Record low snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin is raising serious concern for downstream users – like New Mexico.
So far, snowpack in the basin is running far below normal – ranging from roughly between a third to half of the typical accumulation for this time of year.
“This is shaping up to be particularly bad,” said Brad Udall, a water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University.
The reservoirs of the Colorado River – such as Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Navajo Lake and Flaming Gorge – make up the primary water storage system for the American Southwest.
And, because of the poor weather conditions and ongoing mega drought, they are running quite low.
“That is putting additional pressure on the system in a way that is, frankly, going to be unbelievable if this winter doesn't shape up or start producing some snow,” Udall said.
The rules that govern the Colorado River and its water allocations are set to expire at the end of the year, creating tension among the 40 million people, seven states and two nations that rely on it for drinking water, and to use for municipal, industrial, and irrigation purposes.
Negotiators have consistently failed to agree on how they will share mandatory cuts as the Colorado's water flows diminish from climate change and chronic overconsumption.
At the center of it all lies Lake Powell, which, in addition to generating hydroelectricity at the Glen Canyon Dam, also controls the release of water into the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead.
If levels drop too low, the dam will hit “dead pool,” where water can no longer flow downstream.
Officials with the Bureau of Reclamation have cautioned that Lake Powell may plunge dangerously close to this point sometime in 2026.
To avoid this, water managers will likely divert water from Navajo Lake reservoir in northwestern New Mexico or Blue Mesa reservoir in Colorado, for example.
“We may very well be releasing water out of these upstream reservoirs to try and keep Powell above the tubes that provide water to the turbines that generate electricity,” Udall said.
Which would mean much less water to go around.
New Mexico is given a certain amount of water each year thanks to the 1922 Colorado River Compact and the 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact.
The current water governance structure splits upper basin states – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – from the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada.
Legally, New Mexico is allotted 11.25% of the upper basin's water. Most of that is funneled through the San Juan-Chama project, which supplies drinking water for the Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Los Alamos areas.
In recent years, the state reportedly received about half of its allocation.
Researchers warn that climate change and other factors will likely bring more water reductions in the future, and urge the state to reconsider their water management practices and system – including prior appropriation, or the “first in time, first in right” doctrine that grants senior water rights for much of the American Southwest.
In New Mexico, the most senior water rights lie with Pueblo lands primarily in the Rio Grande Valley and Spanish-influenced acequias systems in Northern New Mexico.
Historically, these peoples cultivated crops by flooding fields. But, Udall said this flavor of water management system is not sustainable in the modern day.
“We are facing a situation in the American West where farmers could get water and cities could get cut off,” Udall said. “That's untenable, politically. We can’t let that happen.”
Agriculture takes up a large swath of the state’s freshwater supply – around 80%, or more than 774 billion gallons annually – driven by the irrigation of mostly alfalfa and other crops.
However, the large drought New Mexico is dealing with doesn’t seem like it will let up anytime soon.
“We're stuck in this La Niña [weather pattern] right now, which is warmer, with above average temperatures and drier and that's what we're seeing in the snow pack,” said Dave Dubois, state climatologist for New Mexico.
Although it is too early to predict the exact conditions for the coming year, Dubois said there is some hope on the horizon for New Mexicans.
“Maybe in the summer we may see an El Niño developing,” Dubois said. “So that's good news for us in terms of next winter.”
An El Niño typically brings wetter, cooler, and stormier conditions for Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona.
Elsewhere, Dubois has been closely monitoring weather conditions at snow telemetry sites in the headwaters of the Rio Grande to make sense of how the state is being affected.
Usually, these sites compare current conditions to historical data and rank them on a scale of 0 to 100 – with zero being the driest ever, and 100 being the wettest.
“They're at the ninth percentile right now,” Dubois said. “We're not even half of the median. There’s a lot of statistics going on here, but that's bad.”
The winter mega storm that impacted much of the Eastern U.S. to New Mexico last week dumped a lot of snow in some parts of the country, but drought conditions here remain largely unchanged.
