Wyoming nervous as demand grows on Colorado River

GREEN RIVER, Wyo. — Wyoming has an unusual problem among the states in the Colorado River system: lots of water and, other than supporting some fine trout fishing, no way to put a significant amount of it to use.

Yet increasing demand for water in the upper Colorado River basin, combined with new government predictions that climate change could reduce future water supplies, are ratcheting up concerns in Wyoming about how to preserve the state's share for the day when it's needed.

People in southwestern Wyoming are particularly concerned about two proposals to tap the Green River, and the Flaming Gorge Reservoir it feeds, to help supply Colorado's populous Front Range.

The Green River, a major tributary to the Colorado River, flows from the craggy heights of Wyoming's Wind River Range into Flaming Gorge Reservoir and on into Utah before it takes a brief turn into western Colorado.

Les Tanner makes his living on the recreation and tourism at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, where he has owned the Buckboard Marina since 1969.

"It's a good fishery; boating is good. It's just an all-around good recreational lake," Tanner said while working on his dock on a recent spring day. "If they stop the flow of good water coming into this lake, all we're going to have is a stagnant pond."

Wyoming has been using about 525,000 acre feet from the Green each year — about 73 percent of what has been the state's typical annual Colorado River Compact allocation of 833,000 acre feet. An acre foot is the amount of water that covers an acre to a depth of 1 foot.

The Colorado River Compact of 1922 essentially divides the basin's water, giving 7.5 million acre feet annually to the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and an equal amount to the lower basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California.

The upper basin states apportion their share among themselves. Colorado gets nearly 52 percent, New Mexico just over 11 percent, Utah 23 percent and Wyoming 14 percent.

If there's not enough water in the system for both the upper and lower basins to get their full 7.5-million acre foot share, the upper basin states still must deliver the full amount on average to the lower basin. The upper states then divide what's left according to their percentage formula.