There is a timelessness to the Colorado River as it makes its ancient run from the headwaters in the Upper Basin through the arid Lower Basin states and to the farm fields, wildlife habitat and urban environment that make up the Southwest.

There also is a sense of urgency regarding how an overallocated river is managed for its many competing uses in the face of looming shortages and a grim climate change forecast that predicts much less river flow in the years to come.

One of the wettest years in California history that ended a record five-year drought has rejuvenated the call for new storage to be built above and below ground.

In a state that depends on large surface water reservoirs to help store water before moving it hundreds of miles to where it is used, a wet year after a long drought has some people yearning for a place to sock away some of those flood flows for when they are needed.

Many Californians are not aware of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta but its signifi­cance to the state’s water supply picture has never been more magnified. A transformed region of sunken islands and crisscrossed sloughs and channels protected by earthen levees that perform more like dams, the Delta is the hub of the state’s water system.

The dramatic decline in water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell is perhaps the most visible sign of the historic drought that has gripped the Colorado River Basin for the past 16 years. In 2000, the reservoirs stood at nearly 100 percent capacity; today, Lake Powell is at 49 percent capacity while Lake Mead has dropped to 38 percent. Before the late season runoff of Miracle May, it looked as if Mead might drop low enough to trigger the first-ever Lower Basin shortage determination in 2016.

Read the excerpt below from the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue along with the editor’s note. Click here to subscribe to Western Water and get full access.

After much time, study and investment, the task of identifying solutions to ensure the long-term sus­tainability of the Colorado River is underway. People from the Upper and Lower basins representing all interest groups are preparing to put their signatures to documents aimed at ensuring the river’s vitality for the next 50 years and beyond.

Before attorneys wrangled in courtrooms over questions of water rights, people typically took matters into their own hands. If your neighbor up river was damming water that affected your supply, it wasn’t unheard of that you would simply sneak up in the middle of the night and blow up the dam.

Living in the semi-arid, Mediterranean climate of California, drought always lingers on the horizon. People believe they are ready to face the next dry period, then conditions arrive testing whether that is the case.