BOULDER, CO — Metaphors about divorce and grief defined an emotional presentation about the Colorado River in Boulder, Colorado, on June 6. Those metaphors, however, did not represent strife or disaster in stalled water negotiations, but apparent progress and the willingness to let go of past ideas and move toward compromise.
“We’ve heard about the stages of grief … about denial and anger and the need to be at bargaining,” said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission. “Well, I believe the basin states are there.”
Officials involved in tense negotiations over how to manage shortages on the Colorado River suggested that months of harsh talk and stalemates have ended and negotiators are exploring new options.
Federal officials indicated that even parts of the “Law of the River,” a 100-year-old legal framework that governs Colorado River allocations, could change as a result of the negotiations.
“We’re trying to pivot to something else and be creative, and we have good engagement on that right now,” said Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
While most of the negotiators from the seven Colorado River basin states did not attend the conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder, the speakers who did attend were cautiously optimistic about their chances at making a deal.
The states have been wrangling for two years over how to distribute water cuts as reservoir levels and stream flows have plummeted in the river. Existing operation guidelines for the river expire in 2026, and the federal government will impose its own regime of water cuts unless states can reach a deal. Now, officials are signaling that progress has resumed toward a deal.
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State negotiators are meeting more often
The Colorado River is a critical source of water for Arizona, providing 36% of the state’s water, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Populous counties in central and southern Arizona — Maricopa, Pinal and Pima — are the most vulnerable when it comes to water cuts as their water rights have lower priority.
Negotiators from the upper and lower basins of the Colorado River have blown through several informal deadlines to reach a deal, sniping at one another in public remarks and propping up their own proposals for shortage management. The debate often centered on whether upper basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) should take any administered water cuts, as lower basin states like Arizona have already taken cuts.
Now, the basin states have begun the process of “letting go,” Pellegrino said, backing away from some of the ideas they clung to at the beginning of the process and imagining new compromises. The states, along with federal officials, have met every other week since the end of March, according to Scott Cameron, acting assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior.
Cameron said the Trump administration is looking to rework and expand the alternatives for river management that the Biden administration put forward in January. Cameron said Trump officials like Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are seeking to engage intensely and support Colorado River basin states in reaching a deal.
Although the administration has fired large numbers of federal employees working in water modeling, Cameron said he was working to shield this process from those cuts, and state representatives have said they are receiving strong services from federal agencies.
California’s representative on the river, J.B. Hamby, said in an interview on June 5 that renewed support from federal officials has helped jump-start negotiations.
“For the longest time, states weren’t meeting all that often, or were certainly not inviting the feds into the room,” Hamby said. “Now that the Trump administration officials are actively engaged in our discussions, I think everyone who supports the basin-state process has seen that as a material benefit.”
Cameron said he has also met with several of the 30 tribes in the Colorado River basin to learn about their unique and differing positions and incorporate their views into official negotiations.
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Water use on the river has become more unsustainable
The Colorado River is expected to carry about half of the water it should, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, pushing states dangerously close to trip wires for legal action under contracts that govern the river. Scientists expect climate change to bring more erratic flows to the river in the long term, with an overall decline in water levels.
Brian Richter, scientist and president of the nonprofit Sustainable Waters, presented preliminary estimates on June 5 that potentially a quarter of human water use in the Colorado River basin over the last decade has been unsustainable, meaning it is drawing on limited water reserves that natural water cycles have not replenished.
“There is a massive cultural change that has to happen in this space, and about how we use water, and that is going to affect the culture of every single water user,” Pellegrino said. “And we need to be doing that cultural change very rapidly.”
Cameron indicated that the negotiations could mean big changes in the bedrock laws that govern the river, saying some of the legal framework defining river management can be changed by Congress or state legislatures. The Colorado River is governed by a long list of compacts, court decrees, and international agreements with Mexico.
“We don’t take all aspects of what people lump together as the ‘Law of the River’ right now to be fixed,” Cameron said. “If the needs of society change, we ought to be open to having a conversation about changing existing law.”
Cameron said his team has notified federal lawmakers that they might seek congressional action in the spring of 2026. The federal team aims to have a final decision in place by the summer of that year.
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But to even reach a state-approved deal, Pellegrino said, state negotiators need to be better shielded from stakeholders and interest groups in their states that keep squashing ideas for deals before they can be fleshed out.
“If every whisper of what we are working on results in every person who’s worried about how it might affect them running and saying, ‘This isn’t the deal for us,’ we’re never going to get there,” Pellegrino said.
Cullom and Pellegrino said the basin is dealing with a hydrological reality in the river that no one can change.
“People are trying to turn this thing upside down and sideways, trying to find a unicorn,” Cullom said. “But there is probably not an operational scheme that prevents us from the challenges that this drier future brings.”
Austin Corona covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to austin.corona@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Colorado River negotiations are getting unstuck, officials say