Lower Basin received “one consistent message” of refusal from Upper Basin states
By Jim Small, Arizona Mirror
A last-ditch meeting two weeks ago aimed at building the foundation for a Colorado River water usage agreement failed, and the seven states that have rights to the river’s dwindling water supplies won’t hit a Saturday deadline to hammer out a deal.
Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke, the state’s chief negotiator, sharply criticized the four states in what is known as the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — for being adamantly opposed to making any cuts to water usage and stubbornly refusing to make even the smallest compromises.
“In all this time, Arizona, California and Nevada have received one consistent message from our counterparts in the Upper Basin — there will be no firm commitment to reduce uses in the Upper Basin, no matter how dire the conditions of the river may be,” he said in a statement announcing the negotiations had ended.
The Colorado River is a vital source of drinking water for 40 million people in the seven basin states, Mexico and 30 Native American tribes, and provides water for farming operations and hydroelectricity.
Buschatzke said that the three Lower Basin states “began these discussions with a spirit of collaboration” and made numerous proposals, from dealing with evaporation of river water to increasing their water usage cuts to using a rolling average of the water flowing in the river to determine cuts for all seven states. Arizona has offered to reduce its Colorado River allocation by 27%, California by 10%, and Nevada by nearly 17%.
All of them were rejected outright, he said, because the Upper Basin states won’t agree to any cuts and instead insist that the Lower Basin states feel all of the pain.
“We have offered to do more,” Buschatzke said. “But we simply cannot take on the task of saving this precious river system on our own.”
The governors of the Lower Basin states — Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, California’s Gavin Newsom and Nevada’s Joe Lombardo — were more diplomatic earlier Friday when they put out a joint statement noting how critical the river is for the economies of all the states, but particularly theirs.
“Our stance remains firm and fair: all seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation,” they said. “Our shared success hinges on compromise, and we have offered significant flexibility, allowing states without robust conservation programs time to gradually develop these programs in ways that work in each state.”
Meanwhile, the governors of the Upper Basin states issued their own joint statement touting their commitment to finding a seven-state deal, which would “provide greater opportunity to pursue federal funding supporting conservation efforts and innovative water-saving technologies” for the river water.
“We have come together in good faith throughout this process, and are putting every tool on the table available to us, including releases from our upstream reservoirs, a meaningful voluntary conservation both now and in the future, and continued strict self-regulation of water supplies. Upper Basin water users live within the means of the River by adapting our uses every year based on available supplies,” said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon.
The likely next step will be litigation. Last year, Arizona put a total of $3 million to its Colorado River legal defense fund, and Gov. Katie Hobbs’ proposed budget for this year would put another $1 million toward that fund. Lawmakers earlier this month gave preliminary approval to doing just that.
The Feb. 14 deadline exists because the seven states failed to meet an earlier November deadline to strike a deal. If the states can’t reach an agreement before the current water usage guidelines expire in October, the federal government would implement one of its draft plans, which would all place an outsized burden on the Grand Canyon State.
That’s because the Central Arizona Project, a series of canals that supplies Colorado River water to the Valley and the Tucson area, is one of the newest users of the river water, making it legally one of the first to be cut.
The Colorado River Compact dates back to 1922, when the seven states made their initial agreement, allocating 7.5 million acre-feet of water each year to be shared by the Upper Basin states and another 7.5 million to be used among the Lower Basin states.
An acre-foot of water represents enough to flood an acre of land to a depth of one foot, or about 325,851 gallons.
The states have updated their water usage guidelines several times since then, but those apportionments remain the same, but lower basin states face mandatory cuts during times of drought and Upper Basin states do not.
In 2025, for the fifth year in a row, the federal government imposed water allocation cuts on the Colorado River due to the ongoing drought and Arizona’s cut amounts to a loss of 512,000 acre-feet of water for the year.
Also part of the original Colorado River Compact was a guarantee that the Upper Basin states would release a 10-year rolling average of at least 75 million acre-feet of water to the Lower Basin, in addition to one-half of the annual allotment owed to Mexico, for a total of about 80.2 million acre-feet.
So far, the Upper Basin states have held to that agreement. But as water levels in the two major reservoirs on the river, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, continue to decline, it’s expected that the Upper Basin states will be unable to meet that requirement as early as 2027.
Under current allocations, Arizona has rights to 2.8 million acre feet of water per year, and has implemented 800,000 acre feet in reductions per year. In contrast, Colorado gets 3.6 million acre feet a year, but has said it can’t handle cutting 50,000 acre-feet during dry years.
However, Colorado doesn’t always get that full allotment, because it relies mostly on melted snowpack for its water, which varies from year to year. This year’s snowpack levels are historically low.
The Lower Basin states have undertaken significant conservation efforts for Colorado River water since 2014 and have reduced their consumption from 7.4 million acre-feet in 2015 to just over 6 million in 2024.
The Upper Basin states have increased their usage in the past five years, from 3.9 million acre-feet in 2021 to 4.4 million in 2024. The federal government’s draft plans allow for the Upper Basin states to use even more water.
***UPDATE: This story was updated with a comment from the Upper Basin governors.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
