Critics decry ‘backroom’ talks about river

Roerink said there is “a failure of leadership” among state and federal officials, and “everybody else is being left in the dark.”

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LAKE POWELL is at a critical level as drought conditions worsen. Above, boaters enjoy the lake in July.

(REBECCA NOBLE Getty Images)

Disagreements over how mandatory water cuts should be allotted have created a rift between two camps: the three downstream or lower basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — and the four states in the river’s upper basin — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. Officials of various states have talked publicly about the spat, but much of the debate is out of the public eye.

“This process is a backroom negotiation,” said Zachary Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. “We need to shift the governance of the Colorado River Basin ... back into the halls of democracy so that people can get engaged.”

Frankel said the limited details that have filtered out of the negotiators’ “secret backrooms” indicate officials are still debating water cuts far smaller than what's really needed to deal with the current shortage.

He said the Southwest could face “serious water crashes” soon if the region's officials don’t act faster to take less from the river.

The Colorado River provides water for cities from Denver to Los Angeles, 30 Native tribes and farming communities from the Rocky Mountains to northern Mexico.

It has long been overused, and its reservoirs have declined dramatically amid unrelenting dry conditions since 2000. Research has shown that the warming climate, driven largely by the use of fossil fuels, has inten-

sified the long stretch of mostly dry years.