Under the scorching sun of a June afternoon in northern Arizona, the Colorado River can be an oasis in the desert. Christian Fauser stood waist deep in its water, casting a fishing line into its swift-moving currents.
He paused to look up at the towering red rock walls on both banks.
"It's a really, really special place," Fauser said.
The thing that makes this particular stretch of river so special, though, is the water itself.
"We're in crystal clear water with a green bottom," Fauser said. "It's like sitting on top of some turquoise jewel."
The Colorado River doesn't usually look like this. In a lot of places, it's a murky, muddy chocolate milk brown. This section is different for one giant, concrete reason. Glen Canyon Dam, which sits just upstream, is a hulking gray monolith that holds back the Colorado River to create Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir.
It is part of a system that creates reliable water storage for tens of millions of people across the desert Southwest, keeping taps flowing in major cities and keeping farm fields lush and green. The dam also holds back the naturally-flowing sediment that turns the Colorado River brown.
"All of this privilege that we have to have this beautiful fishery is a product of human intervention," said Fauser, public lands coordinator for the Arizona Wildlife Federation.
In many ways, the Colorado River works more like a plumbing system than a river. For more than a century, its flows have been dammed, diverted and divided for human use.
Now, that human use has forced a reckoning. Climate change and drought have sapped water supplies, and demand for cities and farms has not been reined in accordingly. Policymakers are likely just days away from a new set of rules about how the river's water is shared. They are expected to make massive cuts, reducing the amount of water that flows to some of those cities and farms and forcing them to adapt to a future with less.
As the new rules are drawn up, environmental advocates say it's worth leaving some water for the river itself. Even if some humans face uncomfortable, expensive cuts to the water supplies they have depended upon for decades, those advocates say it is necessary — and logistically possible — to save some water for the river and the things that live in and around it.
The plumbing system, they argue, can and should be a river too.
'This is not a zero sum game'
Sara Porterfield, Colorado River program director with the conservation nonprofit Trout Unlimited, stood on a narrow, rocky river beach, about as close to Glen Canyon Dam as a boat can go.
"This is not a zero sum game," she said. "Investing in watershed health is not an either-or. We need the system to be healthy from an ecological perspective in order for the rest of it to function."
The river, Porterfield said, cannot deliver big volumes of clean water if it does not, at least partially, function like a normal, healthy river. For example, if the river's upper reaches are dried out, they'll be susceptible to wildfires and wetland degradation, which make it harder for them to hold on to water and release it slowly into the streams where humans have been able to reliably divert and collect it for generations.
"It's not just plumbing, but it's also not just water in a river," Porterfield said as the dam's hydroelectric generators emitted a whining hum in the background. "We're not separate from the natural world, we're part of it. When we recognize that, and we take help to take care of it, we get a lot further than when we're just thinking about a plumbing system."
Porterfield, who has a Ph.D. in Colorado River history, said calling the river a "plumbing system" is a useful way to think about one of its jobs, but not the whole picture. Environmental advocates say the river can be protected while still flowing through the dams and canals that keep the West wet for humans.
Those protections can even be part of the wonky and rigid legal policies that dictate where water goes. John Berggren, a water policy manager at the conservation nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, had some recommendations for the next set of river-sharing rules. An important one, he said, is to get the river out of "crisis mode."
For the past few years, declining reservoir levels have threatened to force the shutoff of hydropower generators inside Glen Canyon Dam. With meager inflows from snowmelt and no long-term plan to cut back on water use, the people tasked with managing the river have spent their time and energy on a series of band-aid fixes to prop up major reservoirs.
That, Berggren said, doesn't allow much room for creative decision making that takes nature into account. A long-term plan lets policymakers think beyond the immediate crisis.
"You can be much more proactive and thoughtful and careful and intentional about how you manage the river and include river health," he said.
Another way to help protect the river's ecosystems, creatures and flows, Berggren said, is by carefully timing the release of water from reservoirs. For example, policymakers can write flexible rules about where and when water is stored, so water that is flowing downstream to cities and farms can also help make life better for native fish. The water can be used to help the environment without being taken away from humans downstream.
"They're going to move the water anyway," he said. "Let's do it in a way that actually benefits ecological conditions."
Berggren cited past releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah and Wyoming. Water was released from its dam as part of a plan to prop up water levels in Lake Powell. But as that water was flowing through the Green River — a major tributary of the Colorado — on its way downstream, it nurtured wetlands that are used as breeding grounds by native fish. In 2022, those releases led to record-breaking populations of razorback sucker, which are critically endangered.
Similarly, strategic water releases from Glen Canyon Dam can help keep native fish in the Grand Canyon safe from predators. In 2024 and 2025, federal water managers ran a program to send water out of Lake Powell to protect the threatened humpback chub downstream. That program is in limbo this year.
Berggren also advocated for an "operationally neutral conservation pool." It's a water management concept that sees water stored in major reservoirs specifically to help with environmental protection efforts.
Basically, water would be stored in Lake Powell or Lake Mead, but would be counted separately from the water in those reservoirs that is designated for people and industry. That allows water managers to keep hydropower turbines spinning and water deliveries coming to downstream users without cutting into the amount of water that could be used to help protect river ecosystems.
Hope for the environment beyond federal rules
It appears unlikely that ideas proposed by Berggren and his allies will end up in the next round of rules for the Colorado River. He said the next set of rules, which may call for new check ins on river management every two years, can still leave the door open for those ideas to be implemented in the near future.
"I'm not happy about what's in there, but I'm not mad," he said. "It does, I think, hopefully set the stage for a lot of good things that happen over the next year or so."
Even without major environmental protections written into the new federal plan, experts say there's hope.
Mike Connor, who served as Bureau of Reclamation commissioner under the Obama administration, said environmental protection is "not a federal priority" right now. While the federal rules provide an "incredibly important foundation" for the river, he said the best environmental work is happening outside of them.
"Those environmental values are being taken up by tribal interests, by state and local interests," Connor said. "You can see that all up and down the basin."
Essentially, the federal government can be expected to do the minimum amount of environmental protection that is required by law — such as protecting endangered species — and not much more. The rest of the work, Connor said, falls to other governments and nonprofit conservation groups.
He highlighted a number of projects in Arizona that exemplify that work.
The Gila River Indian Community, for example, is recharging an underground aquifer by putting water in a culturally significant part of the Gila River, helping to recreate flows in the river and nurturing a lush ecosystem above ground.
Not far away, the city of Phoenix is using highly-treated outflows from a wastewater treatment plant to nurture a giant manmade wetland area on the banks of the Salt River. The Tres Rios Wetlands creates a nearly 700-acre oasis for plants and animals. The city says the wetland hosts more than 150 bird species and helps bring the area back to the condition it was in during the 1800s, before major dams rerouted the Salt River's water.
A lot of conservation work done by local and tribal governments is aided by federal funding. The Biden administration provided a generational boost to many conservation projects around the reason with billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Similar federal spending has been in limbo under the Trump Administration, making it harder for cities, tribes and nonprofits to carry out expensive environmental projects.
"Looking out, we don't see those plans for that leadership investment continuing," Connor said. "That should be a concern to people."
The lack of federal funding for water projects going forward, he said, will mean a pause on environmental work around the region.
"Will people adjust, and will there be more investments that will be made from the philanthropic community combined with local and state resources?" Connor said. "Yeah, I think there will be some level of adjustment, but it cannot make up for that lack of federal investment."
Connor said strategies to keep water in the Colorado River and its tributaries is about more than just protecting fish and plants. Water in the river also protects culture and heritage for tribes, supports a massive recreation economy, and keeps the river flowing as a place for people to escape.
"Whether you're a farmer, whether you're a tribal member, whether you're a recreational worker, or whether you're a city slicker needing respite from screens and all the other technologies that dominate our day," Connor said. "I think keeping the river alive and healthy is a fundamental human need."
Christian Fauser, the angler casting into the cool, turquoise waters downstream of Glen Canyon dam, said the Colorado River provides respite for him. Fly fishing, he said, has taught him patience and the ability to stand still.
"The more you leave water in the river so that it can function and flow and operate properly," Fauser said, "The more that's going to turn around and feed back and take care of us."
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