Roughly half of Colorado’s Front Range water comes from the Colorado River Basin. The allocation of this water is governed by the Colorado River Compact, which is currently struggling under conditions the river no longer matches. Since 2000, the Colorado River’s flows have fallen 20% on average. Lake Powell currently sits at 25% capacity, near critical levels for hydroelectric generation and downstream delivery.
In response to this crisis, seven states, the federal government, approximately 30 Indigenous nations and Mexico are negotiating the future of a river on which 40 million people depend.
What the Compact is, why it matters
Signed in 1922, the Compact divided the river between Upper Basin states — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico — and Lower Basin states — California, Nevada and Arizona — allocating 7.5 million acre-feet per year to each.
John Tracy, former director of the Colorado Water Center, said the compact was born from fear that states would rather negotiate among themselves than let federal judges decide river allocation. Water lawyer Delph Carpenter led the compact, worrying California would develop quickly and claim senior water rights to the entire river under the prior appropriation doctrine.
Colorado State Engineer Jason Ullmann said the stakes were existential.
“That’s why the states … signed the compact, to share the water … equitably,” Ullmann said. “So that Colorado and New Mexico and Wyoming and Utah would have the ability to develop into their entitlement as people moved to the state and developed industries.”
Greg Walcher, a former Colorado Department of Natural Resources cabinet secretary, said the compact helps ensure every state gets their fair share.
“If water were for sale on the open market and flowed towards the money, California would have all the water,” Walcher said. “If it weren’t for the interstate compacts, it’s the only thing that keeps Colorado safe.”
However, the compact was created on assumptions that have since proven inaccurate. It assumed an average annual flow of around 16.4 million acre-feet, a number the river has never consistently produced. Actual flows from 1906 to 2021 average approximately 14.6 million acre-feet and have averaged 12.3 million acre-feet since 2000.
“The law of the river was written for a river that no longer exists from a hydrologic standpoint,” said Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at CSU’s Colorado Water Center.
Indigenous rights to water
An important element of the compact to note are groups that were excluded from the agreement.
In 1908, the Supreme Court established the Winters Doctrine, which implicitly reserves sufficient water rights to maintain the land and its people. However, the roughly 30 recognized Indigenous nations in the basin were not included in the division of water created by the compact. Tracy said the omission was not accidental and created a structural problem the compact has never resolved.
“You cannot create a compact that excludes people who have a legal right,” Tracy said.
Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School, said those consequences persist, pointing to ties between the ongoing lack of clean water and sanitation on many reservations and unresolved federal water rights.
“So much work has gone into trying to elevate the interest of the tribes in this conversation,” Winter said. “They were not at the table in 1922. … That in and of itself was a form of systemic injustice that has continued to have ripple effects.”
Winter said the tribes still do not have significant input in current negotiations, a situation he described as “unacceptable.”
“The compact really only includes the Lower Basin and the Upper Basin states, and then the federal government is in the middle trying to help them reach an agreement,” Winter said. “The tribes should have a much more meaningful seat at the table.”
The Bureau of Reclamation, role of federal govt.
Colorado’s major dams and reservoirs, which help the Colorado River system function, are owned and operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, an agency of the United States Department of the Interior.
In late April, the Bureau of Reclamation released its 2026 Drought Response Operations Plan, ordering up to one million acre-feet released from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to prop up Lake Powell’s levels. Additionally, the Bureau will be reducing releases from Lake Powell to Lake Mead from 7.48 million acre-feet to 6 million acre-feet this year.
Tracy said framing federal action as intervention misunderstands its role.
“The federal government is not going to come into Colorado or Wyoming or California and tell them they can or cannot irrigate something,” Tracy said. “The federal intervention is, in essence, Reclamation deciding what the operational plan … should be.”
Ullmann agreed there should be limits on federal reach into the Upper Basin.
“They can make decisions on how they’re going to operate those reservoirs; that’s primarily what this whole post-2026 negotiation is about,” Ullmann said. “But they can’t say to Colorado or to my office that you have to go shut people off because of this deal.”
Winter described the federal government’s role as complex, including roles as an operator, mediator and trustee.
“The first thing the federal government has to do is figure out how to operate the dams and reservoirs in order to protect the infrastructure,” Winter said. “But the federal government also has a trust responsibility to the 30 tribes in the Colorado River Basin. The federal government should be operating as a trustee and helping the tribes ensure that they can realize the promise of their federal reserved water rights.”
He also said Congress still maintains its authority, even though it has barely been tapped.
“Congress still retains residual authority to pass new laws, to grant new authorities to the Secretary of the Interior, to change the rules of how all this happens and to provide funding necessary to implement conservation measures,” Winter said.
Walcher argued the Bureau lacks legal authority to force Upper Basin cuts under the compact, though he acknowledged the practical limits of enforcement.
“We can say you have no authority to do that, but the guys who control the head gates work for them,” Walcher said.
He said the consequences of that power have already hit home. When the Bureau drained Blue Mesa Reservoir to send water to Lake Powell a few years ago, Walcher said communities in Gunnison, Colorado, had no warning.
“Several businesses went out of business because of it,” Walcher said.
Where negotiations stand
On Feb. 13, the four Upper Basin states announced they had reached an internal consensus on a long-term post-2026 operations framework, but the Lower Basin states rejected the plan. Lower Basin governors responded, saying management must reflect shared responsibility, noting their states account for about 75% of the basin population, jobs and agricultural production.
Udall said the disagreement calls for more than the small compromises the basin has managed before.
“This isn’t incremental,” Udall said. “What we’re faced with is transformational. It’s a fundamental relook at 100 years of agreements.”
Tracy said the Bureau prefers a consensus among states but will act alone if necessary.
“If the states don’t do that, Reclamation gets to make the decision on their own,” Tracy said.
Udall also said the prospect of the Supreme Court intervening concerns him deeply.
“The overwhelming feeling is this is too complicated for a court to understand and to rule on,” Udall said. “The only way you can get all these different stakeholders involved in their needs and desires represented is through extended, complete negotiations by highly informed negotiators from each state.”
Winter emphasized that the lack of political leadership has left the agreement stuck.
“Right now there’s this vacuum of leadership,” Winter said. “Nobody, for any of the states or the federal government, is taking ownership over leading us in the direction of a meaningful compromise. We’re all stuck … fighting … and making sure we fight for every last drop of water. Nobody is stepping up (or) showing the political leadership that’s necessary to lead us towards the compromise solution.”
What it means for Colorado
Water reductions are already happening in Colorado. Ullmann said this year will see more curtailments than ever before, given the record-setting low snowpack.
“Using 10 (million) to 11 million acre-feet for many decades has drained reservoirs,” Ullmann said. “It’s not because we’ve overused. It’s because there’s been more water released than comes in.”
For Walcher, who grew up in the peach-farming community of Palisade, Colorado, on the Western Slope, the stakes are personal.
“My grandparents were peach growers, my parents were peach growers (and) my brothers and I are peach growers,” Walcher said. “All of the orchards in Palisade and vineyards and so on depend on irrigation from the canals in the Grand Valley, which are the oldest and most senior water rights in Colorado. If the Bureau of Reclamation decides to start cutting back the water in those canals, we’ve got a good fruit crop coming this year, but if you can’t irrigate, (the fruit is) going to die.”
Tracy said Coloradans need to understand where their water comes from and what is at stake in future negotiations.
“There will be this increasing pressure to relook at the compact and possibly negotiate another compact,” Tracy said. “And that’s where I think the average citizen should be informed on this subject. Because whatever happens in the future in terms of these negotiations, if there’s not a clear understanding by the people relying on the water in the Front Range of where a lot of our water comes from, it could very easily slip into this mode of, ‘Oh, that’s not going to affect us.’”
Udall said the stakes are on everyone, including students in Fort Collins.
“Water is key to our quality of life,” Udall said. “It’s key to our economy. It’s key to what we think about ourselves. If you don’t care about this, you don’t understand this state.”
Reach Maci Lesh at news@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
