By Jennifer Yachnin

Water rights to the Colorado River are a notoriously valuable commodity: The flows support verdant agricultural lands in Southern California and Arizona, as well as major cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

So when the federal government needs to curb use on the 1,450-mile waterway, it has long opted to open up its checkbook and pay up — such as with a recent emergency effort to protect hydropower operations on the river, which cost the Biden administration $1.2 billion for a three-year deal.

But when Mother Nature cuts back on the supply at its source, it's a much different story. No water. No payments. No IOUs for next year.

That’s the argument of officials in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, who say they are uniquely affected when lackluster winter snows create summers of hardship. And they argue that this reality should figure into the next long-term operating plan for the drought-stricken river. The seven states that share the Colorado River — which serves 40 million individuals and supports 5.5 million acres of farmland — are currently negotiating that agreement.

In a proposal published earlier this year, the Upper Basin states said they want those shortfalls — estimated as high as 1.2 million acre-feet a year — to be included in any formal accounting, not only for their users but to require the Lower Basin states use to be “balanced with actual supply.”

"The hydrologic cycle is not intuitive, but we live and respond to Mother Nature," Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s Colorado River commissioner, said recently, noting that water users in the river's headwaters state rely primarily on flows from snowpack and precipitation, as water enters the river and its tributaries.

Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the waterway is divided into 7.5 million acre-feet each for both the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada. But more than two decades of persistent drought have reduced what is available, with some estimates suggesting the river contains 20 percent less water than it did in the year 2000.

"Our water users are dependent on snowpack. It is the reservoir. So when we do not have sufficient snowpack, our water users have to take painful shortages to their water supplies," Mitchell said, referring to those four Upper Basin states.

Mitchell regularly asserts in public discussion about the next operating plan that losses to water users in the Upper Basin — and especially in Colorado, which is home to the river’s headwaters — go unrecognized in the larger river system. If a new operating plan does not tally those losses, Mitchell contends that only the Upper Basin states would be responding to climate change. The Upper Basin states propose putting the bulk of new reductions in water use on the Lower Basin states —which rely solely on federal infrastructure to store and deliver water — arguing it would even up losses imposed by nature.

According to data provided by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, between 2021 and 2023, water users in the state faced an average annual shortfall of 600,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot of water is equal to about 326,000 gallons, or enough to supply three families for a year. That same amount of water could flush a high-efficiency 1.28-gallon toilet once every hour for more than 29 years.

Each state has its own process for delegating cuts. In Colorado, dozens of local water commissioners — individuals assigned to districts within the state’s seven water divisions, which encompass the Colorado River and other waterways — monitor streamflow conditions to determine how much is available.

Those commissioners, who work for the state’s Division of Water Resources, respond to requests from water rights holders, and determine which users must be cut off when there is not a sufficient supply for all those who want to draw from the river. In Colorado, Hannah Cranor-Kersting, a third-generation cattle rancher, said those calls can force water users to decide between watering fields needed for grazing cattle or those used to grow crops including hay.

“It's kind of a balancing act of,” said Cranor-Kresting, who is the Gunnison County extension director for Colorado State University’s Office of Engagement and Extension. “If there's not enough water, we have to decide what gets irrigated.”

“It has real, real impacts for us, and it's so variable,” added Cranor-Kersting, who spoke at a June event sponsored by the state’s Department of Natural Resources. “It’s so hard to know year-by-year."