Colorado River crisis: How record spring heat impacts Western water sharing

PHOENIX - Our record-breaking spring heatwave is doing more than just spiking air conditioning bills early; it’s raising concerns for the future of the West’s most vital water source—the Colorado River.

There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to the future of the Colorado River water, including how the seven basin states will share the water after 2026 and how these above-average spring temperatures will affect what’s left to share. Unseasonably high temperatures can trigger an early snowpack melt, and that directly impacts how the Colorado River water system functions.

What they're saying:

"What happens when we have extreme heat, even now in the early spring, is that the snow melts faster," said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU. "A lot of that snowmelt evaporates into the air instead of basically making its way kind of percolating through the ground to the river."

Think of the mountains as a frozen water tower. It’s designed to hold snow all winter and "drip feed" the reservoirs through the summer. If it melts too quickly because of the heat, the system can’t catch it all.

"The high temperatures that we're experiencing in the Phoenix metro area and actually throughout the West is just kind of capping off a really bad winter in terms of snowpack and runoff," said Cynthia Campbell of the Arizona Water Innovative Initiative. "That impacts the amount of water that's available in our surface water supplies—really specifically the Colorado River."

About 40 million people rely on the Colorado River water, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The bureau is now working on a water-sharing plan because the seven basin states have continuously failed to reach an agreement.

"All we have is uncertainty about how much Colorado River water will be available in the years to come," Porter said. "One thing we can feel certain about is there will be cuts in how much Colorado River water will be available in the future."

Campbell added, "It's going to be a long-term problem in terms of how much water we can get out of the Colorado River, even if the weather was to change dramatically overnight. It still would take years to resolve those reservoirs."

What's next:

The Bureau of Reclamation released a draft of its plan for how to allocate the water and shared it for public comment. Now those comments are being reviewed before a final plan is announced.