The No Action Plan: Doing Nothing Is the Worst Option

The No Action alternative in the post-2026 Draft EIS is exactly what it sounds like: continue operating under the 2007 Interim Guidelines past their expiration with no modifications. No coordination improvements, no elevation-responsive adjustments, no new tools. This alternative exists primarily as a baseline for comparison — it is what happens if Congress and Reclamation fail to agree on anything.

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

• Simple. No new legal framework required; no inter-basin negotiation needed.
• Politically the path of least resistance — easier to block change than enact it.

Weaknesses

• Worst outcome of any plan we evaluated. Under the last-decade stress test, median elevation ends below 3,430 ft within 40 years.
• Worst-case (p10) floor hits dead pool (3,370 ft) — in the bottom 10% of futures, the lake is effectively empty.
• Ignores everything we've learned since 2007 about reservoir response to extended drought. The 2007 rules were designed for a wetter paradigm.

Verdict

If you remember nothing else from this series, remember this: doing nothing is not safe. No Action is the worst option on the table. Every other plan — including ones we don't recommend — produces better outcomes than continuing the status quo. The decision is not whether to change; it is which change to choose.

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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.