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Over 1,400 miles of the Colorado River have created some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth and supported life throughout the American Southwest.
It formed canyons, power cities, irrigated farms, and became the center of one of the most important water conflicts in modern history.
From the Rockies to the Gulf of California, Colorado has shaped nearly every aspect of society for all who use it.
Learn more about the Colorado River in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Few places on Earth are as impressive as the geological formations created by the Colorado River and its drainage basin. The Grand Staircase of the Lower Colorado Plateau includes Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capital Reef, and Arches National Parks.
If you go a little further downstream, you will see the majestic Grand Canyon.
Geological evidence suggests that tectonic plate movements triggered a geological uplift that raised the Colorado Plateau about 70 million years ago.
This uplift allowed rivers, including the Colorado and Virgin Rivers, to carve through sedimentary rock, forming the canyons that define the region.
The rivers were well supplied with summer rains because the intense heat limited vegetation and the rocky, dry ground limited absorption and allowed the rain to run off into the rivers.
Surprisingly, there are places in this area where it rains during the monsoon season. The North American monsoon, also known as the southwest monsoon, is a seasonal weather pattern that occurs when intense summer heat pulls moisture from the ocean into the desert, causing sudden, powerful afternoon thunderstorms across the Colorado Plateau.
Although these heavy rains impact the Colorado River, nearly 90% of the river’s water actually comes from spring snowmelt in the Rockies. This further strengthens the dependence on mountain sources of rivers.
The Colorado River erodes surrounding rocks as it falls more than 12,000 feet from its source, acting like a fast-moving sediment mixture that carves up the Colorado Plateau.
Rio Colorado was chosen as the name for the lower river between Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, and the Mexican border. Because it means ‘red’ in Spanish.
Colorado was the perfect name for the river chosen by Spanish explorers who saw the red hue of iron oxide in the surrounding landscape and muddy waters. But to the north of the Grand Canyon it was called the Grand River.
The entire river was not called the Colorado River until 1921 when Colorado Congressman Edward Taylor convinced Congress to use one name for the entire river.
Today, the name Colorado seems strange because it has a dark turquoise color. The construction of dams removed most of the river’s sediment and eliminated the red hue seen by early explorers.
Beyond its physical presence, the Colorado River continues to shape the American Southwest in ways that cannot be overstated.
Arguably the Colorado River’s greatest contribution has been to the millions of people who live along its basin.
Today the river and its tributaries provide water for more than 30 million people. The river also supports major metropolitan areas such as Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas.
Although the river supports a major metropolitan area, urban use is relatively small compared to the approximately 3 million acres of farmland that use nearly 80% of the river’s annual flow.
There is a problem for the Colorado River and those who depend on it in the Southwest. It’s a really big problem. Massive droughts over the past 25 years have led to water shortages never before seen.
Tree ring data from the last 800 years show that this was the driest period on record.
Two major reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are losing water at alarming rates. Lake Powell is currently at 23% capacity and Lake Mead is at 31% capacity. Those who visit either reservoir will see an incredible sight. Low water levels have resulted in prominent “bathtub rings” carved into the cliffs and rocks along the coast.
Given the essential role of rivers, their widespread use has led to numerous agreements and contracts governing their distribution, which has set the stage for ongoing legal conflicts.
The complex system that governs river use is called the ‘River Law’. These complex agreements, local water traditions, ordinances, regulations and court cases have taken so much water from the Colorado River that it no longer reaches the Gulf of California.
The first attempt to regulate the use of the river was the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Negotiated by the seven states that share the Colorado River Basin, this compact defined the relationship between the upper and lower basin states.
Water use presents a complex problem. There is an ongoing debate about allocation because the upstream basin is where the water comes from and the downstream basin has a greater demand for water.
Upstream basin states are also concerned that water use will be limited by plans to build several high-profile dams, the most important of which is the Hoover Dam.
When negotiations failed to reach an agreement, Secretary of Commerce and the dam’s namesake, Herbert Hoover, took on the task of brokering peace.
Hoover’s solution was to formally divide the region into upper and lower basins and allow each to use 7.5 million acre-feet of river water each year.
The compact struggled to create a byzantine structure that divided between the upper basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming and the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada.
A complex framework of principles and assumptions governs water distribution and the distinction between the two basins. Flow patterns in the early 20th century established many key benchmarks for water use in the Colorado River.
This last part is very important to the story.
The first quarter of the 20th century, the period in which compacts were developed, was particularly the wettest on record. This historic rainfall is a stark departure from the large-scale droughts that have characterized the past 25 years.
According to the Rockies Project research team that has been studying water issues in Colorado: The 1922 Colorado River Compact, which set an annual average of 15 million acre-feet and divided that amount among the basin states, was created during the wettest decade of the last 100 years. This was the period from 1914 to 1923, with an average annual area of 18.8 million acre-feet.
18 million acre-feet per year means less water is being replenished than originally scheduled to be taken from the basin.
However, over the past 10 years, the basin’s average annual rainfall has been about 13 million acres. Therefore, water taken from the basin has caused water shortage in the river.
Another issue is that allocations in downstream basins may increase as agricultural and industrial demands arise. This makes conflict inevitable because the lower basin contains far more of almost every quantifiable data point than the upper basin.
The lower basin states have a 3:1 population advantage and a 3:1 advantage in almost all agricultural, industrial, and economic factors. The subdivision has always been able to claim more than a 50/50 split.
Provisions guaranteeing water supply regardless of weather conditions also added to the confusion.
This arrangement causes upper basin conditions to be constrained as flow originates there and often restricts water flow more aggressively than the lower basin.
Since 2015, upstream states have used an average of 4.5 million acre-feet of water per year, while downstream states continue to use their full allocation.
Complicating the situation was a clause under which Mexico was added to the agreement and would get a significant portion of the water. Amendments to the 1944 agreement gave Mexico an additional 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year.
Mexico currently gets almost nothing because most of its water is gone by the time it reaches the border.
In 1928, the federal government passed the Boulder Canyon Act, authorizing funding for the construction of the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas. One of the main challengers to the various water agreements has been California.
California is the largest single user of the Colorado River, despite the river flowing adjacent to California only to its border with Arizona, which makes up one-eighth of the river’s total length.
California’s large river intakes are used primarily for agriculture in Southern California, with approximately 80% of the total allocation providing irrigation water to the Imperial Valley.
Nowhere is this situation more confusing and problematic than in the indigenous communities living along the watershed. Of the 34 existing reservations that rely on this system, all have implied water rights, but the system is fraught with conflict between reservations and tribes over water use.
Some reservations found that they had anticipated water increases under agreements they had reached with federal officials, but that had been overridden by adjacent agreements with other groups.
Incentives for agriculture in the region are also counterproductive to water conservation. They created a strong incentive to use as much water as possible. In many western states, if farmers don’t fully use their allotted water, they risk losing some of their claims under the “use it or lose it” principle.
As a result, conserving water may actually work against a farmer’s long-term interests. Many agricultural users continued flood irrigation or grew water-intensive crops such as alfalfa, cotton, and hay in desert areas. Because maintaining high water consumption protects valuable legal rights.
Because water prices in many irrigated areas are heavily subsidized and disconnected from actual water shortages, there has historically been little financial pressure to modernize irrigation systems or switch crops. In some areas, water is more valuable than the crops themselves.
As previously mentioned, the condition of the Colorado River is best viewed from its two major reservoirs. When full, it can hold about 25 million acres of water.
The situation in both reservoirs is worrying. The reservoir system is in crisis due to lack of snow accumulation in the upper basin.
The challenges for reservoirs go far beyond the amount of water, according to Shannon Mullane, who covers water rights for the Colorado Sun: If Lake Powell’s water levels drop too low, it could put the dam’s critical infrastructure at risk and disrupt hydroelectric power generation that helps provide affordable, renewable energy to communities across the West.
A key problem with Colorado River water rights is that the legal system that governs the river was created during an unusually wet period in the early 20th century. Policymakers at the time dramatically overestimated how much water the river could reliably provide.
The agreements that followed, most notably the 1922 Colorado River Compact, distributed more water than the river normally produces in most years.
Few rivers have been as studied, dammed, redirected, and debated as the Colorado River. Nonetheless, it continues to support tens of millions of people and form some of the most incredible landscapes on Earth. The river’s future depends on whether the people who depend on it can finally learn to live within its limits.
