By Kennedy Maize
As the federal government dithers over imposing conditions on the allocation of Colorado River water in seven states, Mexico, and multiple Indian tribes, the region is gripped by fear, uncertainty, doubt, and numerous homemade schemes ranging from the difficult to the preposterous. 
With a crisis that has been well understood for over a year, a result of more than two decades of regional drought, the Interior Department’s leaderless Bureau of Reclamation has been rattling paper sabers, issuing empty threats, and cajoling the seven-state members of the 1922 Colorado River Compact into reaching a settlement. All to no end.
The states — divided into the four “upper basin” states that largely supply the river water (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico), and the “lower basin” states that are the large consumers (Nevada, Arizona, and California) — have been in regional gridlock. In trying to update a 2007, 20-year agreement, they first blew past a Biden administration “deadline” for action. Then, when Interior last July told them they had to reach a deal by November, the states thumbed their noses at the feds.
So BuRec told them they had to act by Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day, but none of the parties were passing out love messages). Nevermind. It’s mid-April and Uncle Sam is absent without leave.
The current deal, which was modified twice after its 2007 implementation, expires in October.
Over a week ago, Politico’s E&E News reported, “The Trump administration is preparing to take drastic action to keep the West’s most important river flowing….” The account predicted that “Reclamation’s plans are not yet final but that the emergency actions could begin as soon as next week.” Not yet.
On the ground in the west, the drought threatens not only 40 million people who rely on the river for drinking water and irrigation, but two large hydroelectric plants: Hoover Dam (1,304-MW) and Glen Canyon Dam (1,320-MW). Low water has already claimed one small hydro project. The 4.5-MW Vinelands plant near Palisade, Colo., which went into service in 2022, was forced out of service April 13 because of lack of water.
One idea to help the river that is getting attention is to release water from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, mainly in Wyoming with a bit in Utah. Flaming Gorge stores water from the Green River, holding about 3.5 million acre-feet. Cowboy State Daily reported, “This could be the year that a brewing crisis along the Colorado River comes to a head. Roughly a third of Flaming Gorge Reservoir could be drained to make up for increasingly desperate downriver water shortages. ‘Things are bad in the Upper Green (river drainage). They’re horrible everywhere else,’ said Wyoming Senior Assistant Attorney General Chris Brown.”
Another idea being floated is to change Mexico’s Colorado River allocation. While the river begins in Wyoming and flows mostly in this country, it ends in a trickle in Mexico at the Gulf of Mexico. In 1944, the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement to share the river, with Mexico getting about 1.3 million acre feet per year, regardless of the overall supply situation.
A recent paper by hydrology experts suggests changing the fixed amount to a percentage, which would change the total amount as river conditions change. They write, “As usage patterns and hydrology change in the 21st century, fixed volumes no longer work. A shift to a percentage-based split between the United States and Mexico on the Colorado River, based on the river’s actual natural flow, would provide a solid foundation for the two countries’ joint management of the Colorado in the decades to come.”
The fixed amount concept also applies in the U.S. to the allocation of water from the Upper Basin states to the Lower Basin. The authors note, “Ironically, under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the States of the Upper Division may be in an identical position to the US on the Colorado River and to Mexico on the Rio Grande. Under the Lower Division States’ interpretation of the 1922 Compact, the Upper Division States have a fixed delivery obligation at Lee Ferry.”
The idea of a percentage allocation has surfaced in internal discussions between the two U.S. basins, but without agreement.
San Diego County, Calif., has a suggestion. It wants to sell water to the lower basin states to make up for shortfalls from above, both from gravity and meteorologically. The New York Times reported, “San Diego County is shopping a surplus of desalinated seawater to Western states that are facing increasingly urgent drought and short supplies.”
Facing serious drought in the 1990s, the county spent close to $1 billion building a desalination plant. The Times noted, “Now, with the seawater-to-tap water plant running at just one-third of capacity, its water utility is shopping around deals to sell its water across the West.”
But it wouldn’t be an easy, ordinary business transaction: “It’s not yet clear how interstate transfers of water could occur — likely by Arizona or other states paying San Diego for its Colorado River water rights. Such transfers have never occurred and could require new federal laws or regulations.”
Finally, how about cloud seeding? This somewhat controversial form of geoengineering has been getting some traction in Arizona to deal with the Colorado River problems.
Phoenix radio station KJZZ water reporter Alex Hager poured some cold water on that idea recently. He told show host Lauren Gilger, “If there is one thing to know about cloud seeding, it is that it does not make water. It basically just helps it fall from the sky….And because we are in a drought, that means across the West, a lot of times there is just less moisture in the air. So there’s less time that cloud seeding can be effective.”
Hager added, “But even though the technology has existed since the 1940s, the really good data that can guide how we’re using it in this century really didn’t start coming out until 2018.
“And the research that did start coming out then made it hard to tell how much cloud seeding was actually adding to the snow that falls naturally. It’s just really hard to measure. If you can only add snow when it is already snowing, it can be difficult to quantify exactly how much of that was a direct result of cloud seeding.”
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*The Perils of Pauline, “a very popular series of early US silent films telling a continuous story, released in 1914. At the end of each film the main character Pauline, played by Pearl White, was shown in great danger, so people went to see the next one to find out how she escaped. After its success, many other similar series were made.”
