Alex Hager is a reporter at KUNC in Greeley, Colorado, who has been covering stories on the Colorado River Basin as part of the Western Water Reporting Project. He covers water and drought issues to listeners and readers across a network of over 20 NPR stations in the Southwest.
In this interview with Lisa Young for KVNF's public affairs program Local Motion, Hager discusses the ongoing challenges and negotiations surrounding the management of the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to over 40 million people across the western United States.
Interview transcript
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Lisa Young, KVNF: I would like for us to start with a little bit of the backstory of the reporting. Can you tell us why the emphasis is needed on reporting on the Colorado River Basin?
Alex Hager, KUNC: The Colorado River is a lifeline for the Western us. About 40 million people are plugged into its system that is kitchen faucets from Wyoming to Mexico. It is big irrigated agriculture that puts food on grocery shelves across the country. It is 30 federally recognized native tribes and more plants and animals that you can count. It is a huge system that brings together a lot of entities across the West and it's a system that we're all plugged into. So there is a lot of need to understand how the bigger system works so we can understand how it impacts ourselves as individuals.
Young: Now you are a full-time reporter on the Colorado River Basin, and tell us a little bit about how you're funded and your partnership with KUNC and our Rocky Mountain Community Radio stations.
Hager: Well, my role at KUNC is to cover the Colorado River full-time and also manage that network of partners. It is thanks to a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, which pays my salary and allows me to travel around the West, and it is designed to help get more and better information about the Colorado River into the ears and eyes of our listeners and readers. So it's a network of more than 20 NPR stations and a few other outlets around the southwest, including KVNF?
Young: Correct. And your reporting has been on NPR a number of times, Alex. Let's talk a little bit about the complexity of the Colorado River Basin due to climate change. What's going on?
Hager: Well, right now, there is a big imbalance between supply and demand. For a long time, those 40 million people and those trillions of dollars of industry that rely on the Colorado River and its water, they have had smooth sailing because the river has supplied a consistent amount of water each decade. But since the year 2000, we have seen climate change make things warmer and drier in a lot of parts of the world, especially in ours. And what that means is that there is simply not enough water for all of the people who have signed up to take some from the river. So now we have more demand than we have supply, and the question is how to bring those two back level. It is not easy to recreate supply. That is mostly Mother Nature's doing, putting snow in the Rocky Mountains. About 80% of the water that ends up in the river starts as snow in the Rockies.
Two-thirds of it starts to snow in our state of Colorado, and you can't really change that in a meaningful way. What you can do is rain in demand. So the problem that we have now is that we know we have to cut back on how much water we're using, but getting people to do that is very difficult. How are you going to go to a farmer and say you don't have the same amount of water to grow your crops? How are you going to go to a city and say you don't have the same amount of water to keep taps flowing? It's kind of a zero-sum game, and it's very difficult to convince people that they should use less. And due to the very complex legal infrastructure that was instituted over a century ago, it is very difficult to force people to use less as well. It could end up with a lot of legal trouble if you go around telling people that you're taking their water away whether they like it or not, and that's what's gotten us in this mess.
Young: So a lot of your reporting, I know recently so much of it has been focused on the negotiations. Let's talk about who the players are that are involved in the negotiations and what is at stake.
Hager: So the point we're at right now is that there are two camps of Colorado River states and they are deeply divided about how to manage the river going forward. They're split into the upper basin, that's us here in Colorado as well as our neighbors, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and the lower basin, that's California, Arizona, and Nevada. And basically there is an old contract from 1922 that governs how the river is shared. It's been tweaked and added to over the years, but the current set of rules for managing the river's water expires in 2026 and those seven states need to put their heads together to figure out a new set of rules that can replace them. But it has devolved into a lot of bickering over who should sacrifice water and who should do that first. Right now, it is a massive tone of division that was really on display last month in Las Vegas when all the states got together in one room to talk it out. And ultimately they did not do a lot of productive talking. They are still deeply divided. The tone was very much one of discord that I think came through to pretty much everyone who was in attendance. I've got a quote here from John Fleck, who is an expert in Colorado River policy at the University of New Mexico. And what he says really underscores just how far apart they are:
John Fleck: "The kids are fighting, and it's really sad to watch these kids used to get along so well and have fun together, and now they just can't seem to agree on how to share the family's bounty."
Hager: So Fleck actually told me that before the big conference in Las Vegas, but after that confab, we learned that the states are just as divided as they were going into it. They cannot agree on who should sacrifice more water. They're ultimately going to be painful cuts. You're going to have to take some away from major farms and major cities, and people are going to have to learn how to adapt. But all of the experts in the room say there is no choice but to adapt because of the hand we've been dealt by Mother Nature.
Young: Alex, we are talking here about the upper and the lower basins. Another player is the tribes. Can you tell me a little bit about how they're being received? I know there's been a lot of talk and reporting. The tribes want more of a voice, and they have a right to water on the river. What is currently happening with our tribes?
Hager: That's right. There are 30 federally recognized tribes within the Colorado River Basin, and for the most part, they have been shut out of negotiations about how to share the river's water. Despite being here before anyone else, they have been shut out of those negotiations going back to the earliest days of Western water management. The same is largely true today, especially in the last decade or so. There have been some pretty significant efforts by state and federal players to bring tribes closer into the fold. But if you ask the people who lead those indigenous groups, they will tell you it is not enough. They have been left out for a long time and have legal rights to a pretty significant portion of the river's water, but they do not have the ability to access it. Many of them simply do not have the money or the infrastructure to take that water, put it through taps in homes, put it onto irrigated farm fields, and instead they have to leave that water in the river for someone else to use. They would like to change that, but they don't feel that they have enough representation for themselves at the policymaking tables to actually institute those changes.
Young: What I'm hearing you say is that the tribes have the right to the water, but they don't have the ability to get the water where they need it. They need infrastructure, and if they had the infrastructure, they would have more water delivered to them. Am I hearing that correctly?
Hager: That's correct. And as a result, a number of tribes, a lot of the people living on tribal land or in tribal communities, they do not have access to clean water in their homes in the year 20 24, 20 25 now. And also that means that they are missing out on the potential to generate income by using it to irrigate crop fields.
Young: Alex, we've talked about problems, lots of problems going on, negotiations at a standstill. Nobody really wants to give an inch. As you travel the region and you're reporting on the Colorado River Basin, have you encountered any interesting solution stories, or is it all doom and gloom?
Hager: Well, unfortunately it is mostly doom and gloom, but there are a few things that give me motivation that there might be a way out of this. One is that we do know how to solve this problem. It is just going to be very difficult to make that a reality, given some significant financial and legal constraints. So there are ways to reduce our demand. They are going to be very difficult to implement. For example, one of the big ones, which I think we might talk about a little more in a moment here, is paying farmers to use less water. We have seen a government that, up until potentially this incoming presidency, has been very willing to spend money on solutions to climate change, which has meant unprecedented amounts of funding to pay for programs like that. We have also seen some pretty significant advances in technology that could help us out. Everything from cloud seeding technology that allows us to bring more snow to the mountains where the river starts to clean up wastewater and turn it back into drinking water. That's one that has generated a lot of attention and energy, especially in the drier parts of the basin. Like in Arizona and California, there are billions of dollars in spending going into facilities that can literally take sewage and turn it back into drinking water, meaning that cities that implement the technology will have a smaller draw on fresh new water from the Colorado River.
Young: Yeah, I heard that reporting, my first thought was yuck, but I think the technology's there, and as far as the testing showing that the water is drinkable still, people have kind of a yuck factor about turning wastewater into drinkable water. Let's kind of turn the page here and talk a little bit about the role that agriculture is playing since agriculture is the biggest user of the Colorado River Water, what is happening with agriculture in our region? I know you mentioned the government paying farmers to furlough land in order to conserve more water.
Hager: Right now, agriculture and the idea that we could come up with ways to have agriculture use less water is at the forefront of the Colorado River conversation. This is a big river that supplies a lot of people in a lot of different cities, like I said, Wyoming to Mexico, but ultimately agriculture uses between 70 and 80% of the river's water. And the upside to that is we get fresh produce on grocery shelves around the country even when it is frigid cold in other parts of the country. It is still good growing conditions in Southern California and in Arizona. Unfortunately, it means that you have one single sector using a lot more water than anyone else, and because of the complicated legal infrastructure that the Colorado River has managed under, it's very hard to take their water away. I went down to the Imperial Valley, which is the single largest water user in the entire Colorado River basin. It is where farmers are growing a lot of the lettuce, broccoli, and other things that end up in your salads, and they say there is one way to get them to use less water. I will let farmer John Hawk tell you that:
John Hawk: "Do we need to conserve? Absolutely, we need to conserve, but we need to be paid for the conservation."
Hager: And that is an attitude that is held by farmers elsewhere in the Imperial Valley and elsewhere in a lot of the western U.S. to incentivize them to use less water. They will need to get paid for a while. That has been a tenable solution. The Biden administration had been pretty deep-pocketed when it comes to that kind of program. It very much waits to be seen, remains to be seen if the Trump administration and the interior department under the Trump administration will take the same approach.
Young: Anecdotally, I kind of heard that those farmers participating in the furlough program are mostly in the upper river basin. Can you tell me anything about that?
Hager: That's right. So there is a pretty significant program in the upper basin that's Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico across 2023 and 2024. That program spent about $45 million to incentivize farmers to use less water, but that 45 million only saved a little bit more than 1% of the total Colorado River water allocated to those four states. So it is a program that works. We know that we can pay farmers to use less water, and we are doing it, but ultimately it will take a truly wild amount of money to save a substantial amount of water in a way that would create significant changes on the Colorado River that it remains to be seen in the coming years if prices might change, if the government might offer different amounts of money to those farmers or if farmers would accept different amounts of money. But right now the bottom line is we know how to pay farmers to use less water, but it can only save a little bit of water.
Young: I think another solution in ag is looking at crops that don't take as much water, but that takes time. I know we have a research center out here in Western Colorado and there's other research centers doing similar research on crops that take less water, but there's also, is that something that's going to be marketable? The farmer has to look at, do they want to switch to a different crop? Can they make money? Are you hearing anything about that, about people looking at different crops? I mean, we know that alfalfa is a thirsty, thirsty crop, but then we use the alfalfa to feed the cattle. So what is going on with maybe finding different crops? Have you heard anything in your reporting or, well, folks that you've talked to Alex on that?
Hager: There are definitely efforts to try to get people to switch to less thirsty crops, but there are two significant limitations to using that as a method to save the Colorado River. The first is that it can't happen quickly enough. Like you said, these are long-term changes that would need to be rolled out gradually, incrementally, you would've to gain the trust of farmers, you would've to turn over fields. And right now the focus is on getting a deal together before 2026, and we are going to need a lot more time to have substantial crop switching than just the year between now and 2026. The second problem is that even if you install less thirsty crops on someone's property, they do not necessarily have to use less water. It might just mean that they could grow more crops. Because of the way that Colorado River Water is managed, it means that the first people to use water are the last to lose it in times of shortage. So a lot of times that means that people who are growing crops now inherited priority rights to water from their grandparents or their grandparents', grandparents or potentially bought them at auction. And what that means is that they have no legal reason to use less water, even if they have less thirsty crops. So they could simply grow more drought-tolerant crops on their property, or they could just keep growing what they're already growing, and there is no legal incentive for them to stop.
Young: So solutions really are difficult, right? I mean, this is a big problem. It sounds to me that really what has to happen is the negotiating folks have got to find a way to get along, and that's simply not happening. It's like they're putting their hills in the dirt, and they're just refusing to make any kind of, they're not budging. Alex, I know you live in the Upper river basin. How hard is it for you as a reporter to stay neutral in this? Or is it even difficult at all? How do you feel? And can you share that with me a little bit?
Hager: Well, I certainly try my hardest to stay neutral. I think, ultimately, what this beat has allowed me to do is to capture a really good breadth of stories. And it is very easy to see why folks are digging in their heels on this. I mean, ultimately, it's livelihoods that are on the line. It's the farm's ability to produce money; it's the city's ability to grow and, in some cases, maintain its existing populations. This is, in some ways, life or death for a lot of people, and I can see why it gets people really charged up. And I think the privilege of this job has been that I get to capture a lot of different perspectives on that, whether it is a big water-using farmer in the lower basin or a small city in the upper basin that is being forced to innovate or anywhere in between a wildlife advocate, someone who lives on tribal land. All of those people feel that they need to have enough water to make it. What making it look like is very different. But it is easy for me to see why people's hearts are really in this and why it is so difficult to find an agreement.
Young: And many times, farmers and ranchers in the agricultural community are way ahead of everybody else. I mean, they are people who've had to make adjustments. They know what's coming, and many of them are already making those adjustments for themselves. I kind of like it over here on the Western slope because we're very resilient type of people, very independent and looking ahead in ways to survive. And survival's been a huge part of the culture here on the Western slope. Our listening area, mostly on KVNF's listening area. Our water supply comes from the Gunnison and then flows into the Colorado River. It will affect us and many people in our area are not realizing that what happens on the Colorado River will affect us because we do contribute to the Colorado River. So it's very important for folks in our area to stay connected to this. And Alex, your reporting is really helping us to understand what is at stake.
Young: Let's talk about what may be coming here in the future. Many of you second the Donald Trump administration as a threat to the Colorado River Basin, and what have you been hearing? Are people staying neutral on this and kind of have a, let's just wait and see what happens
Hager: Right now? Yes, it has mostly been wait and see. I talked to a number of the most powerful water negotiators in the seven states that formed the Colorado River Basin, and most of them said, look, we actually don't expect the Trump administration to change our negotiation process very much because, in the past, politics and Washington have largely left Western water untouched. Most management decisions have been left to technocrats, even at the federal level, and have been kind of shielded from partisan bickering and partisan turnover in DC. That said, we know that there are a lot of ways in which the Trump administration promises to be unlike any administration before, and it is not hard to imagine that that might extend to Western Water Management. In my opinion. I think one of the biggest ways we might see that play out is in the amount of money that is made available for Colorado River Management programs. As we touched on before, a pretty significant way that water users out in the West have been freeing up. Water has been by paying farmers to use less. A lot of programs to protect fish and wildlife habitats have been aided by federal money. And I could go on. It is not hard to imagine that a government that has promised to roll back federal spending, particularly in the climate sector, will not make that same money available, which will make it harder to make progress on turning the dials to save water throughout the Colorado River Basin.
Related link:
Money for the Colorado River faces an uncertain fate under Trump
Young: Alex, if the two parties, the Upper River Basin and the Lower River Basin, if they cannot get it together, negotiate something by 2026, which is literally right around the corner. How likely is it that the issue could come before the United States Supreme Court?
Hager: It is absolutely a possibility. If this were to end with the states being at a total standstill, it is very likely that it would get settled in the Supreme Court. Everyone you talk to who has significant decision-making power in the Colorado River Basin will tell you that they do not want that to happen. They refer to that as sort of the nuclear option. Basically, they agree that despite all of their differences, a manager in Colorado and a water manager in Arizona know a lot more about managing water than a bunch of folks in DC. So they say that even if it is an uncomfortable compromise, they would rather make that compromise themselves than have it forced upon them by an outside entity. That said, I have talked to a lot of very smart people throughout the Colorado River Basin who fear that the states are so deeply entrenched in their ways that they are closer to bringing this issue to the Supreme Court than they would like to admit.
Young: Can you give us any kind of a preview as maybe some of the stories that we might be looking forward in this year or just some overall big planning for you and what we might be anticipating in your reporting in 2025?
Hager: Yeah, I look forward to bringing you guys a lot more great coverage about the Colorado River this year, and I think the stories that I have planned so far, we'll hopefully tap into the breadth of the area that the Colorado River touches and also the amount of people and experts and regular folks like you and I that are tied up in what happens to it. So we are certainly waiting eagerly, maybe first and foremost, for more news from the negotiators who are so stuck in disagreement about how to manage the river. But even if they do not come to an agreement, we know that there will be a lot of people on the ground both using and studying that water to understand what might be next for it. So, I am hoping to tag along with some more snow researchers who are studying how water behaves at high altitudes so we can get a better understanding of how to forecast the amount that ends up in the river.
Young: Every year I'm planning a story on a new law that allows folks to clean up abandoned mines in Colorado without potentially incurring legal penalty that would potentially improve water quality for us right here. I'm also keeping a close eye on what's happening way at the bottom end of the river between the US and Mexico. There are separate treaties separate from that central old contract that have a lot to do with how much Colorado River Water makes it to Mexico. And if there is some chilliness between our next presidential administration and the country south of us, it might be a little bit harder to have productive sharing down there.
Young: Finally, Alex, on a scale from one to 10, how hopeful are you that things will get better in the negotiation process? You've done a lot of reporting, you've been in those rooms, you've felt the tension. Do you go in thinking, oh man, here we go again? Or do you ever think maybe this meeting, an epiphany will surface, and suddenly everybody gets it, and they're willing to compromise and work? I mean, when we saw the reservoir levels go so low, so frightening, was that the wake-up call, or is there another wake-up call coming? If we can kick the can down the road, will we continue that? If we get a better year of snow, then, oh, we feel okay. What is your confidence level and negotiations going forward?
Hager: In my opinion, I think that there will be some sort of agreement, but it will really just be a kicking a can down the road. We have seen that a in recent years, that there is some level of agreement between states that share this river, but it is not enough to substantially change the fact that we are using more water than Mother Nature is willing to provide. We can kind of turn the knobs here and there to use less water on one farm or in one city, but it has not changed the simple fact that our demand for water in this region is far outpacing the amount of water in the river, and that is a problem that is likely only getting worse as we see population growth, steady demand for produce and a significant reduction in the amount of water in the river due to climate change.
So when you talk to these negotiators, they say it's okay that we don't have an agreement now because historically, these things have always come at the 11th hour. The threat of litigation, the threat of the Feds coming in and forcing us to do something has always been the quote anvil hanging over our head that has forced us to come to an uncomfortable agreement. But the challenges in front of the negotiators get bigger every time they come back to the negotiation table. So it still remains to be seen whether they will have an agreement at all. If you are asking for my opinion, I think they will probably have an agreement. A lot of smart people in the basin have told me that they do not expect this agreement to completely change the paradigm that has led to this problem.
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