Key Colorado River conservation deadline arrives, with no consensus on the horizon

Source: The Hill

03/11/24 3:12 PM ET


Monday marked a key cutoff time by which Colorado River states had been tasked with proposing a consensus-based plant for long-term water conservation in the overtaxed system. But with the arrival of that deadline, set by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, no such agreement was on the table. Instead, the river system’s two main contingents — the Upper and Lower basins — submitted their own competing plans.

The proposals pertained to an upcoming update of the rules — known as the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages — that govern where, when and how much the seven basin states must conserve water from the 1,450-mile river. While those rules only apply to the domestic parties, the Colorado River serves as the lifeblood for about 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico, and the two countries are currently renegotiating international conservation commitments at the same time.

The history of the Colorado River system’s water consumption is complex, with a century-old agreement allocating parties with more water than is reasonably available today. That 1922 compact allotted 7.5 million acre-feet of water annually to each of the two U.S. basins, while a 1944 treaty then granted another 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico. For reference, suburban U.S. households tend to use about an acre-foot each year.

As the rules governing the river have come up for renegotiation, matters have grown increasingly complicated on the domestic front, where the Upper Basin states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — have starkly different perspectives from their Lower Basin peers — Arizona, California and Nevada.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4524455-colorado-river-negotiations-key-deadline-arrives-no-consensus-plan-upper-lower-basins/