WEBSITES: Department of Interior
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ALTERNATIVES FROM THE STATES, MAJOR NGOS, AND ACADEMICS
New information for Post-2026 EIS
- February 13, 2025 - Comments by the Lower Basin States on Alternatives Report
- January 17, 2025 - Post-2026 Alternatives Report. Reclamation.
- December 30, 2024 - Upper Division States Alternative Refinements
- December 22, 2023 - Table: Lower Basin System Conservation Implementation Agreements
- December 22, 2023 - Upper Basin System Conservation amounts were less than 38,000 acre-feet.
- March 5, 2024 - Upper Basin States Alternative for EIS; Post-2026 Operations
- March 6, 2024 - Lower Basin States Alternative Presentation for EIS; Post-2026 Operations
- March 11, 2024 - Tribal Principles to Reclamation. Sovereign Tribes.
- March 29, 2024 - Cooperative Conservation NEPA Alternative. Audabon et al.
- March 29, 2024 -Managing the Powell / Grand Canyon / Mead Ecosystem after 2026. Schmidt, Kuhn and Fleck.
- MOU: Upper Basin Tribes and Upper Colorado River Commission.
- April 29, 2024 - National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Alternative
WEBINAR UPDATES
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NEW SCIENCE IN 2024
Snowmelt Efficiency since 2020
The evaporation and sublimation "take" of climate change impacts
- 2020: The snowpack was 107%, but runoff was 61%. A deficit of 46%.
- 2021: The snowpack was 89%, but runoff was 37%. A deficit of 52 %.
- 2022: The snowpack was 90%, but runnoff was 63%. A deficit of 27%
- 2023: The snowpack was 161%, but runoff was 140%. A deficit of 21%.
- 2024: Projected runoff might be 87%.
- Source: KSL.com
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NEWS From 2024
Series by Alan Best at Big Pivots
October, 2024
Additional News
- March 20, 2025 - The March 24-Month study and the myth of a “Compact Call". Eric Kuhn for Inkstain.
- March 12, 2025 - Feds blasted for not protecting infrastructure at Arizona's Glen Canyon Dam. By Tony Davis for AZ Daily Star.
- March 8, 2025 - Colorado River choices botched by Feds under Biden, letter to Burgum alleges. By Greg Haas for Channel 8 News, Las Vegas.
- March 4, 2025 - 'Water Trains' desalting stations among proposals to boost Arizona's water supplies. By Tony Davis for AZ Daily Star.
- January 30, 2025 - River District warns again about impacts to Western Slope. By Heather Sackett for Aspen Journalism.
- January 22, 2025 - The January 2025 24-month study is a major caution sign for the Colorado River Basin. Kuhn, Schmidt and Fleck.
- December 12, 2024 - Colorado has big dreams to use more water from the Colorado River but wiil planned reservoirs ever be built? By Heather Sackett for Aspen Journalism.
- December 10, 2024 - "Zero Progress:" Western states at impasse in talks on Colorado River water shortages. By Ian James for The Los Angeles Times.
- December 6, 2024 - Colorado River states fear a long legal battle as talks falter over shortage rules. By Brandon Loomis for The Arizona Republic.
- November 25, 2024 - Long-unthinkable, a court fight looms over the Colorado River. By Tony Davis for The Arizona Daily Star.
- November 19, 2024 - Arizona, California push study of forced cuts on Colorado River. By Shannon Mullane for The Colorado Sun.
- May 5, 2024 - Why Colorado River basin states are split on long-term plan to manage its water. By Carter Williams for KSL.
- March 6, 2024 - Lower Colorado River Basin states submit competing water conservation plan as deadline looms. Sharon Udasin for The Hill.
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NOTE:
- The Draft EIS is scheduled to be published at the end of Year 2024. This did not happen.
- It would not surprise us if the Record of Decision arrives at the last possible moment, which is September of 2026.
- We think the final decision willl not be the right one, as was the case for the Record of Decision signed on December 13, 2007.
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SCOPING REPORT is provided HERE
DISCUSSION: Deep Uncertainty
Definition: When parties do not know or cannot agree on future conditions and how to measure these conditions.
We think the future is easy to determine, but the necessary sacrifices to prepare for this future are not achievable, because our society is deeply disconnected from Nature. We find it difficult to accept this truth: Nature as baseline.
NEWS about Deep Uncertainty
National Academy of Sciences on deep uncertainty
- "There is a broad class of problems that have no "solution" in the sense of an agreed course of action that would be expected to make the problem go away. These problems can also be so important that they should not be avoided or ignored until the fog lifts. We simply must learn to deal more effectively with their twists and turns as they unfold. We require sensible regular progress to anticipate what these developments might be with a balanced diversity of approaches. The payoff is that we will have had the chance to consider alternative courses of action with some degree of calm before we may be forced to choose among them in urgency or have them forced on us when other--perhaps better--options have been lost. Increasing atmospheric CO2 and its climatic consequences constitute such a problem." Reference, 1983.
The naturalist approach
DOING THE MATH WITH PENCIL AND PAPER
- Baseline: Since 1991, the take from global warming is 800,000 acre-feet per decade, or 80,000 acre-feet per year.
- Baseline: Since 1999, the take from global warming and human over-consumption is 1.35 million acre-feet (maf) per year.
- Baseline: Total reductions of 1.35 maf will stabilize the system for the decade of the 2020s.
- Baseline: Restoring the reservoirs in the 2020s will require reductions of 2.7 maf.
- Baseline: Total reductions in the decade of the 2030s will be 3.5 maf.
- Baseline: Total reductions in the decade of the 2040s will be 4.3 maf.
- Baseline: Total reductions in the decade of the 2050s will be 5.1 maf.
- Baseline: Total reductions in the decade of the 2060s will be 5.9 maf.
- Did Reclamation simulate this in their modeling? Yes they did and in 2011.
NEWS
COMMENT LETTERS FOR POST-2026 OPERATIONS EIS
SCOPING COMMENTS COMPILED BY BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
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COMMENTS ARE DUE: Tuesday, August 15, 2023 (60 days)
Send comments to:
eMall address: crbpost2026@usbr.gov
Or. via postal service to:
Bureau of Reclamation
Attn: Post-2026 (Mail Stop 84- 55000)
P.O. Box 25007, Denver, CO 80225
Press Release
More information will be provided at a later time. Please return.
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- To review the Notice of Intent for this scoping process in 2023, click here.
- To compare the Notice of Intent for the scoping process in 2005, click here.
- To review last year's (2022) "prescoping" process, click here.
- To review the website for scoping process of 2023, click here.
- To review Reclamations presentation for public scoping, click here.
- To review the recordings of the three scoping webinars of 2023, click here.
- To review Reclamation's 2012 Handbook for following the NEPA process, CLICK HERE
ALTERNATIVES
- Please read the citizen alternative called the One-Dam Solution and written in 2005 by Living Rivers & Colorado Riverkeeper.
WE THINK THIS IS HELPFUL INFORMATION: Opinions by the Federal Appellate Court in the 10th District; July of 2023. NEPA litigation for the Green River Block Water Exchange Contract between Reclamation and the state of Utah; a new depletion contract for water stored in Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
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NEWS
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NARRATIVE
During the public scoping meetings for the development of 2007 Interim Guidelines, the water managers in attendance were emphatic; that reductions greater than 20% would be "impossible" to achieve. This is why the seven states did not participate in the voluntary prescriptions of the original Guidelines, until reservoir elevations approached the level where intakes at Glen Canyon Dam begin to suck air.
Precautionary planning in the Colorado River Basin was possible in 1970 when Long Range Operating Criteria (LROC) became the first tool to achieve water resource sustainibilty, and precautionary planning right now is a situation of too little and too late. Because this economic engine is designed for consumptive uses of 16.5 million acre-feet annualy, not 12.5 maf (a reduction of minus 25%). Consequently, the decision-makers have to understand that this ship has already slammed into an iceberg. We will eventually understand that the best solution is to begin conversations about starting over.
Read: Revelle and Wagoneer, 1983
The proposed reductions from the Lower Basin States, as of this date, is about 12% per year. The ask from Reclamation was a range from 14% to 27%. Additionally, it would appear that the Upper Basin states will not be participating in any reductions at this time. The Upper Basin states are building and enlarging dams at the present time, and other diversion contracts have been proposed. Consequently, the grassroots have intervened by engaging the judicial branch of governement.
If you think that curtailing water used to grow alfalfa is a solution, please understand that such a campaign actually means changing the food preferences of everyday consumers. It means asking North Americans to forsake hamburgers and pizzas; milk products suchs as yogurt, cheese, ice cream and formulas for infants.
At the end of the next decade, reductions of 30% will be necessary; and then 40% in the following decades thereafter. Especially if the municipalities continue to sprawl across the deserts of North America, and fueling that growth by purchasing water from farmers that take the responsibility of feeding the nation very seriously.
Proposed new sources of water, such as constructing desalination facilities, and the electric generating stations that will power them, and the pipelines, and the pump stations, and the transmission wires, will not be operational in the 2030s, nor in the 2040s.
So these are the decades when the system will crash and the assets of 50 to 60 million people become stranded.
If your thinking otherwise, consider that it took parts of four decades to negotiate the Law of the River, and to finish the construction of Hoover Dam, the All American Canal, and the Colorado River Aqueduct.
We can anticipate the depletion of our groundwater supplies as the third and final bad planning decision, and witness the great abandonment of this geography.
Rather than kicking a rusty can in the wrong direction, let's stop this madness and take a completely different pathway.
- Read our 2022 prescoping comment letter HERE, which concludes that this process must include an emergency action plan because the seven states will fail once again and the system will be lost.
- Review the entire prescoping process from last year (2022) HERE
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COMPARING THE PROCESS OF 2005 WITH THE PROCESS OF 2022
Federal Register Notices of 2023 and from 2005
Scoping Summaries
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TERMINATION DATES OF 2007 INTERIM GUIDELINES
Termination date of 2007 Guidelines
See: 2007 Record of Decision.
- "Except as provided in Section 8.B., these Guidelines shall terminate on December 31, 2025 (through preparation of the 2026 Annual Operating Plan)."
Termination dates of "Special Provisions"
- 1. "The provisions for the delivery and accounting of ICS in Section 3 shall remain in effect through December 31, 2036, unless subsequently modified, for any ICS remaining in an ICS Account on December 31, 2026."
- 2. "The provisions for the creation and delivery of Tributary Conservation ICS and Imported ICS in Section 3 shall continue in full force and effect until fifty years from the date of the execution of the ROD."
- 3. "The provisions for the creation and delivery of DSS in Section 4 shall continue in full force and effect until fifty years from the date of the execution of the ROD."
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