The Trump administration will give state officials hashing out the future of the drought-stricken Colorado River until mid-February to reach a deal, based on a still undisclosed “framework” achieved this week, according to Utah’s lead negotiator.
Gene Shawcroft, chair of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, also pushed back against the narrative that state negotiators had blown a Nov. 11 deadline set by the Interior Department to draft a new long-term operating plan.
“We did not miss a deadline,” Shawcroft said Wednesday at a press conference. “We were able to have enough of a framework put together that the federal government agrees with us that that framework can be continued to be refined in order for us to have a deal by the middle of February.”
But despite issuing a joint statement with Interior on Tuesday that cited “collective progress,” negotiators for the seven states that share the river — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have offered few details about what that agreement looks like.
