Disagreements over whether states in the Colorado River Basin should agree to restrict future water development are threatening to derail the arduous negotiations over the waterway’s operations.
A top Wyoming water official on Wednesday said that demands from the Colorado River’s Lower Basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — would force it to sharply cut back on its water use and also prohibit future development in his state. That means essentially blocking Wyoming from tapping the drought-stricken river’s flows with new dams or diversions.
“They’re asking me to give up the future we were promised and to make promises that I can’t keep,” said Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhardt, who serves as his state’s lead negotiator, at a meeting with other leaders from the Upper Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.
The fight centers on a key issue in the negotiations over a new long-term operating plan for the Colorado River, which will determine how states share water and the pain of cuts in supply. The focus is on exactly how much the Upper Basin states must forgo to find parity with the Lower Basin. As the states struggle to reach a deal, the Upper Colorado River Commission met Wednesday to discuss ongoing conservation efforts and discuss the state of negotiations.
Officials from the Lower Basin, who weren’t present at the commission meeting, defended their approach.
“We need to live with the river we have, not the one we wish for. Suggesting new development in the Upper Basin while the system is in crisis is tone deaf,” said JB Hamby chair of the Colorado River Board of California and his state’s lead negotiator.
While the two basins each share the river equally under a 1922 compact, the Upper Basin has long used less than its full allocation, while the Lower Basin has tapped its full share.
More than two decades of persistent drought have shrunk the available water by as much as 20 percent, leading to a series of agreements about how to dole out cuts — largely taken by Arizona, Nevada and the nation of Mexico. California has also accepted emergency agreements to reduce flows in exchange for federal payments.
Those current agreements and the operating plan, however, will expire next year. A new long-term operating plan must be in place by Oct. 1, 2026, which marks the start of the 2027 water year.
States have been locked in negotiations for more than a year without success. The Interior Department set a November deadline for the states to reach consensus, using the threat of federal action if they fail to do so.
Although the Upper and Lower Basins appeared this summer to coalesce around the idea of a supply-driven proposal, or “natural flow” plan, debate over how much water each region would receive has complicated that effort.
That proposal would divide the water supplies based on how much water the river actually contains — using an average of recent years — rather than historical figures about what states were promised in the past that require significantly more water than now exists in the river.
But that approach would still require cuts.
“From Colorado’s perspective, we hear a lot about the need for the Upper Division states to feel pain or take real cuts,” said Colorado River Commissioner Becky Mitchell, who is serving as the interim chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
But Mitchell argued that the Upper Basin already takes significant cuts, averaging about 1.3 million acre feet annually from decreased precipitation or snowpack as drought conditions have lingered in the West.
“We’re taking deeper and more significant cuts than the 1922 Compact would require us to take,” she said, pointing to examples of reduced water use across southwestern Colorado.
During Wednesday’s meeting of the commission, representatives of all four Upper Basin states said that they remain engaged in negotiations even as they expressed frustration with demands from their counterparts in the Lower Basin.
Gebhardt accused the Lower Basin states of seeking reductions to Upper Basin supplies so aggressive that they would not only bar future water infrastructure, but also roll back his state’s current use — which is already less than the full share allotted by historical agreements.
“The Lower Basin is demanding that in dry conditions, Wyoming must effectively give up the 30 percent it has developed, which means giving up everything Wyoming was promised under the Compact,” Gebhardt said.
Under the Colorado Compact, the Colorado River is divided evenly between the two basins, with each designated 7.5 million acre-feet annually.
Wyoming is allocated 14 percent of the Upper Basin’s supply of the river, or a little more than 1 million acre-feet per year.
But the state consumed only 421,000 acre-feet on average between 2016 and 2020, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
In an interview with E&E News, Gebhardt said that plans being pushed by the Lower Basin states would not only freeze new development in the Upper Basin states, but go beyond that to roll back previously developed water rights.
“What they have proposed results in a magnitude of reduction in the Upper Basin that would essentially require Wyoming to shut off enough water that would be equal to what we have developed since the Compact,” he said.
Gebhardt said Wyoming has only developed an additional 150,000 acre-feet of water in a more than 100-year period since the Compact was signed.
An acre-foot of water is equal to about 326,000 gallons, or enough to support two to three families a year. The Colorado River supports 40 million individuals along with 5.5 million acres of irrigated farmland.
But Lower Basin state officials pushed back against those characterizations, arguing that they are asking the Upper Basin states not to increase demands on the water supply — but aren’t requiring them to halt all future development.
“The Lower Basin has already made painful reductions to stabilize the river,” said California’s Hamby, pointing to an aggressive effort to conserve and reuse water in his state, Arizona and Nevada. “If Wyoming or any Upper Basin state believes the solution is to simply take more water, they are ignoring reality and shifting the burden onto their neighbors.”
He added: “The path forward isn’t demanding more, it’s doing more with less.”
According to data compiled by Reclamation, the Upper Basin consumed 4.7 million acre-feet in 2023, the most recent data available. The Lower Basin used 5.8 million-acre feet that year amid aggressive conservation efforts to address short-term drought that threatened hydropower production at the Glen Canyon Dam.
“Arizona does not assert the Upper Basin must stop growing. To the contrary, the Lower Basin states have continued to grow while reducing water use across sectors,” said Doug MacEachern, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
He added: “There is enormous room for efficiency improvement in the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin merely is asserting that the Upper Basin should not increase its overall water demand while also demanding deep reductions in the Lower Basin. Volumes are negotiable. Mandatory, certain, and verifiable water-use reductions by all seven Colorado River states should not be.”
