A lawsuit has been filed to halt the diversion of nearly 73,000 acre-feet of water from the Green River/Kurt Repanshek file of the Green River as it heads into the Gates of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument

Born high in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, the Green River flows south out of the state and into Utah and over to Colorado, where it soon slips into Dinosaur National Monument. For nearly 60 miles the river bucks and jumps and flows, creating one of the best white-water experiences in the West, before leaving the monument.

Further downstream, and back in Utah, the Green merges with the Colorado River and passes through Canyonlands National Park, again creating a phenomenal white-water experience, before emptying into Lake Powell at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

At a time when the upper and lower Colorado River Basin states are facing dire water shortages, the Trump administration is issuing a contract that will allow the diversion of nearly 73,000 acre-feet of water from the Flaming Gorge Dam in Wyoming for the state of Utah to use on other projects, including one to pipe water from Lake Powell to the growing southwestern Utah community of St. George.

This move, a quartet of conservation groups argues, comes despite a prediction from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that the Colorado River Basin will increasingly face shortages. 

A lawsuit filed by the groups -- the Center for Biological Diversity, Living Rivers, Colorado Riverkeeper, and Utah Rivers Council -- argues the Interior Department erred in reaching this decision without conducting an adequate environmental review that thoroughly took into consideration climate change, drought, economic impacts, and the river basin's current water deficit. They also claim in the 40-page lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that the agency didn't fully consider the impacts the diversion, proposed for 50 years, could have to endangered fish and the region's recreation industry.

The filing (attached below) maintains Interior based its decision on outdated 2007 water data and failed to consider "recent scientific studies showing the water deficit in the Colorado River Basin is growing due to rising temperatures, persistent drought, and other factors."

Bureau of Reclamation officials admitted as much just weeks after approving the Green River Block Exchange contract when they responded to another request to divert water from the Green River by saying "documents prepared by Reclamation in 2007 should not be relied upon to determine an amount of water now available for this project. The data used to determine availability of water on the Green River must be updated before any commitment to enter a contract to supply water for this project will be made. It is conceivable that current conditions will not support any new contracts for water,” the lawsuit notes.

By 2060, according to a 2012 BuRec study cited in the lawsuit, the Colorado basin's "water supply imbalance between natural supply and human demand" will reach 3.2 million acre-feet. But that prediction could be wildly outdated, the filing implies, as a 2017 report by consultants concluded that reduction in Colorado River flows by mid-century will be 20-30 percent from present, not just 9 percent as the 2012 study assumed.

At the end of the day, the groups allege, Interior did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act "by failing to ensure scientific integrity in its choice of modeling to assess future water availability while ignoring other modeling and data, ignoring new and directly pertinent scientific studies and data regarding water availability, and failing to consider a reasonable range of alternatives."

Harmed by that failure are not only the endangered fish (the Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker, humpback chub, and bonytail chub) that rely on Green River flows, but those who head to Utah's canyon country to fish, swim, raft, canoe, hike, and camp along the Green and Colorado rivers, the lawsuit contends.

Rather than preparing an environmental assessment on the water diversion, BuRec should have commissioned a much more detailed environmental impact statement that would, along with other things, examined how the diversion would affect Dinosaur and Canyonlands, along with other recreational areas and tribal lands, the lawsuit charged.