While the Bureau of Reclamation in on the right track as it weighs how to split flows from the drought-stricken Colorado River, any new agreement must include “clear, binding commitments” by all states to reduce or conserve water, California’s lead negotiator said.
For nearly two years, officials with the seven Colorado River states — Arizona, California and Nevada in the Lower Basin; and Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the Upper Basin — have been in negotiations over a new long-term operating agreement for the drought-stricken waterway. They face a November deadline from the Bureau of Reclamation to strike a deal.
States negotiators revealed in June that they have begun to coalesce around a deal based on “natural flow” — or estimates of how much water would be in the river without human-interventions like diversions or dams.
But the states must figure out over how much each basin could actually be allowed use under the scheme, along with how much would remain in storage in reservoirs and to provide hydropower. The plan would set a still-to-be decided percentage of flows that would go to the Lower Basin states based on an average of the three most recent years.
