“…The Colorado River basin has a long history of water problems-conflict, competition, salinity, scarcity, and others -no more so than in the current crises of drought and overappropriation that have jointly led to the lowest main stem reservoir levels and largest cutbacks in history (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2012; Kuhn and Fleck, 2019;Salehabadi et al, 2020;Robison et al, 2021;Congressional Research Service, 2022;U.S. Department of Interior, 2022;Wheeler et al, 2022). Each water problem, large and small, has been shaped by the basin's elaborate water institutions, i.e., its norms, laws, policies, and organizations that enable, constrain, and regulate alternative courses of action (National Research Council, 1968;Ingram et al, 1984;Ostrom, 2008;Easter and McCann, 2010).…”