The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to announce its release decision in April 2027, after reviewing winter snowpack, runoff projections, reservoir levels and other hydrologic data, Wayne Pullan, the agency’s Upper Colorado River Basin regional director, told water commissioners. One federal official estimated the release would be between 6 million and 7 million acre-feet.

“It’s going to be nice to know what kind of year we’ve got before we decide exactly what our obligations will be with respect to deliveries,” Pullan said.

Keeping Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower infrastructure operating is a federal priority. That requires Lake Powell to remain above 3,510 feet in elevation. The reservoir stood at 3,520 feet on Monday, about 1.52 million acre-feet above that threshold.

The decisions come as water commissioners across the Upper Basin describe severe effects on agriculture and local supplies. Colorado Commissioner Becky Mitchell said some ranchers are selling cattle because they cannot afford to feed them, while storage at Blue Mesa Reservoir has fallen below 20 percent. The reservoir, in Gunnison County, was at 17 percent full, according to commission director Chuck Collum.

In the Uncompahgre Valley near Montrose, irrigators received about half their normal allocations, leaving some land fallowed, Mitchell said. In the Grand Valley, irrigation was cut off two months before the season ended — the first such cutoff in 111 years, she said. The Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch Enterprise received only 15 to 20 percent of its allocation. Northern Water, based in Loveland, reduced Colorado River supplies to its agricultural and municipal shareholders on the Front Range by 20 percent.

Other Upper Basin states reported serious impacts, too. Wyoming said Colorado River irrigation was curtailed on 161,000 acres during the past water year, out of roughly 300,000 acres typically irrigated. Utah cut deliveries by as much as 70 percent in some areas. New Mexico’s commissioner described the past year’s hydrology as the worst on record, even as September brought record rainfall and deadly flooding in the San Juan River Basin.

Reservoir conditions vary across the system. Flaming Gorge in northeastern Utah was 67 percent full, while Navajo Reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border was about 53 percent full. Blue Mesa’s elevation was 7,412 feet, just 19 feet above its critical elevation of 7,393 feet, Collum said.

Reclamation’s operating guidelines call for Arizona, California and Nevada to take about 1.25 million acre-feet less water. The three Lower Basin states have also agreed to voluntarily conserve an additional 700,000 acre-feet in Lake Mead over the next two years, Pullan said.

Mitchell argued that Upper Basin users have already faced shortages and said their actions did not cause the current crisis. She contrasted their experience with that of Lower Basin states, which she said had received full supplies during much of the drought and faced only modest shortages beginning in 2022. The states’ competing claims reflect the tensions surrounding how water is shared as supplies decline.

Arizona and Nevada are also challenging the federal operating guidelines in court. Mitchell said litigation would not add water to the system. Meanwhile, the Upper Colorado River Commission is developing a voluntary conservation program backed by a $100 million federal grant. Each state would administer agreements compensating water users for temporary reductions in use.

The system’s water managers face an immediate balancing act: protect critical dam infrastructure while determining deliveries among states and users with sharply different conditions. The release decision will depend in part on whether winter weather brings enough snow and runoff to ease the pressure.