A new plan to help alleviate the Colorado River water crisis aims to use millions of dollars to pay some in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico to voluntarily use less water from the river, according to Colorado officials.
The plan is the latest of a number of efforts to compensate people for using less water as the West faces an escalating water crisis. The details of the project — including how the money would be divided between states and how exactly water use would be reduced — are currently undetermined. Amy Ostdiek, chief at the Colorado River Water Conservation Board, said they're hoping to encourage participation across all sectors and regions of the state.
Low water levels in Lake Powell are apparent in this February 2026 image showing the end of a floating dock hanging off a cliff at Antelope Marina in Page, Arizona. Workers carved a new path to the water through the solid rock.
The program could save a year's worth of water from hundreds of thousands of households, but many more cuts are necessary. A federal plan released July 31 could mean cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet of water a year among Arizona, California and Nevada. An acre-foot is roughly 326,000 gallons, enough to supply two typical households for a year.
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The Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico — paid farmers to reduce water use from 2015 to 2018 in a pilot program specifically testing and implementing "on-the-ground water conservation" strategies to manage drought conditions in the Colorado River. During that time, farmers and ranchers were paid around $180 per acre-foot of water conserved. Some farmers switched to water-efficient crops, and others didn't irrigate at all on parts of their land, according to the Colorado Sun.
And in 2023, the federal government enacted a similar program for the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada. The deal targeted water use by Native American tribes, water districts and farmers across the West, paying them to voluntarily use about 2.3 million acre-feet less water than they would otherwise be entitled.
"We really want to do our part," Ostdiek said. "We really want to do what we can with setting up this contribution program. But the reality is, we're already living on the front lines of climate change every single year and taking really significant reductions as a result of that."
The contribution program, according to Ostdiek, will begin taking applications for conservation projects in the next few months and officially start in 2027, after the 104-year-old compact that currently governs water distribution from the Colorado River is set to expire.
Colorado officials described the contribution program as a "parallel program" — separate but in conjunction with current negotiations about the future of water allocations from the Colorado River.
