'Like driving off a cliff at 2 mph': A water expert's take on what's coming for the Colorado River

The Colorado River is on the brink of collapse because of climate change and overuse of water.

Reservoirs supplying water to tens of millions of people in the southwest reached record lows this summer. The nation is racing to refill them with conservation measures so they can still generate hydropower and reliably deliver water to users downstream.

Fish are struggling. Rafters are having trouble navigating low water. 

Despite all this, the seven states sharing the water supply remain at a yearslong impasse over how to conserve the river. 

“The Colorado River is in as bad a shape as it’s ever been,” said Doug Kenney, chairman of the Colorado River Research Group at CU Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center.

The Interior Department announced Aug. 21 it will significantly cut back the amount of water that will flow to the lower basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona for at least the next two years.  

“To the people who really study this river, everything that’s happening this year has been expected for decades,” Kenney said. “This is a classic, slow-moving crisis. I’ve equated it to driving a car off a cliff at 2 miles an hour. You can look out the windshield and see that cliff coming. And we’re now right at the edge.”

Kenney spoke to CU Boulder Today about the latest efforts to conserve the river and what he thinks is coming next. 

Are these cuts to the lower basin states enough to save the river?

There’s nothing in this plan that will save the river. It hasn’t made it to the ocean since the 1960s. That’s not going to change. What they’re really trying to accomplish is to prevent the reservoirs from going even lower. They’re trying to avoid further disaster. And the cuts they’re anticipating for the next two years—I don’t think are going to get us there.

If we have a good water year or two with heavy snowpack, we can maybe hold where we’re at. But by the time we get to year three and beyond, those cuts will probably have to be about twice as big as they are now. 

Nevada is suing the federal government to stop the cuts. What’s at stake?

One of those stakes could be that the Bureau of Reclamation is told to go back and redo its plan to cut water to the lower basin states. That would be chaotic. The last thing water users want is chaos. They want to know how much water they can expect. 

Doug Kenney

With lawsuits starting, is there any hope left for states to agree on a plan?

There are two problems on the river. One is stopping the current trajectory of reservoirs dropping. And that’s a heavy lift. But if you manage to do that, then there’s the other problem of rebuilding those reservoirs. Which requires even further conservation and cuts. 

We have to rebuild some storage in those reservoirs. At the moment, we’ve decided let’s just deal with what we have to deal with immediately—this short term crisis—and even that’s proving to be a lift that the states can’t do themselves. And the federal government has had to step in.  

Their plan doesn’t force water cuts for upper basin states like Colorado. Can we get out of this crisis without mandatory cuts in the upper basin?

The upper basin is tricky here in that it uses significantly less water than it was promised. And people in the upper basin will tell you, this is the deal they made a century ago in the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

So when you talk to the upper basin states about conserving water on any sort of permanent basis, that’s the sticking point that you’re going to get is people saying ‘we were promised this water.’ 

The scientists will say this is a different river than 100 years ago. So you have that sort of impasse. If the upper basin could just cap what they’re using today, long term, that would be tremendously helpful. And that might very well happen. But I don’t think the upper basin would want to commit to that in any sort of formal way. 

Then how do we get out of this crisis? 

A truly long-term sustainable solution has to look at the fact that we’re using 75 percent of the water in agriculture. And some of that agriculture I think is going to just have to go away. So the policy decision there is: Which agriculture goes away? And does it just go away through bankruptcies, and let the market do what the market does? Or do we do that in a structured and more humane manner, such as a federal program to buy out large amounts of it? 

But when you start talking about retiring a lot of agriculture, that’s not popular. There’s no easy way out of this. 

Is the fate of the river heading to the US Supreme Court? 

I would guess we end up in interstate litigation. I’m not sure of that, but I think the odds of that happening are greater than 50-50 in my mind. But you have to appreciate that no negotiation and no court fight creates water. The weather systems create water. And as long as the earth continues to heat, this basin figures to get drier and drier. 

Twenty years from now, we’re gonna look back and say, ‘Oh, those were the days when we got healthy snowpack,’ and ‘Oh boy, we had it good back then.’ That’s the trajectory we’re on in terms of the climate part of this. 

Is there anything that gives you hope for the river’s future?

Hope comes from the fact that at some point, Mother Nature imposes cuts. At some point, the water just isn’t there and people have to be creative and do more with less or at least try to do the same with less. And there’s a good track record of doing that. 

The southwest is a great example. Las Vegas over the last 30 plus years has been the fastest growing big city in America. And during that period, they slashed their water use dramatically. Other cities have been on the same trajectory: Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson have shown that they can use a lot less water. And that’s really encouraging.

It’s tougher to save water in agriculture. But there are some things we can do to adapt. Some of it’s technology. Some of it’s using different systems for irrigating crops. It’s also changing to different crops. There are tools in the toolbox here. 

But it’s really hard to get that sort of adaptation going as long as you’re still in the mindset that the other guy is the problem, and what I do is fine. That mindset stops a lot of good innovations from happening. 

There are 30 tribal nations with a stake in this river as well. What can we learn from them?

They say, ‘Why is there a table with seven chairs. Why is it only seven states negotiating? There should be at least 37 chairs.’ They should be involved in this process at every level. And by and large they aren’t. 

The Colorado River Indian Tribes have dubbed their portion of the river as basically having personhood status. It is a living independent being. It’s important, I think, to challenge the rest of the users in the basin to think about the obligation we have to the river itself. Because that’s just not a viewpoint that comes up in these negotiations, but it really needs to.