Parks and Wildlife also has plans to install a new $1.3 million dip tank to improve the decontamination of boats visiting the Highline Lake, a large reservoir near Grand Junction where mussels were detected in 2022.

On the eve of the high-stakes summit, negotiators from both the upper and lower river basins are not sounding confident they can reach an agreement with less than three weeks to go before a Feb. 14 deadline.

Four days of negotiations in a Salt Lake City conference room earlier this month did not appear to have sparked a breakthrough.

Steamboat Springs author and adventurer Eugene Buchanan has lived near the banks of the Yampa River long enough to notice it’s rhythms and moods are often mirrored by the residents in his northwest Colorado ski town.

The proposals range from taking “no action” to a scenario that might result in water cuts to the lower basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. One alternative developed in partnership with conservation groups would incentivize states and water users to proactively conserve the river.

The Upper Arkansas Basin in the central part of the state is currently the driest, with about 49% of the normal snowpack.

Invasive zebra mussels have now infested at least 135 miles of the Colorado River, from the Utah border to Dotsero in western Colorado. And if these tiny pests flow into narrow irrigation pipes and tubes, they threaten to spoil the harvest of Colorado's sweetest crops.

The personhood designation for the river is part of a broader "rights of nature" movement that aims to bestow new legal protections on threatened natural resources around the globe.

The plan is a $99 million bid from water users on Colorado’s West Slope to ensure some of the state’s most valuable water rights, which are currently used to power a hydroelectric power plant, continue to keep a huge volume of water in the river.

Drought and steady demand along the Colorado River are draining the nation's second-largest reservoir. Land that was once submerged is now full of beavers and thriving ecosystems.