State negotiators grappling with how to share the drought-ravaged Colorado River say they could be close to breaking free from gridlock just as the Trump administration warns that missing a November deadline could force the federal government to take control.
Members of the Upper Colorado River Commission — which represents Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — announced Thursday that the states are weighing a new method of sharing the waterway based on the actual flow of the river, as opposed to projected flows and historical agreements.
“The basin states have been exploring an explicit supply-driven operational framework based on the natural flow of the river,” said Becky Mitchell, who serves as both Colorado’s Colorado River commissioner and acting chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
The plan — at the heart of which is a formula for declaring how much water can be shared among the seven states each year, based on actual flows from the preceding three years — was proposed by the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, Mitchell said.
“If done correctly, it should provide the opportunity for the Upper and Lower basins to manage themselves, with the only real point of agreement being the [Lake] Powell release,” Mitchell said of the flows that leave Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam and head toward the Lower Basin states.
Characterizing the proposal as a “divorce” between the basins, or a “conscious uncoupling,” she added: “What we know today is that for any approach to work, it must be supply-driven and perform well under both dry and varying hydrologies and adapt to uncertain future conditions.”
Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, first detailed the proposal last week at a state meeting.
“We are evaluating a supply-driven concept that shares the water that the river actually provides while requiring each basin to take actions to live within their respective shares,” Buschatzke said.
The seven states that share the Colorado River have been in protracted negotiations over a new long-term operating plan for the waterway for more than a year, unable to agree how to share the pain of potential cuts to their individual allocations.
A series of existing agreements that govern the waterway are set to expire next year, and a new agreement must be in place by Oct. 1, 2026, which marks the start of the 2027 water year.
Scott Cameron, who serves as the Interior Department’s acting assistant secretary for water and science, reiterated his warning Thursday to states that a failure to reach agreement would result in federal intervention.
“Those are my three charges: Get heavily involved, work intensely to help the states come to a seven-state solution but let [Interior Secretary Doug Burgum] know if he has to act,” Cameron said via video at the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting. “That’s certainly not his preference at all, but he’s prepared to follow through on his responsibilities, if necessary.”
Cameron, who has taken on a key role in the negotiations for the Trump administration, issued the same warning earlier this month at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. On Thursday, he set hard deadlines for the states to meet, warning that if a draft agreement has not taken shape by Nov. 11, then Reclamation will need to shift its focus to federal action.
A final deal is needed by Feb. 14 to be included in a March 2026 environmental report. A record of decision is expected in May or June 2026, Cameron said.
Use of the Colorado River water is divided based on the terms of a 1922 agreement known as the Colorado River Compact. That document allocated 15 million acre-feet of water evenly between the two basins. The basins then further divided the flows among their respective states.
An acre-foot of water is equal to about 326,000 gallons, or enough to support two to three families for a year. The same amount of water would cover a football field to a depth of 1 foot.
But decades of persistent drought in the West have reduced water in the river by as much as 20 percent, forcing the states and Mexico, which also claims a share of the waterway, into a series of repeated cuts and conservation efforts.
At the Arizona meeting last week, Buschatzke noted that the average of the past 25 years shows just 12.4 million acre-feet of water in the river. Those measurements, like the ones that would be used in the new proposal, are taken at a point called Lees Ferry a few miles below the Glen Canyon Dam.
“Unfortunately, the river continues to shrink, which obviously provides a real challenge for us,” he said. “In its simplest form, basing the Lake Powell releases to Lake Mead on natural flow allows for a fair division of what Mother Nature provides to us.”
Buschatzke added: “We haven’t agreed to anything, but we’ve agreed to test it.”
JB Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, confirmed to POLITICO’s E&E News on Thursday that the states are pursuing the idea.
“California and the other six basin states are exploring a natural flow-based approach to post-2026 operations — one that offers a far clearer path to consensus than last year’s competing proposals or continued debates over the compact,” Hamby said.
He added: “California remains committed to collaboration. Walking away from compromise and cooperative problem-solving is not an option — it’s both irresponsible and dangerous.”
Despite the general agreement on how to calculate the available water, there could be some sticking points.
Buschatzke insisted that a new agreement would not alleviate the Upper Basin states from meeting a “delivery obligation,” or the 75 million acre-feet over a running 10-year period marked by flows at Lees Ferry.
But Colorado’s Mitchell rejected that idea Thursday.
“It’s essential to understand that this must not impose a delivery obligation on the Upper Basin under any context,” Mitchell said.
In his address to the Upper Basin commission, Cameron did not mention the “natural flow” proposal under discussion by the states but said that Interior expects any agreement reached by the states will become the de facto operating plan to be adopted by Reclamation.
“The goal is to essentially parachute in a seven-state deal as the preferred alternative” into an environmental impact statement expected next year, Cameron said.
He likewise reiterated comments he made earlier this month about preparing the House and Senate for potential legislation related to any deal, with a focus on water transfers among states or between the basins themselves.
“Perhaps most fundamentally, I think we all need to realize it’s a lot less water in the Colorado system than people thought there was going to be 100 years ago or 50 years ago or, quite frankly, 10 years ago,” Cameron said. “That’s a new hydrologic reality, and we all have to live in the physical world as it is, not as we might hope it will be.”
