There’s still no plan for how the seven states that use water from the Colorado River will allocate the scarce resource after 2026.
Tuesday, November 11, marked a deadline set by the federal government for the states to share a framework for new operating guidelines—another deadline that’s come and gone with no agreement.
The river’s supply has drastically decreased since the original Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922, due to climate change and overallocation of water. In 2007, the states agreed to interim operating guidelines, but those expire in 2026.
Because Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the basin’s two biggest reservoirs, are federal projects managed by federal agencies, those agencies will need to do an environmental review and public comment period, as required by law. The federal government needs input from the states in a timely fashion to complete the review and public comment process, in order to have new rules in place by October 2026.
On Tuesday night, the seven states, along with the Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation, issued a statement on the negotiations.
“While more work needs to be done, collective progress has been made that warrants continued efforts to define and approve details for a finalized agreement,” the statement reads. “Through continued cooperation and coordinated action, there is a shared commitment to ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience of the Colorado River system.”
The upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico have been at odds with the lower basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada over how to define shortages and who will face cutbacks. Negotiations over the post-2026 operating guidelines have been taking place since 2023. While there have been some minor breakthroughs, the process has remained largely secretive, and oftentimes tense.
Colorado’s Upper Colorado River Basin Commissioner, Becky Mitchell, the state’s lead negotiator, issued the following statement Tuesday night.
“The Basin States remain committed to collaboration grounded in the best available science and respect for all Colorado River water users,” she wrote. “We are taking a meaningful step toward long-term sustainability and demonstrating a shared determination to find supply-driven solutions.”
In October, Mitchell described the meetings as “not enjoyable.”
“A supply-based proposal is the only way to move forward,” she told attendees at the Colorado River District’s Across Divides conference on October 3. “We all have to be responding to supply.”
That means that the new guidelines should be based on actual streamflows, rather than demand from water users.
“We need to set aside building an operations plan that meets the needs as they are currently,” she said. “We need to let go of that dream and be able to figure out how to respond, and I think that's been a bit of a struggle.”
Mitchell said at the time, there were a lot of ideas being put forward at the negotiating table as to what that system might look like.
“It feels a little bit like we’re in a game of ‘bring me another rock’ right now, and we’re continuing that, and we will continue it,” she said. “We can’t give up.”
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs sent a letter to the Department of the Interior on November 11, asking Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to step in on the negotiations, saying that the upper basin had failed to offer “meaningful, verifiable conservation commitments.”
Chris Winter, the director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at CU Boulder’s School of Law, said last week, ahead of the deadline, that the Colorado River is in a new era, defined by climate change and a scarcity of resources, which demanded urgent action.
“The best way that we can prepare to move forward in this new reality is for the states to reach agreement amongst themselves and to compromise on how we're going to adapt water use to fit the supply,” he said.
He said compromise was necessary to ensure certainty for the over 40-million people that rely on the river.
“I think many people in the water user community want certainty above all else,” he said. “They can plan around scarcity, but they need to know, with a certain amount of certainty, what that scarcity looks like.”
Colorado River experts largely agree with Winter’s assessment, saying that “shared pain” when it comes to cutbacks will be necessary.
If the states don’t come to a detailed agreement by February 14, 2026, the federal government will step in and make a plan for them.
The threat of legal action also hangs over the proceedings. The lower basin could ask the Supreme Court to step in and require the upper basin to deliver the amount of water allotted to them in the 1922 compact—which would kick off years of litigation, according to Winter.
“I think that the big risk that many people are really concerned about is suddenly turning over management of the Colorado River to the justices on the Supreme Court, who, of course, are not water law experts,” Winter said. “A lot of people are starting to talk about that as a more realistic possibility.”
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.
