PUEBLO — When paramedics showed up at Bernie Esquibel-Tennant’s door the day after Thanksgiving in 2020, it was the second time in roughly 12 hours that an ambulance had visited her stretch of the neighborhood.
The night before, Esquibel-Tennant had watched as paramedics came for Adolph Gallardo, a man her children called Grandpa who lived across the street. Now they were here for her sister Melissa.
Melissa Esquibel’s oxygen level had dropped dangerously low to 70% overnight, which is why Esquibel-Tennant called 911 and paramedics were at her door even before the sun rose that Friday morning in Pueblo.
But the paramedics wouldn’t come in — not with COVID-19 in the house. So Esquibel-Tennant helped Melissa, dressed only in a nightgown, outside. They were barefoot and the ground was cold.
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“We love you,” Esquibel-Tennant, 54, recalled telling Melissa as she helped her onto the waiting gurney.
She never saw her sister again after the paramedics drove away on Nov. 27, 2020. Adolph, their 77-year-old neighbor, never returned home, either.
He and Melissa, 47, are among the nearly 16,000 Coloradans who have died due to COVID-19 since the pandemic began five years ago this month. And their families are among the thousands still grieving, still wondering how the virus made its way into their homes and still struggling with how their loved ones died alone during the early days of the pandemic.
“There just weren’t a lot of procedures in place,” Esquibel-Tennant said. “Then, emotionally, we weren’t ready to deal with it.”
Closure — if such a thing exists — is still out of reach for many pandemic survivors. Their grief is complicated by unknowns and what-ifs. Rituals they historically used to mourn and honor the dead were postponed or scrapped entirely during the height of the pandemic.
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Pamela Gallardo, top left, flips through a book filled with pictures of her son, Andrew Valdez, who died from COVID-19, as she sits at her mother’s kitchen table surrounded by family in Pueblo, Colorado, on March 11, 2025. Pamela also lost her father, Adolph Gallardo, to the virus. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
And yet the world has seemingly moved on even as so many still grieve and COVID-19 remains, though we now have vaccines and better treatment. There’s no state memorial honoring the thousands who have died in the worst public health crisis of a century. There’s no finality as hundreds still die from the virus each year in Colorado.
“Over 15,000 Coloradans died due to COVID,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a recent interview, noting he lost two friends to the virus. “Some would have perhaps passed away by now anyway. Others would be perfectly healthy other than that COVID felled them. There’s no getting those people back.”
Misinformation and conspiracies spread during the pandemic, leading a swath of the American population to dismiss the severity of the disease that has killed more than 1 million people nationwide. At the same time, the death toll hasn’t fallen equitably as Black and Latino Coloradans died at disproportionately high rates compared to their white peers.
“I hope people know now how bad COVID was,” Adolph’s widow Ernestine “Toni” Gallardo said, adding, “We’ve experienced a real, real pandemic.”
Colorado’s first death
Ski season was well underway in the high country when the virus was first confirmed in Colorado on March 5, 2020.
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At the time, COVID-19 already had been discovered in California, Florida and Washington state, although the virus is now believed to have been slinking its way across the United States well before then undetected.
In Colorado, the number of confirmed cases, mostly clustered in mountain towns crowded with tourists, ticked up in the days that followed. Health officials first confirmed a Coloradan had died from COVID-19 on March 13, 2020.
Gov. Jared Polis announces a series of orders as COVID-19 puts a heavy strain on Colorado’s economy, at the Colorado Capitol in Denver on March 20, 2020. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Dr. Leon Kelly, at the time El Paso County’s elected coroner, was standing on a stage with Polis and other state officials for a news conference about that first COVID-19 fatality — a woman in her 80s — when he got a phone call.
Employees from El Paso County’s health department were trying to reach Kelly, who had just also been appointed the county’s deputy medical director.
There was a problem, they told him.
The woman who died had attended a bridge tournament in Colorado Springs two weeks earlier and scores of people — most of them elderly — were potentially exposed to the virus.
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Hearing the news was like being in a movie, Kelly said, when you find out the “absolute worst-case scenario has occurred.”
Public health employees spent the weekend tracking down attendees. Meanwhile, Kelly called an aunt in North Carolina who played bridge. They didn’t talk frequently, but Kelly wanted her to explain how the game worked, what happened with the cards and whether players rotated between tables during a tournament.
Kelly quickly realized that as many as 150 people were potentially exposed to the virus at that single event.
“It was clear we were already behind the ball,” Kelly recalled.
Former El Paso County coroner Dr. Leon Kelly and his son, Milo, 14, get ready to walk their dog Arlo in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
At least four attendees of that bridge tournament died from COVID-19.
The virus killed thousands more Coloradans in the months and years that followed, including Adolph Gallardo and Melissa Esquibel.
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“We thought we were good”
Melissa, born March 19, 1973, was the youngest of three siblings. She was small in stature and — having been diagnosed with Turner syndrome when she was 9 — looked like she was about 12 years old.
Melissa had other disabilities, such as being hard of hearing, but she was very social and worked for Furr’s Cafeteria for decades, then McDonald’s until the virus sent everyone home.
She was “spunky,” her sister Bernie Esquibel-Tennant said.
The family was unable to visit Melissa in the hospital because they were also sick with COVID-19. Doctors and nurses kept Esquibel-Tennant updated on her sister through phone calls. They told her when Melissa ate scrambled eggs — and when Melissa went into cardiac arrest.
“They were overwhelmed with the amount of care everyone needed,” Esquibel-Tennant recalled.
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Emergency room team members prepare for the arrival of a patient at the Aurora Medical Center on April 22, 2020. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
At that point in November 2020, Colorado was in the middle of one of the state’s deadliest waves of COVID-19. So many people were sick that efforts by state and local public health departments to test and track the virus faltered.
The governor had warned hospitals of the influx of patients they were about to receive just two weeks before paramedics came for Melissa Esquibel and Adolph Gallardo.
Soon hospitals across the state were inundated. Mesa County ran out of intensive-care beds. Weld County only had three ICU beds at one point. Metro Denver hospitals turned away ambulances.
Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo canceled inpatient surgeries and sent patients to Colorado Springs and Denver. Staff also asked the county coroner to take bodies if more people died than could be stored in the hospital’s morgue.
Pueblo had one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the state by mid-December and the coroner was using a semitrailer to store extra bodies.
Esquibel-Tennant’s family had tried to minimize their exposure to the virus, but she worked in social services and could not always do so remotely.
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By then the virus was so rampant throughout the community there was no way to know who brought COVID-19 into the house, much less where they got it from — including whether mixing between the Gallardo and Esquibel-Tennant families spread the virus between them.
“We thought we were good,” Ernestine Gallardo, 78, said. “We weren’t associating with a lot of people.”
She and Adolph met when they were children. He lived in Florence, but would visit his aunt in Pueblo. Adolph served in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two tours in Vietnam, and received the Purple Heart for his service.
Ernestine “Toni” Gallardo, 78, looks at a photo of her late husband, Adolph Gallardo, who died from COVID-19, at her home in Pueblo, Colorado, on March 11, 2025. Toni also lost her grandson Andrew Valdez to the virus. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
He and Esquibel-Tennant’s husband were “two peas in a pod,” Ernestine Gallardo said.
In mid-November, around the same time the Esquibel-Tennant household got sick, Adolph caught what he initially thought was a cold. He was prone to colds and got them each winter, Ernestine Gallardo said.
It was COVID-19. Adolph spent his final Thanksgiving mostly in bed struggling to breathe before paramedics came that evening.
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Melissa Esquibel went into cardiac arrest at Parkview Medical Center three days later.
Medical staff tried to resuscitate her, but Melissa had little to no heartbeat. Her bones were fragile because of Turner syndrome and doctors told Esquibel-Tennant that their attempts to save her sister had crushed Melissa’s body.
“I felt the hurt in the doctor,” Esquibel-Tennant said.
She asked the physician to have hospital staff call her when Melissa died. Hours passed and Esquibel-Tennant still hadn’t received a call, so she dialed the hospital herself. A staff member paused before telling her they had forgotten to call.
Melissa had already died.
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“She probably just died by herself,” Esquibel Tennant said. “Nobody to comfort her.”
Melissa passed away on Nov. 29, 2020.
Bernie Esquibel-Tennant heads downstairs at her home in Pueblo, Colorado, on March 19, 2025. Esquibel-Tennant’s family kept the posters they made to celebrate her sister, Melissa Esquibel’s, life. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Nearly five years later, questions still linger in Esquibel-Tennant’s mind, mainly about the quality of care her sister received and whether Melissa died the way she was told.
“I can’t blame anybody,” she said. “…But because there were so many great unknowns you just had to trust what you were being informed about.”
“We’re stuck” in grief
A pandemic plan drafted by Colorado’s public health department in 2018 found that if there was a major health crisis, “there may be a need for public mourning, psychological support and a slow transition into a new normal.”
But since the pandemic, more people are feeling isolated and overwhelmed as they grieve, said Micki Burns, head of Judi’s House, an organization that helps grieving families.
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“We’re stuck (in grief) because the pandemic divided us in such distinct ways,” she said. “Until we are able to heal and reunite and connect we’re probably going to remain stuck.”
A group called Marked by COVID is advocating for a national memorial in Washington, D.C. so that society can pause and remember “this unprecedented loss of life that we have experienced,” said Kristin Urquiza, co-founder and executive director.
Ca-Sandra Goodrich leans against her walking cane in her home in Aurora, Colorado, on March 17, 2025. Goodrich lost her cousin to COVID-19 in 2021, and had to watch her funeral via a livestream because she was sick with COVID-19. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
But for now, many Coloradans grieve alone.
Ca-Sandra Goodrich, who lives in Aurora, was unable to attend the funeral held for her cousin Necole Dandridge, who died from COVID-19 at age 39 on Nov. 9, 2021.
Instead, Goodrich watched the funeral via a livestream because she herself was sick with the virus.
“I remember feeling left out,” Goodrich, 53, said.
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When Goodrich thinks about the pandemic, she remembers all that her family has lost. Her extended family is large and more than a dozen members have passed away in the years since the virus first swept the state.
Only Necole’s death was attributed to COVID-19, but Goodrich can’t help but to wonder whether other relatives who had respiratory symptoms at the time they died might have also had the virus.
“It’s just in the shadows,” Goodrich said. “…It’s almost like COVID is the phantom or the ghost that no one is acknowledging. “
The loss changed Goodrich, who struggles with her own health.
“I’m reluctant to get close to an individual,” she said.
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Misinformation swirled around COVID-19 deaths
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had prepared for the possibility of a pandemic years earlier by running simulations with local health departments. But there was a major aspect of COVID-19 that public health officials hadn’t known to prepare for: misinformation and conspiracy theories.
“That was a new dynamic and the level of misinformation — it was challenging to counteract that,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the state’s public health director. “If public health says, ‘We recommend you wear a mask’ — we would have thought that that’s something that would have been accepted universally. But it wasn’t.”
Protesters gathered at the Colorado Capitol to oppose the state’s stay-at-home order and other restrictions implemented early in the COVID-19 pandemic on April 19, 2020. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Among the things that became politically divisive during the pandemic was how state and federal health departments counted and publicly reported COVID-19 deaths.
Officials said from the beginning of the crisis that the number of people who died from the virus was likely undercounted because of delays in testing. But critics claimed the death toll was inflated.
The debate came to a head in May 2020 when a state lawmaker alleged the Department of Public Health and Environment falsified the number of people who died from the virus and called for criminal charges to be filed against Hunsaker Ryan.
“I regarded it as a conspiracy theory and still do,” said Ian Dickson, who worked as a communications specialist with the state health department in 2020. “We also weren’t doing anything to get ahead of it.”
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The agency denied altering death certificates, but responded by changing how Colorado publicly reported COVID-19 deaths. The decision, Dickson said, “really lent credence to a conspiracy theory.”
“From a communications standpoint it was a mess,” he said.
The department in May 2020 split deaths into two categories: those who died from the virus and those who had COVID-19 when they died, but it was not the leading cause.
“My directive was just get the best data, be transparent,” Polis recalled in an interview.
There was often a narrow gap between the two figures during the height of the pandemic, but the number of people who died from the virus was typically lower than those who died with COVID-19 because it only included fatalities listed on death certificates as being caused directly by the disease.
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Yet medical professionals use what they call the “but for” principle when determining a cause of death, which says: if “but for (a certain event),” a person would not have died at this specific time and place. So deaths are ruled COVID-19 fatalities when the virus causes a person to die by triggering a condition that leads to their death, such as heart attacks, strokes or septic shock.
“If in those early weeks of the pandemic, we had relied exclusively on that final death certificate coded data, it would have been weeks, maybe even months until we had counts,” state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said. “That would have misled the public.”
“We were really at a very difficult time trying our best to get information to the public as quickly as we could,” she added.
The spread of misinformation affected Coloradans who lost loved ones to the virus.
There were many times during the height of the pandemic when families didn’t want COVID-19 to be listed on their relatives’ death certificates, said Kelly, the former El Paso County coroner. A person even screamed at Kelly over the phone, he said, telling him that COVID-19 wasn’t real and that he wouldn’t accept the virus as his father’s cause of death.
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El Paso County Coroner Dr. Leon Kelly stands in a hallway at the county office on Oct. 19, 2020. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
“These people were being lied to and they were being manipulated in many ways,” Kelly said.
Kelly, in his dual roles during the pandemic, performed autopsies in the morning on people who died from the virus and then spent his afternoons trying to prevent those deaths with El Paso County’s health department.
For almost a year, Kelly collected death certificates and reviewed them for accuracy because there were so many questions about how people died. The notebook with those death certificates sat on his desk for nearly five years until he shredded them earlier this year after he stepped down as coroner.
“I took it so personal. It was my responsibility to keep people safe,” he said. “…I had failed.”
“It just leaves a hole in your heart”
Ernestine Gallardo doesn’t like to think about Thanksgiving anymore, much less cook a traditional feast of turkey, stuffing or mashed potatoes.
Adolph’s pet peeve was lumpy potatoes.
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But he’s not here anymore and Thanksgiving has never been the same. The family opted out of the holiday two years ago, choosing to dine at a Chinese restaurant instead.
“It’s too hard for me to think of doing things that he really enjoyed,” Ernestine Gallardo said.
Ernestine Gallardo and her daughter, Angela, were able to be with Adolph when he died on Dec. 10, 2020.
But the patriarch’s other children, Patrick and Pamela Gallardo, weren’t there because they were sick.
Ernestine “Toni” Gallardo, 78, third from the left, lost both her husband, Adolph Gallardo, and her grandson, Andrew Valdez, to COVID-19. Toni stands outside her home in Pueblo, Colorado, for a photo with her adult children, from left, twins Angela and Pamela, Andrew’s mother, and their older brother, Patrick, on March 11, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
“That still haunts me,” Patrick Gallardo, 58, said.
Angela Gallardo, 54, wonders sometimes if it would have been better if she hadn’t gone to the hospital.
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“I feel selfish because I was able to be there with my dad and hold his hand and rub his arm,” she said.
The Gallardos lost a second family member to COVID-19 nine months later. Pamela Gallardo’s son, Andrew Valdez, had the virus earlier in the pandemic and died of a heart attack in his sleep on Sept. 26, 2021. He was 31.
“We couldn’t be with them at all and then for them to pass by themselves — it just leaves a hole in your heart that’s never gonna fill back up no matter what you do,” Pamela Gallardo 54, said.
“There’s still no closure”
Esquibel-Tennant went to Parkview Medical Center to pick up her sister’s belongings in December 2020, a couple weeks after Melissa died.
When she opened the bag given to her by staff, Esquibel-Tennant saw only a nightgown — the one her sister had worn when the paramedics came.
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“How horrible,” Esquibel thought. “That’s all I have left of my sister.”
Melissa was cremated, a first for their family. Esquibel-Tennant hadn’t wanted her sister’s body to sit in a morgue or freezer truck.
But it meant she never saw Melissa’s body or what she looked like when she died. She still wonders what happened in her sister’s final moments.
On the way home from the hospital, Esquibel-Tennant stopped at a car wash and tossed her sister’s nightgown in a trash bin.
“There’s still no closure,” she said.
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Across the street from the Gallardo’s home, Bernie Esquibel-Tennant sits outside her home in Pueblo, Colorado, on March 19, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
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The leaders of two Native American reservations in southern Colorado recently called the state’s ban on their ability to partake in online sports betting an extension of the “troubling legacy” of broken agreements between governments and the Tribes.
A recent ruling by a federal court judge on the issue, along with a petroleum spill that has aggravated the relationship between the state and the Tribes, has apparently reopened old wounds. Healing them may happen in the coming weeks if the two sides can talk.
A money matter
Colorado voters narrowly approved legalized sports gambling here in November 2019. The amount of betting and the amount of tax paid to the state from it has grown substantially since then. In September alone, bettors from across the nation spent more than $99 million online with casinos in Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek.
Reservation-based casinos are important to Native American economies. In 2023, tribally owned gaming operations nationally generated about $42 billion in revenue. Understandably, those reservations seek to maximize that cash flow.
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In Colorado, both the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribes started sports betting platforms through their own casinos six months after voters gave online gambling the green light. The Southern Ute Tribe launched the Sky Ute SportsBook through its Sky Ute Casino in Ignacio. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe started its own platform at its Ute Mountain Casino in Towaoc.
According to court documents, the vendor for the Sky Ute Sportsbook received a letter from the Colorado Division of Gaming (CODOG) two weeks after it started.
“[W]e believe that your company is participating in sports betting in Colorado on behalf of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe without complying with Colorado gaming law,” the letter stated.
Later, the vendor working for the Ute Mountain Utes’ operation received the same letter.
The gaming division advised the Tribes to apply for the state betting license, the same license that all other Colorado casinos are required to obtain. With that license would come a promise to pay 10% of net sports betting revenue to the state. The casinos declined, shut down their sports books and sued instead.
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“The Tribes claim that Colorado’s actions made their sports betting operations challenging and more expensive,” Judge Gordon Gallagher summarized in last month’s ruling, “effectively freezing them out of the sports betting market.”
Last month, Gallagher dismissed the case.
“Colorado explicitly authorized sports betting, a Class III game, throughout the state,” the Tribes complained in a joint press release following the judge’s decision. “But the State immediately stymied the ability of the Tribes to engage in that activity despite clear authorization under the Gaming Compacts, and instead, elected to benefit out-of-state gaming interests over its relationship with the Tribes. When the Tribes sought to challenge that conduct, the Administration chose to hide behind its immunity. These actions by the Polis Administration in refusing to honor the Gaming Compacts entered into with Colorado’s two federally-recognized Tribes represents one of the lowest points in State-Tribal relations in recent history.”
History
The first gambling approved on a Native American reservation came in 1979 when the Florida Seminoles opened a high-stakes bingo hall. Its legality was challenged, but the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled it was a legal operation.
In 1988, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) was enacted, giving way to the growth of casinos on reservation land.
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Much has changed since then. First, online sports gambling became legal in most states in 2018, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
That same year, the Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that banned commercial sports betting in most states. This spurred most states to authorize sports wagering, as Colorado did one year later. This gave those states regulatory authority over such gambling outside reservation boundaries.
Of course, one of the most significant changes to occur was in technology.
“[B]ecause of the ability to place an online bet from a cellular phone or other electronic device, bettors can engage in gambling from almost anywhere,” Judge Gallagher stated in his ruling. “If the gambler and roulette wheel were on Indian land, IGRA applied. However, in 2025, a gambler can be in Denver and the electronic game processed through a computer server on Southern Ute Indian Tribe land or Ute Mountain Ute Tribe land. Where then does the gaming occur?”
“This is a legal determination for the Court to make,” he stated.
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In the end, Gallagher determined that any bet placed off-reservation is regulated by the state.
“That distinction is crucial in this action and fatal to the Tribes’ case,” Gallagher wrote. “A myriad of gambling houses offer legal sports betting in the State of Colorado. To engage in this service, they must remit 10% to the State. The State of Colorado has offered this possibility to the Tribes.”
Anger Spills Over
“The Tribe respects Judge Gallagher and appreciates the time he has given this issue,” the Tribes stated in their recent press release. “We believe a different result is mandated by federal law and will be evaluating how to move forward in the coming weeks.”
But after that expression of hope, the Tribes’ sentiments took a very different tone. The press release referred to the “bitter irony” of the situation – a legal setback over gambling funds, most of which are directed at the state’s effort to protect its water resources, while the Southern Ute Tribe deals with a nearly year-old gasoline spill that threatens the Animas River. Groundwater contamination has forced several residents from their properties.
In the months since CBS Colorado first reported the spill, the company whose pipeline is responsible for it has upgraded the extent of it, from 23,000 gallons to nearly 97,000. The spill is now the largest spill of its kind in Colorado since the state began tracking such incidents in 2016.
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“We are confident that had this spill been in Denver instead of a remote, rural part of the state, the response would have been more robust,” the two Tribes stated in the press release. “The Southern Ute Indian Tribe has expended its own resources to ensure the local waterways and resources are protected in our region. It has done so without a single dollar of the millions of dollars in revenue the State has collected from sports betting, and without the benefit of additional revenue from tribally-run sports betting that could have been relied upon had the Gaming Compact been honored.”
The Tribes claimed Colorado Gov. Jared Polis failed to participate in a recent conference call with state and Indigenous leaders about the spill.
“Yesterday’s cancelled call between Governor Polis and (Southern Ute) Chairman (Melvin J.) Baker reflects an alarming lack of urgency on the Governor’s part to work cooperatively with the Tribe on this spill – it brings to mind the troubling legacy of how states have historically disregarded Tribal relations, an approach that is wholly unacceptable in today’s society,” they said. “The history of relations between Tribes and the state and federal governments is one of broken Treaties and agreements. The Polis Administration’s conduct is a reminder that those things we think are an artifact of a distant past still exist today.”
A spokesperson from Gov. Polis’s office responded with a statement:
“We deeply respect the government-to-government relationship the state has with the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute Indian Tribes. We are glad that the court ruled in the state’s favor to ensure Colorado can continue to manage sports betting in a way that works best for Coloradans and our state, and continue funding important water projects around the state. We are dedicated to working together with the Tribes on gaming matters, and we look forward to ongoing conversations with the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute Indian Tribes on this important issue.”
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Elsewhere
The issue is not Colorado’s alone. Today, Indian gaming, as it is called, is played in 29 states. There are 532 gaming operations, which include casinos, bingo halls, travel plazas and convenience stores. These are owned by 243 Tribes. In total, they grossed almost $44 billion in fiscal year 2024.
However, according to Tribal Government Gaming, three of the 10 states containing the largest number of Tribes still do not have legal sports betting seven years after SCOTUS gave states the right to allow it. A ballot initiative is in the planning stages for 2028 in California.
Congress could enact a national standard for online sports betting through tribal casinos, but has not taken up the issue.
Adjacent to Colorado (from Tribal Government Gaming):
All of Arizona’s Tribes can offer in-person wagering and digital betting on the reservation. But off reservation, the 10 Tribes licensed to offer online sports betting are regulated by the state and pay the same 10% tax rate as commercial operators.
Nebraska voters agreed to legalize sports betting on the November 2020 ballot, and three years later, the first bets were taken. The Winnebago Tribe is a key player on the Nebraska gaming scene, but in this case, the Tribe is regulated and taxed by the state.
Oklahoma Tribes are hoping to pursue legalizing sports betting when the current governor’s term limits are reached in 2027.
New Mexico’s Tribes have their own regulatory body and are not beholden to the state. They also do not pay taxes.
After months of tense negotiations, Utah and six other western states are running up against the clock to broker a deal over the drought-stricken Colorado River.
The federal government gave the Colorado River Basin states a Nov. 11 deadline to reach an agreement on how to manage the water supply for 40 million people after the current guidelines expire next year. If they fail, the federal government may come up with a plan for them.
“We’re making steady progress on key issues the federal government has identified, aiming to reach broad alignment by November 11—even if the finer details come later,” Gene Shawcroft, Utah’s Colorado River commissioner, said in a statement. “If we can get there, it may allow the states to retain control of the process and avoid federal intervention.”
The states are still struggling to reach a consensus on key sticking points, though, and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Wednesday called on the Trump administration to “step in, exert leadership and broker a deal,” the Arizona Daily Star reported.
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Hobbs said the Upper Basin states have held an “extreme negotiating position” in refusing to agree to cuts on their share of the river.
“Without consensus among all seven states, Interior’s management options would be more limited and less beneficial than what could be achieved through a collaborative approach,” a spokesperson for the Interior Department said. “We are optimistic that, through continued collaboration and good-faith efforts, the seven states can develop the level of detail and consensus needed to meet the initial November deadline.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rafts on the Colorado River as seen from Navajo Bridge in Ariz. on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
The river and its upstream tributaries are the lifeblood of the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico. It supports farms, 30 federally-recognized tribes, habitat for endangered fish and booming metropolises from the Wasatch Front to Phoenix.
The critical waterway is being stretched thin, though, and has been dwindling as hot and dry conditions have plagued the Western U.S. for the past two decades. The entire Colorado River Basin was in drought this year, with large chunks in extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
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“We’re in just a very dry period over the last 20 years,” said Mark Stilson, the principal engineer for the Colorado River Authority of Utah.
What states are negotiating
For over a century, the states across the Colorado River Basin have managed the river according to the Colorado River Compact. That law divided the region into the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada.
The compact did not account for the historic drought the region has been experiencing, though. The states and Interior adopted temporary guidelines in 2007, 2019 and 2024 that implemented increasing cuts to lower basin states as water levels at Lake Mead drop.
Those agreements expire at the end of 2026, though, and states are now working on a new agreement to manage the river during years of low flows.
Tensions have flared, particularly over one major sticking point: who takes cuts during dry times.
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“We need to figure out a way to withdraw less water over the long term from the Colorado River … and fundamentally it comes down to sharing the pain of shortage,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
The argument over water cuts
Because Lower Basin states have agreed to take cuts during times of shortage, they argue Upper Basin states must agree to reduce their use, too.
Utah and its Upper Basin neighbors have said that they already reduce their water use each year based on the actual flows of the river. “We scale water use according to the water availability every single year, every week of the year,” said Michael Drake, deputy state engineer at the Utah Division of Water Rights.
While Lower Basin states fall downstream of the country’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, many upstream communities lack such long-term water storage and must adapt according to snow runoff.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Ariz., on Monday, May 19, 2025.
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“We’re always on the brink of disaster, so to speak, if we don’t have good winters,” Stilson said.
Utah’s state engineer has the power to cut water rights when needed. Those with the newest, or most junior, water rights receive cuts first. But even farmers with some of the oldest rights in the state have had to reduce use.
“In Utah, even the 1860 rights were cut by 30 to 40% this year,” Shawcroft said at a meeting of the Upper Colorado River Commission in September.
In neighboring Colorado, the Dolores Project, which provides water to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, received a 70% cut, and the Ute Farm and Ranch Enterprises operated on a 50% supply, Becky Mitchell, the Colorado River Commissioner for Colorado, said at the UCRC meeting two months ago.
While some water users have faced cuts in dry years, researchers have found that the Upper Basin has actually used more water in dry years.
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“I just don’t think the claim of these shortages being taken is a legitimate claim,” said John Fleck, a writer and member of the Colorado River Research Group that conducted the study. “It misstates the hydrologic reality of the way water is moved around in the Upper Basin.”
The four northern states used an average of 4.6 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year from 2016-2020, according to a Bureau of Reclamation report. That’s roughly 3 million acre-feet short of their annual allotment under the compact.
(David Condos | KUER) Farmer and rancher Coby Hunt stands next to idle irrigation equipment in one of his fields near the town of Green River, Aug. 19, 2024. Utah has launched a new program that will pay producers to leave their fields empty, as Hunt has done, and leave their irrigation water in the Colorado River system.
What matters to the Lower Basin, though, is how much water flows downstream to their states. As part of the original compact, the Upper Basin is required to “not cause the flow of the river” at Lees Ferry to fall below an average of 7.5 million acre-feet over a 10-year period.
“We’re perilously close to the point where the Lower Basin will assert that the Upper Basin has not delivered the amount of water that it’s required to under the compact and all of the related agreements,” Porter said. “It’s hard to imagine that unless we have a new agreement, this won’t occur in the next couple of years.”
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The tense debate boils down to whether or not the Upper Basin has a “non-depletion obligation” or a “delivery obligation,” Porter added.
If the compact just requires the Upper Basin states to not deplete the river, then they may be able to make an argument that forces such as climate change are causing the reduced flow. If it’s a delivery obligation, then Utah and the three other states may have to cut their own use to make sure the Lower Basin’s and part of Mexico’s allocation flows past Glen Canyon Dam.
The different interpretations are at the crux of what states are hashing out right now.
“When we get less water, it makes it harder for us to be able to honor those commitments in the future,” Stilson said. “And that’s the heart of what the negotiations are about.”
The reality of the river
If negotiators were to agree on cuts for the Upper Basin, Utah’s cities and agricultural communities may not be too happy about having to reduce their water use for farmers and booming metropolitan areas downstream. “[Farmers] struggle with closing down their farms in favor of farms down in California and Arizona,” Drake said.
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Lower Basin states have made strides in cutting use, though. The Lower Basin historically used their full allotment of the river, even going beyond their full share at times. But recent data compiled by Fleck shows that those states are projected to cut their take of the Colorado River down to 5.9 million acre-feet in 2025, the lowest level since 1983.
“You have seen these … really significant reductions in water use, and the economies of these communities just keep chugging along,” Fleck said. “Even if you look at the agricultural productivity in places like Imperial, Yuma, they’re doing great with less water.”
While communities would prefer to not cut their water use, Fleck said, desert cities and farms can survive with less. “The alternative is not acceptable,” he added.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lake Powell near Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Ariz. on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Climate change projections show the Colorado River will continue to have less than it did when the seven basin states negotiated the compact over a century ago. While the current drought has been referred to as a “crisis,” Porter said that word has become overused and “doesn’t have any meaning anymore.” The real crisis may be how managers respond to the new water reality.
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“It’s been recognized for a very long time that essentially the Colorado River is over allocated, and that we were going to drive down the reservoir levels. … Where we are now is because the states can’t come to agreement,” Porter said.
If the states reach consensus by Tuesday, they will have until mid-February to hash out the finer details of a plan, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
“Utah remains fully committed to defending every drop of Colorado River water to protect our communities and water users,” Shawcroft said, “and we’re hopeful that the Basin States can unite around a workable framework before the February deadline.”
