One hundred-years after the historic Colorado River Compact allocated 15 million acre feet of water between seven states in the arid west, the situation has grown dire. On June 15, US Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton issued a call to action for all seven states in the 1922 Compact to come up with a plan to save 2-4 million acre feet of water.
“It has been a pretty intense time,” said Rebecca (Becky) Mitchell, Director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) during the Club 20 Policy meeting in Rangely last week. In her role as Upper Colorado River commissioner, Mitchell represents Colorado water users’ interests in an arduous, multi-state negotiation process to address severe water shortages across the west.
UPPER AND LOWER BASINS
“I feel like one of the most important things as we’re moving forward is that Colorado stands together to protect Colorado,” said Mitchell, emphasizing her efforts to unite residents on both sides of the literal and political divides before formal negotiations at the federal level really take off.
Citing estimated consumptive water use statistics, Mitchell explained that Upper Basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah) collectively cut back on more than one-million acre feet of water use from 2020-2021. During that same time period, lower basin states (California, Nevada, Arizona) increased their water use by more than 300K acre feet.
This gap in water usage reduction was discussed at length and revisited multiple times during last week’s Club 20 meeting, with Mitchell expressing frustration over lower basin states’ failure to make meaningful cuts to their own use. Despite that, she noted “we have to still be a part of the solution as uncomfortable as it is,” adding “at the same time, we don’t want to do anything that further enables the overuse in the lower basin.”
5 POINT PLAN
In response to the June 15 Bureau of Reclamation announcement, upper basin states in the Colorado River Compact developed a 5-point plan and submitted it to the Bureau of Reclamation. Its major steps are:
- Reauthorization of the System Conservation Pilot Program
- 2023 Drought Response Operations Plan
- Demand management feasibility investigation
- Bipartisan infrastructure funding
- Strict water rights administration
The plan aims to facilitate even more water conservation by protecting existing watersheds through a variety of methods. Some of these include:
- compensating water users who opt to go without some or part of their allocation
- creating/agreeing to a plan to release more then 600K acre feet from Flaming Gorge and Blue Reservoirs starting next year
- using bipartisan infrastructure funding to boost development of enhanced measurement, monitoring and reporting capabilities
Mitchell said the 5-point plan is the official response to the federal government, who hadn’t responded as of last week. She noted that any commitments made are contingent on what she described as the real source of the problem, overuse in the lower basin.
“Our position has been, this is all meaningless, anything we can do is meaningless in the Upper Basin unless there is something done in the Lower Basin, she said.
PRIORITIES
“The time that we are in now, it’s not a re-negotiation of the compact, it’s really, we’re about to embark on the re-negotiations of the operations of Powell and Mead that adhere to the compact,” said Mitchell.
Later on, she spoke about the guiding principles of Upper Basin negotiators, of which four have been officially listed:
- security and certainty for water supply
- operations must be responsive to real time data, hydrology
- lower basin has to address their overuse/depletions
- tribal nations must be consulted
“We really have to hold everyone accountable, ourselves included, and all of those managers that are using Colorado river water,” said Mitchell, adding “We have a hard road ahead of us.”
During her presentation, she also described Colorado’s position as “unique” in the process. “I think that we have a lot to offer in terms of how to build flexibility in the system because we do it all the time, we’re responsive to what Mother Nature provides.”
You can watch the entire Club20 meeting from last week, including presentations from local officials, politicians, etc. on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEE5Ok-mfyg
By LUCAS TURNER | [email protected]om
