Enduring Solutions on the Colorado River

As we work to reduce water use on the post-2026 Colorado River, two paths lie open before us.

One is to incentivize conservation by giving water users the chance to bank saved water for later use. Known most commonly as Intentionally Created Surplus (ICS), and more broadly in a series of increasingly creative implementations as “Assigned Water,” this creates short term savings. But in the long run, the approach entitles the users to take the water back out of the bank.

The other involves permanent reductions – “System Water.” Water use is reduced for the benefit of the Colorado River as a whole.

Investment in Assigned Water, attractive to water managers because of the allure that they can get their water back, has crowded out investment in the more durable System Water reductions that will be needed to bring the Colorado River into balance.

As we develop new operating rules for the river, we need to be mindful of the differences involved.

Accounting for water as Assigned Water is a means to reduce total water use in the short-term but the basin requires a means to reduce total water use over the long-term. Enduring solutions on the river can only be found by addressing overallocation, which at its most basic means that there needs to be more unassigned water in Lake Mead.