Settlements on Settlers’ Terms

IN EARLY JANUARY, Lake Powell, a reservoir fed by the Colorado River, reached critically low levels. The bathtub ring around its receding edges has spent the last year gracing the pages of news publications across the nation, accompanied by increasingly panicked concern about Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower turbines, which cannot operate reliably if the lake is lower than 3,490 feet. At the start of 2022, Powell’s water levels were just 46 feet above that threshold.

The drought is an emergency, and water cuts are coming. But the drought is also compounding another emergency. Indigenous nations within the river basin, left out of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, have been working through state and federal courts to settle their water rights, anticipating