Colorado River Deal Faces Critical Deadline as Reservoir Levels Plummet
LAS VEGAS,NV – Western states are racing against the clock too finalize a plan for managing the dwindling Colorado River,with a crucial deadline of late 2026 looming. Failure to reach an agreement could trigger a return to outdated water allocation rules from the 1970s, threatening water security for millions across the basin.
The Colorado River, currently gripped by a historic megadrought, supplies water to approximately 40 million people across seven states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, new Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – and Mexico. Recent projections for key reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, have been described as “beyond awful” by Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Institute. Udall notes the latest forecasts show both reservoirs perhaps entering “uncharted territory” by the end of Water Year 2026.
The current framework for managing the river is under pressure to adapt to increasingly arid conditions. The Trump management previously considered declaring a water shortage and mandating cutbacks for lower basin states,but ultimately deferred to a seven-state agreement. As of now, no such extensive agreement is in place.
A key concern centers on “banking” water in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. The Metropolitan Water District (MWD), which supplies 19 million people in six Southern California counties, has stored roughly 1.5 million acre-feet of water in Lake Mead over the past 20 years - enough to supply 4.5 million households for a year.Under the 1970s rules, MWD would be unable to continue adding to this reserve, potentially forcing them to deplete their stored water over the next decade.
“Under a new regime, the feds – if things get dry enough – could cut us back,” explained Bill Hasencamp, manager of colorado River resources at Metropolitan. “We could access that storage, but we might need it to offset cuts on the river that could come to us. So its a very undesirable situation.”
Tanya Trujillo, the acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, emphasized the urgency of the situation during a summer meeting in Arizona, stating, “There are real risks to both the lower basin states and the upper basin states if we don’t collectively do something differently than we’ve done in the past.”
Experts widely agree that the most meaningful challenges to the Colorado River basin stem from the impacts of climate change and the ongoing megadrought, rather than solely from disagreements among the states. the future of water resources in the West hinges on the ability of these states to forge a collaborative path forward before the 2026 deadline.
