SALT LAKE CITY — Faced with a new record low water level, Governor Spencer Cox pushed back at ideas that it may be time to let Lake Powell go.
"It's definitely not time to let Lake Powell go. That's never going to happen. I don't know why we keep writing about it; it's not going to happen," Gov. Cox said Thursday at his monthly news conference on PBS Utah in response to a question from FOX 13 News. "What I will say is we have a framework with the Department of Interior. You all have seen it, you all have reported on it. We need to keep Lake Powell from hitting deadpool. That's important. There are really hard sacrifices that every state has to make as we move forward with preserving the Colorado."
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has ordered the release of up to a million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge to prop up Lake Powell and keep it generating power for millions. On Wednesday, the head of the Colorado River Authority of Utah told FOX 13 News she feared more releases from Flaming Gorge could happen.
With none of the seven states along the Colorado River able to make an agreement on managing the water for more than 40 million people in the West, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has pushed its plan. It includes deep cuts to water supplies in the Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona and a push for conservation in the Upper Basin states of Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado. It also includes a decade's worth of deals up for renewal every two years.
The governor told reporters that if nobody's happy with it and it may be close to finding "the right balance."
That doesn't mean he's OK with letting the federal government manage the water for Utah and the other states.
"We're always wondering whenever you come up with a deal, it's like, well, what is the worst case scenario look like in this deal? And we're now negotiating the deal in the worst case scenario," he told reporters. "That's helpful because it's not about projections."
The governor said he was still hopeful the states can make their own agreement.
