Climate change is altering the Colorado River, with rising temperatures hitting the region hard, sending consequences cascading downstream.
The Biden administration on Wednesday previewed a set of options for fixing the Colorado River's supply-and-demand problem, providing a rough outline for proposals that it will hand off to the incoming Trump administration to finish.
The ideas under consideration range from leaving the decisions strictly in the hands of federal officials to blending state and tribal proposals for sharing cuts, while another blends elements from each of those.
Another option proposed by a coalition of conservation groups would reduce flows out of Lake Powell to a more natural "run of river" when the reservoir gets low, instead of the usual releases that fluctuate with hydroelectricity or downstream water demands. It also would give federal dam managers more flexibility in managing the reservoirs for the benefit of the Grand Canyon environment.
Federal officials described the options in a set of bullet points that outlined possible methods of allocating anticipated cuts, and said they would publish more details with a draft of the environmental study they've worked on throughout this year. They have not anointed any of the options as their preference.
New rules for sharing in the pain of worsening shortages are needed because a previous set that went into effect in 2007 will expire in 2026. Those rules proved insufficient to protect reservoir levels from dropping to critical levels, so the parties agreed to emergency conservation measures with the help of federal cash from the administration's infrastructure and climate legislation.
The specter of an Interior secretary or judge determining how much water each state or user must give up has in the past forced the watershed's seven states to find consensus so they can avoid uncertainty. So far they have not been able to agree on their next path forward, but a White House official said he hopes and believes they will.
"We got there once and we can get there again," White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said in a call with reporters.
Reaching for a consensus by year's end
The states appear headed toward next month's annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference at an impasse. The Southwest, including Arizona, has borne the brunt of mandated cuts because the region uses most of the water. The Rocky Mountain states have argued their relatively small share of the river and reliance on fickle snowpack instead of the Southwest's huge reservoirs means they're already suffering without taking mandated cuts.
They could still reach a consensus before the Trump administration chooses a path next year. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado, released a statement on Wednesday urging that they keep working toward a deal.
"These proposed alternatives underscore how serious a situation we're facing on the Colorado River," Hickenlooper said. "The only path forward is a collaborative, seven-state plan to solve the Colorado River crisis without taking this to court. Otherwise, we'll watch the river run dry while we sue each other."
Jennifer Pitt, the Audubon Society's Colorado River specialist and one of those who helped propose a conservationists' proposal, agreed that consensus is necessary to provide certainty about how much water is available for environmental restoration. Without it, she said, "there is really little opportunity to consider the river itself."
The negotiations have divided the states of the river's upper and lower basins, as designated under the century-old Colorado River Compact. That compact essentially split what the signers thought was the normal flow of the river in half, and required the Upper Basin -- Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming -- to leave the Lower Basin's half to flow past the dividing line at Lees Ferry in northern Arizona.
As the warming and drying climate reduced the river's natural flow, Upper Basin officials have argued that they shouldn't have to send as much, especially since they aren't using as much as the others. Meantime, the southwestern states have long since fully developed their shares and, as a result, have been forced to cut back to keep the river from running dry below Hoover Dam. Now they want the mountain states to commit to their own cutbacks in future drought years.
While the outlined options will give water users and others some time to consider their positions ahead of the annual conference and continued negotiations, some observers criticized the information as too vague for meaningful review.
"Releasing bullet points on alternatives without the full analysis is like sharing a recipe that only lists a few of the ingredients," Great Basin Water Network Executive Director Kyle Roerink said in a news release.
Administration officials said they will publish a fuller explanation of the alternatives in December.
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at [email protected].