There’s an old saying that what happens in Las Vegas stays there. Unfortunately, that turned out to be true for water officials from the seven Western states served by the Colorado River, who attended the three-day Colorado River Water Users Association conference but didn’t meet to discuss long-term solutions for the overburdened river.

According to the Denver Post, negotiators from the Lower Basin – California, Arizona and Nevada – and those from the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico presented their own competing plans in separate panels during the conference in early December. The two sides blamed each other for the communication breakdown, the newspaper reported.

“What happened in Vegas? Well, nothing, unfortunately,” said a spokeswoman from Dorsey and Whitney, the international law firm that has been warning of dire consequences for everyone if the states don’t get on the same page. She emailed remarks from one of the firm’s lead attorneys, Salt Lake City-based water law expert Gage Zobell, who attended the conference and says it was a “failure” and a “missed opportunity” made by the state reps.

“Both sides offer sincere expressions of a desire to find common ground, but … seem unable to move from their ‘proverbial’ entrenched positions to meet in the middle on policy (and, it appears, physically),” said Zobell, who has an active water practice throughout the Intermountain West and advises a variety of companies in regulations and compliance.

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The impasse comes as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Lake Mead and Lake Powell, must create a new operating plan for the reservoirs before current guidelines expire at the end of 2026, the Post notes. The two basins presented separate proposals in spring 2024 on operating the two reservoirs, disagreeing over issues such as whether the Upper Basin states should face mandatory water cuts in dry years.

Zobell warned last June that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to nix a settlement between Texas and New Mexico over the management of the Rio Grande River could have a sweeping impact on other interstate water disputes in the West, incentivizing states to avoid lawsuits that would cause the federal government to intervene.

“The worst-case scenario for all involved states is to allow this to devolve into litigation over a federally mandated plan,” Zobell explained Dec. 6. “In light of recent Supreme Court precedent out of New Mexico v. Texas, I think all sides are best served by working toward a common solution.”

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A state resolution would be only the beginning, he said. “On the sidelines still looms reserved water for tribal entities and federally enforced treaty rights with Mexico,” he said. “Resolving the state issues won’t resolve all issues.”

But at this point, just continuing to argue is a gamble worthy of Las Vegas’ biggest high rollers, with producers’ future at stake.