As a Coloradan and water engineer with 48 years on the front lines, I am outraged – not merely disappointed – that the seven states renegotiating reservoir operations, shortage criteria and the post-2026 management plan under the 1922 Colorado River Compact have collapsed into a stalemate. After two full years of talks, and 19 years after the failed Interim guidelines, the Nov. 11, 2025, deadline – set by the Bureau of Reclamation – passed without a single agreement, not even a token gesture of progress. It is a failure of leadership.
Why am I not surprised? Negotiations have been anything but transparent, and the public has been shut out of decisions about our most public resource. Where is the urgency, the accountability, the recognition that we are edging toward the cliff? Who thinks that a nontransparent process can withstand the scrutiny and approval of our state legislatures and Congress? People at the table are experts, yes, but they are also advocates for narrow geographies – states, agencies, boards, governors. They are risk-averse. What’s missing is a basin-wide perspective and acknowledgment that we must negotiate based on the river we have today, not the nostalgic river we wish we had. We are trapped in a culture of an unsustainable system.
California, Arizona and Nevada have long exceeded their allocations. Yet in recent years, they have made substantial cuts and are now proposing deeper ones. The Upper Basin, by contrast, points to its history of using less than its legal share and refuses to commit to further reductions. We already take involuntary cuts every year based on whatever Mother Nature delivers, without the safety net of massive storage from Mead and Powell. Instead of confronting this imbalance honestly, the states have descended into entitlement and finger-pointing. Compromise has been absent. The river does not care about politics, priority dates, the law or allocations. We are witnessing an inability to adapt to a changing era and climate.
The consequences are severe. If the states continue to stall, the Trump administration, litigation or unelected judges will rewrite the rules for us. We are ceding Western control of our destiny. This impasse could not come at a worse moment: The Colorado headwaters are facing the lowest snowpack on record for this date. Lake Mead is at 27% of capacity, and Lake Powell is at 34%. Critical infrastructure is at risk. Upper Basin water rights are at risk from a Lower Basin compact call as early as 2027.
Who should be responsible for making cuts of 2.1 to 4 million AF? Everyone, in an equitable proportion to historic consumptive use, including Colorado’s Front Range. Allocations must be tied to supply-driven metrics, not the century-old fiction of fixed-demand entitlements. Mother Nature does not take orders from seven states. Future allocations should be based on a three-year running average of native Colorado River flow, with scenario filters for both low- and high-water years. Stabilizing storage at Powell and Mead should come first. Investment in agricultural efficiency should be a priority. Colorado’s State Engineer should immediately draft a water management plan, within a public process, to implement cuts, based on a combination of prior appropriations, public health/safety and equitable apportionment. Tribal water claims must be adjudicated and honored.
We also need structural reform. The Bureau of Reclamation has been complicit in bureaucratic inertia and a lack of accountability. The BOR has known about the river’s trendline of overallocation since 1984. We can do better. The necessity of an Upper Basin Commission deserves scrutiny. All seven states and all water providers must acknowledge the undeniable link between water and land use. And if the Upper Basin makes additional cuts, the Compact’s outdated requirement that the Upper Basin not cause the flows at Lees Ferry to be depleted below 75 million AF in a 10-year running average must be eliminated. The math no longer works, and hydrology has changed. Above all, we must recognize that healthy rivers are foundational – not optional.
Leadership is not measured by what we inherit from the past, but by our stewardship of the resources we bequeath to future generations. A century ago, politics and power shaped the Compact. Today, the river is demanding we rewrite it.
Louis Meyer PE, founder of engineering firm SGM, is retired and lives on a farm in the north Animas River Valley. He was the lead author of Colorado’s first water plan for the Colorado Basin in 2015.
