A prominent water expert believes it’s past time for the federal government to bring Native American tribes into the discussion on shaping the response to the Colorado River crisis.

Troy Eid, who served as Colorado’s 40th United States attorney, said the tribes have historically been left out of the discussions. That situation, he said, perpetuates today.

“The tribes are not present (at the table), and I don’t know how else to say it,” said Eid, who also represents the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. 

Troy Eid, who served as Colorado’s 40th United States Attorney and an expert on water rights, says tribes, who have been absent at the table, must be a part of Colorado River discussions.

The 30 tribes in the basin need to be able to represent themselves – and not just be represented by the federal government – in discussions that will define the response to dwindling water supply from the Colorado River, Eid told Colorado Politics.  

The Colorado River flows through Upper and Lower basins, with the former including Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, and the latter made up of Nevada, Arizona and California.

But the water is overallocated, and the river is suffering from more than two decades of drought.

The seven basin states have missed multiple deadlines to formulate a plan they can all agree on for reducing water usage. The most recent came earlier this year when six of the states reached an accord but California offered a competing proposal. That led the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation to come up with its own set of alternatives.

The Interior analysis released this week lays out three options to address potential shortages in order to protect the operation of Glen Canyon and Hoover dams, which provide electrical power for millions of households, in addition to regulating the flow of water to downstream communities.

The first option, to maintain the status quo, won’t work, the document concludes. That leaves two “action alternatives” – one that would distribute cuts among Lower Basin states based on historic water rights priorities, which would favor senior rights-holder California and disadvantage Arizona, and another that would spread the reductions equally across the Lower Basin states.

Eid, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig, said for the tribes to have a seat at the negotiating table, the White House needs to get involved.

“There needs to be a decision that Interior and the Department of Justice no longer disagree on these issues. Interior is trying to an advocate for the tribes to be at the table,” he said. “The Justice Department is not.”

“So, the president’s office needs to be able to make the call, and, at the end of the day, I think the right move would be to get the president to support the idea that the Justice Department will start to represent the tribes,” he added.

Eid sees the federal government’s analysis as a step in the right direction, largely because he views the Interior Department as the entity influential enough to get the parties to work toward a compromise.

“It’s a positive step for the supreme governmental power in the country to step up and say – for environmental reasons, this is their legal basis – and for resource and energy reasons, we have to lead here,” Eid said. “And leading doesn’t mean being dictatorial. It means getting everyone to the table and trying to work out a compromise.”

Eid echoed what others have articulated following the release of the federal plan, notably that it’s time for the states and other parties to act. 

James Eklund, an attorney at Sherman & Howard and the author of Colorado’s first water plan, said: “We really are running out of time on this.”

“We have the tools to control our own destiny and make this pain and this disruption – we can mitigate those. But we do have to act. If we don’t, that’s where we’re going to get in trouble,” Eklund said. 

Eklund said the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement released Tuesday by the bureau removes any doubt that the federal government is prepared to step in if the river’s Upper and Lower Basin states can’t figure out how to share what are likely to be drastic reductions in available water in the coming years.

In this interview, attorney James Eklund, who leads the water and natural resources practice at Sherman & Howard, said the federal government’s water analysis means the basin states need to come up with a plan they can all agree on. This time, he said, the federal government showed it, indeed, carries a big stick. James served as Colorado’s lead negotiator and signatory on the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan. He was also the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

The draft proposal is open for public comment for 45 days, and a final version is expected this summer, the Interior Department said.

Colorado’s two U.S. senators hailed the plan as an important step toward grappling with the drought and its ramifications. Both also cautioned against taking comfort from this year’s heavy snows.

“This year’s good snowpack can’t be an excuse to kick the can down the road,” said U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in a statement. “This SEIS is a constructive step toward sustaining the Colorado River system for the long term, and I continue to urge all seven Basin states to come to an agreement. We have no time to lose.”

His fellow Democrat, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, made a similar point.

“Today’s announcement marks an important step in planning for a drier West,” Hickenlooper said Tuesday in a statement. “As the Colorado River Basin faces the stresses of climate-driven drought, states and stakeholders must work towards a collaborative, seven-state solution for managing water scarcity that honors our communities, the sovereignty of Tribes, and the concerns of agricultural producers. No matter how promising this year’s snowpack is, we must prepare for less water in the river on which we rely.”

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Silt Republican whose congressional district contains the Colorado River from just downstream from its headwaters to the Utah border, told Colorado Politics in an email that she will continue fighting for Coloradans.

“The Colorado River is called the Colorado River for a reason,” Boebert said. “I will keep working to put the people of Colorado and our interests first as we work to find solutions to western drought. Six states representing millions of people came together to produce a solution, but California failed to show up to the table and negotiate in good faith. Now, millions of people are being held hostage by California’s willful incompetence.”

Boebert noted that she recently invited Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Conservation District, to testify before a key House subcommittee, where he called for more active forest management and water storage to meet some of the challenges.

“These two approaches have to be a part of the solution,” Boebert said.

Reporter Ernest Luning contributed to this story. Ernest can be reached at ernest.luning@coloradopolitics.com