Bennet: ‘Survival of the West’ in peril as drought drains Colorado River

Drought, climate change, and a push-pull dynamic between the states that depend on the Colorado River have made for a dire situation, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said.

“The future of the American West itself is at stake,” Bennet told the Montrose Daily Press Wednesday, shortly before making similar remarks to constituents during a campaign stop here.

The Colorado River Compact splits up its water between the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming and the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona, and Nevada. The 100-year-old compact also apportions some of the river’s water to Mexico.

Among the compact’s provisions, the Upper Basin is required to release 75 million acre-feet on a 10-year rolling average, equating to about 7.5 million acre-feet a year.

But years of parched conditions have made that tough, and the dispute between the Upper and Lower Basins over who needs to do more to conserve the water has only grown.

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Reclamation’s commissioner told the Upper, and Lower Bains states to cut water use even further than has already been done, or else the agency might act unilaterally to protect the operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the reservoirs that store Colorado River water for the Upper and Lower Basins, respectively.

To keep the river basin operations flowing, BuRec said between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water would have to be conserved. The Aug. 13 deadline has come and gone, and BuRec announced emergency action.

In the Upper Basin, the agency will act administratively to reduce Glen Canyon Dam (Lake Powell) releases below 7 million acre-feet per year, as needed, to protect the dam’s infrastructure.

Among other actions for the Upper Basin, BuRec said it will be working with the Basin states, tribes, and other stakeholders “to be prepared to implement additional, substantial releases from Upper Basin reservoirs” to beef up elevations at Lake Powell, as per the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan.

In referring to both basins, BuRec said the agency will “continue to seek consensus support” for solutions.

“I think the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states are going to have a profoundly difficult negotiation,” Bennet said Wednesday. “I think the states have to come to a consensus. Then I think the federal government has to be there with the resources to back up that consensus. … I do not believe the federal government should dictate the outcomes here. The federal government should be there to fund the agreements that are reached by the states.”

Bennet said he is working with Republican Sen. Mitt Romney to ensure that kind of support takes place.

On Tuesday, BuRec also released its new, 24-month study for the river. The study sets annual operations at Powell and Mead and takes into account “critically low reservoir conditions.”

The Colorado River Conservation District that same day called for the agency to better assess system losses in the Lower Basin. Director Andy Mueller, in a provided statement, said that while evaporation from Upper Basin reservoirs is counted toward the Upper Basin’s consumptive use, the same is not true when the BuRec measures Lower Basin consumptive use.

“The fact remains if we are going to bring this river back into balance, it’s going to have to require permanent reduction of use by the Lower Basin,” the river district’s Director of Government Relations, Zane Kessler, said.

The drought’s effect on soil moisture is starkly illustrated: although snowpack last season was 89% of normal, inflows into Powell were only 32% of normal, Kessler said. The current numbers for the year showed 62% of normal inflow into Powell after 96% of average snowpack overall.

“The impacts of this drought continue to hammer this river,” Kessler said. “This really is an issue of supply and demand. We’re seeing less supply coming from Colorado’s Western Slope and the Upper Basin as a whole, caused by increased temperatures, reduced runoff, and soil moisture conditions.”

The Upper Basin is dependent on natural hydrology, he noted.

“In the Lower Basin, there is a clear demand problem. If we are going to address the balance in the river and the over-demand in the Lower Basin, we’ve got to see meaningful and permanent reductions in use by those Lower Basin entities. We don’t have the luxury in the Upper Basin of living below 50,000 acre-feet of storage,” Kessler said.

He said the Upper Basin cut consumptive use by 1 million acre-feet in 2021, while the Lower Basin and Mexico together increased use from 10 million acre-feet to 10.6 million acre-feet.

Bennet, during Wednesday’s remarks, touted money secured under the Inflation Reduction Act to combat drought. The recently signed law provides $4 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation for water management and conservation efforts in the Colorado Basin and other areas, as well as $5 billion for forest conservation and wildfire mitigation.

Bennet also said the act’s $360 billion to address the climate woes is “the most significant investment in climate change that we have ever made as a country.”

Ten percent of the money was what he was able to secure for conservation, forestry, and drought, said Bennet, who has pushed for funding for years.

He also touted the act’s health care provisions, including capping the out-of-pocket costs to seniors for prescription drugs and requiring Medicare to, for the first time, negotiate drug prices.

Bennet said the Inflation Reduction Act provisions raise revenue by creating a minimum 15% tax on the profits of the largest corporations in America with incomes of more than a billion dollars. Right now, they are paying less than 15%, and, he said, “some of them are paying zero.”

Bennet said he was initially concerned that the bill didn’t do enough to fund fighting drought. He worked with Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Mark Kelly of Arizona to secure $4 billion of Inflation Reduction Act money for BuRec’s drought efforts. The money includes $12.5 million for tribes’ drought-mitigation efforts.

“In the end, we got our language, and we got our $4 billion,” Bennet told people who packed into The Coffee Trader’s North First Street warehouse location Wednesday to hear from him on the issues.

Kevin Kuns, the Montrose County Democratic Party chairman and candidate opposing incumbent Rep. Marc Catlin for the State House District 58 seat, cited water as one of the two most pressing issues. (The other is education, he said.)

Colorado is at its driest in 1,200 years, and Kuns sees a bigger pattern at play.

“I think, as Democrats, we should move away from calling this a drought because it really isn’t a drought anymore. It’s aridification. The Southwest is moving into an arid climate. This is not going away. Montrose is 4.5 degrees warmer than it was 100 years ago,” he said.

“It seems we can do more for the Colorado River —instead of calling it Upper Basin, Lower Basin; them against us, us against them — it could be looked at as ‘the Colorado River.’ It’s one river, and we have to be able to manage it in all seven states. Doesn’t that seem to make more sense?”

Bennet said the matter isn’t at the point “where we can just say it’s the Colorado River.” Negotiation was required to ensure the Upper Basin’s interests were represented, he reiterated.

“It is a reality that the Lower Basin is using more water than they’re entitled to. That is a reality. We are using less water than we are entitled to (in the Upper Basin),” Bennet said.

“At the end of this, we need a solution that works for the entire Colorado River Basin. I believe that’s a solution that should be negotiated among the states … and then backed up by the federal government.”

Bennet again said the federal government shouldn’t be dictating the terms of the consensus but, instead, should provide resources in support of the consensus.

“The survival of the American West depends on it,” he said.