, I just don’t know,” Shawcroft said. “The issues are extremely complex, so progress from an outside observer might say we’re not making enough progress, and there are times I agree with that, but we’re still talking, we’re still working with the (bureau) of reclamation. We understand that we have to come up with something that works.”

Draft guidelines for 2026 are expected to be published in December.