Upstream and downstream states have less than two weeks to power through sticking points
By Annie Knox, Utah News Dispatch
Utah and six other states along the Colorado River are pushing up against a deadline to figure out as a group how to manage the river and its reservoirs.
If they can’t reach an agreement by Nov. 11, the federal government is set to intervene and make its own plan. The existing agreement expires at the end of next year.
“There’s still hope,” Marc Stilson, principal engineer for the Colorado River Authority of Utah, said Thursday. “They’re working hard, and they’re close.”
The upstream Upper Basin states — Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin states of Nevada, Arizona and California pitched competing plans to the federal government last year.
Now, in the home stretch of negotiations, the seven states are working through questions including which reservoirs would be managed under the new agreement, how they’ll measure water use and whether the plan will include mandatory cuts to water allocations, Stilson said.
The Upper Basin states have resisted the idea of mandatory cuts in dry years, saying they typically use much less than their yearly allocation.
Lower Basin states have said all seven should share water cuts during dry years under the new plan, warning if they don’t, downstream states could face cuts that aren’t feasible for them to absorb, the Nevada Current reported.
The river provides water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Mexico, and contributes 27 percent of Utah’s water supply. Hotter temperatures tied to climate change have mixed with drought and overuse to reduce its flow.
Utah isn’t waiting to prepare for potentially significant changes to how it manages water, said Michael Drake, deputy state engineer with the Utah Division of Water rights.
It’s been investing in expanding its use of tools to better measure and monitor water use since 2023, Drake told reporters Thursday.
That year, the Legislature poured $1 million into a Colorado River measurement infrastructure project and approved $650,000 in annual funding to monitor water use, according to the division.
Whether the state ends up facing cuts as part of the new plan or just working toward new targets, Drake said, it sees a need “to be able to manage water better, and you can’t regulate what you can’t measure.”
“As we get close here, I think reality is starting to hit and so we want to put out the messaging, you know, we can do this,” Drake told Utah News Dispatch.
He noted the possibility of forced cuts is troubling to many of the state’s farmers.
“What we’re going to be asking people to do is to see water running in a stream, and to not take it, to leave it there,” Drake said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”
Scott Thayn, who farms alfalfa and the grain sorghum in unincorporated Carbon County, agreed.
“If something happens with this new treaty and they drop it 10, 15, 20%,” Thayn said, “most of the years we’re going to be hurting.”
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.
