Colorado River Basin - Reports and Blogs
That was Then; Now it’s This
How Colorado River Basin Climate Science has Changed 2015 – 2025
A Confluence West Briefing Paper
December 2025
Encouraging News? Never Thought I’d Say This!
BLOG JUNE 2025: Once more, let’s start with the besieged Colorado River Basin. There is still no agreement among the Basin States, and they continue to negotiate behind closed doors. Various deadlines have been blown past. Here’s some encouraging news - words I’d never thought I’d write - DOI is getting involved. Scott Cameron, the Special Assistant to the Secretary, told attendees at the Getches Wilkinson Annual Colorado River Conference earlier this month that the Secretary would exercise his Water Master power - reluctantly and only at the 11th hour. Read Alex Hager’s excellent piece for more.
As if a rapidly drying basin weren’t enough, the Supreme Court has pretty much gutted NEPA. Can someone weigh in on what that means for the negotiations?
read here
Teetering on the Edge
BLOG MAY 2025: Whenever we start writing a Three Drop Thursday, I always hope to share some good news about the Colorado River Basin. Still nope and nada.
As Dr. Doug Kenney at UC Boulder, a go-to Colorado River Basin maven, told me this week, all of the push-comes-to-pull discussions are reaching a crescendo. Mead and Powell continue to be a low levels, and while the Upper Basin is getting a big round of precipitation this week, the overall runoff forecast is bleak.
Three Drop Thursday readers who are not CRB aficionados often ask, “Why all this attention, Kimery, on the Colorado River Basin?” Easy: 35+ million people in seven states and two countries, critters on the brink, and a $1.4 trillion economy (recreation, manufacturing, ag, and 16M jobs).
Let’s hope a few people at the CRB negotiating table decide to blink gracefully.
At the bottom, you’ll find a blurb on something we all need right now – Jay Lund humor!
read here
Dropping Shoes and Political Vacuums
BLOG FEBRUARY 2025: In this week’s Three Drop Thursday:
Can we figure out the CRB before the new Administration does?
Nature Abhors a Vacuum
A Communications Pocket Guide for Climate Scientists (and for many of us!)
Our first ‘End Note’
We’re all waiting for more federal shoes to drop in the Colorado River Basin and more shoes with Forest Service, National Park Service, NOAA, BLM, and NRCS employees and funding—the list is long.
Along with the heartbreaking human consequences of all these layoffs, the western wildfire season is of immediate concern. We already have too few federal staff working on forest and watershed restoration projects and too few wildfire firefighters. On the heels of that worry, is the Colorado River Basin.
I’m often asked why Confluence West spends so much time highlighting the CRB. It's simple: It’s one of the essential river basins on the planet. Water for over 34 million people, for 150 endangered species, the economy with a $1.4 trillion output and 16 million jobs, and provides about 15% of the world’s crops and 13% of its livestock. Unless we start making fundamental changes quickly in how this basin is managed, there won’t be much of a river left a century from now, give or take a few years.
My crystal ball isn’t very helpful right now, but we’re tracking as best we can. Of course, by the time you read this piece, everything may have changed again! Who knows?
read here
Mapping the River Ahead
Priorities for Action Beyond the Colorado River Basin Study - 2015
This report documents the concerns of some Colorado River thought leaders and their ideas about potential solutions and paths ahead. It provides a useful compilation of perceptions and suggestions gleaned from one-on-one interviews, and points out consistencies of approach that may not be evident in more public discussions.
Governing Like a River Basin
Carpe Diem West’s leadership developed the current policy brief, Governing Like a River Basin, to provide the Colorado Basin water community with a look at the stakeholder engagement models in some other river basins and a discussion as to what those models might look like in the unique context of the Colorado River.