Performative Colorado River Talks Pending; Expectations Low, Since Littlest President Having Tantwums At AZ, CO

[hatrack]

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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Friday is expected to host most of the governors from the Basin states, a rare if not unprecedented gathering during the past two decades of haggling over how to address the drought and warming temperatures that have drained the country’s biggest reservoirs to near disaster levels, according to participants. “Governors don’t really get involved in this stuff, typically,” said one participant in the negotiations.

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“I will be heading to Washington, D.C., along with my fellow commissioners to have some more discussions,” Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top negotiator, told a conference this week, according to the Colorado Sun. “It is tough to say I’m looking forward to it because that would be a lie.” Getting the governors directly involved also raises a new risk of injecting national political calculations into an issue that has been widely considered relatively nonpartisan in recent years. The Trump administration’s favor doesn’t fall evenly across this wide swath of the West, or the states most stubbornly at odds, Colorado and Arizona.

While both have Democratic governors, President Donald Trump has been feuding with Colorado, a state Trump lost three times. The state has refused to free a convicted election denier, and Trump has vetoed bipartisan legislation to fund a water project. Arizona, facing potentially the largest cuts to its water use, is a key swing state and one Trump won twice.

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The states are also at odds about when to release water from reservoirs in Upper Basin states to keep the country’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, from dropping to the point that hydropower is threatened. The meager snowpack in Western mountains this winter and low projected runoff have raised the stakes on these talks. All parties want to keep Lake Powell, about a quarter full, above critical levels, so that an adjacent dam can continue to produce hydropower and deliver water reliably to Lower Basin states. The lake is currently 45 feet above that threshold. The federal government projects it could drop that far by the end of the year.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/01/30/colorado-river-governors/

https://wapo.st/4qMWN6Z

[Norrrm]

1. What possible water shortage?

What possible water shortage? Trump released (wasted) bazillions of gallons, essentially to fight Los Angeles area fires. The water had no way to get to the Los Angeles area.