LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A new report says the demand for Colorado River water outpaces supply in "all corners of the watershed," and calls on officials to take "bold action" to address declining reservoir levels.
WATCH | Water year starts Oct. 1. How is our supply holding up?
"What we want to underscore more than anything else is that we need more transparency and we need more accountability," Kyle Roerink, Director of the Great Basin Water Network, said during a press conference Wednesday.
The meeting, held by a coalition of non-governmental agencies, launched the report There's No Water Available.
The analysis, authored by several water advocacy groups in the Colorado River's basin, contends that each state in the Colorado River Basin must commit to using less water and that new dams and diversion projects should be foregone. The document breaks down nine recommendations for decision-makers to weigh, with high stakes.
"We want to start a new era of discussion in this new water year. We could see serious water crashes this water year in the next 12 months because of the leadership failure that we have seen over the last several decades of this century," Zach Frankel, Executive Director of the Utah Rivers Council, said.
This comes as closed-door negotiations continue for the Colorado River's post-2026 operating guidelines, along with the start of a new water year.
"The truth is, water is not available in the quantities we've been promised, but hope is. Hope comes when leaders at every level — Congress, the states, and local water managers — stop pretending that the old way of doing things will work and start acting with the courage this crisis demands," Cullen McGinnis, Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter member, said.
Above all, the group says these decisions must be made openly and quickly.
"There is just this procrastination and this lack of accountability inside both our statehouses and inside the Bureau of Reclamation. And so it raises questions about whether we're being served. We, the public, as Americans, have a right to ask 'are we being well-served?'" Frankel asked.
"We need to shift the governance of the Colorado River basin out of this backroom negotiating room, and it needs to move back into the halls of democracy so that people can get engaged and all constituents that are at the table wanting to see progress can move forward," he continued.
An agreement between the seven Colorado River Basin states has not yet been reached, although representatives have offered the idea of a "supply-driven framework" as a possible solution to the crisis.
But the conversations have been difficult, leaving a potential plan in a gridlock as time runs out and reservoir levels continue to drop.
At the end of September, Lake Mead's was filled up to just 31% capacity with a level 6 feet lower than that time last year, according to Bureau of Reclamation data. And a recent study points to continued decline — possibly surpassing 2022's historic low in 2027.
"If we don't cut 5 million acre feet of water from the system, Lake Powell and Lake Mead will disappear, and there will be no storage there whatsoever, and residents in Nevada, and Arizona, and California will not have their full water supply," Frankel said.
Read the full report here: