SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's chief negotiator over the Colorado River says progress has been made in coming up with a new agreement to manage the water supply for more than 40 million people in the West.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Gene Shawcroft told reporters they had presented the Trump administration with a "conceptual agreement" by the Nov. 11 deadline set by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The current agreements between the seven states along the Colorado River expire in 2026.
"The Nov. 11 deadline, if you will, was more of a milestone for us to have conceptual agreement on a framework. That was achieved yesterday," Shawcroft said. "So what we will do is we will continue to meet on a regular basis until we get to the framework solution. The details, if you will, have to be accomplished by the about the middle of February. But we did not miss a deadline."
But the devil is in the details, and it remains unclear what exactly the sticking points are to a final agreement between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states. Shawcroft confirmed that hydrology remains a factor. There is simply less water in the Colorado River.
That means cuts are a real possibility.
As FOX 13 News and the Colorado River Collaborative first reported last month, Utah's Division of Water Rights has begun warning of the potential of "curtailments." Under Utah's longstanding water rights system of "first in time, first in right," junior water users would see the first cuts. That would include the Central Utah Project, which pumps millions of gallons from the Colorado River into the Wasatch Front for drinking water supply.
"There's no doubt the Central Utah Project is a junior user on the river. We have capacity in in reservoirs to help us through drought cycles," Shawcroft said. "We will have to be very judicious about how we use the water during these periods of time when we have low water. But we have opportunities for us to negotiate with folks to either purchase a third crop of hay, for example, or things like that that could help us be more efficient and continue to have water for municipal uses in the state."
Lower Basin states — California, Nevada and Arizona — have said they're cutting their use and called on the Upper Basin States of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah to take less water. Upper Basin states have countered that they are doing with less because of the river's hydrology.
Management of Lake Powell and Lake Mead will remain a central part of any deal. But Shawcroft said a previous concept of "natural flow" and an "amicable divorce," which basically is the Upper and Lower Basins manage their own parts of the river so long as Lake Powell and Lake Mead have certain levels, has been pushed aside.
"That was probably a little bit of a stretch to believe that there would be no communication or no coordination between the two basins," Shawcroft told reporters. "Yes, there will be. We will have to understand how they use water. They will have to understand how we use water."
Moving forward, Shawcroft said he and his fellow Colorado River commissioners will continue to meet to hammer out a more formal agreement between the states. It's unknown how long it would last.
"Every state is involved in aggressive conservation measures, and those measures are ultimately what we will have to continue to do in order to stretch this water supply as far as we possibly can," Shawcroft said.
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This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River at greatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver
