The Trump Administration gave states a Nov. 11 deadline to come to an agreement. They’ve blown through that and an agreement still isn’t in sight.
By MacKenzie Elmer, Voice of San Diego
If the U.S. states that share the dwindling Colorado River are feuding siblings, then Trump Administration officials are their pushover parents.
Warnings from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation about the river’s drying conditions shaped the second day of negotiations between the river’s users who are supposed to be agreeing to use less of it. But despite a deeply-divided basin, the feds keep refusing to lay the hammer down.
The Trump Administration gave the states a Nov. 11 deadline to come to an agreement. They blew through that. So the feds set a new deadline of Feb. 14. But other than California (which offered to reduce its usage by 10 percent per year) nobody else is publicly offering to cut much.
The states have to come up with new agreements on who gets to use the Colorado River to replace old rules that expire in August. If they don’t, users of the river, which quenches 40 million people and fuels industry and agriculture, will probably start suing each other.
When the river reached crippling lows and states refused to make cuts in the past, threats from the federal government were an effective tool to reach an agreement, said Michael Cohen, a researcher at the Pacific Institute. Give the users someone to blame, Cohen basically said in a blog post he wrote on the matter.
“The states need to be able to point to this incoming threat of federal action in order to go back to their constituents and say, we have no choice,” said Cohen.
Yet, Trump’s officials continued to plead for compromise.
“The time for grandstanding and rhetoric is past. The river will not wait for us,” said Andrea Travnicek, Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior. “I’m asking again today to give commissioners room to negotiate and room to compromise.”
She went on to specify that the federal government’s role is still “the facilitator” — in other words, not a dictator.
The river’s two major reservoirs are less than 40 percent full, according to Carla Jerla, an analyst with the Bureau of Reclamation. Snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, which fills the river each year, also “isn’t looking good,” she said. Mid-December temperatures in Colorado hit the mid sixties which trigger early snow melt, meaning the river’s proverbial savings account is emptied too soon to last the basin through 2026.
“This is decisionmaking under deep uncertainty,” Jerla said of the negotiations.
Next was Scott Cameron, Trump’s acting secretary of the bureau. His main message: Time is getting short. Act now.
