Colorado River Continues to Bring Unlikely Parties Together at CRWUA
Image by Lex Padilla
The Colorado River Water Users Association annual conference met in Las Vegas last week. Each year, over a thousand government officials, members of the press, municipal water district leaders, water engineers, ranchers, and tribal members meet to discuss the management of the mighty Colorado River. Hanging over the three-day conference was a stalemate between the upper and lower basin states over how to manage the Colorado River after current operational guidelines expire at the end of 2026.
Throughout the conference, the states’ inability to reach a consensus deal produced ripple effects. The stalemate held back progress on both near term shortage concerns (experts predict that Lake Powell will be only 28% full at the end of the ’25-’26 water year) and long-range planning, such as the development of the next “Minute” agreement between the United States and Mexico.
The closing act of CRWUA 2025 was an orderly (and familiar) report from each of the basin states’ principal negotiators that their state is stretched thin but remains committed to finding a consensus agreement. This final session had no discussion or Q&A. The basin states now have until February 14th to provide the Bureau of Reclamation with their consensus deal, which would presumably be added to an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) draft that is expected to be released in early January. With time running short, many worry that public participation in the EIS process – vital to informed decision-making – will be greatly reduced.
Still, as Rhett Larson of Arizona State University said on the first day of the conference, “Desert rivers bring people together.” Tribal governments continue to innovate in the areas of conservation and storage, even in spite of ongoing challenges to meaningful access of federally reserved tribal water rights. For instance, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, or CRIT, shared news of a Resolution and Water Code recently passed by their Tribal Council which work together to recognize the Colorado River’s personhood under Tribal law. This provides CRIT with a holistic framework for on-reservation use and requires the consideration of the living nature of the Colorado River in off-reservation water leasing decisions. John Bezdek, who represented CRIT at the conference, put it this way: “If laws are an expression of values, then this tribal council is expressing to the world the importance of protecting and preserving the lifeblood of the Colorado River.” Among others, Celene Hawkins of The Nature Conservancy and Kate Ryan of the Colorado Water Trust also shared about the unique, and often unlikely, partnerships formed to protect stream flows and the riparian environment across the Colorado River basin.
Notwithstanding the basin states’ current deadlock, one theme rang true at CRWUA 2025: Despite the dire hydrologic and administrative realities facing decision-makers today, the Colorado River continues to bring unlikely parties together.