This story was last updated at 5:16 p.m.
Federal officials on Friday released a long-awaited framework for the Colorado River, a system that sustains agriculture, businesses, communities and tribes across the West, eliciting disparate reactions from across the river basin.
The plan would require Arizona, California, and Nevada to reduce their water use by 3 million acre-feet in the coming decade. The increasingly parched river system is providing less water than it did in prior decades, according to federal estimates.
The final Environmental Impact Statement from the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation represents the largest proposed cuts for those states to date. The documents cited drought, historically low water levels at the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs, and increased human strain on the river system.
A new framework
Federal officials called the "preferred alternative," which was issued after state negotiators failed to reach an agreement, a way to help adapt the river's changing needs and conditions.
"This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions," Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a press release on Friday.
The cuts in Arizona, California, and Nevada have the potential to impact agriculture, businesses and communities that rely on the river.
One of the most important and contentious natural resources in the West, the Colorado River is fed by waters in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The river runs west to the California border with Arizona, flowing through northern Mexico before emptying into the Gulf of California.
Upper Basin states include Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah. Lower Basin states include Arizona, Nevada and California. The Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922, and interim guidelines on water allocation, issued in 2007, are set to expire in October.
The new plan would extend the agreement until 2036, with decisions about water use made every two years during that time.
The recommendations come amid historic changes in the waters measured for allocation to the states. More than a century ago, the Colorado River Compact apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet to both the Upper and Lower Basins based on the estimated pre-compact average inflow. That division was based on average inflows measured in the early 1900s of 18 million acre-feet. About a century later, inflows from 2000 to 2024 are much less: 12.9 million acre-feet.
That trend of less water has held in recent years. According to the Bureau of Reclamation, the average consumption of water in the Colorado River Basin was 13.1 million acre-feet between 2020 and 2024, and is broken down as follows:
- Upper Basin Use: 3.8 million acre-feet (29%)
- Lower Basin Use: 6.5 million acre-feet (49%)
- Mexico Use: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%)
- Evaporation: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%)
Reactions split between the basins
"This is an important milestone, but it is not the finish line," JB Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California and Colorado River commissioner for California, said in a statement on Friday. Negotiations between the state, he said, will continue.
The federal plan does not, in itself, determine specific operating decisions or serve as the operating plan for the river, Hamby said. He touted California's water cuts, describing them as the lowest since 1949, despite communities served by the river growing to a population of 19 million.
"The proposal responds to a fundamental reality: the Colorado River no longer reliably produces enough water to support all the uses and expectations built around it," he continued. "That challenge is shared across the Basin, and addressing it requires specific, measurable reductions in water use by every state."
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs appeared even more pointed in her disapproval of the plan, saying it contains "unacceptable options that include the federal government forcing Arizona to take the majority of draconian water cutbacks."
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo expressed concern that the plan could have "devastating" impacts on the state's economy and environment.
"Nevada has put forward reasonable compromise proposals to the other states, and I will fight against any outcome that imposes unreasonable impacts to our communities and those living in them," he said in a statement.
John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, echoed Lombardo's concerns about the economic and environmental impact.
"Nevada gets 1.8% of the water on the Colorado River, and yet they're showing hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of reductions," he said.
Entsminger felt that Lower Basin states were being singled out in the plan.
"The idea that a minority of states can solve the problem without all of the states and all of the water users participating, I think, is misguided," he said.
Meanwhile, leaders upriver were more optimistic.
"While the final details are still being analyzed by Upper Division States, we are encouraged that new operating guidelines will better reflect existing water supply, which must underpin any practicable plan going forward," Govs. Jared Polis (Colorado), Mark Gordon (Wyoming), Spencer Cox (Utah) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (New Mexico) said in a joint statement.
The statement also said the states are committed to "continued good faith discussions with our counterparts."
Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado denounced the plan for its top-down approach, saying it doesn't go far enough.
"I am disappointed that the Interior Department could not develop a seven-state consensus agreement," Bennet said. "While a two-year operating plan is the bare minimum needed to operate the river, a long-term, consensus agreement that recognizes real hydrologic conditions is the only durable solution to bring certainty to the Colorado River."
How could the plan impact Upper Basin states?
Under this plan, the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) aren't as affected as Lower Basin ones (Arizona, California, Nevada) since they were spared from mandatory cuts.
The plan instead sets a target for voluntary cuts: up to 200,000 acre-feet per year, which it says could be stored in Lake Powell. That's roughly 5% of the Upper Basin's annual water use of 3.75 million acre-feet.
Conserving the water could look like paying farmers or irrigation districts to leave crop fields dry or improve the efficiency of irrigation.
"Everyone's going to have to contribute," said John Berggren with Western Resource Advocates. "The Upper Basin states are moving in that direction, and they really need to build out those programs as best they can."
Utah started a state conservation program last year, while Colorado and Wyoming are just getting started with new efforts. Berggren said the conservation initiatives will take steady funding.
The federal government is set to allocate $100 million for these voluntary conservation programs by September, but past precedent shows that may not be enough to meet the acre-foot goal.
"My hope would be that that's just a target and that some federal dollars may be made available to help move us toward that target," said Jim Magagna, the executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
Past conservation programs have been criticized for not tracking how much additional water was sent downstream. State officials are working to set up better tracking mechanisms. The question remains whether water users will opt into the program. Some in Wyoming recently said they weren't interested.
New Mexico has pursued other solutions for saving water, such as signing agreements with tribes to help conserve resources for users downstream.
The federal plan calls for voluntary cuts, for now. But potential lawsuits from Lower Basin states could ask for mandatory ones down the line.
How a century-old deal ran out of water
Talks between the states and the federal government stalled, becoming deadlocked — sometimes for years at a time — despite low water levels brought on by a decades-long megadrought and record heat.
The river system provides municipal water for roughly 40 million people, irrigation for over 5 million acres of farmland and provides hydropower resources in seven states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and is estimated to generate roughly $1.4 trillion in economic activity. Some towns near the river rely on it for up to 95% of their water.
The new Environmental Impact Statement is intended to guide how the river's largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — will be managed after the 2007 guidelines expire. The negotiations have largely been held behind closed doors, out of reach from the public and the media, but have long focused on how the states would address drought and divvy up the water allowances during droughts.
Water from the 1,450-mile-long river is divided, with some portions diverted to communities, farms and tribes with the legal rights to use it.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead also just hit a record low, being the driest they've been since 1957, before Lake Powell was even built.
Jack Schmidt, the director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, was alarmed, telling KJZZ earlier this month, "we are truly in uncharted territory."
Mountain West News Bureau Managing Editor Michael de Yoanna contributed to this report.
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