It’s been so dry this winter that the Glen Canyon Dam at the outlet of Lake Powell could stop producing hydropower. That means utility rates in the southwest could go up at the moment when people need electricity the most, like during hot spells. While that may not seem like a Wyoming problem, Wyoming water might be a part of a solution.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska spoke with Luke Runyon. He reports for The Water Desk on all things Colorado River, including the ongoing negotiations between the seven states that rely on it. He said Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir might end up shipping water downstream, with varied effects for Wyomingites.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Luke Runyon: This kind of release out of an upstream reservoir into Lake Powell would be this year, just to keep that hydropower production going. You basically release enough water out of Flaming Gorge and a couple of other reservoirs, one in Colorado, one in New Mexico, that would prop up Lake Powell so that it wouldn't lose hydropower production.
This isn't unprecedented. This has actually happened a couple of times. First in 2021, [which was] another really dry year, Lake Powell was flirting with this loss of hydropower production. The federal government essentially pulled the emergency lever and sent water from those upstream reservoirs down to Lake Powell to keep it from dropping further.
It then happened again in 2022.
It's looking more and more likely that is going to happen this year. How it happens, how much water and from which reservoir is still under discussion amongst the federal government and the upper basin states – Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. But I would be very surprised if there were no releases from those reservoirs this year, just based on the drier circumstances at Lake Powell.
Kamila Kudelska: Other years that you mentioned, did those times also include the Flaming Gorge Reservoir?
LR: Yeah, Flaming Gorge has been kind of a bright spot in the Colorado River Basin for several years. Whether that's just [because] the rivers and streams upstream of Flaming Gorge haven't had the crazy fluctuations and snow pack that we've seen in other places, but Flaming Gorge levels have stayed pretty high, even as the rest of the Colorado River Basin has really struggled.
It's often seen as this sort of Hail Mary in these really dry years, where Flaming Gorge ends up getting its water released downstream in order to keep these other downstream reservoirs propped up.
KK: Let's say if we're releasing some water from Flaming Gorge, how would it look different this summer, visually, recreationally and [for] surrounding water users for ranchers and towns?
LR: I think there's still some uncertainty about that, just because we don't know how much water is going to get sent downstream. But any time you're reducing a reservoir's levels, you're going to see some impacts.
We saw some examples of this in Colorado the last time some of these upstream reservoir releases were happening. There's Blue Mesa Reservoir, it's the largest reservoir in Colorado. In some of these previous releases, Blue Mesa was dropping low enough that its marinas were having to close and [we were] starting to see really large sandy beaches all the way around it.
It's just hard to say right now without knowing exactly how much water is going to get sent downstream from these reservoirs. But my guess is it's going to be a lot in order to keep Lake Powell from dropping to that hydropower level.
KK: Even with not knowing how much water potentially would be released, does that impact the areas upstream from that reservoir?
LR: Not necessarily. What those water users are watching right now is what's happening as snow accumulates and melts off in those high elevations. That's really what dictates the water availability that they're going to have over the course of the irrigation season.
KK: If Flaming Gorge does get more water released from it, how would this potentially affect people who rely on irrigation from that area?
LR: These large federal reservoirs like Flaming Gorge were essentially constructed to meet this demand right now of keeping Lake Powell's level high. This is up for debate amongst policymakers in the upper Colorado River Basin right now, but lower basin users in Arizona, California and Nevada are basically saying right now, this is the purpose of those upstream reservoirs like Flaming Gorge. They were built to be part of a large system that moves water downstream to where there are high demands in California, Arizona and Nevada.
Now, what you're hearing from some of the upper basin leaders right now is that they would like input into how that water is moved and released downstream.
This idea of how much water gets released out of the these upstream reservoirs is playing into the broader conversation around the Colorado River right now and are actually a sticking point in the negotiations.
KK: What should Wyomingies expect as these negotiations continue?
LR: Generally, the way that agreements come together on the Colorado River is that the states come together, the seven states that use it, and agree on how to move forward.
We had the last deadline pass, the states were not able to come to an agreement and some of them admitted to failure in the negotiating process. What we have now is the federal government has put out a kind of a range of alternatives for how they would manage the Colorado River, and we're still at this stalemate amongst the states.
What that means specifically for Wyoming is unclear right now. They're part of the Upper Basin State Coalition. The latest charge has been from the lower basin states to the upper basin states saying, “We want you to commit to a certain amount of conservation in order for us to move this negotiating process forward.”
The upper basin states have said,”No, we don't want to do that. We're already subject to reductions because of low snowpack and climate change.” That's really one of the main sticking points right now, and there's just so much uncertainty on the policy front.
KK: You mentioned that friction between the upper basin states and the lower basin states. I wonder how you think Wyoming is viewed by the other Colorado River Basin states.
LR: Wyoming is an interesting player in those negotiations because it's not like the entire state of Wyoming relies on water from the Colorado River, unlike some other states.
In Wyoming, it's really agriculture in the Green River Valley and some municipal uses in southern Wyoming, and then recreational uses from Flaming Gorge Reservoir. So it's not like it has a massive interest in the Colorado River. It has many river basins in the state, and so I think a lot of times, maybe the other basin states don't see Wyoming really as a power player in those discussions because its use is so much less.
And it isn't rapidly growing like some of the other states in the Colorado River Basin. So it doesn't have that same demand pressure that you would see in Arizona or California.
I think sometimes it can be kind of cast aside because it's not as much of a power player in those talks.
