A conceptual breakthrough has emerged for the Colorado River’s future. Here’s what it looks like.

After months of stalemate glimmers of hope have emerged for consensus on a new plan to manage the shrinking Colorado River Negotiators from the seven river basin states explained in a series of meetings in up-to-date weeks that they were discussing a plan rooted in a concept that breaks from decades of management practice Rather than basing water releases on reservoir levels it would base the amount disclosed from the system s two major reservoirs on the amount of water flowing in the river The new concept would be more responsive as river flows become more variable The comments signal a break in months of stalemate between the Upper Basin states Colorado Utah New Mexico and Wyoming and the three Lower Basin states California Nevada and Arizona The states representatives are wrestling with a seemingly simple question How should the river s water be allocated as long-term drought and higher temperatures fueled by weather change decimate the amount of water available The Upper Basin states have argued that they have already borne the brunt of lower river flows That s because they rely on snowmelt and precipitation since they are upstream of the system s two major reservoirs Lakes Powell and Mead The Lower Basin states which sit below the reservoirs and rely on releases from them for their water supplies have announced they have already made major reductions in water use and that the Upper Basin states must also agree to cuts The new concept for managing the river reflects an attempt to account for the reality of the shrinking river and will if adopted adjust releases from the reservoirs based on the amount of water in the river This is a very new thing Arizona s negotiator Tom Buschatzke disclosed of the idea at a June meeting of the Arizona Reconsultation Committee It is focused on what the river provides and looking at avenues to share that volume The Colorado River system relied upon by million people stands on the brink of system failure Colorado s negotiator Becky Mitchell stated at a June meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission We also stand on the precipice of a major decision point an opportunity point she explained We have the responsibility and opportunity to do better if we collectively choose to do so After years of talks the states face a federal deadline to submit a plan early next year with other decisions due sooner Current rules dictating how the river is managed expire at the end of What does the new concept look like The conceptual framework dictates that releases from Lakes Powell and Mead would be a percentage of a rolling three-year average of the river s natural flow That s a huge shift from previous management plans that called for releasing set quantities of water based on reservoir levels Using a percentage instead of a fixed volume would acknowledge that the amount of water in the river has shrunk significantly since when the states struck the original agreement over how to share the flows The quantification of hydrologic shortage is incredibly significant Mitchell noted No amount of lawyering is going to fix the math complication we must live with the river we have not the river we want What do people think of it I think it has a lot of promise Anne Castle a former assistant secretary for water and science at the U S Interior Department and a former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission stated of the emerging concept I think it responds directly to the hydrological situation that we re in where supply is shrinking and it s also very volatile she revealed in an interview If you base allocations on a percentage of fresh hydrology I think that gets you closer to veritably solving the complication of having a big gap in supply and demand in the Colorado River system But the devil s in the details she warned The states if they adopt the plan will have to decide how to calculate the river s natural flow which is the amount of water that would be in the river without any human intervention That number will serve as the base from which the percentage is derived Then they ll have to decide exactly what that percentage should be Negotiators will also have to determine how to enforce the agreement if the Upper Basin is obligated to ensure a percentage of the river reaches the reservoirs but fails to do so Castle mentioned Jared Patterson with Trek Las Vegas guides a kayak tour group along the waters of the Colorado River near Willow Beach Arizona on June Photo by RJ Sangosti The Denver Post How long do states have to hammer out details Federal functionaries for the first time last week publicly disclosed a hard deadline for the negotiations The states need to tell the federal cabinet by Nov if there will be a deal stated Scott Cameron the acting assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior Then the states would have until Feb to submit a detailed plan In the meantime the U S Bureau of Reclamation will continue the monthslong process of analyzing other prospective management plans as required by the National Environmental Agenda Act Federal bureaucrats plan to analyze such a wide range of options that any plan submitted by the states would fit in that range Cameron revealed last month at a conference in Boulder The bureau is on track to release a draft of that analysis by the end of the year and a final plan by summer he explained Even as negotiations have faltered at times and tensions between the states have flared into the residents eye negotiators from the states have repeatedly pledged their commitment to finding a deal We are dedicated to a consensus agreement Commissioner Estevan Lopez of New Mexico disclosed Anything else is likely to lead to litigation and that leads to years and years of uncertainty and none of us will win in that context How s the river looking this year anyway Not good The amount of water expected to flow into Lake Powell this year is of the average from to according to the National Weather Institution s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center This is one of the five driest years over the past or years Daniel Bunk the office chief for the Bureau of Reclamation s Boulder Canyon Operations Office declared at last month s Arizona Reconsultation Committee meeting Related Articles Front Range concerns over purchase of Colorado River rights on Western Slope to get hearing As Colorado water deaths trend lower this rescue organization trains in the bulk hard conditions to keep people safe Injuries in Colorado s Grand County lead to four rescue missions Denver Water plans appeal of judge s ban on filling expanded Gross Reservoir Littleton rafter missing for nearly a year discovered dead in Colorado River The the greater part current modeling by the Bureau of Reclamation shows that in the worst-case scenario Lake Powell s water level could drop below the minimum power pool level by December If that were to happen water would no longer be able to flow through Glen Canyon Dam s hydroelectric infrastructure which delivers power to seven states including Colorado The the majority likely scenario isn t good either If conditions continue as expected the reservoir will not add any water to its supplies in the next year and water levels are expected to decline over the next two years That s especially troubling since both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are only a third full now Overall we know we have a very vital gap between supply and demand and we ve been getting away with using more than nature s supplies Castle disclosed But the reservoirs are going down very swiftly especially this year You can t overspend your income on a permanent basis Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter