Colorado

• The Colorado River is drying up due to a combination of chronic overuse of water resources and a historic drought
• The dry period has lasted more than two decades, spurred by a warming climate primarily due to humans burning fossil fuels
• Demand is increasing because of the changing relationship between snowpack in the mountains and runoff into the reservoirs
• Last year was a decent snow year, about 90 percent of the normal amount of snow fell, but only about 60 percent of normal runoff reached the reservoirs
• In 2021 things were even worse: another 90 percent snow year resulted in 29 percent of average runoff
• Water allocation to each state

  • Arizona: 3,453
  • California: 5,427
  • Colorado: 4,748
  • Nevada: 320
  • New Mexico: 1,040
  • Wyoming: 1,295
  • Utah: 2,095
  • Mexico (Delta Region): 1,850
• As global temperature and water demand continues to increase, these US states may face the risk of extreme drought
• California, Nevada, New Mexico and other nearby states have already suffered under water scarcity
• If water tensions increase

  Political conflict will increase between these states over who receives the water resources
• The Colorado Compact Treaty of 1939 involves Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, California
• The Mexican Water Treaty of 1944 commits the US to deliver 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico annually, plus an additional 200,000 acre-feet under surplus conditions
• The Colorado River water is delivered to Mexico at Morelos Dam, located 1.1 miles downstream from where the California-Baja California border intersects the river
• Tribes on Indian reservations close to the Colorado and its tributaries have interests in the waters, mainly for agriculture in the bottomlands close to the river
• The Ten Tribes Partnership, formed in 1992, is now a strong political voice for the majority of the tribes in the Colorado
• The Central Utah Project (CUP) is part of the Colorado River Storage Project authorised in 1956 to divert water from the Colorado River westwards into the Bonneville basin of Central Utah
• Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River in a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supplies for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America's most productive farmland