News

Opportunities to rebuild basin-wide reservoir storage have been rare in the 21st century, and there have been many years in which there is significant risk of basin-wide reservoir storage depletion. the natural flow of the Colorado River at Lees Ferry in ...

"The longer-term challenge is to develop post-2026 rules that not only pull back the reservoirs from the brink of dead pool ... but that also restore a healthy, equitable, and sustainable river system. That’s the heavy lift ... That time has arrived,

The Colorado River Basin goes through periods of severe water shortage and also flooding, adding greater uncertainty to the already complex challenge of creating water policy. Some years water managers have rejoiced at the heavy precipitation that falls w...

With the submission of two additional proposals last week, we now have five major proposals for post-2026 Colorado River management. Tribal Principles (a set of guiding principles proposed by 17 of the basin’s sovereign indigenous communities), Upper and ...

In the Colorado River basin, dewatered rivers are often portrayed as an ecological problem unique to the Lower Basin. But while the dry riverbed of the mainstem Colorado in its delta in northern Mexico may be the most striking example of anthropogenic dew...

A full accounting of where the Colorado River water goes en route to its delta can aid design of strategies and plans for bringing water use into balance with available supplies, according to new research.

Storage progressively increased in February. The small value matters little; what matters is that basin storage did not decrease and hasn’t for the last 2.5 months. To date, reservoir storage is only 20% less than the peak storage at the end of the 2023 r...

Nothing really changed in reservoir storage during January 2024. That is really good news as the basin prepares for the upcoming irrigation season. Conditions in the basin remain comparable to conditions in spring 2021. There is no reason so stop our effo...

There was not much loss in reservoir storage in the Colorado River basin in December 2023. Total storage in the basin’s reservoirs only declined by 17,000 acre feet during the month, and the combined contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell increased by 68,0...

We’ve used 21% of the gains from the exceptional 2023 runoff, a drawdown slower in the annual cycle than in it has been in all but one of the previous decade. New policies to reduce basin-wide consumptive use may be working.

October brings another month of reservoir storage data from the Bureau of Reclamation. How are we doing in conserving water? Decline in reservoir storage occurs when reservoir releases to meet consumptive use demands and reservoir evaporation exceed inflo...

Summary: Water Year 2023 was exceptional for runoff and for boosting reservoir storage---but it isn't likely to repeat itself for the additional 3-6 years needed to refill the reservoirs to 1999 levels (the last time they were full). We need to work to co...

The Colorado River has one of the largest natural sediment loads of any large river in the United States. In 1936, Hoover Dam was completed, thereby beginning the filling of Lake Mead and the trapping of the upstream sediment load. In 1963, Glen Canyon Da...

What does the future of the Colorado River look like? That question and more were discussed at a recent USU Research Landscapes event featuring Jack Schmidt. The presentation, hosted on Aug. 10 in Salt Lake City, brought together state and community leade...

It’s time for a serious reckoning with the way we use water from the Colorado River, and the way forward will be tough, according to a new publication by Jack Schmidt, chair of the Center for Colorado River Studies in the Quinney College of Natural Resour...

In the Colorado River basin, dewatered rivers are often portrayed as an ecological problem unique to the Lower Basin. But while the dry riverbed of the mainstem Colorado in its delta in northern Mexico may be the most striking example of anthropogenic dew...

“I would love to see the Colorado River of old but these are extremely complicated issues that have very significant impacts all the way through the system,” says Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. “I...

“This business-as-usual approach means the lowest-priority users take the biggest cut, and that is surely not going to work,” said Jack Schmidt. An alternative, unprecedented approach outlined in the analysis would be to divvy the cuts up evenly among the...

When President Joe Biden considers the economic trajectory of the country, he weighs factors like the global pandemic, international trade agreements and national rates of inflation. This year, the country’s highest economic report also took into account ...

In 2018, river advocates and paddlers Mike and Jenny Fiebig spent five months paddling the Colorado from its source in the Wind River mountains to the Gulf of Mexico to understand the river’s challenges firsthand – while collecting stories about change fr...

Sitting on the sandy banks of the Colorado River, reporter Ian James from the LA Times took notes as USU students shared thoughts, experience and fears about the fate of the water in the river over the next few years. This led off a series of articles abo...

Cornerstone at the Confluence: Navigating the Colorado River Compact's Next Century is a book that leverages the centennial year to reflect on the compact and broader “Law of the River.” Edited by Jason Anthony Robison and contributed to by several CRRG m...

Transbasin diversions transfer water from the Colorado River basin to the Great Basin, including the populations of the Wasatch Front. These transfers are considered to be vital to maintain the health of Utah’s economy and to guarantee a secure water supp...

Working for the first time for a major water resource agency in the arid west exposed Leonard to the challenges and complexities of western water resource development. Growing up in a rural community in the Midwest, she was acutely aware of agricultural p...

Who's really using up the water in the American West? Water scarcity in the Western US has more to do with our diets than our lawns.

With most forecasts pointing toward another below-average winter of precipitation in the Rocky Mountains in 2022/2023 and with total basin-wide reservoir storage now less than 20 maf (less than 17 months of supply at the rate water has been consumed in th...

Induction Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Saturday, October 1, 3-8 pm in Green River Utah.

Jack Schmidt traveled to a park in Moab, Utah, on a June evening to explain the Colorado's woes to a few dozen interested Utahns and Canyon Country visitors. To his eyes, Glen Canyon's reemergence is both locally beautiful and regionally troubling.

Australia Public Broadcasting featured Dr. Jack Schmidt with an interesting out-of-country perspective on problems currently hitting very close to home.

From the Fleck Blog: As we begin discussing what replaces the soon-to-expire Colorado River operating guidelines, we argue that there are important lessons to be learned from a careful examination of the way the current guidelines have failed us.

The authors look back at the last four decades of water-supply management to pose the central question: How did we get into this mess? Our answer in brief: When the Colorado’s flow was up, we used it all. When it was down, we drained the reservoirs.

In a new policy forum commentary in the journal Science, researchers offer perspective on what is needed to stabilize or reverse the decline of reservoir storage by quantifying the magnitude of consumptive use cuts necessary to balance the system, maintai...

It's no wonder that the map from Reclamation’s landmark report, Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study, is often used --- it is clear, easy to read, and depicts many of the key features of the infrastructure by which the Colorado River is mana...

This paper provides an analysis of the accuracy and bias of the 24-Month Study projections for future Lake Powell inflows and elevations and finds that in some years, the most probable projected inflows were higher than what actually occurred by as much a...

This is a grim year for runoff. Brad Udall ran through a striking series of graphs of the current state of the Colorado River. The Fleck Blog posted them, along with accompanying commentary.

During a live broadcast on the Today show, a popular national TV program, Babbitt opened valves to unleash an unprecedented experimental flood into the Grand Canyon just downstream. As onlookers applauded, water gushed from gaping outlet pipes.

Hidden with Lake Powell's ever-changing shorelines are countless fingers running up side canyons where flat water terminates at mucky sediments, deposited after the lake started filling behind Glen Canyon Dam.

Congratulations to Christy Leonard, CCRS Ph.D. candidate, for receiving the prestigious P.E.O. Scholar Award for the 2021-22 academic year. Christy was chosen from 847 nominees to receive this important recognition.

The Colorado River’s existing management guidelines expire in 2026. The states that draw water from it are to undertake a new round of negotiations over the river’s future, while it’s facing worsening dry conditions due in part to rising temperatures.

Endangered fish in the Colorado River face multiple threats. Their survival is linked to the river’s temperature, which is altered both by climate change and by dams.

This White Paper is designed to encourage wide-ranging and innovative thinking about how to sustainably manage the water supply, while simultaneously encouraging the negotiators of new agreements to consider their effects on ecosystems.

See recent media coverage for our newest white paper, an exploration of wide-ranging alternatives for sustainably managing the future water supply, with consideration for their effects on ecosystems.

Jack Schmidt offers the keynote at the 16th Annual Berkeley River Restoration Symposium in December called "Restoring the Colorado River."

Two Utah river rafters are documenting the changes that come as the massive Lake Powell reservoir hits historic lows. For the past three years, Mike DeHoff and Pete Lefebvre have carefully photographed and mapped Cataract Canyon on their boating trips.

Effective water-supply negotiation and river management are best served if Colorado River stakeholders are mindful of the precision and accuracy of the many components of the hydrologic cycle that affect the water supply.

Long-range planning of the water supply provided by the Colorado River requires realistic assessments of the impact of a continuation of the current drought that began in 2000, of extreme future droughts, and the long-term and decline in watershed runoff....

Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming that depend on the Colorado River are pushing back against Utah’s proposal to build a 140-mile pipeline that would divert water from the river and use it to support plans for growth.

The Upper Colorado River Basin is now caught in a vise. We have fixed commitments under the 1922 compact and a declining supply of water above Lee Ferry. Yet many are still operating under the illusion that the Upper Basin has “unused” entitlement.

The conventional simplification of the Colorado River Compact’s water allocation scheme is that it set aside 7.5 million acre feet of water use for the “exclusive beneficial consumptive use” of the states of the Lower Basin.

Leaders across the west are grappling with how to continue to share a diminishing supply of water from the Colorado River. It’s a wicked problem, one that Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies, has been wrestling with for years....

On New Year’s Day in 2018, Paul Kehmeier and his father drove up Grand Mesa until they got to the county line, 10,000 feet above sea level. There wasn’t enough snow to even cover the grass.

Sara Goeking and David Tarboton (Director, Utah Water Research Lab), reviewed 78 recent studies of streamflow and snowpack response to forest disturbances, and reassessed the question: Does water yield or snowpack increase after forest disturbance?

River channels change in response to natural and human-caused fluctuations in streamflow and sediment supply. Predicting how the channel might change is an important and challenging part of managing a river system.

Charismatic is not the best word to describe the humpback chub, a fish with a frowny eel face jammed onto a sportfish body in a way that suggests evolution has a sense of humor.

Schmidt said. "When it’s hot and dry, as it was this year, he said, more runoff is soaked up by dry ground. More water is taken up by plants and more evaporates off the landscape. Snow can also be lost to sublimation, changing directly into water vapor.

In the face of climate change induced declining river flows and increased competition for the river’s water, there is no question that the basic compact ground rules devised by the negotiators a century ago will face increasing pressure.

Sixty years after its creation, Lake Powell faces an uncertain future with increasing drought and limited runoff. Here we speak with Jack Schmidt and Eric Kuhn about the policies and politics of reservoirs along the Colorado River.

The Returning Rapids Project seeks to document the recovery of river resources. Peter Lefebvre and Mike Dehoff, principal investigators of the project and professional river guides in Moab, Utah, are working to record these changes.

For hundreds of years, the Colorado River has provided vital water supply for seven states in the U.S. Wyatt visits with researcher Jack Schmidt Professor of Watershed Sciences and Janet Quinney Lawson Chair Member at the Center for Colorado River Studies...

Since record keeping began in the 1920’s, the record high water years along the upper Colorado River peaked around 100,000 cfs. That’s a ton of water. But that’s nothing, says hydrologist Dr. Vic Baker, compared to the paleo records of floods.

A conversation with Anne Castle, who served as assistant secretary for water and science in the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2009 to 2014.

A conversation with Eric Kuhn, author and Colorado River District General Manager (retired). April 16, 2020.

A conversation with Daryl Vigil, Ten Tribes Coalition and Matt McKinney, University of Montana on April 16, 2020.

The Colorado River and its tributaries provide a water supply for more than 40 million people in the American Southwest. This water supply is primarily used in irrigated agriculture but also provides essential drinking water to large metropolitan areas.

The lower Green River episodically narrowed between the mid-1930s and present day through deposition of new floodplains within a wider channel that had been established and/or maintained during the early twentieth century pluvial period.

Representatives Brent Osiek (Power Marketing Manager) and Clayton Palmer (Environmental Specialist) made a presentation to students of the Large River Management Class taught by Jack Schmidt and David Rosenberg on March 10, 2020.

“The political agreement is about how to share the pain of drought," said Jack Schmidt. "The renegotiation of that pain is supposed to begin sometime in 2020, and has to be concluded by 2025.”

A white paper where describing how Colorado River stakeholders face many uncertainties—issues like climate change, future water demand, and evolving ecological priorities—and are looking for new tools to help cope.

A new white paper is the first of a series of papers to be produced by the Future of the Colorado River Project that explore alternative management strategies for the Colorado River that might provide benefit to water-supply users and to river ecosystems....

A new report from Castle and Fleck indicates that declines in the Colorado River’s flow could force water curtailments in coming decades, posing a credible risk to Colorado communities and consideration of insurance protection like demand management.

Declining flows in the Colorado River could force Southwest water managers to confront long-standing legal uncertainties, and threaten the water security of Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, according to a new analysis.

Arizona’s portion of the Drought Contingency Plan became a unique example in the basin of tribal leaders asserting themselves in broader discussions about the river’s management.

Some environmental groups say climate change will lead to a scarcity of river water and Glen Canyon could become inoperable. Aside from wanting the dams 2016 operating plan to be revised, they want a discussion on draining Lake Powell and removing the dam...

Kuhn’s book, cowritten with John Fleck, examines one of the long held myths of the Colorado River. This myth is that the unusually wet runoff conditions of the early 20th century were not well understood by those who negotiated the Colorado River Compact....

Science be Dammed: how ignoring inconvenient science drained the Colorado River on October 2, 3:30 pm in ENGR 201. From his new book, Eric Kuhn discusses the management and mismanagement of water in the west.

This course combines an overview of the science behind water and climate in the Western United States with a survey of the major legal, political, and cultural issues focused on this precious resource.

Since 2000, total consumptive use by all water users – cities, farms, industries – has been 20% greater than the total flow of the river, on average. In 2002, the volume consumed was twice the entire flow of the river.

The Center for Colorado River is partnering with the Escalante Canyons Festival to bring a slate of speakers to cover the art, science, and politics of the Colorado River system.

Join us for our next installment of Colorado River Science: Moab. We partnered with the Moab Festival of Science to have a conversation with Mike and Jenny Fiebig about their fall 2018 boating tour from the Wind River Range down to Mexico.

Students from the Center for Colorado River Studies headed to the field in April, 2019 to get in-person experience on the river. The USU class called "River Planning and Management" is a collaborative course for water resources and engineering students

What Glen Canyon once was is starting to come back. At Lake Powell’s high water mark plants, insects and wildlife have been settling back in. With continued demand for water we’ve had a two-decade-long shortage on the river system, said Eric Balken.

The Department of the Interior is conducting the third experimental flow at Glen Canyon Dam since implementing its LTEMP. The goal is to provide enhanced habitat for the lifecycle of aquatic insects that are the primary food source for fish.

As the Colorado River’s flow declines, water supplies in seven states are imperiled by potential shortages. That includes Arizona, which passed legislation outlining steps it would take if water from the river continues to decrease.

One hundred fifty years ago, John Wesley Powell argued that the West needed smart development. Now the fast-growing region is playing catch-up. The American West is also a region that depends heavily on science for its long-term livability.

Representatives of seven Western states and the federal government signed a landmark deal on Monday laying out potential cuts in water deliveries through 2026 to reduce the risks of the river’s reservoirs hitting critically low levels.

When one considers the historic harm done by mining operations to rivers in the West, it is tempting to speculate—if people then could only understand what is known about how river systems work could one have avoided decades of ecological disaster?

"Now that the agreement’s been signed, everybody’s looking at augmentation,” said Paul Orme. Projects such as desalination of brackish groundwater, repair of leaking pipelines and recycling of wastewater could be funded by municipal bonds.

Students from the Center for Colorado River Studies headed to the field in April, 2019 to get in-person experience on the river. The USU class called "River Planning and Management" is a collaborative course for water resources and engineering students.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Desert Research Institute are working to better understand evaporation rates at Lake Powell, one of the key recommendations from the 2016 “Fill Mead First” report from the Center for Colorado River Studies.

After months of negotiations, seven basin states wait for Congressional approval. "The urgency is real because our system is stressed by warmer temperatures,” Colorado’s water official, James Eklund, told the House Natural Resources Committee last week."...

When you consider the historic harm done by mining operations to rivers in the West, it is tempting to speculate—if people then could only understand what we know now about how river systems work … could we have avoided ecological upheaval and disaster?

Will Utah have sufficient water in an era of declining stream flows to support a population expected to double, strong agriculture, recreation economies and a healthy environment?

On October 13, 2018 we asked national experts -- can you rehabilitate a stressed river ecosystem and still meet the water needs of 40 million people? Find out what they said.

Bullfrog Marina • Ever since the Colorado River began filling Utah’s Glen Canyon and its countless side canyons in 1963, conservationists have been calling for emptying the lake that now supports a recreation economy and power generation.

Keith Moses said coming to terms with the limits of the Colorado River is like losing a loved one. "It reminds me of the seven stages of grief," Moses said. "Because I think we've been in denial for a long time."

The study documents how Partnership Tribes currently use their water, projects how future water development could occur and describes the potential effects of future tribal water development on the Colorado River System.

Check out our colleagues' presentations from the fall AGU meeting held in Washington DC in December 2018.

Experimental releases that mimic natural floods have nudged the Colorado River ecosystem back toward its natural state, but have not fully restored the river.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation begins a four-day controlled flood of the Grand Canyon. The goal is to help move sand and sediment down the Colorado River the way the river's natural flows did before construction of Glen Canyon Dam.

In the 55 years since the federal government poured about 5 million cubic yards of concrete across the Colorado River to form Glen Canyon Dam the demand for water and electricity in Arizona, Nevada and California has turned the river’s ecology upside down...

Shrinking snowpack in the Colorado River watershed is not just a water supply problem, but could also lead to a variety of water quality concerns. Listen to two experts describe these changes and how we might adapt.

"Adaptive management will flounder, says a veteran of efforts on the Colorado River, "if it's only guided by stakeholder concerns and is tightly constrained by nuanced policy considerations."

From Scientific American: Jack Schmidt, a former chief of the U.S. Geological Survey's Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, says "the science doesn't back it up. Instead, it could cause "one hell of a problem," said Schmidt.

In a technical assessment of scientific issues associated with the proposed project Jack Schmidt, center director, offers an exhaustive analysis of anticipated water savings and possible risks of FMF’s implementation.

The Fill Mead First (FMF) plan would establish Lake Mead reservoir as the primary water storage facility of the main-stem Colorado River and would relegate Lake Powell reservoir to a secondary water storage facility to be used only when Lake Mead is full....

An on-the-water field experience for stakeholders, tribal, NGO staff, and river scientists to learn about and discuss water-supply policy, river ecosystem health requirements, reservoir operations, and the aspirations of users of the River’s water.