With another Colorado River deadline missed, how much does the election matter?

LAS VEGAS — How the country manages a shrinking river that provides water to 40 million people is a decision that is sure to be made under the next president’s administration.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages water in the West, is wrapped up in a yearslong process to update the Colorado River’s 2007 operating guidelines before they expire at the beginning of 2027. Two coalitions of states from the north and south are at odds with one another, disagreeing about whether Upper Basin states should “share the pain” of water use reductions amid drought conditions.

While staff members say the agency will reach a final decision in time, they told negotiators and water users this month that they will no longer issue a draft environmental impact statement in December. Rather, they will parse through recommendations from states, tribes and others to provide a list of “reasonable alternatives” they will consider for the next step in the process.

“We anticipate doing that at the end of this year, releasing that range of alternatives,” Carly Jerla, senior water resources program manager, said in a Bureau of Reclamation webinar last month. “That will keep us on track for … adopting that record of decision in mid-2026.”

That is, if there is consensus at all. A legal challenge to whatever the bureau decides could one day reach the courtroom, though negotiators across the basin have signaled that a judge making water decisions is an undesired last resort.

Heading up the federal agency is its commissioner, a presidential appointee who holds immense sway in how the outcome of these negotiations shapes up.

That official under the Biden administration is Camille Calimlim Touton, a Las Vegas native who began her two-decadeslong political career as an intern at the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Under Donald Trump, it was Brenda Burman, another experienced water insider who now serves as general manager of the influential Central Arizona Project that delivers water in Arizona.

Elizabeth Koebele, a University of Nevada, Reno, professor who studies Colorado River governance, said in an email that whoever ends up as the Interior Department secretary and Bureau of Reclamation commissioner will be key in helping the basin states come to an agreement.

“These appointments are important to fostering productive negotiations on the post-2026 rules in the next year,” Koebele said. “We are certainly at a moment in the negotiations where we need federal leadership that is willing to make decisions and follow through.”

On the river, is there a difference between Harris and Trump?

There has been significant progress in mitigating Western drought under both the Biden-Harris and Trump-Pence administrations.

In 2019, following negotiations at the state level and leadership from Burman, Congress passed the Drought Contingency Plan — a series of voluntary water use reduction agreements that helped stabilize the Colorado River system in the interim before post-2026 negotiations began.

Touton, under Biden, issued a draft supplemental environmental impact statement that took a difficult look at how reductions may shape up in the process. Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, cast the deciding vote in the U.S. Senate on the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been heralded as the largest federal investment in mitigating climate change — and, by association, drought — in world history.

In a statement, Trump senior adviser and Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald said he’s confident in the former president’s ability to navigate complex water issues affecting basin states like Nevada. Harris’ press secretary over Nevada did not provide comment from her campaign before a publication deadline.

A Republican National Committee campaign official pointed to Trump’s creation of a federal interagency water subcabinet in 2020 to work on a national water strategy.

“As Nevadans, we understand the importance of sustainable water solutions, and we look forward to seeing President Trump bring his proven track record on water back to the White House,” McDonald said.

White House not likely to influence ‘insular’ negotiations

Kyle Roerink, a Nevada water advocate who runs the Great Basin Water Network, said he believes outside, federal political influence will not meaningfully influence Colorado River negotiations or drought mitigation as a whole.

The next Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, whether it’s Touton or a new pick, is anticipated by most to be another well-known face in the Western water world, he said.

“This is a very insular process,” Roerink said. “Reclamation, in many respects, is always insulated from the goings-on of political and campaign restraints in D.C. I think this process is no different.”

The in-fighting between the Lower and Upper Basin states is intense enough to where the next president won’t intervene, he said. Negotiations are complex and involve millions of people across multiple states, several tribes and parts of Mexico.

“I don’t think any president is going to want to rock the boat,” Roerink said. “I don’t think any president is naive enough to say, ‘I have the solution to fix this.’”

Koebele, the UNR professor, said national politics can come into play, especially when considering that tribal governments have had more of a seat at the negotiation table than ever before. Biden appointed Deb Haaland as the first Native American to serve as Interior Department secretary, leading an overarching federal department that oversees the Bureau of Reclamation.

Addressing climate change leading to loss on the river also may be more comprehensively taken into account under a Harris administration, Koebele said. Throughout the Colorado River basin, an amount of water equivalent to the volume of Lake Mead has been lost to climate change over time, researchers have said. Trump has repeatedly called climate change “a hoax.”

“National-level politics could potentially influence some aspects of the Post-2026 rules directly, such as how extensively we consider the impact of climate change on river management, which I believe would (be) substantially broader under a Harris-Walz administration,” Koebele said.