What’s happening with the Colorado River? Here’s the breakdown.

Colorado water officials knew that they and the three other Upper Basin states would likely be asked to conserve Colorado River water under a new plan spanning the next decade. Now they know the target amount: up to 200,000 acre-feet, or 65 billion gallons of savings among the four states.

Water watchers gained new insights into the river’s future thanks to a federal report released Friday. The report, a final environmental impact statement, describes how the federal government plans to manage the river basin’s key reservoirs, including lakes Mead and Powell, for the next 10 years. 

It outlines severe water cuts for downstream states — Arizona, California and Nevada — plus a range of reservoir releases and new storage pools for conserved water. States will have to negotiate specific plans for cuts, conservation and more every two years. 

The seven states and 30 tribes in the basin already had a general idea of what to expect after seeing a preliminary version circulating this summer. Now, the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — can plan around a firm conservation target. They’re still waiting on other federal reports to define what conservation will look like in 2027 and 2028. 

Colorado officials did not respond to questions about the conservation target Friday, saying they were still reviewing the report.

More federal reports are expected in the coming days. The highly anticipated documents represent the culmination of a three-year planning process plagued by sassy political rhetoric and gridlock among states. 

“The Department (of the Interior) has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a news release Friday. “This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions.”

These reports are thick documents, hundreds of pages long and riddled with the water-world jargon that even experts will need days, if not weeks, to fully analyze. Here’s a short guide to the report and why it matters to Colorado.

What’s in this final environmental report?

The final report sets up guardrails for how water should be stored, conserved and released from reservoirs. 

It will last for 10 years, not the 20 or 50 years previously debated during three years of negotiations among states, tribes and federal officials. Those negotiations aren’t over: They’ll debate and decide two-year operating plans for how to manage the basin’s key reservoirs until 2036.

The final environmental report analyzed releases from Lake Powell between 5 million and 12 million acre-feet. One acre-foot roughly equals the water used by two to four households each year.

Lower Basin states could be called on to cut their use by as much as 3 million acre-feet under the two-year operating plans. The basin as a whole used about 13.1 million acre-feet each year between 2020 and 2024, according to the Bureau of Reclamation release. The Lower Basin’s portion of that total was 6.5 million acre-feet.

Arizona is expected to be hit hardest by the cuts outlined in the federal environmental impact statement. 

“The FEIS contains a framework that includes sideboards that are unacceptable for the state of Arizona,” the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in a statement Friday. “Such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”

The report also analyzed voluntary conservation in Upper Basin states of up to 200,000 acre-feet combined under the short operating plans. The four states used about 3.8 million acre-feet of water between 2020 and 2024, according to the bureau. (The rest of the water was used by Mexico or was lost to evaporation.)

It defines storage pools in reservoirs, like small bank accounts within larger accounts, for conserved water that can be used in the future. Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona border, can store up to 8 million acre-feet in its conservation pool. Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border, can store up to 3 million acre-feet.

“This plan strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability for the Colorado River system that is vital to the 40 million people who rely on it given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users,” said Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek.

Water managers have shared concerns about the proposal because of the lack of predictability and having to quickly change how they operate the pipelines, ditches, reservoirs and canals that deliver water to communities.

What are the impacts in Colorado?

The Colorado River’s impacts to Colorado are less direct than to downstream states, Arizona in particular.

The river basin spans the western half of Colorado, and communities in every corner of the state use the river’s water. But because Colorado is upstream from lakes Powell and Mead, it will not be directly impacted by the reservoir release decisions included in the federal reports. 

Communities in Colorado have already been practicing ways to save extra water. In 2024, mostly farmers and ranchers in Colorado and its sister states in the Upper Basin completed 110 water-saving projects under the System Conservation Pilot Program. They received about $28.6 million and saved about 63,600 acre-feet of water. 

Releases at Blue Mesa, the largest reservoir in Colorado, might be changed if the reservoir near Gunnison is used more frequently as part of basinwide options. Blue Mesa is a federal reservoir built as part of the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project. 

Then there are some prickly, century-old legal issues that, if a series of unfortunate events were to take place, could require mandatory cuts for Colorado.

Arizona says upstream states aren’t sending enough water downstream, referring to a line in the 1922 Colorado River Compact that says Upper Basin states “will not cause” the river’s flow to be depleted below a certain level. By Arizona’s math, upstream states will be out of compliance by Sept. 30. 

If a state sues over the issue — and wins — it could result in mandatory cuts in upstream states to fulfill the terms of the compact. But there are a lot of unknowns that would need to be addressed before this concern becomes real for Coloradans. 

Arizona and Colorado have bolstered their legal teams in response to tensions and litigation threats. 

The main direct concerns for Coloradans are drought and low water years, regardless of Colorado River negotiations. In dry years, like 2026, some farmers and ranchers have their water cut off early under state law. Reservoirs can go dry, city water supplies are strained, boating and fishing industries are hurt by low flows, and homeowners face outdoor watering restrictions.

How are lakes Mead and Powell doing now?

The combined water storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell has reached a historic low, and experts say record lows will continue to happen until the basin solves its supply-demand problems. 

The two reservoirs’ combined storage totaled about 12.7 million acre-feet of water in mid-July, breaking the previous low record set in 2023. The last time storage was that small was in 1957, before Lake Powell even existed, according to a study by Colorado River experts.

Lake Powell’s elevation was 3,522 feet above sea level Tuesday. Below 3,500, the Glen Canyon Dam struggles to generate hydroelectric power and could experience damage caused by scouring dirt, air or cavitation. The dam is already generating less hydropower than when it is full, and federal projections show hydropower generation could stop completely by early 2027 because of low water levels.

Lake Mead’s water level was about 1,041 feet above sea level. It cannot produce hydropower once water falls below 950 feet.

The flow of water into Lake Powell also sparked concerns this year. About 950,000 acre-feet of water entered the reservoir, according to federal officials based on April through July inflow forecasts. That’s about 15% of normal. 

The Colorado River has been shrinking. Over the past 27 years, its flows have dropped by 20% compared with the 20th-century average. Since 2020, the river’s flow has been about 10.2 million acre-feet on average per year — that’s a 33% decline.

The bathtub ring around Lake Powell shows the reservoir’s low water levels in June 2026. The federal reservoir is at the center of interstate and federal discussions over the Colorado River’s future. (Mark Courage, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Remember those logjammed negotiations? 

The negotiations you’ve been hearing about for years are part of this federal process to replace expiring agreements for how to store, release and manage Colorado River water. These federal reports are the grand finale of that process.

To correct a common misconception: Water officials have not been renegotiating the century-old Colorado River Compact that established how water is shared between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin. 

They have been working to replace a set of rules established in 2007 that have governed reservoir releases at Lake Powell and Lake Mead for nearly 20 years.

The basin states and federal officials negotiated these “interim guidelines” in response to several years of intense drought in the basin, starting in 2000. They set up a system where releases from lakes Mead and Powell changed depending on reservoir levels and established a water savings incentive program in the Lower Basin.

The 2007 plan has been criticized for not being responsive enough to the basin’s drought conditions or adaptive enough to avoid the historically low water storage seen today. These rules will govern reservoir operations until Sept. 30.

Other agreements are also expiring this year, including 2019 Drought Contingency Plans. The basin states and federal officials successfully negotiated this plan after another decade of prolonged drought, shrinking flows and constant demands pushed the basin to the brink of a water storage crisis. (Storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is lower now than it was then.)

The United States is also negotiating international agreements that expire this year with Mexico. These agreements are happening separately from state discussions and include how water deliveries to Mexico will adapt to the basin’s changing water supplies.

Are states ceding control to the feds? 

Yes and no. The entire Colorado River saga over the past three years has been tied to a federal environmental review process under the National Environmental Policy Act. This happens whenever a federal agency is suggesting a major action, like say, changing how the water supply for millions of people is managed.

This NEPA process began in 2022 and comes with defined stages, like releasing draft management options and public comment periods. The final environmental impact statement released this week is the second to last stage in the bureaucratic process. The final report is called a record of decision, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. 

The federal agencies leading the process — Department of the Interior and its subagency, the Bureau of Reclamation — have always had authority to decide the final management plan outlined in the final environmental report and record of decision.

But those agencies have also repeatedly said they want the states to decide the game plan, keeping with the precedent for local leadership set in past Colorado River decisions. 

If the states had been able to agree, their plan would have become the preferred alternative, i.e., the final plan for the basin, according to past statements from federal officials.

Because state leaders failed to reach an agreement — missing deadline after deadline and entrenching themselves behind competing proposals — they forfeited a key opportunity to guide the basin’s future.

Historically, states have been able to successfully negotiate Colorado River decisions in agreements like the 1922 Colorado River Compact, 2007 interim guidelines and 2019 drought plans. 

What’s been holding up a basinwide agreement?

The central tension points have barely budged over the past three years, mainly revolving around how to cut back on water use in the basin’s driest years. 

The Upper Basin states, including Colorado, and the Lower Basin states have operated in blocs and since early 2024 have remained entrenched behind competing proposals for how the basin should be managed. 

The Upper Basin states have opposed making mandatory cuts but promised voluntary conservation. The Lower Basin states have argued that every state should participate in mandatory cuts, saying the basin should act as a whole to share the pain of smaller water supplies.

This is complicated, in part, because of differences in how the basin is managed. The federal government does not control the upstream water supply — the states govern that through the Upper Colorado River Commission. The federal government is water master for the Lower Basin, which means it manages contracts with water users who draw their supplies from the immense upstream reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. 

That’s just one area of conflict. The states have also heavily debated how long the post-2026 agreement should last, which reservoirs should be governed by the agreement, how upstream federal reservoirs, like Blue Mesa, will play a role, and how to align differences between state water accounting, and more. 

Over the decades, Colorado River officials have also left prickly legal questions and gray areas unaddressed. Those decades-old tension points are coming to a head in part because of the river’s drought conditions and extremely low storage, making this round of negotiations even more difficult than in the past.

This is a developing story that will be updated.