Latest Colorado River management forum moves water experts toward consensus
As a non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 1945, the Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) provides a forum for exchanging ideas and perspectives on the Colorado River for its nearly 1,000 members hailing from across the river basin.
Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy and a member of the executive team for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative (AWII), a multi-year partnership with the state led by Arizona State University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory in collaboration with the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, has been attending the CRWUA annual gathering for eight years.
Porter, also a Senior Global Futures Scientist with the Global Futures Laboratory, is well-known as an expert on Colorado River policy. Here, she discusses the outcomes from the 2023 CRWUA meeting and what they mean for Arizona with Faith Kearns, AWII’s director of research communication.
Faith Kearns (FK): What is the role of CRWUA in Colorado River management?
Sarah Porter (SP): I think of CRWUA as a legacy organization that is based on the idea that if people come together to explain their situation and spend time listening to each other, they will have an easier time with the important agreements about managing the Colorado River.
Each year in mid-December, CRWUA hosts a conference in Las Vegas and people from the Colorado River Basin states – Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico from the Lower Basin and Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming from the Upper Basin – meet for a few days. It is a see and be seen event. There is representation from the seven states, Mexico and the 29 Tribes in the Colorado Basin, irrigation district leaders, city water planners and the federal agencies, particularly the US Bureau of Reclamation.
The first day is mostly Colorado River 101. The second day is panels, and the third day is devoted to federal leadership and a binational panel addressing the US - Mexico component of river management. On the second morning there's also a state breakfast – each state in a different room – and you are supposed to go to the breakfast for your state.
Arizona usually has the biggest group for breakfast and is getting work done with serious presenters and conversations. I think people in Arizona have always felt like they have to be serious about their Colorado River position.
For many people who go, however, the biggest value is the stuff that's happening outside the organized sessions. It’s an opportunity to spend time with people from across the whole basin and there is a lot of value in that.
FK: It seems like a venue where people are able to sometimes discuss hard issues, or to test out new ideas, without the same worries they might have in a more formal negotiation?
SP: Yes, in some respects, it's a forward-thinking gathering. For example, in 2023, there was a fun panel on cutting edge solutions. It included a video about a Formula One project that put an atmospheric water collector on top of a cooling tower on the MGM Grand and collected thousands of gallons of water to make up for the water being used to clean the Las Vegas streets for the Grand Prix.
A few years ago when the states were struggling to come to agreement and reservoir levels were continuing to decline, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Brenda Burman at the time, used her time on the final day of CRWUA to lay down an ultimatum and essentially said to the states, “if you don't do something soon, we will.” So these meetings are kind of exciting for us self-identified water nerds.
FK: Judging by the news out of the 2023 CRWUA meeting, one of the big challenges discussed was what is known as the “structural deficit” in the Basin. Can you explain what that means?
SP: With the river, the problem is that all of the water we can expect to flow into Lake Powell and Lake Mead is completely allocated. But, no one ever accounted for the water that's lost through evaporation and other losses that are inevitable when water is moved through a large system.
The structural deficit is the term used to describe the failure to account for these additional water deliveries, if you will, to evaporation and general system losses. And that deficit is adding to the persistent declines in Lake Mead because not enough water is obligated to be delivered from the Upper Basin to make up for it.
The structural deficit is one of the drivers of declining reservoir levels, along with overallocation and climate change. Pretty much all of the negotiations come down to whether we stick to priority and therefore the junior users, including Arizona, should have all of their water cut first, or whether we should depart from priority and spread the pain in a different way.
FK: How does what happens at CRWUA fit into the overall decision-making process for the Colorado River?
SP: I hate to say that it’s complicated, but it is. Changing how the Colorado system is operated requires consensus among the people with the water rights. It inevitably requires federal legislation, and for Arizona to sign on requires state legislation.
I don't think people appreciate that because Arizona requires legislative approval, the state’s representative to the negotiations, the Director of the Department of Water Resources (ADWR) has to sell that agreement to all of the Colorado River water users in Arizona, including high priority irrigation districts and Tribes along the mainstem and junior priority cities and Tribes in Central Arizona.
The last major agreement aimed at protecting the Colorado River system was the Drought Contingency Plan, which was finalized in 2019. Before Arizona could sign on, ADWR convened a stakeholder group to figure out what it would take to get agreement among Arizona water users.
There were dozens of meetings in the lead up, which resulted in 16 sub-agreements and required state legislation. And that's just Arizona. No other state requires legislative approval, but the other states still need a degree of consensus. It’s a difficult thing to develop formal agreements and that doesn’t happen at CRWUA per se.
FK: These Colorado River issues can feel existential, particularly for Arizonans. Does it feel existential to you?
SP: It doesn’t feel existential to me in the way you might think it would. Arizona has an allocation of 2.8 million acre feet of Colorado River water. Of that, 1.2 million acre feet is delivered to users along the mainstem, including farmers and the Colorado River Indian Tribes and some smaller communities. The other 1.6 million acre feet are available to water users from Phoenix to Tucson who take delivery via the Central Arizona Project or CAP. We in Arizona have never developed demand for that entire 1.6 million acre feet since the first delivery in the mid-eighties.
About twenty years ago, an agreement was struck in which farms in Pinal County received discounted CAP water in exchange for giving up their priority, meaning that they would be the first to take a cut in a time of shortage. Since the first federal Colorado River shortage was declared in 2022, they have been the most impacted. In response, they have reduced the number of acres they cultivate and turned to groundwater as an alternative supply.
The amount of Colorado River water CAP cities need to meet demand at the tap is somewhere between 500-600K acre feet. If in the coming years, Central Arizona cities have to adjust to lower or no CAP water, it would be difficult and disruptive, but it could be done. There is a scenario in which there could be no water running in the CAP, but I think it is more likely that some water will continue to run in the CAP.
Central Arizona cities are responding. They’re pushing out conservation programs – for example offering rebates to replace grass with xeriscape. They’re making sure their well systems are in shape for withdrawing and conveying stored groundwater, which they’ve been saving up in case of shortage. They’re participating in projects to bring new water supplies.
FK: What’s up next for decision-making on the Colorado River?
SP: In 2026, there is a deadline for new long-term operating guidelines for the Colorado River system. In 2022, Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation Camille Touton announced that conditions were so dire, the states had to figure out a way to leave two to four million acre feet of water in the system. They weren't able to come up with an agreement to do that, but we had a good winter in 2023, which gave more flexibility to come to agreement on different strategies.
Now there's a proposed framework being vetted, and we're waiting to see how this winter’s precipitation ends up. If we could stay the course with the measures we have in place, and keep the reservoir levels up, that gives everybody room to focus on 2026.
Colorado River Policy Management Water supply