Whether they will actually pull it off, though, remains to be seen.
Water officials from the seven Colorado River Basin states - Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico in the upper basin; Nevada, Arizona and California in the lower - were publicly hopeful, even optimistic that they would strike a deal following the recent Colorado River Water Users conference, also held in Las Vegas.
"I'll be surprised if we don't reach an agreement," says Larry Anderson, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources. "I don't know that we'll have a formal deal, but we should be close enough that we can go back to our states and present it for approval.
"There are many reasons for both the upper basin and lower basin states to support this and get it done."
If an accord is reached, it will be forwarded to the Interior Department as part of a federal environmental impact study that will determine future shortage criteria for the river. It is widely assumed that the Interior will take the states' agreement and use it as a template for the EIS, which is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2007.
Failure to forge an agreement, however, would almost certainly result in litigation. Interior officials have vowed to implement new shortage criteria by 2007 regardless of whether the states are on board. Water officials believe such an outcome would spawn upper versus lower basin lawsuits, costing millions of dollars and stalling ongoing and future water projects indefinitely.
Such a bleak scenario is not without an upside.
"The threat of litigation in and of itself is driving a lot of the solutions," says Assistant Interior Secretary Mark Limbaugh.
Yet, there still are some significant hurdles to be cleared before a state-brokered settlement can be placed in the hands of Limbaugh's boss, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, by the February deadline. Left to be resolved:
l How to make any new agreement reasonably binding, short of amending the 1922 Colorado Compact or creating new federal legislation, alternatives the states would rather not pursue.
l How large a water reduction Arizona will accept under shortage conditions as the junior partner in the lower basin. Computer models of low-reservoir conditions run by the Bureau of Reclamation have narrowed the options and Arizona has presented a proposal. But as of the conference meeting in Vegas, it still had not been accepted.
l How to jointly manage and balance water storage in the Colorado River's two largest reservoirs - Lake Powell in the upper basin and Lake Mead in the lower basin. Powell drains more quickly during a drought, but also rises faster when snowpack is plentiful. Mead tends to drain and replenish more slowly. The basin states are closing in on a formula, but still need to finalize it.
l Sorting out how southern Nevada, which has just about tapped out its Colorado River allotment, will tide itself over during the next six or seven years while projects to tap groundwater resources elsewhere in the state are being developed.
That's not all.
Upper basin officials want assurances from the lower basin counterparts that they won't demand a full allocation - 8.23 million acre-feet - that would result in a reduction of their own water supply. The upper basin is also seeking lower basin support for their future water development projects, such as Utah's planned Lake Powell pipeline, which must snake through Arizona between the reservoir and its St. George destination. The lower basin is already considered to be fully developed.
The basin states are also wrestling with the thorny issue of tributary use. Nevada, for instance, wants to take water from the Virgin River to supplement its Colorado River allocation, but has run into opposition from upper basin states. Utah has been an exception here, because of its own use of that tributary.
And all of the basin states are trying to coordinate strategy for augmenting Colorado River water through additional storage capacity and techniques such as cloud seeding, desalinization and the lining of canals to minimize seepage. Battling water-sucking invasive plant species, such as tamarisk and Russian olive, is also part of that agenda.
Finally, California would like a little flexibility in drawing down its annual allotment of 4.4 million acre-feet from Lake Mead. Jeff Kightlinger, general counsel for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, says the state, under the current agreement, must lap up its entire allotment by the end of the year, whether it's all needed or not.
"We're pumping until midnight on Dec. 31. It doesn't make any sense," Kightlinger said. "It draws down Mead and it stresses the system. It's a use-it-or-lose-it approach. Why not leave it in there until the following summer? But right now, the rules don't allow for that."
Limbaugh, the assistant Interior secretary, says the basin states have some things going for them.
First, he noted, both Powell and Mead were essentially full when the five-year drought arrived in 1999. Second, the seven states were able to rely on newly adopted interim guidelines to determine how much surplus water use would be reduced in the lower basin during bountiful water years - a formula that provided a model for the current negotiations.
But federal officials also believe it is crucial for the states to agree on shortage conditions now.
Even though the 2005 water year provided above-average precipitation - way above average in the lower basin - Limbaugh notes that "we don't know if we're at the end of a five-year drought or in the middle of a 15-year drought."
Like other water officials, Limbaugh says he is optimistic the states will forge an agreement, based upon what he witnessed during upper and lower basin meetings during the Colorado River Water Users conference.
But he also says the Interior is prepared to move on even if there is no agreement.
"In order to stay on schedule with [the environmental study], we need to see all the plans in February," he said. "If it's not there, we'll be disappointed, and the alternatives will be analyzed. But that remains to be seen. I'm very encouraged the states will be able to submit a plan at the proper time."
jbaird@sltrib.com
