Utah and its six neighbors are just days away from a federal deadline to update the original Colorado River-sharing agreement they signed more than a century ago.
On Nov. 11, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada and the Beehive state need to reach a consensus on how to split up a dwindling river that supplies water for nearly 40 million people. If they do, the agreement goes into place in 2026 and governs the river’s future as megadrought, climate change and overuse stretch it dangerously thin.
If the states don’t agree, the federal government could step in and force their hand.
Either way, it would likely mean water cuts to Utah’s farms and reservoirs.
“What we're going to be asking people to do is to see water running in a stream and to not take it,” said Mike Drake, deputy state engineer with the Utah Department of Water Rights. “That's going to be hard, in a lot of cases, to run that water down to this nebulous idea of the Lower Colorado River.”
Conserving water in Utah is nothing new. During dry years, there’s often not enough from rain and snowpack to meet everyone’s water rights, so some people go without their share. Those cuts typically happen on a small, localized basis.
What makes potential Colorado River reductions unprecedented, Drake said, is that they would happen basinwide. That’s why Utah has prepared for how that might play out.
“Whether it's 50,000 acre-feet or 10,000 acre-feet, we can be responsive to any number that comes our way,” Drake said.
One acre-foot represents enough water to fill one acre of land to a height of one foot. That’s roughly enough to supply two households for a year.
After years of back-and-forth discussions, it’s unclear whether the basin states will be able to reach an agreement this month. But water leaders remain hopeful.
“They've closed the gap significantly,” said Marc Stilson, principal engineer with the Colorado River Authority of Utah. “They are working on finishing up and hammering out the details of what's left to do, and so I think there's still a lot of optimism that we'll have an agreement in principle.”
There are a couple of ways widespread cuts might happen.
The lower basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — could make a compact call. That would essentially say that Utah and the other upper basin states — Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico — are in breach of contract by not sending enough water downstream. That would force them to reduce water use and increase flows into Lake Powell.
That means some farm fields would go dry, at least temporarily. It would also likely impact city water supplies, Drake said.
Many of Utah’s reservoirs weren’t built until the mid-20th century, so they have junior water rights compared to rights established in the 1800s. While the state engineer can’t require reservoirs to dump water they already have, Drake said, it could prevent the flow of new water to refill them. As reservoirs empty, communities and farms become even more reliant on Mother Nature.
If the states don’t reach an agreement, it’s possible that the federal government could make its own plan for states to cut water use. Either way, it would then be up to Utah to decide how to comply.
Part of the state’s plan to meet that moment is a better understanding of how much water is used by each water right, Drake said.
Like much of the West, Utah’s water law follows the first in time, first in right principle. That means senior water rights, many of which were established before Utah became a state, have priority over junior rights established more recently. If statewide water use needs to be reduced to comply with Colorado River rules, those junior water rights would be the first ones cut off.
Utah state law gives the engineer’s office the authority to enforce this, Drake said, but before it can do that, the state needs to know who’s using what.
Utah is installing meters to track where water goes. The state would then know if someone who’s been cut off is, in fact, allowing their water to flow by. The state could also document and prove to other basin states that it’s sending enough water downstream to meet requirements.
“You can't regulate what you can't measure,” Drake said.
The state has informed water users that this worst-case scenario may be on the horizon, Drake said. No matter what happens with potential water cuts, he said, it’s likely lawsuits could follow.
In advance of the deadline, Utah has preemptively touted the steps it and other Upper Basin states have taken to increase conservation. That includes Utah’s demand management pilot program, which pays farmers to leave their fields unirrigated.
Drake would like to see the new agreement include an understanding that the Colorado River just doesn’t produce as much water today as it did when the 1922 agreement was created. If there’s a general recognition that everyone gets less water than they historically have — thanks to drought and climate factors — that could help avert a compact call.
“That's the hope,” Drake said, “is that we’re able to avoid it through a negotiated settlement.”
This story was produced as part of the Colorado River Collaborative.
