Federal forecasters dramatically cut their estimates Friday for how much water will flow down the Colorado River this year — projections that now thrust the Trump administration into politically contentious decisions about how to operate the river’s dams.
The Feb. 1 forecast the Colorado Basin Forecast Center released last week projects the amount of water flowing from the river’s headwaters into Lake Powell this year will be one-third less compared with its already grim Jan. 1 forecast.
“Snowpack conditions are very poor across almost the entire area due to a combination of low winter precipitation amounts and the much warmer than normal temperatures,” Brenda Alcorn, a forecaster at the center, said on a webinar Friday. The vast majority of the river’s water originates as snow in its Rocky Mountain headwaters.
The new forecast comes at a critical moment for the management of the drought-riddled waterway, which serves 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles to Phoenix. The Interior Department’s deadline for a major new water-sharing deal is less than one week away, and the seven states that share the river remain sharply divided on what an agreement should look like.
