On the heels of a warm, dry, winter, the Colorado River is at a tipping point. Its biggest reservoirs are draining, climate change is making the region warmer and drier, and leaders have not been able to come up with a plan to reduce water use.
That context shaped conversations at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at CU Boulder's School of Law on June 4 and 5, as water experts, attorneys, and Colorado River Basin leaders gathered for the 46th annual conference on the Colorado River. This year's theme was "Searching for Solutions in the Face of Uncertainty," and was co-hosted by the Water and Tribes Initiative.
The state of the basin's hydrology
"The climate future looks awful," said Brad Udall, a water and climate researcher at Colorado State University. "Much of the same and worse."
Udall recapped Water Year 2025-26 so far. The Colorado River basin had a record-breaking bad winter when it comes to snow cover and snowpack. States like Colorado and Utah had their worst snowpack years on record, which is bad news for a region that relies on snowpack for much of its water supplies.
The poor snowpack was exacerbated by an abnormally warm March, with every single basin state having their warmest March on record. That caused an early runoff in many areas, though Udall noted that the one saving grace, if there was one, was a wetter cooler period that emerged in late April and early May.
The current runoff forecast from NOAA's Colorado Basin River Forecast Center for April to July is 13% of average: 800,000 acre feet, one eighth of the usual 6 million.
"It's below even 2002, which was the lowest year on record, (at) just under about a million," Udall said. "(There's) no historical analog for snowpack this year."
Lake Powell, the Upper Basin's largest reservoir, is currently sitting at 3,528 feet in elevation, or 23% full. The Bureau of Reclamation has said it will release water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming state line in order to supplement Lake Powell.
If the reservoir reaches a water level at elevation 3,490, it will no longer be able to produce hydroelectric power from Glen Canyon Dam. If the water must bypass the turbines, it could severely damage the river outlet work tunnels. Reclamation has said that it will try to keep the reservoir's elevation above 3,500 to provide a cushion.
A new analysis from the Colorado River Research Group, which was also discussed during the conference, found that if the basin has another dry year, comparable to this one, Lakes Powell and Mead will likely be mostly depleted. A very wet year, similar to Water Year 2023, would only buy about two years of reservoir storage before the basin was back in the same position.
Reclamation's plan for post-2026 operating guidelines
The original 1922 Colorado River Compact accounted for 15 million acre-feet of water available for use, with each basin entitled to 7.5 million. It is now clear that there is not that much water in the system, due in part to aridification driven by climate change.
The Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico have been at an impasse with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada for the past several years over who will take the biggest cuts to water usage. The Lower Basin has already made significant cuts to water usage, and says it wants to see future cuts spread throughout the basin. The Upper Basin contends that their hydrology is different from the reservoir-based system in the Lower Basin, and that during dry years, their water users take de facto cuts without compensation.
Earlier this year, the Bureau of Reclamation issued a draft environmental impact statement, outlining five plans, or alternatives for the post-2026 operating guidelines.
Scott Cameron, the agency's acting director, addressed conference attendees on Thursday. He said that the alternatives laid out in the EIS had been crafted to be as broad as possible on purpose, with the understanding that any seven-state deal should fall within one of the alternatives.
"I wish I could tell you that we had a solution," Cameron said. "As you're obviously very painfully aware, we don't have a solution, at least not at this point.
"We'd have loved to have a 20-year deal, or a 30-year deal," he added. "But frankly, we haven't even been able to get seven states to agree on what a two year deal would look like.
Cameron then went on to introduce the outline of the Bureau's preferred alternative, which will be finalized later this summer.
"We're using a ten-year framework that the department would use to issue operational guidelines at two year intervals," he said.
It's not yet clear how that sort of system will work, according to Chris Winter, the director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center.
"That makes it really difficult to plan, it makes it difficult to make investments, it creates ongoing uncertainty," he said. "And it doesn't really tell us what we need to do to align consumptive use with supply across the basin."
The negotiators from Colorado and Nevada, Becky Mitchell and John Entsminger, respectively, spoke the day after Cameron.
"The constant renegotiation every two years is difficult to fathom," she said. "When I first saw that, all I could think about was the certainty that folks had asked for through this process."
The Lower Basin has proposed a two-year bridge plan that would allow the full basin more time to craft a long-term plan.
"There's a reasonable rational operating plan for the next two-plus years right in front of our face, and we should take that," Entsminger said.
Mitchell and Entsminger were in agreement that they did not want to see the post-2026 operating guidelines be litigated in the Supreme Court, where one basin sues the other. Likely, that would be a Lower Basin state suing the Upper Basin over a failure to deliver enough water at Lees Ferry, Arizona, the dividing line between the Upper and Lower basins.
"Marching into the Supreme Court, it's an abdication of our responsibilities," Entsminger said. "The seven governors' representatives are taking our hands off the wheel the day that happens."
Entsminger and Mitchell also seemed open to the idea of a neutral mediator being brought into negotiations to help the Upper and Lower basins reach a deal. Entsminger liked the idea of three mediators, one selected by each basin and a third selected by the first two mediators.
"I hope it isn't viewed as a failure," Mitchell said of mediation.
Mitchell also took the opportunity to call out what she believed to be unnecessarily harsh criticism of the negotiators.
"Just last night, I think we were called failures," she said. "All seven of us. Not one of us, not one state. Not just the feds or just the states. We're called failures."
She said that mediation could be helpful, given just how unprecedented the situation was.
"We're dealing with hydrology that is not cooperating with a consensus, easy agreement," she said. "We're looking at infrastructure issues at the same time. We've got tribal issues, environmental issues, and interstate components that are really rising to the heated positions. And so I think we have to ask ourselves, can we use a little help?"
The role of tribes in the Colorado River Basin
There are thirty federally-recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin that rely on the river and its tributaries for water. The 1922 Colorado River compact makes no mention of these tribes, except a single sentence: "Nothing in this compact will be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes."
Since then, the tribes have not had a seat at the table in the way that the seven basin states do, though many tribes have some of the most senior water rights in the basin, tied to when reservations were officially established.
"I believe there can be no real or doable solutions without the full and active engagement of tribal nations, who account for over 25% of the adjudicated water in this basin," said Amelia Flores, Chairwoman of the Colorado River Indian Tribe. "CRIT alone represents 23% of Arizona's Colorado River entitlement and almost 10% of the entire Lower Basin entitlement. Yet I stand here today with an all too familiar refrain: that tribal nations continue to be marginalized in these discussions."
"Yes, things are better than they used to be, but having said that, I want to acknowledge the Reclamation staff in the room for their efforts," she said. "But we still have a long way to go before tribal nations are treated as two partners in this process. Tribal leaders, do you agree with me?" A round of applause from tribal leaders in the room followed. Flores smiled and said, "Good."
Speakers and attendees alike discussed how drought has impacted tribal nations. Earlier this year, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in southwestern Colorado was only able to receive 8% of the water federally allocated under its water right. Becky Mitchell said that the tribe had to purchase and lease other water rights from their neighbors to get up to 14% of their allocation.
Donald Whyte, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute, stood and spoke to the audience, describing the sadness he felt at seeing his community so ravaged by drought when the Utes once lived all throughout the headwaters of not just the Colorado, but also the Gunnison, Yampa, White, Rio Grande, Arkansas, and Platte rivers.
"I hear that and I wonder, 'how did we go from the headwaters of all of these streams to where, on my reservation, I have no continuous water source traveling across my land?'" he said. "That's my perspective. And that's why I come here to sit and listen and that's all I can do. But I speak to the public to let them know what we as Utes understand. And looking at water, it's important. I normally don't cry, but when it comes to this issue, water is life."
Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community whose reservation is located in Arizona, spoke about the work the Community had done on the Colorado River. He said that as the federal government and the basin consider major cuts to water usage, he and other tribal leaders want to be sure that Indian trust assets, including water rights, were being adequately considered.
"I really have to be candid to all of you at this point: it's still unclear whether this administration is willing to honor that trust responsibility over the next two years, much less over a ten-year horizon," he said. "And this is especially troubling, because the Community has consistently been one of the federal government's strongest partners in helping to finalize those durable agreements on the Colorado River."
What to do moving forward
For panelists and attendees of the conference alike, there was palpable frustration with what people saw as a lack of movement on an urgent crisis.
"The river is in crisis right now, and I think we could have and should have seen this coming earlier in time," said Chris Winter. "And now I think over the last day or two, we've really seen a collective reckoning about the very serious situation that we're in."
Despite those frustrations, conversations focused on what people are already doing well when it comes to water conservation in the basin, and what solutions can be replicated.
"We need to buy out demand," said Udall. "We've got a much smaller glass right now, we've got too many straws in it, and we need to pull the straws out of this glass. Getting through that hurdle will be hard, when you're on the other side of it, everyone will be so much happier."
He said buying out demand for water would take money—mainly, money from the federal government.
"You know, the feds often dump tens of billions of dollars post-some kind of hurricane mess in Florida," Udall observed. "I mean, this is not dissimilar from that. It evolves very differently, but it's not dissimilar in terms of people impacted and seriousness and need."
Tina Peters from the Imperial Irrigation District in Southern California discussed improvements made to irrigation systems for farmers in the Imperial Valley, saying that between 2003 and 2025, the district had conserved over 9.1 million acre feet of water. In 2025 alone, she said that figure was 726,000 acre feet.
There was also real consideration given to the idea that Glen Canyon's ecosystem, which is reemerging after being submerged by Lake Powell over half a century ago, should be a factor in conversations about the river's future. Zak Podmore, who wrote the book Life After Deadpool about the recovery of Glen Canyon, discussed some of the findings from research done in the canyon, including the regrowth of native plants and the resurfacing of archaeological values previously submerged.
Tribal success stories with water conservation were also at the forefront of conversation. For example, last year, the tribal council for the Colorado River River Indian Tribes passed a resolution declaring that the Colorado River was a living being with rights. The legal framework could potentially be a tool for protecting the river and its ecosystems.
"The personhood of our river, and to require that all of our future transactions regarding the Colorado River must be grounded in protection of the resource for future generations," Chairwoman Flores said. "A living Colorado River with a functioning ecosystem is as important to our existence as the air we breathe. In addition, our tribal council has approved principles that will govern our engagement in Colorado River Matters principles that reflect our obligation to be stewards of the resource and prioritizing assistance to other tribal nations."
A desalination plant in San Diego has allowed the city, which relies heavily on Colorado River water, to come up with a surplus. It recently entered into an agreement to sell some of its water to Arizona, and Reclamation touted the project as a success.
Winter summed up the overall mood at the conference.
"We have those solutions in hand: we know how to use less water, how to be more efficient, but I think we really need leadership in order to put into place the legal and policy framework, the collaboration across the states, the inclusion of the tribes in that conversation," he said.
The coming months will reveal whether the basin has the kind of leadership needed to steer the basin out of crisis and to build a durable, more resilient system.
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