Colorado River experts were in the nation's capital on Wednesday to testify in front of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources committee. Water officials told senators, including Arizona's Ruben Gallego, about the dire state of the water supply as the likelihood of a messy court battle over its future grows stronger.
Water levels in major reservoirs are dropping due to drought and climate change, and state negotiators have spent more than a year in negotiations with no agreement about how to cut back on demand.
Federal water officials are targeting a mid-summer deadline for a new water-sharing plan. They are urging the seven states that use the river to agree amongst themselves and produce a consensus deal for divvying up water. Without that consensus plan, federal officials will likely put forth their own, and will likely get sued by some of the states.
It's an outcome that water experts at nearly every level of government say they want to avoid, but one that seems to be getting more likely with each passing day.
"If they can't move their stakes to get closer, we are going to have to make the decision," said Andrea Travnicek, assistant secretary for water and science at the Interior Department. "And the federal government is prepared to do that."
The Senate hearing also included some saber rattling from the states themselves.
Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, told senators about the importance of steering river negotiations away from the courtroom.
"The window to solve this without lawyers, judges and generational damage to basin relationships is shrinking faster than Lake Powell," Haas said, referencing dropping water levels in the nation's second-largest reservoir.
States on both sides of the dispute about sharing the Colorado River appear to be preparing for litigation. Arizona, for example, secured an outside law firm specifically for Colorado River matters.
Haas urged senators to withhold federal spending from states that push Colorado River talks into a court battle.
"Utah is calling for a legal détente now, before the first briefs are filed, before positions harden that make compromise impossible," Haas said. "We urge Congress to send a clear signal. States that choose courtrooms over cooperation should not expect Washington to bankroll it. States that sue other states should not be rewarded."
Utah and its allies — Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico — have done comparatively little to move the states toward agreement. Those states have not volunteered to make mandatory cutbacks to their water use in the future, and appear ready to test their own legal theory — an interpretation of a 1922 agreement that would absolve upstream states from major cutbacks.
Arizona and its allies — California and Nevada — have put forth a plan that volunteers some water cutbacks. That proposal is expected to, at least partially, inform the federal river plan that would be released later this summer.
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