On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issued an environmental impact plan in a last-minute attempt to save the dwindling Colorado River from overuse. The good news is that the Bureau recognized that for decades Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico have engaged in conservation to send the required amount of water to three downstream states that also rely on the river for municipal water, irrigation and hydropower. Colorado and the other three Upper Basin states are facing less severe cuts, and they are voluntary.
Meanwhile, the Bureau ordered California, Arizona and Nevada to reduce their water use by a significant amount – 3 million acre-feet over the next two years unless the drought significantly improves. That is the equivalent of 977 billion gallons of water that won’t flow to homes in Phoenix, to fields in the Imperial Valley or to pools in Las Vegas. For comparison, Denver Water customers use about 60 billion gallons of water a year.
We wish that these cuts were not necessary.
But the Colorado River has been receiving less and less water every year, as the West undergoes a warming and drying process known as aridification. A reduction in snowpack has resulted in less water flowing into the river every year, culminating with the disastrous 2026 winter, when record-low levels of snow left reservoirs unfilled and the Colorado River hurting for water.
We want to make clear that Colorado users have been restricting their water use every year based on the actual amounts of water that flow into the Colorado River. The state uses a system of prior appropriation, and in dry years, users with junior water rights see drastic reductions in the water available for use.
Lower-basin states have not engaged in as much conservation, and in dry years they have been able to rely on stored water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell to cushion water cuts. The result has been the steady drawing down of Mead and Powell. Today those two reservoirs are in crisis, facing deadpool status where water levels are too low to flow over the dam.
Upper basin states are not perfect. For the first time since the Colorado River Compact was first agreed to in 1922, the states may fail to send enough water downstream to the Lower Basin states. The shortfall is the result of extreme drought, and California, Nevada and Arizona are likely to file a lawsuit demanding compensation for the reduction in water if the five-year average dips below the required threshold this year.
The takeaway from all of this is that in the West we all must reduce our water use. Whether you own senior water rights and are flood irrigating crops on the Grand Mesa or you live in an apartment on the Front Range and your municipal water provider is pumping water from the river basin over the Great Divide, we all must use less than we have historically.
Some of the adjustments are easier than others, and the federal government has compensated Lower Basin states for reduced water use in recent years.
Colorado water users are suffering from the drought this year, and those who pull from the Colorado River basin will have to get serious about complying with the river ccompact’sdownstream demands.
The Bureau of Reclamation, however, is right that for now the brunt of the mandatory cuts must fall on Lower Basin states that have not practiced the same annual water conservation methods as upper basin states. The path forward for the river system is still muddy — we have obligations to Native American tribes and to Mexico — but the BBureau’sorder on Friday requiring dramatic cuts for Lower Basin states does help clear the waters a little.
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