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Wyoming seeks role in Upper Basin conservation framework; agencies aim to meet 11/11/2025 deadline
Summary
State engineer and attorneys updated the committee on Colorado River post‑2026 negotiations and described plans for a voluntary, compensated conservation pilot tied to Fontenelle storage and coordinated Upper Basin action.
State Engineer Brandon Gebhardt and an attorney from the Attorney General’s Office briefed the Agriculture, State & Public Lands & Water Resources Committee on efforts to shape post‑2026 operations of the Colorado River and the role a Wyoming pilot conservation program could play in a basin‑wide consensus. Reclamation has given the basin states a deadline of Nov. 11, 2025, to submit a framework for a consensus agreement on post‑2026 operations, they said.
Gebhardt described the working concept under discussion among the seven basin states: calculate Lake Powell releases as a percentage of a short‑term average of natural flow at Lee Ferry (the parties are tentatively discussing a three‑year averaging period), adopt upper and lower release bounds,…
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