100 years after compact, Colorado River nearing crisis point

As water levels on the Colorado River plummet, calls for reduced use have often been met with increased population growth.

During the past two decades, the situation on the Colorado River has become significantly more unbalanced, more dire. A worker diverts water as a sprinkler system is installed for alfalfa at the Cox family farm Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, near Brawley, Calif. In November 1922, seven land-owning white men brokered a deal to allocate water from the Colorado River, which winds through the West and ends in Mexico. During the past two decades, pressure has intensified on the river as the driest 22-year stretch in the past 1,200 years has gripped the southwestern U.S.

The commissioner set an August deadline for the basin states to come up with options for potential water cuts. The Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — submitted a plan. The Lower Basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — did not submit a combined plan. The initial compact was negotiated and signed on Nov. 24, 1922, by seven land-owning white men, who brokered the deal to benefit people who looked like them, said Jennifer Pitt of the Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover presides over the signing of the Colorado River Compact in Santa Fe, N.M., on Nov. 24, 1922. Seven land-owning white men brokered a deal to allocate water from the Colorado River, which winds through the West and ends in Mexico.

“In 1922, my tribe was subsistence living,” Vigil said. “The only way we could survive was through government rations on a piece of land that wasn’t our traditional homeland. That’s where we were at when the foundational law of the river was created.”Agriculture uses the majority of the water on the river, around 70% or 80% depending on what organization is making the estimate. When it comes to the difficult question of how to reduce water use, farmers and ranchers are often looked to first.

Nine years out of 10, they’ll receive payment from a conservation group in exchange for leaving the surplus water in the river. But in Colorado, the state revokes water rights after 10 years if they aren’t used.

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