{"id":296278,"date":"2025-11-17T03:13:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/296278\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T03:13:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:13:17","slug":"less-water-more-problems-california-6-states-miss-colorado-river-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/296278\/","title":{"rendered":"Less water, more problems \u2013 California, 6 states miss Colorado River deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lake<\/a>Drought-stricken Lake Mead on the Colorado River in August 2022. (File photo by Christopher Clark\/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)<\/p>\n

This story<\/a> was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

After two fraught years of negotiations amid\u00a0dire projections<\/a>\u00a0for the Colorado River\u2019s reservoirs, California and six other states that rely on the river\u2019s water have yet again failed to reach a deal \u2014 despite a federal deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile more work needs to be done, collective progress has been made that warrants continued efforts to define and approve details for a finalized agreement,\u201d the states said. The written statement released Tuesday included no details about how they plan to manage the river after the current rulebook expires at the end of next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal stewards for the river under the Department of the Interior,\u00a0have threatened to impose their own plan<\/a>\u00a0in the absence of a deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo years. And the lack of progress, in light of how perilous the conditions are on the Colorado \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d said Mark Gold, former director of Water Scarcity Solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a board member of the Southern California water import giant, the Metropolitan Water District.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The federal government frequently sets deadlines on the Colorado River,\u00a0but it almost never\u00a0<\/a>enforces them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Negotiations now continue in advance of another deadline, in February, for a seven-state deal. Scott Cameron, acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, said in June that the goal is to \u201cparachute\u201d the states\u2019 agreement into the ongoing federal planning process, in time to finalize a plan by May or June next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet the states remain deadlocked even as the agreements that currently govern the river near expiration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Koebele, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, suspects that relationships between the states\u00a0have become too fractured<\/a>, and water too scarce, for deadlines to effectively motivate them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have less water, and it\u2019s caused more rippling problems,\u201d\u00a0Koebele told CalMatters<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re cutting a smaller pie, for more people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Federal pressure or state collaboration?<\/p>\n

A major conflict has been over how much each basin must cut back their use of the overtapped river to close the ever-growing gap between dwindling supply and ravenous demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin\u00a0offered in March 2024<\/a>\u00a0to cut their use by up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year, depending on reservoir conditions. They urged Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico upstream to share any belt-tightening beyond that, but the upstream states balked \u2014 saying that their water users must already conserve water when dry conditions shrink the river\u2019s flows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Becky Mitchell, Colorado\u2019s Upper Colorado River Commissioner, said that the states \u201cremain committed to collaboration grounded in the best available science and respect for all Colorado River water users. We are taking a meaningful step toward long-term sustainability and demonstrating a shared determination to find supply-driven solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has pressed the Trump administration to be more forceful in state negotiations. In a letter Tuesday to Trump\u2019s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Hobbs and Arizona legislative leaders called the upstream states\u2019 negotiating position \u201cextreme.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find it alarming that the Upper Basin States have repeatedly refused to implement any volume of binding, verifiable water supply reductions,\u201d the letter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts say there\u2019s no time to waste; even the time it takes to develop a new plan for the river may be too long for its dwindling reservoirs. The Colorado River basin is suffering a climate change-fueled megadrought, and the basin\u2019s major reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are\u00a0each less than one-third full<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California\u2019s Colorado River use is on track this year to hit its\u00a0lowest since 1949<\/a>. Still,\u00a0projections show<\/a>\u00a0another dry winter may yet send Lake Powell plunging below the levels needed to generate power by December 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem is that even when it rains or snows, runoff is disappearing into thirsty soils before it reaches the river. The paltry runoff keeps driving up\u00a0estimates of the conservation required\u00a0<\/a>to stabilize the basin and its reservoirs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Schmidt<\/a>, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, and others have urged\u00a0more urgent conservation<\/a>\u00a0in order to protect operations at the dams and ensure that water can be released from Lake Mead and Lake Powell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to drag our heels on not implementing additional cuts right now. That\u2019s our fear: if it doesn\u2019t snow this winter, we\u2019ll really compromise the system,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cWe might get bailed out by a more decent winter, but that\u2019s betting on a whole lot of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

CalMatters<\/a>\u00a0is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drought-stricken Lake Mead on the Colorado River in August 2022. (File photo by Christopher Clark\/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[2356,15838,35410,192,15839,15840,153672,79,154625],"class_list":["post-296278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-california","tag-colorado-river","tag-droughts","tag-environment","tag-lake-mead","tag-lake-powell","tag-reservoirs","tag-science","tag-u-s-bureau-of-reclamation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}