CRRG News
The newly released Record of Decision for Colorado River operations and the Operating Guidelines for 2027 and 2028 provide a range of potential reductions in deliveries to the Lower Basin states, starting immediately with a 1.25 MAF shortage.
July 12, 2026 marked the date that the combined storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell reached a new all time low. Stored water reserves in the two reservoirs are now less than they were before Lake Powell was constructed.The last
We almost always focus on just Lake Powell and Lake Mead, but there are 46 reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin. This new paper by Jack Schmidt and the usual suspects looks at the state and trends of total Basin storage and the “Ratchet
Stored water reserves in the Colorado River system continue to decline. The mismatch between natural supply and overall Basin water use is having the inevitable effect on Basin-wide storage. This paper analyzes the impact on storage in
With the existing Colorado River operating rules set to expire in nine months, the relationships among the Basin States have been the focus of much discussion and analysis, but the agreements between the US and Mexico governing their relationship
The Colorado River system is inching closer and closer to the “tripwire” in the 1922 Compact. This is the requirementthat a specifiedvolume of water pass Lee Ferry, the dividing point between the Upper and Lower Basins, every ten- Water consumption in the Colorado River Basin continues to outstrip natural supply, causing steep declines in reservoir storage. This paper by CRRG members Jack Schmidt, John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, and Kathryn Sorensen, in collaboration with Anne
A team of researchers including the CRRG’s Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta has recently published 2 studies in Ecological Engineering showing that efforts to restore riparian habitats in the delta have led to noticeably larger and more diverse bird
The CRRG was well represented in a live PBS event broadcast from Hoover Dam (on July 24, 2024) focused on the Colorado River’s challenges. John Fleck and Jack Schmidt were part of a line-up that also included Bruce Babbitt, JB Hamby, Mark- The latest publication from the Center for Colorado River Studies looks back at the 2024 runoff season (mid-April to early July), observing that the basin netted only a modest bump in storage of 2.5 maf, a significant volume but much lower than the