- Colorado River Basin states have failed for more than 2½ years to reach agreement on post-2026 water operations, raising the likelihood of Supreme Court litigation if no deal is reached soon.
- The dispute centers on overallocation under previous agreements, with Lower Basin states seeking guaranteed releases from Upper Basin reservoirs, while Upper Basin leaders argue the real problem is unsustainable demand driven largely by Lower Basin use.
- Officials say long-term solutions must align water use with declining river flows, with ideas like California desalination floated to reduce pressure on the river rather than relying on temporary reservoir releases.
Colorado River states have been deadlocked over future water rights for more than 2½ years. On Friday afternoon, Utah’s Colorado River Commissioner Gene Shawcroft announced that the states have been unable to reach an agreement on post-2026 operations.
“While we continue to talk in the coming months, the upper division states of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico are pivoting our immediate focus to deal with the real enemy on this river — hydrology," Shawcroft said.
The river, which stretches for more than 1,450 miles, serves 40 million people, provides 27% of the water used in Utah and irrigates 5.5 million agricultural acres of land.
But the Colorado River’s water levels have been declining, largely for one reason: overallocation.
The original water-allocation agreement, the 1922 Colorado River Compact, designated 7.5 million acre-feet of water to the Upper Basin (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico), and 7.5 million acre-feet of water to the Lower Basin (California, Nevada and Arizona).
These quantities were derived from unusually wet years, so the states have been legally allowed to use more water than is sustainable for more than a century.
Annual flows from 2000 to 2024 have averaged at around 12.4 million acre-feet, while the states are allowed to use 15 million acre-feet. Then in 1944, the federal government signed a treaty allocating 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually to Mexico.
Leaders from each state say they’ve sacrificed more water than the next, and no one seems willing to budge.
If the states can’t come to a deal by the summer, the outcome will most likely be years of litigation, which would go straight to the Supreme Court, The Guardian reported.
Why are the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states disagreeing?
Lower Basin states have asked Upper Basin states to commit to guaranteed releases and supply, asking for water releases from the Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge and Navajo dams to meet their water demands.
But “if you assume that that water is available, then instead of just having Lake Powell and Lake Mead low, you end up in a situation where Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo are low, and you haven’t solved the problem,” Shawcroft said.
Releasing water from upper dams could delay “the problem by maybe a year or possibly two, but you haven’t eliminated the problem,” Shawcroft said. The problem is that “the demand has been driven by use principally in the Lower Basin, and those demands can no longer be met.”
High water demands from Lower Basin states were initially met by storage from Lake Powell and Lake Mead, but “that storage is essentially gone,” Shawcroft said.
“So reductions have to occur to be on par with what the system will actually provide,” he said.
What happens next?
The federal Interior Department did not give state leaders another calendar deadline, but the terms of the existing 2007 agreement expire this year.
If the states fail to make a deal, any one of the seven could file a lawsuit for a number of different reasons.
But Shawcroft said he was optimistic that the states would find a way to work around their disagreements, “so that we can manage the river, rather than having it determined by the courts.” A court-led decision would likely last decades and cost millions of dollars.
Utah officials hope future water guidelines are better equipped to deal with low-water years.
The soon-ending water guidelines from 2007 “failed because they weren’t robust enough to deal with the low hydrology that we’ve experienced over the last 20 years,” Shawcroft said.
California may be looking at desalinating ocean water
At a press conference at the Capitol on Thursday night, Gov. Spencer Cox said he’d been having ongoing conversations with the federal government and the state of California for the Pacific Coast State to get help desalinating ocean water.
Desalination is a process that takes salt water and makes it drinkable. As technology currently stands, it is very energy intensive and expensive.
But with California’s easy access to the ocean, Cox said helping the state increase its desalination capacity could alleviate water demands on the Colorado River.
“The only way we’re going to be able to flourish in the West is if we expand the pie instead of shrinking it,” Cox said. “Desalination in California pushes water upstream. It means California needs less of that water, which means that helps Arizona, which ultimately helps Utah and Colorado and Wyoming, the Upper Basin states as well.”