Water official says Colorado River agreement still has long way to go to become reality

• The Lower Basin Plan submitted May 22 by representatives of California, Arizona and Nevada marks the first time those states voluntarily have agreed to reduce their water use.
• The plan still must be analyzed by federal officials, go through a public comment period and gain the endorsement of the other four states that use the Colorado River and its tributaries.
• The plan would conserve at least an additional 3 million acre-feet of river water in the lower basin by the end of 2026.

FARMINGTON — An agreement proposed by officials in California, Arizona and Nevada — the three so-called lower-basin states among the seven Colorado River users — may be historic in nature, but it still faces a long road toward ratification, according to a San Juan County water official.

The Lower Basin Plan submitted May 22 by representatives of California, Arizona and Nevada to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — the agency that oversees the river and its reservoirs — marks the first time those states voluntarily have agreed to reduce their water use.

Aaron Chavez, the executive director of the San Juan Water Commission and the president of the Colorado River Water Users Association, said that fact alone makes the proposal historic.

The plan still must be analyzed by federal officials, go through a public comment period and gain the endorsement of the other four states that use the river and its tributaries — New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

“It’s a step forward,” Chavez said while noting there is no guarantee that Bureau of Reclamation officials or representatives of the upper-basin states won’t find fault with it.

Chavez said he is optimistic the proposal offers a framework for something all seven states and the government can get behind as they try to find a solution to the problem of a dwindling water supply in the American Southwest.

If an agreement by the seven states can’t be reached, officials of the U.S. Department of the Interior said they will impose water-use cuts on the seven states that use the Colorado River.

That led officials in the lower-basin states to develop their May 22 proposal. According to a letter sent to Camille Calimlin Touton, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the plan would conserve at least an additional 3 million acre-feet of river water in the lower basin by the end of 2026, when the agreement would end.

That water savings would be achieved by reductions in use by cities, tribes and irrigation districts in the lower-basin states. In exchange, those entities would receive $1.2 billion in federal grants stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act adopted by Congress in 2022.

In a news release issued May 22 by the Department of the Interior, Touton hailed the proposed agreement, noting federal officials helped bring the stakeholders together.

“For over a century, Reclamation has led with solutions grounded in partnership and collaboration,” she said. “The agreement today continues in this tradition. I am proud of the Reclamation team’s work and thank our partners across the basin and the Basin states representative for reaching this moment. This is an important step towards our shared goal of forging a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home.”

The agreement is particularly notable in that it includes the participation of California, which is the senior water rights holder among the lower-basin states. Over the previous months, that state’s attorney general Rob Bonta vowed to vigilantly protect California’s water rights in court, if necessary, perhaps even at the expense of Arizona and Nevada.

“To my understanding, that’s correct — they were taking a hard line,” Chavez said. “But they realized something was going on, and they needed to compromise.”

The May 22 proposal, if ratified, would nullify the need for any such court battles, in addition to keeping the federal government from deciding for the seven states how the Colorado River water should be allocated.

Chavez said the upper-basin states have yet to take a position on the new plan as they await the Bureau of Reclamation analysis, an environmental impact statement and the public comment period. All of that could take months, but Chavez said the sooner something gets done, the better.

“To me, there is an urgency to this” because of the momentum generated by the proposal,” he said. “ … Even though it’s been a great year (precipitation wise throughout the Southwest), the key is not to let our foot off the gas. It’s always urgent, in my mind.”

Even if the plan is approved, officials from the seven member states would have little time to sit back and enjoy a respite. With the proposed plan set to expire in 2026, they would need to reconvene quickly and come up with another plan to address the region’s long-term water-use priorities.

The good news is, Chavez said, this plan lays a good foundation for future agreements.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time past 2026,” he said.

Water managers from the seven states also are enjoying an historically wet winter and spring across much of the region, especially in northwest New Mexico, where Chavez leads the San Juan Water Commission. Despite a massive snowpack in the San Juan Mountains of the southwest Colorado, Chavez was a little apprehensive earlier this year, fearing that an unseasonably warm spring would melt that snow too quickly, leaving New Mexico high and dry once summer arrived.

But the Four Corners region has experienced a very mild spring so far, failing to record even a single 90-degree day as the middle of June approaches. Additionally, temperatures have cooled significantly at night, and that means the snowpack has continued to melt gradually, leaving much of it in place only two weeks before the official start of summer on June 21.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s SNOWTEL website, which measures the snow-water equivalent of the snowpacks in Colorado’s eight river basins, the San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan river basin snowpack was at 245 percent of the historic average on June 4 – the second-highest figure in the state. That means there has been slow but steady melting of the snowpack into those four rivers.

“It’s been an ideal runoff situation,” Chavez said. “The Animas hasn’t gone much past 5,000 (cubic feet per second), which means it’s full, but not flooding. What I was looking for has been coming through, and I’m happy about that.”

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 ormeasterling@daily-times.com.

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