Water rights to the Colorado River are a notoriously valuable commodity: The flows support verdant agricultural lands in Southern California and Arizona, as well as major cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
So when the federal government needs to curb use on the 1,450-mile waterway, it has long opted to open up its checkbook and pay up — such as with a recent emergency effort to protect hydropower operations on the river, which cost the Biden administration $1.2 billion for a three-year deal.
But when Mother Nature cuts back on the supply at its source, it’s a much different story.
No water. No payments. No IOUs for next year.
That’s the argument of officials in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, who say they are uniquely affected when lackluster winter snows create summers of hardship. And they argue that this reality should figure into the next long-term operating plan for the drought-stricken river. The seven states that share the Colorado River — which serves 40 million individuals and supports 5.5 million acres of farmland — are currently negotiating that agreement.
In a proposal published earlier this year, the Upper Basin states said they want those shortfalls — estimated as high as 1.2 million acre-feet a year — to be included in any formal accounting, not only for their users but to require the Lower Basin states use to be “balanced with actual supply.”
“The hydrologic cycle is not intuitive, but we live and respond to Mother Nature,” Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s Colorado River commissioner, said recently, noting that water users in the river’s headwaters state rely primarily on flows from snowpack and precipitation, as water enters the river and its tributaries.
Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the waterway is divided into 7.5 million acre-feet each for both the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada.
But more than two decades of persistent drought have reduced what is available, with some estimates suggesting the river contains 20 percent less water than it did in the year 2000.
"Our water users are dependent on snowpack. It is the reservoir. So when we do not have sufficient snowpack, our water users have to take painful shortages to their water supplies," Mitchell said, referring to those four Upper Basin states.
Mitchell regularly asserts in public discussion about the next operating plan that losses to water users in the Upper Basin — and especially in Colorado, which is home to the river’s headwaters — go unrecognized in the larger river system.
If a new operating plan does not tally those losses, Mitchell contends that only the Upper Basin states would be responding to climate change. The Upper Basin states propose putting the bulk of new reductions in water use on the Lower Basin states — which rely solely on federal infrastructure to store and deliver water — arguing it would even up losses imposed by nature.
According to data provided by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, between 2021 and 2023, water users in the state faced an average annual shortfall of 600,000 acre-feet.
An acre-foot of water is equal to about 326,000 gallons, or enough to supply three families for a year. That same amount of water could flush a high-efficiency 1.28-gallon toilet once every hour for more than 29 years.
Each state has its own process for delegating cuts.
In Colorado, dozens of local water commissioners — individuals assigned to districts within the state’s seven water divisions, which encompass the Colorado River and other waterways — monitor streamflow conditions to determine how much is available.
Those commissioners, who work for the state’s Division of Water Resources, respond to requests from water rights holders, and determine which users must be cut off when there is not a sufficient supply for all those who want to draw from the river.
In Colorado, Hannah Cranor-Kersting, a third-generation cattle rancher, said those calls can force water users to decide between watering fields needed for grazing cattle or those used to grow crops including hay.
“It's kind of a balancing act of,” said Cranor-Kresting, who is the Gunnison County extension director for Colorado State University’s Office of Engagement and Extension. “If there's not enough water, we have to decide what gets irrigated.”
“It has real, real impacts for us, and it's so variable,” added Cranor-Kersting, who spoke at a June event sponsored by the state’s Department of Natural Resources. “It’s so hard to know year-by-year."
Lower Basin disagreement
Those arguments are unlikely to move water users in the Lower Basin states, who say that less water in the river system means everyone must accept a portion of future cuts.
That trio of states put together a plan in which, under the most extreme circumstances, cuts would be shared equally across the basins.
“The Upper Basin’s claims of hydrologic shortage are fictional — a complete hoax,” said JB Hamby, California’s Colorado River commissioner, adding that Colorado and other states have ramped up their reliance on the river and pointing to projections that show further increased use of the waterway.
“Climate change will not allow us to manage for a river we wish we had. Real reductions must happen across the entire basin to adapt to the reality of Mother Nature,” he added.
Despite being allocated 7.5 million acre-feet of water annually, Bureau of Reclamation records dating to 1971 on consumptive use in the Upper Basin show the region topping out at 4.9 million acre-feet in 2001. The states reached a low point in 1977, when they consumed just 3.1 million acre-feet.
More recently, the Upper Basin states used 4.7 million acre-feet of water in 2023, down from a recent peak of 4.8 million acre-feet in 2020.
By comparison, the Lower Basin states used 5.8 million acre-feet of water in 2023, marking their lowest use since 1984. Reclamation projects those states will use more than 6 million acre-feet in 2024.
“A hydrologic shortage in the Lower Basin means real people are forced to cut back on water that cities and farms have long relied on,” Hamby said. California owns the oldest and largest share of the Colorado River, claiming 4.4 million acre-feet of its flows.
“In contrast, the Upper Basin’s claims of hydrologic shortage seem to stem from an inability to pursue unchecked development dreams, rather than actual reductions,” he added.
Hamby also pointed to a study published in late August in the journal Water Resources Research that suggests Colorado must halt a practice allowed in so-called wet years under which users can tap unlimited flows when the river is healthy enough to meet the needs of all water rights holders.
That practice is known as operating the waterway under “free river conditions.”
The study led by researchers from the University of Virginia found excess withdrawals in one region of the state totaling nearly 88,000 acre-feet in 2017, based on diversion and water rights records. That means the state drew more water than projected, removing flows from the river system that might otherwise have been directed to storage facilities for future use.
“We argue that closing the loophole is a pragmatic step to address the Colorado River Basin's enormous water challenges, and could serve as one part of the Upper Basin's contribution to the current challenges,” the researchers wrote.
Planning for uncertainty
In the West, water rights are akin to a property right, but with a key difference: Water is dispensed based on how long the water right has been in use, whether that is to irrigate fields or supply drinking water to a municipality.
That concept is often summed up as "first in time, first in right."
When a drought occurs in Colorado, water users in a particular basin may lose their ability to draw flows if a more senior water rights holder makes a "call," or a formal demand to use their full share of the river.
Less water in the river means that a call can impact more users as ever more senior water rights holders demand their flows. In 2023, up to 18 percent of the more than 737,000 acres of irrigated land faced curtailment, according to Colorado DNR data. In 2021, when flows in the river were lower, up to 28 percent of those same acres faced cuts to their water use.
In 2021, for example, state records show that when a user with a water right dated 1881 demanded their full share of the waterway, it impacted flows to 1,450 structures — meaning headgates that control how water is diverted are required to remain closed, and prevent would-be flows from traveling to ditches or canals — in the state.
Surface waters in Colorado, or the flows in rivers and streams, are typically delivered to users via a ditch, canal or similar structure.
"As everybody does here in Colorado, we start watching the snow build up back in November, and when you see one of these bad years coming — 2021 being the worst — you know it's not getting better, and you're not going to get saved," Ken Curtis, who serves as general manager for the Dolores Water Conservancy District in Arriola, Colorado, said at a June event hosted by the state DNR.
"I end up out there having these meetings, both with farmers and even the downstream fishery folks, and telling them there's not going to be any water to grow crops," he said.
By comparison, states in the river's Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — rely entirely on major reservoirs behind the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams, with flows moderated by Reclamation.
Water users in those states still face potential cuts—Arizona and Nevada currently receive only a portion of their state allocations under an agreement with the federal government that triggers automatic reductions based on the level of Lake Mead, which is the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam. But Colorado officials contend that their water users face significantly more uncertainty.
"We can't plan next year for shortage or for a big release … because none of us know what's coming next year," Curtis said. "The uncertainty level is different when you're relying on snowpack. With that said, all you can do is make mitigation plans and keep practicing."
Voluntary cuts
In recent years, the Biden administration reopened a pilot program that pays farmers and other water rights holders for voluntary, temporary cuts to their water use.
In 2023, the program saved nearly 38,000 acre-feet of water at a cost of nearly $16 million, or an average of $422 per acre-foot of water conserved.
The program doesn’t fix the issue of more junior water users losing out on flows due to drought or lower snowpacks — those losses remain uncompensated — but instead marks a step toward increasing conservation and decreasing water use by some water rights holders.
The Upper Colorado River Commission, which presents the region's four states, is also working with Reclamation to create a new "credit" system for conserving water in the state that would flow into Lake Powell.
That means when water is saved by farms, the state would be responsible for tracking those flows. Currently, conserved flows remain in the river system and can be claimed by downstream water users.
“We all know that we have a supply and demand imbalance in the Colorado River system. We can’t control supply, so the only lever that we have to work with is demand,” Anne Castle, the commission's chair, recently told The Colorado Sun newspaper.
Castle, a former Interior Department assistant secretary for water and science in the Obama administration, said: “But if we’re reducing demand — and using taxpayer money to do it — then we have to make sure that it’s meaningful.”
Still, while Upper Basin negotiators hope to see those shortfalls formally incorporated into future federal management of the river, some water officials are less optimistic.
"I think it's a real problem we have, and it's a reality that we live with in the Upper Basin," said Andy Mueller, who serves as general manager of the Colorado River Conservation District, an agency that represents water interests for 15 counties on the state's Western Slope.
But that doesn't necessarily make it "a persuasive talking point" to Lower Basin officials, he said.
"Frankly, from the Lower Basin perspective, it's like, 'Well, that's too bad you guys didn't develop your water rights better,'" Mueller said, pointing to the long-term efforts by those states that created major infrastructure including lakes Mead and Powell.
Nonetheless, Mueller said he, too, hopes to see "some recognition and credit for those hydrologic shortages" in the next operating plan.
"In those years where our water use in the Upper Basin drops because of drought and our consumption drops, it doesn't produce more water in Lake Powell or Mead, and that's the problem," Mueller said. "But it's real, and it is conservation, whether it's voluntary or not."
