Federal water officials made public on Wednesday what they called "necessary steps" for seven states and multiple tribes that use Colorado River water and hydropower to meet an August 2026 deadline for deciding how to manage the waterway in the future.
"Today we show our collective work," Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said as she outlined four proposals for action and one "no action" alternative that she and Biden's government will leave for the incoming Trump Administration - with formal environmental assessments still to come and just 20 months to act.
The announcement offered no recommendation or decision about how to divvy up water from the river, which provides electricity to millions of homes and businesses, irrigates vast stretches of desert farmland and reaches kitchen faucets in cities including Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Instead it provided a bullet-point sample of elements from competing proposals submitted last March by three key river stakeholders Upper Basin states Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, where most of the water originates Lower Basin states California, Arizona and Nevada, which rely most on water captured by dams at lakes Powell and Mead and more than two dozen Native American tribes with rights to river water.
"They're not going to take the any of the proposals," said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. "The federal government put the components together in a different way ... and modeled them to provide near-maximum flexibility for negotiations to continue."
