Members of the Colorado River Compact gathered in Las Vegas on Monday in a bid to restart discussions and craft a proposal for Interior Secretary Gale Norton by the middle of the month. But after two hours of negotiations, it appeared that adhering to the new timeline is looking pretty iffy as well.

"We all agree that there's a better way, a more efficient way of operating the reservoirs on the Colorado River system in a way that will benefit all of the users," Larry Anderson, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources, said via telephone. "But those are long-term discussions. The real question is, what can we do today?"

The current situation is essentially a stalemate. Upper basin members of the Colorado River Compact - Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico - have called for a reduction this year in the 8.2 million acre-feet of water annually released out of Powell in a bid to refill the reservoir, which is at less than half its capacity. But the proposal has been resisted by lower basin members Nevada, Arizona and California, which point to heavy snowpack in the Colorado River Basin and what appears to be at least a temporary end to six years of drought.

If the states cannot reach an accommodation, Department of Interior officials say they will impose their own water management plan for the Colorado that could entail a reduction for the lower-basin states - something that has not been done since the current compact standards were established in 1968.

But Interior would prefer the states come up with their own plan, and state water managers prefer the voluntary approach as well. Why? Anderson and his peers fear what an imposed solution might lead to.

"If each basin writes its own letter [to Interior] and the secretary acts on one or the other's recommendation, what happens?" said Anderson.

"We all want to keep talking and find a solution, but that's more difficult to do if we're suing each other." Norton decreed last December that the states submit drought-management plans by April 1. That was to serve as the template for another new wrinkle implemented just for 2005: a mid-year review that could lead to new federal water management guidelines for the Colorado.

Anderson says the Colorado Compact's upper basin states have always opposed the yearly 8.2 million acre-feet allotment out of Lake Powell, but never followed through withholding water because their reservoirs were usually full and the upper basin systems were not fully developed.

Under current conditions, the status quo is now even less appealing.

"We'd like to break this 37-year process. We'd like it to be something different than 8.2," said Anderson. "Maybe now is that time."

jbaird@sltrib.com