Western states that rely on the Colorado River have less than two months to agree on how to manage the troubled river – and pressure is mounting as the federal government pushes for a compromise and a troubling forecast for the river’s two biggest reservoirs looms.
Top water officials for the seven Colorado River Basin states — Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — gathered for the three-day Colorado River Water Users Association conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas last week.
Colorado River states have until Feb. 14 to reach a new water sharing agreement before current operating rules expire at the end of 2026 —or the federal government will step in with their own plan.
Despite the fast-approaching deadline, states reiterated many of the same issues they did during previous years at the conference, namely, which water users will need to sacrifice more water to keep the Colorado River stable as overallocation, climate change, and rising demand sucks the river dry.
Nevada’s chief river negotiator and general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority John Entsminger offered a succinct but sharp assessment of the negotiations during a panel discussion Thursday.
“If you distill down what my six partners just said, I believe there’s three common things: Here’s all the great things my state has done. Here’s how hard/impossible it is to do any more. And here are all the reasons why other people should have to do more,” Entsminger said.
“As long as we keep polishing those arguments and repeating them to each other, we are going nowhere,” he continued.
The seven states that share the river’s flows have been deadlocked for nearly two years over how to govern the waterway through the coming decades — even as water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell are forecasted to reach record lows after two straight years of disappointing snowpack across the West.
The Colorado River’s headwaters saw a weak snowpack last winter, contributing to one of the worst spring runoff seasons on record. Water flow into the river this year was only 56% of average, leading to significant reductions in Lake Powell, according to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation.
Federal officials also released a troubling forecast of expected flows for the river in 2026, which were significantly lower than previous predictions. Projections from the Bureau of Reclamation found the Colorado River’s inflow next year would likely be 27% lower than normal, with worst-case scenarios predicting even lower flows.
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