BOULDER, Colorado — The head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is making a proposal to the seven states along the Colorado River in the absence of a consensus deal.
"I am heartened by the fact that they are literally still at the table and interested in talking. At the same time we have a schedule at the federal government," acting Commissioner Scott Cameron said in an interview with FOX 13 News (a member of the Colorado River Collaborative).
The Bureau of Reclamation will proceed with its proposal to manage the Colorado River — offering a chance every two years to renegotiate terms for the next 10 years. Cameron argues it allows the river, which supplies life to a significant portion of the American West, to continue to operate and adapt to the hydrology they are dealing with.
"I think everyone’s going to have to adjust to the new reality that for the foreseeable future — and maybe we’re wrong — but for the foreseeable future, we’re not going to have huge snows in the Colorado River Basin and Powell and Mead are not going to be going up 50 to 100 feet," he said.
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Faced with an abysmal winter and snowpack that has been almost nonexistent in many states (in Utah it's been dubbed "no-pack), all states are seeing less in the river. Colorado and Utah have both declared drought emergencies. There is less water coming into the Colorado River system than there is demand.
At a conference about the Colorado River hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder's Getches-Wilkinson Center, some are personally feeling the impacts.
"On my reservation, I have no continuous water source traveling across my land," said Donald Whyte, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, who began to cry as he described his concern when speaking to a pair of the state-assigned negotiators over the future of the river.
"I normally don’t cry, but when it comes to this issue? Water is life," Whyte said to them Friday as people around him applauded.
The stakes for negotiations keep ratcheting up. The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people across seven states and Mexico. But with current agreements governing the river expiring in October, the states have been so far unable to reach a deal.
"As the hydrology has deteriorated, it makes it rougher for people to compromise," Cameron told FOX 13 News.
Asked about Cameron's offer, some of the states' river commissioners were in support of it while others had concerns.
"Somewhat of a renegotiation every two years? That’s going to be difficult," said Becky Mitchell, Colorado's commissioner on the river.
JB Hamby, who is California's river commissioner said to him, "I think it’s a sensible approach." Likewise for Gene Shawcroft, Utah's Colorado River commissioner.
"We don’t have anything to put on the table. If we had something to put on the table, which I wish we did, that would not put us in the position where we felt we had to go along," Shawcroft.
John Entsminger, the Colorado River Commissioner for Nevada, said he believed the states were making progress negotiating a two-and-a-half-year operating plan, but on a multi-state deal? "No, we haven’t made much progress on that."
Cameron said if the states do reach their own multi-state consensus agreement, he would he happy to implement it instead of the federal plan.
The sticking point between the states still appears to center largely around who cuts what and where. The Upper and Lower Basin states have each pointed to the other to make cuts.
"The basic premise is that we need to use less water because there’s less in the system. The problem is, we can’t have one basin or set of states do all of the reductions and others not participate at all," Hamby told FOX 13 News.
Mitchell argued that the Upper Basin states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico — see cuts right off the top.
"There is less coming into the system than folks feel like they’re entitled to," she said. "In the Upper Basin we have to work with what Mother Nature provides. We work with that in real time. We are on the front lines of climate change."
But work is being done to make do with what the Colorado River is providing and find new sources of water. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California, Nevada, and Arizona signed a memorandum of understanding to explore desalination and advanced water purification to help provide water.
"I think it’s evidence of continued solutions being driven in the Lower Basin," Hamby said.
Utah and other Upper Basin states say they are seeing agriculture efficiencies and successful efforts to send water downstream to Lake Powell.
Meanwhile, millions of people are watching and waiting to see if the states get a deal.
"Failure is not an option, right? There’s 40 million people that rely on this river," said Sara Porterfield with the environmental group Trout Unlimited. "There’s fish, there’s wildlife. There’s economies, recreation, all of us who love this river."
This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University.
