Speaking at the Colorado River District’s annual meeting, titled “Overdrawn,” a top official warned if we do not plan for drastically reduced water flows in the Colorado River and take action now, the two largest reservoirs in the system could dry up in the next three to four years.
Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, stated the Colorado River Compact is a “living document” to apply to today’s standards, despite being 100 years old. Mueller continued when the compact was formed, the intent was to have an equitable approach to the apportionment of water, and the biggest mistake when adopting the compact was using the hard number of 7.5 million acre-feet (an acre-foot is 325,851 gallons) for the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states.
Mueller said when the compact was adopted, the best available science was not used, and hydrologists noted there was not enough water to satisfy dividing that amount of water.
According to Mueller, the average river water usage by the Basin states from 2011-22 was 14.7 million acre-feet. This included 60%—or 8.8 million acre-feet—allocated to the Lower Basin states and 30%—or 4.4 million acre-feet—for the Upper Basin states, with another 1.5 million acre-feet for Mexico. The problem Mueller pointed out was there were only 12 million acre-feet to divide, forcing the states to use water from Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
Mueller painted a picture where if the states continue to allocate water as they currently do, the water levels for Lake Mead and Lake Powell will hit “dead pool status” in the next three to four years if demand is not reduced. When the lakes reach dead pool status, water levels would no longer flow downstream and power hydroelectric power stations that serve the 40 million people who rely on the river.
Mueller said while the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) could continue to rely on upstream reservoirs for maintaining lake levels downstream, those plans are unsustainable.
“We’ve now drained Blue Mesa (Reservoir in Colorado), we’re draining Flaming Gorge (Reservoir in Wyoming) as we speak and we have no plans for how we’re going to handle this when those reservoirs are dropped. We can’t keep doing this,” Mueller said.
While there has been 12 million acre-feet of water to divide, Mueller said scientists are planning for 9 million acre-feet, which is “incredibly scary because … that’s a huge economic disruption; that’s communities suffering in all the Basins.”
Under that scenario, with the current usage percentages, Lower Basin states would receive 4.5 million acre-feet, and the Upper Basin states would receive 2.25 million acre-feet.
Mueller suggested the federal government demand the Lower Basin states account for evaporation and transit losses in their annual water use. Mueller said the transit and evaporative loss together account for 1.2 million acre-feet, and the Lower Basin states “do not get dinged for this.” Mueller said the Department of the Interior (DOI) and BOR must fix this problem before the Upper Basin states begin programmatic water conservation.
Mueller added the BOR has a good relationship with the Lower Basin states, and the issue could result in litigation from the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the Upper Basin states.
“There very well may be litigation if they don’t fix this problem,” Mueller warned. “Because if their threat is to come after our federal projects in the Upper Basin, we will defend those projects.”
Mueller said everybody needs to come to the table and come up with solutions, some of which may be local solutions.
“The key here is getting the accounting fixed and then recognizing we all have an obligation to participate as well,” Mueller said. “How does that work? We’ll see in the future, and there are lots of opportunities for all of us.”
Federal efforts
DOI Secretary Deb Haaland, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo and BOR Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton attended the Colorado River Symposium in Santa Fe, NM, in September to address evaporation and transit loss along with levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
Currently, Upper Basin states account for evaporation in reservoirs, but Lower Basin states are not required to due to court decrees that followed the Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. California, which never required accounting for evaporation from Lake Mead.
The symposium focused on taking action to reduce water consumption amid dire hydrological projections. These included protecting infrastructure in Lake Powell and studies of the bypass tubes at Glen Canyon Dam to increase water delivery capacity during low reservoir levels and to manage water levels.
The symposium also considered making additional water cuts in 2023 and changes to evaluate and adjust triggering elevations and/or reduction volumes identified in the interim guidelines under the 2007 Record of Decision. Based on Lake Mead levels, the interim guidelines govern when water cutbacks would occur in Lower Basin states.
Department leaders announced plans for the $4 billion BOR received from the Inflation Reduction Act, but they were not finalized. According to public radio station KUNC, the bulk of the money will go toward projects in the Colorado River Basin, with the majority going to “system conservation.” Sources told the station some funding would go toward farmers and ranchers in Lower Basin states to fallow land in exchange for $300-400 per acre-foot of water conserved.
A DOI statement said the projects could include initiatives such as canal lining, re-regulating reservoirs, salinity projects and other infrastructure or “on-the-ground” activities. —Charles Wallace, WLJ editor
