WATER SECURITYA Deadline Looms for a New Colorado River Plan. What Happens If There Isn’t One?
It would likely be complicated, messy and involve big lawsuits, according to experts and former officials.
The clock is ticking on the Colorado River. The seven states that use its water are nearing a 2026 deadline to come up with new rules for sharing its shrinking supplies. After more than a year of deadlock, there are rumblings of a new plan, but it’s far from final.
So what happens if the states can’t agree before that deadline?
There’s no roadmap for exactly what would happen next, but policy experts and former officials can give us some ideas. It would likely be complicated, messy and involve big lawsuits.
“I think people are looking for a concise answer here,” said Brenda Burman, former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. “But there isn’t a concise answer.”
While the details of that hypothetical future are fuzzy, experts generally agree on one thing: the states should do everything they can to avoid missing that deadline and heading into uncharted territory.
“It’s our job to make sure that we are setting the path for the next 20 or 30 years of stability,” said Burman, who now manages the Central Arizona Project. “And if we fail in that job, shame on us.”
Former federal officials can give some of the best insight into what might happen without a state deal, because federal agencies would likely step in to make sure reservoirs and dams stay functional. The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water infrastructure across the West, and its parent agency, the Department of the Interior, would become major power players.
Falling Back to a ‘Nightmare Scenario’
For more than a century, the Colorado River has been governed by a legal agreement called the Colorado River Compact. It was signed in 1922, when the river — and the West — looked a lot different. Over the years, policymakers have added a patchwork of temporary rules to adapt to modern times.
In this century, climate change has driven the need to adapt. The river has been in a megadrought that goes back to 2000. With less water in the river, states have had to cut back on demand, even though the compact promises more water to users than the river itself could ever provide naturally. Drought conditions have become the new normal over the past two decades, and temporary rules that were implemented to rein in water demand aren’t keeping up with the pace of drying.
