A monthly members-only column by Alan Dulaney
Negotiations depend on the interested parties actually talking to one another. Amongst the seven states of the Colorado River Basin, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of talking going on, at least to an outside observer. And 2026 gets closer every day.
There is no question that conditions within the Colorado River Basin are becoming warmer and drier. River flows cannot be expected to remain at 15 million acre-feet (maf) per year as set in the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Future flows will be more variable, with volumes ranging from 12.5 to 9.0 maf in any given year, which impacts storage. Even when the snowpack is at or above historic expectations, changes in soil moisture, seasonality of snow melt, and increased evaporation mean that runoff does not match snowfall totals; 2023 was a good example, where runoff was far less that would have been expected given a heavy snowpack. Everyone knows this.
The current shortage-sharing guidelines were established in 2007 and expire in 2026. The seven Basin states have been negotiating new guidelines for years now under the aegis of the Bureau of Reclamation. Mexico is also involved, having a claim by treaty of 1.5 maf on the river. The basic division between the states has been the Upper Basin (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming) versus the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada). Those two groupings cannot reach agreement on how to allocate the dwindling flows on the river.
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