Fears are growing in the Colorado River basin about the prospect of painful water cuts, prolonged court battles and other dire impacts after negotiators from seven states missed a second key deadline Saturday to reach a conservation deal.
"This winter has been a really stark illustration of some of the challenges that we may face in keeping our watersheds and rivers and lands healthy," Celene Hawkins, the Colorado River Program Director at The Nature Conservancy, said Wednesday. "And so I think it is really profoundly terrifying to think about moving into a future where we aren't starting to really focus on implementing solutions that the basin needs."
Conservation groups want the states in the basin to start using tools like conservation pools, which would offer new incentives to voluntarily cut back and save water, and a climate response indicator to help determine how much water should be released from Lake Powell.
Releases would be curtailed in response to drought conditions.
But those ideas aimed at protecting the river's health could be stalled if states don't come up with an agreement to implement before the current operating guidelines at Lake Powell and Lake Mead expire this fall.
Hawkins and other leaders of environmental groups are issuing fresh warnings this week about the impacts the ongoing gridlock could have in the basin.
Hawkins said, "The courtroom is not the place" for states to go to find creative and innovative solutions that will improve the health of the river.
"The path of litigation in the basin is going to divert a lot of time, attention and money that we may not have to make some decisions in the basin, and put that all towards litigation instead of the solutions that are needed," she said. "So I think that if we care about river health, at a time of one of the worst (hydrologic conditions) we've seen on record in the basin, we need to take action now, and litigation is not going to help us down that path."
The impasse in negotiations and another missed deadline have plunged the fate of the river into a new state of uncertainty.
Low snowpack across the west and grim forecasts for the water supply in the river's largest reservoirs are adding a new sense of urgency to the talks.
A recent summit in Washington, D.C., with most of the governors in the river basin failed to result in a breakthrough in the negotiations.
States in the upper basin remain at an impasse with states in the lower basin over how to conserve water despite years of talks.
"Our downstream neighbors are seeking to secure water from the (upper division states) that simply does not exist," negotiators from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico said in a statement last week after the Feb. 14 deadline was missed.
Arizona, California and Nevada are faulting the upper basin states for not agreeing to enact mandatory water restrictions during times of drought.
Despite the ongoing gridlock, Sinjin Eberle, of the conservation group American Rivers, is calling on negotiators to stay at the table.
"Hang in there," he said Wednesday. "Do your best to set aside your differences, because the hydrology is going to force the hand of a really dire situation if action isn't taken now."
He said continued impasse in the negotiations could have a long list of negative implications, including putting municipal water supplies at risk.
"Clean, safe, reliable drinking water could either be voluntarily or mandatorily curtailed," he said. "And then, if the basin overall is so hydrologically challenged, there could be ecological damage to places like the Grand Canyon. There could be a real struggle with the recreation industry… You can imagine a much smaller Colorado River for boaters and fly fishermen from Hot Sulfur Springs all the way to Glenwood Springs."
American Rivers and The Nature Conservancy receive funding from the Walton Foundation, which also supports KUNC's Colorado River Coverage.
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
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