With long-standing operational rules of the Colorado River set to expire, federal and state leaders are preparing to fight over how to share a river that keeps shrinking.
The canal system’s water users have been operating under a drought contingency plan for the past seven years, says Brian Buzard, the director of operations, power and engineering with the CAP.
“The guidelines that were established on how we operate the system during times of drought were established in 2007... Obviously those are expiring at the end of this year and so there is a…spirited debate about how we’re going to divvy up a smaller river,” Buzard said.
CAP water users have continued to give up about 30% of its water supply, or about 18% of the state’s cut from the Colorado River. But Arizonans have already learned how to operate with less.
Patrick Dent is the assistant general manager of water policy at the CAP. He says that the Lower Basin – made up of Arizona, California and Nevada – has been working voluntarily, for the most part, since 2013 to try to reduce its overall Colorado River use.
“8 to 9 million acre feet between what’s been mandatorily required to be reduced and what’s been voluntarily committed back to the system,” Dent said.
But this past hydrologic year has been a doozy, Dent said, with runoff into Lake Powell possibly reaching historic lows. According to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, precipitation in March was less than 50% of average. Snowpack in April was also a record low.
“Lots of concern in the coming months about dropping water levels at Lake Powell. If they reduce the release from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, they’ll now be dropping water levels at Lake Mead as well. And so there’ll be more calls for more reductions in water use and more conservation too,” Dent said.
Dent says the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum – who serves as the water master of the Lower Basin –needs to release water from upper initial units or storage reservoirs in the Upper Basin, in order to meet its 75-million-acre-feet obligation under the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Burgum has authority over the reservoirs within the river’s infrastructure
“That’s never really been done before, the United States has largely operated in those reservoirs and kept them full,” Dent said.
At a meeting with mining stakeholders in Tucson earlier this month, Burgum said that no final decision has been made in terms of releases but that decisions will have to be made on water levels that would be released. He added that it’s unlikely that the seven basin states will come to an agreement, leaving it up to the Bureau of Reclamation to make a decision.
“It’ll be numbers that no one will be satisfied with because there’s not enough water in the system and certainly this year, not enough water. It’ll be balancing the issues of water rights, power generation, water supply,” Burgum said.
The Lower Basin has already offered more cuts for post-2026 operational guidelines: 27% for Arizona, 17% for Nevada and 10% for California.
Burgum says the federal government will have to balance everybody’s needs, even if everybody makes “powerful claims” about their needs.
“I would just ask everybody that’s involved to keep coming with their best ideas on new sources, supply, on conservation, on trade offs,” Burgum said. “We want to keep listening to everybody on this and then I would seriously say, pray, pray for more rain too.”
Officials with the CAP say that they want to work with the federal government on immediate actions to address this coming year, but that effort needs to be focused on a long term plan.
