(2026-02-27) How To Save The Colorado River

How To Save the Colorado River. Snowpack in the mountains provides tap water for millions downstream. That water is also the key ingredient for salads and steak dinners around the country. Melting snow feeds creeks and tributaries that eventually connect with the Colorado River, which flows 1,450 miles through seven states, supporting nearly 40 million people, over 4 million acres of farmland, and an estimated $1.4 trillion in economic activity. The river fills sprinklers and faucets from Denver to San Diego and every other major southwest city, town, farm field, and feed lot in between

*we have too many straws in the drink. And in the last two and half decades, a mega drought and a changing climate have cut about 20% of that flow.

As a result, the system is veering toward catastrophe.*

Two of America’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which bookend the Grand Canyon, are depleted by over 70%—teetering near “dead pool,” a term used when water levels drop below the level of the dams’ outlets. For years, dead pool was a phrase only used for futuristic alarmist forecasts. Many experts today say it could happen as soon as next year.

This August marks the most important milestone for the Colorado River in more than a century: the expiration of its 2007 management plan. Trouble is, there is no agreement to take its place.

agriculture, the largest straw in the river, continues to consume over 70% of the river water available for human use. More than half of the water consumed in the Colorado River Basin goes to growing 10 to 15 annual cuttings of alfalfa crops and hay for cattle feed, much of it for international export to Saudi Arabia and China.

The 2025 snowpack proved better than this winter, but produced a runoff that was just half of the 1991–2020 median.

Five and half decades ago, two Colorado River nemeses, Floyd Dominy of the Bureau of Reclamation (pro-dam) and David Brower of the Sierra Club (anti-dam), did just that. They took a river trip together down the Grand Canyon

Who knows if that trip was key to fewer dams on the river today, but those fierce adversaries shared more river time than our leaders do today.