Colorado Basin Snowpack At 55%, 7-State Deadline 2 Days Away (2/14) And Zero Prospects For An Agreement In Sight

Time and water are running low on the Colorado River. Amid one of the driest winters on record, representatives from seven Western states have less than two weeks to meet an already-delayed federal deadline to find a new way to share the dwindling Colorado River—one that recognizes the megadrought and overconsumption plaguing the basin.

The current guidelines for implementing drought contingencies expire later this year, but as the Feb. 14 deadline looms, basin states, particularly Arizona and Colorado, have begun discussing the prospect of settling their disputes in court, suggesting that a deal is far from guaranteed. And while a meeting last week in Washington, D.C. between the Interior Department and all seven basin states brought some hope, state negotiators have again dug in their heels.

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The dams provide hydroelectricity for more than a million people in the Southwest, but must hold water well above the turbines that generate power. If water levels at Lake Powell dip below “minimum power pool” for an extended period of time the agency would have to bypass the turbines, turning off the electricity they produce, and deliver water to the Lower Basin through lower outlets on Glen Canyon Dam, which could compromise the structure. At that point, the Bureau of Reclamation would have to choose between damaging the second-highest concrete-arch dam in the U.S. or reducing water releases to Arizona, California and Nevada, which would be a devastating blow to the region’s cities and economy. Some experts have predicted that could happen as soon as next summer or sooner if this winter’s dry spell continues.

Last September, (Ed. - retired Colorado River District General Manager Eric) Kuhn and a consortium of other hydrologists and Colorado River experts authored a report that found that if the current winter was similar to last year’s, Colorado River users would overdraw the river by 3.6 million acre-feet, and there would need to be “immediate and substantial” reductions in water use across the basin to prevent a total collapse of the system. One acre-foot is enough to supply water to two to four households. Now, with winter looking even more dismal than initially forecast, Kuhn says the Bureau of Reclamation’s options are “further constrained, unless things get wetter in the next two months.” One option that Kuhn found likely was a big release from Flaming Gorge near the Wyoming-Utah border, the largest federally managed dam upstream of Lake Powell. He guessed the release could be anywhere from half a million to 1 million acre-feet of water.

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Ed. Notes: 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge would be more than a quarter of its total capacity.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04022026/colorado-river-record-low-snow-litigation/