Colorado River water has been a source of contention between seven southwestern states for decades. Nearly a quarter-century of drought has created more stress. The states have not yet come together.
Soon, the federal government will bring the parties together and compel a new operating agreement. California receives the largest share of any state with 27% of deliveries. Southern California especially depends on the Colorado River to supply large urban and agricultural customers.
It’s hard to overemphasize the magnitude of the Colorado River in the history of the American Southwest. Its water serves more than five million acres of farmland, 30 Indian tribes and three major cities over a 40-million-acre service area in seven U.S. and two Mexican states. Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix depend on the river to sustain their growing populations.
A panel of California experts recently discussed how important the Colorado River is to the state. Wade Crowfoot heads the state’s Natural Resources Agency, and he talked about what’s at stake.
“Basically, we are at the end of a 20-year period of an operating agreement across seven states and the nation of Mexico. And we all rely on the river for water, both for communities and for agriculture.
“By the end of this year, there needs to be a new operating agreement to manage the river for all our benefits and, of course, the benefit of the environment beginning next year. So, it’s really crunch time for the Colorado River.”
In the two decades since the Colorado River compact began, two things have happened in the watershed: a 20-year megadrought and a population explosion. The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Meade, are at historically low levels.
So, the problem is how to serve more people with less water. The geography and economic diversity of the seven states make agreement difficult and complicated.
Karla Nemeth, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, stresses that states will need to address the threats of climate change and aridification to become sustainable in the long term.
“That complexity is really established in what’s called the Law of the River,” notes Nemeth.
“It’s a complicated set of interstate compacts, court decrees, treaties, tribal water rights, settlements, contracts [and] legislation; lots of different things essentially establish the law of the river.”
State climatologist Michael Anderson states that things have gotten warmer in the West. He has been tracking global scientific projections of temperature and predicts that the climate will keep warming in the Colorado River watershed.
“Some of the challenge when you keep warming is the air can hold more water. If it can hold more water, there’s more demand to pull water away from the landscape, meaning that landscape’s drying out even further.
“Another part of climate change is [that] storms become bigger, spaced out further. When it’s not getting wet, it’s drying out, then you have longer windows of dryness.
“On top of that, our snowpack is getting smaller.
“Another challenge in the Colorado River Basin is blowing dust. Dust from the desert is being blown up onto the snowpack, and that makes it melt earlier.”
Western states typically have cycles of wet or dry years. Nemeth cautioned that water managers must be ready to capture stormwater and store it underground or recycle that water. Otherwise, she warns, there is a potential for slipping into a drought that is consequential to human health and safety.
“When you provide water for 40 million people like the Colorado River does, or 27 million people like the State Water Project, or supplying water for 19 million people in Southern California, you start understanding what resiliency means. How do you capture water when it becomes available?”
Conservation will be the key to a sustainable future while using less water from the Colorado River. Los Angeles has already proven that conservation works through a variety of wise-use practices adopted by the city’s residents.
Shivagi Desmukh heads the Southern California Municipal Water District, the nation’s largest water user. He emphasized that conservation is the key to the future.
“While we’ve seen population increases, we’ve seen our demand significantly reduced. Our per person potable water consumption in Southern California has dropped over 40% over the last 30 years.
“The region has cut its imported water use in half since 1990, from about two-and-a-half million acre-feet down to almost one million acre-feet. And yet the population has increased by four million.”
Colorado River water has also made vast areas of Southern California desert into a lush agricultural landscape. In the Coachella Valley, the Colorado River supplies 75% of the water. They have been working toward conserving to reduce demand.
The water district lined 80 miles of the Coachella Canal for more efficient flow. They’ve saved more than six million acre-feet of water that’s been put to beneficial use elsewhere.
The Colorado River is also essential for the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe. It runs through their 45,000-acre reservation.
Frank Venegas, the tribal water technician, has been part of the reservation’s conservation efforts to protect their ancient connection to the Colorado River.
“The one thing I want us to always remember as a tribe is that we still rely on the river for our cultural practices. So it’s important to us that we have a living river to continue practicing all of our cultural traditions that we’ve had since the beginning of time.”
The Colorado River Board of California is California’s main negotiating agency for the state’s river interests. JB Hamby is the chair. It includes many of the state’s major water users—cities, ag districts and tribes. They are California’s delegation in hammering out a new Colorado River compact.
Hamby stresses that the stakes are high for the future of Southern California’s residents and businesses.
“We have 600,000 acres of year-round farming 365 days a year in the Imperial Valley, Bard Valley, Fort Woodson Indian Tribe, Coachella Valley Water District and even in the San Diego area.
“We have highly productive farmland in production all year round. Half of the population lives within Southern California. And this essential Colorado River water supports $2 trillion in economic production.
“All of these things we are charged and tasked with protecting, while at the same time getting to a consensus deal that makes sense for our state, our users and the people of our state.”
There is bound to be controversy with all the parties dividing up the shrinking river. The Imperial Valley at the southern end of California is at the center of debate.
The Imperial Irrigation District founded in 1911 gets a lion’s share of water from the Colorado River. In 2023, Imperial County agriculture grossed $2.6 billion in revenue from a variety of crops and livestock. They’re concerned that less water from the Colorado River will dramatically harm their economy.
But where does all that water go? An investigation by ProPublica and the Desert Sun newspaper found that more than half is consumed by just 20 farming families. The report stated that the Abatti family farms alone consume more water than the entire Las Vegas metro area.
Although the San Joaquin Valley does not directly depend on the Colorado River, reduced allocations to the state could still impact the region.
Less water for Southern California could put more demand pressure on the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, which are the primary sources of water for Valley farms and towns. That would place even more strain on water deliveries to the Valley from Northern California’s rivers and the beleaguered San Francisco Bay Delta ecosystem.
