Politics

Water is like wheat; both are tradeable commodities.

In a stunning surrender of Canada’s food sovereignty Prime Minister Stephen Harper converted the Wheat Board into a money-making opportunity for the ultra-wealthy, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a decade ago. Canadians must now stand on guard to make sure that no future government does the same thing with Canada’s water now that US President Donald Trump wants it. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he believes that the water problems of the western states, primarily California, can be solved by diverting water from Canada. It is often said in California that “water flows uphill toward money”. That old saying has new meaning now that Trump has openly mused about using economic pressure to annex Canada and turn it into the 51st state.

A year ago the Los Angeles Times reported that the seven western states which depend on the Colorado River for water were at an impasse in negotiations over the writing of new rules for dealing with their chronic water shortage. Apparently disagreements over competing proposals have created a deep split between two camps; the three states in the river’s lower basin—California, Arizona and Nevada—and the four states in the upper basin—Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. The Colorado River provides water for cities from Denver to Los Angeles. The river has long been over allocated and its reservoirs have been declining dramatically since 2000. The Colorado River has been managed under the Colorado River Compact, which was negotiated among the states in 1922. That agreement requires the four states of the upper basis to deliver an annual average of 7.5 million acre-feet to California, Arizona and Nevada over a 10 year period. Apparently the upper basin states will not agree to cut back their allocation when water shortages occur which means the lower states may not receive their allocation.

On June 15, 2026 The New York Times reported, in the article below, that this impasse has not been broken. If the 7 states cannot reach an agreement the dispute will land on the doorstep of the Supreme Court of the United States for resolution.

Why does this matter to Canada? Trump has often referred to Canada as a “giant faucet”. More recently he has taken to calling Canada the 51st state. Canada does have the water that the US southwest needs now and long into the future. It has also been said, probably in California, that “Water is not for drinking; whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.” We don’t know how hard Trump will fight to get access to Canadian water. We don’t even know if he will have enough political power to achieve much of anything beyond harassing the individuals and groups that he and his MAGA allies don’t like. But the water issue may now look like another very good distraction from the Presidents many woes. And the idea of diverting water originating in Canada to the US southwest has been discussed for decades though it was never seriously pursued. The water problem in the US southwest is real and is almost certainly going to get worse over the coming decades. No doubt Trumps advisors can see the political opportunity in putting this issue on the front burner.

Canada must now be prepared for anything that Trump or any future President may want to do to secure its water supply. Canadians have somehow been led to believe that the US cannot force Canada to supply water to the US under any conditions including under the trade agreements Canada has negotiated with the US and Mexico. This message was delivered very forcefully by several senior federal officials at a water law conference I attended in Ottawa not long after NAFTA came into effect. To that I would simply say Canada and Canadians must never be so naïve as to trust the US to abide by its treaty obligations when politicians like Trump are in positions of power. After all Trump has said he wants to annex Canada by economic pressure and recently refused to rule out the use of military force to acquire Greenland, which is protected under the NATO treaty, and the Panama Canal. And he is publicly musing that the US may not want to renew the Canada- US- Mexico trade agreement.

It is often said “If wheat (food) doesn’t cross borders, then armies will.” That certainly applies to water as well. Not so long ago the US invaded Venezuela to secure access to it’s oil. The idea of Canada allowing any US access to Canadian water seems unthinkable today but there can be great value in planning very quietly for the previously unthinkable. Indeed, it may be enormously beneficial to Canada as a whole to allow US access to Canadian water where it can reasonably be supplied. If Canada’s water is to flow uphill toward money then that money must be made to flow back to Canada. Sales of fresh water may even be a better way to pay for our hospitals, schools and roads than sales of heavy oil.

If Canada is compelled by circumstances to sell it’s water to the US then it is essential that such sales be managed at the Federal level to block price competition among the provinces. I propose this be done only through a single desk marketing structure if it is to be done at all. This structure will ensure revenue from water sales is shared fairly among all Canadians. It will also ensure that Canada’s water wealth is not simply handed over to entrepreneurs who happen to be good friends of a future government. And this issue ought to be settled soon.

The New York Times

Tensions Are Rising Between States That Rely on the Colorado River

A prolonged drought means the nation’s largest reservoirs are dwindling, and litigation over access to water could lie ahead.

The Upper Colorado River on the Grand Canyon last month. About 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of cropland depend on the Colorado for drinking water and irrigation.Credit...Nina Riggio for The New York Times

By Scott Dance June 15, 2026

Water in the Colorado River is dwindling to levels that haven’t been seen in decades, and the seven states whose residents and farmers depend on the river can’t agree on a fair way to divide up what’s left.

Negotiations are going nowhere despite more than six months of ongoing talks, plus cajoling by the Trump administration, which twice gathered governors in hopes of a breakthrough that never came. States are already sniping at aspects of a water-use plan the federal Bureau of Reclamation is set to unveil this summer and impose later this year, and they’re threatening to sue each other over water deliveries, raising the prospects of prolonged legal battles just as Western states face demands to sharply reduce water use.

The river’s system of reservoirs and canals was designed for the climate and population of a century ago. It has strained to adapt to a declining water supply and enormous growth in communities in the river basin, despite improvements in efficiency that mean even booming cities are using less water than in the past. Water rights that may date back to the arrival of European settlers also complicate matters. And a year of extreme drought is making it even harder to decide how much each state can draw from the Colorado.

It is not for lack of effort.

“We have invested time, effort and money in trying to facilitate a multistate agreement,” Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said in an interview this month, moments after signing a deal that could one day augment the basin’s supply using desalinated water from a plant in Carlsbad, Calif.

Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, third from left, during the opening of the Carlsbad Desalination Plant in Southern California this month.Credit...Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

But a day later, Mr. Cameron told a conference of water experts in Boulder, Colo., that states have repeatedly rejected proposals for compromise. He said he doesn’t expect any state to be pleased with the measures the federal government is expected to take to delay or prevent reservoirs from dropping to critical lows in the short term.

“I think we’ve succeeded in making everyone unhappy, and maybe making everyone mad,” he said.

About 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of cropland depend on the Colorado for drinking water and irrigation, but its flow has gradually diminished over the past two decades as the climate becomes warmer and more arid across the West. Now the arcane system of water rights governing the river entitles each state and Mexico to far more water than is actually available. The rules prioritize the longest-established uses of water, in many cases dating to the 1850s and 1860s.

But the states have been unable to agree upon water cuts that would reflect the new reality.

A Lifeline for the West

The Colorado River system stretches across seven states and Mexico. They rely on a century’s worth of laws to determine who gets priority for increasingly limited water resources.

In the river’s lower basin — which includes growing urban areas in California, Arizona and Nevada, vast agricultural operations and the nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead — communities have agreed to significant reductions in recent years. A new proposal that the states are asking the federal government to consider would curtail use even more, but the lower basin states and tribal nations have asked upstream communities in New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to cut back, too.

But any time winter snowpack in the river’s headwaters is meager, the upper basin is forced to use less water, so those states have resisted committing to permanent annual water use cuts. While a 1922 compact divides the United States’ share of the river’s flow equally between the two basins, the less-populated upper basin consumes significantly less water each year than the lower basin.

The stalemate between the basins has deepened as the stakes rise. An existing water-use plan expired this winter, and the states missed key deadlines to agree on a new one, which must be in place by October to avoid chaos and confusion in water deliveries.

A mild winter and extreme spring heat left winter snowpack so depleted that Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, which straddles the upper and lower basins, risked falling below levels critical for hydropower until federal officials began emergency actions to shift water around and keep dams generating electricity.

So far, Trump administration officials have resisted imposing any plan unilaterally, though Mr. Cameron said the bureau had “not been passive.” It has offered $454 million for water conservation projects across the basin, using money left over from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and included $4 billion for drought response in the West. Mr. Cameron said less than $100 million is left to help pay for more water savings.

“We have floated, three times, solutions that we thought represented something that the seven states could agree on,” Mr. Cameron said. “Turns out we were wrong.”

With the states unable to agree, the federal government is set to put new guidelines in place. Mr. Cameron said he expects Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose department includes the Reclamation Bureau, to release a plan in July to govern use of the river for the next decade. Before that plan becomes final, it would need approval from a White House that has so far not gotten very involved in Western water issues.

A draft plan released in January included a range of options, some of which would make significant cuts across the lower basin, where the federal government’s control of reservoirs gives it more power to cut off flows. The alternatives would force water shortages, mostly in the lower basin, based upon reservoir conditions. They include varying levels of cutbacks that would leave some risks of unplanned emergency water shortages in the lower basin.

Arizona is especially vulnerable because of its heavy reliance on the reservoirs and its relatively junior water rights.

The federal plan would include room for tweaks and negotiations every two years, Mr. Cameron said. But state officials from across the region said that could make things worse.

The biggest problem is that reopening the whole plan every two years would undermine any certainty over water supplies, which is a key goal of the talks, said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top water negotiator.

“The constant renegotiation every two years is difficult to fathom,” Ms. Mitchell said, adding she believed it could create even more tension between the states. John Entsminger, Nevada’s negotiator, agreed it was “not a good plan.”

But Mr. Cameron said it was the best option given how difficult it has been to craft a longer-term deal.

As the talks stall, the threat of litigation is looming larger, even though negotiators have said they are hoping to avoid court battles that would undoubtedly be lengthy, expensive and unpredictable. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, warned Wednesday on Capitol Hill that he would seek to block federal drought relief funds from any states that sue over Colorado River water.

In Arizona and Colorado, state officials have been readying lawyers and setting aside public funds for a legal fight over water. Earlier this year, television ads paid for by a coalition of Arizona water users warned that the state is “being targeted” with crippling cuts. Officials in both states said litigation was a real possibility.

Lake Powell in 2025. Its water levels were so depleted this year that they risked falling below levels critical for hydropower until federal officials began emergency actions to keep dams generating electricity.Credit...Rebecca Noble/Reuters

In public comments submitted in response to the federal proposal, the states have hinted at contradictory legal interpretations of the 1922 compact, offering dueling arguments that both suggest that the Trump administration was at risk of violating that document. In dispute is whether the compact requires upper basin states to deliver a set amount of water downstream, regardless of conditions, or if the compact simply bars those upstream states from using more than they are officially allotted.

Arizona officials said the federal plan would “improperly prioritize maintaining Lake Powell elevations at the expense of required downstream releases,” and thus reduce the flows the state says it’s owed. Colorado said the plan “fails to impose adequate shortages in the Lower Basin to protect the system” and could unlawfully draw from upper basin reservoirs to stabilize Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Focusing on legal arguments could keep the states from reaching a compromise, Ms. Mitchell said. But Arizona’s top water official, Tom Buschatzke, said litigation was “still very much in play.” State lawmakers tripled the size of a fund for river-related litigation when it included $6 million for that purpose in a budget sent Thursday for approval by Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who has stressed Arizona’s need to protect its water supply.

Because the 1922 agreement is only about 1,700 words long, Mr. Entsminger of Nevada suggested that the states might never agree on what exactly each of them is entitled to — and that was all the more reason for them to find common ground without resorting to litigation.

“The only way you’re ever going to have any certainty on that is probably the Supreme Court action,” Mr. Entsminger said. “The way you avoid that is a seven-state agreement.”