By Caleb Hampton, Ag Alert
Time is running out for the seven states in the Colorado River Basin, as well as 30 tribes and Mexico, to reach a long-term deal for managing the overtapped river.
The current guidelines and drought contingency plans for the river expire at the end of next year, and negotiators have until Nov. 11 to reach a new agreement or risk intervention by the federal government.
Meanwhile, after one of the river’s driest years on record, reservoir levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell have again declined, prompting warnings from federal officials and hydrological experts.
“The urgency for the seven Colorado River Basin states to reach a consensus agreement has never been clearer,” Scott Cameron, acting assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, said last month in a statement. “We cannot afford to delay.”
The Colorado River supplies water and hydropower to 40 million people in the West and irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmland. During the past two decades, unprecedented drought has depleted the river’s flow and threatened to sink reservoir levels below the threshold needed to supply water and electricity to the Lower Basin.
The stakes are especially high for farmers in California’s Imperial Valley, who are entitled to the largest share of the river and rely on it as their only source of irrigation for half a million acres of farmland.
Farmers in the desert region produce most of the vegetables grown in the U.S. during winter, and they employ a sixth of the local workforce.
“Our water is a valuable resource for this community,” said Mark McBroom, who farms in the Imperial Valley. “It’s our primary industry driver.”
Supplies from the Colorado River are allocated based on the seniority of each user’s water rights and governed by a compact enacted in 1922.
Under the century-old law, 7.5 million acre-feet of water a year is promised to the Upper Basin, which includes Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The Lower Basin states of Nevada, Arizona and California are entitled to the same amount, while 1.5 million acre-feet goes to Mexico. That totals 16.5 million acre-feet. But in recent years, drought has reduced flows to a fraction over 12 million acre-feet.
“The fundamental problem we’re contending with is declining hydrology with no end in sight,” said JB Hamby, president of the Colorado River Commission of California and the state’s lead negotiator. “How do we adapt to live with less?”
The seven basin states have yet to come to a consensus.
Last year, the Lower Basin agreed to long-term cuts of 1.5 million acre-feet a year during most conditions on the river. Under that proposal, which would take effect after 2026 and potentially last decades, California would forfeit about 10% of its allocation, with Nevada giving up 17% and Arizona 27%.
“That’s still on the table,” Hamby said.
But Lower Basin negotiators are looking for a commitment from the Upper Basin that in the most dire circumstances, those states would join the Lower Basin in enforcing cuts, he said. Thus far, they have only agreed to voluntary conservation.
The Upper Basin, which is less populated, has typically not used its full allocation, diverting around 4.5 million acre-feet a year, while population growth in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas has stretched supplies in the Lower Basin.
Leaders from the Upper Basin have sought to protect the region’s right to continue developing and using more water. Last week, during a meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission, Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart characterized the Lower Basin’s demands as asking his state to “give up the future we were promised.”
Hamby, who also serves as vice chairman of the Imperial Irrigation District board of directors, said that stance was “going in the opposite direction” of what’s needed to protect the river. Every state has “legal theories and positions,” he said, but the reality on the river “requires some level of compromise.”
While interstate negotiations continue, meetings have commenced among California water users to discuss where the state’s anticipated cuts will come from.
The Imperial Valley’s senior water rights will likely spare the region from forced reductions, growers and water managers said. But the valley, which is entitled to 3.1 million acre-feet a year—roughly a quarter of the river’s flow—may still play a role in the state’s water balancing strategy.
Since 2003, IID has transferred 16% of its entitlement to cities such as San Diego in exchange for funding to install water-saving irrigation systems. From 2024 through the end of 2026, growers are forfeiting an additional 8% of their allocation through federally funded programs designed to boost reservoir levels on the river.
Under the short-term agreement, farmers are paid to stop irrigating hay crops for 45 to 60 days during summer, sacrificing two or three cuttings without—they hope—killing the perennial crops.
Farmers participating in the deficit irrigation program described mixed results, with some needing to reseed about half their crop afterward, but they said the grower-proposed strategy could provide an option for future conservation.
“We’re learning how to make those adjustments,” said McBroom, who dried up most of his hay crops during the past two summers.
In each year, more than a quarter of the farmland in the Imperial Valley was enrolled in the program. Next year, it will be scaled back as IID reaches the 700,000 acre-feet of conservation over three years that the federal government has funded.
“We will have to truncate those programs unless Reclamation decides to increase that cap,” IID Water Manager Tina Shields said, referring to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, to whom IID has submitted a request for additional short-term water conservation funding. The district has an environmental permit to conserve up to 900,000 acre-feet between 2024 and the end of next year.
In the long term, growers cautioned against siphoning more of the Imperial Valley’s water supply to other parts of the state.
“We’re going to draw a line in the sand,” Imperial County farmer Ronnie Leimgruber said. “We don’t want to solve a water crisis and create a food crisis.”
Caleb Hampton is assistant editor of Ag Alert. He can be reached at champton@cfbf.com.
