The seven states that use water from the Colorado River have been in negotiations for the past couple of years. The upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico are at odds with the lower basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada over how to allocate the water.
The river’s current operating guidelines expire next year, and the states are under pressure to scale back usage due to water shortages driven by climate change.
On Tuesday, November 11th, the federal government needs to know whether the states have reached an agreement for the river’s use going forward.
Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes spoke with Chris Winter to find out more about what’s at stake. Winter is the executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at CU Boulder’s School of Law.
Editor’s note: this conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Llanes: Let's start with a little bit of background. There are seven states in the Colorado River Basin. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico are the upper basin, and the lower basin is California, Nevada, and Arizona. Those states have been negotiating new operating guidelines for the Colorado River for quite some time now. But what exactly have they been discussing?
Winter: Yeah, very good questions. And this dispute has a very long history. So in the big picture, the states in the Colorado River Basin are discussing how to allocate a scarce resource, which is the water in the Colorado River. And that water supports 40 million people or more across the American Southwest, including, you know, robust agricultural economies, municipal water users. It also supports recreation and environmental values. It's a scarce resource that’s getting more scarce over time because of the results of climate change, the impacts of climate change, and so the seven states in the Colorado River Basin are now discussing how to allocate that scarce resource moving forward into the future.
Llanes: So we have a deadline coming up that's pretty important. What are the seven states supposed to have come up with by November 11th?
Winter: So there's operating guidelines that are in place right now for how the Department of the Interior will operate the reservoirs, and those operating guidelines expire in 2026. And so everybody's talking about now the Department of Interior needing to develop post 2026 operating guidelines for the Colorado River. Those guidelines will dictate how much water is released from the reservoirs for downstream users, and that will, of course, affect how the reservoir levels are managed over time. So the Department of Interior said, “states, you have to bring to us an agreement by November 11th if you would like the Department of Interior to consider that agreement in our decision making process as we get ready to decide how to manage the reservoirs in this post-2026 environment.” So that's the deadline in November. It's basically the time that the Department of the Interior has told the basin states that if they want a consensus agreement that the states have come up with, and they want the Department of Interior to base its decision on that agreement, then the states need to provide that to the Department of Interior basically by November 11th,
The Department of Interior has authority over how to operate the reservoirs because they’re federal projects. And so when the department decides how to do that, that's a public process. Because it's a federal agency, it has to go through an environmental review process. There's public participation, public notice and comment. And so it takes some time for the federal government to make this decision, and that's why the Department of Interior needs the basin states to present their consensus agreement well before the deadline for issuing a final decision.
Llanes: So it's my understanding that this plan that they have to come up with by November 11th is more high-level, a little more conceptual. They don't need to have every single detail figured out. And then in February, a little further down the line, they will be required to have more details and a much more fleshed out plan for the Department of the Interior. But let's talk worst case scenario. What happens if we get to the 11th and there's no plan, the states haven't come to an agreement. Where do we go from there?
Winter: The alternative to the states coming up with a plan for how to allocate water in the Colorado River is for the Department of the Interior to decide for the states and for the department to essentially take over operation of the system. And that's a very realistic possibility. And the leaders in the administration right now who are in charge of this process have said publicly that they're prepared to do that. That would basically look like the Department of Interior deciding on its own how much water to release from Lake Powell and Lake Mead and to decide whether to exercise other authorities that the department might have over water storage and water use in other places in the Colorado River Basin.
And one of the interesting dynamics to this whole story is that the Department of Interior has much more authority to control lower basin water use than it does upper basin water use. That's because the department has contracts with all of the major water users in the basin, and those contracts basically say the department releases a certain amount of water to the lower basin water users from Lake Mead. And so the government or the department interior can control how much water's released under those contracts. In the upper basin, the department doesn't have such a strong lever to pull. The department could, for instance, release water from Flaming Gorge or Blue Mesa reservoirs to help prop up water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. But that's really kind of a one-time operation. Once you release water from those upper basin reservoirs, you can't continue to do that over time. And so I think one of the interesting dynamics is, if the states don't come up with their own agreement, the Department of Interior steps in, takes over the system. Its existing authorities, you know, grant it much more power over lower basin and water users. But there's always the possibility that the department could go to Congress and seek new authorities in some way. So that's also kind of an unknown that's hanging out there.
Llanes: Okay. So what do we know about the negotiations at this point in time? Are we confident that there is going to be this agreement on a plan by November 11th?
Winter: Well, I think there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of doubt, and I think many people who are really knowledgeable about these issues in the basin are concerned about the state of the negotiations and whether we see a framework or an agreement out of the states on November 11th.
And I think it's important to note that in the bigger picture, you know, there's a ton of uncertainty, there's a lot of uncertainty. Mother Nature is creating, of course, a lot of uncertainty and there's concerns over aridification of the West as a result of climate change. There's a tremendous amount of legal uncertainty over how the 1922 (Colorado River) compact should be interpreted and issues like whether the Department of Interior could get new authorities from Congress. And so with so much uncertainty, I think it's imperative that the states reach an agreement amongst themselves that involves compromise by all the parties and in the face of so much uncertainty.
I think it's a compromise agreement that is really going to provide this certainty that all the water users in the basin really desperately want and need at this point in time. So I think many of us are hoping that the states can figure out how to compromise and reach agreement with each other so that the Department of Interior doesn't have to step in, which I think would start us down a path of much greater conflict and uncertainty in the future. So I think compromise is good for the water users, it's good for the system, and it's certainly good for the states if they can hammer it out.
So all that said, I don't know if we're going to get there. I think there's a lot of uncertainty and I think a lot of that relates to the state's various interpretations of what they're entitled to under the 1922 compact, even if that's unrealistic, based on how much water's in the system. But it's been a very difficult set of negotiations so far, and I honestly don't know whether we'll get there on the 11th. Or if we do, like you said, it's just going to be kind of a very high level framework, and there'll be a lot of really important details left unanswered at that point in time. So we're just going to have to wait and see.
Llanes: All right. Well, November 11th is just around the corner. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
Winter: Absolutely, Caroline.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
