Operationally neutral conservation pools could help alleviate stress on Lake Mead and Lake Powell

The news on the Colorado River and its two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, has been not great for a while now.

But a new concept paper offers an idea for one way to start to protect the system — if the seven basin states and federal government agree to do it.

John Berggren is regional policy manager for Western Resource Advocates, where he leads the group’s Colorado River policy work.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: John, you’re advocating for the use of something called a flexible conservation pool. What exactly is that?

JOHN BERGGREN: So that refers to this idea that, can we find a way to incentivize or encourage water users throughout the Colorado River basin to conserve water? And then when they do conserve that water, store it in a separate account in one of the large reservoirs, in this case Lake Powell or Lake Mead. And if you store that conserved water in a separate account, you can actually do some pretty creative things with it that you couldn’t do otherwise.

And so there is a current program in the Lower Basin called intentionally created surplus, which is one of these conservation programs where Lower Basin users can conserve water and it is stored in Lake Mead, but it’s not this key term that we talk about in the paper, which is operationally neutral.

In other words, current, the way the current system works is when Lower Basin users conserve water, it becomes part of the system, it becomes part of Lake Mead to determine Lake Mead operations, and therefore how much of this intentionally created surplus water there is impacts those Lake Mead operations.

Our suggestion is if you make that what’s called operationally neutral, then the conserved water doesn’t impact those reservoir operations, and if you do that and that’s the case, then you can kind of move and store this water in pretty creative ways.

BRODIE: Is the advantage of making it operationally neutral an idea of maybe there’s more incentive to do it because, for example, if Lakes Mead or Powell have a certain amount of water in them, then that has certain implications, pardon the pun, up or down stream? Does keeping it operationally neutral sort of incentivize more conservation because it doesn’t mean, you know, for example, more or less water coming to the Lower Basin states?

BERGGREN: Yeah, so what it really does is it provides more flexibility in managing the system. So like I said right now, it’s pretty hard to or there’s pretty set rules, there are set rules for how conserved water is managed. But what we’re saying is if you make it more flexible, and you you make it operationally neutral, and therefore it doesn’t matter where it’s stored, then depending on that year’s conditions, depending on that year’s needs, you can move the water around without impacting Upper to Lower Basin water deliveries, without impacting Lake Mead operations or Lower Basin shortages or or impacting things happening upstream of Lake Powell.

BRODIE: So, in your paper, you use the analogies of a savings account and a checking account. I wonder if this sort of separate account that you're talking about is almost like if you're saving up for something, like you're, you know, saving up money for a down payment on a house, you might put money into a a third type of account. Is that kind of what you're talking about when you would take this water that is being conserved and put it in Lake Mead or or Lake Powell but not sort of as part of the overall pot there?

BERGGREN: Yeah, so exactly. So, you could put it into a separate account where it wouldn't be part of your checking account, which is your day-to-day budget, and your day-to-day, this is how much water we, this is how much money we have to spend.

This is a separate account that doesn't impact that decision. But what the separate account does is depending if we need that down payment for a house, depending if we need a new car or some big fix on our house, we have the flexibility to pay for it without dipping into that checking account.

BRODIE: How politically palatable might this be for the the seven Colorado River basin states, which haven't really been able to agree on a whole lot recently?

BERGGREN: Yeah, it's a good question. You know, this is not necessarily a new concept, and we're not the only ones talking about it. There are other folks talking about it, and and what we're really hoping is this type of flexibility really gets into the narrative around the basin states negotiations to demonstrate that there are tools, there are things available, there are policies on the table that people have proposed that could really help alleviate the the the stresses on the system.

And so, we don't want to wade into the politics by any mean, but rather show, OK, here's a tool that if we had in place this year, it'd be pretty effective at helping us protect Powell with a lot of these other political consequences.

BRODIE: So, assuming that the states were to go ahead and do this, how would you suggest they manage sort of the withdrawals from that special account? Because I could see a situation where, you know, an Upper Basin state, for example, puts water into it and a Lower Basin state really needs it, that may be not going over so well, or vice versa.

BERGGREN: Yeah, you'd have to work out there are a lot of details to work out for sure, and you would need agreement, you know, between the states and the and the feds. But it would be it would be similar to how for Lower Basin states, it'd be similar how the Intentionally Created Surplus works — where users can contribute to this pool and depending on system conditions and and various components, they can get that water back in future years.

What we're less focused on is how the water gets in and gets out, but rather, while the water's in there, let's be really smart with it.

BRODIE: So listening to you describe this, I’m struck by, it seems like it kind of accomplishes the goal that almost everybody is agreeing on, something that pretty much every water user understands has to happen, which is using less of the water from the Colorado River.

But instead of it almost seems like it’s more of the carrot approach, like there’s this incentive to say, "OK, look, we know we have to conserve water, we have to use less water, instead of just making it sort of punitive, why don’t we put it into this this separate account, into this pool, so that if we needed it at some point, it’s there as opposed to just taking it away."

BERGGREN: So that’s a really important point, and I’m glad you brought it up because I want to make clear that this tool that we’re talking about is not a silver bullet, and it’s not the only tool. It’s definitely one of the tools in the toolkit.

And when I say that, I mean, in addition to this concept of an operationally neutral conservation pool, you also need other things to help use less water, so maybe more of the stick that you’re talking about.

BRODIE: I wonder if you might be able to give us sort of an example of how this would work in practice for folks who are maybe understanding the conceptual idea of it, but not sure sort of logistically how it would work.

Let’s say that the states and the feds agreed to this and put it into place. How might it work in terms of putting water into it and then maybe deciding at some point, OK, we should use some of that water that’s been stashed away for purpose X?

BERGGREN: Sure. So, you know, this year’s a great example. There’s over 3 million acre feet of Lower Basin intentionally created surplus currently in Lake Mead, but it’s part of the calculation for Lake Mead, and so you can’t take it out without impacting Lake Mead operations or Lower Basin shortages.

If it were operationally neutral, and then we had a year like this where Lake Powell is getting incredibly low, we could “move” some of that Lower Basin intentionally created surplus, there’s up to over 3 million acre feet, let’s say we move a million acre feet.

We do that by reducing releases out of Lake Powell upstream, and then on paper, that in essence moves that water from Mead to Powell. And so now you account for it in Powell, because you released a million acre foot less out of Powell, now that water is considered in Powell. But again, it’s operationally neutral, so it doesn’t impact Powell operations, it doesn’t impact compact delivery obligations, it doesn’t impact any of that.

Same thing if you wanted to move it back down to Mead, you just release an extra million acre feet out of Powell, but act like you didn’t do it so the water will physically move, but on paper you account for it in a separate way.

So it’s a little trick, it’s a little confusing, a little counter intuitive, because you’re not physically, you know, piping water from Lake Mead upstream to Powell, but you’re you’re playing with the releases, and you’re you’re doing a bit of accounting to move this water around and provide the benefits where where it’s most needed.

BRODIE: All right. That is John Berggren, regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates. John, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

BERGGREN: Thank you, Mark.