Since taking up a new capacity as Colorado’s full-time commissioner on the Upper Colorado River Commission, Becky Mitchell said she has dedicated herself to full-time protection of Colorado and the significant interest the state has in the Colorado River.

Up until recently, Mitchell held a dual role: commissioner and director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. With the board’s blessing, and with the workload increasing for everyone tied to the renegotiations for Colorado River operations set to expire in 2025, the 2023 General Assembly split the job and put Mitchell on full-time with the Upper Colorado commission. Tuesday, Lauren Ris was named Mitchell’s replacement on the state water board. 

On the final day of 2023 Colorado Water Congress, Mitchell told the audience her full-time dedication is representative of the importance the river holds for Colorado.

Mitchell also spoke about what she sees coming next: the supplemental environmental impact statement to revise the 2007 Colorado River guidelines, a process the Bureau of Reclamation started in late 2022 and expects to wrap up this year. That statement will provide the Bureau with additional tools to protect Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams between now and through 2026, Mitchell said.

A draft of the supplemental statement showed two action alternatives and one “no-action” alternative. The latter would involve the Upper Basin states. Each proposal focused on reducing water uses downstream of the reservoirs. The response from the Lower Basin states was to come up with a different proposal, to conserve one million acre-feet of water per year for three years. While the Upper Basin states didn’t endorse the proposal, they did agree to send it on to the Bureau for analysis. 

Mitchell said they expect the Bureau to respond in the coming weeks with a revised draft that includes the analysis. “I applaud any conservation efforts wherever they occur,” she added, and applauds any efforts by the Lower Basin states to conserve water. 

But the Upper Basin states didn’t endorse the proposal because they didn’t get the details and still don’t have them, she said. 

A second environmental impact statement that will help develop new operation guidelines for the system, post 2026, started in June. This is the process that matters the most to Colorado, Mitchell said.

“This is where our focus needs to be unwavering. This is where we absolutely have to stand together,” she said.

That’s because the 2007 interim guidelines were “gamed” by the Lower Basin states, which have “knowingly maximized releases from Powell for decades,” along with simultaneously ignoring basic physics like evaporation and transit losses. The silver lining, she said, is that those guidelines are expiring.

What comes next “is to make very clear our boundaries and what our expectations are,” she said. 

“We need to be prepared for the worst case scenarios like what we saw in the early 2000s. Our future is going be drier, but it’s also going to be more variable,” she said.

Among the future challenges is the fact that water users in the Lower Basin are not more important than water users in the Upper Basin. Both have equal apportionments under the 1922 compact, but the river does not provide enough water to sustain overuse by the Lower Basin states.

The Lower Basin states must account and adjust operations accordingly for all depletions, including evaporation and transit losses.

Mitchell also noted compact curtailment is not an option, and operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead must respond to actual hydrology and available water supplies. Eight out of the last 10 years more water was released from Powell than comes in, and that happened in the 10 years prior to that, she said.

“This is not sustainable.”

She also said tribal nations have water rights they are entitled to, but have been unable, to use, and those federally-reserved rights must be preserved instead of being used as solutions for the Lower Basin states.  

“We have a chance to do this better. We have a chance to do this right.”

Finally, “we also need to comply with federal environmental law and advance the coordination between the United States and Mexico,” Mitchell said.

Difficult negotiations are ahead. Mitchell said she suspects things will get harder, but “we are better when we stand together,” not only in Colorado but with the Upper Basin states. There may be times when “we have to stand alone and we are prepared to do that.” 

She also asked the audience and their organizations to reach out to her with their input and advice, acknowledging that while they don’t always seen eye to eye, they all agree “to protect Colorado’s rights on our namesake river, and commit to finding shared values where we can. As commissioner, I represent the entire state, all of our diverse interests and needs. And it’s so important that we put our best foot forward on the matters where we are unified, while leaving room for difficult discussions to continue within our state.”