Feds establish goal for Lake Powell elevations with finalized 2-year plan

Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed a decision for the 2027-2028 guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
• Federal officials set a goal to maintain Lake Powell at above 3,510 feet elevation.
• Lower Basin states face water cuts while Upper Basin states avoid mandatory reductions.

SALT LAKE CITY — Lake Powell reached its lowest point on record earlier this month, but federal officials hope to cap its decline by establishing a new minimum elevation goal.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed a record of decision on Friday that solidifies the Bureau of Reclamation's Post-2026 Colorado River Operations, which was released last month.

While it's a 10-year plan, it calls for biannual adjustments based on hydrology. The 2027-2028 operating guidelines, which are now in place with the decision, call for keeping the nation's second-largest reservoir straddling Utah and Arizona at an elevation of 3,510 feet, a little more than 9 feet below its current level.

"We are grateful for the seven Basin States, the thirty Basin tribes, Mexico and many other basin stakeholders who have provided the feedback and voluntary arrangements necessary for the development of the 2027-2028 operating guidelines," Burgum said in a statement.

Federal officials already approved a plan to release up to 1 million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge at the Utah-Wyoming border to help add water to Lake Powell. That will continue into next year.

Upper Basin states, including Utah, were spared mandatory cuts over the next decade, but they can work with the Lower Basin states and Basin tribes on additional measures to help protect Lake Powell's levels under the two-year plan. That could include more releases from Flaming Gorge, as well as the Aspinall and Navajo reservoirs in Colorado and New Mexico.

Lower Basin states, by contrast, will face cuts of 1.25 million acre-feet from the system each year of the two-year plan. Arizona will lose 760,000 acre-feet annually, while California will lose 444,000 acre-feet and Nevada will lose 50,000 acre-feet.

The states can also voluntarily conserve and store at least 700,000 acre-feet of water over the next two years to help protect the system, per the federal plan.

Exact water releases from the system will be determined in April 2027, once spring snowpack runoff projections from the upcoming winter are better known. Work on the new plan for the reservoirs began in 2023, but the negotiations between the seven Colorado River states became more complicated after the past winter produced Lake Powell's worst natural inflows since it was established in the 1960s.

Federal officials unveiled their own plan for the system, which also includes Lake Mead, in July after the states failed to reach consensus on a new plan. Both reservoirs have hit all-time lows this year.

The states aren't happy about the federal plan, but they also aren't giving up on Lake Powell either, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said on Thursday. They're committed to preventing the reservoir from hitting deadpool status, which he said may require difficult sacrifices.

Upper Basin states want to make sure that any releases from Flaming Gorge count as contributions toward protecting Lake Powell and are recovered with additional storage within the Upper Basin during better snow years, he added. He said he would also like a longer-range plan instead of the two-year segments.

"I'd much rather have a long-term deal that the states agree to, and that we avoid litigation," he said. "That's the goal."

Both sides have said that a formal agreement was still possible, potentially replacing the 10-year plan at some point. The federal plan is what Cox refers to as the worst-case scenario, meaning that future negotiations could build on it.

They also agree there is less water in the system than before, but they have yet to agree on how to handle it. Lower Basin states argue Upper Basin states aren't doing enough to cut water consumption, while Upper Basin states contend they deal with greater snowpack variability every year, which makes cuts for them.

California is "prepared to discuss greater flexibility for the Upper Basin than the Colorado River Compact otherwise afford," JB Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California, said in a statement on Friday.

"This is a bridge, not a permanent solution," he said, asserting that any flexibility "must be matched by robust action" by Utah and the other Upper Basin states.

"A durable agreement must spread that responsibility fairly across the basin, with all seven states and both countries doing their part," he added.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Carter Williams

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Carter Williams is a reporter for KSL. He covers Salt Lake City, statewide transportation issues, outdoors, the environment and weather. He is a graduate of Southern Utah University.