Federal officials made the first of several long-awaited decisions about the future of the Colorado River on Friday.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is going to stabilize plummeting water levels in Lake Powell by moving water from a reservoir in the northern half of the Colorado River system to Powell and reducing flows of river water from Powell to Lake Mead.
The bureau said these measures will add up to 2.48 million acre feet of additional water to Powell, where decades of drought and overallocation have driven water levels so low that they pose imminent threats to hydropower generation and infrastructural stability at Glen Canyon Dam.
“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife, and recreational uses across the region,” said Andrea Travnicek, assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, the parent agency of the Bureau of Reclamation.
The bureau’s announcement comes alongside its monthly publication of 24-month hydrologic projections for the reservoirs of the Colorado River. This month’s study, released on Friday, projects that Lake Powell could drop below 3,490 feet by August of this year without intervention. At that level, water can’t make it into the intakes for hydropower generation, and is forced through river outlet works lower in the dam that aren’t designed for large deliveries — a major infrastructural and legal problem that we discussed earlier this month.
This intervention comes with significant political and hydrologic implications, especially as the seven states of the basin are deadlocked in a separate-but-related process to develop new operating guidelines for the Colorado River and just about everyone is standing with lawyers at the ready to ensure they get the water they feel they’re entitled to.
“The bureau didn’t really have a choice,” Kathryn Sorensen, director of research of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU, told us. “The dire snowpack has just taken away all of our flexibility. You’re at a point where you kind of have to throw legal and political consequences out the window and look at what it takes to protect the infrastructure.”
Reclamation’s announcement shouldn’t come as a surprise, said Eric Kuhn, retired general manager of the state of Colorado’s Colorado River Water Conservation District. Previous 24-month projections have forecasted the possibility of impending deadpool at Lake Powell, and what's shaping up to be the driest winter on record made that possibility a probability.
“Last year, we recognized that there wasn’t enough water in the system to deal with a seriously dry year,” Kuhn said. “We’ve been watching a train move at one-and-a-half miles an hour for the last six months.”
Water elevations are dropping at Lake Powell.
Sharing the pain
Reclamation’s planned actions come at the expense of two other reservoirs.
In the Upper Basin of the river system, Reclamation will draw down between 600,000 and 1 million acre feet (hereafter: MAF) from Flaming Gorge reservoir in northern Utah and southern Wyoming to Powell over the next year.
And, more importantly for Arizona readers, the Bureau is planning to reduce the annual discharge of water from Powell to Mead from 7.48 MAF to 6 MAF through September of 2026. Doing so will draw down already low water levels at Lake Mead and diminish the hydropower capacity of the Hoover Dam.
Reclamation says it has the authority to make these decisions under existing agreements, namely the 2019 Drought Response Operations Agreement, which provides for the releases from Flaming Gorge, and a 2024 update to near-term Colorado River guidelines that allows for reduced flows from Powell to Mead to stabilize Powell when it approaches critically low elevations.
But this manipulation of the reservoirs is still controversial.
The 1922 Colorado River compact allocates to the Lower Basin an average of 75 MAF of Colorado River water over 10 years, as measured at Lees Ferry downstream of Powell and Glen Canyon Dam. Later agreements to deliver 1.5 MAF a year of Colorado River water to Mexico effectively added to that base allocation, so now, the Lower Basin states expect an average of 82.5 MAF per decade, and say that the Compact legally obligates the Upper Basin states to ensure delivery of that total downriver.
Lees Ferry
The point at which the amount of water flowing through Lees Ferry falls below that 82.5 MAF is referred to as the compact “tripwire,” and it could come as soon as next year.
But now, Reclamation’s planned reductions from Powell to Mead — the primary storage reservoir for the Lower Basin states of Arizona, Colorado and Nevada — will cross that threshold, the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in a statement. The likely remedy for this is litigation. But ADWR didn’t commit to any such action.
“This failure to comply with the bedrock agreement among the seven Colorado River states is itself a serious development that Arizona will assess and will respond to accordingly in time,” the department said in its statement.
Moving water from Flaming Gorge and other Upper Basin reservoirs, however legally possible, is also a hot-button issue in the Upper Basin states, which are reticent to contribute to systemwide stability when they say the obligation should fall on the far more populous and consumptive Lower Basin states.
Flaming Gorge is also minuscule compared to Lake Powell — it presently holds just 3.1 MAF of water, about 83% of its total capacity. Reclamation’s actions will reduce elevations in Flaming Gorge by about 35 feet over the next year, to about 59% full.
“It is critical that any releases made by the federal government from Flaming Gorge and other upstream reservoirs are in compliance with existing agreements … and governing law and done for the purpose of protecting Lake Powell,” representatives from the Upper Basin states said in a statement. “We must have a clear understanding of how these proposed releases will effectively protect elevations at Lake Powell. Once the releases conclude, we expect that all water released from Flaming Gorge and other upstream reservoirs will be fully recovered.”
The fact that neither group of basin states has threatened legal action in response to Reclamation’s decision suggests that they both recognize the need for intervention to stabilize Powell, Kuhn said.
“They didn’t come right out and say ‘You can’t do it, we’re gonna sue you if you do,’” he said. But he added that he wouldn’t be surprised if “this ultimately ends up in some kind of litigation down the road.”
Sorting it all out
It’s not immediately clear what the reduction of water flows from Powell to Mead means for water consumption in the Lower Basin.
In its statement, ADWR said that a delivery of 1 MAF from Flaming Gorge coupled with a 1.48 MAF reduction of Powell-to-Mead flows constitute “the least draconian scenario for Arizona’s water users.” The three Lower Basin states have already proposed taking 1.5 MAF reductions in 2027 in addition to other measures to stabilize Lake Mead.
But a spokesperson for ADWR said that “details about how Lower Basin conservation volumes are to be allocated have yet to be worked out.”
Either way, the reduced flow from Powell to Mead leaves the latter reservoir in a potentially critical position amid discussions about how to divide the river’s dwindling water between the seven states into a drier future.
For years, the hope was that the seven basin states would agree on how to do just that. But negotiators from the states can’t agree on their interpretation of the Colorado River compact or how to share reductions between the two halves of the basin: the Upper Basin, where the headwaters of the river are located, and the Lower Basin, where the bulk of the region’s population and economy is concentrated.
In absence of agreement, the federal government has released draft plans that suggest major cuts for the Lower Basin, particularly Arizona — cuts that could kneecap the Central Arizona Project, the canal that ferries Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. But while those plans are being finalized, the federal government has said it needs to act to bring immediate stability to Lake Powell.
“For us to have a functioning operating plan for 2026, decisions are going to have to be made this month,” U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a roundtable on public lands hosted by U.S. Rep Juan Ciscomani earlier this month, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reported. “Under the current course we’re heading on, it’s unlikely there will be an agreement with the seven basin states, and the bureau is just going to have to make a decision — the best judgment it can make.”
Officials with the Central Arizona Project called Reclamation’s proposed actions a “band-aid” that will not address the current crisis on the river.
They wrote in a statement that the use of water from Upper Basin reservoirs is “encouraging,” but expressed concern that Reclamation said it will release anywhere between 600,000 and 1 million acre feet from Flaming Gorge. The bureau should release at least 1 MAF from the reservoir, CAP said, reducing downward pressure on Lake Mead.
“Those reservoirs have been held unreasonably high for years while Lake Powell and Lake Mead were allowed to drop to crisis levels,” CAP officials said. “It is critically important that the federal government make full use of the water currently held in the Upper Initial Units to stabilize the system. The Upper Initial Units were built by the federal government for the purpose of ensuring the entire Colorado River Basin could survive dry years like this one, and they must be fully utilized as such.”
Gonna be a late one again: Most Republican lawmakers in the Arizona Legislature — and several Senate Democrats — are taking a three-day trip to Washington, D.C. in June, smack dab in the middle of budget season, Mary Jo Pitzl reports for Capitol Media Services. The invite describes the event as “an opportunity to hear how President Trump is ushering in the Golden Age by delivering on the America First agenda,” but House Republicans say they expect it to focus on issues like water and public lands that are important to Arizonans.
Getting the backstory: A judge’s ruling in favor of Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap made headlines this week and, like most technical issues related to elections, it’s hard to understand what happened and what’s at stake. Votebeat’s Sasha Hupka breaks down the issues behind the long-running dispute between Heap and the Board of Supervisors, including which claims don’t hold water. Keep in mind, the Trump administration and its allies, which include Heap, are making the 2020 election a key issue of the 2026 election. They already gathered election records in Arizona through a grand jury subpoena, seized records in Georgia, and this week they’re going after records in the Detroit area for the 2024 election, per the Washington Post. (On the bright side, the election dust-up in Maricopa County is leading to an entertaining Twitter spat that now includes GOP candidate for Arizona secretary of state Gina Swoboda, GOP Rep. Alexander Kolodin, and high-profile lawyer Tom Ryan.)
The Big One: Zoning officials in Pinal County gave the green light to a massive data center project that would cover 3,300 acres of vacant desert land near Eloy, Hailey Mensik reports for the Phoenix Business Journal. If the project gets final approval, it would consist of 59 data center buildings, two gas-fired power plants and a battery storage system.
Delayed, not discarded: The change at the top of the Department of Homeland Security, along with the partial government shutdown, likely mean the immigration detention center planned for a warehouse in Surprise won’t open by its September target date, the Republic’s Elena Santa Cruz reports. A spokesperson for Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, whose district includes the warehouse, said all signs point to the detention center opening at some point, even if there are minor delays. Surprise City Councilman Chris Judd said he’d like to see the project delayed until after the November elections, when voters could choose a member of Congress who could take action on the project.
If you’re looking for a way to take action, we highly recommend clicking this button.
Starting to spread: Measles cases have been on the rise at the Arizona-Utah border for months, and now health officials in the Valley have seen six cases so far this year, including three that can’t be traced to other known cases, Jessica Boehm reports for Axios. The most recent case popped up last week, and health officials say it may have come from an Arizona Youth Sports basketball game in Mesa.
Debates season is right around the corner!
As we prepare to grill the candidates as part of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission legislative debate series, we want to know what issues matter most to you.
Sure, we know you care about issues like education, elections, water, the border, infrastructure and the environment.
But those are pretty broad.
So this week, we’re asking you to help us narrow it down a bit by filling out some simple surveys. Today’s “What’s Your Issue” is about social services.
Think of it this way: If we can only ask candidates about one of the subtopics on this list, what should it be?
When it comes to the environment
When it comes to covering a Trump rally, really only one outlet consistently does it correctly — and that’s the Phoenix New Times.
Rather than writing about the rally like a straight news story, Morgan Fischer of the New Times distilled the right-wing hootenanny as it deserved to be treated: like a cultish circus coming to town.
Let’s be honest, the comedic value of these events is their only redeeming quality, the only thing worth reading about them. Fischer’s editor, Zach Buchanan, is keenly aware of this, too. It’s like some kind of strange, twisted medieval spectacle with its theatre, fanfare and buffoonery.
Here are some of the best, wildest moments as seen by Fischer (whom we sincerely thank for going so we didn’t have to):
One protester referring to Trump as “poopy pants the antichrist”
The president pantomiming the bombing of boats in the Caribbean like a toddler playing with toy military planes
Trump referring to embattled Republican U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Tucson as “Juan Cisco-maynee”
The fact that GOP U.S. Rep. David Schweikert wasn’t there — either for not catching an invite or choosing not to go — yet his gubernatorial campaign’s flyers were put on the windshields of parked cars outside
His gubernatorial primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, criticizing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs but accidentally calling her “Kari Lake” at one point
Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar getting booed for endorsing former Democrat Rodney Glassman for Arizona attorney general
“I refuse to let California become Arizona” – Erika Kirk
Trump saying he loved supporter and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick’s “widow’s peak”