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- [Liz] On this edition of "Utah Insight", we'll explore the issue of drought and the Colorado River.

- I think that water's so precious that you can't help but fight for it.

- We explain this complex issue and how it can impact your family, plus, find out what leaders are doing to manage the river flow as the drought rages on.

(bright music) Welcome to "Utah Insight".

I'm Liz Adeola.

I want you to think about this the next time you take a sip of water.

Officials are inching closer to the deadline of when they have to decide how they'll continue getting water from the Colorado River to nearly 40 million people.

I'm talking about the deadline to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact, a water agreement for California, Arizona, and Nevada, also known as the Lower Basin.

And New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, which is known as the Upper Basin.

Now since 1922, the Compact has served as a water management guide while also stipulating the allotment of water for those seven states, 30 Indigenous tribes, and Mexico.

But things have changed drastically since it was first created, and those guidelines are set to expire in 2026.

Joining on the show to share more about this major decision and how it's impacted by drought, we have the Executive Director of the Colorado River Authority, Amy Haas, the Director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, Dr. Jack Schmidt, and joining us virtually, the Colorado River Program Director with the Nature Conservancy, Taylor Hawes.

And I wanna welcome you all to the show.

Thank you for being here.

Jack, can you set this all up by sharing what's the state of the river today, and how does it impact our water supply here in Utah?

- Sure.

Let's just stand back for a minute.

The Colorado River's really just a modest sized river, in the grand scheme of things in the United States, but it's extremely important in Western society.

The Colorado River's water comes from the Rocky Mountains of the Upper Basin, and then it flows downstream and across arid lands where it's extensively used.

And the important point is that the river is fully utilized.

Essentially, not one drop of water of the Colorado River naturally makes it to the ocean.

in the 21st century, since the year 2000, the natural runoff from the Rocky Mountains has been about 13% less than the average for the 70 years between 1930 and the turn of the century.

13% may not seem like a big number, except that the river is fully utilized.

So suddenly, you have to decrease use because the supply.

So for about 20 years in this century, we were able to use more than the natural supply, and the way we could do that was by essentially draining the large reservoirs of the watershed.

But now we've drained the bank account, and we can't keep overspending.

And so the dilemma before us, and the reason for the negotiations, is how to bring consumption in line with the natural supply, recognizing that the reservoirs are reasonably depleted.

We've had some recovery.

They're about 45% full now, but we're not out of the woods at all, and the question is how to share that pain, and that is an inherently political process.

Here in Utah, we move supplemental water from the Colorado River Basin to the Wasatch Front.

It serves as a supplemental water supply, but it's important to Wasatch Front needs and supplements what we have on this side, and St. George and the communities of southwestern Utah use the Virgin River and have talked about using water from Lake Powell.

It's important for agriculture in the Uinta Basin.

And obviously recreation on Lake Powell is an essential activity affected by depleting supply, as well as the great rivers of Utah that we use for recreation.

So here in Utah, we're deeply part of what is a very important negotiation of who's gonna cut use, where will it be reduced, by how much, and do all that in the face of an unknown future of a warming climate.

That's sort of where we're at.

- Yeah, I think one of the questions that people probably can gather from that is what are people using the water from the Colorado River for, or where is it going?

You shared a little bit of where it's going in Utah, but the New York Times created this infographic that you can check out on your screen right now.

It gives us a clearer picture of how 1.9 trillion gallons of water is being used.

That number, the amount of water from the Colorado River that is typically consumed within a year, and you can see that the bulk of it goes to livestock feed, while about 12% is used for residential use, and I guess the question coming out of that is if farmers were to switch to a different crop, such as barley or other grains, would that change the amount of water used, or make a significant difference?

- I can probably take that question.

We have worked throughout the Basin to try crop switching.

We've been exploring different ways that we might be able to help farmers transition from really intensive water crops, like alfalfa, to things like Kernza in the Upper Basin, or barley in the Lower Basin.

So there definitely is some potential there for us to reduce our water use with farmers, but also the timing of when that water comes out of the river.

So there's lots of solutions we can explore with farmers.

- Amy, as negotiations are going on right now, looking back over the years, what worked and what didn't work?

- It's a great question, Liz.

A lot didn't work, we've discovered.

But there are some things that I think, you know, we're still certainly learning.

Jack kind of set the stage in terms of hydrology and what we're looking at in respect to the combined storage elevations of the two major reservoirs, but to take it just a step back, what we're currently negotiating is the criteria to operate the river beginning in 2027, when the current criteria expire, they expire in 2026.

And fundamentally, that's really operating the two major reservoirs that Jack described on the river, Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

We are now, depending on how you count, 24 to 25 years into the drought of record on this river.

So when the current criteria guidelines were negotiated, we were about seven years in.

Now bear in mind that in 2000, right at the inception of this millennium drought, the reservoirs had a combined storage of over 90%.

Lake Powell and Lake Mead sat at their highest levels, 90%.

Just 22 years later, the combined storage was just roughly around 26%.

So you have seen this precipitous decline.

To your question about what didn't work, we have now been operating pursuant to these guidelines since 2007, and they haven't been successful in really sustaining and shoring up reservoir elevations.

Now why is that?

There are myriad reasons, but a few kind of specific or top shelf items include that releases from Lake Powell, our reservoir in the Upper Basin, have been dictated largely by Lower Basin use, right?

This is the uses that are made by California, Arizona, and Nevada.

And then the system operations have been primarily based on forecasts, and forecasts are inherently reliable.

So when you make a determination about how to operate the system that's six months out, that's an inherently unreliable.

Anything can change, and we see that.

We've seen that unfold in terms of the hydrology, especially under this millennium drought period.

And then the fact that you could have, there was a lot of uncertainty around the current criteria in terms of releases that would be made from Lake Powell to the Lower Basin.

They could change on the order of hundreds of thousands of acre feet based on one foot in elevation in terms of forecasts or predictions.

So a lot of uncertainty around reservoir operations.

The current negotiation takes place in a NEPA context.

A lot of these interstate negotiations do.

They take place in the context of these big environmental processes.

This one is no different, so this is all in the context of a NEPA process.

I think from a fundamental standpoint, and Jack really set the stage very nicely in this respect, what are we confronted with as we negotiate the post 2026 criteria for the river?

We are saddled with 19th century laws.

You mentioned the Compact, right?

That's a 102 year old document.

And there's a lot of criticism around that document and the fact that that document basically over-appropriated water that even the folks 102 years ago understood wouldn't necessarily be in the system.

So we've got 19th century laws, we've got 20th century infrastructure, and we've got 21st century climate change.

And those, I think, are the issues that we're grappling with as we renegotiate this criteria for the river.

- Yeah, I think especially here in Northern Utah, we had a good year of water, and rain, and snow as well, so the drought may have, some people may have forgotten that we were still in a drought.

Taylor, what are you hoping that people will be doing this time, during the negotiations?

- Thank you, Liz.

As you probably can pick up from Jack and Amy's responses, this is a really complex issue, and I tend to think of it as a multi-pronged problem.

We're overusing the river, we've got hotter and drier temperatures, which is causing less of the water that funnels as rain and snow to actually make it to our rivers.

We have these outdated laws and policies that maybe haven't adapted to climate change and what we're experiencing now in this century.

And then we also have tribal issues that are not resolved.

So there's multiple facets that we need to address, multiple aspects of the problem that we need to address.

So I would say while the negotiators are continuing to work on these later Basin-wide rules for the river, there's a lot we can do on the ground.

We can help farmers figure out crops that might use less water.

We need to find ways to reduce our water use.

We need to increase our resilience in the system, so that's improving our forest health, and our river health, and our wetlands.

And we can also be helping with bringing tribes into the conversation, and working to find solutions with them.

While these negotiations for new laws for the river are occurring, and have been occurring for quite some time, some people have been fighting for water rights for decades.

I spoke with leaders from the Ute Indian Tribe on the Uinta Reservation who say people there deal with dangerous water shortages in a nation within a nation that's fed up with broken promises.

Well, I wanna thank you all for joining us here today.

Can you share with us where things stand with water rights here with the tribe?

- We have 550 acre feet of water here in the reservation.

A lot of our water flows downstream to the Green River and into the Colorado River.

Basically, we don't have the infrastructure to store our water, so we have a huge quantity of water where it goes downstream, and we have reserve water rights.

That's a little bit different than the state water rights, and was established because when the reservation was established in 1861, by decoration of Abraham Lincoln, they put water aside for reservations.

- Driving by, people can see the reservoir and say it looks like they have plenty of water, but is that case?

- No, it's not the case.

A lot of that water storage was built for irrigation purposes, which we have no control over it, pretty much.

It's state.

- About how much of it are you able to utilize?

- It's a small portion.

- Small portion?

- Yeah.

- Why is now the time to push for this change?

- We've been raised to believe that water is life, and without it, you've got no life.

You don't have nothing.

So the water is very, very important to us as Native people.

If the water's gonna go downstream, we wanna be compensated for it, and we'd like to have infrastructure, too.

- How did we get to this place today where we're still trying to get this infrastructure put in place?

- In the 60s basically the tribe was promised two reservoirs within the Basin here, and they were never fulfilled.

They were never built.

- Going through the system and believing that the system would come through, and help with the infrastructure, and they haven't, how do you believe again in the infrastructure, and in the system that they're gonna build this infrastructure?

- We have legislation that was passed in 1992, which gave us vast water rights in the Green River, 500,000 acre feet that just flows past.

It's impacted everybody.

We can technically settle a lot of the water issues in the Uinta Basin if we all just come to agreement.

- What do you think is the underlying issue that's preventing an agreement?

- Probably personalities.

(chuckles) You know, we're always gonna look after the Ute Indian Tribe, right?

So we gotta make sure that any agreement benefits not only us, but our water.

We depend on that four ceremonies, and how the Utes believe that everything has a spirit.

- How do you go into that when you're thinking from that perspective, and other people are thinking from a financial perspective?

- It's hard, right?

'Cause that's what they depend on for the tribe, right?

Is our environmental naturalistic philosophy when it comes to water.

- I think just the history of everything is really, it's just a reminder of how the United States has treated the Native Americans that were here.

And it's really disheartening to see that what was promised to us through our reserved water rights has never really been recognized by anybody.

It continues to flow downstream to where others received the benefits from it, and the tribe, it's always left just holding the bag.

I think that water is so precious that you can't help but fight for it.

- How do you keep hope alive that one day maybe this could happen when for so many years it hasn't happened?

- The longer these fights go on, the more and more people are getting educated on the histories of these things, and it's opening a lot of eyes, right?

- Us as Indian people and being here on this Uintah and Ouray reservation, we know that water goes with the land, so this land is ours, so the water should stay here.

A lot of things that we plan for or that we fight for is for our future, for our kids.

I feel like that we just gotta keep this fight going, and hopefully that we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We all wanna see this come to an end.

We all wanna make peace, and be together as one.

'Cause we all have to live here together.

- Well thank you all for being here and taking time out of your day to talk with us on "Utah Insight".

I appreciate you guys using your voice.

Now the Tribe filed a lawsuit with the grievances that were described in that interview back in March of 2018.

I reached out to a spokesperson with the US Department of Interior, and they did not want to share a comment about the accusations.

Jack, how critical is it that a solution is found for everyone?

- Well, as Taylor mentioned, that's an essential element of the negotiations today, which make it very different than in the past.

There is a concerted effort to bring more voices to the table, and the most important one is trying to find ways to meaningfully involve Native peoples, and the tribes throughout the Basin are much more active than they ever have been.

Similarly, the environmental community, the non-governmental organizations, such as Taylor's and others, are playing a much more important role in offering their own brand of strategy for solutions.

I would just point out that one of the hardest things here, and I think that Amy can speak to this, is that on the one hand, we made the clear point that you can't spend more water than is your income, so we must reduce the total amount of water we use, and yet we have legitimate voices, such as Native peoples, who are saying hold on, you left us out of the deal.

This is the time to rectify past injustices, and we have additional needs.

How do you increase additional needs when you must reduce the total use?

And that just makes the problem that much harder.

- And Liz, there have been a few, I think, very positive developments.

I'm so pleased to see the clip from the Ute Tribe.

A few really, I think, meaningful developments on the river that take into account the tribal entitlement to the flows.

The first is the tribe states MOU.

This is an agreement, a memorandum of understanding, among six tribes with lands and water rights in the Upper Basin, and the four upper division states of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and the Ute Tribe is a signatory to this agreement.

And the agreement essentially identifies an opportunity for the tribes and the states to find common ground on major issues impacting the Colorado River, and we've been meeting with the tribes over the last two years.

It's been a really remarkable forum to exchange information in part on this post 2026 criteria that we've been discussing today.

The second thing is, you know, I mentioned the negotiations over post 2026 operations, the four upper division states have put forward an alternative, and part of that alternative contemplates satisfying obligations to the tribes in the future for their recognized but as yet undeveloped rights, and that involves keeping more water in Lake Powell, and really preserving water so that we can fulfill our promises to the tribes in terms of their settled recognized but undeveloped rights.

And then the final thing I would say, and I think both Jack and Taylor can certainly weigh in on this, is that we are seeing once in a generation federal funds made available for a variety of efforts to mitigate the impacts of drought on the Colorado River, to enhance infrastructure, investment, ecosystem and environmental improvements, habitat restoration, and so forth.

And the tribes are entitled and certainly invited to participate in some of these funding opportunities, and I hope that that will be a means for the tribes to really solidify and improve some of their opportunities, especially with respect to infrastructure.

- Well Taylor, was there anything that you wanted to add to that?

What did you gather from that piece?

- Well, I agree with everything that's been said.

And we're really seeing the tribes engage in a new way, and every tribe we've worked with really wants to be part of the solution, and they're ready to step up and work with those who are willing to find solutions, that may involve their water, whether that's water, or funding.

I think working together, we can find the solutions that will work for our tribal nations.

- All right, well as we come to a close, we have just a few moments left.

I do wanna give you each the opportunity to share your thoughts on this issue, your final thoughts on this issue, starting with you, Amy.

- You know, there is a lot to be said.

I have to say that the seven states remain at the table, so to speak.

We continue to have discussions with each other, with the federal government in terms of trying to find solutions for the river.

We have mentioned the tribes and the very important role that they would play, but I would also like to mention the Republic of Mexico.

This is a binational river, as well, and Mexico has really been engaged in measures to address the drought situation that we've seen over the years.

So I'm encouraged.

These negotiations are rough.

I mean, from time to time.

But I think there's real value in charting our own course, and writing our own destiny.

I think that real failure would look like litigation, litigating these issues, or even legislating these issues, and those things, I think, would get outside of our control pretty quickly, and I think that really having the water managers, the experts, dictate the outcome is where we wanna be.

- [Liz] Jack?

- I'd just add the perspective that we don't wanna forget about the rivers.

And we wanna renegotiate the agreements on water use while also remembering some of the most distinctive parts of the watershed.

The toughest one to think about is the Delta in Mexico, once one of the most biologically productive places in North America, and now essentially bone dry.

Now to bring any life to that area, one needs to add water.

But to add water to that area is a truly enlightened decision, because that water is essentially wasted, right?

It's not gonna be used by anyone.

So do we have the courage to make that enlightened decision?

And then, of course, one of the iconic landscapes of earth is the Grand Canyon, trapped between the two largest reservoirs in the watershed.

Can we operate Lake Powell and Lake Mead together to bring the greatest benefit to one of the most iconic landscapes on earth?

That's the second question.

And then how do we manage the rivers of the Upper Basin and restore some of the badly depleted rivers of the Upper Basin that have been adversely affected by water development, and how do we do that while still recognizing the continued use of water in the Upper Basin?

We have these major pieces of environmental concern that we will need to address as we address everything else.

- And Taylor, we have a few seconds left.

- Thank you.

I would just add, I mean I agree with everything that's been said by Amy and Jack.

I would just add that we know this is possible.

We can find solutions that work for people and nature, and help these rivers, but also help our communities and our farmers.

Now, I'm optimistic as well, and I know that we can put our river on a path to sustainability and resilience.

- All right, well thank you all for joining us for this discussion.

Coming up next on "Utah Insight", you can check out PBSUtah.org to get more information, more resources, available for you to stay up to date on new developments with the Colorado River Compact negotiations, and what you can do to make a difference during drought in Utah.

And while you're online, go ahead and send us a message, share your thoughts on the show.

Coming up next week on "Utah Insight", we're gonna return with a special episode on Utah's power pivot.

You can sound off on that topic using the methods that you see on your screen, and be sure to join us back here next week for another edition of "Utah Insight".

Thank you.

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