A century ago in Colorado River Compact negotiations: seeds of a deal planted, but which will grow?

By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck With the arrival of all of the commissioners and their key advisors, the Commission got back together on Saturday morning. The purpose of this meeting had been agreed to back in early April. Each commissioner would be given the opportunity to suggest the form of a compact. Nevada’s James …

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A century ago in the Colorado River Compact: Converging on Santa Fe

By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck   Santa Fe, New Mexico, was off the beaten path in November 1922. That was the point. After a logjam and a seven-month break, the Colorado River Commission finally reconvened in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the Bishops Lodge on Nov. 9, 1922, to try to find common ground …

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a Colorado River hypothetical and an attention-getting cuss word

Colorado River political and policy discourse is tangled right now around an increasingly unhelpful set of questions. They involve process: Should the federal government step in and impose cuts? Should the Lower Basin states, especially Arizona and California, do more to save themselves? Should we pay farmers to fallow? How much? Should the Upper Basin …

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Accounting for Colorado River evaporation

Helpful piece by Luke Runyon on steps toward accounting for Lower Colorado River evaporation and riparian system losses. During a September Colorado River symposium held in Santa Fe, both Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told attendees that the issue of evaporation and transit loss in the Lower …

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The Colorado River at the end of water year 2022: a status report

I don’t see how this ends well. Most of the major players – the ones that matter, anyway, by which I mean Arizona, California, and the federal government – appear boxed in by constraints they can’t seem to overcome, while the water in the Colorado River’s big reservoirs is circling the drains. Arizona’s giving up …

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It is time for the federal government to further reduce Glen Canyon Dam releases

By Eric Kuhn, John Fleck, and Jack Schmidt With most forecasts pointing toward another below-average winter of precipitation in the Rocky Mountains in 2022/2023 and with total basin-wide reservoir storage now less than 20 maf (less than 17 months of supply at the rate water has been consumed in the basin since 2000), it is …

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Castle appointed federal rep on Upper Colorado River Commission

The White House announced today it has appointed Anne Castle as the federal representative on the Upper Colorado River Commission. Anne is former Assistant Secretary of Interior For Water and Science, where she helped steer the federal boat through chaotic Colorado River rapids. She’ll be an important asset now that the rapids seem that much …

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A reminder that the federal government does not use Colorado River water

Count me among those in the Colorado River community who was disappointed last month with the lack of Department of Interior action on its threats should the states not come up with a plan to sufficiently reduce their water use. But let’s remember the core issue here: the states of the basin, especially the Lower …

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Keys to Past Colorado River progress

As we watch the quivering uncertainty about the nature of the federal threat on the Colorado river, it is perhaps worth a look at past moments of progress in Colorado River governance, and also past roadblocks. Anne Castle and I ran this stuff down for a paper we published last fall. Some history shows a …

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