Since 2000, the Colorado River Basin has experienced its lowest 16-year period of inflow in over 100 years of record keeping that began in 1895. The impacts are visible in the receding reservoir levels across the Colorado River Basin. The Upper Colorado River Basin states are designing strategies to avoid a drop in Lake Powell’s water level that would impact hydropower generation at Glen Canyon Dam, as well as their ability to maintain minimum flow obligations for the Lower Basin and Mexico. The Upper Basin’s three-tiered “drought contingency plan” involves a reservoir re-operations component that calls for the Upper Basin’s three large Colorado River Storage Project facilities upstream of Lake Powell – Navajo, Aspinall, and especially Flaming Gorge reservoirs – to commence additional releases if critical levels at Lake Powell are anticipated. This paper evaluates the reservoir re-operations component of the Upper Basin’s drought contingency plan and explores both short-term and longer-term options for bolstering its overall effectiveness. While reservoir re-operations can have a meaningful short-term impact, improving the accuracy of modeling baselines by staging a wet-year pilot run and recognizing reservoir re-operations as a single component of the larger Upper Basin drought contingency plan can help strengthen the planned drought response efforts. Forming new collaborative water-sharing agreements and undertaking infrastructural modifications can extend the Upper Basin’s ability to maintain minimum flows at Lee Ferry over a longer period than currently possible. Identifying alternative funding sources for hydropower revenue-dependent programs and mitigating our role in driving the hydrologic uncertainty prompting the Upper Basin’s drought contingency plan can act as proactive long-term solutions.