The Colorado River has been in the midst of climate change-fueled drought for the better part of two decades, and 2025 brought no relief to the stressed system.
Even though snowpack in the early part of the year was close to normal for much of the basin, inefficient runoff meant a lot of the water in the snow didn’t make it into rivers and streams.
The Colorado River’s political future is also uncertain.
The river’s current operating guidelines, including how water is released from its two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, expire in 2026. The seven states that rely on the river have missed several key deadlines to come up with a plan. That includes the most recent deadline of November 11, 2025, when the states were supposed to have a big-picture idea of what water allocation amongst the states would look like, and where cuts to usage would occur.
A somber mood at the annual river conference in Vegas
At the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas in December, attendees had to grapple with worsening drought conditions, and no movement on negotiations over allocating the river’s water after 2026.
Attendees describe the mood at the conference as serious, as the seven states that use the river were no closer to an agreement than they were in November.
“Pessimism and frustration are kind of the words of the day, I think,” said Doug Kenney, the director of the Western Water Policy Program with the Colorado River Research Group at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Chris Winter, the executive director of the Getches Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at CU Boulder’s School of Law, was also at the conference.
“I don't think there was a lot of hope or optimism, and folks were feeling frustrated,” he said. “I think folks are also feeling like this crisis, the actual crisis in terms of managing water on the system is becoming more acute. And so there's all of this energy to get something done and there's nothing happening.”
If the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico can’t reach an agreement with the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada, the federal government could step in and create an operating plan for them.
“In 35 years of studying the Colorado River, this is the first time in my life that there's a lot of people I talk to who would welcome the federal government stepping into this issue,” Kenney said.
The states have until February 14, 2026, to give their plan to the federal government. The Bureau of Reclamation, under the Department of Interior, will need to do an environmental analysis with a public comment period, because Lake Powell and Lake Mead are federal projects and are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act. February is the very latest that the states can submit a plan, given the time required for the analysis, and the new guidelines have to be in place by October.
Officials at Interior have given the states warnings that they need to figure it out. But Winter said there’s also been frustration with the federal government. He said that’s because the crisis facing the Colorado River is an issue of climate change and building resilience to its impacts.
“Meanwhile, this administration needs to step up and show more leadership, but at a federal level, they're not even willing to talk about climate change,” Winter said. “So it's this kind of frustrating and surreal situation where we all know that climate change is exacerbating the problem. But there's been this pullback from even talking about climate change as an issue at the federal level. So for many of us, that's very frustrating to see.”
The back-and-forth between two basins are getting stuck on a few key issues that have hung over negotiations for years.
The lower basin has already agreed to some pretty big cuts to water usage to the tune of 1.5 million acre-feet of water. Arizona, California, and Nevada contend that there needs to be shared pain with the Upper Basin, and want to see commitments from those states to cut water usage.
The Upper Basin says that cuts are already taking place—that snowpack and melt have become too inconsistent, and therefore, farmers and ranchers in the Upper Basin are already taking cuts because the water simply isn’t there.
There is also every indication that in 2026, the Colorado River could play a role in key elections. With Colorado Gov. Jared Polis being term-limited, gubernatorial candidates like Attorney General Phil Weiser and Sen. Michael Bennet will have to weigh in on the fate of the river.
Weiser has already taken an aggressive stance on the negotiations.
“Not being afraid of litigation—that’s important to getting the right deal,” Weiser told Politico’s E&E News.
The threat of the Colorado River going to the Supreme Court is one that’s gotten more real in recent months, but many fear it would take decades to litigate the issue.
In the Lower Basin, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is facing re-election, and she’s begun drawing her own line in the sand. In a letter to Interior Sec. Doug Burgum she wrote that the Upper Basin has refused to offer “meaningful, verifiable conservation commitments.”
‘Dancing with Deadpool’ report highlights challenges, proposes solutions
Kenney is one of the authors of a new report from the Colorado River Research Group called “Dancing with Deadpool.” The collection of essays from members of the research group and guest contributors highlights the dire conditions the basin is in, and calls for leadership to rethink how to manage the river going forward.
The different essays look at climate science, agriculture, decision making and governance, as well as
In one of his essays, Kenney writes that the safety nets the Colorado River Basin relies on are being eroded by politics and climate change. One of those safety nets is groundwater, which water users can pump when surface water is low.
“The groundwater through much of this basin is in worse shape than the surface water,” he said. The declines are quite alarming.”
He said the other disappearing safety net for the basin is the federal agencies that manage and study the river and its reservoirs, namely the Bureau of Reclamation under the Department of Interior.
“Those budgets are being slashed, those people are being fired,” he said. “You're waiting for the moment when these people are most needed and they're all getting fired. And it's just so reckless.”
Kenney works on issues of governance as it relates to the Colorado River system. He said the current management system for the river doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the issue, especially with climate change making things worse.
“We need big reductions just to catch up with what has happened in the climate and hydrology in the last 25 years,” he said. “There's every indication that it's going to continue to get worse the next 25 years. So we need some sort of dynamic system to keep making these adjustments, and we just don't have that.”
Kenney and some of his fellow scholars would like to see a much more transparent approach to river management, rather than closed-door negotiations that only occur when the Colorado River is in a moment of crisis.
“Clearly, we are in an era screaming for new ideas and new approaches; the status quo isn’t working,” Kenney wrote in the report’s preface.
He would like to see a body like a river commission with dedicated staff and representatives from not just the seven basin states, but also from Mexico and the 30 federally-recognized tribes that rely on the Colorado River. He said this could also potentially give the public more transparency and opportunity to participate in the process of governing the river that 40 million people use and supports a $1 trillion economy.
“This is a river, this is not a plumbing system,” Kenney said. “I mean, this is a place that has some intrinsic value, some cultural value, some environmental value. This is not just about how many gallons Party A gets versus how many gallons Party B gets.”
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.
