Archive of posts filed under the Colorado River category.
2026-05-19: Federal managers increase release for the silvery minnow
Federal water managers yesterday (May 18, 2026) began pushing a pulse of water through New Mexico’s rapidly drying Middle Rio Grande to try to encourage the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow to spawn. From a note sent ’round to the Bureau’s water management list yesterday by Carolyn Donnelly, water operations supervisor for the bureau’s Albuquerque …
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The Utility of Operationally Neutral and Flexible Conservation Pools in the Colorado River Basin
Nota bene: A guest post from friends of Inkstain John Berggren and Kevin Wheeler John Berggren (Regional Policy Manager, Western Resource Advocates) Kevin Wheeler (Principle, Water Balance Consulting) 5/5/2026 As everyone is well aware, the snowpack and associated runoff this year are truly awful. It will be one of the worst, if not worst, on record. …
The Bard
The Colorado River and the Tragedy of the Anti-Commons
Quoting Jeff Kightlinger and Jim Lochhead
As the former CEOs of two of the largest water utilities using water from the Colorado River, we have been deeply engaged in interstate and federal negotiations on the river for over 30 years. Those negotiations were tough, but the basin states ultimately reached agreement, including reducing California’s use of water by 800,000 acre-feet and …
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In which my colleagues and I share thoughts on the future of Colorado River governance
It is hard to know where to begin. The Department of the Interior’s Post-2026 Colorado River draft environmental impact statement, and the deep questions it raises, is an “everything including the kitchen sink” sort of process. But at its root, the question it raises is simple: Tell us what you’re going to do. It is …
Colorado River news isn’t all bad!
I’ve been pretty successfully checked out of Colorado River work while I put the finishing touches on the new book (pre-order now!) but my colleagues are on it with a new post looking at the over-winter storage at the big reservoirs behind Hoover and Glen Canyon dams: This feels like good news, or least not …
Colorado River Assigned Water: Quoting Sorensen et al
For more than a century of development, Colorado River governance has lived under atension between individual communities’ desires to use more water and the collectiveneed to balance basin-scale supply and use for the benefit of the region as a whole.Incentives favoring individual communities at the expense of the collective good havebrought us to the edge …
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A truly awful Colorado River snowpack so far in 2026
Via Eric Kuhn, the snowpack above Lake Powell is miserable. 2002 was the lowest year on record for unregulated April-July inflow into Lake Powell. This year is starting off even worse.