Basic Coordination: The Minimum Effort Plan

Basic Coordination is the gentlest of the five Draft EIS alternatives. It preserves the broad tier structure of the 2007 Guidelines but adds smooth interpolation between tiers, plus modest coordination with Lake Mead elevations. The release reductions trigger slightly earlier and at lower rates than under the current rules.

The scorecard

We ran this plan through our standard stress test: sampled inflows from the last ten years (the driest decade on record), 2,000 Monte Carlo iterations, 40 years forward. Same starting point as every other plan we evaluate. Same inflow sampling. Only the operating rule changes.

Strengths

• Slight improvement over the 2007 Guidelines at low elevations — the interpolated tiers avoid the cliff effect of hard tier boundaries.
• Politically feasible. This is the alternative that changes the least, which makes it the easiest to get adopted.
• No new infrastructure or new legal frameworks required.

Weaknesses

• Does not address the structural deficit. Inflow minus outflow is still negative most years; the plan just trims a little off the top.
• Worst-case floor still reaches dead pool in our stress test. The plan does not introduce a real reservoir-elevation protection mechanism.
• Incremental — saves a few feet in the short run, loses the same few feet over the long run.

Verdict

Basic Coordination is better than No Action but worse than every other alternative we evaluated. If it is the only plan with political traction, it is marginally worth supporting over the status quo. But it should not be the ceiling. Push for Max Operational Flexibility or Enhanced Coordination, and treat Basic as the floor of what's acceptable.

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See all plans compared in the head-to-head verdict, or read about why the real problem isn't drought — it's math.