From the Salt Lake Tribune, June 5:
The warning comes as seven Western states and the federal government struggle to agree on new rules for managing the shrinking river.
Boulder, Colo. • Colorado River experts and decision makers gathered in Boulder, Colorado, this week to discuss the future of the water supply for 40 million people across the Southwest. At the registration table, a new white paper set the tone for the conference at the Colorado Law School: “Colorado River Basin Storage Continues Slide Toward System Crash.”
If the Colorado River Basin has another dry year, even if water consumption is at or near historic lows, Lake Powell and Lake Mead will likely drop to levels that could threaten dam infrastructure and downstream deliveries to major southwest cities and agriculture hubs at the start of the 2028 water year, according to the paper co-authored by Colorado River experts.
If next year is more similar to a heavy snow year like 2023, then the nation’s two largest reservoirs would recover to an extent, but that cushion would likely only last for about two years, the paper says.
“We’re going to have to work harder to save water than we have ever worked before in the 21st century,” said Jack Schmidt, one of the paper’s co-authors, in an interview before the conference.
The researchers intentionally didn’t use the “most extreme” years in their study, Schmidt added. For the dry scenario, they used historic flow data from 2025, the fifth driest year in the 21st century. The wet scenario used 2023 flows, which were the third highest in the past 26 years.
“We’re trying to lay out, in the starkest terms, where we’re at so that everybody understands the significance of the cuts that lie ahead,” Schmidt said. “We cannot go over the cliff.”
That “cliff” is dropping below “reasonably accessible storage,” which the paper defines as the water above 3,500 feet at Lake Powell and 975 feet at Lake Mead. The Bureau of Reclamation has identified these as critical elevations to protect hydropower production and infrastructure at the dams....
....MUCH MORE
