Under pressure to deal with water cuts, and amid discussions of lawsuits, Wyoming and other states in the upper Colorado River Basin are pointing to the climate-driven disaster in the West to insist they can’t cut what Mother Nature doesn’t give her head.
Although some observers suspect that the dispute is to prevent further cuts in water use, the state of emergency insists on honest negotiations and still hopes to make an agreement with its partners in the low-lying areas despite the deadlines. They cannot commit to numbers beyond their means.
“If there’s no water, our water users can’t use it, and that’s often the case,” said New Mexico water spokesman Estevan Lopez. On paper, it may seem like the watersheds are getting overwhelmed, Lopez added. However, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, live with “a real and mandatory reduction imposed by nature, which we call water scarcity.”
Lopez met with Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart and other members of the Upper Colorado River Commission Tuesday to discuss what they say are ongoing negotiations with the lower Colorado River Basin in Arizona, California and Nevada, as well as 30 tribes and Mexico. The complex Drought Response Action Agreement expires later this year and must be renewed. It dictates how the stakeholders – and the 40 million people who depend on the river system – share the deficit when the water supply does not meet the set allocations.
Failing to make an agreement so far, government officials are determined to enforce their plan – an expectation that many believe, but it confirms that there are competing claims and court decisions that are lacking in the expectations and hydrological realities of the river system.
“We’ve given every tool we have,” Colorado Water Conservation Board Director Becky Mitchell said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We’ve provided releases from our upstream reservoirs, an extensive supplemental program and releases from Lake Powell that put Powell at greater risk, especially in the short term.”
Mitchell added that they must go beyond their water-use reduction practices to “adapt to new conditions,” which include significant losses due to evaporation.
One big difference between low- and high-end areas, for decades, has been water use, according to Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. While participants have been using their full allocations, top states like Wyoming haven’t — and they want to protect their full allocations. So while there is little debate about how much both sides will suffer from the water cuts, downstream stakeholders say their proposed sacrifices outweigh the river’s.
“Both arguments are valid, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re where we are and the negotiations are stalled,” Sorensen told WyoFile. “Basically, this is a battle over whether the low-income countries continue to use the full allocations, or whether [upper-basin states] adding materials that destroy the lower basin, because it seems that there is not enough water for both of them. ”
In addition to striking a new long-term drought protocol, stakeholders – along with the federal Bureau of Reclamation – are considering measures to stop sharing the pain of the hydrological crisis driven by heat in the region.
The severe lack of snow this winter, combined with blistering, record high temperatures, calls for immediate action, said Lopez of New Mexico. Additional upstream releases to help provide water downstream and support hydroelectricity at Lake Powell, which includes storage water from Flaming Gorge Dam on the Wyoming-Utah border, must occur as soon as possible “if we’re going to be able to get the full benefit of those jobs,” he said.
“We’ve talked over and over, it’s a bad situation.”
What does it mean in Wyoming?
In addition to the release of more water from the Flaming Gorge this spring, residents in the southwestern part of the country are worried about future “calls” for mandatory restrictions on water use.
Such “lines” are placed on the basis of the water rights of both seniors and juniors. Those who received their water rights recently are the first to be ordered to turn off their spigots. In southwestern Wyoming, those smaller water rights include municipalities and industrial facilities.
“We have 2,300 workers at risk in southwest Wyoming if we don’t find a solution,” Jody Levin, who speaks on behalf of the mining industry and the Wyoming Mining Association, told Wyoming lawmakers earlier this year.
Although the state has initiated water efficiency and voluntary efforts to save water to help in the general efforts of the Colorado River, Gebhart said, the state intends – as Sorensen said above – to protect its existing rights to use its full allocation of Colorado River water.
“That authority is not open for negotiation,” Gebhart told WyoFile in an email. “Therefore, Wyoming continues to consider new water use applications in accordance with Wyoming’s constitution and regulations.
“We also continue to pursue and support further development of existing applications,” he added. Therefore, new permits and new uses do not necessarily result in increased use.
Some observers assert that upstream states do not realize that new permits to pump groundwater that could be considered part of the Colorado River system, for example, make their water conservation claims “hollow”.
“The authorities in those counties are still issuing new use permits,” Basin Water Network Executive Director Kyle Roerink told WyoFile. “Until we collectively understand the dangerous nature of that consent, we’re spinning our wheels.”
From bad to worst
The Colorado River has long been considered overloaded for what it can deliver – the result of the 1922 computer, growing demands on the system and changing climates.
This river is usually fed by seasonal snow in the upper reaches of the region. So far this year, the region’s “equivalent snowfall” is 42% of normal — the lowest since 1986, according to federal sources. Measurements show an earlier-than-normal and lower-than-normal flow to feed the system, with hungry upstream reservoirs acting as a water bank to balance distribution among users.
“I think those [who] stay at water groups already know that 2026 will be a bad water year – possibly the strongest on record.
“Cities across Colorado, East- and West Slope, large and small, are putting water restrictions in place in response to this drought,” Mitchell added. “No one is safe.”
The situation is similarly dire in Utah, which has had its warmest winter on record, Utah communications spokesman Gene Shawcroft noted. “That’s unbelievable. Most of our rivers are already high – four to five weeks ahead of schedule.”
Although the snowpack in southwestern Wyoming may be “set” compared to the rest of the Colorado River watershed, “We’re continuing to lose that snow earlier than normal,” said Wyoming’s Gebhart. We set the maximum temperature.
Gebhart said he has spoken with ranchers in southwestern Wyoming who say they may not be able to grow the first hay. He added: “The water we expect is not clear. “This year seems to be very different and shows very bad resources for us.”
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