BOULDER — When a panel moderator at a Colorado River conference in Boulder asked Friday for any positive notes in the negotiations over the river’s future, officials from Colorado, Nevada and Mexico paused — and then paused some more.
“You know it might be like, you get invited to someone’s home and you sit down, and dinner is not ready because there’s an argument going on in the family,” said Carlos de la Parra, founder and managing partner of the Luken Center for Strategies on Water and Environment in Tijuana.
With no unified input from the seven Colorado River states, the federal government will decide what happens next — and already officials are citing concerns about a 10-year plan that requires renegotiating reservoir operations every two years.
State and tribal officials have been at loggerheads since 2023 over how to manage the water supply for 40 million people once the current rules, established in 2007, expire this fall. As time runs out, officials are punting after shooting for a 20- or 30-year agreement. The 10-year proposed plan will allow operations at two key reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, to be adaptable, transparent and stable, said Scott Cameron, acting commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation.
“We would love to have a 20-year deal, or a 30-year deal,” Cameron said. “But frankly, we haven’t even been able to get seven states to agree on what a two-year deal would look like, so we’re using a 10-year framework.”
It’s not a popular choice among some water officials at the University of Colorado’s 2026 Conference on the Colorado River.
The proposed idea ties management of lakes Mead and Powell, which make up almost all of the basin’s reservoir storage, more closely to real-time conditions, and that’s a positive, said Commissioner Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top negotiator on Colorado River issues.
But “constantly negotiating every two years — that would be incredibly difficult,” Mitchell said. And it could further entrench opponents in their legal positions or hold up other work to help the basin adapt, like funding new programs.
“How do we fund and finance if we’re constantly renegotiating?” Mitchell said. “How do we create the certainty that 40 million people deserve?”
A 10-year proposal
The Bureau of Reclamation said the 10-year preliminary plan was its preferred option at a May meeting in Arizona. Since then, officials have shared sparse details, saying the final plan will be released in mid-summer.
The rough plan comes with certain tenets, Cameron told the gathering of hundreds of water officials Thursday. In addition to tying reservoir releases more closely to real-time conditions, the federal officials talked about being conservative with water use in low-flow periods and then building in recovery periods when water conditions improve.
“If peace breaks out and we have a seven-state agreement on something … we’re happy to take that agreement and have it supplant this 10-year framework,” Cameron said.
The plan will be finalized in two reports, a final environmental impact statement and a record of decision. The record of decision, which is the final step, will come out before mid-August, when reservoir operations are typically finalized for the next year.
At the same time, states are still working out what operations need to look like for the next two years, he said. The federal government aims to free up funding for groups in the Colorado River Basin, including $100 million that could go to upstream states like Colorado to show how they can achieve large-scale water conservation.
“Frankly, at this point we are interested in any multistate agreement that would provide anybody anywhere a little bit more certainty and pose a little bit less risk,” Cameron said.
“Disappointing” and “troubling”
The proposal, however, is an imperfect solution coming at the eleventh hour amid simmering frustrations from water watchers.
The 10-year cycle is too short, said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which advocates for water resources for 15 Western Slope counties.
To mandate two-year cycles of renegotiation that happen to coincide with congressional and presidential elections is a “terrible idea,” he said.
“Negotiations on the river need to be depoliticized, not further politicized,” he said. “The structure that has been discussed by the feds is disappointing.”
There’s no certainty or a clear path forward. Cities, farmers and ranchers plan their water use on multi-year cycles. They’re planning years if not decades in advance, he said.
“When you’re using public funds and a public market to achieve a public purpose, let’s do this the right way,” Mueller said.
Lower Basin officials from downstream states — Arizona, California and Nevada — shared their own concerns. The two-year renegotiations are not a good plan, John Entsminger, Nevada’s Colorado River negotiator, said. Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community, said the tribe is extremely concerned about the 10-year framework.
“The limited details that we’ve seen in the preliminary preferred alternative … are very troubling,” Lewis said.
A 10-year framework could impose massive additional cuts on the Lower Basin, including the state of Arizona and his tribal nation — without a strategy to offset the resulting damage, he said. The framework could also modify how water laws work in practice without going through the required planning processes.
“If we’re going to change the rules that govern this river, then we need to be honest about what’s happening,” he said. “We need to follow the law. We need to follow the required process.”