This week, Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado’s full-time Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission, addressed the more than a thousand Colorado River Water Users Association conference attendees at the 2023 annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Commissioner Mitchell stood up for Colorado water users who live on the front lines of climate change and regularly take significant cuts to their water supply.
This year’s sold-out conference’s theme was ‘Constructing a Resilient Future: Rebuilding From the Ground Up.’
The meetings, panels, and hallway conversations helped set the stage for ongoing negotiations on improving the management of the river’s largest reservoirs– Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Both reservoirs hit record lows in recent years as unprecedented drought and overreliance on the river continue to threaten a water supply for millions of people.