With a deadline for a new Colorado River plan fast approaching, the states that share its water are still at an impasse, and still repeating many of the same talking points that have emerged during more than a year of unsuccessful negotiations.
Federal officials said they will formalize a plan for dividing the shrinking water supply as soon as mid-summer, and state leaders are not close to a seven-state agreement that would keep the river working somewhat normally and stave off messy lawsuits between states and the federal government.
Negotiators representing the seven states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada — rarely address the public together, but an annual water policy conference in Boulder, Colorado, put two of them on the same stage.
Colorado's negotiator, Becky Mitchell, and Nevada's, John Entsminger, spoke to a crowd of policy experts and answered questions from the audience. Arizona's top water official, Tom Buschatzke, attended the conference but did not speak publicly.
"I hope you know we've been called failures," Mitchell said. "Just last night, I think we were called failures, all seven of us. Not one of us, not one state, not just the feds, or just the states. We're called failures."
Despite months of negotiations, Mitchell and her allies in Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico have not put forth a plan to voluntarily cut back on their water use. Their downstream counterparts in Arizona, California, and Nevada have volunteered some.
"There's a reasonable, rational operating plan for the next two-plus years right in front of our face, and we should take that," Nevada's Entsminger said. "Ultimately, that's probably the best way to operate the river, and to keep us out of court until 2029."
That plan would issue steep cuts to some water users in central Arizona, but local water experts say they would be manageable, especially in the short term.
Mitchell pushed back on the proposal, raising concerns that returning to the negotiating table every two years could set the states up for more conflict.
"As we move forward," she said, "I hope that we can answer the question, not are we building a series of band aids, but are we building some sort of certainty and resilience for the basin and for the future?"
The states seem to be on a crash course for litigation. Negotiators have repeatedly said that they want to steer away from court, but have made little progress on an agreement that would do that steering.
Entsminger and Mitchell addressed the idea of bringing a mediator into their negotiating rooms as a last-ditch attempt to reinvigorate stalled talks. Entsminger said he would support a setup with three mediators — one picked by the upstream states, a second picked by the downstream states, and a third picked by the first two mediators.
Meanwhile, an expert on U.S.-Mexico water deals opined that the chaos between the states was making it hard for Mexican officials — who sit literally and figuratively downstream of Colorado River decisions made by those states — to plan for the future.
Carlos de la Parra, who served as an advisor during previous water-sharing talks between the U.S. and Mexico, addressed the American negotiators.
"Have you ever wondered what it does to the presence of Mexico in the internal argument of the states?" he asked. "It might be like you get invited to someone's home, and you sit down and dinner is not ready because there's an argument going on in the family."
De la Parra said Mexico has used the time that states have been deadlocked to "improve our game" and work on new strategies for a drier future.
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