PBS News Hour - Full Show - As the Colorado River dries up, how Western states are confronting the water crisis

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Roughly one in ten Americans gets their water from the Colorado River. But a worsening drought, driven in part by climate change, is drying up the river, and states are fighting over water rights. Horizons moderator William Brangham explores what that means for communities and industries that depend on that water with Luke Runyon, Wade Crowfoot and Joel Ferry. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

I'm William Brangham, and this is Horizons. About one in ten Americans get their water from the Colorado River, but a worsening drought driven in part by climate change is drying up that river. States are now fighting over water rights. What does that mean for the communities and industries who depend on that water for their survival? And what is being done to help grant some urgently needed relief? Coming up next. Welcome to Horizons.

The American West is running. out of water. This is a crisis that has been building for decades, driven by a long, persistent drought, but it will likely come to ahead this summer. Why? Thanks in part to climate change, this last winter was brutally warm. And so that heavy snow that is supposed to fall on the mountain west didn't. Temperatures in March hit record highs. That snowpack, that frozen high altitude bank of water in good years, is supposed to slowly melt and and send water down into rivers and reservoirs to be used by millions. But that bank has barely any deposits left.

Because of that, the Colorado River is slipping to record low levels, threatening the water supply for 40 million people across seven Western states. This is also a power crisis. The two reservoirs on the Colorado, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, generate hydroelectric power for millions. and those two colossal man-made lakes are also near their record lows. If water levels drop much further, those hydroelectric dams would stop working. On top of all of this is a political stalemate.

Of these seven western states that draw water from the Colorado River Basin, there are four in the upper basin and three in the lower, these states cannot agree on how to best share this dwindling resource. The rules for doing so were initially set out in the state, the 1922 Colorado River Compact. It was last updated in 2007, but it's been a source of conflict for years. In February, the seven states failed to reach a new agreement about the river, and the federal government is now threatening to impose its own plan. In a moment, we're going to talk with two officials from two of those states. But first, for a deeper understanding

of how we got into this crisis, we turned to Luke Runyon. He's the co-director of the Water desk at the University of Colorado Boulder's Center for Environmental Journalism. And he's covered Western water issues for nearly a decade, including in his excellent award-winning podcast, Thirst Gap, learning to live with less on the Colorado River. Luke Runyon, so good to have you on the program. For people who have not been following this as closely as you have, how bad is it out in the West right now? We're gearing up for a pretty unprecedented year in the Colorado River Basin.

The drought of record in the basin was set back in 2002, one of the driest years that we've ever seen in the Colorado River Basin, and this year is threatening to break that record. Really low snowpack over the Rocky Mountains, where the Colorado River and its main tributaries begin. And really record warm temperatures over this past winter and this spring have left us with an extremely limited water supply for the region. And going back beyond just this particularly grim winter, separate from how we manage the water, how did we get into this crisis? What's the driving factors there? Yeah, this has been kind of described as a slow-moving train wreck where we've seen over the last 25, 26 years warming temperatures taking hold across the American Southwest and really upending how the water cycle functions in our region. So we're seeing changes in precipitation, so less snow is falling, more precipitation is falling as rain, which is harder to capture and manage. We've seen soil moisture declining in a lot of parts of the southwest, and that has knock-on effects as well.

And what all of this means is that it's getting much harder to manage the water supply that we do have in the region. At the same time, we've had demand has stayed steady or in some places, risen during that same time. And so what we have is a massive gap between the amount of water that we have available and the demand for that same supply. Right. I don't think it takes an advanced mathematics degree to get that if you only have, say, five cups of water going into the system, but a demand for six cups out of it, that does not work.

When you look across the Southwest, who are the principal users? Who are the thirstiest customers, so to speak, across? the West? The largest user is agriculture, and farmers and ranchers use, depending on how you want to measure it, about 75 to 80 percent of the available water in the Colorado River Basin. That varies across the various states, but agriculture really is the primary user. And the Southwest produces a lot of food that people eat. You know, if you look in Southern California, Southern in Arizona, it really becomes kind of the lettuce bowl of the country, particularly in the wintertime. You've got, you know, large beef operations. So this is, you know, agriculture is definitely

a significant user. The remaining uses are municipalities. You've got some of the largest cities in America that rely on the Colorado River, talking about Phoenix or Los Angeles, Las Vegas, even, you know, Denver, Salt Lake City use a portion of the Colorado River. And then industry makes up the And we've heard a lot about, you know, data center expansion happening in the Southwest, which is a new and growing use of Colorado River water. Another population that we don't talk about too much are the many Native American Indian tribes that are in the Southwest. We spoke recently with Amelia Flores.

She's the chairwoman of the Tribal Council for Colorado River Indian Tribes. Here's how she described the issue from their perspective. The river has its needs. and we're just taking, taking, taking from the river, this river is life to us. It's also life to the animals. It gives water nourishment to the plants, to the trees, to the fish that, you know, swim in the river.

So conservation is part of starting to make this river healthy again. But there's a lot more that needs to take place. Luke, how are tribes and how have they been? been participating in this conversation about what best to do with regards to the river? Well, I think if you talk to a lot of tribes, this has been one of the greatest disappointments of this latest round of policy negotiations. You mentioned this 2007 agreement was one of the last times that there was a big overhaul to how the river was managed. That agreement is expiring this year. And there was a lot of promises that the states made to those Native American tribes

that they were going to be more readily included in this new agreement. And from the tribes that I've spoken to, that has not been the case. Lots of promises that were made in order to include those tribes, get their interests, their economic interests to the table. And some tribes are definitely participants, but there's 30 Native American tribes in this river basin and not all of them have been included in this latest round of talks. So in those latest round of talks,

the seven states were supposed to come up with the plan by, I believe it was Valentine's Day of this year. They failed to do so. Can you explain, just give us the broad architecture of what happened and why those talks and agreement failed? Yeah, so the states have been locked in negotiations for management of the Colorado River for the last several years. They had a really wet year in 2023 that, you know, kind of extended the timeline to make some of these hard decisions. And really what it comes down to is, who wants to feel the pain of water scarcity? And the answer is no one,

and that's why they're locked in a pretty hard stalemate. You have a significant disagreement between the upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and the lower basin states of California, Nevada, and Arizona, you know, basically disagreeing about who has to cut back what amount of water and when and under what condition. And the states still remain locked, in that stalemate and the federal government realizing that some of their infrastructure is being

threatened by this stalemate is starting to come and say, all right, if you states can't come to an agreement, we're going to have to start making some of these hard decisions for you. And does the federal government have that authority to do so? I think we're going to find out here pretty soon. You know, the Bureau of Reclamation, which is the federal agency that manages some of these large dams in the Colorado River Basin, has threatened taking action in the past, and I think some states have been ready to call their bluff of whether or not they have the authority

to make some of these hard decisions. It's much clear in the lower basin. The Secretary of the Interior is considered the water master of the lower basin and can actually make some changes to how water contracts are decided in the lower basin, but in the upper basin it's much less clear about how much authority the federal government actually has on the river. All right, that is Luke Runyon of the University of Colorado's Center for Environmental Journalism.

Luke, thank you so much for this perspective. We really appreciate it. Thanks. So for more on how these different states see this crisis and how they hope to navigate through it, we have two top representatives who are joining us today. Wade Crowfoot is California's Secretary for Natural Resources. He was appointed to the job by California's governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom. And Joel Ferry is commissioner of Utah's Department of National Resources. He was appointed to that position by Utah's Republican Governor Spencer Cox.

Gentlemen, thank you both so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us on such a critical issue. Joel Ferry, to you first, I want to ask each of you this, but when you look at this issue of the seven states all having a straw in the river, so to speak, and trying to figure out an appropriate allotment, what do you see as the principal driver of the problem that we are in right now? Well, quite frankly, I think that your previous presenter,

Luke, talked about this very clearly. The problem that we have and the biggest hurdle that we have is the lack of water. The drought, the increased temperatures, and the increased demands have all caused us to experience these shortages. And that's driven us to this position where today, these negotiations have been very difficult. But as we try to come together, it's ultimately what we're trying to do is slice up a smaller pie.

And it's been a very difficult situation because it means someone's going to have to give something up. Now, the states have come together and we're working on solutions associated with conservation or reductions in use. But it is big cuts and it is a big hurdle and a big challenge that we have to. overcome. Wade Groffitt, the same question to you. When you look at this writ large in the West, what do you see as the principal driver of the problem? It's mother nature. Simply put, the basin is not producing the water supply that all of our states anticipated decades ago. So we all anticipated and planned for and build infrastructure to use more water than currently available. The good news is all of our states, including Mexico, which uses a portion of the

river, agree on the problem statement. We need to maintain economic vitality and prosperous communities with less water. We also share a long-term vision of the basin, which is we succeed or fail together. We have to figure this out across our seven states. I mean, after all, first and foremost, we're Americans. So while our state negotiators haven't found a pathway, I can tell, it's important to tell people that our governors are really focused on finding a path forward over the long term. Joel Ferry, do you think that, again, I'm not pointing the finger at you or at any other state, but do you think that this is also partly a political failure? Because this has been known, like the warning signs have been here for a very long time that this crisis was coming. and successive administrations from successive states

have in essence kicked the can down the road. Do you think that political leaders take some responsibility for this too? Well, I think we can all share in that responsibility. Every state has its own position. And ultimately, this has been a problem that has taken years, decades, to kind of really to get to this point that we are today.

Now, it's a solvable problem. Our governors have come together now and said, we are going to work together. We're working closely with the Department of Interior with Secretary Bergam in his office to come up with these solutions. It may be something that as we are talking about a perfect storm today because, yes, this has been a crisis that has been slow to progress and to materialize. But it also, you're talking about this year in particular, we are seeing the lowest inflows, the lowest snowpack, the lowest moisture, snow water equivalent in the snowpack. And so you're going to see the lowest inflows into Lake Pal and Lake Mead,

which exacerbate the situation and make it that much more difficult. And so it's hard to plan when you're dealing with such drastic situations. But ultimately, this is something that both our political leaders and the water users have got to come together to find a creative solution and a solution that everybody participates in.

This isn't something that can just be placed on the back of one state or another. And I'm encouraged by some of the discussions that have been happening recently. But ultimately, we've got to come together to find that, find the positive outcome that we can all live with. Well, I would like to talk to each of you about what your relative, your respective state's positions are. We'll start with you, Wade.

When California comes to the negotiating table, who are the players you are representing? What are the principal interests that you feel are critical in these talks? From your state's perspective? Well, Colorado River Water is really important for California. There are about 40 million Americans that draw water from the Colorado River. About half of them, 20 million, live in Southern California. So it's important for our big city, Los Angeles,

the entire region of Southern California. Also, as Luke noted, it's really important for our agricultural communities, particularly in the Imperial County. 100% of the water that they use both for agriculture and drinking. comes from the Colorado River. And each state could explain this, but this is quite important for California and for our future.

We do draw water from other portions of the state, so it's always a bit of a balancing act, but those are the folks that we represent in these negotiations. I also want to agree with Joel that, you know, in a pretty polarized political environment these days, it's pretty refreshing that our states are coming together across party, across geography, with, towards a country,

common solution. You know, you may not expect leaders from California and Utah to agree on many political issues, but, you know, we're working closely together because we share this vision, again, that ultimately we need to build and diversify our water supplies over the long term, create more flexibility across the basin. We all are committed to each other's prosperity. We just have to find the pathway to get there. And Joel Ferry, the same thing, from your perspective, from putting your Utah hat on, what are the critical? critical issues when your state's negotiators come to the table? Well, and I think it's important to recognize there are some differences here.

In the upper basin, we're the headwaters of the Colorado River. Where the water is originally, you know, it's where it's sourced. We add to the river. And so ultimately, we have a different mechanism that we regulate this water. We have, I have thousands of individual water rights in the state of Utah that are tied to the Colorado River or one of its tributaries. It's not just large districts or large irrigation companies that hold those rights. And so we're talking about impacting the individual rights of thousands of people in our states. And so we have to be mindful of that. So we also have

large districts that deliver water, develop water. But in the upper basin, we don't have the storage. Our storage is very limited. Meaning that you guys live above, exactly. For people who don't understand the geography here. You live above those two massive reservoirs, and so you can't just, in a way, turn on the spigot to fill up your needs down below. Exactly right. You think about those large reservoirs as a bank account that can be drawn upon. We don't have that. We have smaller reservoirs. We certainly have a lot of reservoirs, and we've worked with Bureau of Reclamation to build those and local districts to build those. But we don't have that deep bank account that we can pull from. And so we are even more impacted by these drought years or we're impacted a very high level because we're

reliant upon that snowpack and as the snowpack windows are like this year it's just non-existent I mean we have this year irrigation companies and deliveries that are going to be a 10 or 15% of their allocation just they're not going to get any water this year and it's really really difficult and so ultimately we have to look at those factors and those considerations as we look at what the future looks like. What investments need to be made? How can we make this system more resilient? How can we build those bank accounts, augment our water supplies, and ultimately find a solution that will, you know, that will kind of take on this abundance mentality instead of a scarcity mentality? I think we need to have a complete mindset shift in how we're addressing some of these

problems. Wade Crowfoot, the lower basin states put together a proposal that they put to the upper basin states. Can you just lay out what the proposal that you guys have put forward is? Sure. And I want to agree with Joel. It really looks different in the lower basin than it does the upper basin. The lower basin, we get our water supplies off to Colorado from Lake Mead. So that's one of the two large reservoirs just outside of Las Vegas that's in precipitous decline. As a result of actually having a little bit more understanding of the amount of water supply, compared to the upper basin because they're at the headwaters, we put on the table significant cuts across our three states,

Arizona, California, and Nevada. And we think that's appropriate, given where we're at in the basin and with that reservoir supply. So our proposal is really a bridging proposal for the next couple of years, significant cuts from water users in our three states. And then specifically, a big question and point of difference is the amount of water that flows from that upper reservoir, Lake Powell, to Lake Mead. So we've suggested a certain level of reduced flow into the basin that we rely on, as well as the use of certain federal reservoirs in the upper basin. It gets really complicated, just given all of the plumbing, the complicated plumbing, and the law.

because some of us have more senior water rights than others. So writ large, the lower basin proposal is really meant to be a bridge to a longer-term agreement that we can come up with across seven states. Joel Ferry and Wade, I'd like to ask you both this. I mean, if, unless something changes meteorologically, and this is the trajectory, maybe won't have as bad a winter as we just had,

but the forecasting does not look good for years down the line. If cutbacks are required, do you believe that each of your states have the mechanism to actually do more with less? Do you think that your governors, that your political leaders have the levers to pull that will get cities to use less water, that will get farmers and ranchers to use less water?

Is that a realistic tool in our arsenal? Well, I'm glad to jump in. Yeah, the tools are there, and that's what's actually really encouraging. So, for example, farmers can conserve water, and they have demonstrated their ability to do so, certainly in California, but I know in other states, including Utah. Oftentimes, that conservation needs to be compensated because essentially you're impacting the livelihood of that farmer. But time and again, farmers have stepped up on those voluntary water conservation programs, We also have so much potential to expand water recycling using the same water more than once or even opportunities to build targeted and environmentally banalination to use. So to me, the solutions are there.

We just need to bridge this challenging moment and ensure that there can be shared federal and state investment in these solutions. Joel, did you want to jump in on there? Yes, I actually love that question, William, and I agree completely with Wade. And looking at some of the examples that California has put in place, they've really led out on a lot of these areas when they talk about water reuse, desal, and even utilization of water that they have, that they're moving from other parts of the state down into the Colorado River areas of their state. And looking at that, being creative with that.

But in the state of Utah, what we've done over the last number of years, our legislature, our governor, have dedicated significant amount of updated legislation on water law and policy that addresses some of these concerns that takes into consideration the needs of farmers and ranchers, but also the needs in the cities. And we're incentivizing conservation, reducing use, reducing depletion of water, consumption of water throughout our state. Utah is an arid state. We're constantly dealing with drought. So that drought cycle is not something that's new to us. What is new is how, deep and how impactful it is. But ultimately, we have just tools in place, particularly on the Colorado River, we have a demand management program in the state of Utah where individuals can

receive compensation for conservation for using less water so that we can offset that impact. But ultimately, when we do that, that water is then flowing down into Lake Powell and other, and downstream, where we can recognize this is our contribution to the ultimate conservation efforts to deliver water and make sure that we're fulfilling our obligations in the upper base. I just want to thank both of you gentlemen. We are out of time today, but this is, it's an inspiring example to have Republican-led state and Democratic-led state agreeing on such a critical public policy issue and vowing to be working together. Thank you both so much. Wade Crowfoot, Joel Ferry from Utah and California. Thank you both so much for being here. We really appreciate

your time. Thank you. Thank you, William. And that is it for this episode of Horizons. You can watch us on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and give us a rating. It will help more people see this program. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week.