LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — It's no secret Lake Mead has seen a decline in recent years — it currently sits at about 32% full capacity — but the larger water system that feeds the reservoir is also strained.
How the critical resource will be managed in the years to come is up for debate and will be a topic at the Colorado River Water Users Association Conference this week in Las Vegas.
Kyle Roerink is the executive director for the watchdog organization Great Basin Water Network. He told Channel 13:
"We're dealing with an availability crisis. We're dealing with a crisis where we know that 20% of the Colorado River has been lost in the past 24, 25 years. We know that the best scientists in the world are telling us that we could lose another 20% in the coming decades. So what we're seeing right now is a conflict between coming to terms, coming to grips with this new availability challenge."
Current rules that have been in place for Colorado River management since 2007 expire in 2026, but the seven states in talks for the next phase have not yet come to an agreement.
Over a century ago now, the Colorado River Compact of 1922 divided the water basin in two and guarantees each basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water a year from the system. The Upper Basin includes Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. The Lower Basin includes Nevada, Arizona and California.
But there's a new reality 100 years later for the system, as years of overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have meant lower water flows. Updated guidelines post-2026 become increasingly important if the state of the Colorado River continues to decline.
Check out coverage from our sister station Denver 7
5 federal options suggested to manage Colorado River; some could mean water cuts for state of Colorado
"The water that might be available on paper doesn't actually exist in reality, so we need to respect the laws of nature as well as our laws of our nation," Roerink said.
If there's not enough water to go around — to growing cities, farms, and industrial projects throughout the region — states will have to take on cuts. Tightening belts on water budgets that are already tight may be difficult for states like Nevada, but could be even more difficult for Upper Basin states like Colorado that have never had to take on any cuts.
"We need to be coming up with curtailment plans for other states. Nevada, Arizona, California have done a really good job of implementing cuts. Those states know how they'll be cut, they'll know what it looks like, there's a lot of certainty there," Roerink said.
"But because of how the law of the river has been developed over the past century, there's a lot of uncertainty about how those cuts would be enacted in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, of Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, depending on the actions that we take now, we're really deciding how much pain we want to inflict on given communities."
While negotiations for how to best manage the Colorado River have stalled, the federal government proposed five ways forward in November.
Here's a breakdown:
- No Action – Reversion to pre-2007 guidance, which lacks sustainability measures.
- Federal Authorities – Leverages existing federal powers to prioritize infrastructure protection.
- Federal Authorities Hybrid – Combines stakeholder proposals with federal strategies.
- Cooperative Conservation – Focuses on conservation, stewardship and flexibility.
- Basin Hybrid – A comprehensive approach combining elements from all stakeholders to maximize consensus.
To view a full breakdown of the agenda for the conference at Paris Las Vegas click here.
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