Colorado River Basin states on deadline to develop plan to conserve millions of acre-feet of water

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has tasked the seven states that make up the Colorado River Basin to develop a plan that would conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water from the river in 2023.

The Bureau's commissioner gave the basin states a deadline of mid-August before the Bureau could step in and impose their own cuts.

John Berggren says the move highlights how critical the situation has become.

"The Colorado River is in crisis, There's been a fundamental imbalance on the system we've know about for decades, but it's really coming to a head," he said.

Berggren is a water policy analyst for the conservation nonprofit Western Resource Advocates. He says the pressure from the federal government couldn't come soon enough.

"We are seeing the two largest reservoirs -- Lake Powell and Lake Mead -- rapidly decline and potentially reach record low levels where they can no longer function as dams on the system," he said.

Almost immediately those in the upper basin, including Colorado, went to work.

Chuck Cullom, the executive director of the Upper Colorado Basin Commission, says the result is their five- point plan.

"What folks are focused on is using the water as efficiently as possible," Cullom said.

The plan includes more aggressive water management, greater incentives to conserve moving more water from the upper reservoirs into lower reservoirs and reimplementing a compensation program for those who voluntarily agree to using less, particularly farmers.

"Agriculture is the backbone of large parts of the upper basin states and to the extent that we can incentivize more efficient investment in irrigation technology then we can have a successful outcome," Cullom said.

He says they are now looking to their counterparts in the lower basin to develop their own plan to conserve and help slow the impacts.

"Because of the scale that is really needed to fix the problem, we need everyone to get on board including local irrigation districts, cities and towns and the state," Berggren said.

To learn more about the issues surrounding the river, Western Resource Advocates is hosting a panel discussion Thursday at noon, you can find more information by visiting the link below and can read the letter sent by the UCR to the Bureau of Reclamation detailing the five-point plan here.