Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Fellow Coloradans,
Let’s start with a truth that somehow still feels radical: The Colorado River is not broken. We are. The river is doing exactly what rivers do when you take too much from them for too long. It is responding to reality. And right now, for many, reality is inconvenient.
For more than a century, we built a system of optimism and entitlement. We planned for abundance, labeled it “normal,” and wrote it into law. When the water showed up, we spent it. When it didn’t, we blamed the weather, climate change, or each other—anything except the simple math.
The river never signed those agreements. And it is not interested in our love story with the past.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead were supposed to protect the system. Instead, we turned them into shock absorbers for delay. We wanted them to be savings accounts, when in reality we treated them like credit cards—use now, pay later. Well, interest has accrued and the bill has arrived. Both reservoirs are in a treacherous situation.
Lake Powell was never meant to be drained so that hard decisions could be postponed downstream. It was designed to stabilize the system, to smooth out highs and lows; not to prop up demand that no longer matches supply. Year after year, Powell has been drawn down to protect uses elsewhere—even as inflows decline and the margin for error disappears.
Lake Mead tells the same story from the other end. Despite conservation programs, pilot projects, and voluntary agreements, Mead keeps dropping. Not because we lack creativity—but because we are still taking more water out of the system than the river is putting in.
Reservoirs don’t lie. They are the silent accountants of what we actually do, not what we say we’re doing.
Here in Colorado, when the river runs low, the impacts are immediate. We don’t have a giant reservoir upstream to hide behind. Shortages here are hydrologic. They are real. Farmers fallow fields. Municipalities restrict use. Communities adapt—not next year, not after another study or more modeling, but now. These impacts should be the indicator of the level of action that is needed across the entire Basin.
That lived experience matters—especially as we head into a post-2026 world. Post-2026 is not just another chapter in the Law of the River, it is a reckoning.
The Interim Guidelines were written for a different river– a river of the past. The drought contingency plans were emergency patches—not as a permanent fix, but to buy time at a cost of more than a billion dollars until the next deal. We all know now those Band-Aids don’t fix holes in reservoirs. And the idea that we can simply extend these frameworks or merely modify them —while Powell and Mead hover near critical elevations—is not leadership. It’s hope, not based on reality or experience, but avoidance.
In the post-2026 world, operations must be supply-based. Not demand-based. Not entitlement -justified. And not built on the hope that the next big year will save us. The harm will be irreversible because the Colorado River is not too big to fail.
Right now, the Basin States have a chance to prevent further irreversible damage and try to avoid bankruptcy. But that will only be possible if we all work together and see the stark reality of our present circumstances with clear eyes. We must build a framework that recognizes and adapts to the math problem–supplies that regularly give us all less than our full rights and entitlements, that improves efficiencies for water-intensive sectors, allows us flexibilities to help our neighbors when we can, and requires full transparency for measurement, monitoring, and accounting across the Colorado River System to build trust between us. Trust is difficult to rebuild when some don’t acknowledge or adhere to the agreements already made.
That means releases from Lake Powell must reflect actual inflows, not political pressure. It means protecting critical elevations is not optional. And it means Lake Mead cannot continue to serve as a pressure valve for overuse. We cannot manage scarcity with delay. We cannot store our way out of imbalance with water that isn’t there-that may never be there.
And we cannot negotiate with the simple arithmetic, no matter how many times we tell ourselves it will be different this time.
As sparks fly in the interstate negotiations, it is important to keep these realities in mind despite the rhetoric that attempts to distract.
Colorado is often told to “come to the table,” as if we’ve been absent. But we’ve been here the entire time—bringing hydrology, realism, and a simple message: if reductions aren’t real, reservoirs won’t recover. It is telling that what some refer to as an extreme negotiating position is based solely on the simple facts of hydrology—using more than the supply will bankrupt the entire system for everyone. How does the saying go? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
We are not asking for special treatment. We are not asking for a pass on doing our part to help save the system from collapse. We are asking for honesty. For reductions from both basins that are measurable, enforceable, and in proportion to use— not in proportion to who can avoid the truth the longest.
If we don’t choose how to live within the river’s limits, the river will choose for us. And it will not be gentle.This is not a call for conflict. It’s a call to face the reality of this unprecedented situation and come together to manage the River with wise and mature decision-making. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are no longer warnings. They are verdicts. They are telling us—clearly and without spin—that the era of surplus, overuse, of clever deals is over.
The question facing all of us post-2026 is simple: Do we align the rules with the river we actually have—or keep clinging to a past that no longer exists? So as I head East to D.C. I take you with me, because I know you all are doing the real work back on the home front. This year’s current hydrology demands it.
I know Coloradans will be prepared, like they always have been. Fields will be fallowed, municipalities will be preparing to manage within their resources, deals will be made to protect fish and flows. Junior priority water users know that years like this one will call for collaboration and innovation, senior priority water users will work within the law and with those that are suffering, you will help each other pay the bill from Mother Nature because you know we all rise and fall together.
You all are here doing the real and hard work, and I will take that with me.
Coloradans should be proud that we are choosing reality over fantasy, science over slogans, and responsibility over delay.
That is not weakness.
That’s leadership.