A River Runs Through Us

And while it may not be the continent’s longest river, or occupy its largest watershed, it is the lifeblood of the Southwest.

Part of the mystique of this river system is its austere aesthetic across most of the Lower Basin. The water is a rare flash of vitality in an arid land. People have had to divvy up the water in order to survive—most famously with the Colorado River Compact, which allocated the river’s limited supply to seven states across the basin. Grand Ditch is just the first of a thousand cuts along the river’s 1,500-mile course. A sprawling network of pumps and diversions helps the water reach far beyond its natural geography: It irrigates ranchlands in Wyoming’s Green River Valley, fills swimming pools in Phoenix and flows from kitchen taps in Los Angeles, 300 miles from the river’s path.

Unfortunately, the Colorado River Compact had a glaring flaw: Signed in 1922, during an abnormally wet period, it allocated more legal rights, or “paper water,” than the river could deliver—particularly after hotter temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and increasing uses have triggered a sustained 25-year drought. The region has managed so far in part because the states along the Upper Colorado have not consumed their full allocation. It’s helped, too, that giant reservoirs like Lake Mead, built in the 1930s, created a watery savings account for Lower Basin states. But these resources are dwindling. The largest reservoirs, full in the late 1990s, now sit below 40% capacity—and the scarcity is exacerbated by climate change, which has translated to a 20% loss of flows since 2000.

With the current set of rules governing the Colorado River set to expire late next year, the federal government is requiring the states to develop a new agreement. So far the negotiations are locked in a stalemate as states work to determine who will take the cuts, says Taylor Hawes, former director of TNC’s Colorado River Program.

In the winter of 2022, Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country, dropped to record-low levels, causing officials to worry that the lake would no longer be able to use its hydroelectric turbines to generate electricity for the more than 1 million users who depend on them—and raising concerns about providing water to surrounding communities. The tug-of-war over water allotments conjures a Western stereotype: that this is a place of rugged individualism. And as the states fight, the time for finding solutions for withering ecosystems, as well as parched farms and ranches, is running out.

Standing here in the Kawuneeche Valley, the Grand Ditch seems like one more monument to this long and bitter resource battle. But there’s a different story unfolding across the basin, too, which is why I’ve come. While state negotiators remain deadlocked on the big-picture problem, local players—city water managers, park officials, Native American tribes, conservationists, landowners and others—have found ways to work together, turning long-standing obstacles into ecological solutions.

Hawes, who has worked on Colorado River policy for more than a quarter century, admits that nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) don’t have the power of the states. “But we do have the power of partnership, and we have the power of good ideas,” she says. If stakeholders on the ground can show what’s possible if we work together, the future of the once-mighty Colorado could be brighter than it seems.

Because the Kawuneeche Valley is the headwaters for the entire Colorado River Basin, water quality there is important. And restoring lost wetlands offers a great way to clean it: Dense vegetation traps sediment, filters impurities and holds water before it can run off. When the water seeps into underground aquifers, it assists with drought resilience—indeed, the last remaining wetlands here were the rare spaces that fared well during recent wildfires.

Recognizing the value of the lost wetlands, and aiming to bring some back, several local organizations have come together to form the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative. I’ve arrived in the valley just weeks after a key step in their work: The Collaborative hired contractors to install a set of structures meant to mimic the disappeared beaver dams. In the distance, contractors set fences to keep out the moose and elk—a practice that elsewhere in the park has already proven to attract actual beavers. As we follow the river, walking from artificial dam to artificial dam, Wellman says she’d grown used to seeing narrow streams here. Now already, the water is spreading, creating new channels and ponds, attracting schools of fish and laying the groundwork for a healthy wetland ecosystem.

The collaboration is notable not just because it’s a classic example of green infrastructure but because of its diverse participants. Alongside the National Park Service and TNC are groups more often associated with development than conservation, including the local town and county. Crucial, especially, has been the leadership of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, the agency that manages and delivers water to farms, cities and industries in northeastern Colorado. Their stake in this water helped get the project off the ground. The fact that this group is now committing to restoring nature is “a great part of the story,” Wellman says.

Forging new partnerships is one way to tackle the challenges of a stressed system—but long-term solutions will require more. “Water is forcing us to change,” says Jenny Dumas, attorney for the Jicarilla Apache Nation, a tribe located downstream in north-central New Mexico.  

The premise behind Western water laws may seem simple: When water runs short, the oldest claims get priority. But when the Colorado Compact was signed, some key users were not adequately represented: Mexico and the 30 tribal nations that occupy the basin. Eventually, a 1944 treaty allocated a portion of Colorado River water to Mexico, but it wasn’t until the 1960s when courts began to quantify tribal water rights, backdated to the creation of each nation’s reservation; when treaties were signed; or in some cases, time immemorial. And even though tribes hold as much as a quarter of the water rights in the basin, they have historically been excluded from governance decisions regarding the Colorado River. Only recently have efforts been made to include them in these critical discussions. This involvement is vital, as it allows tribes to bring their Indigenous knowledge and sustainable water management practices to the table to help develop new approaches to managing water across the basin.

One example is a project on the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado that drains the region where the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah intersect. The watershed involves four tribal nations, including the Jicarilla Apache Nation, which has historically leased some of its San Juan River water rights to a number of power plants. The resulting revenue funds tribal drinking-water infrastructure, among other things. But these plants are in the process of closing, which will reduce air pollution but negatively impact the tribal economy. To replace those leases, the Jicarilla Apache Nation looked to the state of New Mexico and its “strategic water reserve” that uses its water for public purposes such as assisting endangered species, while meeting the state’s legal obligation to send some water to states downstream.

An agreement was hammered out, and Dumas was “just shocked” at how little precedent there was for a partnership between a tribal nation, a state and an NGO. She says that made TNC’s expertise essential in the negotiations, which yielded a 10-year contract allowing the state to lease up to 20,000 acre-feet of San Juan River water annually. That water now helps sustain endangered fish like the razorback sucker and Colorado pikeminnow.

Unlike the old contracts with the power plants, this deal isn’t just an exchange of water for money. “This is an ongoing collaborative effort,” says Dumas. The Conservancy has supported an associated program connecting tribal youth with the San Juan River, and partners have come together to monitor the benefits of the project for the San Juan River’s ecosystems. The revenue from the water leases, meanwhile, allows the Jicarilla Apache Nation to use their water according to tribal priorities, including continuing to manage their drinking water. As Dumas explained these connections, I thought of the water cycle itself—river to ocean to sky and back again. Through careful negotiations, the tribe has created their own virtuous cycle of connections.

The town of Maybell, 8 miles downstream, still depends on this infrastructure: The irrigation district has a legal right to take 129 cubic feet of water out of the Yampa each second. So a headgate in the canyon creaks open every spring, supplying 18 farmers and ranchers like Camblin.

But in the past hundred years, a lot has changed. Droughts increased in frequency and intensity, while booming cities emerged, far downstream, which helped prompt the Colorado River Compact. In the 1960s, new laws arrived, protecting the environment; the Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Recovery Program was launched in the 1980s to assist endangered species. By the early 2000s state engineers began to scrutinize the Maybell Irrigation District, especially the unused water that made it all the way through the ditch and back into the Yampa. Returning excess water is a good thing for an overburdened river, but inefficient diversion raises sticky legal issues on a river where every drop is supposed to be accounted for.

“We felt like they were gonna shut us down until we got that tailwater under control,” Camblin says from his farmhouse in Maybell, on land that has been in his wife’s family since 1917; the ditch runs just a hundred feet away. “We needed to do something—or they were going to do it for us.”

Camblin and others installed small structures to slow the water, making it easier to control. But the bigger problem was the ancient headgate, which was difficult to adjust with any precision. Sometimes it was difficult to open at all. It was also hard to get to: Camblin had to trek 3 miles down into the canyon to make manual adjustments. Ideally, they’d have a modern gate, solar-powered and remotely operated, but that would cost millions—far beyond the district’s $10,000 budget.

Camblin’s years attending water meetings, sometimes as the only rancher, had shown him he wasn’t alone in worrying about water. “Most people have the same values and want the same thing,” he says, echoing what I’ve heard all along the river. He began to notice how TNC had forged relationships within the agricultural community. In 2017, the Conservancy gave Camblin’s irrigation district $40,000 to assist with installing a liner in the old ditch. Eventually it occurred to Camblin that TNC might be a useful partner at the headgate, too.

Boulders had been arranged to push water into the ditch, but that yielded dry patches in the low-water season, an obstacle for fish. This was a hazard for boaters as well, who flock to the Yampa, one of the few relatively free-flowing major tributaries in the Colorado River Basin. Over beers, Camblin and TNC employees sketched out a plan. By 2022, the resulting coalition assembled nearly $7 million in private, state and federal funding; by 2024, almost a year ahead of schedule, construction was complete. A month later, the new structure opened—at the push of a button. As farmers’ and ranchers’ irrigation needs change, sensors automatically adjust the gates, delivering just the right amount of water.

Rather than subject Camblin to another trek into the canyon, I persuade Wellman to guide me. As we clamber past cow patties—and, I’ve been told, rattlesnake dens and roving mountain lions—I’m less entranced by the fancy new control structure than the boulders. They’ve been rearranged into a set of descending pools, which should hold enough water even in dry seasons to allow fish to survive. The design also provides a surge of whitewater, says Wellman, that is thrilling to rafters without being hazardous. We stand in the sunshine, eating burritos we packed, watching the flow of water.

I consider the work it took to first build this ditch—work that was plenty rugged, but not at all individual. The development of the American West relied heavily on community cooperation and on government support. Today is no different. Across the basin I have seen examples of bold solutions born out of shared goals and unlikely partnerships.

I arrived at Maybell assuming that what was done here had to be impossibly clever—tricky engineering, maybe, or a newly discovered loophole in Western water law. But the innovation is far simpler: The locals realized that if they worked together and with partners, they could create solutions that served people and nature. It’s modest in scale, perhaps, but profound in its implication. While there’s still a long way to go with this river, every project like this one proves what’s possible—and helps carve a new path.