After two-and-a-half years of negotiations amid a record drought, an unprecedented agreement aimed at helping the seven states in the Colorado River basin endure future water shortages is final. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne signed the accord today at a ceremony in Las Vegas.

The states and the Bureau of Reclamation claim the new plan will stretch shrinking water supplies in the basin, provide more certainty to the states about what will happen when reservoir levels drop and help avoid lawsuits. Within the framework of the agreement are a series of water management stipulations for the states and a host of conservation and water augmentation measures.

The seven states and the Bureau of Reclamation claim the new plan will stretch shrinking water supplies in the basin and provide more certainty to the states about what will happen when reservoir levels drop. Map courtesy of the Department of Interior.

The agreement, the "Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead," spells out how much the states will be required to reduce their take of the Colorado River during dry times and under what circumstances. In 2005, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton directed the states to work together to find ways to ease the pain of projected shortages in the basin. The drought, now in its eighth year, along with climate change impacts and increasing growth in many basin states, provided a strong incentive for the states to hammer out their differences during negotiations, federal officials said.

"It really has taken a lot of participation and good will and the commitment among the seven basin states and Reclamation to try to find solutions," said Barry Wirth, spokesman for Reclamation's upper Colorado River Basin office. "They were challenged by the secretary to come up with shortage strategies, and they did."

"It had to be done to stretch the water supply and get through the tough times that are inevitably ahead," said Don Ostler, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission. "I think everyone is hopeful this will make a significant difference."

The drought -- the worst the basin has seen in 100 years -- has shrunk water levels in the Colorado River's two main storage reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, to about half full. In 1999, before the drought hit, the lakes were near capacity (Land Letter, April 12). Meanwhile, population growth -- and the increased demand it brings -- continues to tax water supplies in the basin, pushing some states to the limit of their Colorado River allocation.

"This is a critical time -- perhaps even an historic time -- in the Colorado Basin," Kempthorne said, during the accord ceremony today.

"We're really trying to take a holistic approach to managing these two reservoirs and come up with a management scheme that really benefits both [upper and lower] basins," said Terry Fulp, area manager for Reclamation's Boulder Canyon operations office and one of the officials involved in writing the plan.

Skeptics of the plan

But river advocates gave the accord mixed reviews. Jennifer Pitt, of Environmental Defense's Boulder, Colo., office, commended BuRec and the states for providing "badly needed flexibility" for managing the river's water. And she lauded a provision that helps clear the way for Mexico to negotiate releases from Lake Mead that could send more water to the beleaguered Colorado River Delta (Land Letter, March 22). But in the end, there may simply not be enough water to go around, she added.

"The bottom line is, if the hydrology stays bad and growth continues, we're still going to be in a water crunch," said Pitt, who submitted a conservation-based proposal during the review process for the plan.

Others criticized the document as a testament to wishful thinking in an increasingly water-strapped -- and overdeveloped -- basin.

"They're not going to conserve a gallon of water," said Jon Weisheit, conservation director for Living Rivers, an environmental group based in Moab, Utah, that advocates breaching Lake Powell's Glen Canyon Dam. "They're just going to turn around and build another house."

"I'm very skeptical," added Nikolai Lash, senior program director for the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz. "It doesn't recognize that we have a very flawed framework of water distribution, that it's based on [estimates from] wet years rather than the realistic climate change years we're in the midst of. We'll be revisiting this agreement 10 years from now."

The 1922 compact that divvies up the river's water among the seven states was negotiated during an unusually wet period in the Colorado River basin, and the allocations to the states may not reflect the hydrological reality in the basin, particularly as climate change takes its toll, he said. In the new plan, Reclamation acknowledged that it may have overestimated average flows in the basin but does not suggest revisiting the compact (Land Letter, Nov. 8).

A balancing act

Reclamation took the best ideas from proposals submitted by the states, environmental groups and other entities, officials said.

Under the 1922 compact and other agreements collectively known as the "law of the river," Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona border, stores water for the upper basin, and Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border, stores water for Arizona, Nevada and California. The upper basin is required to send 7.5 million acre-feet of water downstream for use in the lower basin each year, and all seven basin states must collectively deliver 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico.

Under the new agreement, which is intended to direct management of the river until 2026, the two reservoirs will be operated in tandem to ensure that neither drops too low. That will help prevent shortages in the lower basin and the need for curtailments of water usage in the upper basin, Wirth said.

If there is a shortage, which would have to be declared by the secretary of Interior, the states will be required to make specific cuts in their use of Colorado River water, based on three trigger points in Lake Mead.

Under the pecking order laid out in plans, Arizona would be hit first if levels in Mead fell to the first trigger point set in the plan. The state would need to cut 320,000 acre-feet, or 11 percent of the state's Colorado River allocation, until water levels in Lake Mead rose again. If reservoir levels continued to fall, Nevada would then have to reduce its use. Further drops would prompt cuts by California, although some officials question whether reservoir levels would drop that low, even in a severe drought.

In most cases, agriculture would be hardest hit.

Levels in Lake Mead are now about 35 feet above the first trigger point. Fulp of Reclamation said there is a 5 percent chance that shortages will occur in the basin by 2010.

Conservation and augmentation

In an effort to cushion the blow of a potential shortage, the lower basin states also agreed to undertake a host of measures and projects to improve efficiency in the system, increase conservation, and tap alternative supplies to lessen their dependence on the Colorado River and leave more water in Lake Mead to avoid reaching shortage triggers.

Population growth taxes water supplies in the basin, pushing some states to the limit of their allocation. Photo courtesy of NOAA.

For instance, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which relies on the Colorado River for 90 percent of the water that quenches the fast-growing Las Vegas area, will be able to draw more water from Lake Mead in exchange for helping to build a new reservoir in California, called "Drop Two." The reservoir, which will be built near the Mexican border, will capture additional water not needed by Mexico. Currently, if rainfall adds more water to the lower reaches of the basin, it simply ends up as a bonus to Mexico because there is currently no way to store it, said Bob Walsh, a spokesman for Reclamation's lower Colorado River office.

The lower basin states also have come up with ways to make it easier for managers to transfer water from agricultural lands to cities.

Creating new water supplies through desalinization, which involves treating ocean water to turn it into potable water, is also under discussion.

Essentially, those conservation and augmentation measures would allow states to leave more water in Lake Mead that they could later withdraw for future use. "If you provide that water instead of Colorado River water, therefore saving water in Lake Mead, it could be conserved and used by a state," said Ostler of the Upper Colorado River Commission. Currently, a state that banks water in the reservoir loses it if it is not used within one year.

Under the agreement, only the state that adds water to Lake Mead can remove it later. But about 5 percent of a water contribution is banked for use in the entire lower basin, and some of that water can be used for environmental purposes -- a provision for which environmental groups fought.

The new guidelines, which will go into effect in January, can be revisited if the states or Reclamation feel they are not working or if new information about climate change impacts required a retooling of the plan, Wirth said.