Western water wonks, worriers and watchdogs of warming warn of ongoing declines in Colorado River and Rio Grande flows that support tens of millions of people, with expectations of millions more to come.
They have long argued water concerns are equally shared by Western states’ liberals and conservatives, and relevant divisions within the populace are between the ignorant and the informed. They’ve held out hope for the future on the fact the informed have been in charge.
That changed Jan. 20 when the ignorant-in-chief began shoving aside the informed.
One of the region’s best informed is the University of New Mexico’s John Fleck. He is the writer-in-residence at UNM’s awkwardly named Utton Transboundary Resource Center. Its mission is research and education on natural resources, mainly water, in New Mexico and the Southwest.
Fleck also writes a blog on , where he recently posted an alarming resignation letter from Anne Castle, who until Monday had represented the United States as its commissioner on the Upper Colorado River Commission. The Trump administration demanded her resignation.
Castle, a water attorney for over 40 years from Boulder, Colo., was also assistant secretary of the interior in the Obama administration for water and science. She is one of the informed.
The Colorado River is divided into two basins — upper and lower. The mountainous headwater states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico are the upper, and the drier states of Nevada, Arizona and California, particularly Southern California, are the lower. The seven states hammered out sharing agreements and signed a compact in ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe in 1922 that became known as the Law of the River.
Remarkably, it has held together for over a century, but the Southwest megadrought that began 25 years ago has put the fragile compact at risk. The Bureau of Reclamation, overseen by the Department of the Interior, now led by former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, has imposed a September 2026 deadline for the seven states to solve the problem that the river does not — and will never have — enough water to meet promises of the 1922 agreements.
From Castle’s resignation letter: “Edicts imposed from outside the Basin, such as recent proclamations concerning California water, based on an inadequate understanding of the plumbing and motivated by political retaliation, upend carefully crafted compromises, create winners and losers, and unnecessarily spawn the potential to adversely affect the lives of millions of people as well as the ecosystems on which they depend.â€
One of Castle’s passions, which she brought to the commission, was advocacy for 30 sovereign tribal entities dependent on the river who were blatantly ignored in 1922, two years before Native Americans were granted United States citizenship. Now they are at the table and asserting their senior water rights. Or at least they were until Jan. 20. Now, it’s anybody’s guess.
Castle’s resignation also called out corporate interests, who until last week were threatened by new and fairer allocations of the river. Suddenly, red state versus blue state could upend steady progress negotiators have been making to find common ground.
Will the administration continue to allow Saudi Arabian-owned alfalfa fields in Arizona consume 18,000 acre-feet of water per year to feed the kingdom’s cows? (That’s double ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe’s usage.) Will President Donald Trump override California’s governor and keep 5 million acre-feet flooding almond groves in the desert? Will Las Vegas, Nev., keep building hotels, subdivisions and golf courses? Will the floodgates open for Salt Lake City? Will water-intense fracking and coal mining increase in Wyoming?
Meanwhile, New Mexico and Colorado confront a heartless mayordomo with vengeance on his mind and his hands on the valve.