The Colorado River is in crisis. The seven basin states just blew through a heavily anticipated deadline to announce a new deal on how they would divide up a dwindling resource. Meanwhile, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are teetering on the brink of collapse, and Mother Nature couldn’t care less about politics or posturing.
It’s time to call out an uncomfortable truth. The system is broken. When the Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922, the Upper and Lower Basins made promises to each other that they can’t keep in an era of climate change, drought, and increased competition for our precious supplies of water. Both basins cling to their entitlements under the Compact like they are lifeboats on a sinking ship.
The Upper and Lower Basins each believe they are entitled to 7.5 million acre feet per year under the Compact (yes, it’s complicated). Recently, however, the Colorado has only produced 11 million acre feet per year with even lower dips. There is a glaring math problem, and it’s obvious that neither basin is going to get everything it wants in this new era of aridification.
We had hoped that the hard-working, well-intentioned people representing the states could figure out how to negotiate around these flaws in the Compact. We had hoped that the Department of the Interior might forge a difficult compromise. And we had hoped that we would occasionally get a lot of snow to cover up all this dysfunction.
Now, it’s quite clear those are unrealistic hopes. While a deal is still possible, it seems unlikely to
solve the long-term conflict. As long as the Upper and Lower Basins hold fast to their presumed entitlements, we’ll likely be managing a crisis on the Colorado River.
This crisis calls out for courageous leadership and a change of course. We need to revisit the allocation of water under the 1922 Compact. After all, it’s been more than 100 years – maybe it’s
time for a tune-up.
The seven governors from the basin states need to sit down in a room and change course to figure out we are going to live together in the Colorado River basin for the next hundred years. They need to set aside their entitlements. And they should be joined by a highly skilled and trusted neutral facilitator charged with brokering a deal. Then they should direct their representatives to fix the Compact. We should honor them for trying and reserve a place in history for their eventual success.
This would also provide a historic opportunity to incorporate the rights of the Tribes into an updated Compact.
If we continue floating adrift, the Supreme Court will eventually be forced to do it for us. That process will be painful, expensive, and slow. It could take decades and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The river won’t wait.
In the interim, the Secretary of the Interior may have to make some very difficult decisions in managing the system. Both basins must share in this pain. And the fourteen U.S. senators from these seven states must convince Congress to provide more money – bridge funding if you will – to help ease the pain until the governors figure this out.
It will be much more difficult for our kids to solve this problem in twenty or thirty years. Every time we kick the can down the road, we make it that much harder for the next generation to run a family farm, to enjoy nature, or just to drink a glass of clean water.
Harry Truman, who had a role in the history of the Colorado River, once said that in “periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”
The Colorado River, and the 40 million people who depend on it, are desperate for courageous people to lead us in a course correction.
Chris Winter is the executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School.
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