By Kennedy Maize
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called the governors of the seven states that comprise the troubled Colorado River Compact to Washington for a January 30 meeting to hash out a compromise. All but one will appear.
Only California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom won’t appear, citing a long-standing family commitment. He’s sending Wade Crowfoot, his natural resources secretary, in his place. California is the largest consumer of Colorado River water.
Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox, Arizona Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, Nevada Republican Governor Joe Lambardo, Wyoming Republican Governor Mark Gordon, and Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis have said they will appear. New Mexico Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham will attend.
The issues that have deadlocked the seven governors in the 1922 compact are not partisan. They are regional.
The four “upper basin” states — Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah — generally contribute the water in the 1,450-mile river serving some 40 million Americans — are at loggerheads with the “lower basin” states — Nevada, Arizona, and California — the consumers. A 2007 agreement divvying up the responsibilities among the parties runs out this fall and the basins have been unable to reach a compromise in negotiations going back over a year.
Negotiators over a new water-sharing deal face a Feb. 14 deadline imposed by Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, the river’s manager. Reach a deal or face an imposed solution, Interior has told the states.
In a comment to The Quad Report, Lujan Grisham said she ”hopes that having all the governors in the room will help lead to a consensus because there is no time to waste. It’s especially important that the governors assert their leadership on this issue instead of leaving it to the federal government to dictate what upper and lower basin states must do.”
A 20-year deal on the 1922, adopted in 2007, runs out this year and BuRec will need to time implement a new consensus deal or impose its own. The context is the 25+ year drought that has severely damaged the river and set the competing parties at each other.
The Interior agency earlier this month rolled out a 1,600-page tome on the river, its problems, the issues, and five possible resolutions, ranging from the de rigueur “do nothing” option to a dynamic, flow-based allocation process. The BuRec filing included a draft environmental impact statement required under the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act. The BuRec menu attracted no diners.
Until this month, the raging western dispute drew no clear attention from Burgum. Unlike many of his predecessors, Burgum has had no hands-in-the-water experience with the river system. He’s from North Dakota.
The White House has been positively obstructive, failing to put a permanent head of BuRec, a presidential appointee, in place. In June, Trump nominated Ted Cooke, former general manager of the Central Arizona Project water distribution agency, to head BuRec. When he left the CAP in 2022, he was succeeded by Brenda Burman, who was BuRec commissioner in the first Trump administration. 
On September 16, the White House withdrew the Cooke nomination without explanation. Cooke told The Arizona Republic that the White House told him the decision was due to “paperwork problems” with his vetting documents. Cooke called that bogus, “a cockamamie excuse,” adding, “This decision was made in August that I had to go because of objections by the Upper Basin, and they tried to sweep the politics under the rug.”
Whether Burgum’s late intervention will have an impact is unclear. E&E News reported on Friday (Jan. 23), “A meeting of negotiators and Interior officials last week in Salt Lake City failed to yield progress. The best-case scenario seems to be a short-term deal that could buy a bit of time for more talks — and for state-level political appointees to potentially change over.”
The most likely positive outcome from the Burgum meeting is a “kick the can down the road” agreement. According to the statewide online news service Nevada Current, the “negotiations are largely focused on operational terms for an initial five-year period after 2026, with longer-term provisions to be addressed if a seven-state agreement can be reached on the near-term framework.
One of the biggest disagreements between the Lower Basin states — Nevada, Arizona, and California — and Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — is over which faction should have to cut back on their water use, and by how much.”
Water law professor Rhett Larson at Arizona State University told the Los Angeles Times, “These are pretty technical conversations, and the distance that would have to be bridged is pretty far right now. So I’m not sure how much progress is going to be made by having governors in the room, but I think it’s still a good sign.”