California’s projected use of Colorado River water this year, 3.76 million acre feet as of Reclamation’s Oct. 29 modeling runs, would be, as near as I can tell, the state’s lowest use since 1949. Also notable: Nevada’s 197,280 acre feet would be the lowest since 1992. The two lowest years in Imperial Irrigation District’s history …
The utility of a model is seldom in its ability to deliver a precise value but rather in whether it provides an improved understanding of a system that would not have existed in its absence. – Kevin Wheeler, Modeling to Support Water Management Negotiations
A bunch of odds and ends cluttering my brain, blog posts that are half written in my mind that are in the way: Quoting Luis Villa on accessing the open data commons We’ve been talking about open data for a long time, but since using data is hard to consume and manipulate, open data has …
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By Eric Kuhn, Anne Castle, John Fleck, Kathryn Sorensen, Jack Schmidt, and Katherine Tara As negotiators for the seven Colorado River Basin states rapidly approach Reclamation’s November deadline for providing a framework for a seven-state agreement for the Post-2026 Operating Guidelines for Lakes Powell and Mead, a larger threat looms. Reclamation’s recently released September 24-Month …
By Jack Schmidt,1 Anne Castle,2 John Fleck,3 Eric Kuhn,4 Kathryn Sorensen,5 Katherine Tara,6 While Colorado River Basin attention is focused on negotiating post-2026 operating rules, a near term crisis is unfolding before our eyes. If no immediate action is taken to reduce water use, our already-thin buffer of storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead …
Continue reading ‘Analysis of Colorado River Basin Storage Suggests Need For Immediate Action’ »
By John Fleck, Anne Castle, Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, and Katherine Tara As we await Friday’s (Aug. 15, 2025) release of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River 24-Month Study, we need to remember a painful lesson of the last five years of crisis management: whatever you see in Reclamation’s report of the “Most …
Continue reading ‘Awaiting the Colorado River 24-Month Study’ »
With the latest Bureau of Reclamation model runs highlighting the serious risks posed by the declining reservoir levels that Utah State’s Jack Schmidt has been warning about, there are signs that the closed-room discussions among the seven basin states, after brief glimmers of hope last month, are once again not going well. The Reservoirs The …
Continue reading ‘Return of the Deadpool Diaries: The Colorado River news keeps getting worse’ »
Jack Schmidt Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University 14 July 2025 Water stored in the reservoirs of the Colorado River represents the account balance from which we draw water for use. The amount in the account is especially important during dry times when the demand by water users throughout the Basin exceeds income …
Continue reading ‘Summer Update on the Colorado River Water Supply’ »
See note of correction/clarification below: Arizona yesterday finally moved the super-secret idea at the heart of current Colorado River negotiations out of the shadows. The idea is deceptively simple: base Lake Powell releases on a percentage of the three-year rolling average of the Colorado River’s estimated “natural flow” at Lee Ferry. Allocate water …
Via Allen Best, Brad Udall’s critically important comments at last week’s Getches-Wilkinson Colorado River conference: Within this basin, we can and have worked together to deal with a really sticky, difficult issue like climate change, to inform decision-making given the right partners, including the federal government at the table. Point two is our current climate …
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