October 5, 2023
Utah weighs in on future Colorado River operations
Through the Upper Colorado River Commission, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming adopted a resolution on September 21st conditioning their support for future releases from Flaming Gorge and other upstream reservoirs under the Drought Response Operations Agreement (DROA) on the following three principles:
- Water released to Lake Powell must be retained at Powell until full recovery is achieved at the upstream Initial Unit (e.g. Flaming Gorge);
- DROA water at Lake Powell cannot result in greater releases from the reservoir to the Lower Basin than would have occurred without DROA; and
- DROA operations cannot make Lake Powell worse off than it would have been without DROA (which in fact occurred this year).
The resolution document can be found here:
Resolution of the Upper Colorado River Commission