What if next year looks like this one?

The nagging, unanswerable question as Colorado River states struggle to share the diminished river

by Allen Best

In haggling with their down-river states about sharing the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, the headwater states have delivered a consistent message.

We don’t have two big reservoirs named Mead and Powell sitting upstream from us, they say. Mostly we must make do with what the sky delivers.

At the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting in Denver this week, the states reiterated this message, offering ample evidence from places like Emery, Utah, and Kemmerer, Wyo.

Lest anybody miss the message, Chuck Cullom, the director of the upper-basin commission, showed aerial images of farming areas in Colorado and the other upper-basin states. Far less green was evident in the Montrose area and on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation during June than in 2024.

This exceptional year for drought and heat was described by several speakers in Denver as dire. “I want you all to recognize the significance and severity of the things we’re dealing with,” said the Utah representative, Gene Shawcroft. “Totally unprecedented.”

In western Colorado, a Meeker rancher used the same word to describe withered streams. “The situation here has gone from bad to dire.”

Upper-basin states have been in a tug-of-war for the last three years with lower-basin states about how to share this diminished river. As Becky Mitchell (above), Colorado’s representative, says repeatedly, we have a math problem. It’s impossible to continue releasing more water from reservoirs than flow into them. Upper-basin states, she says, “live within the means of the river.”

In crafting the Colorado River Compact in 1922, delegates assumed annual flows of roughly 17 to 18 million acre-feet annually at Lee Ferry, the legal division point separating the upper and lower basins. The 20^th century delivered naturalized flows of 15.2 million on average.

In this century, flows have slackened even more. Since 2019 they have averaged 10.2 million acre-feet. This year less than 1 million acre-feet is expected to flow into Lake Powell other than releases from upstream reservoirs.

The compact pledged 7.5 million acre-feet to each of the two basins. The lower-basin states for many years over-used their allocation. Upper-basin states topped out at about 4.5 million acre-feet, using 3.5 million acre-feet in drier years.

Colorado and other basins states insist upon the right to use more water — if it’s there. Pre-compact rights of all Native American tribes have yet to be realized. All this creates a different math problem.

When the four upper basin states adopted their own compact in 1948, they wisely chose to use a percentage not an absolute number. That would make sense for the Colorado River Basin altogether — if the two basins could agree upon it. Tensions have elevated. Outwardly this marriage looks very rocky.

Might there be another way? Tanya Trujillo, New Mexico’s new representative, offered an intriguing statement at the Denver meeting.

“I think we need to think differently about some things,” she said. “In New Mexico, we’re going to be taking a fresh look at some of the issues that we are facing and really try to look for a collaborative process going forward.”

In time of crisis, she added, it’s important to “project calm, knowledgeable reassurance and try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

For whom was that message intended? It was not clear. However, even in Colorado, some have suggested upper-basin states have overstated their case.

What cannot be contested is Mitchell’s assertion that demands cannot exceed supplies. This year, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Water is being taken from Flaming Gorge and other federal upstream reservoirs to keep water in Powell. Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison may have too little water to release any downstream, a condition called dead pool. The Bureau of Reclamation similarly sees that possibility for Navajo, the reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border.

The Bureau intends to release six million acre-feet from Powell for the lower-basin, leaving Powell 80% empty. The agency’s “most probable” projections see reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam early next year being too low to generate electricity.

In Grand Junction this week, people stood in the rain with sheer delight. It was a feel-good moment. But will El Niño save us from calamity? Maybe, but don’t bet on it. The warming climate seems to be rewriting the rules about how much water from the Pacific Ocean arrives on our mountains.

That was the takeaway from a recent presentation by Brad Udall, a scientist scholar affiliated with Colorado State University. El Niños in the past have produced big water years. One was in 1983, the year that flood waters nearly broke Glen Canyon Dam. Often, though, an El Niño produces no more moisture than a La Niña.

“The real question” said Shawcroft, the Utah representative, “is what happens if next year looks like this?”