STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Colorado water officials announced Wednesday a rough plan to figure out how the state would handle an unwelcome specter in the Colorado River Basin: forced water cuts.
Mandatory water cuts are possible under a 103-year-old Colorado River Compact in certain circumstances, mainly if the river’s 10-year flow falls too low. It’s a possibility that is one or two “bad years” away, some experts say.
Colorado, however, does not have a clearly defined plan, or regulations, for how exactly it would handle such forced water cuts. It’s time to start preparing, according to state engineer Jason Ullmann, Colorado’s top water cop.
Over the years, Coloradans on both sides of the Continental Divide have asked about these “compact administration regulations,” Ullmann told state lawmakers during the Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee hearing Wednesday in Steamboat Springs.
“We’ve heard those questions,” Ullmann, director of the Division of Water Resources, said as hundreds of water professionals listened at the Colorado Water Congress Summer Meeting.
If the river’s flow falls below a 10-year rolling average of about 82.5 million acre-feet, the Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — could demand that the Upper Basin send more water downstream based on the 1922 Colorado River Compact. In the water world, this is often called a “compact call.”
The Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — argue that the trigger is actually 75 million acre-feet because of a difference in legal opinions about how the basin states should meet their obligations to share Colorado River water with Mexico.
That 10-year average flow was forecast to be about 82.8 million acre-feet by September 2026. If the flow falls below the tripwire, it would cause a legal mire that could take years to sort out.
State officials said Colorado is in compliance and expects to remain so in the future. If a compact call ever happened, it would be a historic first for the Colorado River Basin.
Colorado officials would need to be able to send more water downstream. But the state doesn’t have regulations to say who cuts back, where the water comes from, when cuts happen or how it would track the water to make sure it would end up where it needed to go.
State officials have debated whether they should even have these discussions in light of larger basin negotiations over water use. Some people wanted to focus the state’s resources on the negotiations. Others feared that finding water supplies that could be cut would weaken the state’s stance that it has no extra water to spare.
Based on Ullmann’s remarks, the state is shifting its next course of action: many, many feedback meetings with communities.
This is pretty big news, said state Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat, asking for more details about the timeline.
This winter and spring, state officials will reach out to key water user groups to host small listening sessions to hear their thoughts on the need for compact administration regulations, Ullmann said.
After that, the state will hold broader public meetings to get more input.
“It’s not something that we intend on doing in a vacuum,” Ullmann said. “It’s important for everybody in the state of Colorado that this would be a very transparent question.”
The state has already started on another key task when it comes to managing mandatory water cuts: improving how the Western Slope measures its water diversions.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” Ullmann said.
Western Slope water users do already measure their use, but the measurements are not as advanced or consistent as in other river basins where Coloradans already curtail their use to meet interstate water sharing obligations, he said.
The state has already made progress on improving measurement rules and requirements in northwestern Colorado, southwestern Colorado and the Gunnison River area. Water diversions along the Colorado River in western Colorado are next up, a process that will wrap up in November.
Colorado could also adapt to the prospect of forced cuts by creating a “conservation pool,” like a savings account that could be tapped in the event of a compact call, according to other water experts who spoke to lawmakers.
Some pinned their hopes on the state’s Colorado River negotiators who have been charged with reaching a seven-state agreement for how to manage the basin’s major reservoirs after the current operating rules expire in 2026.
“We’re not going to have a compromise unless they [the Lower Basin] waive compact compliance threats. We just can’t enter into any agreement with that,” said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District.
Those negotiations have been stalled over fundamental issues like how to cut back on water in the basin’s driest water years.
Colorado’s Colorado River Commissioner, Becky Mitchell, told lawmakers Wednesday that the discussions continue to be challenging. Negotiators have until November to share more information about a seven-state agreement with the federal government.
“Whether or not we reach a seven-state consensus, all of us will be forced to deal with this reality in one way or another,” Mitchell said. “But today, what we’re hearing from our counterparts is they may be unwilling to reduce their uses in some dry years. It appears they believe that this gap should somehow be filled by the Upper Basin water, using any means necessary.”
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