Farmers are using cover crops to conserve water and improve soil health

Close-up of rubber boots standing in a grassy field under a blue sky.

by Robert Marcos

In 2022, University of California Davis published the results of a three-year study on covers crops, which was carried out on ten commercial farms and research sites in California’s Central Valley. The study examined the impact of winter cover cropping on soil health and water retention in irrigated agricultural systems with a focus on almond and tomato crops, which are two of the most common crops grown in the region.¹

Three cover crop systems were included in the study and then compared with adjacent control fields that were left bare, at the same site. The systems included: 1) a cover crop in processing tomato fields; 2) a cover crop planted in between rows of almond trees; and 3) allowing whatever native vegetation was available to grow in between the almond tree rows. The planted cover crops were a mix of legumes, grasses, and brassicas.

The results were impressive. Researchers found that the cover crop fields had higher levels of soil organic matter, soil nitrogen, and microbial activity, indicating improved soil health. In addition, the cover crop fields had higher levels of water infiltration and retention, meaning that they were better able to hold onto water during periods of drought or water stress. The researchers found that the cover crops did not compete with cash crops for water, and that the same amount of water used in the control fields without cover crops was able to support the same amount of crop yield in the cover crop fields. In one case in Davis, there was heavy rainfall at one point during the study. The water loss via evapotranspiration was greater in the bare control plot, showing that use of cover crops improved water retention.

The study provided important evidence of the benefits of winter cover cropping in California’s Central Valley, particularly for improving soil health and reducing water usage in agricultural systems. The findings suggest that cover crops can help farmers make more efficient use of their water resources, potentially reducing the need for additional irrigation, and providing environmental benefits such as reduced erosion and improved water quality.

Top 5 Cover Crops for use in the Western US

For the Western United States – including the arid regions of California, Arizona, and Nevada, the best nitrogen-fixing cover crops are selected for their drought tolerance and ability to thrive in either high heat or mild winters.²

Cowpea: Best For: Summer heat in low-elevation deserts. Highly drought-tolerant with a taproot that can reach up to eight feet deep to access water. It thrives when temperatures exceed 100° F and can fix roughly 100–175 lbs of nitrogen per acre. The ‘Iron Clay’ variety is widely recommended for use in the Southwest.
Alfalfa: works best for long-term soil restoration. Often called the “queen of forages,” alfalfa is a perennial legume with deep roots that break up subsoil and reach nutrients deep in the earth. It is one of the most powerful nitrogen fixers, capable of producing 250–500 lbs of nitrogen per acre.
Crimson Clover: Used as winter cover in the Southwest or for spring cover in the north. A fast-growing annual that establishes quickly in the fall to provide winter protection. It is frequently used in mixtures with radish to improve soil structure while fixing roughly 70–150 lbs of nitrogen per acre.
Hairy Vetch: is excellent as a winter-hardy coverage and weed suppression.
Why It Works: It grows slowly in the fall but resumes vigorous growth in the spring, creating a thick mat that smothers weeds. It is known for high nitrogen fixation (over 100 lbs per acre) and performs well in the cooler, non-agricultural environments of the West.
Lablab: works best during the summer-to-fall transition in Arizona. Lablab is specifically noted for its performance in the hot weather of central Arizona. It produces high biomass and can contribute 50–200 lbs of nitrogen per acre. Unlike some other summer legumes, it continues vegetative growth late into the year without flowering immediately, offering more flexible termination dates for growers.

#Drought news April 23, 2026: Degradation continued across the plains of #Wyoming and #Colorado, with expansion of moderate to extreme drought, severe drought also expanded in western Wyoming

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

The week was highlighted by a band of above-normal precipitation extending from south Texas into eastern Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, and southern Wisconsin. Many areas in this swath received greater than 150% of normal precipitation, with some locations exceeding 400% for the week. From the Ohio Valley south into the Southeast, conditions remained quite dry, with little to no precipitation recorded across most of the region.

The West was also largely dry, with only coastal areas of California and parts of the Pacific Northwest recording above-normal precipitation. Northern portions of the Northeast received rain, with areas from western New York into Maine recording 200% or more of normal precipitation.

Temperatures were near normal to slightly below normal across the West, with departures of up to 5°F below normal in some areas. Portions of the central Plains, Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic experienced above-normal temperatures, with departures of 5–10°F above normal. Temperatures in the Southeast were near to slightly above normal, with cooler conditions in the Florida Panhandle…

High Plains

The region was mostly dry, with isolated rainfall in far southeast Nebraska, northern and southeast Kansas, and small areas of Colorado and North Dakota. Temperatures were generally above normal, with the warmest departures in southeast Nebraska and eastern Kansas.

Dryness and a warm spring led to widespread degradation. Extreme drought expanded across central and western Nebraska and into northwest Kansas. Severe drought expanded in central and southwest Kansas, with new extreme drought in far southwest Kansas.

Degradation continued across the plains of Wyoming and Colorado, with expansion of moderate to extreme drought. Extreme drought was also introduced in southern South Dakota.

Some improvements occurred in southeast Kansas, where moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions were reduced due to recent rainfall…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending April 21, 2026.

West

Precipitation was mixed. Parts of central to northern California, western Oregon and Washington, much of Idaho, and isolated areas in Montana, Utah, and Colorado recorded above-normal precipitation. However, most of the region remained drier than normal.

Temperatures were generally cooler than normal, with northern Nevada experiencing departures of up to 6°F below normal. Southern California and Arizona saw the warmest conditions, with temperatures up to 6°F above normal.

Drought conditions worsened across much of Nevada, with expansion of abnormal dryness to severe drought. Severe drought expanded into northwest Utah, while moderate to severe drought increased in western and southern Arizona. Severe drought also expanded in western Wyoming, and extreme drought was introduced in southwestern Montana.

Oregon and Washington saw slight expansion of abnormally dry to moderate drought, with a small increase in severe drought in southwest Oregon. Southern California also experienced expansion of abnormally dry conditions.

Impacts are becoming more evident as snowpack has largely melted, and early runoff may contribute to future water supply issues… [ed. emphasis mine]

South

Temperatures were above normal across northern and eastern areas, with departures of 2–6°F. Across Texas, temperatures transitioned to below normal in southern and western areas, with departures of 2–6°F below normal.

The heaviest rainfall occurred from central to southern Texas into central and eastern Oklahoma, where totals reached 150–400% of normal. Elsewhere, conditions were mostly dry, including the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, and much of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Where rainfall was sufficient in Texas and Oklahoma, drought conditions improved or were removed. However, drought intensified across Mississippi, where nearly the entire state experienced a full category of degradation and is now 100% in drought.

Extreme drought expanded in eastern Arkansas and northern and southern Louisiana, with moderate drought increasing in southern Louisiana. Severe and extreme drought expanded across western Tennessee, while moderate drought increased in the east. Tennessee is now also fully in drought…

Looking Ahead

Over the next 5–7 days, the highest precipitation chances are expected from the central Plains into the South, Midwest and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. The Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies may also see widespread precipitation.

Temperatures are expected to be above normal across the southern Plains, South and Southeast, with departures of 9–11°F in north Texas and Oklahoma and 5–7°F elsewhere. Cooler-than-normal temperatures are forecast for the northern Plains, northern Rockies, and California, with departures of 9–12°F below normal in North Dakota and Montana and 6–9°F below normal in California.

The 6–10 day outlook shows the highest chances for cooler-than-normal temperatures across the Plains and Midwest, with the greatest potential over the High Plains and upper Midwest. The best chances for above-normal temperatures are in the Pacific Northwest and along the southern Gulf Coast. The greatest likelihood of above-normal precipitation is across much of the central and southern United States, with the highest chances in the Southwest. Meanwhile, the northern United States along the Canadian border is expected to have the best chances for below-normal precipitation.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending April 21, 2026.

#ColoradoRiver water release is a ‘Band-Aid on a gaping wound’ with negotiations stalled — KJZZ.org #COriver #aridification

The Grand Canyon survey party at Lees Ferry. Left to right: Leigh Lint, boatman; H.E. Blake, boatman; Frank Word, cook; C.H. Birdseye, expedition leader; R.C. Moore, geologist; R.W. Burchard, topographer; E.C. LaRue, hydraulic engineer; Lewis Freeman, boatman, and Emery Kolb, head boatman. Boatman Leigh Lint, “a beefy athlete who could tear the rowlocks off a boat…absolutely fearless,” later went to college and became an engineer for the USGS. The Grand Canyon survey party at Lees Ferry in 1923. (Public domain.)

Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Lauren Gilger, Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:

April 21, 2026

It’s been a record dry winter across the West — and it’s making an already bad situation on the Colorado River even worse. If water levels get any lower, Lake Powell and the dam that holds it back could be in dire straits. So now, the federal government is stepping in to prop up water levels. But, as KJZZ’s Alex Hager reports, it could be a Band-Aid solution to a much bigger problem. Hager joined The Show to explain.

LAUREN GILGER: Good to have you. So, what’s the situation on Lake Powell right now after this really dry winter? Kind of a worst-case scenario almost.

ALEX HAGER: Well, right now water levels there are forecast to drop to dangerously low levels as soon as this summer. And when I say dangerous, that means we would start to see some of the infrastructure in Glen Canyon Dam, which is up in Page, Arizona, start to fail. So water levels are on track right now to drop below the intakes for the hydropower turbines that sit inside the dam. That means it would become difficult or impossible to spin them and make electricity for 5 million people across seven states. If water drops a little bit further than that, it might not be able to pass through the dam at all. We are already looking at — you know, if it falls below that hydropower intake, it could only travel through this little-used set of backup pipes. We don’t know that it could carry enough water through. You start to have all of these problems. So we are seeing some actions to prevent that from happening now.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So tell us about those actions. This is the federal government sort of taking control of at least this aspect of it. What are they going to do?

ALEX HAGER: That’s right. The federal government is stepping in. It is kicking into action something of an emergency backup plan. It’s been done before, but it is definitely a backup plan. And they’re going to shuffle some water around. There is another big reservoir up in Utah and Wyoming called Flaming Gorge, and they’re going to release extra water from Flaming Gorge, send it down the Colorado River to help fill up Lake Powell. At the same time, they’re going to start tightening the tap on Lake Powell, meaning that less water comes out of it. That water will — less of it will flow into the Grand Canyon downstream to Lake Mead and downstream to us.

Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Romancing the River: The Era of Conquest 3 — George Sibley (SibleysRivers.com) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson

Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):

April 21, 2026

A bad year in the Colorado River Basin – barring a truly miraculous spring, probably the worst in recorded history. It is bad enough so the Bureau may have to stop creating power from the Glen Canyon powerplant by this coming fall. At that point, the only way to get water downriver from Glen Canyon Dam will be dribbling it through four outlet tubes that the Bureau is now wishing it had built differently (better) 65 years ago. And praying for enough precip to push the level back above the danger point for the turbines.

Meanwhile the negotiations between the seven basin states about the future distribution of the water remained at an impasse. One might think that a really bad year might generate some new thinking, but the two Basins are still debating Compact numbers like 7.5 million acre-feet for the Lower Basin with a river that might produce less than 5 maf this year, and maybe not much more than that more frequently in the future.

It should be obvious by now that any further negotiation between the states needs to have an independent facilitator guiding the discussion, pushing both factions to disassemble their own non-negotiables. A hard-ass facilitator speaking on behalf of river reality. [ed. emphasis mine]

It seems likely that we will go into the 2027 water year this fall with some new ‘interim plan’ for operating the river system for the water year that begins in October – probably some mix-and-match from the Bureau’s five alternatives proposed last year and ‘EISed’ while the seven states fiddled. The real purpose of the new interim plan will be to keep the infrastructure of the river system viable – dancing with the dead pool. This will probably impose serious delivery shortages on those below the Powell and Mead Reservoirs (meaning the Lower Basin), and also drop the Upper Basin’s rolling 10-year total closer to the 75 million acre-feet (maf) that will cause the ‘compact call’ threat to rear its ugly head.

Year-to-year might be the most honest approach now, anyway, getting a habit of feeling our way forward carefully, with our eyes wide open – woke, one might say. The managerial ‘need for certainty’ in projections may not be part of the future we’ve imposed on ourselves.

But that’s a good place to let the present sit and settle, and go back to the unfolding saga of the ‘Era of Conquest’ in this update of Fred Dellenbaugh’s Romance of the Colorado River. You may remember that in the last post here, I related that the Bureau of Reclamation, feeling much loved for the Boulder Canyon Project that watered, fed and powered a massive regional development in Southern California, came out of World War II ready to do the same for the Compact’s Upper Basin, in response to a mandate in the Boulder Canyon Project Act that a plan be developed for the development of the rest of the river.

There was, however, already quite a lot of development going on in the Upper Basin – at least in the state of Colorado, beginning in the 1930s, simultaneous with the Boulder Canyon Project.

Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall

To establish context – the whole Colorado River Basin was experiencing its first serious modern-times drought, even as the Great Depression was settling over the whole nation. After the ‘pluvial’ of water abundance in the first three decades of the 20^th century, which convinced the water mavens that the river would deliver a dependable-enough flow of nearly 18 maf, the basin experienced its first 5 maf flow in 1933; by the end of the 1930s, there was reason to doubt that the river would ever again average 18 maf.

But Colorado had a special problem to resolve about Colorado River water distribution: the transdivide situation. I will not bore you again with my opinion of the imperial arrogance in randomly laying down straight line state boundaries in a region of great geographic and geological diversity. But what this created in the irrelevant rectangle called Colorado was like a blanket laid over a fence – the fence being the Continental Divide. West of the Divide, precipitation that fell (mostly snow in the winter) all ran off toward the Pacific Ocean in the Colorado River tributaries. East of the Divide, it all ran off toward the Atlantic in the Platte, Arkansas and Rio Grande Rivers. Because the weather mostly rode in on the prevailing westerlies, considerably more precipitation fell on the West Slope than fell on the East Slope. But the vagaries of cultural and economic development put most of the population and economic growth on the East Slope – ‘80 percent-20 percent’ is the rough ratio frequently used to describe the imbalance between water and population in the blanket dropped over the fence.

The distribution of water on both sides of the ‘blanket’ was governed by the appropriation doctrine as stated in the Colorado Constitution: all the water in the state belongs to the people of the state, subject to appropriation for individual use, and the right to divert ‘shall never be denied’ – with seniority among users determining the right to use the water in times of shortage. And by the turn of the century, challenges in water court had established the right to divert water from one basin to another.

As the drought of the 1930s settled in, farmers on the East Slope began to experience serious pressures on the water supply. And consistent with the optimism and technological advances of the early 20^th century, this was not regarded as a fact of life to be acknowledged and adapted to, but as a problem to be addressed – in this situation, by moving water from the West Slope. A major task – but Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ efforts to alleviate the Great Depression offered the possibility of some help, through new agencies like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Public Works Administration.

So when the Colorado General Assembly gathered early in 1933, two water project bills were in the hopper: one to divert an unspecified quantity from the Upper Colorado River in the Grand Lake area to the South Platte River basin, and one to divert an unspecified quantity from the Gunnison River to the Arkansas River basin.

Inhabitants of the West Slope, however, knew nothing about this until they read about it in the newspapers. And they were even more surprised that summer when construction actually began on two transdivide projects: the Denver Water Board began constructing a system of small canals high in the Fraser River headwaters (Upper Colorado tributary) to bring water to the Moffat railroad tunnel pilot bore, which the Water Board had leased from the railroad – an unused but already dug ‘pipe’ to the northern Denver area. And the sugar-beet industry led by Great Western Sugar was doing the same collection system in the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River above Aspen for diversion into a small tunnel to the Arkansas River basin. Both of those enterprises were self-funded.

All of this precipitated a regional West Slope meeting in Grand Junction of ‘water people’ – county commissioners and attorneys who were also all ranchers or farmers – at which a ‘Western Colorado Protective Association’ (WCPA) was formed, and a letter was drafted to the state engineer expressing concern that the proposed and in-process projects threatened the future development of the West Slope, and requesting inclusion in all future discussion of them.

The situation as the West Slope people saw it was not a ‘water grab.’ The leadership in the WCPA knew that the East Slope irrigators and city-builders were exercising a constitutional right in appropriating ‘the people’s water’ on the West Slope. They also knew that most of the Colorado River water left the state’s West Slope in an unmanageable snowmelt flood anyway, and it might as well go through a tunnel to the Front Range as through Grand Junction and on to – well, soon, on to enviable storage behind the great dam being built far downstream rather than its historical destiny of flowing on into the salty sea unused.

Storage! That was the key to the West Slope’s chief water problem, which was water available throughout the growing season for finishing as well as starting crops. West Slope engineers had been drafting up a number of reservoir-and-irrigation projects to present to the Bureau of Reclamation, but dams are expensive, and all of the proposed reservoirs served mountain-valley populations too small to pass the Bureau’s cost-benefit analyses.

So the concept of ‘compensatory storage’ for water lost through transdivide diversions became the WCPA’s central focus. And despite their small population, the WCPA had two good cards to play. One was the fact that New Deal federal funding distributed to the states had to be for projects approved by the entire state; the transdivide diversions that needed federal assistance needed for the basin of origin to be as happy as the basin of destination.

A image shows a guest column by Rep. Edward Taylor that appeared from the Steamboat Pilot in 1921. Graphic credit: Northern Water

The other card was a congressional representative, Edward Taylor, whom they had returned to Congress for 12 terms by 1933, and who had over that quarter-century ascended to chairmanship of the subcommittee that controlled the Interior Department budget in the powerful House Appropriation Committee. Congressman Taylor launched the WCPA’s ‘defensive offensive’ by saying that any project seeking federal assistance for a transdivide diversion would have to provide, as part of their project, an acre-foot of compensatory storage for the West Slope for every acre-foot to be diverted.

That was a large and very expensive demand. Taylor exempted Denver and its Moffat project from the mandate – because, he said, we all want to see ‘our capital city’ grow unrestricted. More likely, he knew that Denver could fund its own project and would at best just ignore him; he was not their congressman, and the Denver Water Board at that point was coming under the domination by their attorney, Glenn Saunders, a city-builder who envisioned a water supply for a ‘thousand-year city,’ most of which he thought would have to come from the West Slope. He just wanted the hicks to stay out of his way. (Not an exaggeration at all.)

Taylor could, however, impose his acre-foot-for-every-acre-foot demand on those seeking federal Public Works Administration funds or Bureau of Reclamation assistance. And that set up what is really an interesting story of people working out difficult problems they’ve imposed on themselves in draping a blanket over a fence and calling it a state, then adopting a wide-open appropriations doctrine for the distribution of a limited resource statewide. It’s a story with many moving parts that we don’t really have time for here in depth; I will note, however, that the whole story is told in my Water Wranglers book, the story of the development of Colorado’s share of the Colorado River. (Out of print, but copies supposedly in all Colorado libraries.)

The principal players in the story were the Western Colorado Protective Association (WCPA), led by Frank Delaney, a lawyer-rancher, and D.W. Aupperle, a Grand Junction lawyer and fruit grower; the South Platte Water Users Association (SPWUA), led by Charles Hansen, a newspaper editor in farm country and a couple lawyer-farmers; and of course the Bureau which wanted to do a big transdivide diversion to the South Platte River. And what turned out to be the ‘wild card,’ Congressman Taylor.

A seemingly endless series of meetings began between the WCPA and the SPWUA with the Bureau in attendance. There was fundamental agreement that, first, the East Slope had legal right to appropriate West Slope water, and second, that the East Slope owed the West Slope some compensation for diverting part of the West Slope’s base for future development. The challenge was arriving at the amount of compensation. The SPWUA wanted to divert more than 300,000 acre-feet from the Colorado River, for what became the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, but they did not see how (even if they could get some New Deal PWA financing) they could afford to also create that much West Slope storage. But the WCPA felt bound to support their congressman – without whom they really had no card to keep them in the game. Frustration and ire grew on both sides – compounded by having to travel back and forth either on the slow trains or drive on roads that were really ‘country’ (a major West Slope chronic complaint).

Finally, in the spring of 1936, Frank Delaney of the WCPA suggested a compromise. If the Bureau and SPWUA wanted to rush into construction, it would have to be Taylor’s acre-foot-for-an-acre-foot mandate. But if they could delay their project until the Bureau did a thorough study of what the loss of 300,000 af of free-flowing water (most of it annually leaving the state unused anyway) would be to the West Slope, and how much storage would actually compensate the West Slope users for that loss of spring runoff, the West Slope would accept that number (and work on getting Cong. Taylor to accept it).

The ‘Delaney Resolution’ broke the stalemate. The Bureau men spent months poring over existing rights and land maps (long before computers and spreadsheets), and came up with a need for 152,000 acre-feet of compensatory storage: 52,000 af to make sure that the Shoshone power plant water right above Glenwood Springs could be met year round (which would also ensure enough late season water for the Grand Valley farms and orchards), and 100,000 af for future irrigation and domestic water development.

That cut Taylor’s demand in two – and the Bureau planned to add a powerplant to the dam that would significantly reduce what the SPWUA would have to pay back. During this period, Taylor – an old man – was actually too sick to participate, and the Delaney Resolution was adopted for the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. (Taylor would die in office in 1941 – still believing that an acre-foot-for-every-acre-foot was what should be adhered to.)

The compromise process was codified as ‘Senate Document 80,’ part of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project Act passed in 1937. Senate Doc. 80 became part of all subsequent transdivide project planning – except where Denver was concerned; it wasn’t until the veto of Denver Water’s Two Forks Project half a century later that Denver Water finally conceded to take West Slope needs into account in its transdivide projects.

That process of working through a significant challenge to mutual benefit stands, in at least my mind, as one of the highlights of the Era of Conquest in the Colorado River region – a period not without occasional efforts measuring up to the often naive but high-minded vision driving the developers’ ‘romancing of the river’ – to bring deserts into bloom, to reshape unfriendly environments to accommodate individuals and their families willing to work at it. It is too easy to condemn that from this side where we reap the harvest of all the mistakes involved that they didn’t know about until they had made them.

Next post, we’ll look at what happened to that carefully forged intrastate resolution when serious Colorado River planning came to the Compact’s Upper Basin. Meanwhile – pray for monsoons, or just a good rainy spell.

Colorado transmountain diversions via the University of Colorado

Antero Reservoir will close to recreation in 2026 for #drought response: Water from the Park County reservoir will be moved to maximize efficiency during ongoing drought — News on Tap (DenverWater.org)

Water from Antero Reservoir (pictured) will be moved to Cheesman Reservoir in 2026 to help with drought response. This measure was last taken in 2002. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website:

April 20, 2026

In the coming weeks, Denver Water will begin moving water from Antero Reservoir to Cheesman Reservoir, as part of the utility’s drought response.

Antero Reservoir has the highest ratio of evaporation to storage of any of Denver Water’s reservoirs, and moving the water to Cheesman Reservoir will prevent about 5,000 acre-feet of water (about 25% of the reservoir’s storage capacity) from evaporating. One acre-foot of water equals the annual water use of about three to four single-family households a year.

“A lot of forethought and planning went into our collection system and reservoirs,” said Nathan Elder, manager of water supply for Denver Water. “Antero is a drought reservoir, designed to provide water to our customers during a severe drought. Consolidating this water into Cheesman will help us make the most of the water we have.”

Denver Water is working closely with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to minimize the loss of fish during this process and to allow the public to use the reservoir for a brief period before it eventually closes. Following the fish relocation process, there will be no recreation, including camping, allowed at Antero Reservoir in 2026. More details about this plan will be announced when it is finalized.

The decision also allows Denver Water to use more water from its South Platte River Basin supplies, reducing the need to pull as much water from sources west of the Continental Divide, which are also below normal levels following an abysmal snowpack and runoff season.

In a standard year, the water lost to evaporation is recovered by the next runoff season. Because of the historically low snowpack levels in 2026, the water lost this year would not have been recovered.

Drought conditions will determine when the reservoir can be refilled. The reservoir was also drained to assist with water management during the 2002 drought. There were plans to drain the reservoir as a drought response in 2013, though a series of late-season snowstorms allowed Denver Water to continue storing water in the reservoir. The last time Antero Reservoir was emptied was in 2015 for a dam rehabilitation project.

The South Platte River Basin is shaded in yellow. Source: Tom Cech, One World One Water Center, Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Replacing coal with wind and solar energy has provided critical relief to water-stressed regions

A landscape featuring multiple wind turbines standing in a desert area against a backdrop of mountains and cloudy blue sky. — ^{Wind turbines producing electrical energy in North Palm Springs, California. Photo by Robert Marcos}

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

They say that bad news will travel around the world three times while good news is still putting its shoes on, which is exactly how I feel about this news about our water use: Our transition from coal-fired power generation to wind and solar has turned out to be one of the most effective ways to conserve our nation’s fresh water.

Transitioning from coal-fired power generation to renewable wind and solar has significantly reduced water consumption, and has provided critical relief to water-stressed regions. While coal plants once competed directly with agriculture and municipalities for freshwater, the shift to renewables allows billions of gallons of water to remain in local ecosystems and aquifers.¹

The electric power sector uses a large amount of water, mostly for cooling. Thermoelectric power plants (including natural gas, nuclear, and coal plants) boil water to create steam, which spins a turbine to generate electricity. The steam leaving the turbine must be cooled back into water to be used to generate more electricity. Plants withdraw water from nearby rivers, lakes, or oceans and pass that water through the steam leaving the turbine. That process cools and condenses the steam back into water. In 2021, 73% of the utility-scale electricity generated in the United States came from thermoelectric power plants.²

Traditional coal-fired power plants are incredibly water-intensive – requiring approximately 19,185 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, (primarily for cooling), while wind and photovoltaic solar power generation requires no water – except for periodic washing to remove dust and bird droppings. Nationally, replacing the remaining coal fleet with wind and solar could decrease electricity-related water consumption by over 99%, potentially making 2.6 billion cubic meters of water available for other uses each year.³

Environmental benefits

Protecting Local Ecosystems: Retiring fossil fuel plants directly restores local river health. For instance, some subbasins are projected to see a 57% increase in annual streamflow by 2050 as plant withdrawals cease, benefiting local agriculture and wildlife.

Efficiency Gains: The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the changing energy mix—led by the rise of renewables—is responsible for roughly 80% of the downward trend in water withdrawals by the electric power sector.

Climate Resilience: This is a critical shaft for drought-prone regions. In the American West, moving to low-water energy sources leaves much-needed freshwater in its natural environment.

Regional Shifts in Water Stress

The impact of this transition has been most visible in arid regions where coal production and cooling previously dominated local water use. Coal plants in states like Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico have historically consumed enormous volumes of surface water from the Colorado River and other critical basins. Retiring these plants is projected to significantly curtail annual water withdrawals, with some rivers seeing a net increase in streamflow of up to 57% by 2050.⁴

In Texas and California replacing fossil fuel generation with wind and solar PV can decrease water consumption by over 98%. This shift is particularly impactful in Texas, which has seen the largest absolute reduction in coal generation in the U.S. over recent years.⁵

In China a transition toward renewables in northwestern regions (like Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang) has been essential for alleviating “extremely high” water stress. Research shows that closing coal mines in these areas leads to a rapid restoration of Terrestrial Water Storage, increasing water availability by an average of 18.8 mm per year through groundwater recovery.⁶

Elephant Butte Reservoir could go as low as 2% capacity this summer — Martha Pskowski (@psskow) #RioGrande

Elephant Butte Reservoir could go as low as 2% capacity this summer. I reported from Santa Fe on the Rio Grande Compact Commission meeting as Colorado, New Mexico and Texas contend with less water after a dismal winter and warm spring.@insideclimate https://t.co/lTKDYnAqRu
— Martha Pskowski (@psskow) April 21, 2026

The #Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission narrowly approves 24 oil and gas wells near #Aurora Reservoir that faced vocal opposition: Crestone Peak Resources had slimmed down plan for pad after state issued a stay on project — The #Denver Post

Aurora looking west towards Mount Blue Sky

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (John Aguilar). Here’s an excerpt:

April 21, 2026

Colorado oil and gas regulators on Tuesday approved a controversial 24-well drilling operation that will sit just over a half-mile from hundreds of Aurora homes and a reservoir that serves as the city’s primary water supply. The 3-2 vote by the state’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission, in favor of the State Sunlight/Long well pad proposed by Crestone Peak Resources, came after about five hours of testimony and deliberation. The decision ends what had become one of the more contentious battles over energy extraction in Colorado. Board Chair Jeff Robbins acknowledged that the application from Crestone had evoked a strong reaction from homeowners living nearby. But in the end, the company complied with rigorous state oil and gas regulations enshrined in a law known as Senate Bill 181, which was passed by state lawmakers seven years ago.

“At the end of the day, State Sunlight/Long achieves the balance we were told to look for,” Robbins said.

[…]

The two commissioners who voted no were Trisha Oeth and John Messner. The approvals process for the Sunlight/Long well pad encompassed seven hearings before the commission, stretching over several months. Nearby homeowners rose up in opposition, claiming that the project would pose health hazards to those living nearby — in particular, to school-age children. They also worried about the drilling’s potential environmental impacts on the Aurora Reservoir, which is a water source for the 400,000 residents of Colorado’s third-largest city.

“I cannot believe that the state came down on the side of the industry yet again,” Randy Willard, the president of opposition group Save the Aurora Reservoir, said in an interview minutes after the vote came down Tuesday afternoon. “The group as a whole is severely disappointed.”

The group had pushed back on the proposed project using the 2019 oil and gas reform law as a guide, Willard said. The 2019 law prioritized public health, safety and the environment when regulators consider oil and gas development — a profound change from the industry-focused approach Colorado had taken for decades.

A super #ElNiño is in the forecast. Here’s what that means for #Colorado — Shannon Mullane (Fresh Water News)

Last night’s monsoon storm (July 30, 2021) was epic — Ranger Tiffany (@RangerTMcCauley) via her Twitter feed.

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):

April 16, 2026

As Coloradans grapple with a record low snowpack heading into summer, the super El Niño and strong monsoon season in the forecast could provide some late summer relief.

Colorado’s weather is impacted by everything from temperature changes in the Pacific Ocean to pressure patterns over Texas — not to mention rising temperatures around the globe. This year’s La Niña conditions, created by cooler water temperatures in the Pacific, should have brought snow to Colorado’s northern mountains. Instead, the state ended the winter a month early with record hot days and a rapid snowmelt, prompting drought restrictions and water cutbacks around Colorado.

As of last week, the La Niña is over and the odds are increasingly good for a super El Niño later in 2026 — a climate pattern that has historically brought wetter winter conditions to Colorado, according to the National Weather Service.

It’s a tentative dose of hope for residents looking for a reprieve from record-breaking dry conditions, said Russ Schumacher, Colorado state climatologist and a professor at Colorado State University.

“Things are probably going to get worse before they get better,” Schumacher said. “I don’t think we’re going to be stuck in just dry, dry, dry for many, many more months to come. I think there is some reason for optimism.”

A lot of Colorado’s bad drought years have come during La Niña conditions, and Colorado has had multiple La Niña years in a row. Colorado should be rooting for La Niña to go away at this point, he said.

“It doesn’t guarantee that things are going to improve in the near term,” Schumacher added, “but we have a better chance of it if La Niña is in the rearview mirror.”

Here are the typical outcomes from both El Niño and La Niña for the US. Note each El Niño and La Niña can present differently, these are just the average impacts. Graphic credit: NWS Salt Lake City office

What are El Niño and La Niña?

El Niño and La Niña are opposing climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that can affect weather worldwide. Together, they’re called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, ENSO for short.

The patterns vary based on water temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that are influenced by winds circling the Earth near the equator, called trade winds because of their use in early sail-dependent commerce.

Meteorologists watch a specific region in the Pacific near the equator to determine whether the water temperature is warmer or cooler than normal, said Erin Walter, a service hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.

If the region’s water temperature is more than 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than usual, then scientists call it an El Niño.

If the temperature is more than 0.5 degrees Celsius cooler than usual, it is a La Niña.

“They’re basically like opposite waves,” Walter said. “They ebb and flow together. And they’re more irregular than one would think.”

The warmer or cooler temperatures need to last for months before scientists will shift the classification from neutral into El Niño or La Niño territory. The climate patterns typically last nine to 12 months, but can sometimes last for years.

El Niño and La Niña events occur every two to seven years, on average, but they don’t occur on a regular schedule. Generally, El Niño occurs more frequently than La Niña, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fun fact: The names for the two climate patterns can be traced back to observant South American fishermen in the 1600s, NOAA says.

The fishermen first noticed periods of unusually warm weather in the Pacific Ocean and called the resulting patterns El Niño de Navidad, the Christmas Child or the Christ Child in English, because El Niño typically peaks around December.

La Niña means Little Girl in Spanish. La Niña is also sometimes called El Viejo, anti-El Niño, or simply “a cold event,” according to NOAA.

How do ENSO cycles impact Colorado and the world?

The temperature fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean impact how and where jet streams, narrow bands of strong wind, flow in the atmosphere. Those jet streams impact which regions of the world have a dry spell, and which ones are hit with storms.

The ENSO events can lead to flooding, heavy rains, landslides and drought. They change where fish can find nutrients in the ocean. La Niña can lead to a more severe hurricane season, according to NOAA.

In the United States during El Niño conditions, a subtropical jet stream moves across southern states, like California, Texas and Florida, making them cooler and wetter than usual. Northern states tend to be warmer and drier than average, Schumacher said.

During La Niña, the jet stream comes out of the Northwest across the western United States. The Pacific Northwest and Midwest are cooler and wetter than average, while the Southwest is warmer and drier than average.

Colorado sits in the middle, which makes it harder to define clear impacts of ENSO events and to separate them from other common climate variations around the Rocky Mountains, Schumacher said.

Typically, El Niño tends to bring wetter-than-average conditions, particularly to southern Colorado and in the fall and spring. (This year, that would mean fall 2026 and spring 2027.)

During La Niña, the conditions flip. Colorado’s northern mountains often receive more snow while southern portions of the state are warmer and drier.

That doesn’t always happen: This winter is an example of La Niña conditions that did not drop very much snow on the northern part of the state — or anywhere.

Which team should Coloradans be on? Definitely El Niño, Schumacher said.

“It tilts the odds towards things being wetter,” he said.

A “super” El Niño in the forecast

This year, the region’s water temperature is more than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than usual for multiple months — prompting climate scientists to dub it a super El Niño.

They expect neutral conditions between April and June. After that, conditions could stay neutral or transition into a strong El Niño, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. Seeing El Niño conditions is likely, but whether they appear will depend on wind patterns over the Pacific Ocean.

For anyone looking for rain and snow in Colorado, this is a reason for optimism later in the summer and for the coming winter, Schumacher said.

In 1997, the last really strong El Niño brought moisture to most of Colorado in the summer and fall. There were floods along the Front Range and Eastern Plains.

But just because that’s what happened one other time doesn’t mean Colorado will see the same conditions again.

“It would be speculation to read too much into that,” Schumacher said.

So what exactly would a super El Niño mean for Colorado?

“The short answer is, we don’t really know,” he said.

Climate and weather researchers only have a few similar years in history to analyze, and that’s not enough data to identify clear trends with high certainty. There have been only five strong El Niños since 1950, with the last taking place from 2015 to 2016.

“In terms of what that’s going to mean for how the jet stream responds to that, and then in turn, what kind of precipitation we get in Colorado?” Schumacher said. “I think it’s too early to say.”

The non-Niño weather event you should be watching

There is one other weather phenomenon that will come into play this summer: monsoons.

“The outlooks are pointing towards the active monsoon season this summer, and so that’s probably the thing to keep a closer eye on in the near term,” he said.

Monsoons are different from ENSO patterns. El Niño conditions are stronger in the winter and weaker in the summer and have global impacts.

Monsoons are local seasonal circulations that develop every summer in the Southwest. They arise when shifting wind patterns bring moisture from the eastern Pacific and the Gulf of California into the Southwest.

Active monsoon seasons can provide a large fraction of the annual precipitation to lower elevations in parts of the state, like western and southeastern Colorado. This year’s forecast indicates monsoons are likely for July, August and September, Schumacher said.

These active seasons bring afternoon thunderstorms every day and flash floods in Colorado’s canyons. They can help reduce some of the risks of a historic drought year, like wildfire risks later in the summer.

“As with any seasonal forecasting, it’s uncertain,” Schumacher said. “Four months out it’s hard to put really high probabilities on anything.”

What do monsoons mean for Colorado’s water supply?

An active monsoon season will offer some relief, but it will not refill Colorado’s reservoirs.

The monsoon storms might bring intense rain over a short amount of time, but in the big picture, they do not provide very much water. The amount of water that normally comes from a big winter snowstorm is much higher than the amount of water in an afternoon storm. The cloudy and cool weather with rain showers would help reduce the demand for outdoor irrigation for gardens and crops while providing a small boost in the supply, Schumacher said. [ed. emphasis mine]

“Monsoon rains just aren’t nearly enough to fill up reservoirs or even bring them back up from really low levels,” he said.

More by Shannon Mullane

North American Monsoon graphic via Hunter College.

Hydropower at risk as #ColoradoRiver outlook grows more dire — AZCentral.com #COriver #aridification

A high desert thunderstorm lights up the sky behind Glen Canyon Dam — Photo USBR

Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Debra Utacia Krol). Here’s an excerpt:

April 17, 2026

Key Points

The Colorado River system’s water storage has dropped to 36% of its capacity due to a warm winter and ongoing drought.

Water levels in Lake Powell are projected to fall below the minimum needed for hydropower generation by this fall.

Federal officials are considering moving water from other reservoirs and reducing downstream releases to prevent a shutdown at Glen Canyon Dam.

Within charts listing projections of water levels, inflow and outflow, and anticipated releases for 15 reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin, one message was clear: The river is in dire straits and conditions likely won’t get better anytime soon. The warmest winter on record, coupled with an ongoing drought, has produced dismal conditions for the West’s water lifeline, conditions reflected by the Bureau of Reclamation in its April 24-month report. The system’s storage has plunged to about 36% of its capacity, the agency said in a statement. More alarming in the near term is the threat to hydropower production at Glen Canyon Dam. Water levels in Lake Powell would drop too low to operate the turbines by fall, according to the latest projections, unless the federal government steps in…The situation at Lake Powell raised red flags: The giant reservoir’s “minimum probable inflow,” a measure of winter runoff, is projected to total just 2.78 million acre-feet, or 29% of the historical average, one of the lowest on record, the agency said. By September, projections show the reservoir could decline to below 3,490 feet above sea level, the minimum needed to power the turbines at Glen Canyon Dam that supply electric service to about 5.8 million households and businesses in the region…

Reclamation said it would consider all tools that are available to avoid water levels below 3,500 feet, including a plan to move water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah and reduce downstream releases from Powell. Flaming Gorge would give up between 660,000 acre-feet up to 1 million acre-feet over the next year. Lake Powell will release about 1.48 million acre-feet less than planned. The move will lower water levels in Lake Mead and potentially reduce Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity by as much as 40%, and would impact recreation throughout the Lower Basin…

The Arizona Department of Water Resources said in its March drought report that most of the state’s snowpack is gone, melted during Arizona’s warmest March on record. The Arizona Drought Monitoring Technical Committee also published its latest three-month drought map, which showed most of the state listed as enduring exceptional drought conditions, the driest level.

Engineering students aim to improve household drinking water — Jennifer Dimas (#Colorado State University)

Undergraduate research students in Civil and Environmental Engineering collaborage with an employee at the Fort Collins Water Treatment Facility near the CSU Foothills Campus. The students are creating a piece of equipment to better evaluate water for treatment levels. Water samples at the treatment facility flow directly from the Horsetooth Reservoir.

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado State University website (Jennifer Dimas):

April 20, 2026

Editor’s note: The FlocBot team will display its work during CSU’s Engineering Days celebration, called E-Days. The event, held by the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, showcases undergraduate senior design projects. It will run 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, April 23, in the Lory Student Center ballroom and on the Student Center Plaza at CSU. Students from the CSU team are available for interviews during the 2026 E-Days event on April 23 at the Lory Student Center on campus.

The future of safe drinking water might be found in the engineering school at Colorado State University.

Here, a student team has invented a device that automates water sampling and data analysis for the chemical treatment used to produce safe drinking water. Not only have the engineering students developed the technology, but they also have founded a startup company to perfect and commercialize it. Their target market: the utilities that treat municipal water to ensure its safety and quality for household use.

The invention is called FlocBot – named for a process called flocculation. During this process, water treatment plants add coagulants to raw water, causing particles and microorganisms, or “floc,” to clump for easier filtration.

Now, treatment plants perform flocculation and associated data collection manually. FlocBot builds upon existing technologies to automate the process, allowing operators to use their plant’s computer-based infrastructure to receive real-time data; this, in turn, allows them to determine their water’s optimal coagulant dose.

FlocBot will allow plants to more accurately dose coagulating chemicals to optimize floc clumps for filtration. Too few chemicals can allow pollutants to get through filters into drinking water. Too many can also impact drinking water quality, while wasting expensive chemicals and wearing down pipes and filters.

“Our goal is to allow water treatment plants and local governments to produce cleaner, more reliable drinking water while minimizing the environmental impact and saving taxpayer dollars,” said Josh Kates, a CSU senior studying civil engineering. He is co-leader of the 14-member FlocBot team. All are students in CSU’s Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering.

The student team visited more than 20 water treatment plants in the span of six months to understand the best way to engineer FlocBot. They have tested the device at the Fort Collins water treatment plant.

FlocBot is a senior design project for the students, who have worked on the project since the start of the academic year last fall. They will present their work alongside dozens of other projects during a campus event called Engineering Days, or E-Days, on April 23.

They have already won a business pitch competition called the I4E Startup Spotlight, sponsored by CSU’s Institute for Entrepreneurship.

As the FlocBot students complete their senior year of engineering studies, they are also building their company to commercialize their technology.

“Starting a business is always risky, but we’re fully committed,” Hugh McCurren, team co-leader, said. “We want to make a positive environmental impact in this industry. Based on conversations with numerous plants and possible customers, we’re optimistic about FlocBot’s potential.”

Aside from #Florida, nearly the entire contiguous U.S. has experienced earlier than average first plant blooms in 2026 — Zack Labe

The state of #solar: Despite partisan rhetoric, the industry is still booming — Rebecca Egan McCarthy & Kate Yoder (Grist.org)

May 6, 2023 – Volunteers with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) ESCAPES (Education, Stewardship, and Community Action for Promoting Environmental Sustainability) program lend a hand to Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, Colo. Bethany Speer (left) goes back for more while Nancy Trejo distributes her wheelbarrow load to the agrivoltaic plots. (Photo by Bryan Bechtold / NREL)

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Rebecca Egan McCarthy & Kate Yoder):

April 20, 2026

Solar power is cheap, fast, and in demand as data centers consume more and more electricity.

The future looked dire for renewable energy in the United States last spring. Republicans in Congress started gutting the Inflation Reduction Act, forcing its generous tax credits for wind and solar into an early retirement. The Interior Department then rolled out a series of byzantine regulations aimed at restricting clean energy on federal land. Some feared those regulations would curb wind and solar development on private land, too.

Although these restrictions do seem to have hindered the wind industry, there are some signs that its fortunes are changing. But a year later, solar continues to boom. MAGA influencers are promoting it, there’s hope for legislation that would speed up approvals for new projects, and the industry has continued to expand over the last year as energy requirements from data centers demand fast, cheap power. The Trump administration has even signed off on some big solar projects: In February, the administration announced that it would allow several solar projects that had been blocked by the new Interior regulations to move forward.

“I feel like there has been so much written that’s like, ‘The Trump administration is delaying this stuff. It’s holding it all up in red tape. Nothing’s getting built,’” said Hannah Hess, director of the Rhodium Group’s Clean Investment Monitor team. “When we look at the data, that’s not true.” Combined, solar and battery storage (which banks excess energy for use when the sun’s not shining) accounted for 79 percent of power generation brought online in 2025 and are expected to continue to grow by 49 percent before the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits expire at the end of 2027.

Support for solar among rank-and-file-conservatives has fallen in recent years, caught up in partisan culture wars, but it could gain more traction in the party if it’s paired with affordability concerns. Some 69 percent of Republicans say they are supportive of solar, provided it lowered electricity costs, according to a recent poll from the research organizations GoodPower and NORC at the University of Chicago. The Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry’s primary lobbying group, has emphasized that its industry aligns with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agendaand lowers energy costs for families and businesses. “Conservative voters are drawing a clear distinction between rhetoric and practical solutions that lower costs,” read a blog post from the association in February.

Even prominent conservative figures seem to be softening toward solar. Katie Miller, a former Trump administration official and the wife of Stephen Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy, has gone so far as to herald solar as the “energy of the future.” In February, she posted to X: “Giant fusion reactor up there in the sky — we must rapidly expand solar to compete with China.” That same month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who had been a vocal critic of solar power, started saying it could be beneficial. “Is there a commercial role for solar power that can add to the grid affordable, reliable energy?” he said. “Certainly there is.”

Data center developers have begun looking to solar as a complement to oil and gas, rather than a competitor. The incoming demand “feels crazy,” said Jim DesJardins, executive director of the Renewable Energy Industries Association of New Mexico. “It’s scary, almost. Five years ago, we were talking about an increase in load from EVs and building electrification — we’re not talking about that anymore. It’s all data centers and how are you going to power them.” This year marked the first time, said DesJardins, that the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association reached out to sponsor the renewable energy association’s annual conference.

Solar is, by far, the cheapest and fastest way to bring energy online, especially as the shortage of gas turbines — internal combustion engines that convert fuel into a steady, reliable energy — in the U.S. creates yearslong delays to build new power plants that run on natural gas. [ed. emphasis mine] The technology is crucial for data centers that need to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “The backlog alone [for turbines] is five to nine years,” said Mike Hall, CEO of Anza Renewables, an energy intelligence and procurement platform based in California. “Then you’ve got to permit it. Then you’ve got to be near a gas pipeline for fuel, and then you’ve got the climate and the carbon issues.” A recent study from the analytics company Sightline Climate found that half of data center deals were expected to be delayed due to power constraints and local opposition, and developers are beginning to realize that waiting in line for a gas turbine could spell doom for their operation.

There are still some obstacles ahead for solar power, however. “We’ve definitely seen examples from our developer customers where the Department of Interior rules are creating challenges for their projects on federal land, but we haven’t seen that it’s really slowed down development on private land,” said Hall. “The bottlenecks are typically still local permitting and interconnection with utilities — those are still major challenges, and we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in either area yet.”

Shortly before Congress adjourned for its winter recess in December, the House passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, also known as the SPEED ACT, a bipartisan bill that would streamline the permitting process for energy, infrastructure, and transportation projects by overhauling the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Signed by President Nixon in 1970, NEPA requires federal agencies to consider how proposed infrastructure projects or drilling permits would affect the environment before approving them. Permitting reform is the rare, bipartisan issue that has sparked real enthusiasm on both sides of the aisle.

After a scuffle over the Trump administration’s decisions to shut down offshore wind projects, which judges ruled invalid, Democratic senators Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse are coming back to the negotiating table to hammer out a deal. “Right now, we’re leaving electrons on the table thanks to Trump’s deliberate attacks on clean energy — forcing Americans to pay higher electricity bills,” Heinrich’s office told Grist. “To lower costs, this administration needs to stop stalling and slow walking clean energy projects and take the politics out of permitting reform.”

The war in Iran, which has caused oil prices to skyrocket, may serve to boost interest in solar power even more — especially as a way to combat rising electricity costs and promote energy independence. “Energy poverty has always been a problem in the U.S., and it’s gotten significantly worse in recent years,” said Brad Townsend, vice president of policy and outreach at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an environmental policy nonprofit. He pointed to a study from the nonprofit RMI, formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute, that found 1 in 3 households were struggling to pay their utility bills. “I think folks in the administration are increasingly becoming aware of the fact that we can’t turn away renewable energy.”

In terms of the geopolitical reasons to support solar, “no one has fought a war over the sun,” DesJardins told Grist. “Not yet, anyways.”

Indian Peaks Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of #Utah Files to Protect Tribal Water Rights — Native American Rights Fund

Click the link to read the article on the Native American Rights Fund website:

April 17, 2026

On April 1, 2026, the Indian Peaks Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, represented by the Native American Rights Fund, filed a Notice of Appeal and Petition for Stay with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Hearings and Appeals, Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA), challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s March 2, 2026, approval of the Pine Valley Water Supply Project.

The filing seeks review of BLM’s decision authorizing a large‑scale groundwater extraction and pipeline project in southern Utah and asks the IBLA to stay the project approvals while the appeal is pending. The Band argues that the decision violates federal law, including the National Environmental Policy Act, and unlawfully threatens the Band’s federally reserved water rights and culturally significant resources.

The Band’s former Reservation, which is on the ancestral lands of the Band, is located just a few miles west of the Pine Valley Water Supply Project’s proposed wellfield. The amount of water that the Cedar Valley Water Conservancy seeks to extract from the Pine Valley exceeds the amount of water available and will harm the Band’s water resources.

“These water resources are fundamental to our Band’s history, culture, and future,”said Chairwoman Tamra Borchardt-Slayton of the Indian Peaks Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. “Federal law is clear that the Band’s water rights must be protected, and we are asking the Interior Department to do just that.”

The Indian Peaks Band holds federally reserved water rights associated with its former reservation lands under longstanding federal law. Those rights, which predate many other uses of water in the region, remain protected today and cannot be impaired by federal agency action. The appeal asserts that BLM failed to adequately consider these rights or uphold its federal trust responsibility to Tribal Nations before approving the project.

“Federal agencies have both a legal and moral obligation to protect Tribal water rights,” said NARF Staff Attorney Tom Murphy. “This appeal seeks to ensure that those obligations are honored for the Band’s water rights.”

The appeal and petition for stay were filed pursuant to 43 C.F.R. Part 4, which governs administrative appeals of BLM decisions. If granted, the stay would preserve the status quo and prevent construction or further project commitments while IBLA considers the merits of the appeal.

#Snowpack news April 20, 2026

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map April 19, 2026.

Colorado SNOTEL basin-filled map April 19, 2026.

Local leaders gear up for unprecedented wildfire season — The #Aspen Daily News

Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Daily News website (Lucy Peterson). Here’s an excerpt:

April 17, 2026

Roaring Fork Valley governments and fire and law enforcement agencies are gearing up for what is anticipated to be a much warmer and drier summer than normal. The Roaring Fork Valley is experiencing a “record breaking year” for drought, snowfall and snowpack, Erin Walter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said during a press briefing Thursday with multiple local emergency management and fire leaders. The agencies are emphasizing both individual preparedness and cross-agency preparedness in hopes of mitigating wildfires or minimizing the damage of wildfires if they occur this summer.

“Wildfires are inevitable,” said Ali Hammond, director of wildfire resilience for Aspen Fire. “Wildfire disasters are preventable.”

Local leaders are encouraging individuals to make their own wildfire preparedness plans, like building a go-bag and establishing an evacuation plan. They’re also urging homeowners to harden their homes and ensure the first 5 feet around their homes is cleared of any vulnerable vegetation…Agencies across the valley are changing evacuation frameworks to “ready, set, go,” which they will use when notifying residents about wildfire risk in their area. They’re also trying to improve their messaging on wildfire risks, like red flag warnings and what different stages of a fire ban mean. Local officials are working to prevent wildfires from a number of angles. But it can be difficult under unprecedented circumstances. The city of Aspen is currently under stage two drought restrictions. Erin Loughlin-Molliconi, the city of Aspen’s utilities director, said the city is considering more stringent measures because of the persistent, dry conditions.

Map of the Roaring Fork River drainage basin in western Colorado, USA. Made using USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69290878

U.S. Government Orders Emergency Actions to Protect #GlenCanyonDam: Extraordinary moves in the struggling #ColoradoRiver basin could prompt historic lawsuits — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org) #COriver #aridification

Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Photo credit: Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton):

April 19, 2026

Difficult decisions for the Colorado River are starting to be made.

In what will be a defining year for the struggling watershed, the federal agency that manages the basin’s dams took unprecedented actions on Friday to store more water in Lake Powell in order to preserve hydropower generation and protect water-delivery infrastructure at Glen Canyon Dam that the agency says is at risk of damage due to low reservoir levels.

The April 17 announcement from the Bureau of Reclamation will also set in motion events that could result in first-ever lawsuits from Arizona, California, or Nevada against their upstream neighbors over water supply from the shrinking Colorado River.

The Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, called Reclamation’s actions “a band-aid” and urged the agency to release even more water from upstream reservoirs into Powell. CAP, because it has lowest water-rights priority in the lower basin, is the most vulnerable to proposed water cuts that would attempt to align water supply with demand.

“There is no time to delay,” Patrick Dent, CAP’s assistant general manager for water policy, told Circle of Blue two days before the announcement.

The Bureau of Reclamation will make two moves to support Lake Powell, the huge reservoir formed by Glen Canyon Dam that is less than 25 percent full and shrinking.

Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico are asking the federal government to pause some releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which straddles the border between Wyoming and Utah. The reservoir, pictured here in 2021, is the third-largest in the Colorado River system.

Reclamation’s first move is to release more water from Flaming Gorge, an upstream reservoir that is 82 percent full. With the consent of the four upper basin states, between 660,000 acre-feet and 1 million acre-feet will flow from Flaming Gorge into Powell over the next 12 months.

Reclamation previously used upstream reservoirs to prop up Powell in 2022-23, when some 463,000 acre-feet were released. These extra releases are supposed to be recovered if water supply conditions turn favorable. If more dry years are ahead, then the upstream releases will have been a one-shot intervention.

The agency’s second move is to hold back more water in Powell. Using authority granted in a 2024 decision, the agency will cut Powell’s water releases from 7.48 million acre-feet to 6 million acre-feet. This is the first time that Reclamation has invoked its Section 6(E) authority.

Water supply conditions in the basin worsened each month this year as hot, dry weather drained a meager snowpack that is on a downward trend due to manmade climate change. A heat wave in late March was the most extreme on record in the Southwest for that time of year. Inflows into Lake Powell this year are projected to be the lowest ever measured, breaking a record set in 2002.

The water elevation at Powell currently sits at 3,526 feet. Reclamation has stated that it will do what it can to prevent the reservoir from dropping below 3,500 feet. Hydropower generation stops at 3,490 feet. Without Reclamation’s announced interventions, that level is expected to be breached by August.

With the two interventions, Powell is projected, with average weather conditions, to remain above 3,500 feet by April 2027, but just barely. If the next 12 months continue to be hot and dry, more emergency actions might be necessary.

If Powell were to drop below 3,490 feet, water would have to be released through a smaller set of pipes called the river outlet works. Reclamation has said that using these pipes for extended periods of time is untested and risks damaging them.

Reducing outflows from Powell will have two effects. One is that Lake Mead, located downstream, will shrink more quickly, as will its hydropower output. Boating access will be more difficult.

The other consequence is the specter of litigation. The 1922 Colorado River Compact requires the four upper basin states – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – to deliver 75 million acre-feet over 10 years. Add in the upper basin’s share of the water required for Mexico and the figure rises to roughly 82.5 million.

Cutting Powell outflows this year to 6 million acre-feet will likely push the 10-year total below the required threshold.

Reclamation is not focusing on the legal implications, says James Eklund, a partner at Taft Law.

“Reclamation is essentially telling the basin states, ‘We are going to protect our billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure, including Glen Canyon Dam, and if you believe that violates your compact entitlement, you know where the courthouse is’,” Eklund, a former Colorado River commissioner for Colorado, wrote to Circle of Blue.

States in both upper and lower basins have already set aside money for potential litigation or are considering it.

Still, a legal right does not necessarily mean the water is available, Eklund cautions. “No court can conjure acre-feet that aren’t in the reservoir.”

Critics question feds’ plans for future of #ColoradoRiver: In years of severe #drought, ‘the system is failing’, #ClimateChange is sapping river flows as #LakePowell, #LakeMead water levels continue to fall — The #Denver Post #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:

April 19. 2026

The multitude of water managers tasked with overseeing the drying Colorado River systemstand at a dire crossroads. As a years long stalemate in negotiations persists between the seven states that share the river, it’s become increasingly likely that the federal government will impose its own long-term plan, choosing from a range of proposals officials have outlined in recent months. But experts and water managers across the 250,000-square-mile Colorado River basin are raising the alarm about the five plans, questioning if any of them hold up under the new climate reality. They say the federal plans won’t keep the system from crashing in critically dry years — which are becoming more frequent — and could wreak chaos on the pivotal lifeline for 40 million people in the American Southwest.

“In every one of those alternatives, under what they call critically dry hydrology, the system is failing,” said Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River District, a taxpayer-funded agency based in Glenwood Springs that works to protect Western Slope water. “And critically dry hydrology is what we have continued to see consistently in the basin in the last 25 years and what we should expect going forward.”

[…]

In extremely dry years, the longer-term plans under consideration by Reclamation would allow the water levels of the system’s two main reservoirs to repeatedly fall below minimum power pool. Federal officials then would be forced to make recurring emergency cuts to the water supplies of the three states downstream of the reservoirs, creating uncertainty for millions of people and a massive agricultural industry…Letters from a number of Colorado entities — including the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, irrigation districts, the Western Slope’s Club 20 and county commissions from a vast swath of the state — urged federal officials to present at least one plan that would hold up in extremely dry years.

“Sound science dictates that Colorado River management must evolve to handle a permanently drier future,” Tina Bergonzini, the general manager of the Grand Valley Water Users Association, wrote in her comments to the bureau. “The current federal preference for predictability is an atmospheric impossibility given that studies indicate rising temperatures have already slashed river flows by a fifth.”

[…]

The conflict on the Colorado is likely one of the world’s first major water policy overhauls to grapple with the reality of climate change, said Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scholar at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. In the past, Colorado River managers made operational tweaks and short-term deals to address drought. This time, it’s different.

“We’re not looking at an incremental step here,” Udall said. “We’re looking at a complete redo of how we operate this resource that affects 40 million people.”

#Arizona’s Growth Machine keeps churning even as existing communities dry up: Thinking about #GrandCanyon river flows — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Rendering of the Halo Vista development and TSMC’s campus. Source: discoverhalovista.com

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

April 17, 2026

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

Sometimes it feels like there are two parallel Southwestern United States out there.

One is naturally arid, is getting hotter and hotter by the year and is gripped by the most severe drought of the last millennium or more. Its water lifeline, the Colorado River system, is on the brink of collapse, and communities and farmers from Wyoming to Calexico are facing painful mandatory water cutbacks this summer.

And then there’s the other one, a sort of fantasy world, or maybe just an oblivious one, in which new water diversion projects like the Lake Powell Pipeline remain on the table, state leaders prepare to go to legal war to protect their states’ profligate water consumption, and a developer is breaking ground on a 2,300-acre “city within a city” called Halo Vista in North Phoenix.

Halo Vista’s developers are billing it as a companion development to TSMC’s $165 billion semiconductor fabrication facility complex. It will wrap around the industrial campus (thus the “halo” in the name), and plans call for some 30 million square feet of industrial, retail, office, research, and healthcare spaces along with 9,000 or more residential units.

“You have to think about all the people at full build-out who’ll work in this area — about 60 to 80,000 people,” Greater Phoenix Economic Council President Christine Mackay told AZFamily. “They’ll work in the Halo Vista science and technology park. They need restaurants, hotels, places to live — and places to shop for what they need.”

Historically, Arizona’s economy was said to run on five Cs: copper, cotton, citrus, cattle, and climate. Copper is still going fairly strong, most of the citrus groves have given way to housing developments, alfalfa has surpassed cotton, and the beef-cattle have been replaced by dairy factories. Now another C — computer chips — is being added to the mix, as the Phoenix-area experiences a semiconductor manufacturing boom and a coinciding data-center buildup.

The tech industry’s expansion is adding economic diversity, making the city somewhat less vulnerable to 2008-like financial breakdowns. But as Halo Vista demonstrates, it is also feeding Phoenix’s dominant economic force, the Growth Machine. And both the Growth Machine and the data center/semiconductor boom need water, and quite a lot of it. This, in turn, increases Phoenix’s exposure to future water shortages, which seem more and more likely with each passing day.

According to TSMC’s draft environmental assessment, the first phase of its Phoenix fabrication plants will initially use about 4.75 million gallons of water per day, or 5,320 acre-feet per year, which would jump to about 19,400 acre-feet yearly if and when all three phases are built out. But the company says it will eventually install a recycling system that will bring that number down considerably. The 9,000 residential units in Halo Vista would use about 2,800 acre-feet per year (based on Phoenix’s current per-capita water consumption multiplied by a rough estimate of 20,000 people occupying those residences). Halo Vista’s other industrial and commercial properties will consume an unknown additional amount of water.

So let’s say the whole development, including the “fabs,” will use about 25,000 acre-feet per year — less if the water efficiencies are realized, more if Halo Vista’s tech district includes data centers or other water-intensive industries.

That’s a lot of water, or a drop in the bucket, depending on how you look at it.

On the one hand it is equal to about one-fourth of Nevada’s total consumptive use from the Colorado River. Yes, the city of sin and excess only uses about four times more water than the TSMC/Halo Vista “city” will use.

On the other, it’s far less than the alfalfa farms in Maricopa County — in which Halo Vista is located — use for irrigation each year, which totals something like 500,000 acre-feet.1 And yet, Halo Vista/TSMC, once all built out in 20 years or so, will have a significantly larger economic output than a bunch of hay fields (which isn’t the only measure of value or even the most important one, and yet, well, water does flow uphill to money).

So yes, it is possible to sidestep water concerns by pulling out the “what about alfalfa” comparison. But it’s also not all that productive.

Halo Vista, which is being built on a plot of uncultivated state land in the desert, is not displacing an alfalfa farm’s water use. Rather, it represents a new water use piled on top of existing consumption. The water will come out of Phoenix’s municipal system, and therefore officially has an “assured and adequate” 100-year water supply, which is necessary in Arizona for this sort of development.

Yet there’s nothing assured about Arizona’s water future. Phoenix’s water comes primarily from high priority rights on the Salt and Verde Rivers, and from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project. But those rights will hardly matter if the rivers dry up: This year’s Salt River Basin meagre snowpack had vanished by March 1, spring runoff peaked weeks ago, and flows are rapidly falling. Meanwhile, the Central Arizona Project has relatively low priority rights, meaning it will be the first to take cuts as the river shrinks.

In other words, aridification and the Colorado River crisis pose an existential threat to Phoenix’s tech boom and, well, Phoenix, itself, which is one of the reasons Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is preparing for a bitter legal fight with the feds and the Upper Basin states over the Colorado River.

The good news for the developers and the semiconductor makers is that agriculture continues to use a lot of water in Arizona. And where there is large consumptive use, there is also more room for increased efficiencies and, if it comes to it, “buying and drying” the farms for their water — which has its own negative consequences. The bad news is that the shortages to come may very well exceed the amount that could be wrung out of the existing farms.

Halo Vista, which is on a 20-year buildout schedule, is far from the only major water- and energy-guzzling development on slate for the increasingly arid West. And maybe it’s not realistic to expect all such development to come to a screeching halt simply because the water may run out sometime in the future. After all, climate change could cause more precipitation; maybe in 20 years we’ll be worrying more about flooding than desiccation.

But you would think that planners and policymakers and the developers would at least act in line with our current reality, where resources, especially water, are limited. Halo Vista-esque projects should be required not just to certify an “assured” 100-year supply, but they also should have to offset new consumption with cuts somewhere else, whether it’s paying for farmers to install drip irrigation or funding treated wastewater recycling projects.

Continuing to consume water at current rates is one thing. Adding new uses on top of our current overconsumption is quite another.

***

And so it begins. It looks like residents of the small Arizona community of Kearney may lose their water altogether later this summer, making developments like Halo Vista look even more surreal.

The town sent this emergency memo out to residents in April:

Kearney sits in Arizona’s “Copper Triangle” along the banks of Gila River and in the proverbial shadow of the Hayden copper smelter smokestack. The town was established by the Kennecott Mining Company in 1958 to house residents displaced from Ray, Sonora, and Barcelona as the mine’s gaping Ray mine pit gobbled up the communities. Resolution Copper’s proposed Oak Flat mine is also nearby, as is Faraday’s proposed Copper Creek project.

Kearney has a maximum allotment of 610 acre-feet of water from the Gila River. This year, however, extreme drought conditions have brought the allotment down to just .76 acre-feet, forcing the town to impose severe restrictions on use to try to make it last until the monsoon arrives.

As for all the mines surrounding Kearney? I’m guessing their dealing with their own water issues, but I’d also wager that they’re allowed a heck of a lot more than three-fourths of an acre-foot.

The water footprint of Arizona’s copper mines — Jonathan P. Thompson

Condors perched on steel girders some 450 feet above the Colorado River. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

In the comment section on the last Land Desk dispatch, reader wkarls reported on the Colorado River’s flows during a recent raft trip on the Grand Canyon. It got me to thinking about how low those flows might go and what that could mean.

I’ve only boated down the Grand Canyon once, back in October and November of 1995 with a group of slightly crazy Salida rafting folks. It was a beautiful, terrifying, sublime — if somewhat debauched — experience. During the trip, releases from Glen Canyon Dam — which make up about 95% of the flow in the Grand Canyon — fluctuated between 11,000 and 16,000 cubic feet per second, a number that was bolstered downstream after a good rainstorm moved through, turning the river that intimidating blood-and-chocolate-milk color. That seemed like plenty of water to me; it was certainly enough to generate waves big enough to toss our little rafts about like toys (did I mention it was scary as hell?).

Somewhat surprisingly, the releases were about the same in September of last year, bouncing between 10,000 and 16,000 cfs, which appears to have been an effort to get the annual flows past Lees Ferry up to about 7.5 million acre-feet to keep the Upper Basin in compliance with the Colorado River Compact’s non-depletion obligation. Then, on Oct. 1, the beginning of the 2026 water year, releases plummeted. This spring they’ve been in that 7,000 to 9,000 cfs range that wkarls mentioned.

That’s in line with the Bureau of Reclamation’s plan to release just 6 million acre-feet from the dam this water year: 6 million acre-feet per year averages out to about 8,200 cfs. That’s also right in line with the Grand Canyon Protection Act’s operating criteria, which set a minimum allowable release during the day (between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.) at 8,000 cfs, while the minimum nighttime release is 5,000 cfs.

So, given all of that, we can assume that the flows shouldn’t drop much below current levels this summer. Of course, if conditions are worse than expected, then the reservoir could drop to 3,500 feet earlier than anticipated, which could force dam operators to further curtail releases to “defend” minimum power pool. If so, then you might see nighttime releases drop as low as 5,000 cfs. If that’s not enough, then I suppose dam operators would have to go to a run-of-the-river scenario, where flows could plummet to 2,000 or 3,000 cfs, which would make rafting quite interesting.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

Colorado River at/around Lees Ferry in autumn 2024, when Glen Canyon Dam releases were around 8,000 cfs.

‘Energy dominance’ agenda sidelines tribes: Changes to NEPA come at the expense of tribal consultation. The administration has changed or revoked rules and policies to prioritize extraction — Anna V. Smith (High Country News)

The Mexican Hat uranium tailings repository on the Navajo Nation holds contaminated waste from uranium mills in Utah and Arizona. The Navajo Nation has raised concerns about its proximity to the San Juan River, a source of drinking water. Russel Albert Daniels/High Country News

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Anna V. Smith):

April 13, 2026

Last fall, construction on the Velvet-Wood uranium mine broke ground in the sandstone deposits of San Juan County, Utah. It’s the first mine that the federal government has permitted under a new expedited “emergency” process that allows projects to go through the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in just 14 days, a process that previously took months or even years. Tribal governments were given just seven days to offer feedback, and the standard public comment period was eliminated owing to the project’s “emergency” status. In the past, both tribes and the public had at least 30 days give input.

The mine is located in an area already deeply scarred by uranium mining, where the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has long opposed the White Mesa Uranium Mill, which abuts the community. During the weeklong tribal comment period, six nations shared their concerns with the Bureau of Land Management, citing the expedited process and possible water contamination from the mine’s activities. No changes were made to the project, however.

Earlier this year, in addition to mandating expedited “emergency” processes for NEPA reviews, the Trump administration finalized its proposed elimination of standards — including public comment periods — for how federal agencies carry out NEPA environmental reviews for large-scale projects on public lands. The changes came without consultation with tribal nations and despite their strong opposition.

Water towers in White Mesa, Utah. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has long opposed the neighboring White Mesa Uranium Mill. Six tribal nations warned the Bureau of Land Management about possible water contamination from the new Velvet-Wood uranium mine, but no changes were made to the project. Russel Albert Daniels/High Country News

“The announce-and-defend method of developing federal Indian policy is an inappropriate, paternalistic, unjustified, and historically inefficient method of decision-making,” the National Congress of American Indians and National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers said in a joint letter. Eliminating previous standards “ignores federal trust and treaty responsibilities, impinges on roles and sovereignty of Tribal Nations, and flouts longstanding policy and practice by failing to consult with Tribal Nations.”

The federal government is legally required to consult with tribal nations on rules and policies that affect them, but so far the Trump administration has regularly bypassed consultation requirements or sped through them in order to accomplish its “energy dominance” agenda on tribal nations’ ancestral lands. Altogether, the changes represent a shift in the way that tribal nations — and the public — are able to have a say in how land in the Western U.S. is managed.

A map of the upcoming Thacker Pass mine in northern Nevada. The federal government has bought stakes in mining companies, including the company behind the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada, which is opposed by some tribal nations and Indigenous communities. Image used courtesy of Lithium Americas

FROM THE START, agencies under Trump have changed or revoked rules and policies to prioritize extraction, citing the so-called energy “emergency.” The BLM and the Forest Service rescinded the Public Lands Rule and the Roadless Rule without tribal consultation, even though both decisions have major implications for tribes’ ability to protect natural and cultural resources on public land. Meanwhile, the administration is seeking to “streamline” Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, one of the most useful tools tribal nations have for ensuring government consultation. Changes are also proposed for Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which enables tribes to review the impacts of extractive projects within reservation borders before a federal agency permits the project.

“It’s all predicated on something that isn’t true: We don’t have an energy emergency,” said Gussie Lord, managing attorney at Earthjustice’s Tribal Partnerships Programs. Chipping away at public input and tribal consultation will only exacerbate issues that tribal nations face, Lord said. “A lot of their resources, their cultural and environmental resources often are one and the same. The existing laws and regulations that we have are already insufficiently protective of tribal rights and resources.”

The administration’s changes to the NEPA review process took effect immediately last year, also without consultation. Under the Biden administration, the Council on Environmental Quality spent three and a half years updating the implementation regulations by consulting with tribal nations and the public, incorporating provisions requiring agencies to consider climate change and environmental justice impacts when reviewing projects. NEPA applies to all federal agencies, meaning that each agency has to come up with its own implementation guidelines. Tribes and experts worry that, under the new guidelines, agencies may not be compelled to work with tribes.

According to University of Arizona professor of law Justin Pidot, who previously served as general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the resulting uncertainty could have serious consequences. “One is the agencies don’t know how to work together. The second is that there’s litigation risk. The third is that project sponsors don’t know what they’re supposed to do,” Pidot said. The removal of those standards “creates lots of complexity for the public, for tribes, for states, for local governments, for nonprofits.”

Under the Interior Department’s new interim set of standards, for example, reviews for something like a mining project will take 28 days. When the “emergency” declaration is added, it could take just 14 days, as it did with the Velvet-Wood mine. Past reviews could take up to four years. “It substantially limits the degree of information flowing from the federal government to the public about big projects, including to tribes,” Pidot said. “What is surprising about this particular decision of theirs is that having a common set of rules makes sense for everyone.”

In comments to the Council on Environmental Quality about the elimination of the NEPA standards, many tribal nations expressed similar concerns. (See sidebar.) Tribes said they were not consulted, and that while dealing with numerous agencies and their different processes was burdensome, the removal of the regulations weakens the whole purpose of NEPA. The National Congress of American Indians and other organizations noted that some streamlining and deregulating could prove useful — but not when tribal perspectives were excluded from the process.

Last year’s federal budget cuts and mass layoffs further complicate matters, affecting agencies’ ability to carry out their work. Meanwhile, congressional budget cuts impacted funding for, among other things, tribal historic preservation officers, which are key to carrying out government-to-government consultation. The idea seems to be to “drown people in an avalanche while providing them with no resources to meet the moment, and call that consultation and collaboration,” Pidot said.

At the same time that the federal government has moved to reduce public and tribal input, it has also been buying stakes in mining companies, including the two companies behind controversial projects opposed by some tribal nations and Indigenous communities: the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada and the Ambler Road project in Alaska. “It’ll be interesting to see if their approval processes for mines in which the federal government has a stake is quicker than it otherwise would have been,” Lord said.

Pidot summed it up this way: “The big theme is that anything and anyone that stands in the way of the kinds of projects that this administration wants to do is an obstacle to progress that they’re going to overrun.”

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

This article appeared in the April 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “NEPA changes could sideline tribes.”

The Daneros uranium mine in the Red Canyon uranium mining district in San Juan County, Utah. All uranium ore mined from this area travels through Bears Ears National Monument. Russel Albert Daniels/High Country News

Gay Mine, a former phosphate mine and current Superfund site on Fort Hall Reservation, in 1948. P1972-201-101. Courtesy of Idaho State Archives

Tribes’ perspectives on changes to nepa implementation

Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, ID
“On the Fort Hall Reservation are environmentally hazardous sites created prior to modern-day NEPA protections. … By stripping away NEPA’s provisions for public participation and environmental review, the federal government would further entrench long-standing historic inequities that have disadvantaged Tribal communities.”

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, MT
“CEQ (Council on Environmental Quality) states that it does not need to consult with Tribes. … This is a tortured and disingenuous reading of EO 13175, in part because it focuses almost exclusively on a federal view of economic impacts on Tribal governments rather than the universe of environmental impacts.”

Susanville Indian Rancheria, CA
“The proposed removal of these regulations represents a significant step backward in our nation’s commitment to environmental protection and tribal sovereignty.”

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, SD
“CEQ is ignoring its established policy of including indigenous traditional ecological knowledge in environmental reviews under NEPA. These issues that have been part and parcel of the implementation of NEPA for decades, such as the consideration of impacts to environmental justice communities, the cumulative effects of projects, and climate change, are being arbitrarily cast aside in contravention of explicit statutory language.”

Bishop Paiute Tribe, CA
“Our traditional and ancestral lands extend far beyond the exterior boundaries of our reservation, and the natural resources on these lands are not merely commodities to be exploited. They are vital to the cultural, spiritual, and economic fabric of all Tribal communities, sustaining traditions that have endured for generations.”

Tulalip Tribes, WA
“The lack of consultation exacerbates the already existing power imbalances, further diminishing the ability of tribes to exercise meaningful sovereignty and protect their interests.”

Nez Perce Tribe, ID
“The Tribe strongly objects to CEQ’s Proposed Rule, which eviscerates the framework that has been relied upon since CEQ first issued NEPA regulations in 1978.”

Big Pine Paiute Tribe, CA
“The interim final rule sidesteps NEPA … as it endorses Donald Trump’s personal agenda. The USA is a country of laws, not a place where one’s personal agenda may supersede the law.”

Native land loss 1776 to 1930. Credit: Alvin Chang/Ranjani Chakraborty

Forecast for Fryingpan-Arkanasas Project imported water for 2026 barely 10 percent of average — ArkValleyVoice.com #ArkansasRiver #FryingPanRiver

The AVC agreement stores water down-river in the Pueblo Reservoir, built after President John F. Kennedy signed legislation authorizing the Fry-Ark agreement in 1962. Photo courtesy of the City of Aurora.

inClick the link to read the article on the Ark Valley Voice website (Susan Roebuck). Here’s an excerpt:

April 16, 2026

In April and May of each year, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (which operates the Fry-Ark Project) and the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (SECWCD), which handle allotments of this water, make forecasts about the amount of water that can be imported through the Fry Ark Project. According to Chris Woodka, Senior Policy and Issues Manager, Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (SECWCD), the 20-year average for imported water is 60,000 acre-feet per year. On April 1, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation forecast importing barely ten percent of that, only 6,500 acre-feet in 2026. This is the least amount imported since the system became fully operational in the late 1970’s.

Also on April 1, the SECWCD projected allocating 4,600 acre-feet of those 6,500 acre-feet to water right holders. However, with the current snowpack, at this time it is not known if there will be any allocation this year. If not, the imported water will be held in storage in one of the Fry Ark Project’s reservoirs.

Fryingpan-Arkansas Project via the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (Click to enlarge)

The #ColoradoRiver disappeared from the geological record for 5 million years. Scientists now know where it went — Holly Ober (University of #California Los Angeles) #COriver

Dark red and green mudstone beds with tan sand-dominated layers above, marking the arrival of Colorado River sediment into the Bidahochi basin 6.6 million years ago. Drone image taken by Brian Gootee, with permission of the Navajo Nation*

Click the link to read the release on the UCLA website (Holly Ober):

April 16, 2026

Key takeaways

The Colorado River existed in western Colorado 11 million years ago and first exited Grand Canyon around 5.6 million years ago. Now, scientists know more about the path it took to eventually reach the Gulf of California.

A study of zircons found in sandstone suggests it pooled just east of the Grand Canyon, before making its way downstream, ultimately arriving at the Gulf of California around 5 million years ago.

The moment marked the Colorado River’s transition to a continental-scale river that connected life throughout its course.

Geologists have solved the mystery of the disappearance from the geological record, millions of years ago, of one of North America’s most important waterways: the Colorado River. A new paper published in Science shows that the river flowed into an upstream lake over the course of a few million years, then likely flowed for the first time into the Grand Canyon. The moment marked the Colorado River’s transition to a continental-scale river as it made its way down to the Gulf of California.

“In some ways, you could really think of it as the birth of the Colorado River that we know today,” said first author and UCLA geologist John He. “There are rivers everywhere, but a river that carries water and sediment across the continent connects life throughout the region, and the entire ecosystem probably changed as a result of the arrival of the Colorado River into the basin.”

The finding, based on the analysis of sandstone samples, complements paleontological evidence, such as fish fossils, that suggests life began to become part of an integrated ecosystem throughout the Colorado River basin during this hidden chapter of its history.

Shaded relief map of the US via Learner.org

How and when did the Colorado River reach the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado River existed in western Colorado 11 million years ago and first exited the Grand Canyon around 5.6 million years ago. But how it navigated the terrain between the two points for around 5 million years had been a mystery. Now, new evidence suggests it pooled just east of the Grand Canyon, in what is now part of the Navajo Nation, before charting a downstream path that ultimately led to the Gulf of California around 5 million years ago.

The Grand Canyon was carved in multiple phases over a long period of time, but precisely when and how much the Colorado River incised it remains debated among geologists.

“Geologists have proposed over a dozen hypotheses for the canyon’s formation and the Colorado River’s path,” said co-author John Douglass, a geologist at Paradise Valley Community College.

One obstacle in the ancient river’s path is the Kaibab Arch, a topographic high point located in northern Arizona and southern Utah. Geologists have proposed different scenarios for how the river crossed it, but one theory that the new evidence makes more plausible is lake spillover. In this scenario, the Colorado River would have filled a lake and eventually exited it along a course to the Grand Canyon.

“Other processes, such as karst piping, which involves water transport through rock, and headward erosion, may have also contributed to the establishment of the river’s course,” explained corresponding author Ryan Crow, from the U.S. Geological Survey. “Some reaches were likely newly carved, and others would have been significantly deepened by the integrated Colorado River over millions of years.”

The collaborative work began when He, Douglass and Emma Heitmann at the University of Washington, met in the field while studying the remnant deposits of Bidahochi Lake, an ancient lake on Navajo Nation land. Most of the deposits of this enigmatic lake have eroded away, so no one knows how large the lake was. Geologists also didn’t know what rivers fed the lake, or why Bidahochi Lake eventually disappeared.

To understand where the sediments in Bidahochi Lake came from, He searched for zircons in the sandstone they collected.

Cluster of three compound crystals of zircon. By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10449836

Zircons are microscopic crystals that form in cooling magma. They do not degrade or change much over time and therefore contain an accurate geochemical signature of the moment they were created. Zircon is found in granite and other volcanic rocks, so it occurs abundantly in many sediments after the source rocks erode.

Geologists have developed a technique called detrital zircon geochronology that uses lasers or ion beams to measure the ratios of uranium and lead isotopes in hundreds of zircons in a sample. The unique age and history of each zircon can thus be traced to learn the sources of a sediment and estimate when it was deposited. The age spectrum derived from hundreds of zircons in a sample is called its detrital signature.

“Zircons are some of the oldest fragments of our Earth,” said He. “They’re like little time vaults, and by looking at the age and geochemical signature of zircons, we can tell where a sediment that has been moved by a river originated.”

He was studying the detrital zircon signatures of the samples he collected when, to his surprise, he detected what he thought was the signature of sediments known to have been deposited by the Colorado River. When he brought this up to Douglass, his colleague said that was exactly what he, Crow and some of his colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey were looking for at the same time.

The researchers teamed up with USGS geologists and colleagues at the Arizona Geologic Survey, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. Together, they compared the detrital signatures of thousands of zircons in the sand that He and coauthors collected with those from other known deposits of the ancestral Colorado River and a few other possible sources.

The results showed that signatures of the sediments deposited about 6.6 million years ago in Lake Bidahochi closely matched those of other Colorado River deposits downstream and upstream, including the Browns Park Formation in northern Utah and Colorado. Study of rock layers in the field from this time period showed signs of rippling that indicated a strong river flowed into standing water, and fossils of large fish species characteristic of fast-flowing waters.

These lines of evidence strongly indicated that the Colorado River was supplying water and sediment to the Bidahochi basin before it spilled over and the river began to flow through the Grand Canyon. This set the stage for the mighty Colorado River that carved much of the Grand Canyon and upon which much of the West depends for water.

“I think there is something unique and disquieting when the planet’s history is laid out before our eyes, but we cannot fully read it. We’ve always known the Grand Canyon is there, this solid towering wall of rock, but we’re learning more each day how it formed,” said He.

*Any person(s) wishing to conduct unmanned aerial vehicle flights on the Navajo Nation must first apply for and receive a permit from the Navajo Department of Transportation.

Dories at rest on a glorious Grand Canyon eve. Photo by Brian Richter

Big cuts are coming for #ColoradoRiver water. This #Arizona town will feel them first — KJZZ.org #COriver #aridification

Cave Creek Town Hall. By BowenLarsen – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=166323823

Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:

April 17, 2026

On the outer edges of the Phoenix metro, the small town of Cave Creek sits nestled among the saguaro-dotted hills. It’s home to about 5,000 people and known mostly for its quiet residential neighborhoods, art galleries and an annual rodeo…Cave Creek, which gets about 95% of its water from the Colorado River, will be among the first to feel the impact of those cuts…Colorado River water travels to Cave Creek through the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile canal that carries water from the state’s western border to the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

The federal government has suggested major cuts to the amount of water the CAP carries each year, forcing Cave Creek officials to find a backup plan quickly. They will be able to keep taps flowing in the short term, but the future is uncertain, as long-term fixes are expensive and complicated…The first option for most cities, [Brad] Hill said, would be a turn to groundwater. For most, it is relatively easy and cheap to dig more wells near town and carefully use some of the water sitting in underground aquifers. Cave Creek cannot do that. Aquifers underneath the Valley are shaped like bathtubs. For one of those bathtubs, the deepest part is in the middle, and Cave Creek sits on the outer edge, so there isn’t much water underneath town…Cave Creek is, part of a program to store excess Colorado River water underground. The town pays an annual fee for the rights to put water into that pool, which essentially serves as an emergency savings account for times when there isn’t enough water above ground to serve everybody’s needs. Cave Creek has the right to take some of that water, but first it has to physically get it to town. Since the underground aquifer is far away, building a pipe directly into it would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. So instead, Cave Creek will be part of an exchange. Cave Creek is working on deals with three other Valley cities: Phoenix, Peoria and Surprise. Those cities can more easily tap into that underground savings account, so they will start using more groundwater and leave some of their CAP water in the canal, where Cave Creek can access it using its existing pumps.

Current Drought Reduction: How much precipitation is needed to end #drought in one month? — NOAA

Precipitation needed to end drought conditions in 1 month. Based on the PHDI. PHDI is a primary measure of long-term drought but may not apply to all areas, including those with heavily managed surface water. No additional precipitation is needed for white areas. Credit: NOAA

The USGS reports an overall decline in water use even as America’s population has risen

Graph illustrating water withdrawals in billion gallons per day from 1950 to 2015, with categories for groundwater, surface water, total withdrawals, and population growth. — *A US Geological Survey chart from 2015 shows America’s population rising (purple) as surface water use (blue) fell.*

by Robert Marcos

A landmark 2015 USGS study revealed that overall water consumption in the United States had declined even though our population had increased. A study in 2025 showed that that downward trend has continued. Scientists involved in the study reported that the decline has been driven by significant efficiency gains in the power and manufacturing sectors, and by improved household conservation.¹

The EPA reported that municipal efforts to conserve water have been paying off. This includes the use of water saving faucets, toilets, and showers, plus the recycling of waste water. Meanwhile – due to climate change, other parts of the world have seen their demand for fresh water rise by as much as 40%.²

Detailed Comparison of Water Use (2015 vs. 2025)

Total Withdrawals: In 2015, the U.S. withdrew approximately 322 billion gallons per day, the lowest level reported since 1970. By 2025, total withdrawals have continued to stabilize or decline despite population increases, largely driven by significant reductions in thermoelectric power and industrial sectors.³

Wastewater Reuse: A major shift in the decade leading to 2025 was the rapid expansion of the municipal wastewater reuse market. Total reuse capacity was projected to increase by 61% by 2025, with potable reuse (treatment to drinking water quality) rising from 15% to 19% of total reuse capacity.⁴

Residential Consumption: The average American used 82 gallons per day at home in 2015. By 2025, widespread adoption of EPA WaterSense certified fixtures has allowed typical families to reduce this consumption by at least 20% through more efficient toilets, faucets, and showerheads.⁵

Positive developments in major sectors

Power generation: Electrical power generation has reduced the use fresh water by shifting from coal to renewables, like wind and solar, which require little to no water, and by implementing dry-cooling technologies. These improvements have dropped U.S. water withdrawal intensity from 14,928 gal/MWh in 2015 to 11,857 gal/MWh in 2020, as the energy mix shifts toward less water-intensive sources.⁶

Agricultural irrigation: Farmers have improved water efficiency by transitioning from flood irrigation to advanced pressurized systems, like drip and micro-irrigation. These systems deliver water directly to the plant’s root zone, significantly reducing losses from evaporation and runoff. Additionally, many operations now utilize precision agriculture technologies, including soil moisture sensors and GPS-guided machinery, to apply water only when and where it is needed based on real-time data. Complementary land management practices like conservation tillage (no-till) and the use of cover crops further enhance water retention by improving soil health and reducing surface evaporation.⁷

Bar graph showing U.S. irrigated farmland acreage using gravity and pressurized systems from 1984 to 2023, with data in millions of acres and color-coded for irrigation methods.

Industrial/Mining: The mining industry is conserving fresh water primarily by transitioning to closed-loop recycling systems that treat and reuse process water multiple times within a facility. Many companies are also adopting thickened tailings technology, which removes more water from waste streams before disposal, and utilizing alternative sources like desalinated seawater or treated municipal wastewater. Additionally, the shift toward dry stacking—where waste is filtered into a sandy substance—significantly reduces the water lost to evaporation or seepage in traditional storage ponds.⁸

Geographic and Economic Shifts

Regional Demand: By 2025, regions like the Southwest and Colorado River basin faced increased pressure due to drought, leading to a 16.9% decline in specific sectors like golf course irrigation through aggressive management.

Investment: The market for municipal reuse and wastewater infrastructure reached an estimated $11 billion by 2025, with Florida and California accounting for over 80% of this activity.

Note about groundwater use estimates

While researching this article I was concerned the accuracy of ground water use estimates. It’s widely-known that most wells are not metered and that many farmers, ranchers, and land owners, are opposed to metering the groundwater they pump. But it appears that the USGS estimates ground water use with highly sophisticated satellite technology like those below.

Satellite Monitoring Methods

GRACE, (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment): These twin satellites “weigh” the Earth by measuring minute changes in gravity caused by the movement of water. By subtracting surface water and soil moisture from total water storage, scientists can estimate changes in deep groundwater.

InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar): This radar technology measures millimeter-level changes in land elevation. When aquifers are over-pumped, the ground above them often sinks (subsidence), which InSAR detects and uses to infer water level declines.

Landsat: This program monitors land surface characteristics, such as crop health and heat. The USGS uses this to map evapotranspiration, which helps estimate how much groundwater is being pumped for irrigation.
Satellite Telemetry: This is the most common operational use of satellites. The USGS equips thousands of physical wells with instrumentation that transmits real-time water level data directly to USGS ground stations via satellite.

Reclamation Acts to Protect #ColoradoRiver System During Historic #Drought: The prolonged drought combined with the lowest winter #snowpack on record is requiring swift actions to protect this vital water system #COriver #aridification

The Colorado River flows through seven states and provides water to 40 million people. Photo credit: USBR

Click the link to read the release on the Bureau of Reclamation website:

April 17, 2026

Long-term drought has reduced Colorado River system storage to about 36 percent of capacity, and the combination of the lowest snowpack on record and record-breaking March heat has further intensified drought conditions across the Basin. These compounding factors are creating elevated risks to essential water and power infrastructure that supply water to more than 40 million people, underscoring the need for immediate action.

Lake Powell’s water year minimum probable inflow is forecasted at just 2.78 million acre-feet—29% of historical average and one of the lowest on record. Reclamation’s April “24 Month Study” projects Lake Powell may decline to below 3,490 feet—the minimum power pool level—by August 2026 without major intervention. If Glen Canyon Dam declines below 3,490 feet, water releases would be only through the river outlet works, which could cause operational issues, uncertainty for users, downstream impacts, instability in regional power and water supplies, and a reduction in power generation.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum met with Governors for the seven basin states, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and their designees again today to discuss the concerning hydrology and plans for operations.

“I am grateful for the Governors and their teams working diligently to find a solution to the complex challenges created by these unprecedented drought conditions which require immediate action,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “Interior and Reclamation continue to coordinate with the basin states, tribes, Mexico and basin stakeholders as we make the decisions necessary to operate and protect the system.”

To stabilize the system, Reclamation is moving quickly and initial plans include adding up to about 2.48 maf of water to Lake Powell by moving water from the upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir and by reducing releases from Lake Powell. [ed. emphasis mine]

Through the 2019 Drought Response Operating Agreements, Reclamation is intending to release 660,000 acre-feet to 1 maf from Flaming Gorge Reservoir from April 2026 through April 2027. In addition, Reclamation is intending to reduce the annual release volume from Lake Powell to Lake Mead by 1.48 maf—from 7.48 maf to 6.0 maf—through September 2026 by utilizing section 6E of the Record of Decision from the final 2024 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for near-term Colorado River Operations.

Together, these actions are expected to increase Lake Powell’s elevation by approximately 54 ft to at least elevation 3500 feet by April 2027. Through the current, ongoing DROA process, the basin states, tribes and partners continue to provide feedback related to the proposed releases. A final decision will be coming next week.

Flaming Gorge Reservoir now holds about 3.1 maf of water, which is 83% full. These actions are expected to lower the reservoir’s elevation by roughly 35 feet over the next year to approximately 59% of capacity. This will have no effect on contracted water rights at Flaming Gorge or Lake Powell. No additional releases from the other upstream initial units of the Colorado River Storage Project Act—Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs—are planned at this time, due to their low water levels and poor forecasted inflows.  [ed. emphasis mine]

“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife, and recreational uses across the region,” said Assistant Secretary – Water and Science Andrea Travnicek. “As we weigh current conditions and prepare for future operations by working with states, tribal nations and stakeholders, the Department of the Interior and Reclamation remain fully committed to taking the actions necessary to reduce impacts on water deliveries, safeguard critical infrastructure, and preserve as much operational flexibility as possible.”

Basin-wide impacts

Reclamation acknowledges that the proposed reduced releases from Lake Powell will accelerate the downstream decline of Lake Mead, with the potential for up to an additional 40% reduction to Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity as early as this fall. Reclamation and its lower basin partners are collaborating to conserve water in Lake Mead and maintain its water levels, even as releases from Lake Powell are planned to decrease.

The initial proposed drought response actions may also impact recreation across multiple sites. At upstream reservoirs, boating access may be reduced earlier in the season than normal. In the Grand Canyon, lower flow rates will affect rafting conditions, and fishing may be more challenging. At Lake Mead National Recreation Area, reduced water levels may further limit boating access. Reclamation is working with reservoir recreation management partners now and as the summer progresses.

The 2026 operational challenges come at a time of transition as the existing agreements that guided the operations of the Colorado River for the last two decades are set to expire at the end of the year. As we approach the new water year on October 1, the seven basin states have not reached consensus on a new operating framework. With time running out, there is a need for extraordinary collaboration for 2027 and beyond. In the absence of a consensus and following the completion of the NEPA process, the Interior Department will be prepared to determine operations for Post 2026 later this summer to provide certainty and stability for the Colorado River Basin.

To learn more about the Interior Department’s or Reclamation’s activities around the Colorado River, please visit the Colorado River Basin website.

Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Feds’ $140 million promised to #ColoradoRiver drought mitigation projects remains stuck for ‘bureaucratic’ reasons — The Summit Daily #COriver #aridification

The Colorado River passing Grand Junction, Colorado. Photo by Robert Marcos.

Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

April 13, 2026

Despite pressure from Colorado’s congressional delegation, around $140 million in federal funding previously granted to Western Slope water projects has lingered in limbo for nearly 16 months. The funds, awarded to 17 Western Slope projects in the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration, were part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s drought mitigation grant opportunity for the Upper Colorado River Basin. This included $40 million granted to the Colorado River District to aid in its purchase of the Shoshone water rights, the oldest and largest non-consumptive right on the Colorado River tied to the hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. Three days after the awards were announced, President Donald Trump took office, and his Day 1 order, “Unleashing American Energy,” called for all federal agencies to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act.” In June, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released funds for two of the projects in the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District in Palisade, but the rest remain frozen.

“The funding has not yet been released, and that’s a real concern given current conditions across all of Colorado, but particularly western Colorado,” said Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican representing Colorado’s third district spanning the Western Slope, in an interview on Thursday, April 9. “I am continuing to press hard for clarity on timing and next steps because those projects were awarded for a reason and the need has not gone away.”

The Inflation Reduction Act set aside $4 billion toward drought mitigation, including funds for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado River Basin System Conservation and Efficiency program, also known as the Bucket 2E funding. In January, the Bureau under Biden’s administration allocated a total of $388.3 million to 42 projects on tribal land and in states in the Upper Basin.

Shoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWeb

This included $152 million for 17 projects in Colorado, including those for wildlife habitat, watershed and stream restoration, water infrastructure improvements and more. Only $12 million of this funding for two Orchard Mesa Irrigation District projects — meant to improve water delivery to the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River, which extends from Grand Junction and the confluence of the Gunnison River and serves as critical habitat for several endangered fish species, as well as install new metering technology in the Grand Valley — has been released to the awardees. The largest Colorado award was the $40 million promised to the River District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties. This funding represented a large chunk of the $98.5 million that the River District needs to purchase the Shoshone water rights from Excel Energy. Outside of the frozen federal dollars, the River District has raised $57.2 million from the state Legislature, its board and the various Western Slope municipalities and utilities it serves. Matt Aboussie, Colorado River District’s communications director, said the district continues to work closely with the Bureau of Reclamation to secure this promised funding and remains committed to securing the rights.

“Funding will not be the obstacle that stops this effort,” Aboussie said. “If needed, River District leadership is prepared with alternative funding options and continues to rely on all our communities to get this project across the finish line.”

#Colorado State University sets #drought workshops for farmers and ranchers across Colorado

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado State University website (Anthony Lane):

April 10, 2026

Colorado State University Extension experts are working with partners statewide to host drought planning workshops for farmers, ranchers and land managers seeking advice and support responding to the state’s abnormally dry conditions.

The workshops, drawing on materials and expertise from the Colorado Agricultural Drought Advisors, will highlight research on drought resilience and adaptation, with a focus on supporting agricultural producers as they develop and refine their own drought-response plans.

“Our goal at these workshops is to leverage what farmers and ranchers already know,” said Retta Bruegger, a CSU Extension range management specialist who co-founded Drought Advisors in 2020. “We offer support and a flexible framework to help producers create a formalized plan that they can use to make more strategic decisions when coping with drought.”

The workshops

Responding to Drought Impacts in 2026: A Workshop for Livestock Producers
Routt County
5:30-8:15 p.m. Monday, April 13
STARS Ranch, 35465 U.S. Highway 40, Steamboat Springs

When in Drought: Smart Irrigation and Soil Management
Larimer County
8 a.m. to noon Tuesday, April 21
McKee Building at The Ranch, 5280 Arena Circle, Loveland
(The program will continue with a drip irrigation demonstration from noon to 2 p.m. at Flores Del Sol Natural Area, 8101 S. Timberline Road, Fort Collins.)

Agriculture Drought Management Workshop
Montezuma County
5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 23
Lewis Arriola Community Center, 21176 County Road S, Cortez

Details forthcoming for the following:

Fremont County on Wednesday, June 10

Morgan & Adams County (date TBD)

In addition to hosting workshops, Drought Advisors provides one-on-one drought planning assistance and offers resources for producers statewide, including the “Colorado Agricultural Drought Handbook” and sample drought plans . For more information, visit https://droughtadvisors.org.

The West’s snow drought meant record dryness — but also record flooding: From the Cascades to the San Juans, the nearly snowless winter wasn’t the same everywhere — Anna Marija Helt (High Country News)

*Image showing little snow cover along the South Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho in February.* ***Hannah Adams/Idaho Department of Water Resources***

Click the link to read the article on The High Country News website (Anna Marija Helt):

April 14, 2026

Old snow crunched underfoot in mid-January as a dozen people snowshoed near Molas Pass in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The interpretive hike, hosted by local environmental organizations, covered ecology, climate change and snow. It was the perfect classroom: below an azure sky, bare ground beneath trailside spruces and pines was a local example of what turned out to be a devastating lack of snow across the West.

Mountain snowpack is the West’s largest reservoir, providing water for 100 million people and diverse ecosystems. The amount of water stored in the snowpack historically peaks around April 1. But this year, the snowpack in many places was absent, or nearly so, by then — the lowest level in the 45 years since automated measurements began.

A stubborn high-pressure ridge contributed to the snow drought by shunting winter storms north to Canada in January. But the main culprit, according to the nonprofit Climate Central, was exceptional heat from climate change, which also caused a spring heat wave that decimated what snow there was at a time when other dry winters have seen “miracle March” snowstorms.

This map from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Services shows snow-water equivalent (SWE) as of April 1 (near the typical peak of snowpack in the Western U.S.). The current SWE is shown as a percentage of the recent historical median SWE. United States Department of Agriculture

The lack of snow was unusually widespread across the Western U.S. But considering it as a whole makes it easier to miss the regional manifestations and implications of a winter that also brought record flooding and record dryness in addition to record heat. Here’s how the snow drought played out in a few regions that exemplify this winter’s variability:

Whiplash in Washington’s Cascades

Winter in Washington’s Cascade Range started and ended in “wet” snow drought — with precipitation falling as rain instead of snow. In December, over 2 feet of rain fell in two weeks in some places, melting much of the nascent snowpack and causing catastrophic flooding west of the Cascades. But it also replenished reservoirs in the Yakima Basin, on the drier eastern side of the range, which were only 8% full in October, a quarter of their normal volume.

Dry snow drought hit in January, when little precipitation fell. While pockets of Washington’s Cascades saw near-normal precipitation in February, most of the mountains stayed dry, and the range’s snowpack remained well below average. Then, despite several feet of snow landing in March, rain followed and washed it away.

That’s a problem for the Yakima Basin, which lacks the reservoir capacity to store enough runoff to meet the region’s needs. The snowpack typically serves as an additional reservoir, storing water as snow into summer, said hydrogeologist and geochemist Carey Gazis of Central Washington University in Ellensburg.

Little snow covers the ground where two bald eagles perch atop a rock near Cooke Canyon about 10 miles northeast of Ellensberg, Washington, last December. Courtesy of Megan Walsh/Central Washington University

South of Ellensburg lies the Yakima Valley — the “fruit bowl of the nation” — where snowmelt is essential for irrigating crops, including cherries, apples, grapes, hops and mint. It also supports the Yakama Nation’s efforts to restore populations of culturally important migratory fish. As of March, the Bureau of Reclamation forecasted that many farmers in the Yakima Valley would receive just 44% of their usual water supply this growing season due to the snow drought.

One long-term solution is to create more water storage by augmenting aquifers. “There’s all this space under the surface that can hold more water,” said Gazis, who studies such processes. Projects pumping runoff or enhancing passive water infiltration into the ground are already happening in parts of the basin, including on the Yakama Nation reservation.

Northern Rocky Mountain high

As in Washington’s Cascades, winter in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Montana and western Wyoming was bookended by wet snow droughts, with a dry January in between. However, colder temperatures at higher elevations allowed for a near- to above-average snowpack in some areas that persisted into mid-March, leaving them in better shape than most of the West in early April.

That helped places dependent on winter tourism, such as Idaho’s Wood River Valley. “It’s as busy as ever, if not a little busier, because we have snow,” unlike many other winter destinations, such as those in Colorado, said the director of the valley’s Environmental Resource Center, Ashton Wilson, in February.

An intrepid group of hut renters heads up the final hill into the Pioneer Yurt, at almost 8200 feet in elevation in Montana’s Pioneer Mountains. Courtesy of Ashton Wilson/Environmental Resource Center

Environmental Resource Center (ERC) employees haul loads of gear and supplies into Bench Hut in late March in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains for their annual woodcut over a mix of dirt, rocks and snow. Courtesy of Ashton Wilson/Environmental Resource Center

Additionally, Russell Qualls, Idaho’s state climatologist, speculated that the Wood River Basin and others nearby may do “fairly well” this summer in terms of providing water for the towns and agriculture that depend on them.

But little to no snow at middle and lower elevations in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana — and ongoing unseasonable heat — might mean a long fire season unless sufficient rain arrives in spring and summer. Indeed, while fire season usually starts in May or June in Montana and Wyoming, both states experienced wildfires over 1,000 acres in March.

But high and dry in Colorado

Colorado also experienced such medium-sized wildfires, but they started much earlier — in December. Both December and January were abnormally dry, and one of the few storms that did arrive dropped rain at up to 11,000 feet — unusually high for winter, and unprecedented in much of Colorado.

This was evident at the January snowshoe hike near Molas Pass, led by the San Juan Mountains Association and Mountain Studies Institute. Outdoor educator Colin Courtney guided attendees wielding avalanche shovels in digging a snow pit to measure the snowpack’s depth and water content. With a dull thunk, shovel blades hit dirt just 2 feet down. As he melted snow samples over a camp stove, Courtney noted that the snowpack at the pass held 23% as much water as in an average year — the snow water equivalent, a more meaningful measurement than depth alone when planning for annual water needs and wildfire risk. “It’s a very real thing to be concerned this year,” said Courtney.

There are ecological threats, too. Research in New Hampshire and Finland has shown complicated effects on tree health when root systems lack an insulating layer of snow during winter. The impact on trees here — already stressed from the worst megadrought in 1,200 years —isn’t known.

“This is our worst snowpack on record,” wrote climatologist Allie Mazurek of the Colorado Climate Center in an early April email. She blamed the West’s record-breaking March heat wave for tipping the state beyond its prior historic low, in 1981.

Looking out towards the La Plata and San Juan mountains in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park in January. Courtesy of Allie Mazurek/Colorado Climate Center, Colorado State University

Denver has already initiated water restrictions. But the implications go beyond state lines: Colorado’s snowpack also provides water to 18 other states, dozens of tribal nations and parts of Mexico. The Colorado River Basin provides drinking water for one in 10 people in the U.S., irrigates over 5 million acres of cropland and generates substantial hydroelectric power. This year’s snow drought is exacerbating an already fraught fight among the seven states in the Colorado Basin over how to manage the dwindling river.

“One caveat to some of this is El Niño,” wrote Mazurek. The climate pattern may bring lots of rain to Colorado, and forecasters expect it to develop in early fall. “Still, rain tends to do much less for our water supply than snow,” she added.

And snow is a resource that will likely be in shorter and shorter supply in the years to come in the West, where researchers expect climate change to shrink snow-supplied water by about a quarter by mid-century. Mazurek summed up the region’s predicament succinctly: “We should probably be preparing for less water to be coming down from the mountain snowpack than usual.”

The biggest potato cull pile the #SanLuisValley has ever seen: An estimated hundred million pounds will need to be disposed of after overproduction and a warm March ruin potatoes in storage — AlamosaCitizen.com #RioGrande

Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website:

April 14, 2026

The San Luis Valley has an overabundance of potatoes in storage here in mid-April that, because of the warm winter, is leading to concerns about what happens as a new growing season begins.

An historically hot March that punctuated a warm winter overall is creating quality standard problems in the potato bins of the Valley. If a potato bin doesn’t meet the quality standard, it doesn’t ship. [ed. emphasis mine]

“When we start to lose a bin, a bin can be 5,000 sacks, 10,000 sacks, up to 100,000 sacks … then we look at a really gigantic pile of potatoes that has to be managed,” explains Jeff McCullough, who operates Spud Seller farms and potato packaging and distribution in Rio Grande County.

Fourth-generation farmer Jeff McCullough. Credit: The Citizen

McCullough does the math on the amount of potatoes estimated to be in storage that may not find a market or their way to processing facility and comes up with a mind-boggling figure on how big a problem this is.

Based on conversations with other operators in the Valley, he is estimating a million hundredweight worth of potatoes, or about a hundred million pounds of potatoes that may not be sold or processed this year and would have to be dumped.

Others say the figure may be an underestimate. And they say the problem isn’t just in the San Luis Valley but everywhere potatoes are grown as an oversupply and weak market keep potatoes in storage.

How a warm winter hurts the quality of potatoes in storage: “A potato is a living organism. It generates its own heat. And so throughout the wintertime, we still have to push cold air and cool those potatoes down. Otherwise, those potatoes will generate heat and once they generate enough heat, they’ll sprout, then they won’t meet a quality standard at all … There’s a lot of instances where you lose an entire bin because the bin generates too much heat before you can get it sold.” — Jeff McCullough, Spud Seller

It’s the responsibility of each grower to figure out how to dispose of what’s left over from their fields, but with such a large amount, McCullough and others see it as a communitywide problem that is going to require input at the public level on what to do.

To that end, McCullough has been meeting with county officials and has a joint meeting set up to address the situation with county commissioners representing Alamosa and Rio Grande counties.

“We’re going to need to find a good way to dispose of these potatoes,” McCullough says.

Adding to the problem is the loss of the Colorado Gourmet processing plant in Center that burned down two years ago and isn’t coming back, leaving the Valley with only one processing facility. It handled about 40 percent of the potatoes that got processed each year.

Potato production in the Valley remained steady in 2025. Total potato acreage went to 51,474 acres from 50,188 acres in 2024, according to the 2025 USDA acreage report. A tight potato market, though, is keeping potatoes in storage as local growers work with distributors over the next three months to move potatoes and clear storage for the 2026 crop.

“The next harvest will start roughly, the first of September, and so the ideal situation is we are out of this crop the day that we start harvesting the new crop,” says McCullough.

The Spud Seller needs to move about 550,000 sacks of potatoes – each sack 100 pounds – by around July to keep pace and to keep the backlog of potatoes from growing at his operation, McCullough figures.

Others are in similar boats.

“There’s still a shit-ton of potatoes out there,” said Mark Lounsbury, general manager of Grower Shipper Potato Company.

Lounsbury and McCullough’s packaging and shipping operations are two of the biggest in the Valley.

2025 top six certified varieties of SLV spuds were:

• Reveille Russet (2,611 acres)
• Russet Norkotah selections (2,444 acres)
• Canela Russet (457 acres)
• Soraya (429 acres)
• Teton Russet (339 acres)
• Alegria (371 acres)

The variety of potato in storage matters, too. Some varieties have a longer dormancy period and will store longer, while a less dormant variety like a Russet Norkotah that wants to sprout has to be gone by a calendar date, McCullough said.

Newer varieties of potatoes are creating efficiencies on the growing side, using less water and creating more yield even as less acreage is planted.

Potato growers have to follow rules for cull piles outlined in the Colorado Seed Potato Act, which will make the dumping of the amount of potatoes McCullough and others are talking about all the more challenging to figure out.

Hence the outreach to county officials.

The process involves smashing or crushing each individual potato, spreading them out in a very thin layer and then running them over with something. “For example, we have a manure spreader that we run our potatoes through and it chops them up and it kind of disintegrates them. And then it spreads them out into a thin layer, and then once you break the skin of that potato, it dries out really well,” McCullough says.

“We’ve been in situations in years past where we’ve had to dump a lot of potatoes, and it’s because of those years that we’ve come up with these new laws.”

But Valley potato growers rarely see a year where a hundred million pounds of potatoes may have to be dumped. Then again, the Valley has never seen a March where the temperatures reached into the 80s and caused potatoes in storage to want to sprout.

An oversupply of potatoes, coupled with a burned-down processing plant and a much too warm winter, is creating the conditions for a biggest cull pile of potatoes the Valley has ever seen. Proper disposal is essential.

“It is not one person that can swoop in and solve this,” said Tara Artho, executive director of the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee in Monte Vista. “It’s going to take the community.”

Aerial view of the San Luis Valley’s irrigated agriculture. Photo by Rio de la Vista.

‘It could be pretty dire’: Water managers at Elkhead Reservoir face hard decisions following a year of historically low snowfall — #Craig Press

Elkhead Reservoir is taking center stage following a winter of historically low snowfall, leaving water managers with hard decisions and water users with a high degree of uncertainty. Courtesy Photo/Colorado Parks & Wildlife

Click the link to read the article on the Craig Press website (John Camponeschi). Here’s an excerpt:

April 14, 2026

A historically dry winter is setting up what water officials describe as one of the most challenging runoff seasons in recent memory, with operations and allocations at Elkhead Reservoir expected to play a critical role in stretching limited supplies across Northwest Colorado….That challenging outlook [ed. snowpack and streamflow in 2025] and lessons learned from past years with low snowfall are key focal points in early planning and coordination among water managers, particularly for reservoirs like Elkhead, which serves irrigators, municipalities and environmental needs in the Yampa River Basin…Calahan said warm, dry conditions have dramatically accelerated snowmelt, raising the likelihood of a runoff season that arrives early, fades quickly and leaves water managers facing difficult decisions for a wide range of stakeholders…In a more typical year, gradual warming allows the snowpack to melt slowly, sustaining river flows well into summer. This year, however, that prolonged runoff is not materializing, which is already increasing pressure on stored water supplies. While late spring storms or summer monsoons could provide some relief, officials do not expect conditions to return anywhere near an average water year. That uncertainty leaves reservoir managers balancing how much water to store versus how much to release to meet downstream demand.

The latest Seasonal Outlooks through July 31, 2026 are hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center

#Drought news April 16, 2026: The plains of eastern #Colorado experienced nearly a full-category degradation, with expansion of moderate, severe, and extreme drought

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

Colorado Drought Monitor map April 14, 2026.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Much of the country continued to experience above-normal temperatures in April. During the last week, the warmest temperatures were over the southern Midwest and into the central Plains, where departures were 9°F or greater. California and portions of the Southeast into the Mid-Atlantic were near normal to slightly below normal. Dryness has continued in the Southeast, portions of the South, the Northeast, and much of the High Plains. The greatest precipitation occurred in the Great Basin, northern California, central and west Texas, northeast Kansas, and across much of Michigan and Wisconsin, where spring thunderstorms developed within an active weather pattern, mainly over the Midwest…

High Plains

Temperatures were mostly above normal, with only eastern North Dakota and northeast South Dakota near or below normal. The greatest departures occurred in central Kansas, where temperatures were 12–15 degrees above normal. Above-normal precipitation was observed in southwest and northern North Dakota.

Kansas experienced the most active weather, with southwest and eastern areas of the state and southeast Nebraska recording above-normal precipitation. Some areas of northeast Kansas received more than 400% of normal precipitation. These rains led to improvements in abnormally dry and moderate drought conditions across southeast Nebraska and northeast Kansas. Some areas of eastern Nebraska and south-central Kansas also saw improvements.

Extreme drought expanded across southwest Nebraska and northwest Kansas, while severe drought expanded across southwest Kansas. The plains of eastern Colorado experienced nearly a full-category degradation, with expansion of moderate, severe, and extreme drought…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending April 14, 2026.

West

Warmer-than-normal temperatures dominated the region this past week. Departures were 6–8 degrees above normal across most of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Only the Sierra Nevada area and northern California were near to slightly below normal.

Precipitation was mixed, with parts of northern California, northern Nevada, eastern Oregon, southern Utah, eastern and western New Mexico, southwest Idaho, and eastern Washington receiving above-normal precipitation.

The lack of snowpack will continue to impact the region in the coming months. Earlier-than-normal snowmelt, below-normal seasonal totals, and increased liquid precipitation are contributing to hydrological impacts.

Changes this week included improvements in moderate drought in northeastern California and expansion of moderate and severe drought in southern Arizona. Southern Idaho into northern Nevada saw expansion of severe, extreme, and exceptional drought, while severe drought expanded across eastern and northern New Mexico…

South

Precipitation was mixed across the region. Oklahoma and much of central and western Texas received more than 150% of normal precipitation. Farther east, eastern Arkansas and Louisiana saw light precipitation, while areas farther west and into Tennessee remained mostly dry.

Temperatures were above normal across much of the region, with only southern Texas, southern Louisiana, and eastern Mississippi near or below normal. The greatest departures occurred in western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, where temperatures were 12–15 degrees above normal.

Drought expanded and intensified across much of Tennessee, with moderate and severe drought expanding statewide and a new area of extreme drought developing in the northwest. In Mississippi, moderate and severe drought expanded across eastern and southern areas, with extreme drought expanding in the northwest. Arkansas remained dry, with extreme and exceptional drought expanding in both northern and southern areas.

Louisiana saw expansion of extreme drought across much of the south, as well as central and northern areas. Moderate and severe drought also expanded across southern portions of the state. Oklahoma remained largely unchanged, with only minor expansion of severe drought in the panhandle.

The most significant improvements occurred in Texas, where much of central, southern, and southeastern portions of the state saw a full-category improvement in drought conditions. However, severe drought expanded in parts of the panhandle…

Looking Ahead

Over the next 5–7 days, precipitation is expected to be most prominent across the southern Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. The heaviest precipitation is likely from eastern Kansas into Missouri and northward into eastern Iowa, northern Illinois, and the Great Lakes.

Additional precipitation is expected from the Pacific Northwest into the northern Rockies and High Plains. Dryness is likely to persist across much of the Southwest and Southeast.

Temperatures are expected to be above normal from the northern Rockies into the High Plains, with the greatest departures in western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and central Montana (10–13 degrees above normal). Cooler-than-normal temperatures are anticipated across much of central Texas (5–9 degrees below normal), while warmer-than-normal conditions are expected across the Mid-Atlantic (5–7 degrees above normal).

The 6-10 day outlooks show that the locations with the best chances of experiencing below- normal temperatures are in the Southwest, especially those locations in Arizona and southern Nevada and California as well as in New England with the best chances in both Arizona and Maine. There is a high likelihood of above-normal temperatures over much of the Midwest, Plains, and into the South and Southeast with the best chances over Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma into southern Nebraska and Iowa. Precipitation chances are expected to be near-normal over southern Florida and southern areas of New Mexico and Arizona. Near-normal precipitation is also expected over the Pacific Northwest, upper Midwest and into the Northern Plains. In the Northeast, there will be a mix of near-normal to below-normal precipitation chances. Most of the rest of the country has above-normal chances of recording above-normal precipitation with the greatest chances over an area from northern Louisiana to Indiana.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending April 14, 2026.

Abysmal math on the #ColoradoRiver: Feds look to avoid de facto deadpool at #GlenCanyon Dam — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #COriver #aridification

The Central Arizona Project canal, which carries Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, as it runs past fields in the desert (that are irrigated with groundwater, not CAP water). The CAP is not likely to see new cuts this year beyond the levels already imposed. Source: Google Earth.

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

April 14, 2026

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

With each passing April day without major snowfall, we gain more clarity on the Colorado River situation and what things might look like this summer, which is, in a word, grim. Or, as Arizona’s top water officials put it: “The winter and spring snowpack and runoff projections in the upper basin are abysmal.”

The Colorado River Basin Forecast Center is putting a number to that term by predicting that the Colorado River system will deliver about 1.4 million acre-feet1 of water to Lake Powell from April 1 through July 31. That’s about 23% of the median for the spring runoff season, which is when flows are most abundant, and just over half of last year’s not so great figure of 2.6 MAF.

This year’s Upper Colorado Basin spring runoff is forecast to be about 1.4 million acre-feet. That isn’t as low as 2002, which was just below 1 million acre-feet, but if conditions don’t improve it could fall even lower than that. Source: Colorado River Basin Forecast Center.

Believe it or not, that figure — the official 50% forecast, made by an actual person — may be optimistic. Over the last two weeks, the Ensemble Streamflow Prediction model (which is a constantly updating automated forecast) has come up with an even more dire outlook, downgrading the forecast to 1.16 MAF during that same time period.

Abysmal, indeed.

We’re also getting a little more information as to how the feds plan to address the crisis, at least in the near-term. Most significantly, they tentatively plan to “defend” minimum power pool at Glen Canyon Dam, which is to say they will do what it takes to keep the surface level of Lake Powell at or above 3,500 feet in elevation to avoid relying on the lower river outlets, which are not engineered for sustained use. The weapons they will use for this defense include:

Reducing Lake Powell releases from the planned 7.48 million acre-feet to 6 million acre-feet.

Releasing up to 1 MAF from the “Upper Initial Units,” which includes Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa, and Navajo Reservoirs. Hydrology may make this impossible, however, meaning that these releases could be as low as ~~650 MAF~~ .65 MAF (or 650,000 acre-feet).

For now, Interior is not asking for larger cuts from the Lower Basin (beyond the 1.5 MAF cuts they’ve already taken), which presumably means the feds will not reduce Lake Mead releases through Hoover Dam.

But will it be enough to avoid dipping below what I call de facto deadpool at Lake Powell? We won’t really know until later this summer, but a fairly simple calculation can help predict that future. Keep in mind that I’m no hydrologist, I’m just working with the numbers that are available to see whether potential inputs (Lake Powell inflows) are at least equal to planned outputs (Glen Canyon Dam releases).

I put together this little diagram to help visualize things. I know the text is tough to read in the email version, and especially if you’re reading this on your phone. So I’d suggest clicking on the image (or the headline of this post) and viewing it in the web version.

Simplified diagram of Glen Canyon Dam with inputs (on the right) and outputs (on the left). *Fish pool is the surface level scientists have deemed necessary for minimizing the potential of non-native bass escaping through the dam and propagating downstream, where they can compete with endangered native fish. Infographic by Land Desk using data from Bureau of Reclamation and the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center.

Here are the figures for the equation.

Inflows:

1.5 MAF: Lake Powell Storage available above 3,500 feet.

1.1 MAF to 1.4 MAF: Forecast Lake Powell inflows April-July

.65 MAF to 1 MAF: Planned releases from upper basin reservoirs.

TOTAL INFLOWS: 3.25 to 3.9 MAF

Outflows:

2.9 MAF: April 1 – Oct. 1 releases to reach 6 MAF for the water year (3.13 MAF has already been released)

.3 MAF: Rough estimate of evaporation from Lake Powell for the remainder of the water year.

TOTAL OUTFLOWS: 3.2 MAF

That gives us a whopping .05 to .7 million acre-feet to spare. That is cutting it close, folks; a hot, dry summer could drive evaporation levels up, and/or bring inflows down, shaving off the sliver of breathing room this affords. But unless the outlook dims considerably, the BoR should be able to avoid a run-of-the-river situation this year, which is good news. And, since Arizona likely will not be required to take more cuts this year, the state will probably hold off on doing a compact call and dragging the Upper Basin to court.

These measures, however, will have a variety of consequences, including:

The Upper Basin reservoirs (Flaming Gorge, Navajo, Blue Mesa) are also likely to see record low inflows this year. That, combined with up to 1 million acre-feet of additional releases to benefit Lake Powell, will draw them down considerably, affecting hydropower production, irrigation, and, especially, recreation.

Non-native smallmouth bass are abundant in Lake Powell, but since they are warmer-water fish, they tend to stay near the surface of the reservoir, meaning under normal conditions they stay well above the penstocks, or the outlets in the dam that lead to the hydropower turbines. However, as the surface drops closer to the penstock openings, so do the fish, allowing them to get flushed through the dam into the Colorado River. And because the water released from the dam is warmer (since it’s nearer to the surface), that warms the river downstream, allowing the bass to thrive and compete with the endangered native fish downstream. This is likely to be exacerbated as the surface level nears 3,500 feet.

This year’s 6 MAF release from Glen Canyon Dam will bring the ten-year aggregate flows at Lees Ferry down to about 79 million acre-feet. This potentially puts the Upper Basin in violation of Article III of the Colorado River Compact, which mandates that the Upper Basin “not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75 million acre-feet” for any 10-year period. A 1944 treaty added another 7.5 million acre-feet to this figure to cover half of Mexico’s allotment, making for a total of 82.5 MAF over ten years. Note: The interpretation of this provision is in dispute.

The diminished reservoir levels, combined with the reduced releases, will lead to lower hydropower output from the dam. That will force tribes, communities, and utilities that buy the relatively cheap power to purchase it on the open market. And it will also cut into power-sale revenues, which help fund endangered fish recovery programs.

Reduced dam releases will mean lower flows, on average, through the Grand Canyon, affecting riparian ecosystems and boating.

Reduced dam releases equate to lower flows into Lake Mead. Since the BoR apparently does not plan to cut releases from Hoover Dam, that reservoir will likely see its levels drop considerably, diminishing hydropower output and affecting recreation. My rough calculation suggests Lake Mead’s surface level will drop from the current 1,060 feet to about 1,030 feet, which would be lower even than in 2022. The BoR has suggested it will “defend” a level of 1,000 feet. That would almost certainly lead to Lower Basin shortages.

It’s still a long ways out, but for now the NOAA is calling for above average precipitation in the Southwest later this summer.

A super El Niño appears to be forming, but the effects in the Upper Colorado River Basin are especially hard to predict because it sits right in between the “warmer, drier” and the “wetter, colder” zones, meaning it could go either way. Source: NOAA.

There is potentially good news on the horizon. Conditions are ripening up for a “super” El Niño to begin forming this summer. It’s difficult to predict how that will affect the Upper Colorado River Basin, but for now, forecasts are calling for a strong monsoon in the Southwest, beginning in July. That probably would not do much to bring up Lake Powell’s levels, but it would provide relief to the many farmers who are almost certain to lose irrigation relatively early this summer and may help keep late-summer megafires at bay. And, you never know, El Niño might just bring a monster winter just when we need it most.

A Colorado River glossary and primer — Jonathan P. Thompson

1 *The forecasts are for the “unregulated flow,” which means that it is an estimate of what the flow would be without upstream dams holding water back. This is not the same as “natural flow” which is a calculation of what the flow would be without upstream human consumptive use, dams, or diversions. In this case, actual inflow and unregulated inflow are almost the same.

San Diego vs. Brawley: A 33-to-1 disparity in the cost of Colorado River water

Aerial view of San Diego's skyline featuring modern skyscrapers, a marina with docked boats, and a park along the waterfront. — ^{San Diego’s Embarcadero Park. Photo provided by Storyblocks.}

by Robert Marcos

There’s a 33-to-1 disparity in the cost of Colorado River water that’s being utilized by the residents of San Diego, versus the residents of Brawley – both of which are in Southern California and are just 97 miles away from each other. The disparity stems from differences in two primary areas: water rights and conveyance. San Diego’s municipal water rates – which are the fourth highest for a major city in the United States, are also inflated by the city’s massive investment in recycling and desalination.

Brawley’s Senior Water Rights

Residents of Brawley are served by the Imperial Irrigation District, which holds some of the most senior water rights on the Colorado River, in particular among major users. The IIDs rights predate the 1922 Colorado River Compact and fall under “present perfected rights” which make them an exceptionally high-priority. The IID holds rights to approximately 3.1 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, making them the largest single user of Colorado River water.¹

It’s also worth noting that the IID pays nothing for the 3.1 million acre feet of water they’re entitled to. They do however pay multiple-millions of dollars for the operation and maintenance of California’s Imperial Dam, and the All-American Canal. Farmers and residents of the Imperial Valley pay only $20 per acre-foot for the water itself, since they only need to cover local delivery costs.² Meanwhile San Diego, which does not have senior rights must buy water at market rates. Beginning in 2026 San Diego pays the Metropolitan Water District $671 per acre-foot of water—33 times what Brawley pays for the same water.

Infrastructure and Transportation

The city of Brawley is adjacent to the All-American Canal, so it requires a minimal amount of infrastructure to move the water into town. Whereas San Diego’s imported water utilizes two large canal systems: The Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct from the State Water Project, and the Colorado Aqueduct that travels 242 miles from Lake Havasu in the east. San Diego – in the face of chronic drought and the increased stress of climate change on imported water sources, has made long-term commitments to making water conservation a permanent way of life. Historically dependent on importing up to 90% of its water from the Colorado River and Northern California, the region is now aggressively diversifying its water portfolio to ensure sustainability: aiming to reduce demand through mandated restrictions, turf replacement programs, and widespread public education.

San Diego is preparing for a drier future

San Diego has launched massive and innovative infrastructure projects, most notably the “Pure Water San Diego” program which aims to produce nearly half of the city’s water locally by 2035, with the use of advanced water purification technology that will convert recycled wastewater into high-quality drinking water.

In 2015 the region pioneered the use of desalination with the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which is the largest desalination plant in the United States. The plant produces up to 54 million gallons of high-quality drinking water per day, which is about 10% of the water San Diego needs, at a cost of about $3,800 per acre foot.

But the stability that these projects promise comes at a high price. Residents who were already frustrated with high energy bills now face skyrocketing water bills too. Water rates in San Diego have seen steep increases, with projections showing a 14.7% hike in 2026, followed by another 14.5% in 2027. These are largely to pay for the Pure Water program in addition to higher costs for imported water. Residents and critics have expressed frustration that water rates could rise by 44% over four years, causing many to question the rising cost of living in the region.

Aspinall Unit operations meeting date has changed to Monday, April 20, 2026 at 1:00 PM #GunnisonRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Crystal Dam, part of the Colorado River Storage Project, Aspinall Unit. Credit Reclamation.

From email from Reclamation (Andrew P. Limbach):

April 14, 2026

Meeting date changed to Monday, April 20th, 2026 at 1:00 pm.

In an effort to better coordinate with the upper initial unit work groups and ongoing DROA discussions, the upcoming Aspinall Unit Coordination Meeting for the Aspinall Unit & Gunnison River has been changed to Monday, April 20th, 2026 at 1:00 pm. Sorry for the short notice and any inconvenience this may cause.

This meeting will still be held virtually via Microsoft Teams. There will not be an in-person meeting location for this meeting. The link to the Teams meeting is below.

Contact Andrew Limbach (alimbach@usbr.gov or 970-248-0644) for more information regarding Aspinall operations or the Operation Group meeting.

Map of the Gunnison River drainage basin in Colorado, USA. Made using public domain USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69257550

#Denver Board of Water Commissioners approves temporary drought pricing as part of Stage 1 #drought response — DenverWater.org #SouthPlatteRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website:

April 8, 2026

Lea este artículo en español.

Denver Water’s collection and service areas continue to face severe drought conditions, with historically low snowpack and concerns about the diminished spring runoff that will be available to meet customer’s water needs in the future.

As a result, at its meeting today, the Denver Board of Water Commissioners adopted a resolution approving the implementation of temporary drought pricing on outdoor water use. The drought pricing will apply starting with May water use (reflected in June bills) and will be in effect through April 30, 2027, or until further action by the board.

Under the temporary drought pricing, residential customers will see a drought charge on Tier 2 water use of $1.10 per 1,000 gallons. Tier 3 will have a drought charge of $2.20 per 1,000 gallons. The temporary drought charges will be added on top of the customer’s existing 2026 water rates.

Tier 1, which covers essential indoor water use, is exempt from drought pricing.

“Implementing temporary drought pricing is not a step we take lightly. It is one of many tools Denver Water has available — when needed — to respond to drought conditions, encourage customers to conserve our water supply, and ensure our ongoing ability to operate and maintain the system that delivers clean, safe water to 1.5 million people,” said Alan Salazar, Denver Water’s CEO/Manager.

“Drought charges signal to our customers the premium value of water in a drought, while exempting essential indoor water use. We haven’t needed to use this tool in more than 20 years — since the historic drought of 2002-04 — and conditions surrounding this year’s snowpack and potential runoff are shaping up to rival, and possibly be worse than, those years,” Salazar said.

Under the temporary drought pricing approved by the board, for Denver Water residential customers in Denver and the suburbs:

e first tier will be exempt from the temporary drought charge. This tier is charged at the lowest rate and covers essential indoor water use for bathing, cooking and flushing toilets. Each customer has their individual first tier determined by the average of their monthly water use as listed on bills that arrive in January, February and March — when there is very little or no outdoor watering.

The second tier will have a temporary drought charge of $1.10 per 1,000 gallons added on top of their 2026 water rates. This tier is for water consumption, typically used for outdoor watering, that is above the customer’s first tier and up to 15,000 gallons of water per month. Water use in this tier is considered to be an efficient use of water outdoors.

The third tier will have a temporary drought charge of $2.20 per 1,000 gallons of water added on top of their 2026 water rates. Tier 3 is for water use above the second tier each month. It is priced at the highest level to signal potentially excessive water use and encourage conservation efforts by larger-lot customers.

The board’s decision to impose temporary drought charges on outdoor water use follows its March 25 declaration of Stage 1 drought. The declaration seeks a 20% reduction in water use effective immediately, with the goal of preserving water supplies and to help avoid the need for Denver Water to take further actions later this summer if conditions don’t improve. Read the March 25, 2026, drought declaration.

The snowpack, which supplies the water Denver Water captures, stores, treats and delivers to customers, is at historically low levels despite recent storms that brought some much-needed precipitation to the mountains and city last week.

It’s a drought. Image credit: Denver Water.

“We welcome the storms that do come, while knowing that this year’s snowpack is at historically low levels and hopes for a Miracle May snowstorm are dimming. And Denver Water has made a number of tools available to help customers reduce their water use — whether it’s a normal year or a drought year. We encourage our customers to take steps to conserve water for this drought and be better prepared to manage through future dry times,” Greg Fisher, Denver Water’s manager of demand planning and efficiency.

Denver Water’s temporary drought pricing charges a premium for outdoor water use and covers several classes of customers, including residential, large irrigation, wholesale and raw water customers. (See the chart at the bottom of this story for additional information on nonresidential customers.)

An individual residential customer’s monthly water bill will vary depending on where they live in Denver Water’s service area (in Denver or in one of the utility’s suburban distributor districts) and how much water they use. Drought charges are expected to incentivize customers to reduce outdoor water use.

The following two charts illustrate the potential impact of the temporary drought charges on an annual water bill for residential customers living inside the city of Denver and, below that, in a Total Service suburban distributor district.

Examples of the impact of temporary drought charges on an annual water bill for Denver Water customers living inside Denver. In this example, “super conservers” will see their bills increase by roughly $7 annually. High users who do not conserve will see their bills increase by roughly $76 in one year. Individual bills will vary. Image credit: Denver Water.

In these charts, the categories are:

“Super conserver”: A customer who has very little outdoor water use, maybe only watering trees and shrubs throughout the year.

“Good conserver”: An average customer who reduces their annual water use by 20%, from 104,000 gallons (the average use by residential customers in an average year) to 82,000 gallons.

“Non-conserver”: An average Denver Water residential customer who uses 104,000 gallons of water over the course of the year (the average use by residential customers in an average year) and doesn’t respond to Denver Water’s call to reduce water use by 20%.

“High user”: A customer in the top 25% of residential water users.

The following chart illustrates temporary drought charges impacts for residential customers who live in one of Denver Water’s Total Service distributor districts in the suburbs. (Learn more about Denver Water’s suburban customers.)

Examples of the impact of the temporary drought charges on an annual water bill for Denver Water customers living in one of Denver Water’s Total Service suburban distributor districts. “Super conservers” will see their bills increase by roughly $8 annually. High users who do not conserve will see their bills increase by roughly $76 in one year. Individual bills will vary. Image credit: Denver Water.

“This is not Denver Water’s first drought. We know our customers strive to be efficient in their water use, and we know we are asking them to use less to stretch the water supplies we have in this drought. We also know that success in reducing water use will result in reduced revenue for our organization. We have tools to address reduced revenue and ensure the organization maintains its financial foundation for when this drought is over,” said Angela Bricmont, Denver Water’s chief financial officer.

If customers comply with Denver Water’s request to reduce water use by 20%, the utility estimates 2026 revenue to fall by a commensurate amount. While drought pricing can offset a portion of that reduction, the utility will rely on cash reserves and budget reductions to cover the majority of the gap.

Denver Water has proactively reduced its spending, taking steps that include enacting a hiring freeze and reviewing maintenance and other projects to see which ones could be deferred.

Now is the time to replace non-native plants with with drought-tolerant plants. Photo credit: Denver Water

To help customers Use Only What They Need indoors and outdoors, Denver Water offers a range of tools, including:

Information for finding and fixing leaks inside the home.

Rebates for low-flush toilets and water-efficient sprinkler nozzles.

A limited number of discounts on Resource Central’s water-wise gardens and turf removal services (currently waitlisted).

Free workshops (in-person and online) to help customers remodel their landscapes.

Free DIY Landscape Transformation Guide and YouTube video series.

Landscape Transformation Assistance Program that can help fund projects for larger HOA, commercial and public spaces.

Additional information and tips are available on our conservation website.

Temporary drought charges for nonresidential customers:

Navajo Reservoir Spring Operations meeting Tuesday April 21, 2026 from 1-3pm — Reclamation

Aerial image of entrenched meanders of the San Juan River within Goosenecks State Park. Located in San Juan County, southeastern Utah (U.S.). Credits Constructed from county topographic map DRG mosaic for San Juan County from USDA/NRCS – National Cartography & Geospatial Center using Global Mapper 12.0 and Adobe Illustrator. Latitude 33° 31′ 49.52″ N., Longitude 111° 37′ 48.02″ W. USDA/FSA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From email from Reclamation :

April 14, 2026

Reminder Navajo Reservoir Spring Operations MTG Tuesday April 21st from 1-3pm. The meeting will be entirely virtual; members of this list should have received a Teams invite. If you did not and would like to attend email cfelletter@usbr.gov for a meeting invite.

Reclamation conducts Public Operations Meetings three times per year to gather input for determining upcoming operations for Navajo Reservoir. Input from individuals, organizations, and agencies along with other factors such as weather, water rights, endangered species requirements, flood control, hydro power, recreation, fish and wildlife management, and reservoir levels, will be considered in the development of these reservoir operation plans. In addition, the meetings are used to coordinate activities and exchange information among agencies, water users, and other interested parties concerning the San Juan River and Navajo Reservoir.

Conservation isn’t enough for the #ColoradoRiver’s drier future, #Arizona State University water expert says — KJZZ.org #COriver #aridification

Phoenix had native water, but expansive growth, among the fastest in the nation, has been enabled by imported Colorado River water since the 1990s. Photo/Allen Best

Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:

April 13, 2025

A new article by an Arizona State University water expert argues that existing conservation measures are a step in the right direction, but may not be effective enough in the face of climate change. Dave White, director of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, says city leaders around the Colorado River basin need to think bigger to plan for a future in which the river has less water to go around.

“We have to think about a reset, a recalibration,” White told KJZZ, “to have an economy and a lifestyle in the southwest that lives within the means of the new normal of water availability in the Colorado River.”

White, alongside The Pennsylvania State University’s Renee Obringer, wrote that cities such as Phoenix, Denver and Las Vegas have made major strides in saving water among homes and businesses. In Phoenix, conservation programs led to a 20% reduction in water use over 20 years, while the population grew by about 40%…Even under aggressive conservation measures, though, the new report explains that demand management practices “won’t be able to keep up” with the kind of hot, dry conditions that fueled the current 26-year megadrought and will likely continue for years in the future…New technologies will likely be a big part of cities’ drought response going forward. White pointed to the need for water reuse programs, desalination facilities and reductions to the amount of water consumed for electricity generation. While Central Arizona cities are already looking to some of those technologies, White said changes may be needed sooner than they can be deployed.

Trump cancels #PecosRiver mining ban process: Hottest March on record; Healing the earth is hard — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

The Atlas Uranium Mill near Moab as it appeared in May of 1972. Source: DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern.

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

April 10, 2026

⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️

The Trump administration has formally cancelled the proposed withdrawal of more than 160,000 acres in the Upper Pecos River Watershed from new mining claims and mineral leasing.

Prompted by local advocacy and New Mexico’s congressional delegation, the Biden administration began the process of protecting the watershed and surrounding mountains east of Santa Fe in 2024. But the Trump administration nipped the process in the bud shortly after taking office by cancelling scheduled public meetings. Now it has officially ended the withdrawal.

For the past several years, Comexico LLC, a subsidiary of Australia-based New World Resources, has been working its way through the permitting process to do exploratory drilling at what it calls its Tererro mining project on more than 200 active mining claims in the watershed. It has met with stiff resistance from locals and regional advocacy groups, partly because mining has a dark history in the Pecos River watershed. In 1991, a big spring runoff washed contaminated mine and mill waste from a long-defunct mine into the upper Pecos River, killing as many as 100,000 trout. That prompted a multi-year cleanup of various mining sites.

The withdrawal wouldn’t have stopped the project outright, because it doesn’t affect existing, active, valid claims. Yet it would have stopped the company from staking more claims and would make it more difficult to develop the existing ones (especially if they haven’t established validity).

I have a saying I coined while writing River of Lost Souls that goes like this: Mining is hard. Putting the earth back together again afterwards is a hell of a lot harder. That’s probably especially true when it comes to mining and milling uranium, given that along with all the other nasty byproducts of mining, it also leaves behind radioactive material. The point was recently driven home by two events:

Moab officials celebrated the removal of 16 million tons of uranium tailings from the Atlas mill site alongside the Colorado River following a decades-long cleanup effort. Remediation work continues.

Meanwhile, over at the cleaned up Durango uranium mill site (now a dog park), the Department of Energy’s most recent verification monitoring report finds that natural uranium flushing in the groundwater beneath the site is happening slower than expected. There’s no reason for concern at this point: Researchers are still confident that uranium concentrations will drop below the compliance goal within the allotted 100-year time period.

I mention it here because of the time-scale involved: The Atlas mill in Moab stopped operating more than 40 years ago, and the cleanup has dragged on for close to two decades. The Durango mill shut down for good in 1963; the massive, years-long, multi-million-dollar cleanup was completed in 1991. And researchers expect it to take another 65 years for the groundwater contamination to finally get back to acceptable levels.

It’s just something to keep in mind when considering new uranium mines and mills.

The rise of the Land-healing Industry — Jonathan P. Thompson

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

One of the more frustrating things about the Colorado River crisis is that the federal government, which controls the big dams and most of the extensive plumbing system on the river, has hardly given even a clue as to what it might do when Glen Canyon Dam reaches the critical minimum power pool mark as early as this summer.

Will they shut down the hydropower turbines and route all releases through the river outlets, possibly compromising the outlet tubes’ — and the dam’s — structural integrity? Will they “defend” minimum power pool by cutting back releases, thereby putting the Upper Basin in violation of the Colorado River Compact? Or will they drain Upper Basin reservoirs in an effort to maintain minimum power pool while also keeping releases at a level that will keep Lake Mead from dropping too precipitously? Maybe they’ll use the bunker-busting bombs intended for Iran to very quickly blast bypass tunnels through the canyon walls to render the dam obsolete?

The answer is still a mystery, but Interior Secretary Doug Burgum finally hinted coyly about the government’s potential approach (Interior oversees the Bureau of Reclamation, which runs most dams). The Arizona Star’s venerable environmental reporter Tony Davis reports that Burgum told a Tucson roundtable this week:

Okay, I don’t know what that means, exactly, but at least they’re planning to do something. The last statement hints at their intent to defend the minimum power pool on Glen Canyon Dam (lest they’ll lose power generation altogether). We’ll probably learn more during the Glen Canyon Monthly Operations Call in the coming week or two. So stay tuned.

As long as we’re on the subject of the federal government doing something about the Colorado River, when’s Trump going to order his people to open the giant faucet up in Canada and send water gushing down to the Southwest?

Trump’s giant faucet: And the tragic Myth of More — Jonathan P. Thompson

🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

This won’t come as a surprise to many people, but it’s now official: March 2026 was the hottest March on record by a lot in the Southwest and beyond. The Upper Colorado River Basin’s average temperature for the month was 46.5° F, or more than 13° higher than the 1895-2026 median. The graph below makes it very clear that the place has been getting hotter over the past fifty years, with the only real break coming in March 2023, when snow was piling up in the mountains.

March 2026 was the hottest March since 1895 by far in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Source: NOAA.

The March scorcher followed the warmest winter and first half of the water year (Oct-March) for most of the West.

The result is clear: Even though precipitation accumulation wasn’t terribly far below normal, the snowpack was. The April 1 snowpack across Colorado was at a record low level, according to this year’s snow course, which is done by manual measurement and so goes back much farther than SNOTEL measurements.

The April 1 snowpack this year was lower than in 1977, 1981, and 2002, the worst winters of the last nine decades, at least. Source: Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies and NRCS.

Early April storms have helped keep the snow around a bit longer in the mountains, but has done little to bolster the snowpack. It’s still at historically low levels.

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

Maybe we’ll have a really wet spring and summer. If not, well, this is what the National Interagency Fire Center says we can expect. Not great.

San Diego: America’s 4th most expensive municipal water

Aerial view of a modern industrial facility located near a body of water, with a surrounding landscape featuring greenery and electrical infrastructure in the background. — ^{The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant in San Diego’s North County. Photo by Robert Marcos.}

by Robert Marcos

Residents in the San Diego region currently pay between $3,707 and $5,179 per acre-foot of water¹, making San Diego’s municipal water the fourth most expensive in America – after San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.²

For years San Diego relied almost entirely on a single source of municipal water: the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. However, a severe drought in the early 1990s exposed the region’s vulnerability. This crisis sparked a multi-decade strategy by the San Diego County Water Authority to diversify its portfolio, effectively trading lower costs for long-term supply reliability.³

To break its dependence on Los Angeles, San Diego secured its own water rights through massive, high-cost agreements. This included a historic 2003 deal with the Imperial Irrigation District in the Imperial Valley, where the city pays farmers to conserve water and send it west. This “ag-to-urban” transfer, combined with paying to line the All-American Canal to prevent seepage, provided a secure but significantly more expensive supply than traditional imported water.⁴

The region further increased costs by investing in “drought-proof” technology, most notably the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which opened in 2015. While it provides about 10% of the region’s water, it is the most expensive source in the portfolio, costing roughly $2,700 per acre-foot—far higher than imported Colorado River water. San Diego is also currently building the multi-billion dollar Pure Water recycling system to turn wastewater into drinking water, adding another layer of heavy infrastructure debt to monthly bills.⁵

Paradoxically, San Diegans’ success in water conservation has also contributed to rising rates. Because the Water Authority built massive infrastructure based on much higher population and demand projections, it must now spread the fixed costs of those debts and maintenance across fewer gallons of water sold. When residents use less water, the price per gallon must increase to cover the billions in outstanding loans for dams, pipelines, and treatment plants.⁶

Today the cumulative effect of these investments has made San Diego’s water rates among the highest in the country, with total bills projected to rise over 60% by 2029. While other California cities face potential shortages during droughts, San Diego often has a surplus; however, the cost of that security is borne entirely by local ratepayers through a complex “chain reaction” of wholesale price hikes and debt service.⁷

How #Colorado rafting outfitters plan to operate during extreme drought: ‘It’s going to be a lower-water year, but you can still have fun with your family and friends on the river.’ — The #Denver Post

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (John Meyer). Here’s an excerpt:

April 13, 2026

Outfitters insist there will be a rafting season this year, but the same lack of snowfall that negatively affected ski resorts over the winter — forcing many to open late and close early — will also hurt rafting since there has been less snow to melt. That, along with ongoing drought, means the low-water conditions typically found in late summer may come much earlier than usual. To make it work, river guides plan to adjust in ways they hope will help them make the best of what they have.

“The water’s not going to get to be high, boat-flipping water,” said David Costlow, executive director of the Colorado River Outfitters Association. “Usually, we try to get to the middle of July before we start entering low water. It will probably be early this year. It could be the end of June, first of July, but it depends on the next few weeks…

The winter snowpack is currently well below average across the state; in fact, it is about a quarter of what Colorado usually has at this time of year, according to the USDA National Water and Climate Center. That’s the lowest since record-keeping began in 1941. Meanwhile, warm spring temperatures triggered a much earlier runoff than normal. Outfitters are hoping spring rains will improve the situation, but three-month weather projections from the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service are calling for above-normal temperatures and below-normal moisture through June. March is normally Colorado’s snowiest month, so outfitters were hoping for a boost last month. It didn’t come.

Rafting on Clear Creek is almost entirely dependent on rainfall during the season, even in good snow years, because it’s situated in a relatively small drainage. Outfitters there are hoping Colorado’s monsoon season, typically mid-July through August, delivers this year…he Upper Colorado draws on runoff from a much larger basin that includes the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Never Summer Range. Reservoirs in that drainage include Grand Lake, and flows are controlled by water managers. Rafting on the Upper Colorado is concentrated west of Kremmling…On the Poudre, Johnson said his company is focused on providing quality experiences for as long as there is enough water to do so.

Recreational vehicle: Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

‘We’ve never seen a year like this’: Worst drought conditions on record predicted for 2026 — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Juniata Reservoir, located near Grand Mesa, is where the city of Grand Junction stores water coming off Grand Mesa in the Kannah Creek watershed. That water flows down Kannah Creek and eventually into the taps of Grand Junction residents. Photo courtesy of City of Grand Junction

Click the link to read the article on The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dan West). Here’s an excerpt:

April 11, 2026

Local water utilities are raising the alarm about the severe drought Mesa County is in and are asking users to voluntarily limit their usage now to conserve water. At a Thursday press conference in Palisade, representatives from the area’s water utilities and the National Weather Service described the situation in stark terms. Grand Junction Public Utilities Director Randi Kim said the winter snowpack is delivering far less water than normal and spring runoff began more than a month early.

“This year in March, our snow survey indicated that our snowpack across the city’s Kannah Creek watershed was at 41% measured as snow water equivalent over the 35-year historical average,” Kim said. “Due to warm weather conditions, runoff in Kannah Creek started on March 26, which is about five to six weeks earlier than normal.”

In response, Kim asked Grand Junction’s water users to help conserve water now. Representatives from Ute Water suggested limiting outdoor watering as an important step in conserving water.

“With Grand Junction currently in D3 extreme drought, the city is asking all of our customers to take actions to conserve water,” Kim said. “Participating now in water conservation actions will help preserve the city’s water supply should that drought persist through the summer and necessitate the city rely upon our stored water rather than direct flows from Kannah Creek.”

[…]

Kim said the city’s Grand Mesa reservoirs are full and it has 1.75 years of water in storage, so it is not facing the prospect of running out of water this year…Data on the Colorado River Basin goes back 130 years. Experts say 2026 will be worse than any of those, likely by a longshot…A perfect storm of factors are behind those concerns.

Erin Walter, service hydrologist for the National Weather Service, said at the Thursday press conference that the record low snowpack has combined with record warm weather to make for especially challenging conditions. In March alone, Walter said Grand Junction saw eight consecutive days of record warm temperatures. That warm weather is persisting into April, Walter said, and forecasts predict it will continue through June. Those conditions could result in the worst drought on record…n reservoirs essential to the Western Slope, that means less water to work with. Green Mountain Reservoir, which includes the Historic User Pool that helps supply numerous farmers, is not expected to fill this year, according to Flinker. Meanwhile Blue Mesa Reservoir, which requires 419,000 acre-feet to fill and supplies water to the Gunnison River before it joins the Colorado River in Grand Junction, is forecast to get only around 200,000 acre-feet this year.

Local rivers likely reached peak flow in March: Forecasts show little relief from high temperatures and low precipitation as reservoir operators make plans for release of irrigation water — Heather Dutton (AlamosaCitizen.com) #RioGrande #snowpack #runoff

Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Heather Dutton):

April 13, 2026

Water Managers anticipate flows in the San Luis Valley’s rivers and creeks will be very low in spring and summer 2026.

The Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 3 Engineer’s April 6 10-day report forecasted the total annual flow of the Rio Grande at the Del Norte gage will be 270,000 acre-feet, which is 42 percent of the long-term average. For reference, flows of the Rio Grande at Del Norte in 2018 totaled 280,400 acre-feet. The forecasted flow of the Conejos River system is 110,000 acre-feet, which is 37 percent of the long-term average. The snow water equivalent on April 9 for the Upper Rio Grande Basin was 12 percent of the median for 1991-2020.

The National Weather Service is forecasting hot temperatures along with below average precipitation into the summer. The irrigation season began on March 23 on the Rio Grande and March 16 on the Conejos River. As such, on-stream reservoirs are required to pass all inflows to satisfy the needs of downstream senior water rights holders. Given the low amount of snow, the exceptionally warm spring temperatures, and the anticipated summer drought conditions, it is possible that local rivers reached peak flow in March.

Rio Grande operations

The operators of reservoirs on the Rio Grande will time their releases of irrigation water to coincide with the canals being in priority to allow water to reach farmers. It is anticipated that many of the canals will only be in priority to divert water for a short time window, in some cases only days or weeks. As such, releases of irrigation water will begin in the next week.

The Santa Maria Reservoir Company will begin releasing stored irrigation water into North Clear Creek on April 14 at a rate of 200-300 cfs for 10 days. Additional releases will continue as farmers call for water. Rio Grande Reservoir will also begin releasing stored irrigation water into the Rio Grande on April 14 for approximately 20 days. The rate of the release will start at 100-150 cfs and increase up to 350-450 cfs. After deliveries are complete, releases will be limited to the natural inflows. As such, boatable flows on the Rio Grande may diminish as early as mid-May.

Entities including Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District, and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District store water in reservoirs in the Upper Rio Grande Basin and call for releases for their operations in accordance with their water rights decrees.

Where possible, releases by these organizations will be prioritized during hot periods to supplement the natural flow of the Rio Grande and the South Fork of the Rio Grande to reduce high water temperatures to protect the health of fish. Unfortunately, there may not be sufficient water to keep temperatures below thresholds for responsible fishing. As such, anglers are encouraged to check temperature gages and not engage in catch and release fishing if water temperatures reach exceed 70 degrees. Temperature is measured at the 30 Mile Bridge, Wagon Wheel Gap, Del Norte, and South Fork Gages and can be viewed at the Colorado Division of Water Resources’ website (dwr.state.co.us). [ed. emphasis mine]

Platoro Reservoir. Photo credit: Rio de la Vista

Conejos River operations

Platoro Reservoir is passing inflows, which were 10 times higher than average for much of March because of rapid snowmelt. The Conejos Water Conservancy District allocated 6,500 acre-feet of project water to the irrigators. Unfortunately, river flows are currently too low to carry that water to farmers’ headgates and water will not be released unless river flows improve. It is likely that the river will have dry up points below Highway 285. Anglers are encouraged to check temperature gages below Platoro Reservoir and near Mogote before engaging in catch and release fishing.

Links to Stream Gages with Temperature Measurements:

Rio Grande at Thirty Mile Bridge (RIOMILCO):

https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/RIOMILCO?params=DISCHRG,WATTEMP

Rio Grande at Wagon Wheel Gap (RIOWAGCO):

https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/RIOWAGCO?params=DISCHRG,WATTEMP

Rio Grande at Del Norte (RIODELCO):

https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/RIODELCO?params=DISCHRG,WATTEMP

South Fork of the Rio Grande at South Fork (RIOSFKCO):

https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/RIOSFKCO?params=DISCHRG,WATTEMP

Conejos River Below Platoro Reservoir (CONPLACO):

https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/CONPLACO?params=DISCHRG,WATTEMP

Conejos River Near Mogote:

https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/CONMOGCO?params=DISCHRG,WATTEMP

Heather Dutton

Heather Dutton is district manager for the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District, which provides leadership to the San Luis Valley water community, a forum for learning and development, and the service of well augmentation in five counties in the San Luis Valley. More by Heather Dutton

Assessing the U.S. Temperature and Precipitation Analysis in March 2026: Warmest March on Record for the Contiguous U.S. — NOAA

Sunset from the western shore of Antelope Island State Park, Great Salt Lake, Utah, United States.. Sunset viewed from White Rock Bay, on the western shore of Antelope Island. Carrington Island is visible in the distance. By Ccmdav – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2032320

Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website:

April 8, 2026

Key Takeaways:

Warmest March: The contiguous U.S. (CONUS) average temperature was 9.4°F above the 20th-century average, making March 2026 the warmest March in the 132-year record.

Prolonged warmth: The April 2025–March 2026 period now stands as the warmest 12-month span ever recorded for the CONUS (since 1895).

Record daily heat: 1,432 counties—over half the CONUS area and one-third of the population—observed their single warmest March day on record (1950–present).

Map of the U.S. Maximum Temperature Monthly Records in March 2026.

Record-dry year to date: The January–March period was the driest on record for the CONUS—less than 70% of average—breaking the previous record set in 1910.

Notable drought footprint: Dry conditions expanded drought to nearly 60 percent of the CONUS—the largest extent of drought since November 2022.

Cold in Alaska: Alaska had its fourth-coldest March on record (since 1925) and the coldest since 2007.

Map of the U.S. notable weather and climate events in March 2026.

Other Highlights:

Temperature

The CONUS average temperature in March was 50.85°F, 9.35°F above the 20th-century average, marking the first time any month’s average has exceeded 9°F above that baseline. Maximum daytime temperatures were especially high, averaging 11.4°F above the March average and 0.9°F above the April long-term average.

Much of the country south of the far northern tier, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, experienced much-above-average temperatures. A broad region spanning the central Pacific Coast, Great Basin, Southwest, and parts of the Rockies and southern Plains observed record warmth, highlighting the widespread extent of the month’s exceptional temperatures.

Ten states recorded their warmest March on record: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. Across all of these states, average temperatures exceeded their respective April averages, with California also eclipsing its average May temperature by 0.7°F.

At the county level, more than 500 counties—covering over one-quarter of the CONUS and affecting an estimated 79 million people—recorded their warmest March on record, reflecting the broad geographic footprint of the month’s record warmth.

Hawai‘i’s statewide average temperature was 65.0°F, 1.5°F above the 1991–2020 average, ranking as the fifth-warmest March in the 36-year record. Daytime temperatures were near average, but statewide average minimum temperatures stood out at 59.2°F—the warmest March nighttime temperatures on record (1991–present), more than 1°F above the previous record set in 2006.

In contrast, Alaska’s statewide average temperature was 0.6°F, 10.2°F below the 1925–2000 average. While the North Slope remained near average, much of the state experienced much-below-average temperatures, with parts of the southeast interior, southern coast and panhandle recording record-cold conditions. Minimum temperatures were especially notable, ranking as the third-coldest March on record and the coldest since 1972.

Precipitation

The average precipitation total for the CONUS in March was 1.83 inches, 0.68 inch below the 20th-century average, ranking as the eighth-driest March in the 132-year record. Combined with January and February deficits, this period marks the driest first three months of any year on record for the CONUS.

March 2026 U.S. Total Precipitation Percentiles.

March precipitation was much below average across much of the West, Southwest, portions of the Plains, Deep South and Southeast. In contrast, above-average precipitation totals fell across parts of the Northwest and northern Rockies, as well as across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region.

In total, nine states across the Lower-48 ranked among their 10-driest Marches. California received less than a quarter-inch of precipitation statewide—less than 10% of its 20th-century March average and the lowest March total in the 132-year record. Colorado and New Mexico each tied their second-driest March on record, while North and South Carolina each experienced one of their five-driest Marches. In contrast, Michigan received nearly twice its average March precipitation—its third-highest March total on record.

Simultaneously hot and dry conditions affected 12 states, where much-above-average temperatures occurred alongside much-below-average precipitation, with potential impacts on snowpack and water resources in the coming months. California exemplified these extremes, recording both its warmest and driest March on record.

Precipitation across Hawai‘i was much above average for the month, with many areas—including large portions of the Big Island, Maui, Moloka‘i and O‘ahu—experiencing their wettest March on record (since 1991). This exceptional wetness was driven by back-to-back Kona low systems mid-month that triggered widespread major flooding and landslides across the island chain.

Alaska’s statewide precipitation was much lower than average, especially over portions of the Southwest, the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutians. However, the cold air over mainland Alaska brought above-average snowfall to much of Southeast Alaska, with several locations recording their highest March totals in more than a decade.

Drought

According to the March 31 U.S. Drought Monitor report, about 59.9% of the CONUS was in drought, an increase of about 5.0% from the beginning of the month. Drought conditions persisted or intensified across much of the interior West, the Plains, Mississippi Valley, South and Southeast, with notable degradation across the Rockies and central Plains. In contrast, drought contracted or eased across portions of the Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast.

Monthly Outlook

Above-average temperatures are favored across much of the CONUS for April, with the highest probabilities centered over the Great Basin, Four Corners region and parts of the Southeast. Above-average precipitation is favored for a corridor stretching from the southern Plains through the Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes into the Northeast, while drier-than-average conditions are forecast for the West and parts of the central Rockies and Southeast. Above-average temperatures and precipitation are indicated for northern and western parts of Alaska. Visit the Climate Prediction Center’s Official 30-Day Forecastsfor more details.

Drought is expected to persist and expand across much of the interior West, Southwest, Rockies and High Plains, as well as parts of the South, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. However, some improvement or drought removal is forecast for parts of the southern Plains, Mississippi Valley and Northeast. Visit the U.S. Monthly Drought Outlook website for more details.

Significant wildland fire potential is above normal across portions of the Southwest, southern Plains and central High Plains and much of the Deep South and Southeast. For additional information on wildland fire potential, visit the National Interagency Fire Center’s One-Month Wildland Fire Outlook.

For more detailed climate information, check out our comprehensive March 2026 U.S. Climate Report scheduled for release on April 13, 2026. For additional information on the statistics provided here, visit the Climate at a Glance and National Maps webpages.

March heat wave fueled worst end-of-winter snowpack on record: #LakePowell could see just 22% of normal inflow — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org) #YampaRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The Colorado River at Las Colonias Park in Grand Junction was running at about 350 cfs Wednesday. Streamflows are expected to be way below normal this spring; some may have already hit their peak for the year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):

April 8, 2026

Water managers are planning for an extremely dry summer as Colorado wraps up winter 2026 with the worst snowpack on record for early April.

The Colorado River basin has seen slightly drier water years, but never a hotter one in the era of modern record keeping. A March heatwave that broke records statewide fueled an early peak of the snowpack, followed by rapid melting. This was the warmest March in 132 years of record-keeping for Colorado – three to four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any other March, according to the Colorado Climate Center.

“Climate change definitely raises the probability of heat waves significantly,” said Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist at Colorado State University. “This heat wave was so far out of the range of what we’ve seen in March before that I don’t expect this to be the new normal, but it was certainly made to some degree more likely by climate change.”

The month of March decimated Colorado’s snowpack, which was thin to begin with, during a time when snowpack is usually still accumulating. The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center put the March 1 snowpack above Lake Powell at 52% of median. One month later, the April 1 numbers showed snowpack had declined dramatically to 23% of median.

“What snowpack was there was already among the lowest, if not the lowest on record, and it melted much more quickly than normal,” Goble said. “We saw melt rates more characteristic of May or June in March.”

Early April status reports and forecasts are important because they provide a critical snapshot of assessing where things stand and how much water will be available for the summer. This week is typically when snowpack peaks for the year before it begins a gradual melt out. But snowpack in the Colorado River headwaters this year peaked nearly a month early on March 17 and now sits at just 27% of median. Snowpack in the Roaring Fork River basin is 26% of normal.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in memory,” said Raquel Flinker, director of interstate and regional water resources at the Colorado River District’s State of the River meeting in Grand Junction Tuesday. “If there’s anything in your memory about a dry year that you’ve seen, a warm year that you’ve seen, 2026 is beyond all of that. It’s far beyond 2002, which has been the year we normally think of as the worst year in hydrology.”

The big question is whether that record-low snowpack will turn into record-low runoff. Forty million people in the American Southwest depend on water from the Colorado River, which comes from the melting annual snowpack. Some streams may have already peaked for the year, something that normally occurs in early June for Western Slope streams.

“The streamflows are going to be much below normal,” Goble said. “But the lowest snowpack on record does not necessarily guarantee the lowest streamflow on record.

”In a Tuesday water supply briefing, hydrologist Cody Moser with the CBRFC said that the forecasted April through July inflow to Lake Powell this year is 1.4 million acre-feet, just 22% of normal and the third-worst on record. That’s down from the March forecast, which predicted 2.3 million acre-feet of inflow. The benchmark for low Powell inflows is 2002, which saw just 964,000 acre-feet of water flow into the reservoir.

The streamflow forecast for the Colorado mainstem in Colorado (known as Division 5 by state water managers) is 38% of normal, according to the National Resources Conservation Service. The Yampa is at 36% of normal; Gunnison is 34% and the San Juan basin in the southwest corner of the state is forecast to have just 26% of normal streamflows this year.

Yampa calls

Water managers around the state are preparing for an exceptionally dry summer. Some municipal water providers have already implemented outdoor watering restrictions, and the Colorado Division of Water Resources is alerting farmers and ranchers to the possibility of more calls this season.

The Yampa River basin is poised to be one of the hardest hit this year. Mosher said on Tuesday that streamflows on the Yampa are forecasted to be close to the minimum on record.

“This forecast declined by 40% in the past month and here you see that huge melt off with our snowpack conditions,” he said.

Yampa River Operations Coordinator for Division 6 Water Resources Brian Romig sent a March 28 email to all water users in the basin reminding them of how calls work. When an irrigator with a senior water right isn’t getting all the water they are entitled to, they can place a call with state officials, who will then shut off upstream water users with junior water rights so the senior right can get its full amount of water. Under the cornerstone of Colorado water law, the oldest water rights get first use of the river.

The Yampa River was among the last to develop in the sparsely populated northwest corner of the state and it had never had a call until 2018.

“Call administration is a reality of our future,” said Division Engineer Erin Light. “I think it’s very possible we are going to see calls and the sooner people start to understand what that looks like and become accustomed to it, the better.”

Light said she has been hearing from water users about how early they have had to turn their ditches on to irrigate their fields – some the weekend of March 21 – due to the meager snowpack and record-high temperatures.

Light predicted that some ranchers won’t be able to grow all of the hay their animals need to feed them through next winter.

“Ranchers are going to have some big decisions to make as far as: Will they buy hay or will they have to sell cows,” she said.

In recent years, the River District has leased water out of Elkhead Reservoir and released it during the irrigation season to boost flows for downstream ranchers and keep a call off the river. But Light says this approach doesn’t help water users adapt to a future with less water. Once people know what to expect and how calls are administered, it’s less of a big deal, she said. And as river flows continue to dwindle due to drought and climate change, learning how to manage inevitable scarcity has never been more important.

“I think it’s a good thing for our water users to manage their water in such a way that they know in late August, they could be shut off,” Light said. “But we’re not giving that opportunity to the people on the Yampa River by trying to always keep the calls off.”

Pitkin County moves forward with #CrystalRiver protection agreement — The #Aspen Times

Confluence of the Roaring Fork and Crystal rivers May 2015. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (Colin Suszynski). Here’s an excerpt:

April 8, 2026

The Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners moved forward Wednesday with an intergovernmental agreement that expresses commitment “to protect the Crystal River from on-channel dams and transmountain diversions.” The agreement will be between Pitkin County, Gunnison County, the town of Marble, the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Water Conservancy District. This was an approval of the first of two readings. The Colorado River Water Conservation District have yet to bring this agreement to their boards but have previously expressed support for the initiative, according to the district’s staff. Gunnison County and the town of Marble will be considering it in upcoming meetings.

“It would be an agreement that all the parties would oppose or not support any new dams on the main stem of the Crystal River, or any new trans-basin diversions out of the Crystal River,” Pitkin County Deputy Attorney Anne Marie McPhee told commissioners on Wednesday. “It is trying to keep the water in the river as long as possible.”

[…]

Despite moving the agreement forward after first reading, Commissioner Greg Poschman acknowledged that there has been concern around the agreement’s lack of enforcement ability, due to the signing bodies’ ability to leave the agreement at will. Poschman referenced specific criticism vocalized by Bill Jochems, a Pitkin County Healthy Rivers and Streams Citizen Advisory board member and Crystal River advocate.

“The expression from Mr. Jochems is, ‘it’s a nothing burger,’ right?” Poschman said on Wednesday. “It’s the weakest of all possible protections for the Crystal. Is that what we want to do at this point?”

Commissioner Francie Jacober commented that, despite the potential weakness that Jochems and Poschman pointed out, it would still be symbolically important for the county to lend their support to the intergovernmental agreement…The county has been pursuing a Wild and Scenic River designation for a portion of the Crystal River since the U.S. Forest Service found 39 miles of it eligible for the designation in 2002, according to county documents supporting Wednesday’s intergovernmental agreement. A Wild and Scenic designation could help with future conservation and preservation efforts.

The March 2026 Intermountain West briefing is hot off the presses from Western Water Assessment

Click the link to read the briefing on the Western Water Assessment website:

April 9, 2026 – CO, UT, WY

March weather conditions promoted rapid intensification of snow drought. Snowpack peaked three to nine weeks early and sits at record low levels at most locations in Colorado, Utah and much of Wyoming. Record low snowpack was driven by low March precipitation and record hot March temperatures. Consequently, drought conditions expanded to cover 93% of the region, and annual streamflow volume forecasts are much below normal with 22% of normal inflow forecasted for Lake Powell.

March precipitation was below average for nearly the entire region. Large areas of less than 50% of average March precipitation were observed in all three states with the least precipitation falling in eastern Colorado and eastern Wyoming. Record low March precipitation was observed in Baca, Bent, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Las Animas, Prowers, and San Juan Counties in Colorado. Water year precipitation varied with above average precipitation in northwestern Wyoming, southern Colorado and southern Utah, while much of the remainder of the region received 50-90% of average water year precipitation.

An extreme and widespread heat wave hit the region during March, and temperatures were 9-12 degrees above average for much of the region. Record high March temperatures were observed at the majority of locations in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. All-time maximum March temperatures were set across the region with many locations recording higher temperatures than all-time April records.

April 1 SWE conditions were record-low for all regional river basins, except those in northwestern Wyoming. On a statewide basis, record-low snowpack was observed in Colorado (24% median), Utah (22% median), and Wyoming (47% median). Snowpack in many southern Colorado and southern Utah watersheds has melted up to 65 days early, including the Upper Arkansas, Upper Dolores, and Upper Gunnison River basins in Colorado and the Dirty Devil, Escalante, Price, and San Pitch River basins in Utah. Record heat and low precipitation in March caused regional snowpack to peak nearly one month early. Typically, on April 1, only three of 213 Snotel sites in Colorado and two of 179 sites in Utah are melted out completely. On April 1, 2026, 36% of Snotel sites in Colorado, 60% of sites in Utah, and 28% of 196 sites in Wyoming were melted out. The snowpack in the Upper Colorado River basin peaked at a record low percent of median peak SWE and was 27% of median on April 1.

After low and early peak snowpack, annual streamflow volume forecasts were much below average on April 1. Annual streamflow volume forecasts ranged from 25-45% of average in Colorado, 20-55% of average in Utah and 25-100% of average in Wyoming. The inflow to Lake Powell is forecasted at 22% of average (1.4 million acre-feet). Regional streamflow forecasts were highest in the Snake and Missouri River basins of northern Wyoming where streamflow volume forecasts ranged from 65-100% of average.

Regional drought intensified during March, and 93% of the region is experiencing severe drought conditions. Extreme drought conditions developed across a broad swath of Utah, western Colorado and southeastern Wyoming, and now cover 45% of the region. Drought in western Colorado worsened by two to three categories, and exceptional drought developed in northwestern Colorado where exceptional drought conditions coincided with the 137,000-acre Lee Fire in August 2025.

Pacific Ocean temperatures have warmed, and ENSO-neutral conditions (ocean temperatures are within 0.5ºC of average) now exist. Warming sea surface temperatures prompt an 80% probability of ENSO-neutral conditions during April-June, and NOAA issuing an El Niño Watch. ENSO forecasts predict a 60% chance of El Niño conditions developing by May-July and continuing through the end of 2026. There is a 25% chance of a very strong El Niño developing during the beginning of the 2027 water year. NOAA seasonal forecasts for April-June suggest an increased probability for below average precipitation and up to a 70% probability for above average temperatures.

Significant weather event: March heat wave. The heat wave during March 2026 was unprecedented in the western U.S. climate records since 1895. March 2026 average temperatures shattered records in Colorado (by 4.3ºF), Utah (by 5.5ºF), and Wyoming (by 2ºF). Amongst weather monitoring sites with at least 50 years of data, new March temperature records were set at 85% of sites in Colorado, 82% of sites in Utah and 60% of sites in Wyoming. In Utah, previous March temperature records were exceeded by 9.7ºF in Alta and 8.9ºF in Escalante. New all-time maximum March temperature records were set at 80-90% of weather sites in Colorado and Utah, and at 70% of sites in Wyoming. At many locations in Colorado and Utah, new March temperature records exceeded April maximum temperature records. Maximum March 2026 temperatures along the Front Range of Colorado reached the 90s with Burlington, CO recording 99ºF on March 26. Extremely high March temperatures were present across the majority of the West, and record statewide March temperatures were set in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Oklahoma, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. A new record March temperature was also set for the contiguous U.S.

Borrego Springs: A cautionary tale about groundwater use in the California desert

A landscape featuring a grove of dry palm trees with their fronds hanging down, surrounded by brown grass and mountains in the background under a cloudy sky. — ^{A dessicated palm grove northeast of Borrego Springs, CA. Photo by Robert Marcos.}

by Robert Marcos, photojournalist

For decades, the desert town of Borrego Springs – in eastern San Diego County, thrived upon what appeared to be an unlimited supply sunshine and groundwater. Lacking an alternative supply of water this isolated community was entirely dependent on the prehistoric groundwater that was lying beneath it. This finite resource acted as the lifeblood for two competing interests: a flourishing agricultural sector and a steady expansion of residential and resort development.¹

The valley’s economic foundation was laid by industrial-scale agriculture. Beginning in the mid-20th century, farmers realized that the high water table and intense desert sun created perfect conditions for citrus, grapes, and nursery crops. Water was pumped aggressively to transform the arid landscape into a lush production hub. At its height, agriculture accounted for roughly 70% of the valley’s water consumption, providing the jobs and revenue that initially put Borrego Springs on the map.

Parallel to the farming boom, the town marketed itself as a serene, upscale getaway, leading to significant residential growth. Developers built golf courses, luxury resorts, and sprawling retirement communities that promised a “green” lifestyle in the middle of the desert. These amenities required massive amounts of groundwater to maintain verdant fairways and private pools. For years, the abundance of the aquifer made it easy to ignore the fact that the community was growing far beyond the environment’s natural recharge rate.²

However, the “golden age” of water use eventually hit a breaking point as the aquifer began to rapidly decline. Decades of extracting more water than the earth could replace caused the water table to drop by more than 100 feet in some areas. As the ground sank and the cost of pumping from deeper depths rose, the sustainability of the valley’s twin economies came into question. The very resource that invited growth became the primary limiting factor for its future.³

Today, Borrego Springs stands as a cautionary tale of desert over-extraction. Under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the community has been forced to implement drastic water reductions, leading to the fallowing of many farms and strict mandates for residents. While the groundwater once fueled a dream of limitless desert prosperity, its depletion now dictates a new era of conservation, proving that growth without replenishment is ultimately a race toward an empty well.⁴

Meeting #Climate Targets Requires Humanity to Reorient Its Relationship With Nature, New Study Says — Jake Bolster (InsideClimateNews.org)

Bison graze near the North Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Jacob W. Frank/NPS

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Jake Bolster):

April 9, 2026

A team including scientists, Indigenous people and conservationists point to the ecosystem connecting Yellowstone and the Yukon as an example of a region where humans and nature are flourishing together.

Governments cannot reach their climate goals without rethinking humanity’s relationship to the Earth.

That is the overarching takeaway from a new paper published [April 9, 2026] in Frontiers in Science by a global team of scientists, conservationists and Indigenous people. The authors examined a set of climate targets from around the world, including the Paris Agreement, through the lens of a “Nature Positive” approach to climate change, in which biodiversity loss is halted and reversed by 2030 compared to a 2020 baseline.

They found that climate progress cannot happen without widespread attempts to increase biodiversity, protect intact ecosystems and reverse ecological damage from centuries of consumption.

For too long, humanity—particularly in the Global North—has viewed the environment as either a resource to mine, or a hindrance to economic growth, said Harvey Locke, the paper’s lead author and a co-founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.

“Nature is essential to the functioning of the Earth system, which is in turn essential to people, and people are essential to the economy,” he said. “That is the hierarchy, nothing else.”

The paper characterized the present global economic order as occurring in the “sweet spot” between competing environmental, societal and economic interests, but says that trichotomy has occurred at the expense of other species and the planet. To maintain a habitable planet, humanity must nest its economy within the limits of Earth’s environment, the authors said.

One of the most severe examples of the current imbalance is climate change, Locke said.

“We’ve wildly exceeded the planetary boundary for putting CO2 into the atmosphere and we’re wildly destabilizing the Earth system through the destruction of nature,” he said. “Everyone in humanity loses—everyone—if we continue to destabilize the Earth system. And everyone wins if we work toward stabilizing it.”

As an example of how economies can grow while ecosystems are preserved and biodiversity is restored, Locke pointed to the Rockies in North America, particularly the region spanning Yellowstone to Yukon.

According to the National Park Service, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem is “one of the largest nearly intact temperate-zone ecosystems on Earth.”

“We have a wider distribution of bears and wolves and bison today than we did thirty years ago. We have more protected areas now than we did thirty years ago. And meanwhile the human population has flourished in that landscape,” Locke said, “in big measure because people value nature.”

The greater Yellowstone area’s growth has not been without its pains. As more people settle in the mountains, urban and suburban enclaves sprawl into forests, increasing fire risks. Grizzly bears and wolves, while magnates for tourists and their dollars, have also become political lightning rods, with some arguing that their rising populations are exceeding the capacity that the growing human settlements in the area will accept.

“If we don’t grow wisely, we will kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg,” Locke acknowledged.

The idea that humans are just one cog in nature’s fabulously complex and interconnected machine is an Indigenous premise, said Leroy Little Bear, one of the paper’s authors and a member of the Kainaiwa tribe that resides near the border of Canada and Montana.

If Indigenous groups across the world had more stewardship over ecosystems, species and land management decisions, it would go a long way toward restoring biodiversity and creating societies and economies that are better tailored to Earth’s environment, Little Bear said.

“We come from and operate on the basis of relationships,” he continued. “When you’re related to everything else in the environment, everything out there—the water, the rocks, the trees, the birds—are all animate. So if they’re animate then they all have the same kind of spirits as you have. How would I treat my relatives?”

But European settlers and their descendents have taken a different approach, he said. “In Western thought, we separate ourselves from nature and to a very large extent, we take the Biblical view that everything is made for the benefit of humans.”

To make their point, the authors collected an “enormous number of references to previous work,” said Cara Nelson, a professor of restoration ecology at the University of Montana who was not involved with the paper. By Daniel Case – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63321074

“I felt they did a really great job of identifying this inherent property of life on Earth: interconnection and interdependency,” she said.

To help change human economies’ relationship to natural systems, Locke said the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is exploring creating natural asset companies, where the value of the organization is tied to the preservation of nature, not its destruction, so private capital can spur conservation.

“You basically think about nature like gold. It’s gonna go up in value because it’s perceived to have value,” Locke said. “And we’re not making any more of it.”

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