BIG PIVOTS: An Eddy in the Colorado River

Photo: Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s lead negotiator in Colorado River matters, speaking at the Colorado Water Congress in January 2024.  Courtesy Allen Best.

This story by Allen Best appeared on BigPivots.com on January 2, 2025.

Big Pivots keeps track of an awful lot in the realms of climate, energy and water, primarily within Colorado.

This is the biggest story of 2024 in our estimation.

First, water. Next, energy.

Some analysts of the Colorado River saw trouble looming even in the 20th century. Then came 2002, like a shotgun blast in the next motel room. Some years that followed have been wetter, others dry. All were joined at the hip with warmer temperatures. Drought over time came to be accompanied by a new word: aridification. And slowly, recognition that a new paradigm had arrived.

The response of the seven basin states to this shift? It took awhile, but the lower-basin states have come closer to living within their means. The upper basin states — well, only Colorado came close to using its full allotment.

In 2024, Colorado and other upper-basin states continued to insist that the lower-basin states needed to absorb the full brunt of this new reality. Big Pivots was at Water Congress last January when Colorado’s Becky Mitchell laid out the state’s insistence once again that this “structural deficit” was a lower-basin problem.  See: A freight train of thoughts.

Division had deepened by December when the water buffaloes of the Colorado River Basin assembled in Las Vegas for their annual meeting. They couldn’t see fit to share the same auditorium. The word “bickering” was used to describe the level — and nature — of disagreement.

Colorado’s state policy might be called stubborn, and that has some people even in the Colorado water community wondering why. As a negotiating strategy, does this really make sense? Climate change is real. There were bound to be problems, but with annual flows of 12.5 million acre-feet instead of 15, and temperatures continuing to rise, the problems have been amplified like a guitar in a hard-rock concert.

“I think the Upper Basin needs to find a way to create a demand management program similar to the Lower Basin: forego irrigation deliveries, fund the program that supports our farmers annually selecting this option, and shepherd that water into a ‘bucket’ within Lake Powell to say ‘Hey, here is what we saved,’ to both the Lower Basin and the Supreme Court (if it goes that far),” wrote one correspondent to Big Pivots.

Changes in water policy and attitudes have occurred since 2002. Big Pivots in 2024 won two awards (with Aspen Journalism) about shifting practices regarding water and urban landscapes. Things often happen in increments. But this kicking the can down the Colorado River borders on the ridiculous. It’s like an eddy in the river, one that just keeps moving in a circle.

A few of the water stories in 2024:

In April, a bill began moving through the Colorado Legislature to allow Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association to retain their water rights in the Yampa River until 2050 while they figure out exactly what will come beyond the coal era. See that story here.

In May, Colorado River experts Anne Castle and Jack Schmidt had suggested in a Sierra Club-sponsored forum that Law of the River discussions about realigning demand with supplies were doomed to fall short. See that story here.

And in September came the issue of whether Colorado needs to start preparing for potential curtailment of water rights junior to the 1922 compact. See Heading for the Colorado River cliff.

For a deeper, even dazzling review of how we got to the edge of this compact curtailment, see the essay by Eric Kuhn that was published this fall in the Colorado  Environmental Law Journal.