An archipelago of ancient bioherms living on the Great Salt Lake’s southeastern side. Photo by Robert Marcos.
“This day we arrived in the valley of the great Salt Lake. My feelings were such as I cannot describe. Everything looked bloomy and I felt heart sick.”Lorenzo Young, Brigham Young’s younger brother
by Robert Marcos
Utah’s Great Salt Lake sits at dangerously low levels
The Great Salt Lake is currently locked in a critical structural decline, hovering in a “serious adverse effects” range at nearly seven feet below its minimum healthy level. Decades of excessive human water diversions for agriculture and rapid urban growth, coupled with a warming climate, have stripped the lake of over half its historic water volume. This trajectory directly parallels the Aral Sea disaster in Central Asia, where Soviet-era river diversions for cotton farming completely decimated a massive inland sea, turning it into a barren desert of toxic salt flats. If Utah fails to drastically alter its current water policies and consumption, the Great Salt Lake faces the exact same fate of complete ecological collapse.1
The Source of Half of the Wasatch Front’s Precipitation
The potential disappearance of the lake would critically disrupt the regional water cycle because half of the convective precipitation along Utah’s heavily populated Wasatch Front relies on the lake’s evaporation. As a terminal lake, its vast surface area fuels a vital localized hydrological sub-cycle, generating the famous “lake-effect” storms that dump immense snowpacks into nearby mountains. Recent research from Utah State University confirms that if the lake dries up completely, regional precipitation will face an approximate 50% reduction. This would trigger a devastating, self-perpetuating drought loop: less lake surface area means fewer storms, which shrinks mountain snowpacks and further dries the rivers needed to refill the basin.2
Potential for a Widespread Respiratory and Cardiovascular Crisis
The long-term consequences of a completely dried lakebed would be catastrophic for Utah’s public health, economy, and environment. With nearly 1,000 square miles of exposed lakebed, heavy winds would unleash massive, toxic dust storms laced with naturally occurring arsenic, mercury, and other hazardous minerals directly into the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. This airborne pollution would trigger widespread respiratory and cardiovascular crises, rendering the region largely uninhabitable. Furthermore, the collapse would wipe out the lake’s multi-billion-dollar mineral extraction and brine shrimp industries, decimate the habitat of 10 million migratory birds, and permanently cripple Utah’s iconic multi-million-dollar ski industry due to the permanent loss of winter snowpack.3
The country’s most severe drinking water problems, from high levels of contaminants and foul-smelling water to pipe breaks, low water pressure, and expensive rates, are generally found in the thousands of small systems that serve dozens of people up to a few thousand.
These systems are public health crises waiting to emerge, said Denise Schmidt, director of water at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, a group that works with water utilities on infrastructure funding.
Though some are perpetually struggling, small water systems, especially those serving low-income communities, are encountering a fresh set of economic and political hurdles in their quest for safe drinking water.
In recent industry surveys, small utilities report that accessing financing to repair and upgrade their systems is becoming increasingly difficult. Their credit ratings are deteriorating, making borrowing more expensive. The rates they charge customers are not covering the cost of providing water service, thus digging a long-term financial hole. Extreme weather is burdening them with unexpected and daunting repairs to their reservoirs, treatment plants, and pipe networks. Federal water quality mandates for PFAS and lead pipe replacements, though both providing public health benefits, are an added cost.
Small systems, in effect, are walking a precarious path. They are trying to survive today while also staring at a gathering wave of necessary replacements to aging pipes and treatment plants.
The Trump administration and Republican allies in Congress, meanwhile, are casting more obstacles. The White House’s tariffs have increased the price of equipment and materials. And the House’s fiscal year 2027 budget would cut the main federal water infrastructure program by about a quarter.
“I don’t think people realize how big this wave is and how much it’s going to cost,” said Blake Anderson, president and founder of Mogollon Water Management, a company that operates and maintains 11 small water systems in northeast Arizona. “The utilities that were built in 1970 now are 56 years old. There was a lot of development that happened back then. And all of these waves are going to start crashing.”
Negative Outlook
Crashing sounds are gaining strength.
Last year, for the first time, S&P Global, a credit rating agency, lowered the financial outlook for small water and wastewater utilities from stable to negative. Large and medium utilities remained stable.
The increased pessimism for small water utilities is due to stiffening financial headwinds, said Malcolm D’Silva, an associate director at S&P, which rates roughly 1,700 water and wastewater utilities. Ninety-one percent of the agency’s credit downgrades last year were for small systems, he said. Credit downgrades increase the cost of borrowing.
D’Silva narrated a story in two parts. One is the “expense squeeze.” Costs are rising across the board. First from the post-Covid inflation and supply chain shortages, and now from the Trump administration’s tariffs. Half of the utilities that responded to the American Water Works Association’s annual survey said that tariffs had “moderate or considerable” pressure on equipment and materials costs. At the same time, revenue is not keeping up. In the same survey, only 43 percent of utilities said they charged customers enough to fully cover service costs.
The second part is managerial. Small systems typically do not have the technical expertise, staff, or budget to analyze their infrastructure and apply for funding in the way that larger utilities do. Some might keep only paper records of their pipe networks. The smallest systems have volunteer board members or staff that might also oversee the fire department and run a business.
The positive news is that last year might have been the bottom for small systems, D’Silva said. S&P is seeing some improvement in the first half of 2026, with the rate of downgrades slowing. More utilities have instituted rate increases to fill budget holes, D’Silva said.
Federal Question Mark
Just as one hole is closing, however, another might be opening.
Every year the White House lobs a spending plan toward Capitol Hill and members of Congress decide whether those numbers are a good idea. For fiscal year 2027, the Trump administration proposed a roughly 90 percent cut to the two state revolving funds, the main federal sources of water infrastructure funding.
Congress usually sustains the state revolving funds, which have broad support. But this budget cycle could be different.
A House spending bill cuts the revolving funds by about 24 percent combined. The House Appropriations Committee approved the bill on June 3.
The bill provides $1.2 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (27 percent cut) and $911 million for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (19 percent cut). The Senate has not yet introduced its version.
The Environmental Policy Innovation Center, or EPIC, tracks state revolving fund expenditures and project proposals in 15 states. At Circle of Blue’s request, EPIC analyzed small system and very small system requests for drinking water funding. By EPA’s definition, small systems serve fewer than 10,000 people and very small systems fewer than 3,300.
The data indicate high demand from these systems. Some 61 percent of projects seeking drinking water funding were small or very small. However, only about a third of these proposed projects advanced to the next step in the funding process. This “highlights significant unmet infrastructure needs,” EPIC analysts wrote.
Water infrastructure funding needs and the status of the revolving funds were a point of discussion during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on May 20.
Jessica Kramer, the head of the EPA Office of Water, defended the administration’s proposed cuts. Her justification: the states have $14.8 billion in uncommitted state revolving funds, those sitting in coffers for more than a year without being allocated. That money should be distributed first, she argued.
“It doesn’t do any good to get the money to the states if the states aren’t actually getting it out to the communities that need it,” Kramer said.
Schmidt, the EPIC water director, had a different view. Two issues are being wrapped into one, she said. If state administrative capacity to review and approve applications is the problem, then focus on that. But don’t use it to rationalize disinvestment in an otherwise successful decades-long infrastructure program.
“Uncommitted does not mean unneeded,” Schmidt said. “Cutting moves us farther from the solution.”
The View from Arizona
The financial pressures that populate D’Silva’s and Schmidt’s spreadsheets are the on-the-ground reality for Blake Anderson.
Anderson is the president and founder of Mogollon Water Management, a company that operates and maintains 11 small water systems in the White Mountains of northeastern Arizona. Mogollon oversees the smallest of the small – systems ranging in size from 29 service connections to roughly 1,100.
These are not the sophisticated, professionally managed systems that you would see in Phoenix or Flagstaff.
“They’re volunteer board members and they’re aware that there’s some sort of money for water out there but they don’t know where it is, or if they do know, they aren’t sure how to go about applying and accessing it,” Anderson said, describing the challenges for small systems in securing grants and loans.
“Most of them have never done a capital improvement project over $50,000,” he added. “And so there is not institutional knowledge in how do you manage a federally funded program or a state funded program? How do you go about securing engineers or contractors? What are the proper procurement practices?”
One school of thought for solving the small systems problem is that there should be fewer of them. By connecting with larger systems or forming regional partnerships, small utilities could grow into medium-sized utilities with favorable economics: more customers to cover expensive infrastructure costs, better credit ratings, money to hire knowledgeable staff.
Research from Manny Teodoro at the University of Wisconsin indicates that the target size for utility consolidations should be about 20,000 service connections, or about 60,000 people. At that point the most serious water quality violations become far less common and operating costs become more reasonable.
Where might funding for consolidations come from? States like California have dedicated programs, though even those are facing funding shortfalls. Another source is federal: the state revolving funds that House Republicans want to cut.
At the Yampa Town Board meeting last week, Andi Schaffner with the Bear River Reservoir Company presented plans and cost estimates for a Stillwater Reservoir project that would lead to removal of its storage restriction. The plan consists of two phases involving installation of a strain and a sand filter to alleviate seepage into the dam’s embankment, the primary concern that led to the storage restriction designation…Currently, the town of Yampa owns 112 shares in Stillwater Reservoir, or about 2% of the reservoir. Phase 1 of the project consists of a blanket drain and filter collar and is estimated to cost $730,717. Phase Two of the project will be stabilizing the channel and the removal of the culvert and the flume, at a total estimated cost $209,874. Schaffner said that the team at Bear River Reservoir Company has spent hours on engineering and studies at the reservoir in order to determine the best solution for the dam. “We finally opted for the least expensive fix, which is what we’re working on right now,” said Schaffner…The project has received a significant amount of grant funding despite higher than anticipated bids, including a $202,000 loan from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. This loan was the primary expected cost for the town of Yampa, and is expected to be approved with an increase to $404,000 ahead of the project’s notice to proceed with the contractor on July 13. The project is expected to be completed by the end of October. The Colorado Water Conservation Board loan is 30 years with 1.85% interest, or $3.40 per share per year. For the town of Yampa’s 100 or so shares, this amounts to $381 a year. Schaffner did not expect any more expenses besides an assessment of the shares which amounts to about $5.
Official ENSO probabilities for the Niño 3.4 relative sea surface temperature index (5°N-5°S, 170°W -120°W) minus tropical mean (20°N-20°S). The relative index is re-scaled to match the variance of the traditional index. Figure updated 11 June 2026. Higher resolution image/table: https://cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/roni/probabilities/
Synopsis: El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the NorthernHemisphere winter 2026-27.
El Niño conditions developed over the past month, as shown by above-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the central to eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index value was +0.7ºC, with the westernmost (Niño-4) and easternmost (Niño-1+2) indices at +0.7ºC and +2.1ºC, respectively. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180º-100ºW) decreased in the past month, but significantly above-average subsurface temperatures remained in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. Low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly wind anomalies were evident over the central equatorial Pacific. Convection was slightly above average over the central and east-central equatorial Pacific and was near or below average over Indonesia. The traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation indices were negative. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected the onset of El Niño conditions.
The North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) average, including the NCEP CFSv2 , forecasts El Niño to intensify into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27. High confidence in El Niño is also linked to anomalously high oceanic heat content and expanding westerly wind anomalies across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. There is a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño during November-January that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950. Even very strong El Niño events do not lead to the expected impact everywhere, but stronger events can more significantly tilt the odds in favor of expected outcomes (see CPC outlooks for probabilities of seasonal anomalies). In summary, El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27.
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
In response to extreme drought conditions throughout northwestern Colorado, the Colorado River District, in partnership with the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), is offering up to 420 acre-feet of supplemental agricultural water from Elkhead Reservoir for irrigators in the Yampa River Valley. Modeled on the successful joint CWCB-River District program implemented in 2021, this effort will provide additional supplies during critical times of agricultural production.
“The drought conditions this year have been exceptional and unpredictable,” said Colorado River District’s Director of Asset Management, Hunter Causey. “And it’s that kind of unpredictability that hits small family farms and ranches the hardest. The Yampa Valley, the western slope, and our entire region depend on local agriculture to drive economies, produce local food, and preserve landscapes. While a program like this cannot solve the drought problem at large, we can be strategic in how we use our available supplies and support our constituents wherever possible.”
“The challenges posed by this year’s drought call for creative solutions and strong partnerships,” said Lauren Ris, CWCB Director. “This project reflects what can happen when local water users and water management agencies work together to respond to emerging needs. We’re pleased to support this collaborative effort in the Yampa Valley and remain committed to working with communities across Colorado to explore creative, locally driven solutions that help address drought impacts and strengthen drought resilience.”
Program Structure:
Water will be allocated using a lottery with an initial round of allocations of up to 50 AF per applicant, totaling 420 AF.
Any water remaining after the lottery will be awarded equally to initial round applicants that expressed a need beyond 50 AF. If there is any remaining water, it will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and will need to be contracted at no cost with the District.
Successful participants in the lottery will need to enter into a no-cost contract with the River District for direct delivery and/or use of the District’s Elkhead water through administrative exchange.
In the event there is a mainstem Yampa River call and to the extent that lessees are out-of-priority, water will be released at the diversion rate plus transit losses.
Water will be available for delivery or exchange beginning on July 10, 2026.
At current agricultural water marketing rates, the total project will cost $18,375. On June 4, the Colorado River District Board of Directors agreed to make $4,594 available from the Board’s previously authorized CFP expenditures for the District’s 2026 Drought relief effort. The CWCB has committed to providing the remainder of the funds – approximately $13,781.
Applications are due by June 26th, and a lottery will be conducted for the initial round of contracts on July 1st. Available augmentation water is limited. Those interested in applying should contact the Colorado River District’s Director of Asset Management, Hunter Causey, at hcausey@crwcd.org or visit HERE for more information.
The IID’s former Watermaster, Merlon Kidwell, makes a presentation to a group studying the Colorado River crisis. Photo by Robert Marcos.
by Robert Marcos & Brad Barham, PhD
In 2022 – while conducting a study of the Colorado River crisis, Dr. Brad Barham – a Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, two of his undergrads and I watched a Powerpoint presentation given by the Imperial Irrigation District’s Watermaster, Merlon Kidwell. Kidwell retired last year after fifty years with the IID. Besides the IID’s hospitality that day, there were two fundamentally-important things we’ve never forgotten –
1. The IID maintains 3,000 miles of delivery canals and agricultural drains that convey 3.1 million acre feet of Colorado River water every year. This amount represents about a quarter of the Colorado River’s average annual 12.5MAF output since 2000.1 Under its historic contracts with the federal government, the IIDis exempt from paying for the water it receives, it does however pay for the operation, maintenance, and repair of the 80-mile long All-American Canal, its own internal water delivery systems, and a portion of the cost of maintaining the Imperial Dam.2
2. Similarly, the IID does not charge farmersfor the water itself. It charges farmers (who are connected to the IID’s water delivery system) an annual fee for that connection, plus a flat $20 per acre foot for the costs associated with the delivery of their water. 3
IID employees demonstrate an automated canal gate to a group studying the Colorado River crisis. Photo by Robert Marcos.
Meanwhile, the San Diego County Water Authority pays a wholesale price that’s between $700 and $1,200 per acre-foot for that same (untreated) Colorado River water.4 With such a disparity in water prices it seems reasonable to ask if the IID could both conserve water and lower the price paid by municipal users by raising the price paid by farmers.5
It doesn’t take an economist to understand the “law of demand” which says: “As the price of goods or services go up, people will generally use less of it”. Today with Lake Powell hovering just above the dead pool level it’ has become crucial’s more urgent than ever to understand why the price of water that’s provided to Imperial Valley farmers hasn’t gone up considering the increased scarcity of Colorado River water.
For decades now the Imperial Irrigation District has demonstrated that they prefer the carrot to the stick – in other words the IID has provided farmers with financial incentives and the technology that’s required in order to conserve water. The IID also cannot raise water prices because of laws established by California Proposition 218.
California’s Proposition 218 was passed by voters in 1996 in order to protect taxpayers by requiring voter approval for local tax increases and restricting property-related fees to the actual, proportional cost of service delivery 6. Since the IID receives Colorado River water for free, they can only charge farmers $20 per acre-foot to recover the costs associated with the water’s conveyance – but not for the water itself. Consequently, to legally increase agricultural water rates, the IID must prove higher service expenses through a formal cost-of-service study, issue a 45-day advance notice to landowners, and then begin the “majority protest” process. Because water, sewer, and refuse collection fees are legally classified as “property-related fees,” the Imperial Irrigation District board could pass the rate increase automatically unless a majority of affected stakeholders vote “no” by submitting written protests.7 In this context the “affected stakeholders” are the legal landowners of the agricultural parcels that are subject to the water fee, and the ratepayers, tenants, or farmers who are directly responsible for paying the water bill under their lease terms. 8
However the cost of these (very successful) conservation measures – especially the cost of paying farmers to fallow some of their fields, are very high: about $250 million per year (or $300-450 per acre foot depending on conservation practices used). Given how Western water laws work, and the addition of Proposition 218, that is currently the most feasible and the most immediate path to water conservation in the Colorado River system.
A lower cost, more sustainable solution would require changing the rules that guarantee specific volumes of water at only the cost of conveyance to farmers across the basin. That will be a challenging transition, and will probably require federal legislation to be achieved.
Summer thunderstorms, with their hit-or-miss nature, dominated precipitation patterns across the U.S. this week. The greatest departures from normal precipitation occurred across portions of the central and southern Plains, West Texas, New Mexico, and the Midwest. Areas of southern Louisiana, northern Alabama, and western Kentucky also recorded well-above-normal precipitation. The East Coast remained dry, with the exception of Florida’s Atlantic coast. Much of the West also remained dry, with only portions of the Pacific Northwest and southern California recording near- to above-normal precipitation.
Temperatures for the week were below normal across the Southeast, with parts of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina averaging 3–6 degrees below normal. Portions of West Texas, southeast New Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest were also below normal. The greatest temperature departures occurred in the central and northern Plains, where portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota experienced temperatures 9–12 degrees above normal.
Drought signals across much of the southern U.S. remain mixed, with wetter short-term conditions developing while long-term deficits persist despite the recent pattern change. In the Plains, impacts have primarily affected winter wheat and forage production, and areas that have remained dry continue to experience elevated fire danger. In the Southeast, water supply concerns and fire danger remain significant, particularly in Florida…
Temperatures were generally warmer than normal across the region, with portions of the Dakotas and western Nebraska averaging 9–12 degrees above normal. Above-normal precipitation occurred in southern Nebraska, northern Kansas, northern Nebraska into southern and central South Dakota, and across much of northern North Dakota. Areas along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains from Montana through Colorado remained largely dry.
Drought intensity eased where the heaviest rains fell in Nebraska, Kansas and South Dakota, and drought was eliminated in portions of northern Kansas and southeast Nebraska. Southeast South Dakota continued to miss significant rainfall, and the combination of short- and long-term dryness allowed moderate and severe drought to expand. Degradation also occurred in eastern Colorado, where extreme drought expanded in the north and moderate drought expanded across east-central portions of the state. Extreme drought was reduced slightly in southern Colorado following recent rainfall…
Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 9, 2026.
Above-normal precipitation was limited to a few locations, primarily along the Pacific Northwest coast and across southern and eastern New Mexico. Temperatures were above normal across much of the region, with departures of 6–9 degrees above normal across Nevada, Utah and western Colorado. Cooler-than-normal temperatures occurred in the Pacific Northwest and eastern New Mexico, where departures averaged 3–4 degrees below normal.
Although some areas have recently received additional precipitation, a winter characterized by above-normal temperatures and below-normal snowpack continues to affect the region and will likely influence conditions through the summer. Conditions deteriorated in Oregon, where moderate, severe and extreme drought expanded across much of the eastern portion of the state, although southern Oregon experienced localized improvements to moderate drought.
Elsewhere, western Montana benefited from recent rainfall, allowing severe and extreme drought to improve. Extreme drought also improved across much of eastern Utah, while southern and eastern New Mexico saw additional improvements following precipitation totals exceeding 200% of normal…
Temperatures were mixed, with Oklahoma and Arkansas averaging 2–4 degrees above normal. Meanwhile, much of West, south and east Texas, along with eastern Mississippi and Tennessee, averaged 2–4 degrees below normal.
Most of the region received some precipitation, although eastern Arkansas, northern Mississippi, southern Texas, and southwest Oklahoma were the driest locations. The continuing wetter pattern resulted in additional improvements, with drought eliminated across more of central Texas and eastern Oklahoma. Drought also eased across much of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, although widespread severe and extreme drought persisted.
Long-term dryness in far south Texas continues to improve, and improving local conditions combined with short-term data supported the removal of remaining abnormally dry designations. Improvements also occurred in Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee, where recent wet conditions are beginning to offset longer-term drought indicators…
Looking Ahead
During the next 5–7 days, the West is expected to remain quite dry, [ed. emphasis mine] while the southern U.S. and portions of the Midwest have the greatest potential for above-normal precipitation. The northern Plains and Southwest are forecast to receive less than 1 inch of precipitation.
Temperatures are expected to remain warmer than normal across the West, with departures exceeding 10 degrees above normal in Nevada and portions of the Pacific Northwest. Most of the remainder of the country is expected to experience near- to slightly below-normal temperatures.
The 6–10 day outlook shows the best chances for above-normal temperatures will be across the West and Southeast, especially in areas centered on Nevada and much of South Florida. Above-normal chances for below-normal temperatures will be centered on the Great Lakes and Midwest, with the highest probabilities over Michigan.
Above-normal chances for below-normal precipitation will be over much of the northern Plains and Upper Midwest, as well as northern areas of California, Nevada, and into Oregon. Above-normal chances for above-normal precipitation will be mainly in the southern and eastern U.S., with the highest probabilities in South Texas and into the lower Mississippi River Valley.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 9, 2026.
The period of March through May 2026 ranked as the second warmest spring in records going back to 1895 for the contiguous U.S., according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Across the past 131 years, only 2012 had a warmer spring, said NCEI in its monthly analysis released on June 8.
The nationwide average temperatures for both spring 2012 (56.17 degrees Fahrenheit) and 2026 (55.79°F) are both more than 1.5°F above any rivals in the 131-year database. Spring 2026 was the hottest on record for Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico, and 38 of the 48 contiguous states had a top-five hottest spring (see Fig. 2).
Figure 1. Average temperature for the contiguous United States for each spring (March-May) from 1895 through 2026. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI)
Figure 2. Temperature rankings by state for the contiguous United States for each spring (March-May) from 1895 through 2026. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI)
Exceptional warmth this year in both March (warmest on record) and April (3rdwarmest on record) – including a phenomenal heat wave that brought summerlike temperatures in late March to much of the central and western U.S. – was only partially tempered by a less extreme but still unusually mild May (28th warmest on record). Over the longer-term, the contiguous U.S. remains locked in a long-term warming pattern fully in line with human-caused climate change.
The 12-month running average temperature for the Contiguous U.S. continues to be at a record high.
For the nation as a whole, spring 2026 ranked as the 37th driest on record, with a contiguous-U.S. average of 7.43 inches. After a parched March (8th driest), precipitation came in closer to average nationwide in April (46th wettest) and May (55th driest). However, that moisture was largely focused in the Midwest and Northeast. Michigan experienced its wettest spring on record, and it was a top-ten wettest spring for Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana. In contrast, it was a top-ten driest spring for Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia (see Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Precipitaton rankings by state for the contiguous United States for each spring (March-May) from 1895 through 2026. (Image credit: NOAA/NCEI)
For the contiguous U.S. as a whole, May 2026 had the second-worst May drought conditions in contiguous U.S. history, with a Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) of -6.93. The only worse May occurred in the Dust Bowl year of 1934 (a PDSI of -7.03). The year 2026 has now had three of the top-10 months for worst contiguous U.S drought conditions since records began in 1895:
Aug 1934: -8.42 Jul 1934: -8.09 Mar 2026: -7.82 Apr 2026: -7.49 Sep 1934: -7.21 Jun 1934: -7.18 Oct 1934: -7.16 May 1934: -7.03 Jan 1940: -6.97 May 2026: -6.93
Figure 4. Departure of snow liquid water equivalent for the winter of 2025-2026, ending in April 2026. Units are in mm; 25.4 mm = 1.0 inch. The vast majority of the Western U.S. saw below-average snowfall, while much of western Canada had much above average snowfall. (Image credit, used by permission: Jihan Bhuiyan, Cornell)
For much of the mountain West, more “no” than snow
The March heat wave dissolved any hope of a respectable snow season for large parts of the western United States. From April into early May, large swaths of the Rockies had record-low snow levels for the season, as much of what was already a skimpy snowpack melted weeks ahead of average.
12-month running average snowfall for the Contiguous U.S. It's as if warming temperatures mean less snowfall. Who knew?
Taking the edge off slightly was a notably moist period over parts of the Southwest in mid-May. That system brought some of the heaviest snowfall of the entire winter to areas that included the Front Range of Colorado (Fig. 5).
Figure 5. The heaviest snowfall of winter 2025-26 fell over leafed-out trees on May 6 in Boulder, Colorado. The May 5-6 storm total was 11.3 inches, capping the least-snowy winter in the 36-year history of Boulder’s current official observing station. (Image credit: Bob Henson)
In California, substantial rain and mountain snow in midwinter helped to keep put of the state’s reservoirs in better shape than one might assume from the early melt-off from unusual warmth.
Most of northern and central California remain within about 10% of normal, while much of the south state is well above normal, mostly on the basis of heavy rains in Nov and Dec.
The situation is considerably more dire across the Desert Southwest. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which together serve thousands of farmers and millions of residents in six states, were both at less than 30 percent of capacity by early June.
Figure 6. Active storage in 46 Colorado River Basin reservoirs between January 1, 1999, and late May 2026. The progressive decline in storage shown above, despite occasional replenishment during wet years, is referred to as the “ratchet effect.” Data for these reservoirs is available at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/hydrodata/reservoir_data/site_map.html. (Image credit: University of Colorado)
The lack of remaining Southwest snowpack means runoff will be limited this summer, only worsening the situation. There’s at least some chance that the fast-evolving El Niño event – which has a greater-than-60-percent of reaching “strong” or “very strong” levels, according to NOAA’s intensity outlook issued in May – will bring generous moisture to the Southwest later this year into early 2027.
Bob Henson
However, scientists at the University of Colorado cautioned in a June 1 press release that even a very wet year such as 2023 would likely forestall major long-term trouble by only about two years, while another dry year could lead to “run-of-the-river” conditions that would hasten depletion and lead to devastating consequences.
“Both scenarios demonstrate the need to adopt significant additional measures topermanently decrease consumptive uses across the entire basin,” the researchers warned.
Bob Henson is a meteorologist and journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. He has written on weather and climate for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Weather Underground, and many freelance… More by Bob Henson
Heat-emitting Phoenix-area data centers next to already hot neighborhoods. Good thing a lot of those houses have swimming pools. They’ll need them. Source: Data Center Waste Heat as an Emerging Urban Thermal Hazard: First Field Measurements of Neighborhood-Scale Air Temperature Impacts, by David J. Sailor, Soroush Samareh Abolhassani, Eli P. Martin.
🤖 Data Center Watch 👾
Phoenix is hot, thanks to its location and elevation; it’s getting hotter, due to climate change, all that concrete and steel and glass and the urban heat island effect, and heat output from thousands of overworked air conditioning units; and it’s bound to get even hotter thanks to … data centers.
A team of Arizona State University researchers recently published a report on data center waste heat as an “emerging thermal hazard.” What they found will make folks who live near the facilities sweat, literally.
Data centers do a lot of work crunching information to stream movies, power AI queries, make those Tik Tok videos, and keep you doomscrolling, and work creates heat, meaning that data centers need constant cooling. As the paper’s authors put it, “virtually all electrical energy consumed by information technology equipment is ultimately converted to sensible heat,” and data centers consume huge amounts of electricity. More and more data centers, especially in arid areas, are using air cooling technology, which means taking that heat away from the equipment and putting it elsewhere — i.e. outside the facility, creating thermal plumes.
The researchers determined that these thermal plumes are migrating into adjacent neighborhoods and heating them up, with downwind air temperatures measuring up to .9° C warmer than upwind temperatures. The data centers’ excess heat was detected up to 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet, away from the facility. This is troubling given that many data centers are being constructed in or next to residential neighborhoods. The massive Cyrus One server farm complex in Chandler, Arizona, for example, is about 600 feet from single-family residences.
The authors write:
Keep in mind that this study only looked at the warming effect of on-grid facilities. Many of the new hyperscale data centers in the pipeline are planning to install power generation infrastructure, usually natural gas-fired, on-site, most likely radiating even more heat than the data centers alone. Putting your data center in Wyoming or Alaska rather than Phoenix or Las Vegas is making more and more sense.
⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️
Will it be the Sultry Summer of 2026 for the Four Corners region? The long-range forecasts sure do look that way. The good news is that it’s looking more and more likely that the monsoon will be potent in the Southwest, with the National Weather Service predicting above average precipitation over the next three months. The bad news is they are also calling for higher-than-normal temperatures for the entire West during that time period, which could offset some of the benefits of the rain.
But whether it’s normally hot or abnormally so, the extra moisture will be especially welcome this year. Many an irrigation ditch is likely to go dry in the next month or so, thanks to extra-low streamflows, and regular afternoon downpours could help farmers get their crops to harvest, so long as the storms aren’t too severe and don’t produce softball-sized hail stones or whatever.
Once the monsoon arrives, it should help dampen wildfire hazard a bit (although the lightning that always comes with it will certainly spark many a blaze). In the meantime, however, big swaths of the West are expected to have above normal wildland fire potential for the next month or so.
And blazes are flaring up here and there, including a small conflagration atop Hermosa Mountain north of Durango that is eerily reminiscent of the 416 Fire in 2018: This winter’s snowpack resembled 2018’s, the 416 broke out on June 1, and the starting points are in the same general area.
The current fire is burning in a hard-to-reach area at higher elevation and was definitely not started by sparks from the railroad. It’s also growing relatively slowly, having reached just 18 acres as of the evening of June 4.
***
Emery Peak near Silverton, Colorado, on June 2, 2026. Andy Gleason photo.
I don’t know about y’all, but the crazy winter and spring has screwed up my perception of the water situation. When skiing-obsessed snow-nerd Andy Gleason sent me this photo, I was somewhat surprised to see that there was any snow at all left in the high country, especially enough to carve a few turns on. When I see that the Animas River is running above 800 cfs right now, I think: That’s not so bad! And when I see Lake Powell’s surface level inching upwards rather than downwards a temporary feeling of relief washes over me.
Then I remember: It’s the beginning of June. The north facing high mountains should be coated with several feet of snow, not a few inches. The Animas should be running at 3,000 cfs, at least, and in a good year still would be approaching its peak. And Lake Powell’s inflows should far exceed releases at this time of year, bringing the surface level up by several feet or more, without requiring Flaming Gorge to be drawn down to “devastating” levels.
That bout of summer-like weather at the end of March set my internal season clock a couple of months ahead, so that I expect the conditions to be like they typically would be in late July. So once that split second of disorientation, and accompanying optimism, passes, there’s a sort of letdown.
Because, yes, the conditions are grim. And it was one of the worst winters, in terms of snowpack, on record. But there are reasons not to despair. While the snow was dismal, precipitation accumulation for the water year so far has been far less so, keeping extreme drought at bay. Temperatures cooled after the March heat spell, a series of storms kept the forests from becoming kindling, and desert rains summoned the wildflowers. Patches of globe mallow, sego lily, primrose, and prince’s plume brightened up the burnished sands of Utah, and my friend and I rode our bikes through a purple-hued super bloom near Farmington.
The land may be dry, but it still offers beauty, solace, and refuge from these trying times. [ed. emphasis mine]
Redrock reflection on the Dolores River near Gateway, downstream from the confluence with the San Miguel. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Last month I wrote about the despair I felt as I witnessed the virtually dry Dolores River bed a mile or so above its confluence with the San Miguel River. Neither the dryness nor the despair are new, though they both came early this year.
For decades, the wild Dolores would swell up into a raging torrent during the spring runoff. Then, during the summer, Montezuma Valley irrigators would divert nearly all of the stream’s flow, reducing these lower reaches to little more than a trickle come late July and August.
McPhee Dam started holding back those spring flows in the early 1980s. Like any dam, this one robbed so much life from the river. Yet this one also promised to give some life back to the beleaguered river by mitigating the impacts of all of that irrigation. The idea was to capture enough of the runoff to fill up the reservoir in the spring. During summer, the storage could be drawn down to serve irrigators, while most or all of the river’s natural flow could be sent through the dam to the Lower Dolores. It was like putting the river’s manic-depressive flows on lithium.
It worked, for a while: The massive spring runoffs, known to hit upwards of 11,000 cfs, were tempered, but enough water still flowed downstream to scour beaches and preserve Snaggletooth’s whitewater snarl. And for the first time in a century the lower Dolores didn’t run dry in July. In fact, the year-round flows were enough to build and sustain a cold-water fishery for trout in the first dozen or so miles below the dam and a habitat for native fish below that. Meanwhile, the Dolores River water was able to reach far more irrigators, including the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and former dryland farmers out Dove Creek way.
It appeared to be a win-win situation. Then, beginning in 2000, things went awry as a long-term drought gripped the region. More often than not, the dam’s operators held back almost all of the water running into the reservoir to allow them to continue delivering something to the irrigators. And even then the reservoir still isn’t full enough to deliver all of the water that’s allocated: This year the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and irrigators outside of the Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company will receive just 13% of their allotted amount. The river below the dam, of course, is the biggest loser, receiving virtually nothing.
And yet, not all is lost. The Dolores River Boating Advocates recently put out a postdetailing the grim forecast for this year, but also reporting on a new Colorado Parks and Wildlife effort to help fish in the Lower Dolores: pulse flows. They tested the concept last year by holding water back behind the dam for a few days by reducing release flows to 24 cfs, then bumping up releases to 75 cfs create a slight surge of water to reconnect downstream pools, to induce enough current to keep the water cooler, and allow fish to move around again.
Graph showing the pulse flows last summer as they reached Bedrock. So far this spring flows there have been below a dismal 10 cfs. Source: USGS.
The Boating Advocates write:
Of course streams also need water, and it’s so scarce this year that the base flows will be just 5 cfs, or one-fifth of last year’s base flows. And so the sorrows continue for the poor Dolores River.
And here’s the thing: closed loop water systems are 100% possible. They just require a bit more investment.Similarly, powering data centers off clean energy is also 100% possible. In some cases, it’s even cheaper!This disastrous overconsumption is not a technological failure: it’s a policy one.
Glen Canyon Dam forms Lake Powell on the Colorado River near Page, Ariz. Officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are holding back water and releasing water from an upstream reservoir to prop up levels in Lake Powell. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Federal officials announced on Thursday that they plan on using a shorter-term framework for future Colorado River management so they can be more responsive to changing conditions and reservoir levels.
Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Scott Cameron said at an annual conference on water policy that the agency will be using a 10-year framework, issuing new operational guidelines every two years. In the absence of a seven-state deal for sharing shortages and managing reservoirs, river management now falls to the federal government — an outcome nearly everyone had hoped to avoid.
“We would love to have a 20-year deal or a 30-year deal but, frankly, we haven’t even been able to get the seven states to agree on what a two-year deal would look like,” Cameron said. “Given the highly unusual hydrological situation in the basin … we think it makes sense to take a second look at decision making every couple of years.”
As part of the required process under the National Environmental Policy Act, Cameron said Reclamation will release a final Environmental Impact Statement with its “preferred alternative,” in mid-to-late summer. It will lay out a more detailed 10-year operations plan for the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and will include short-term operational guidelines for 2027 and 2028. He said the plan provides a stable, transparent and adaptable framework for river management.
Scott Cameron is the acting commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. He announced Thursday the federal agency is planning to release a river management plan in mid-to-late summer that includes a 10-year framework, with new operational guidelines every two years. CREDIT: U.S. BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
“We want to pay more attention to what’s actually happening in the river and what’s happening in terms of the elevation of the reservoirs,” Cameron said. “We want to manage conservatively during low inflow periods and hopefully be able to transition to recovery as conditions improve across the basin to keep the system stable and resilient.”
Cameron left the door open for a return to future management by the states and added that if they eventually come to an agreement, it could supplant the federal plan.
Cameron’s update came at the Colorado Law Conference on Natural Resources at the University of Colorado Boulder, hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center and the Water & Tribes Initiative. Water managers from around the basin gathered at the Wolf Law School in the midst of one of the worst droughts on record that threatens the water supply for about 40 million people in the American Southwest. Record hot temperatures and one of the worst snowpacks since measuring began resulted in streamflows that peaked much lower than normal and, in some reaches, a month early. Reclamation’s most recent projections put spring runoff into Lake Powell at just 800,000 acre-feet, which would be 13% percent of normal and the lowest on record.
On top of the abysmal hydrologic conditions, the basin is also in the midst of a management crisis. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and Lower Basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) after two years of negotiating have failed to reach a consensus on how they will share future cuts and have blown past deadlines to come up with a plan. The current guidelines, which have determined shortages and releases since 2007, expire at the end of the year. But for all intents and purposes, water managers need a new plan in place by the start of the new water year on Oct. 1.
Some of the problem still centers around the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allocated half of the river’s flows (7.5 million acre-feet a year) to each basin. But this framework no longer applies under 21st century conditions, which has seen flows decline by 20% due to climate change. Despite indications a year ago that the states were moving to a supply-driven model based on each year’s snowpack and available water — rather than a fixed allocation of water — a new management framework the states can agree on has remained out of reach.
Colorado representative Becky Mitchell and Nevada representative John Entsminger speak at a conference on Colorado River policy in Boulder on Friday, June 5, 2026. The federal government is set to release a plan for future river management in mid-to-late summer. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Beyond the band-aid
The feds’ operating plan for the first two years may be based on a proposal submitted by the Lower Basin states in early May, in which they propose to cut another 700,000 acre-feet of water per year through 2028, on top of the 1.5 million acre-feet they had already promised. California and Arizona will each take another 300,000 acre-feet of cuts and Nevada will take a cut of 100,000 acre-feet. The proposal does not include any mandatory conservation from the Upper Basin.
Federal officials responded in a May 28 letter with adjustments to make the proposal feasible, including the requirement that the Lower Basin states help pay for the 700,000 acre-feet of conservation. In the past, conservation programs have depended heavily on federal funding.
Becky Mitchell, who represents Colorado in the negotiations among the states, said during a Friday panel that the feds’ plan was a starting point but raises some concerns. Constantly renegotiating an operating plan every two years would be hard to fathom, she said.
“How do we fund and finance if we’re constantly renegotiating?” Mitchell said. “And how do we create the certainty that the 40 million people deserve?”
The feds have already stepped in this spring to prevent the worst consequences of the exceptionally dry winter and keep water levels at Lake Powell from falling below the threshold for making hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. They are releasing up to 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to prop up Powell and holding back Powell releases by about 1.5 million acre-feet. Cameron conceded, however, that these are temporary, stop-gap measures meant to address a critical situation.
“I think we succeeded in making everybody unhappy and everybody mad, which maybe means we’re doing the right thing in terms of Lake Powell,” Cameron said.
The Upper Basin states, including Colorado, are exploring ways to contribute water to a pool in Lake Powell as a means of maintaining higher water levels and an insurance policy against drastic cuts. But officials have not budged from their position that the Upper Basin is limited in what it can do and that cutting Lower Basin overuse is the primary solution to the Colorado River crisis.
Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University whose presentation kicked off the conference, asked water managers not to waste this unique opportunity to redo 100 years of law and policy around how to manage a critical resource. And he directed a plea at the Upper Basin, saying that they, too, are part of the problem.
“We need everybody with a shoulder to this wheel,” Udall said. “We understand that the Upper Basin is different. We understand that they don’t have (large upstream) reservoirs and that every year people suffer. But we need you to help. Please help us.”
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
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
June 1, 2026
I’ve been on a “Colorado River sabbatical” of late, but I took a peek last week at Reclamation’s latest 24-month study. Holy moly things have gotten bad since the last time I looked!
Those not on sabbatical already know all of this, but to keep Lake Powell above a surface elevation of 3,500 feet, Reclamation is:
increasing releases out of Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border
dropping releases out of Lake Powell to 6 million acre feet this year
Even with those two “hail Mary” moves, Lake Mead is projected in the “most probable” scenario to drop to elevation 1,020 by summer 2027. Under the “minimum probable” forecast, Mead drops all the way to elevation 1,008 in 2027.
We are on the brink, as a group of my colleagues explains in a new analysis out this morning (Monday June 1, 2026), of a system crash:
Even a wet year, my friends conclude, would only provide a short reprieve from the need to significantly reduce consumptive use.
Building on a similar analysis done last September (I was a co-author on that one), the authors attempt to overcome one of the shortcomings of the traditional Colorado River accounting systems, which is to treat any water above “dead pool” as usable storage. This is not the case, with clear do-not-cross lines in the reservoirs that are maintained for technical reasons well above the bottom, defined by my colleagues as…
One of the reasons for my “sabbatical” is, frankly, an agonized frustration with the abject failure of Colorado River governance at the basin scale, and a desire to turn my attention to the local level, which is where the problem solving responsibility seems to rest right now. Each community needs to be having a serious conversation right now about the specifics of its Colorado River water supply, and how it intends to go about using less. Blaming other people for using too much isn’t particularly useful at this point, we seem to have chosen to hand that set of questions (the rule-based part of “who is entitled to how much”) over to the courts, and who knows what that process holds. We know the answer for everyone is “use less water”, and each community needs to be getting on with that conversation.
Saguaro cactus in Southern Arizona. Image provided by Storyblocks.
The forecasted “Super El Niño” is expected to delay the start of Southern Arizona’s monsoonal season but by August it could trigger heavier, more intense rainfall, severe flash flooding, and unusually high humidity during its peak. While El Niño historically weakens global monsoons, its impact on the Desert Southwest creates unique atmospheric shifts for the June 15 to September 30 season.1 Climate experts from the National Weather Service and the University of Arizona predict the season will unfold across three distinct phases: 2
A DELAYED AND DRIER ONSET
Early in the summer, El Niño’s atmospheric patterns alter the subtropical jet stream, creating persistent westerly winds across the Southwest.
Moisture Suppression: These westerlies act as a wall, driving out early moisture from the south and delaying the typical shift to monsoonal wind patterns.
Increased Fire Risk: A slower, drier start to the monsoon prolongs the summer dry spell, elevating the risk of wildfire ignition from dry lightning storms.
HIGH-INTENSITY PEAK (August into September)
Tropical Cyclone Activity: The incredibly warm ocean temperatures of a Super El Niño fuel severe hurricane activity off the Pacific coast of Mexico.
Tropical Moisture Pumps: While the hurricanes themselves rarely hit Southern Arizona directly, they act as massive atmospheric pumps, steering heavy tropical moisture straight into the Desert Southwest.
Rain Bombs and Flooding: As this extra moisture collides with the desert heat, it increases the likelihood of high-intensity storms, widespread flash flooding, severe dust storms, and heavy rainfall that could reach up to 150% of normal averages in some areas.
A SHIFT TO MOIST HEAT (after September)
High Humidity: Southern Arizona is famous for its dry heat, but the influx of Pacific moisture will cause humidity levels to skyrocket.
Stubbornly High Temperatures: Even with localized cloud cover and rain mitigating the most extreme temperature spikes, daily highs will remain brutally hot—frequently ranging between 100°F and 115°F. The added moisture will result in a heavy, oppressive “moist heat” rather than a dry one.
Video and photos of fish-shaped intaglio (geoglyph) damaged by border wall construction contractors at Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Footage taken from Mexico. Credit Russ McSpadden / Center for Biological Diversity
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Debra Utacia Krol). Here’s an excerpt:
June 7, 2026
Key Points
Border wall construction is damaging or threatening sacred Indigenous, cultural, and environmentally sensitive sites in four states along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Department of Homeland Security has waived environmental and historic protection laws to expedite construction of a two-layered structure.
Sites affected include a 1,000-year-old O’odham geoglyph in Arizona and Kuuchamaa, a sacred mountain to Kumeyaay tribes in California.
The recent destruction of a 1,000-year-old sacred O’odham geoglyph in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge is only the latest example of damage and desecration to religious, cultural and environmentally sensitive sites caused by construction of the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. At least one Catholic shrine, two mountains held sacred by Kumeyaay bands in California and Catholics on the New Mexico-Texas state line, and wetlands prized as life-giving water sources for wildlife and humans have all suffered damage or are in the work zone. The Las Playas Intaglio holds great cultural and historical importance to O’odham and other Indigenous peoples in the Southwest. The intaglio, or geoglyph, was created by scraping the top darker layer of earth from the desert floor, resulting in a 200-foot-long rendition of a fish with its nose pointing south. Some tribes say it served as a directional marker along a trail that led to the Gulf of California and its marine resources, including salt deposits…
The Department of Homeland Security is filling in the gaps in the border wall not completed during President Donald Trump’s first term. The agency is also building a second wall parallel to the first in areas deemed to be at higher risk of smuggling and human trafficking. The Trump administration has moved to waive environmental and historic protection laws and regulations in its rush to build the walls. In April 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued waivers to expedite construction in Arizona and New Mexico, based on a 2005 law that gave the agency the authority to waive laws to expedite barriers and roads at the U.S. border…The agency has also ignored directives such as sites being included in the National Register of Historic Places, the United States’ official list of historic and archaeological resources deemed worthy of protection…
Members of the 16 Kumeyaay tribal communities in Southern California and Baja California sounded alarms when the government began blasting chunks off Kuuchamaa, also known as Mount Cuchuma or Tecate Peak. The 3,885-foot-high mountain straddles the U.S.-Mexico border and is about 4 miles west of Tecate, Baja California. Kumeyaay people consider Kuuchamaa their most sacred mountain. According to the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit founded in 2005 to protect areas important to the Kumeyaay peoples, the peak is the namesake of a powerful Kuseyaay, or religious leader…Like other cultural and sacred places, the government has waived environmental laws and disregarded Kuuchamaa’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The 1992 listing, which Bergueno said was led by her elders, was the first-ever Native religious site to be listed…
Quitobaquito Springs was heavily damaged as the first border wall was built in 2020. At least two endangered species, the Sonoyta pupfish and Sonoyta mud turtles, are endemic to the springs and found nowhere else on the planet. Their survival was on the line as construction crews pumped water and damaged wetlands. The spring is also a lifeline for other wildlife in one of the hottest, driest parts of the Sonoran Desert. Biologists and environmentalists are already mapping strategies to rescue Sonoyta mud turtles from the pond should CBP damage it again. A small population of the Sonoyta pupfish was brought to a new desert stream habitat at Biosphere 2 in October 2025 to provide a backup to the critically endangered species.
Underwater until recently, a biodiverse ecosystem has quickly re-established in this particular side-canyon of Glen Canyon. Along with a whole host of plant life, I’ve documented crayfish, otters, beavers, deer, coyotes and tracks of mountain lions and bobcats throughout Glen Canyon’s wet tributaries. Photo credit: Elliot Ross/Glen Canyon Institute (GlenCanyon.org)
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
June 7, 2026
The tops of trees, dead since Lake Powell’s levels rose decades ago, poked through mud and ooze at the silent mouth of Davis Gulch, where the side canyon met the reservoir’s still waters. But just around a few bends in the sandstone walls, life began to appear. First, a fuzz of inch-tall greenery. Then, knee-high cattails and primrose, followed shortly by small cottonwoods and willows, then by towering gambel oaks. The silence of the canyon mouth was replaced by the soft rush of a creek, bird songs, and the constant cacophony of dragonflies and gnats. Scattered throughout the canyon, an ecologist, bug scientists, birders and advocates for Glen Canyon were working to document the ecosystems emerging as Lake Powell’s water levels have dropped after decades of drought and water overuse.
“Hiking the side canyons is like going through ecological time travel,” said Eric Balken, the executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring the canyons inundated by Lake Powell, as he hiked up Davis Gulch…
The falling water levels have also steadily revealed long-submerged canyonlands: red slot canyons, sandstone amphitheaters, waterfalls that tumble over slickrock cliffs. The reemerging landscapes provide a new opportunity to study life in Glen Canyon, which sits just upstream of the iconic Grand Canyon. Little scientific work was completed in Glen Canyon before the federal government flooded it — an event seen by environmentalists then, and now, as an unmitigated ecological disaster, a paradise lost…But for a new generation of advocates, regaining paradise seems possible as the reservoir’s shorelines recede, bringing more than 100,000 acres of rugged terrain out of the water. The Glen Canyon Institute and canyon activists for years have argued that Lake Powell should be drained and the Colorado River allowed to again flow freely through Glen Canyon. Now, their argument is also bolstered by the fact that Lake Powell is emptying — whether Colorado River managers like it or not. For those advocates, recent years have provided a rare chance to study life in the emerging canyonlands and to make their case to basin leaders who are contemplating the long-term future of Colorado River management…
A map of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area produced by the U.S. National Park Service. The map shows the shoreline of Lake Powell as it was when it was full — the water level is now more than 170 feet lower. Click image to enlarge map. (National Park Service via Wikimedia Commons)
April 2023 photograph showing the Colorado River as it enters Lake Mead. Photograph by Robert Marcos.
By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
Arizona, California, and Nevada are actively preparing for a future that may provide little or no Colorado River water through a combination of aggressive local conservation, infrastructure changes, and unprecedented collective agreements. On May 1st – driven by the imminent expiration of current river guidelines, the states finalized a joint Water Stabilization Plan to collectively slash usage by up to 3.2 million acre feet. J.B. Hamby, the Chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, said, “We’re putting forward additional measurable water contributions for the system. Without that, the system will continue to decline.” 1
ARIZONA: Agricultural sacrifices and groundwater banking
Arizona holds the lowest-priority water rights among the major Lower Basin states, which means that it takes the earliest and deepest cuts during shortages.2 Under multi-state and federal plans, Arizona has offered up to 760,000 acre-feet in voluntary reductions, nearly half of what typically flows through the Central Arizona Project canal.3 Central Arizona agriculture has borne the brunt of these reductions. In counties like Pinal, farmers have already been forced to operate at half their normal capacity, switching to high-tech drip irrigation or leaving fields fallow. 4
The state is shifting heavily toward managing its underground aquifers, heavily regulating new real estate developments that cannot prove a 100-year assured water supply independent of dwindling surface flows.
An article in the Manataba Messenger said, “In Phoenix, city leaders are getting ready for the possibility of Colorado River cuts by checking out alternative water sources and long-term reserves. Phoenix relies on several water sources, including the Colorado River through the Central Arizona Project. As future reductions become more likely, the city’s planning mirrors a broader trend across the Southwest: big cities are no longer seeing Colorado River shortages as just a distant threat. They’re preparing for a future where less river water might be available, and backup supplies might be needed to keep up with demand.” 5
CALIFORNIA: Agricultural efficiency and urban recycling
As the largest consumer of the river’s water, California has historically avoided the earliest shortage cuts, but now it has begun to force its massive agricultural districts to adapt to having less water.6 The Imperial Irrigation District which rceives 3.1 million acre feet of Colorado River water every year, is expanding its efficiency programs. On January 20th the IID Board of Directors approved the continuation of the District’s Deficit Irrigation Program for 2026. This program motives local growers to voluntarily pause irrigation on select perennial forage crops (such as alfalfa, Bermuda grass, and Klein grass) during peak summer water use windows. Growers are then financially compensated for their reduced crop yields.7
On May 15th the IID Board of Directors announced an amendment that would leave an additional 100,000 acre feet of Colorado River water in Lake Mead. The amendment increased the IID’s existing three-year conservation agreement capacity from 700,000 acre-feet to 800,000 acre-feet, in addition to the 106,111 AF conserved for Lake Mead in 2023. Cumulatively these programs are slated to add about 12 feet of elevation to Lake Mead by the end of the year.8
TheMetropolitan Water District of Southern California, is investing billions of dollars into advanced local wastewater purification systems to reduce coastal cities’ reliance on imported river water –
Pure Water Southern California: MWD has partnered with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to develop Pure Water Southern California, aiming to produce up to 150 million gallons of recycled water daily for 15 million people. MWD has allocated $150 million within its capital investment plan for the planning and final design of the project’s first stage, and has financed and operates a 500,000-gallon-per-day demonstration facility (the Grace F. Napolitano Innovation Center) to test advanced purification techniques before full scale construction.9
The Local Resources Program: MWD has provided financial subsidies to its 26 member public and private water agencies based on the volume of recycled water they successfully produced, and it has invested over $1.5 billion since 1990 to support more than 100 localized recycling and groundwater recovery projects across Southern California. Additionally, the MWD funds localized conversions, such as transforming unused sewer lift stations into active recycling plants for urban irrigation.10
Commercial and Research Grants: MWD has awarded grants to public and private entities to evaluate next-generation water-saving devices and urban reuse technologies. It has funded studies on innovative Membrane Bioreactors that are paired with reverse osmosis to reduce the energy and financial costs of recycling wastewater.11
NEVADA: Focused on a new lower-lake pipeline and a war on turf
Nevada has the smallest allocation of the river but is widely considered to have established a blueprint for urban climate adaptation, having spent decades in preparation for the kind of low-water scenario the Southwestern US is now facing. 12
Low Lake Level Infrastructure: Nevada’s water manager, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has completed a “third” intake and a specialized low-level pumping station at Lake Mead. This will allow Las Vegas to continue drawing water even if Lake Mead drops below the deadpool level where water can no longer flow downstream to California and Arizona.13
A War on Turf: Nevada has passed strict laws mandating the removal of “non-functional turf” (decorative grass) at commercial, multi-family, and government properties. It also bans outdoor water features and prohibits new grass in future developments. 14
Indoor Water Recycling: Las Vegas treats and returns nearly 100% of its indoor wastewater back to Lake Mead. This cycle earns the state “return-flow credits,” stretching its small allocation significantly further than other states. 15
A large crowd listens to a presentation at the University of Colorado Boulder law school about securing powerful new water rights on Colorado’s West Slope to benefit the health of the Colorado River. Scott Franz/KUNC
June 5, 2026
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
Water negotiators, river enthusiasts, Native tribes and lots of lawyers convened at the University of Colorado Law School on Thursday to take stock of the future of the dwindling Colorado River.
Here are five things KUNC’s water and environment reporter learned on the first day of the gathering.
There’s a thirst for treating the river as more than something to be consumed, and monetized and stretched out
Dale Sinquah, a tribal council member for Arizona’s Hopi tribe, is among a growing number of people who view the Colorado as a living being that should have the same rights as a person.
“If you look at it at that level and you allow it to, then it starts changing the ways in which you think about it, and maybe your actions,” he said.
Late last year, the Colorado River Indian Tribes of Arizona and California voted to give their namesake waterway the same legal rights as a person, saying the ‘living being’ deserves more protection while it’s being threatened by overuse and drought.
Sinquah said he had mixed reviews of the discussions at the water conference halfway through the first day.
“I’m kind of wondering if we’re stuck in that mode where you know personal interest (is winning) instead of how do we fix this as a whole, as a group,” he said. “It works better when you work together as a group.”
There’s still no finalized federal plan for the river yet, and the White House could have the final say…
Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation overseeing the operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, said the Interior Department is expecting to publish a short term operating plan for the reservoirs by “mid-summer.”
He said the plan would have to be renegotiated every two years and could be replaced at any time with one that the seven states can agree on.
“The good news is that the White House is very interested in what’s going on with the Colorado, so we’ll probably have to brief the White House on the (Secretary of the Interior’s) decision before it’s final,” Cameron said.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, center, speaks during a gathering with governors from six states in the Colorado River basin on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo credit: Lowell Whitman/Department Of Interior
River negotiations are ongoing, but details are scarce…
First governors from all seven states in the river basin were summoned to Washington, DC, ahead of the Feb. 14 deal deadline they missed.
Then, after that didn’t work, came the Microsoft Teams meeting.
Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently talked with the seven governors again on the virtual meeting platform.
“The fact that he is trying to wrangle his gubernatorial colleagues twice, I think, indicates how seriously Secretary Burgum takes what’s happening in the Colorado River,” Cameron said.
However, no deal has yet to materialize as the states remain at an impasse, and some in the upper basin have called for a different mediator to intervene.
June 1, 2026 seasonal water supply forecast summary.
One thing is clear.
Forecasts for the river have gotten worse in recent months. And there was an acknowledgement that the status quo is not sustainable.
Graphic via Holly McClelland/High Country News.
Could the feds get more involved in the management of upper basin reservoirs like Flaming Gorge? The answer is murky…
The audience asked Cameron, the Bureau of Reclamation official, about his thinking on how Interior should manage four large reservoirs in the upper basin that are collectively known as the upper initial units (they include Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border).
Flaming Gorge is currently being partially drained so water can be sent down to Lake Powell so it doesn’t get so low that it stops producing hydropower.
Cameron said the Interior Secretary could exert more control over the reservoirs in the future in the event of an “emergency.”
“And what an emergency is, I think, is probably in the eyes of the beholder,” he said. “Now, you put four or five lawyers in a room. You’ll probably get nine answers on how much discretion the secretary has or doesn’t have in the upper initial units.”
Parts of the lake that have only recently been uncovered are full of old beer cans and other relics of boating escapades, including sunken boats.
But deeper down, Podmore shared photos of Native artifacts that have survived decades of being submerged.
New ecosystems are also taking shape.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Doug Kenney at the Getches-Wilkinson Center 2026 Conference on the Colorado River June 5, 2026. Photo credit: Allen Best
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
June 7, 2026
Doug Kenney, principal organizer of annual gathering in Boulder, talks about how the growing tensions among basin states pose challenges in setting the agenda
The Colorado River has always had a magnetic appeal to the public consciousness. John Wesley Powell and his crew were instant national heroes after they emerged from the Grand Canyon in 1869.
That interest continues to this day. Bathtub rings are an absorbing visual, an easy way to communicate declines in the two biggest reservoirs in the basin, Mead and Powell. The river is being hammered by a warming climate and archaic governance of the shared resource.
This provides much to chew on, and that discussion continued again on June 4-5 at the Colorado River Conference hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School. Organizers reported 373 people were registered to attend in person and another 132 remotely, a record for both. This surpasses a record set last year.
Afterward, Big Pivots sat down with Doug Kenney, the principal organizer of the conference, to take stock of what had just transpired. He directs the Western Water Policy Program and chairs the Colorado River Research Group.
What year did this conference begin? What was the thinking that gave birth to it?
I believe 1983 was the first one. This was mostly a creation of Larry MacDonnell, (the first director of the Natural Resources Law Center, a position he held from 1983 to 1994).
Larry pursued a dual mandate of researching key issues but also of trying to involve the public and other constituencies. A conference was a natural thing to do. We are an educational institution.
I’ve done the last 30 or so of them, but Larry got it started,
It seems like two or three, maybe three years ago, the tribes became a major presence in attendance and on the agenda. How did this come about?
Mostly through our professional networks. We knew people who were associated with the (Colorado River Basin) Water and Tribes Initiative. They wanted to broaden their reach and their influence. At the same time, we’ve here always wanted to involve tribal interests in what we do, going back to the work of David Getches and Charles Wilkinson.
We decided we’d try co-hosting a conference. It’s a partnership, and like all partnerships, it grows over time. But it’s working pretty well, I think.
Am I wrong? Was I missing something? I didn’t notice much of tribal presence in the agenda or participation until just a few years ago.
We’d usually maybe have one tribal speaker sprinkled in the program somewhere, but it was pretty hit and miss, in part I think because you kind of need a critical mass of involvement from the tribal community for other tribes to feel like this is a place that they’d be taken seriously and that they’d be welcomed. It wasn’t a slow linear growth to where we’re at today. There was a pretty dramatic shift four or five years ago.
How new is the Water Tribal Initiative?
They’ve been around I think for about a decade. They’re co-managed by Matt McKinney, who wasn’t here, and Daryl Vigil.
Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR
It’s not a national thing, but the Colorado Basin has 30 different tribes. That’s a pretty big number of tribes to keep track of. It’s a network as much as it is anything, and every so often they try to get together. They consider this conference their big convening. They also get to get together at CRWUA (Colorado River Water Users Association, which holds an annual conference during December in Las Vegas).
They have also produced a few research reports. This week they talked about their report on tribal sovereignty. And they have particular initiatives within the Water and Tribes Initiative, such as universal access to clean water. They are pushing, mostly through federal legislation, to provide assurances that all tribes have access to clean water.
Do they have a strong benefactor?
I don’t think so, but they have a very broad base of funders and supporters. A lot of water agencies, a lot of people, and a lot of organizations that know tribes have been treated poorly and that tribes have legitimate interests in the basin but (know) that many tribes just don’t have the resources to do this without some assistance.
As I’ve attended most years since 2002, I have noticed some ebbs and flows. There were some empty seats this afternoon, but the seats were mostly occupied through the first day and a half, and that’s somewhat different than, say, 10 years ago. What explains the ebb and flow?
I attribute that mostly to two things: one is this partnership with the Water and Tribes Initiative. The other thing is the fact that we’re talking about the Colorado River, which by every measure is in a crisis. It’s easier to get people’s attention when you’re talking about a crisis than when you’re talking about something that’s still not that serious. That’s part of it.
We used to be in another building. This is clearly a better facility for audience and speakers alike. That helps us attract a larger audience. We’ve had good foundation support, good funders. It takes a lot of money to do this, but we’ve had funders that see value in it. That has allowed us to make this a bigger event.
The conference is always the first week of June, so when do you begin rough-drafting the agenda?
Usually January. In some years it’s easier than others. This year was the most difficult. It was the easiest year in terms of attracting an audience. The hardest year in terms of putting the program together.
Everyone’s mad at each other, and everyone is — I can’t tell you all the back stories. Becky Mitchell said something today about how it’s hard to negotiate and prepare for litigation at the same time. She’s right. And I was thinking to myself, it’s hard to bring people together to talk at a conference while acknowledging the fact that they’re all mad at each other, and some of them are about to sue each other, and some can’t be in the same room with each other because they’re that angry, and some will be deeply offended if someone else is there.
It’s one of these years that there’s just so many delicate issues and angry folks — and angry for legitimate reasons; I’m not discounting that. But it’s been a really challenging year.
Your answer anticipates my next question, but I’ll ask it nonetheless. If memory serves me, a few years ago you had representatives of all seven basin states at the same table. This year you had two. I guess it’s fair to say that agenda setting has become more politically sensitive.
Every year for the last four or five years we’ve given all seven principals, all seven states, an opportunity to sit at the same table and have a discussion. In every passing year it becomes more difficult to do that.
Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission Becky Mitchell, center, speaks on a panel with representatives of each of the seven basin states at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas Thursday, December 15, 2022. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
You have seen this at CRWUA as well. Some years they had to divide into two sessions, upper and lower basin sessions. For awhile we were thinking of just having a lower basin session. The lower basin folks were happy to do that, but the upper basin folks weren’t as comfortable. We (also) thought about a different part of the session or a different location.
Ultimately we came to the conclusion that everyone could agree if it would be a conversation, not a posturing or confrontational thing. (Having) one upper basin person and one lower basin person, that was a format that could work. That’s what we did (with Becky Mitchell from Colorado and John Entsminger of Nevada). Anything more elaborate than that I don’t think was viable this year. It’s a really delicate time.
In terms of conferences devoted to the Colorado River do you have rivals for what you’re doing? Are there other places in Arizona or California, for example, that are kind of like must-go sessions?
There are two must-attend Colorado River conferences each year, and this is one of them. CRWUA (in Las Vegas) is the other one.
We specifically try to be different than CRWUA. We’re the opposite end of the calendar, roughly six months away. CRWUA is in many respects much more of a social event. We try to be more academic and about policy, with serious talk about serious issues. CRWUA, just like us, ebbs and flows from year to year in terms of what it looks like. But we try to be a little more hard-hitting and less of a, you know, take-the-family-and-have-a-vacation sort of event. I don’t mean to sound like I’m negative on CRWUA. I think we’re the perfect compliment.
Aside from that, there are some meetings such as CLE, Continuing Legal Education. It always has a Colorado River event. This year was quite good. Many other years, it’s not as strong. For practicing attorneys, that’s something that they want to go to every year, because they can get some credits there.
Still another one in New Mexico that’s held each year kind of commemorates the signing of the compact.
How do you measure success? I’m sure you constantly ask that question of yourself.
You understand the challenge of it all. We can measure success by the size of the crowd and that they mostly seemed to have a good time. In that sense, that’s success.
The other side of that is that we’ve been focused just on the Colorado River issues for the last five or six of these, and things have only gotten worse on the river. Obviously, we don’t think we’re to blame for that. But clearly, there’s no great success story that we can lay credit to either.
So I think we’re successful in that we promote conversation and the exchange of ideas, and we shine a light on new and innovative ideas, and we give a voice to people who sometimes don’t have a voice. This is where the tribes come into play again.
Some elements I think are successful, but in the very big scope of things, the issues that we’ve been addressing in our conference aren’t getting any better. It does force me to think about (and question) whether there is a better way for us to make a difference. I don’t know what that would be, but I do think about that a lot.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
For June–August 2026, WMO forecasts indicate significant shifts in rainfall patterns—a classic atmospheric response to the developing Pacific El Niño. See which regions are likely to experience below-normal, normal or above-normal rainfall: https://t.co/isVXTJ27m4pic.twitter.com/NL86C2CMUs
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) June 6, 2026
The 123-mile long Coachella Canal carries Colorado River from the All-American Canal to the Coachella Valley. Photo by Robert Marcos.
Southern California’s Coachella Valley includes the cities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert. Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells and Indio. It is a hot, dry, low-desert region that nonetheless supports 100 to 120 commercial farms, 120 golf courses, dozens of world-class resorts and one of the nation’s highest rates of per capita water use.1 The Coachella Valley sustains this (artificially) verdant environment with imported water from two sources: 430,000 acre feet of Colorado River water that’s diverted at the Imperial Dam and then conveyed by the Coachella Canal, and 194,000 acre feet of water from California’s State Water Project – but only if there’s sufficient snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Both sources of imported water arrive via the Coachella Canal and the majority of it’s used by farms and by aquifer replenishment programs. The remainder is used by golf courses and for the irrigation of commercial landscaping. Municipal water (for residents and businesses) is pumped from the Coachella Valley Groundwater Basin – an aquifer that at one time contained an estimated 39.2 million acre-feet of water, just in its upper 1,000 feet. Municipal water users, who consumed 5.6% more water in 2025 than they did in the previous year,3 natural recharge from rainfall and runoff currently provides about 21,000 acre-feet per year2. So without the imported replenishment water the basin would plunge into an immediate and severe deficit. Water tables would drop rapidly in historically vulnerable zones like the East Valley and Palm Springs.3
This scenario is alarming for a variety of reasons –
The Colorado River is rapidly become unreliable as a source of water.4 Since both sources of imported water depend upon the Coachella Canal for delivery, 100% of the imported water will stop flowing just days after Lake Mead reaches deadpool. Again – not one drop of the imported water that the Coachella Valley depends upon will arrive in the Coachella Valley if that water can’t make it past Hoover Dam. A second, albeit less-likely danger is the known fact that the Coachella Canal crosses over the San Andreas Fault.4
Cheap water encourages farmers to grow water-intensive crops. Coachella Valley farmers who obtain raw irrigation water directly from the Coachella Canal can pay as little as $40.14 per acre foot. This cheap water encourages farmers to grow profitable but water-intensive crops – like alfalfa.5
Municipal water use in the Coachella Valley is increasing. Instead of the Valley’s water consumption falling – as we’ve seen in almost every other Southwestern municipality, the Coachella Valley’s municipal water use continues to increase due to a rising population and an increase in the irrigation of crops and landscaping due to climate change. On April 15, 2026 The Indio Post reported that urban water use – which includes municipal customers, golf courses, and other recreational users, climbed by 12,989 acre-feet, or 5.8% compared to the previous year.
The Thomas E. Levy Groundwater Replenishment Facility is one of four replenishment facilities operated by CVWD. Photo by Robert Marcos
Challenge #1 – Maintaining groundwater levels
The Coachella Valley Water District and four other water agencies have been doing their best to maintain groundwater levels through the use of groundwater replenishment facilities. These programs are designed to reverse decades of aquifer overdraft and ensure long-term water sustainability. By percolating 165,000 acre feet a year of imported water directly into the ground, the districts have successfully stabilized and even raised groundwater levels in historically depleted areas. But what has been left unsaid is that both sources of imported water – the Colorado River and the State Water Project, both use the same conveyance and both are under severe long-term threat from climate change. Therefore Coachella Valley’s water districts have to plan for the day when they have no sources of imported water, and will have to depend entirely on groundwater.5
Challenge #2 – Convincing residents to use less water
Individuals living in the Coachella Valley city of Bermuda Dunes consume between 217 and 380 gallons of water a day.6 While residents of Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Thousand Palms, Indian Wells, La Quinta, and Thermal consumed an average of 188 gallons of water per day. And residents of the Desert Water Agency, which serves Palm Springs and Cathedral City, used an average of 178 gallons of water per day.7 The residents of other comparably-sized desert cities use far less water. On average residents of Tucson use as little as 72 gallons a day, residents of Phoenix 92 gallons, and residents of Albuquerque use just 56 gallons per day.
While the Coachella Valley relies entirely on imported Colorado River water to recharge its aquifers, and loops recycled water back to its farms and golf courses, other Southwestern desert cities have shifted to advanced purification technology that recycles100% of their wastewater directly back into municipal drinking supplies. In the Arizona cities of Phoenix, Glendale, Mesa, Scottsdale, and Tempe, they treat the recycled water to high standards so it can be used to irrigate sports fields, golf courses, commercial landscapes, and create or restore riparian habitats. It is also used to recharge aquifers and stored underground for use during times of shortage. Recycled water can extend water supplies, improve water quality, reduce discharge and disposal costs of wastewater, and save energy.8
Challenge #3 – Preparing for “Day Zero” when the Coachella Valley receives no more Colorado River water
If the current drought continues and Lake Powell reaches dead pool, it’s estimated that Lake Mead will also reach dead pool within two-to-four years. This means that absolutely no Colorado River water pass beyond Hoover Dam and into the lower Colorado River basin. The Colorado River Aqueduct, the All-American Canal, and the Coachella Canal would be shut down. In this worst-case scenario, the Coachella Valley would survive by pumping from its underground aquifer, though this would immediately trigger a severe, unsustainable deficit. Because the region averages only 3 inches of rainfall annually, its primary long-term buffer would be exhausted without Colorado River and SWA water being available to replenish it.9 To prevent the aquifer from going dry, the State of California would likely enforce extreme water rationing, ban all outdoor ornamental landscaping, and trigger a massive, forceddownsizing of the local agricultural sector. 10
Why not do some of these things now instead of waiting until the Colorado River has dried up?
Tesla Model Y and electric camper trailer charging in Lake St. Louis June 5, 2026. Sorry, I forgot to ask the dude for the manufacturer information.
I am in St. Louis for my first ever punk rock concert and some baseball!
The owner of the rig in the photo told me that the trailer was fully electric, but he said that the Tesla couldn’t draw charge from the trailer. Nice light low-profile rig.
The Model Y I am driving (rented from Turo) has Grok integrated so you can set and change your navigation interactively. I asked many questions of her (I mean IT!) during the solo drive from Denver so it’s sort of like having your computer available while driving. Of course the discourse was mostly, “What river am I crossing?”
Grok, “That is likely the Missouri River which is located in this general area.” Sure enough, a road sign validated Grok’s message — one correct query!
The Trump administration is attacking public lands again, this time in an apparent effort to open more special places to off-road vehicles. Late last Friday, Trump issued an executive order revoking a Nixon-era policy aimed at ensuring “that the use of off-road vehicles on public lands will be controlled and directed so as to protect the resources of those lands, to promote the safety of all users of those lands, and to minimize conflicts among the various uses of those lands.”
No, this does not mean unfettered swarms of ATVs will be kicking up dust on your favorite public lands next week. But it does bolster the off-road vehicle lobby’s effort to open up motorized access to federal lands, and takes away one of the long-term planning tools used by land management agencies to protect those places from off-road vehicle use and abuse.
In the nearer-term, Trump’s order could end or diminish the ban on OHVs in national parks, allowing the vehicles to travel backroads in, say, Capitol Reef National Park. This might not sound so bad: If a three-ton SUV can drive there, why not let a smaller side-by-side or four-wheeler on the same road?
The answer lies in the nature of the newer OHVs, namely “side-by-sides” or razors, which more closely resemble souped-up dune buggies than conventional SUVs. While some people use OHVs as mere modes of transportation, the vehicles are more commonly treated and utilized like recreational playthings — very powerful, fast, and noisy toys that tend to travel in herds. They therefore bring their own type of impacts.
Alpine Loop Backcountry Scenic Byway near Lake City, Ouray, Powderhorn, Ridgway, Silverton Credit: ColoradoDirectory.com
Anyone who has traveled on or hiked around the Alpine Loop in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado on a busy summer day has likely experienced these particular impacts first-hand. Those roads were first opened up to OHVs in the early 2000s. Since then Alpine Loop traffic numbers have exploded, with at least half of the motorized traffic made up of OHVs.
Law enforcement officers now spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy trying to keep the OHV drivers on designated routes and in compliance with traffic laws. OHV crashes, often resulting in serious injury, are not uncommon. And each summer several riders surrender to the temptation to illegally leave the road — these are off-road vehicles, after all — and rip across the tundra, causing irreversible damage. Unlike regular vehicles, OHVs tend to travel in herds, spewing exhaust and kicking up dust, their collective buzzing reaching far beyond the roads on which they travel. It has become almost impossible during the high season to completely escape the incessant din of OHVs on the Alpine Loop, even in wilderness study areas.
This same phenomenon could now be coming to a national park near you.
The administration claims it eliminated the policy because it was outdated, vague, and redundant, because Congress has since passed a host of other laws protecting public lands from OHVs and other uses. The order goes on to say:
This makes very little sense. Sure, the restrictions on OHVs could hamper energy or timber development if it required destructive off-road vehicle use, but you’re not going to haul a drill rig into the backcountry on a side-by-side. And the idea that a hiker might feel “banned” from a trail because they couldn’t ride get there on an OHV is just silly.
The dubious statement reeks of the rhetoric of the crowd that claims that motorized vehicle restrictions are locking folks out of public lands, and therefore are discriminating against the type of people who drive these vehicles. But the discrimination claim simply does not fly. Mountain bikes are banned from wilderness areas, from a majority of trails in national parks, from some trails on BLM land, and are not allowed to ride off-trail on all federal land. This has nothing to do with the people who ride the bikes, or even the funny clothes they tend to wear, and everything to do with the vehicles’ potential impacts.
Trump probably did this at the behest of the Blue Ribbon Coalition and the likes of Sen. Mike Lee, who has pushed legislation that would open up national parks to OHVs. Maybe he’s trying to garner support from somewhere, given his terrible favorability ratings. Or perhaps he’s trying to appease the motorized crowd, which is probably a bit miffed that their drug of choice — gasoline — is so damned expensive thanks to Donny’s dumb war. Maybe he’s even trying to increase national park entry fee revenues so he can funnel it to his ballroom/drone-port or his White House UFC fight.
Near Hite with the Henry Mountains. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
It pretty much goes without saying that if next winter is as bad as this past winter, in terms of mountain snowpack, then the collective users of the Colorado River and its infrastructure will be toast — at least figuratively (maybe literally, too?). Now, my favorite team of Colorado River wonks1 [Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara] have crunched the latest water numbers, and they’ve found that even a nearly “normal” winter won’t stop depletion of “reasonably accessible storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, leading to “devastating consequences.”
Back in 1999, the Colorado River’s storage system, which consists of Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and several other smaller reservoirs in the Upper and Lower basins, was almost full, holding about 60 million acre-feet of active, or available, storage. This provided a robust savings account that could be tapped during the inevitable dry spells on the notoriously fluctuating river system.
The reserve, however, was not adequate for the megadrought — or long-term aridification — that started in 2000 and continues today. Instead of following the usual up-down cycle, the Colorado River’s flows began a downward trend that is on track to hit its lowest point so far this water year, while consumptive use stayed more or less steady. Demand exceeded supply more years than not, drawing the savings account down significantly. That has forced the Bureau of Reclamation to take extraordinary measures, such as reducing downstream releases and tapping upstream reservoirs, to keep Lake Powell’s surface level from dropping below 3,500 feet, or what I call de facto dead pool 2.
Thanks in part to extra releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in May, Lake Powell’s surface level climbed slightly to 3,528 feet last month. Given that spring runoff in the Upper Basin has peaked and most tributary flows are decreasing, we can expect that number to start dropping, perhaps precipitously, at least until the monsoon arrives.
The wonks wanted an idea of how things might play out in the slightly longer-term, so they modeled two scenarios:
In the first scenario, they assume that the Colorado River’s natural flow, or the estimated amount of water in the river without human consumption or interference, will be similar to water year 2025, when the mountain snowpack was below average but not nearly as slim as this year. They also assume that consumptive uses will remain at the lowest levels in recent years.
Natural flow: 8.5 MAF at Lees Ferry + .70 MAF from Grand Canyon and Virgin River = 9.20 MAF Consumptive use: 3.56 MAF Upper Basin (includes evaporation and other losses) + 8.23 MAF Lower Basin + Mexico (incl. evap and other losses) = 11.79 MAF Deficit and resulting reservoir drawdown: 2.59 MAF Realistically accessible storage (RAS) remaining in Mead, Powell, and Flaming Gorge: 3.63 MAF
For the second, they plug in snowpack/flow numbers similar to those from water year 2023, which was a huge winter. Consumptive use would be about the same as in 2023.
Under the first scenario, the BoR will almost certainly have to go to a run-of-the-river situation on Glen Canyon Dam to defend 3,500 feet. That would mean releases would be approximately equal to inflows minus evaporation and seepage from the reservoir, and might drop to 3,000 to 4,000 cubic feet per-second or even lower. In the summer of 2002 inflows at times dropped below 1,000 cfs. This would turn the river through the Grand Canyon into a relative trickle, and cause a significant drawdown of Lake Mead.
The second scenario would be far better, but is far from an enduring solution. At best it would buy a little time, perhaps enough for the feds to build bypass tunnels around Glen Canyon Dam to allow for sustained releases below 3,500 feet. If it were followed by another three or four 2023-like winters, then things would start to look pretty darned good.
But if it were followed by just one more dry year it would bring everything back to today’s rather dire situation.
Since there’s no way to bolster supplies, the only way out of this mess is to continue to slash demand. The paper’s authors write:
Oof.
As long as we’re on the topic, the BoR recently released its Lower Basin accounting report for 2025, which tallies up consumptive uses in the basin. As you can see from the following graphs, which the Land Desk whipped up using the BoR data, the Lower Basin uses significantly less water now than it did in 1999, just before the current megadrought began. Upper Basin consumptive use figures for 2025 are not yet available. The following figures do not include reservoir evaporation, conveyance losses, or Mexico’s use.
All three Lower Basin states have substantially reduced Colorado River water consumption since 1999. However, more cuts will be needed if current climatic and streamflow trends continue. Data: USBR, Graphic: The Land Desk
🤖 Data Center Watch 👾
Has Enchant Energy finally found a raison d’être? The Farmington-based company was created in 2019 to try to save the San Juan coal-fired power plant from retirement by retrofitting it with carbon capture equipment. Enchant would then sell the carbon to oil producers in the Permian Basin, while also receiving generous federal tax credits. Basically they wanted to turn the power plant into a taxpayer subsidized carbon dioxide factory. It flopped for various reasons. Now the San Juan plant — and all of its pollution — are no more. We suspected Enchant Energy had met a similar fate.
But then I received a press release letting me know the not-so-up upstart is not dead, but has instead signed a letter of intent with Creekstone Energy to capture carbon from the tech firm’s proposed hyperscale Delta Gigasite data center in Delta, Utah. As is often the case, Creekstone touts all of the renewable energy it plans on building for its center, but the first phase will be powered by natural gas, which emits carbon dioxide.
Enchant hopes to capture the carbon from the gas plant and convert it into marketable fuel. The company has apparently given up on trying to give coal-burning a slightly more climate-friendly veneer (after all, Trump has declared coal to be “clean” and “beautiful”). Instead, it looks like they’re jumping on the data center bandwagon, along with wannabe nuclear reactor developers and the like.
Who knows, maybe this is the thing that finally gives Enchant some meaning. But we’re not holding our breath. After spending gobs of money on lobbying, pulling in some hefty federal grants, then failing spectacularly with the San Juan generating bid, Enchant partnered with another firm and tried to buy the Intermountain coal plant in Delta to use it to power its own data center. That didn’t work, either.
Dolores Canyon solar project outside of Cahone, Colorado, with Airproduct’s apparently defunct helium plant on the right. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
🔋Notes from the Energy Transition 🔌
Yes, the energy transition may have run into some stumbling blocks, i.e. the Trump administration’s hatred for anything that might compete with coal and oil and gas, but it’s still quietly underway. For example, out by the aforementioned, defunct San Juan coal plant, DESRI recently broke ground on two utility-scale solar installations: the 170-megawatt Foxtail Flats solar-plus-battery storage array; and the 100-MW Four Mile Mesa solar-plus-storage project.
That’s some pretty serious generating capacity and adds to the existing San Juan solar facility nearby. Los Alamos County has signed on to purchase power from Foxtail Flats, and Meta will be drawing electricity Four Mile Mesa via PNM to power its data centers.
Both of the new facilities are under development on Ute Mountain Ute tribal land.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
In last week’s comments, ncoffey94 asked what kind of bike I ride. It’s a 2023 Niner RLT, with an aluminum frame, carbon fork, and SRAM Apex parts. It’s nothing fancy and isn’t super light. But I dig it for riding on the roads, dirt, and even singletrack. It’s got 40 mm tires, so isn’t so great in the sand, and with no suspension I don’t do big drops or super-cobbly stuff. But it sure is nice having just one bike for all uses.
Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson.
1Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen, and Katherine Tara.
2 Water can no longer be released through the penstocks and hydropower turbine below 3,500 feet, forcing dam operators to rely on the lower river outlets for all downstream water releases. Those outlets are not engineered for sustained, long-term use, however, and could be damaged. The feared scenario looks kind of like this: The penstocks are closed; the river outlets release water faster than reservoir inflows; the reservoir surface level drops down to, say, 3,450 feet; the river outlets get damaged so must be shut down altogether, trapping the remaining water behind the dam and halting all releases until the water climbs back up to 3,500 feet. This would effectively dry up the Grand Canyon and cause Lake Mead to start plummeting as well. Of course, no one wants this to happen, so BoR is doing all it can to defend 3,500 feet, making that level the effective dead pool, even though technically 3,370 feet (the river outlet elevation) is the actual dead pool.
Click the link to read the report (and drill down to the individual major basin stats) on the NRCS website. Here’s an excerpt:
Colorado experienced an unusual volatile winter this year. In October 2025 at the start of the water year; the southern basins received record amounts of rainfall, while the rest of the state saw minimal early-season accumulation. November brought intermittent storms but not enough to build a meaningful base and the snowpack remained well below normal. Early December finally delivered a measurable amount of snow for the northern basins but record high temperatures and lack of moisture in the middle of the month raised concerns heading into 2026. January continued the trend of minimal snow accumulations, and many basins began falling into single-digit percentiles. The first half of February remained dry, and although the second half brought some moisture it was not nearly enough to recover from the early-season deficit. Statewide snowpack entered March at 60 percent of median. March delivered a combination of record high temperatures and record low precipitation, causing some basins to reach peak snow-water-equivalent (SWE) almost a month early. The rate at which the snowpack began to melt was unprecedented, with soil moisture sensors and streamflow gages showing an immediate response. Thankfully, April brought cooler temperatures and above normal precipitation, allowing the remaining snowpack to linger a bit longer. With increased storm activity, the majority of hydrographs receded as runoff slowed down. However, by May 1st statewide snowpack had fallen to the zeroth percentile and the remaining snowpack continued to melt. Melt in May is common, but the combination of extremely low snow conditions and warm temperature triggered a second peak in the hydrographs – a peak that normally would represent the first rise of the season. At nearly all streamflow forecast points the runoff duration was significantly shortened, as much of the volume had already been observed in March. By June 1st 91% of SNOTEL stations were fully melted out – compared to the typical 56% for this time of year, highlighting the exceptionally early and accelerated melt season.
Statewide snowpack was 14 percent of the historical median as of June 1, with an average of 0.4 inches of snow water equivalent (SWE) in the state. This is the third-lowest June snowpack in the NRCS Snow Survey period of record, surpassed only by 2002 and 2012—years which both contained a higher seasonal SWE peak in mid-March but experienced rapid meltout in early April and May. Comparatively, 2026 experienced a record-breaking early initiation o snowpack melt in mid-March, reducing the total snowpack by half before cooler conditions and late-season snowfall hastened the decline throughout April. Snowpack melting returned to a predictable bell-curve pattern in May and at the end of the month all river basins currently exhibit far lower-than-median SWE in the state. The San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan, Upper Rio Grande, Gunnison, Colorado Headwaters, and South Platte exhibit the most extreme deviations from the 1991-2020 historical median, reporting 0, 1, 2, 3, and 7 percent of median snowpack SWE respectively. Meanwhile the Laramie-North Platte, Arkansas, and Yampa-White-Little Snake have low but less extreme deviations from median snowpack levels, reporting 17, 18, and 30 percent of median SWE.
The statewide water year-to-date precipitation remains below normal at 77 percent of median. May brought some improvements, with statewide precipitation at 104 percent of median, but the spatial distribution varied greatly. The front range and northern part of the state received above median precipitation with the South Platte River basin at 138 percent and the Laramie-North Platte basin at 128 percent for the month of May; an encouraging shift that helped boost soil moisture and short-term streamflow potential. In contrast, the southwestern basins received below median with the combined San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan River basin and Gunnison River basin at 53 percent and 60 percent of median, respectively. A shift from last month, where those two basins received the most precipitation in April at 155 percent and 116 percent of median. Tower SNOTEL located in the Yampa-White-Little Snake River basin received the most precipitation in the month of May with 5.8 inches total; 2.2 inches falling in a single day (May 5th, 2026).
Colorado Drought Monitor map June 2, 2026.
The current U.S. Drought Monitor Map shows drought conditions are still prevalent across the state, with slight improvements in some northern basins and slight degradations in the southern front range basins since last month. Spring moisture has brought some much-needed precipitation after a well-below normal winter. The monthly precipitation outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts above to near normal precipitation for the month of June.
Reservoir storage is currently 75 percent of the 1991-2020 median on a state-wide scale, down from 85 percent last month. Mean water storage decreased in all river basins in the state compared to last month. As of June 1, storage remains relatively close to median in the Arkansas and South Platte*, reporting 91 and 90 percent median storage, respectively. The Upper Rio Grande, which had been an outlier with above-average reservoir storage since October 2025, is now down to 86 percent of median storage. Five additional basins are reporting reservoir storage levels somewhat below the 30-year median, with the Colorado Headwaters, Eastern South Platte, Yampa-White-Little Snake, Gunnison, and San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan reporting 80, 79, 78, 70, and 69 percent, respectively. The Eastern Arkansas remains the basin with the lowest overall percent of median storage, decreasing from 56 percent down to 41 percent of median storage this month. Overall, Colorado is currently utilizing 54 percent of total reservoir capacity statewide compared to 61 percent storage this time last year (see June 1 2026 Reservoir Storage Capacity chart).
*At the time of publishing, end-of-month reservoir water storage data had not yet been reported for 8 out of 23 reservoirs in the South Platte basin. These reservoirs were excluded (rather than reported zero) in the statistics above, and the data will be updated on our website as soon as it is available.
June through July forecasts at the 50 percent exceedance probability are at 24 percent of median statewide. Observed streamflow from March through May is 50 percent of median statewide. April and May alone are 41 percent as March runoff occurred outside the normal primary period. Record March temperatures drove an early rise in streamflow statewide weeks ahead of typical spring melt timing. Cooler April temperatures and increased April and early May storms placed a pause on snowmelt. A second rise in streamflow followed in mid-May consistent with normal sun angle-driven melt onset. May observed flows averaged 34 percent at a median percentile of 2. Those runoff conditions are observed downstream at Lake Powell where March through May observed inflow is 1,104,000 acre-feet at 28 percent of the period of record median ranking 3rd lowest in the 117-year record behind 2002 and 1977. June and July typically deliver 54 percent of the April through July volume at Powell. The June through July combined forecast is 300,000 acre-feet at 9 percent of median and is near 21 percent of projected total seasonal volume remaining. The forward-looking period 63 of 70 points rank at or below the 10th percentile with a median percentile of 3. Statewide remaining period volume at the 50 percent exceedance probability represents one third of projected total seasonal volume. May storm activity shaped a distribution where eastern basins retain comparatively more remaining volume. The South Platte is at 51 percent and Arkansas at 38 percent of median. Remaining snowpack is limited to the highest elevations and will contribute modestly to late-season flows. Above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation are both favored through the remaining period.
Cumbres Trestle SNOTEL located in the east San Juan mountains and a part of the Upper Rio Grande River basin. This site is currently at 76% of median precipitation with a cumulative 22.7 inches since the start of the water year (October 1st 2025). Field crews visit every SNOTEL site in the state to perform routine maintenance and site upgrades; Colorado has 118 SNOTEL stations. Photo by: Tom White/NRCS
Click the link to read the release on the NRCS website:
June 5, 2026
An early runoff season shifted a substantial portion of annual runoff into March through May. At Lake Powell, where June and July normally account for about half of seasonal inflow, only about 21 percent of projected seasonal volume remains. Similar conditions are forecast throughout Colorado.
June through July runoff forecasts remain well below normal statewide at the 50 percent exceedance probability at 24 percent of median (Figure 1). Outlooks in the Front Range Mountains remain the exception. May storm activity helped to sustain comparatively higher forecasts in the Front Range and boosted precipitation in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and in the northern Park Range. The South Platte is forecast at 51 percent of median and the Arkansas at 38 percent. In the Upper Rio Grande River basin the most probable outlook is 28 percent of median. Western slope remaining period forecasts range from 19 to 23 percent in the combined Yampa-White-Little Snake and San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan (SMDASJ) basin, respectively. May precipitation ranged from 54 to 59 percent in southwest basins while the South Platte received 140 percent of median.
Figure 1. Remaining period (June through July) streamflow forecast volume at the 50 percent exceedance probability. Credit: NRCS
Record March temperatures initiated an early rise in streamflow weeks ahead of the typical spring melt period. A second rise followed in mid-May consistent with normal sun angle-driven melt timing. In some rivers the May peak became the seasonal maximum. Statewide observed flows from March through May are 50 percent of median. April and May alone are 41 percent, as March runoff occurred outside the normal primary period and skews the seasonal comparison.
Statewide reservoir storage is 75 percent of median and largely reflects October precipitation and carry-over storage from the previous water year. Some of the state’s larger reservoirs are well below the statewide median particularly in southwest basins. Blue Mesa and McPhee reservoirs are both at 59 and 57 percent of median respectively and rank at the 10th percentile in their period of record. Navajo Reservoir is 69 percent of median at the 20th percentile. Colorado Headwaters basin storage is 80 percent of median, and the Upper Rio Grande is 86 percent. Eastern basins are the highest in the state. Pueblo Reservoir is 93 percent of median and aggregate South Platte basin storage is 90 percent. Remaining period inflow forecasts are considerably lower than current storage levels. McPhee inflow is forecast at 24 percent and Navajo at 18 percent. Dillon Reservoir inflow is forecast at 25 percent ranking lowest in the 75-year period of record. Pueblo inflow is forecast at 44 percent of median.
As of June 1, statewide snowpack is averaging 14 percent. Median melt-out timing across the Colorado SNOTEL network is running 36 days ahead of normal. Remaining snowpack is limited to the highest elevations and will contribute modestly to late-season flows. Above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation are both favored through the remaining period.
*combined San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan River basin
Click the link to read the discussion on the CBRFC website:
The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) geographic forecast area includes the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB), and Eastern Great Basin (GB).
Water Supply Forecasts
April-July volume forecasts are well below normal and rank in the driest five on record at many locations. Record low snowpack and poor soil moisture conditions are the primary hydrologic conditions impacting the water supply outlook, while future weather is a primary source of forecast uncertainty. June 1 water supply forecasts are summarized in the figure and table below.
June 1, 2026 seasonal water supply forecast summary.
Observed Streamflow (April-May)
Poor soil moisture and snowpack conditions have led to well below normal April-May observed unregulated streamflow volumes, which are summarized in the below table.
Much of the CBRFC area experienced its warmest and least snowy winter on record. Following this, an unprecedented heatwave in March initiated significant snowmelt in areas that would usually still be building a snowpack. April brought cooler and wetter weather, and May generally continued this trend, with temperatures remaining mostly near normal across the CBRFC area. Portions of the GB and UCRB experienced periods of snowfall accumulation through May, but above normal precipitation was limited to small areas within the Green River Basin and Colorado River headwaters. In the LCRB, central/eastern AZ into western NM ended the month with significantly above normal precipitation, but this is a function of the very dry climatology as most of the LCRB routinely receives near zero precipitation in the month of May.
Water year 2026 precipitation summary.
Snowpack Conditions
Snow water equivalent (SWE) has been at or below record low for most of the snow accumulation season. The significant heatwave during the last half of March led to historically low April 1 snow water equivalent conditions across the region. UCRB and GB SNOTEL SWE peaked around March 8, which is 3-4 weeks earlier than the 1991-2020 normal peak date. June 1 SWE across the UCRB and GB is generally less than 25% of normal, with more favorable conditions in the Upper Green River Basin. SWE conditions are summarized in the figures and table below.
Left: June 1, 2026 SWE – NRCS SNOTEL observed (squares) and CBRFC hydrologic model. Right: CBRFC hydrologic model SWE conditions summary.
UCRB SNOTEL SWE during historically dry winters: 2026, 2021, 2012, 2002.
GB SNOTEL SWE during historically dry winters: 2026, 2021, 2012, 2002.
Soil Moisture
CBRFC hydrologic model soil moisture conditions impact water supply forecasts. Basins with above average soil moisture conditions can be expected to experience more efficient runoff from rainfall or snowmelt while basins with below average soil moisture conditions can be expected to have lower runoff efficiency until soil moisture deficits are fulfilled. The timing and magnitude of spring runoff is impacted by snowpack conditions, spring weather, and soil moisture conditions.
Mid-November 2025 soil moisture conditions were below average across most areas as a result of warmer and drier than normal weather during the 2025 water year. Early June soil moisture conditions are generally well below average across the region due to the lack of snow. CBRFC hydrologic model soil moisture conditions are shown in the figures below.
CBRFC hydrologic model soil moisture conditions as a percent of the 1991–2020 average – Mid-November 2025 (left) and early June 2026 (right).
Upcoming Weather
Temperatures are heating up across the CBRFC area as June begins. Precipitation chances in the near-term are limited to warm, convective showers and storms, mainly over eastern areas. The 7-day precipitation forecast and the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) 8–14 day temperature and precipitation outlooks are shown in the figures below.
7-day precipitation forecast for June 4–10, 2026.
Climate Prediction Center temperature probability forecast for June 12–18, 2026.
Climate Prediction Center precipitation probability forecast for June 12–18, 2026.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.
High Plains Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.West Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.
The mid-level height anomaly pattern during the week exhibited an omega-block type pattern, with mean troughing over Alaska and both the West and East, with the western trough cutting off over California, and strong ridging between the troughs across the central contiguous US. This pattern promoted below-normal temperatures across the Southwest for much of the period, with colder air pushing eastward towards the end of the week followed by warming temperatures. Across the East, cooler air overspread New England and the mid-Atlantic, keeping evapotranspiration rates a bit lower than normal. In contrast, much above-normal temperatures were observed throughout the week across the northern Plains and upper-Midwest, though colder weather and storminess overspread the northern Rockies and adjacent High Plains at the end of the week.
An active pattern was noted across the Plains, South, and Southeast as a mean frontal boundary provided a focus for stormy weather. These rains, in conjunction with a wetter pattern overall during May, prompted widespread additional drought relief for the South and Southeast regions, as well as portions of the High Plains. In contrast, hot, dry weather across the northern Plains and upper-Midwest caused expansion of drought and abnormal dryness, with widespread degradation occurring in western portions of the Midwest region. Towards the end of the week, a storm system brought heavy precipitation to western and central Montana, bringing some drought relief following a period of hot, windy weather. Across the Northeast, additional rainfall benefitted portions of New England, while drier weather overspread the mid-Atlantic and southern New England following a wet week previously…
Stormy weather brought soaking rains across much of the High Plains, with the highest coverage and accumulations over Kansas and Nebraska. While beneficial, this precipitation competed during the week with much above-normal temperatures, which maintained high evapotranspirative demands. Accordingly, areas that missed out on significant rainfall, including portions of the Dakotas and far northern Nebraska, experienced some degradation, while reductions were noted across much of Kansas and eastern Nebraska. Further west, beneficial precipitation brought some relief to portions of the Colorado Plains and a few spots in Wyoming, while drier conditions resulted in deterioration in southwestern Colorado…
Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.
A late season storm system brought heavy rainfall to southern Oregon and northern California, sparking a few modest improvements but overall doing little to change the current drought depiction. Some degradations were noted across portions of California, Oregon, and the Great Basin, where impacts from a lack of snowmelt recharge – especially low streamflows – are beginning to be felt. Temperatures during the week were near to above-average across the Northwest, but below average across California, helping to keep evapotranspiration demands lower than average…
Soaking rains overspread most of Texas during the week, promoting additional drought reductions, primarily across southern Texas and the Big Bend country. Rainfall also overspread eastern Oklahoma, but conditions worsened across the western half of the state which fared drier during the week. Along the lower Mississippi Valley, heavy rains, exceeding 6 inches in some locations, fell across northern Arkansas, promoting drought reduction. Soaking rains were less intense across Louisiana and Mississippi, but were still sufficient to promote substantial drought reduction at the tail end of a wet May. Although conditions have improved overall across the Southern Region, widespread D3 to D4 continues across northern Texas and western Oklahoma, and long term drought impacts to groundwater remain a concern heading into the summer months across the whole region…
Looking Ahead
At the start of the next 7 days, drier conditions are favored across much of the East, with daily temperatures quickly warming to above-normal. A storm system now over the Plains will progress slowly eastward, bringing a potential for much needed rainfall across the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region. Current QPF forecasts from the Weather Prediction Center show amounts potentially exceeding 1.5 inches across much of Iowa and far southwestern Wisconsin, but lighter amounts elsewhere will likely be insufficient to overcome the high demands coming from much above-normal temperatures and summer agriculture, especially across Illinois, Indiana, and northern Minnesota. A gradual return to a summer convective regime is favored across the Southeast during the week, but accumulations are forecast to be less than what fell over the past few weeks, especially across northern Florida and east of the Appalachians. Seabreeze-driven convection is favored to remain active across South Florida. Mostly dry conditions are favored across the West, with a storm system bringing some precipitation to the Pacific Northwest. Meager precipitation is forecast for the Northeast region, raising concerns for a return of short term drought impacts.
During Week-2, weak troughing over Alaska is favored to maintain below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation for another week. Downstream, positive height anomalies are forecast for most of the contiguous United States, leading to coast-to-coast enhanced chances for above-normal temperatures. The highest probabilities for above-normal temperatures extend across both the West and the Northeast. Enhanced low-level southerly flow in this pattern favors a wide open Gulf, with moist air penetrating far to the north across the central US. Any interactions with shortwave troughs or other synoptic features could trigger periods of organized convection. Therefore, a broad signal slightly favoring above-normal precipitation extends from the Gulf Coast through much of the CONUS east of the Rockies. Near normal precipitation is the most likely outcome across the Northeast with weak troughing just offshore, and a slight tilt towards below-normal precipitation is forecast for the Pacific Northwest. Across Hawaii, both above-normal temperatures and precipitation are favored, based on a consensus of dynamical model guidance.
Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.
Just for grins here’s a slideshow of early June US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026.
Anthropogenic objects suspended in strata, as described by the author and then brought into reality by Google’s Nano Banana 2
by Robert Marcos, photojournalist
If Lake Powell ever dries up completely scientists excavating the exposed reservoir floor will uncover a massive, human-made geological record known as anthropogenic stratigraphy. This towering wall of trapped sediment, which already reaches up to 150 feet thick in some areas, acts like an open book detailing the history of Lake Powell. Researchers will find a distinct, repeating pattern of cyclic sand-mud interbeds that chronicle the reservoir’s seasonal fluctuations and regional hydroclimate. The thick layers of coarse sand will mark rapid, powerful depositional events fueled by annual spring snowmelt and dramatic upstream floods. Conversely, the alternating bands of thinly laminated, fine-grained lacustrine mud will reveal prolonged periods of high water levels when the reservoir was full and the currents slowed, allowing the finest suspended particles to settle to the canyon floor.1
Beneath this structural rhythm, a geochemical analysis will expose a darker record of the West’s industrial and agricultural history. Because the dam permanently trapped Colorado River sediments that once flowed naturally to the sea, the dry lakebed will serve as a containment sink for concentrated toxins and heavy metals. Geologists and environmental scientists will encounter dense pockets of arsenic, lead, selenium, boron, and mercury swept down from upstream agricultural runoff and legacy mining districts. Most notably, the layers will hold chemical fingerprints from historical events like the 2015 Gold King mine spill and the submerged yellowcake uranium mill tailings pile near Hite. As water levels vanish, these hazardous materials will remain bound to the platy clay aggregates and iron oxide coatings of the sediment, posing a significant risk of toxic dust storms if re-mobilized by the wind.2
Finally, the deepest trenching will reveal a stark ecological and physical boundary line: the pre-dam canyon floor. At the very base of the mud, scientists will strike an erosional surface composed of native boulders, coarse river gravels, and heavily weathered sandstone that directly predates 1963. Preserved just above this bedrock, researchers will find an anaerobic time capsule of organic debris. This includes preserved strands of invasive tamarisk and Russian thistle, ancient cottonwood fragments, and dense layers of decaying organic matter that once starved the deep reservoir of oxygen. By using advanced tools like X-ray diffraction, environmental DNA (eDNA), and scanning electron microscopy, scientists will be able to reconstruct the precise timeline of how human engineering completely transformed, and ultimately choked, a vibrant desert river ecosystem.3
Blue Castle Holdings is proposing to build a nuclear power plant in Green River, Utah. You have not gone through a time warp, nor is this a “this date in history” sorta thing, though it could be. The same company tried to build a reactor in Green River a couple of decades ago, during the last “nuclear renaissance,” but the project fizzled amid fierce opposition, uncertainty over water rights, and as the nuke boom busted before it ever really got going.
This week, Blue Castle announced that the concept had only been dormant, not dead, and that it was coming out of hibernation in a spiffed up form in hopes of serving rapidly growing data center-driven electricity demand. Instead of constructing two, 1,500 MW reactors, the company — in partnership with Fulcrum Point Holdings — looks to install small modular reactors. It has not specified what the nameplate capacity will be, but says the units can be air-cooled, meaning they wouldn’t use as much water as conventional reactors.
Blue Castle has a bit of a head start on the project, since they’ve already done most of the site characterization work (on private land about five miles west of Green River). But they’ll still have to jump through the nuclear reactor licensing hoops, which can be arduous. That said, it should be a lot easier with both the Trump administration and the Cox administration champing at the bit to get more nukes up and running. Meanwhile, opposition to the idea is not likely to be any less fervent now than it was 20 years ago, and they’ll still have to secure water in an increasingly aridified region.
The melon-farming town along the banks of the Green River has become a magnet for proposed and actual industrial projects lately. The prospective nuclear plant joins Anson Resources’ lithium extraction project, Western Uranium & Vanadium’s proposed uranium mill, a 400-megawatt solar-plus-storage installation, and various uranium, lithium, and potash extraction proposals in the surrounding areas.
Check the weather report before heading out on this road. Photo credit: NPS
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
Well, they’ve gone and done it now. Garfield County has paved the Hole-in-the-Rock Road, or at least the first 10 miles of it. To folks who are unfamiliar with the road situation in Utah, paving — chip-sealing, actually — a notoriously washboarded, suspension-blasting, teeth-rattling dead-end dirt road may not seem like such a big deal. But this little maintenance action could have real consequences for the public land it runs through, i.e. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and sets a dangerous legal precedent when it comes to roads on public lands. It is also a symbolic move for both the opponents and proponents of the asphalt-laying project.
The Hole-in-the-Rock (HITR) road roughly follows the first segment of the Hole-in-the-Rock trail, which is the route Church of Latter Day Saints colonists forged in 1879 to get from Escalante to what would become Bluff City on the banks of the San Juan River in the southeastern corner of Utah. When the early Mormon travelers reached the seemingly-impassable, 2,000-foot-deep Glen Canyon on the Colorado River, they blasted and built a passage for their wagons, horses, and cattle through a natural opening in the cliff and called it Hole in the Rock.
It may have been this experience, in part, that led the descendants of those folks to develop a kind of fetish for roads, especially ones that cross federal land. By building the path across an especially rugged chunk of country and even crossing the mighty Colorado, they were able to assert a certain amount of control over what they saw as a hostile and wild landscape. Now county commissioners in Utah fight for control over backcountry roads* as a sort of proxy for dominating the lands they pass through. Garfield County has long looked to take ownership of the HITR road so that they can improve and pave it and be sure the Bureau of Land Management never closes it.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have pushed back against county control. While the feds almost never close roads, they are more likely than counties to do so if necessary to protect cultural or ecological resources**. Counties are more likely to improve the roads, which leads to more people and attendant impacts in the backcountry.
Today’s HITR road runs 62 miles, from just outside Escalante to Hole in the Rock, where the canyon below is now mostly inundated by Lake Powell. It snakes its way on a rough parallel path to the Escalante River and passes near the heads of many of its tributary canyons that are popular with backcountry adventurers.
As visitation to the national monument and its surroundings has increased, so has the HITRR’s traffic: Garfield County’s road crew says some 600 vehicles per day travel the washboard-plagued road, with as many as 1,500 each day on weekends. All those cars wreak havoc on the road, and the county says it has been spending $150,000 annually on maintenance, some of which it claims could be avoided if it were allowed to pave the road.
Last July, a federal court ruled in favor of Garfield County and granted it quiet title to the section of the HITR Road in the county (the lower section is in Kane County, which also won quiet title to that portion of the road). In February, the county began preparing the route for chip-sealing. It informed the BLM of the work, but did not apply for a permit, and the BLM did nothing to stop the work. That was two victories in a row for the local-control over the public’s land crowd.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance sued both the BLM and the county, saying the work required federal approval, since it occurred on federal land. It also sought an emergency injunction on further work while the case is pending.
Earlier this month, a judge denied the injunction request, clearing the way for Garfield County to proceed. A few days later, the machines were out there laying asphalt, while county officials and their backers crowed triumphantly and public land lovers cried foul. The courts may eventually rule against the county, but the chip seal is there to stay.
“Paving will lead to more, faster, and louder traffic,” said SUWA attorneys in a written statement, “changing the remote, serene backcountry experience the monument was created to protect, and that draws visitors from around the world.”
Even pavement/chip-seal can’t stop the desert from taking back the Burr Trail. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The HITR Road battle is an echo of an almost identical fight over the Burr Trail, another backcountry road between Boulder, Utah, which lies within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Ticaboo/Bullfrog on the shores of Lake Powell. The sections on BLM land on either side of the route have been paved and/or chip-sealed after years of conflict. But the National Park Service has blocked Garfield County from paving the middle segment, which passes through Capitol Reef National Park.
I drive the Burr Trail any chance I get, simply because I love the country it travels through and because the slower pace the road requires allows me to see more, and facilitates frequent stops to get out of the car and look around.
I’m sure that traffic has increased since the paving. Just based on my observations, however, I would say that the added number of vehicles is not necessarily increasing the number of folks going into the surrounding backcountry. What I’ve seen are more RVs and low-slung sedans heading down the road from Boulder, going beyond the end of the pavement, stopping at the top of the switchbacks through the Waterpocket Fold (where the road is steep, loose gravel, and washboarded), then turning around and heading back up to Boulder. The eastern paved section, towards Bullfrog, has very little traffic. (On my most recent trip I did see a few vehicles drive up the Burr Trail switchbacks, then come back down before heading north on the Notom Road back toward Capitol Reef, a phenomenon that was also evident at the Moqui Dugway road in San Juan County.)
Looking down at the unpaved part of Burr Trail from the switchbacks. Jonathan P. Thompson photo
So while paving HITRR is a sort of symbolic and even spiritual defeat for those public lands and the folks looking to protect them, I’m also not sure that it will necessarily lead to more impacts to the surrounding backcountry. Garfield County’s vehicle count numbers, if correct, indicate that the automobile-driving masses are already driving the road. How could you cram more than 1,500 vehicles a day onto that little section?
In any event, it’s certainly the end of an era, and driving the first ten miles of the HITRR will be a completely different experience than it was pre-blacktop. Whether the phenomenon will be limited to those ten miles (and the Burr Trail), or spread throughout the rutted byways of Utah may depend on the outcome of SUWA’s lawsuit.
Campsite boulder. Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
🛻 Notes from the Road 🏕️
The hummingbirds have come back to southern Utah for the spring. Are they earlier than usual? Later? Maybe all that really matters is the penstemon are blooming, scarlet red.
***
One of my non-Land Desk gigs is compiling and summarizing Western energy news for a Canary Media newsletter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. This requires early morning internet, so when I’m out and about it means staying in a hotel on those nights or camping in a site where I know there is a strong and steady cell signal.
Stone, water, light. Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
But on Tuesdays and Thursdays and weekends, I’m free to wander as far off grid as I can get. This is not difficult in southern Utah, which may have the highest proportion of out-of-cell-signal-range lands in the continental U.S.
Liberated from the digital shackles, I meander impulsively, by car, by bike, on foot, in search of the perfect campsite, a cool pool of desert water, a viewpoint from which the landscape unfurls before me, the post-storm light playing among the red rock crevices and spires far below. The sense of time slips away and I quickly forget what day it is. The lack of destination or deadline allows me to wander down whatever road, canyon, or trail looks appetizing. More often than not, they are dead ends, which is just fine.
A tinaja, or pothole, after a good rain. Southeastern Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Recently I set off on such an amble from Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell. A storm had blown through the night before, leaving a few inches of wet snow on the steep slopes of the Henry Mountains and clearing the haze and smoke and dust from the air. Remnants of the storm lingered over the mountains and high mesas, defying the weather forecasts.
Following a bike ride up the paved part of the Burr Trail, I headed in el Burro Blanco onto the eastern slope of the Henries, and followed a back road that traversed the incline.
The soil was rocky enough to naturally gravel the road, or rather, to cobblestone it. While it wasn’t a smooth ride, it did keep the surface solid despite a couple of inches of moisture that fell the previous night and morning, at least for a while. Then, after topping a little rise, and as I descended a north-facing slope into a small drainage, the cobbles vanished, giving way to classic southern Utah clay. Goopy nasty stuff, that is, the kind of mud that steals your shoes, builds up on your tiles, and turns a motorized vehicle into a slip-sliding, uncontrollable, wheeled sled and that inspires signs warning “Impassible When Wet.”
Post-rain arroyo patterns. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Luckily, the fall line followed the line of travel, meaning I landed safely on a more solid patch of road at the trough of the drainage. I got out and surveyed the path ahead on foot, only to find that conditions worsened. I could either camp there and wait for the road to dry, or try to make it back up the hill I had just slid down in my rear-wheel drive pickup.
The former was the more intelligent choice, of course. But the campsite was far from ideal, and the clouds were still pretty thick, meaning it might rain or snow even more, and I don’t always make the smartest choices. Then I remembered: I had bought chains for the truck soon after inheriting it. I broke them out, chained up the rear wheels, did a thirty-point turnaround, and barreled back up the way I came, no problemo.
A couple of hours later, after venturing down another backroad, albeit one on more stable soil and at a considerably lower elevation, I landed in a delightful campsite. The rain had flushed away the gnats, settled the dust, sculpted the sand in the arroyos that flowed past the camp, summoned the wildflowers to bloom, and filled the tinajas and potholes to the brim with murky, cool water.
***
Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
I’ve included a lot of different types of content in the Land Desk, from Messing with Maps, to Data Dumps, to movie reviews, but I don’t believe I’ve ever included a recipe here. That all changes today. I would recommend that you not try this recipe at home; it’s refined nature can only be fully appreciated when prepared on a camp stove and eaten in the outdoors, preferably while watching the evening light slide slowly across the desert.
I grew up going camping, usually in the Utah desert, with my family. It’s just what we did on many a weekend and on just about every school break. We didn’t have enough money for “real” family vacations, and we wouldn’t have wanted to do the Disneyland thing, anyway. This means I also grew up eating my father’s distinctive camp cooking, almost always made over a campfire because we didn’t have a camp stove.
I remember liking the food back then, but looking back I do have to wonder whether it wasn’t a form of child abuse. Delicacies included Dinty Moore beef stew on top of a bed of those canned deep-fried chow mein noodles; corned beef hash from a can; Vienna sausages — my dad’s friend called them cows lips in order to get us to hand them over; generic grape, orange, or black-cherry soda-pop; and, my personal favorite, those Pillsbury biscuits in a can cooked in a skillet over the fire in a sizzling reservoir of Country Crock squeeze-bottle margarine.
I’ve spent years trying to heal the taste-bud trauma, partially by sprinkling my food with truffle oil whenever someone else is paying for it, and have come quite a ways in my recovery. But it all went to hell in a hand basket when I went camping with a friend, who originally hails from the Midwest, and let him assume dinner duties one night. To my horror and dismay, he prepared something called Chili-Mac, which consists of a can of Hormel canned beef chili dumped into a batch of Krafts instant macaroni and cheese. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t do his other specialty, which involves hot dogs and mac-and-cheese — entirely too reminiscent of those damned jelly-coated cows’ lips, er, Vienna sausages.
Anyway, I learned my lesson, and I vet all of his dinner choices beforehand, and bring backup food just in case he tries to pull a fast one. Meanwhile, I’ve developed a more regionally and taste-bud appropriate alternative to his Chili-Mac. I call it Mac-n-Chile. Here’s the recipe (serves one hungry person):
One box of Annie’s macaroni and cheese. I prefer the aged cheddar stuff, but any flavor will do.
One can of hot Hatch green chiles. Yes, you can bring fresh roasted chiles if you want, but that adds to the work and complexity and who wants all of that? The canned stuff is fine.
A liberal sprinkling of Cobblestone farm’s garlic powder. Oh, you want to buy the cheap grocery store stuff that has no flavor and is filled with anti-caking agents like silicon dioxide? Suit yourself! But if you want the best, you gotta go with Cobblestone Farms.
A touch of salt and olive oil or butter.
Follow the instructions on the box, but salt the pasta water (they don’t put enough salt in those cheese packets), and add some olive oil or butter when mixing in the dried cheese. Dump in the green chiles and a liberal sprinkling of garlic powder — more is better. Pour yourself a beverage of your choice, sit down on your camp chair, truck’s tailgate, or a slab of sandstone, and devour it.
Oh, and keep your eyes open for those hummingbirds. I hear they’re buzzing about the canyon country these days.
A reservoir built to serve nearly a million Northern Coloradans started filling this spring. But Chimney Hollow’s future is still murky weeks after the initial fill. Chimney Hollow will eventually pull water from the Colorado River near its headwaters in Grand County to serve a dozen fast growing cities on the Front Range from Broomfield to Greeley…Chimney Hollow is holding just 2% of its total volume today because there’s a problem. Northern Water discovered that some of the rocks it used to build the massive dam at the reservoir contained radioactive uranium. It was naturally occurring, but it set the project back at least a year. Northern Water is still coming up with a mitigation plan.
“Really, the best way to kind of move that uranium out is to draw down the water and force that out,” spokesperson Rachel Stevens said. “But before we make any of those decisions, we really want to see what the levels of uranium are.”
So every week, crews are taking water samples from the small pool and sending it to a lab to see how much radioactive material is really in the water. The results are expected soon. Northern Water has only been able to test how uranium leaches out of the rocks in a laboratory setting. Filling the reservoir just slightly will help reveal the extent of the problem.
Map from Northern Water via the Fort Collins Coloradan.
Specialists surveying Colorado’s forests know this year will be challenging. Snow melted too quickly, strong winds dried out the trees, and the early signs of danger are already settling across the landscape. Wildfire season is no longer confined to a few months — it’s a year‑round reality, they said…And this year, the risk is even higher. Snowpack peaked at just 58% of normal — and weeks earlier than usual. An unusually warm March accelerated the melt, and parched soils absorbed much of the runoff before it reached streams and reservoirs, leaving less water to flow downstream. While much of the public conversation focuses on drought, dry fuels, and wildfire danger, another worry runs deeper — what happens to the state’s water supply if a major fire strikes?
[…]
When a large fire burns, the flames strip hillsides of vegetation, said Weston Toll, a watershed program specialist for the Colorado Forest Service. Once rainstorms arrive, there’s nothing left to hold the soil in place.
“When we have a storm event, all the sediment that is now exposed typically runs downhill and … will fill up reservoirs, which is bad from a water quality and quantity standpoint,” Toll said…
A 2023 report by the U.S. Geological Survey echoes that warning.
The agency found that wildfires pose a significant risk to water supplies by triggering severe flooding, erosion, and the delivery of sediment, nutrients, and metals into rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
According to the USGS, these changes can degrade water quality, reduce reservoir storage, harm stream habitats, and drive up treatment costs for drinking‑water providers. The effects can vary widely — from barely noticeable shifts to 100‑fold increases in sediment, nutrients, and other contaminants. In the worst cases, experts said the water can resemble “chocolate milk.”
Ash and silt pollute the Cache la Poudre River after the High Park Fire September 2012. Photo credit: USDA
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website (Susan Montoya Bryan). Here’s an excerpt:
May 27, 2026
In a brief order Tuesday, the court accepted the recommendation of a special master to move forward with agreements first proposed last year by New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. The settlement calls for reducing groundwater pumping along the dwindling river and retiring water rights from irrigated farmland in southern New Mexico. The states held up the proposal as a promise to restore order to an elaborate system of storing and sharing water between two vast irrigation districts in southern New Mexico and western Texas.
“We’re very excited to be redirecting resources from costly and lengthy litigation to solutions on the ground,” Hanna Riseley-White, director of the Interstate Stream Commission, said Wednesday…
Those solutions will include everything from long-term fallowing programs and more efficient irrigation infrastructure to developing new sources of water, like tapping brackish supplies or importing water, and improving stormwater management so more runoff can be captured and stored.
Before he died at age 87 in early May, Ted Turner knew that stewardship of land would be his real legacy. Of course, he might also be long known for starting CNN and 24-hour news, as well as building a major league baseball team, his hometown Atlanta Braves.
He also started a UN Foundation to help bring peace to the world, thanks to his starter $1 billion contribution, and he tapped former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado to lead it. Wirth recalls how Turner, once dubbed “Captain Outrageous,” liked to shoot from the hip and could never be bothered by whatever passed as political correctness. A plaque on his desk in Atlanta said it all: “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.”.
Most of all, Turner left a significant swath of private lands in better condition than he found them. In Montana and other parts of the Rockies, Turner bought huge ranches and made sure the land was healthy enough to grow a bison herd to over 55,000 animals at its peak.
Turner never subscribed to the notion that property rights trumped the common good. He also challenged the conviction that landowners ought to be able to do whatever they want on their land—even if it resulted in environmental harm.
As an entrepreneur with green intentions, Turner believed he could operate better and cheaper in recovering wildlife and rivers on his ranches that had been degraded by overgrazing. He was able to show that smart management also offered safe harbor to wildlife without sacrificing profit.
Some locals around Bozeman, Montana, in the 1980s thought Turner was out of his mind when he placed a conservation easement on his 113,000-acre Flying D Ranch, one of the largest easements in America at the time. The easement limited development in perpetuity, and had Turner exploited the Flying D as a real estate play, he could easily have made hundreds of millions in profit.
Turner could make a big impact on people. One was the billionaire businessman Thomas Kaplan, who likens Turner to a combination of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. Kaplan says Turner inspired him to co-found Panthera, now the leading global wildcat conservation organization, as well as The Orianne Society, named after his daughter and dedicated to perpetuating the survival of snakes.
Kaplan likes to recount how, when he visited Turner’s Flying D, he saw a wolf pack and howled back and forth with them. The ranch was home to the one of the largest, free-ranging wolf packs in North America, co-existing with Turner’s buffalo, and a population of elk, deer, moose and other wild animals that moved on and off the property.
Turner issued an edict that wolves visiting his land were never to be hunted or lethally controlled. Emulating the Turner model, Kaplan acquired thousands of acres in a vast wetland area of southwest Brazil called the Pantanal, and there he advanced a model of co-existence between cattle ranchers and jaguars. The Pantanal is considered the best place in the world for watching jaguars, and even cattle ranchers, who used to shoot the cats, now have eco-lodges on their estancias.
Turner was aware of his foibles, for which he hoped he would be forgiven. Biologist Mike Phillips, who oversaw a number of rewilding projects for Turner, told me, “In these recent years, as he was in decline, Ted once asked me, “Mike, we did okay, didn’t we?’ And I replied, “Ted, we accomplished exactly what we set out to do so long ago. I reminded him that he had done more as a private citizen to benefit native species than any other individual in the history of the world.”
Phillips said that Turner choked up with emotion.
Todd Wilkinson
Jane Fonda, Turner’s “third and favorite wife,” according to those who knew the couple, told me that after a brutal childhood with a hard-driving father who took his own life, along with a sister who died young from lupus, Turner found solace in nature.
“What did he want most of all? asked Fonda. “To be recognized as a good guy. There was a part of Ted who believed that by trying to save nature and bring more peace to the world, he could save himself. But he saved much more than that.”
Todd Wilkinson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He is a longtime journalist and founder of Yellowstonian.org, who wrote an award-winning biography about Turner.
One good thing the Trump administration’s and the GOP’s attack on public lands has brought about is more attention to public lands and the sometimes arcane policies governing them. When I started the Land Desk back in 2021, it was one of the only Substack-like outlets focusing on public lands issues; now there are more than a dozen of them, put out by journalists, quasi-journalists, and advocacy groups — with a fair amount of overlap. Meanwhile, more conventional media outlets have also beefed up their public lands coverage since Trump took office.
I’m all for it — a well informed public makes for a stronger democracy — but it does have a major downside. There has been a noticeable increase in disinformation and misinformation and simply erroneous coverage of the issues and, especially, of the potential effects of the administration’s actions. The motives are surely mixed, ranging from honest misunderstandings to the writer trying to simplify complex issues for the average reader. Maybe they feel that the nuanced reality won’t rally the troops as effectively as hyperbolic alarmism. Maybe they know that outrage is more likely than mere concern to garner clicks, subscriptions, and donations.
While I understand the need to get people fired up about these issues and actions — most of which should indeed be stopped — I also worry that writing one’s congress member or commenting to the federal agencies based on erroneous information will be ineffective or even counterproductive. The truth in most of these cases is bad enough. Let’s just stick with it. Please?
Here are a few examples of what’s got my goat:
The claim: Revoking Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s management plan will open up nearly 900,000 acres of the monument to oil and gas drilling, coal extraction, and uranium mining.
The messier reality: MAGA Sen. Mike Lee’s and Rep. Celeste Maloy’s attempts to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s management plan is abhorrent, stupid, and is done out of spite rather than for any pragmatic reasons. If they succeed, the monument’s management will revert back to the far weaker 2020 plan that allowed more grazing, more damaging “vegetation management,” and more off-road vehicle use. Plus the 2020 plan only covered the 1 million acres left in the national monument after Trump removed about 900,000 acres from its boundaries, meaning there would be a sort of management limbo on those 900,000 acres.
However, rescinding the plan will not eliminate or shrink the national monument or its basic protections, nor will it allow drilling or mining or other development anywhere within the 1.9 million acre national monument. The boundaries will remain the same, which means that the terms set in the 2021 proclamation restoring them also remain in effect1, and that includes no new oil and gas or coal leases or mining claims within the national monument.
Furthermore, the claims about grazing have been exaggerated as well. The 2020 plan allowed grazing in all but 125,800 acres of the national monument, but did not allow it right along the Escalante River or in Lower Calf Canyon, and it would have allowed suspended allotments to be reissued (if a rancher wanted them). The 2024 plan put 314,700 acres off-limits to grazing — including bigger buffers around the Escalante River — and would have permanently retired suspended allotments.
The claim:Moving the U.S. Forest Service headquarters to Salt Lake City, “the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America,” will lead to a mass selloff of public lands and is part of an “execution” of the agency.
The messy reality: Look, I know that Utah politicians are kooky and that they don’t like the idea of federal land management. I wrote a whole damned book about it. But that doesn’t mean that once you cross the border into Utah you become a raving sagebrush rebel. There are pros and cons to moving a federal agency to the West, but it’s not like Phil Lyman, Mike Lee, Celeste Maloy, Ken Ivory, and the ghost of Cal Black are going to have more influence over the agency’s HQ in SLC than they would in D.C. Nor is the relocation, alone, going to lead to public land sales. Utah happens to be home to strong public lands advocacy and environmental groups, including SUWA, Grow the Flow, Utah Rivers Council, HEAL Utah, Uranium Watch, Torrey House Press, and others. Salt Lake City is more progressive politically than many cities in blue states. Over the last three decades it has elected liberal mayors and other city leaders, including climate, human rights, and air quality activists.
Instead of fear-mongering over Utah, maybe we should be focused on the severe budget cuts plaguing the Forest Service, the loss of thousands of staffers and their deep well of institutional knowledge, its growing inability to manage lands under its purview regardless of where it’s headquartered, along with policies aimed at increasing logging and grazing on the nation’s forests. That’s the real danger.
The mislead:Almost every story or blog post or call to action regarding the administration’s move to rescind the oil and gas leasing moratorium in the area around Chaco Culture National Historical Park is accompanied by a photo of Pueblo Bonito, Casa Rinconada, or another site inside the park itself.
The messy reality: This is misleading because it gives the impression that those structures will now be open to drilling. That’s not the case. The park and the pueblos in it retain their protections no matter what happens with the moratorium. The leasing ban is for a ten mile radius outside the park boundaries, which is, indeed, a very significant cultural landscape, replete with Chacoan “roads,” outlier pueblos and great houses, shrines, and other sites — and absolutely should be protected from energy development. This is an innocent mistake: The sites in “downtown Chaco” are not only photogenic, but most outlets probably can’t find stock images of the sites that could be wrecked by drilling if the moratorium is lifted. Still, they could ask me …
So yes, write to your congress member, protest, write letters to the editor, and send your two cents to your public lands agencies. But please, base your protests and suggestions and recommendations on facts, not on outrage-inciting hyperbole or speculation.
The Shootaring uranium mill near Ticaboo, Utah. Anfield says it plans to restart the facility. Built in 1980, the facility ran for only six months or so before shutting down. It has remained idle ever since. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
If nuclear reactors could run on hype, alone, then we’d have plenty of power for all of those hyperscale data centers in the pipeline. The optimistic, gold-rushesque press releases about new uranium mining claims, acquisitions, and exploration just keep coming, giving the impression that there is a nuclear renaissance underway in the West. Maybe there is, sort of, but it hasn’t made it to the uranium mining space yet.
The one substantial move forward was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granting a construction license to Bill Gates-backed Terra Power, allowing it to begin building its Natrium advanced reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It’s a big deal, but the company doesn’t expect to bring the plant online until 2030, at least, and will still need an operating license to do so.
It will take more than one reactor to bring the western Colorado and eastern Utah uranium mining industry back to anywhere near its Cold War-era glory days, though that’s not stopping mining firms from courting investors.
Some of the latest hype includes:
American Atomics’ website banner is an image of Monument Valley, where Diné miners worked Cold War-era uranium mines with virtually no safety measures or protective equipment, despite industry and government knowledge of the occupational hazards. Many of those workers eventually fell sick and died from exposure to radon and other substances in the mine. Now the company hopes to “reshape how nations fuel their power grids and defend their energy sovereignty” by building a “fully American-controlled nuclear fuel cycle, from exploration and extraction to enrichment and supply.” They hope to seed the effort with the 217-claim Big Indian project in the Lisbon Valley in cooperation with a company run by Mark Steen, the son of Charles Steen. American Atomics also has a block of mining claims in the Uravan uranium belt in western Colorado.
After abandoning its proposal to use high-pressure slurry ablation, or HPSA, to extract uranium from the October waste rock pile near Gateway, Colorado, Disa applied to do the same on the smaller Mary Ann pile in Montrose County. On April 22, the NRC replied to Disa with a request for more information. Disa filed an amendment to its application on May 14.
Anfield Energy submitted a permit to restart its long-idle JD-8 mine located on a mesa south of the Paradox Valley in western Colorado. This is part of an effort to restart its entire Monogram Mesa Complex, which consists of five inactive facilities. The company claims it plans on being permitted and starting production in mid-2026. If it hits its target, however, it doesn’t appear to have a place to mill the ore. While it says it plans to restart the Shootaring Mill near Ticaboo, Utah, the state hasn’t issued a permit for it to do so. However, Anfield did apparently drill monitoring wells at the Shootaring Mill and at its Slick Rock project near the western Colorado hamlet of the same name.
Anfield, as you may remember, is the company behind the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley. The same one the Trump administration dramatically fast-tracked permitting for to help solve the so-called “energy emergency.” Well, Anfield did do some work at the mine, but they still don’t have state air quality, ventilation shaft, or groundwater remediation permits, meaning actual production is a long ways off. That must be some emergency, eh?
The Velvet Wood-Mine as it appeared in May 2026. Without critical state permits, they won’t be solving the energy emergency anytime too soon. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
1 It’s worth remembering that restored GSENM was managed by the Trump-era plan for the three years between when Biden restored the monument in 2021, and when the new management plan went into effect in 2024.
Photograph of Iron Mountain Pumping Plant by Jet Lowe. Provided by the U.S. Library of Congress
The 85-year old Colorado River Aqueduct – which was constructed over a 8-year period beginning in 1933, is a major water conveyance system that brings 1.2 billion gallons of Colorado River water to Southern California every day. The aqueduct was paid for by voters in 13 Southern California cities who overwhelmingly approved a $220 million municipal bond in order to finance the monumental construction project. Managed by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the aqueduct stretches 242 miles across the Colorado and Mojave deserts, tunnels under two mountain ranges, and rises a total of 1,617 feet in elevation from its starting point downstream of Parker Dam near Lake Havasu.1
Photograph of canal and adjacent sand filters at Iron Mountain. Photograph by Jet Lowe. Picture provided by the U.S. Library of Congress
Numerous engineering features mark the aqueduct, including dams, reservoirs, pumping plants, tunnels, canals, conduits, inverted siphons, and transmission lines. Each of these parts works together to provide what was determined to be the most efficient, cost-etfectlve, and safe combination of transporting water from the Colorado River to the southern California coastal basin. The aqueduct has always been much more than just a canal. Its engineering coincided with American during the Depression-era, when the appearance and promotion of technological “progress” provided the American public with a sense of accomplishment and pride. During its construction the aqueduct provided jobs for 35,000 people for over eight years.
Headgate house at the Iron Mountain Pumping Plant, photographed by Jet Lowe. Provided by the Library of Congress.
The combination of the total height that water is lifted (1,617′) and the aqueduct’s 242-mile length was unprecedented, as was the aqueduct’s carrying capacity of 1,605 c.f.s. The vertical synchronous motors driving the pumps were the largest of these types of motors then constructed. The difficulties encountered during the construction of the Mt. San Jacinto tunnel received national attention, and engineers argued that it was one of the most difficult tunnel construction jobs undertaken in the history of world engineering. Some of the equipment introduced and engineering techniques employed during the aqueduct’s construction overall were celebrated for their ingenuity and ability to set standards for future projects of similar magnitude. The Parker diversion dam had to be erected upon bedrock 233′ deep, which at the time made it the world’s deepest. The Colorado River Aqueduct overall was the world’s most technologically-advanced water conveyance system, and it has proven its reliability by serving the needs of 19 million Southern California residents for the last 85 years.
Click the link to read the article on the KSL website (Shelby Lofton). Here’s an excerpt:
May 27, 2026
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Central Utah farmers said severe drought, frost and strong winds have led to the worst conditions they’ve seen.
Farmer Neil Sorensen said his alfalfa crop is far below where it should be.
Scott Sunderland is struggling with irrigation, raising concerns about his long-term crop viability.
Central Utah farmers said a combination of drought, frost and strong winds has created some of the worst conditions they have ever seen. Farmer Neil Sorensen said normally, fields across the Sanpete Valley would be lush and green this time of year. Instead, he said conditions look more like late summer.
“The frost, the wind and the drought, it’s just took a toll on all our crops,” Sorensen said.
He primarily grows alfalfa but also grows grass and barley, grass mix and potatoes. Sorensen said his alfalfa crop is far below where it should be.
“Right now, you can see it’s below my knees,” he said, adding that even his best fields are struggling.
The National Weather Service’s Central Region Climate Outlook issued Sunday [May 24, 2026] said there is an 82% chance that an El Niño weather pattern will develop between May and July, which could bring a higher chance of above-average precipitation this summer…
Additionally, the U.S. Drought Monitor said drought conditions, which have been persistent across the Western United States for the past several months, are expected improve in Colorado over the next three months. But, even with such a hopeful outlook, NWS Meteorologist Kate Abbot said a slightly rainier pattern should start to appear the first week of June in Southwest Colorado.
“As we move into next week, we start to set up into more of a southwesterly flow pattern,” Abbot said. “We start to see some chances for afternoon showers in the San Juan Mountains, with probabilities increasing as the week progresses.”
Colorado is headed toward a potentially wetter-than-normal summer, with promises of an active monsoon season and growing confidence in developing El Nino conditions. However, with hotter temperatures likely, this summer could look different from the mountains’ last El Nino visit. The Climate Prediction Center’s seasonal precipitation outlook shows above-normal chances for rainfall in Colorado from June through September, with the Western Slope and Utah border seeing the highest likelihood of above-average rainfall. Forecasts also show a strong possibility that Colorado will see an active monsoon season, according to Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center…
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.
The forecasts for summer showers coincide with those predicting the fast arrival of El Nino conditions, though Goble said he doesn’t currently see a strong tie between El Nino and stronger summer precipitation…A release published by the center on May 14 predicted that El Nino is likely to emerge during what’s left of spring, with an 82% chance that it will materialize between May and July and continue through the Northern Hemisphere for the upcoming winter. The center predicts a 96% chance that El Nino will remain from December through February 2027…Historically, El Nino conditions have brought wetter summers and falls , but drier than normal winters to the Northern Rockies. The last time Colorado saw El Nino conditions in the summer was in 2023, which created “a really wet late spring and summer east of the Continental Divide,” Goble said.
The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials.
Big takeaways
A new desalination method produces drinking water from seawater without chemical additives.
The solar-powered system uses specially engineered black metal to absorb sunlight.
Its self-cleaning surface separates and collects salts, instead of dumping them as harmful brine waste.
From the salts, the system can extract lithium, a key material for rechargeable batteries.
The approach could help address global water shortages and growing mineral demand.
The United Nations estimates that 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water, and communities from California to the Middle East rely on desalination plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. Common desalination techniques, such as reverse osmosis and thermal distillation, are energy-intensive, require pre- and post-water treatment, and leave behind a concentrated saltwater byproduct called brine. The brine byproduct wreaks havoc on sea life when it’s deposited back into the ocean by raising the salt level and lowering oxygen in the water.
But a novel approach developed at the University of Rochester offers a way to overcome these drawbacks. Researchers at URochester’s Institute of Optics developed a new solar-thermal desalination process to produce fresh water in an energy-efficient way that does not leave behind brine and requires no chemical additives to pre-treat the water. A team led by Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and of physics and a senior scientist at URochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, describes their method in a paper published in Light: Science & Applications.
Vials of l-r: seawater, Great Salt Lake water, nickel and phosphorus waste, and desalinated water along with evaporated salt are pictured in the lab of University of Rochester professor Chunlei Guo April 8, 2026. Guo and his team have a paper coming out in Light: Science and Applications that describes new solar-powered ocean water desalination devices he engineered that feature his superwicking laser-etched black metal. The devices are highly efficient compared to current desalination methods and the new process doesn’t produce the brine waste that current methods do. The process takes ocean water (they collected smaples from three continents) and breaks it down into fresh water and salts. // photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester
The technology uses solar panels made of black metal etched with femtosecond lasers to make the surface super light-absorbing and superwicking—or extremely attractive to water. The panels have a laser-treated active region that pulls a thin layer of water across the surface, absorbs nearly all solar radiation, distills the water, and deposits the leftover salts and minerals into the panel’s untreated sides or “passive” region so that the salt does not clog the active region and disrupt continuous desalination.
Leveraging the ‘coffee ring’ effect
Guo says other researchers have developed solar-thermal desalination techniques that work well in lab experiments using simulated seawater made of only water and sodium chloride. As the water evaporates, the sodium chloride crystallizes in a grainy and porous fashion allowing water to pass through to dissolve the salt. The solar panels, meanwhile, can be easily cleaned.
But real ocean has a much more complex composition, and these systems tend to encounter issues when tested in the field. Unlike sodium chloride, many other components in seawater, such as magnesium- and calcium-based materials, crystallize in a crusty and non-porous fashion on the solar panel’s surface, clogging it. Eventually, water can no longer seep through. This is the same phenomenon as your shower head clogging over time or your teapot lined with scales, except that seawater contains hundreds of times more salts than your tap water.
To keep their solar panel surface from gumming up similarly, Guo’s team precisely etched the black metal’s grooves so the various salts and minerals in ocean water would simply slough off. They also leveraged a physical phenomenon that has plagued clumsy javaphiles for centuries: the coffee ring effect.
“If you drop coffee on a surface, eventually the water evaporates, and there’s a ring left at the outer edge that is the concentrated coffee particles,” says Guo. “We use that same principle to advance the salts to the passive region.”
Testing their solar-thermal desalination technique using samples of water from the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, Guo and his team were able to make the surface self-cleaning. In other words, it extracted freshwater and directed the remaining salts to the passive region where they could be later collected without reducing the panel’s efficiency.
Vials of l-r: seawater, Great Salt Lake water, Nickel(II) sulfate (NiSO4) and Copper(II) chloride wastewater, and desalinated water along with evaporated salt are pictured in the lab of University of Rochester professor Chunlei Guo April 8, 2026. Guo and his team have a paper coming out in Light: Science and Applications that describes new solar-powered ocean water desalination devices he engineered that feature his superwicking laser-etched black metal. The devices are highly efficient compared to current desalination methods and the new process doesn’t produce the brine waste that current methods do. The process takes ocean water (they collected smaples from three continents) and breaks it down into fresh water and salts. // photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester
Turning waste into resources
One of the new desalination method’s distinct advantages is that instead of leaving behind brine that must be disposed of or processed, it extracts nearly 100 percent of the salts in solid form. This could not only produce an abundant supply of table salt, but it could also be used to extract more precious minerals, including lithium, which is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and other electronics.
In a related paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Guo and his colleagues show how they can use the same superwicking solar panels to separate lithium from the rest of other salts in desalination. Embedding nanoparticles made of hydrogen titanate in the tiny grooves of the black metal surface isolates the lithium from other salts and minerals.
“Mining lithium from the earth has proven to be very taxing from an energy and environmental standpoint, so pulling lithium directly from saltwater could be a very important future route,” says Guo.
Using water samples from Great Salt Lake, the researchers extracted about 50 percent of the lithium from the salts left behind by the desalination process.
Guo says now that the superwicking desalination technology has been demonstrated in proofs of concept on small-scale devices, he sees the technology inherently scalable, capable of improving global access to drinking water and building more sustainable supply chains for precious minerals.
The National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Worldwide Universities Network supported this research. Guo’s colleagues from the Institute of Optics who contributed to the research include Senior Scientist Subash Singh, alumnus Ran Wei ’24 (PhD), PhD students Luheng Tang and Tainshu Xu, and Mingjiang Ma.
In a letter published by Environmental Research Letters, Andrew Berardy and Mikhail V. Chester of Arizona State University examined the agricultural and beef industry’s dependency upon water and power. Athough their research was focused the effects of climate change in Arizona, their findings could be applied almost anywhere in the American Southwest.
“Arizona’s predominately irrigated agriculture relies on water imported through an energy intensive process from water-stressed regions. Most irrigation in Arizona is electrically powered, so failures in either energy or water systems can cascade to the food system, creating a food-energy-water nexus of vulnerability.” Using data provided by the USDA, the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona crop budgets and region-specific literature, the two scientists predicted that a temperature increase above the baseline could decrease yields by up to 12.2% per 1° centigrade for major Arizona crops and would require increased irrigation of about 2.6% per 1° centigrade.1
Modern agricultural production is made possible by systems working together to deliver energy and water resources necessary to provide a reliable food supply. This interdependency creates the food-energy-water nexus. Arizona is a major agricultural producer, supplying considerable animal feed, livestock, milled grain products, meat, and other food products to cities throughout the U.S.
Figure 1. Importance of agricultural exports from Arizona. This map displays the food related goods shipped from Arizona as a percentage of total food related goods shipped to each state in the freight category where that percentage is highest based on 2012 Freight Analysis Framework data (Center for Transportation Analysis 2016). Cities with 5% or more of a category imported from Arizona are labeled with an icon representing the freight category and labeled with the percent of that category they receive from Arizona out of their total imports of that category. For example, Los Angeles receives 22% of their Live Animals and Fish imports from Arizona.
The Phoenix region’s large volume of food related exports means that reduced yields would have a signifcant impact on overall export capacity for Arizona. The most significant food related exports are to cities near Arizona – including Los Angeles, San Diego, El Paso, and Las Vegas. Tucson receives 100% of its live animals and fish, 85% of its other agricultural products, 83% of its other foodstuffs, and 69% of its meat and seafood from within Arizona. Phoenix receives 87% of its other agricultural products, 73% of its animal feed, 57% of its cereal grains, 51% of its other foodstuffs, and 51% of its live animals and fish from within Arizona. Therefore, disruptions to the agricultural system in the greater Phoenix area would have both a local impact, and would be felt across the Southwest in California, Nevada, and Texas.2
Shocks and strains on energy and water production and delivery systems may result in failures which cascade to food systems. In addition, feedback loops across the nexus could create compounding vulnerabilities, as failures in one system may propagate to another. Potential disruptions such as population growth, climate change, and interruptions to energy and water supply cause problems in food, energy, and water systems that combine and cascade to have downstream impacts on food supply and farm viability, which feed back into population growth in an iterative cycle.
Farms with diminished yields by cause. In 2013, Arizona farms reporting reduced yields attributed them primarily to water shortage and irrigation equipment failure, while the cost of water or energy shortage and price increases accounted for most of the remaining diminished yields (Vilsack and Reilly 2014). Arizona farms relied on irrigation for 100% of their total sales and 419 farms discontinued irrigation in 2013 (Vilsack and Reilly 2014).
Climate change already has significant negative impacts on agriculture in the United States, causing substantial economic costs and raising serious questions about the vulnerability of food supply chain3. The Southwest is especially challenged due its rapidly increasing population, changing land use and land cover, limited water supplies, and long-term drought4. Arizona is largely a semi-arid desert receiving only 20.4 cm of rain across only 36 days per year on average and with an average yearly temperature of 24° centigrade. Despite a resulting reliance on imported water andsprawling housing developmentsreducing available arable land, Arizona has a strong agricultural history and significant specialty crop production.5 The strain of irrigation required for agriculture is manifested in crop losses for Arizona farmers, as reflected in figure 3, showing key drivers of yield loss as water shortage, water costs, energy costs, and equipment failure. In 2013 these problems affected about 15% of irrigated farmland in Arizona.
Failures in the Arizona food-energy-water nexus could cause disruptions throughout the Southwest as food supply chains for urban centers like El Paso, Los Angeles, and San Diego shift. There is also the potential for cascading impacts because these cities have their own exports which might be disrupted. As cities throughout the Southwest look to meet their own needs, there may be a significant change in food supply across the region. Regardless of potential systematic failures and reductions in crop yields, it is very likely that consumptive water use will increase as average temperature increases. Sustainable food supplies in Phoenix and Tucson, as well as other agriculturally productive regions of the Southwest, will require a greater amount of water drawn from sources that are already strained.
The Crystal River flows through the Gunnison County town of Marble, seen here with Beaver Lake. A representative from the Town of Marble is expected to participate in a subcommittee focused on an intergovernmental agreement to protect the river. CREDIT: ECOFLIGHT
May 27, 2026
Five Colorado governments, including Pitkin County, and water entities have officially entered into a landmark intergovernmental agreement to protect the Crystal River from mainstem dams and out-of-basin water diversions.
The agreement comes at the recommendation of the Crystal River Wild and Scenic and Other Alternatives Steering Committee from March 2024, suggested as one of three potential long-term preservation measures, according to a press release. Along with Pitkin County, the Colorado River Water Conservation District, Gunnison County, town of Marble and West Divide Water Conservancy District formalized their shared commitment to oppose any new on-channel reservoirs on the mainstem of the Crystal River and any trans-basin diversions that would export water out of the watershed.
Each stage of a big construction project has its own challenges and puzzles to solve along the way. Raising Gross Dam is no different.
Denver Water is raising the height of the dam by 131 feet, with the final 22 feet going up this spring in two sections that are separated by a giant gap. The Gross Reservoir Expansion Project, which began construction in 2022, is designed to nearly triple the reservoir’s storage capacity. Major construction work resumed in April following a winter break.
And this year’s construction puzzles included:
How to move concrete across a 160-foot gap between where the concrete is made and where it’s placed?
And, how do you move construction vehicles across that same gap when work on the first section is finished?
“We are building the top of the dam in two sections because we need to leave a 160-foot gap in the middle of the dam for the spillway channel,” said Casey Dick, Denver Water’s deputy program manager for the Gross Reservoir Expansion Project.
Denver Water is building the last 22 feet of Gross Dam in two sections. The photo shows the left side at its new height. The right side’s last 22 feet will be finished in June. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Spillway channels are safety features on dams that allow water to safely flow out of a reservoir if needed due to flooding rains or exceptionally high and rapid snowmelt.
Raising the dam’s last two major sections, while leaving a 160-foot gap between them, meant coming up with a new way to move concrete across the construction site.
On the lower portion of the dam, crews worked on one continuous structure, which allowed trucks and equipment to easily move from one side of the dam to the other, and to move concrete from the batch plant down a large chute to where it was put into place.
However, with the final 22 feet going up in two sections, construction crews had to find a way to deliver concrete from the batch plant and across the 160-foot spillway gap as the first section went up.
The solution to this puzzle? A series of conveyors positioned in the middle of the dam that tilted higher as the first section rose higher.
“Building the new conveyor system is just another example of all the ingenuity we go through out here to build the dam,” Dick said. “With each new phase, there are new challenges that our team has to figure out.”
The new conveyor system moved concrete across the gap where the spillway channel will be to the far side of the dam. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Construction crews finished placing roller-compacted concrete on the dam’s left side on May 12.
But once that was done, crews faced the second challenge: How do you move the equipment off the finished, 22-foot higher section of the dam, across the spillway gap, down to where they are needed to complete the second section?
Short answer: If you can’t go over, go around.
Cranes lifted equipment off the higher section of the dam to the road, where the machines convoyed about 4.5 miles around to the other side using the dam’s access road.
A crane lifts a piece of equipment off the dam. Because of the new spillway gap, equipment was driven across the dam’s access road to get into position on the other side of the dam. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Construction on the final 22 feet of the second side of the dam began at the end of May and is expected to be completed in June.
Once the second section is done this summer, a year’s worth of remaining work includes: finishing the top of the dam, building safety walls; constructing the actual spillway; building a bridge over the spillway and completing the stilling basin at the bottom of the dam.
This view from the bottom of the dam shows the new baffle blocks on the bottom of the stilling basin. The baffle blocks reduce the energy of the water that flows down the spillway. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Full construction on the dam raising project is expected to wrap up in mid-2027.
“There are hundreds of logistical challenges throughout this project, but our team has been able to meet every one of them along the way,” Dick said. “We’re making good progress so far in 2026 and are looking forward to getting a lot of work done in the coming months.”
The Gross Reservoir Expansion Project involves raising the height of the existing dam by 131 feet. The dam will be built out and will have “steps” made of roller-compacted concrete to reach the new height. Image credit: Denver Water
The Clifton Water District announced Wednesday that it would join the list of utility providers implementing temporary drought rates, with a press release about the change calling for community members to take action with other drought mitigation efforts.
“The Clifton Water District urges all customers to take immediate steps to reduce water usage wherever possible,” the press release said. “Small changes — such as limiting outdoor watering, repairing leaks, and using water-efficient appliances — can collectively make a significant impact … By working together, Clifton residents can help ensure that safe and reliable water remains available for essential needs now and in the future.”
The change won’t alter billing for those using less than 3,000 gallons of water per month, much like similar rate restrictions recently announced by other providers. Clifton Water said it hoped to encourage prudent water usage with the higher rates. The district said the rates would remain in place “only until watershed conditions show meaningful improvement,” a stipulation that could mean Clifton Water customers are in for a long summer, with forecasts suggesting a historically dry year and winter snowpack widely observed at record-low levels.
Green Mountain Reservoir is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and located in Summit County north of Silverthorne along the Blue River. Photo credit: Denver Water.
The state and the Colorado River Water Conservation District, a public water policy and planning agency on the Western Slope, have a new plan to protect mountain towns from losing their water supply during an unprecedented drought this summer. The District’s proposed emergency water supply plan was approved at the Colorado Water Conservation Board meeting on Wednesday, May 20, 2026…The emergency plan would protect certain water users on the main stem of the Colorado River by replacing water that would have historically come from Green Mountain Reservoir. This year forecasts say it won’t fill up for the first time in history…A portion of the reservoir is reserved for what’s called the “historic users pool,” which holds 66,000 acre-feet of water…It’s an important emergency water supply plan that protects approximately 250 municipal and domestic water entities across the Colorado River Basin from being called out due to senior water rights claims. It was created as part of the Colorado Big Thompson project, a massive water engineering project that created reservoirs and redirected Colorado River water to Front Range cities…After a drought in 1977, water managers set aside the historic user pool for agricultural and domestic users. It’s historically always been filled and available to protect those water rights from being usurped by more senior users…Every year, a group of agricultural and utility entities in the Grand Valley near Grand Junction makes what’s called the “Cameo call” to use water from it. It’s the largest and most senior call on the main stem of the river and demands that they get enough water for their needs. That includes the Grand Valley Water Users Association, Grand Valley Irrigation Company, Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, Palisade Irrigation District, and Mesa County Irrigation District. The call is made annually, generally between June and August. This year, the fear is that if that water demand is called early, there won’t be enough water for upstream towns and municipalities, including Silverthorne, Eagle River, and Grand, Garfield and Mesa counties…
The River District plans to borrow water from other reservoirs — the nearby Wolford Mountain and Ruedi reservoirs — to replace the water that would have come from Green Mountain and to prevent the Cameo call from being made…At the meeting, the board committed to support the move with $585,000, in addition to $342,000 the District committed last month.
“Instead of having to turn off all of these cities’ water rights up here and the farms and ranches up above the Grand Valley, the Green Mountain historic user pool would release water to meet the Cameo call and protect the West Slope users. It is a really appropriate use of that water,” Mueller told CPR News.
Colorado-Big Thompson Project map. Courtesy of Northern Water.
Denver Water customers have yet to embrace a strict water diet this year, cutting water use just 5% this month as the outdoor watering season begins.
The utility, which serves 1.5 million customers, has asked residents and businesses to slash water use by 20% this summer to combat extreme drought.
At the same time, reservoirs, unable to refill after melting snows evaporated early due to a surprising March heatwave, are dropping. The utility said its storage system is just 79% full, down from the 89% mark normally seen at this time of year.
Denver Water officials said they’re not disappointed with their customers, in part because they’re asking homeowners and businesses to adopt habits they haven’t had to use in years.
“We didn’t expect them to be saving 20% right away,” said Greg Fisher, Denver’s manager of water supply planning. “It’s been 13 years since we were under mandatory drought restrictions. It takes a few months to get up and running on this.”
Aurora homeowners and businesses have cut use 6.5%, Aurora Water spokesperson Shonnie Cline said. And the city’s reservoirs are similarly low, standing at just 56% full. This time last year they were 66% full.
At issue is Colorado’s drought emergency. Mountain snows, which provide the majority of the state’s water supplies, hit critical lows this year and then melted off in a March heat wave that also set records, with temperatures soaring into the 80-degree to 90-degree range.
In response, cities across the state imposed strict watering restrictions, pleading with customers to sharply limit water use so that water stored in reservoirs can be preserved as long as possible.
That reservoir levels are dropping in May is unprecedented, Fisher said. “Levels usually would be rising now,” he said. “But ours are dropping.”
Rains this month have helped. The most recent forecasts indicate that summer monsoons may be wetter than normal and a developing El Niño weather pattern later this year could deliver more liquid relief, according to Russ Schumacher, director of Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center.
Rains won’t necessarily help refill reservoirs, but they will help reduce the summer demand for water, meaning less needs to be released from the giant storage pools.
Utilities hope their customers will use the rains that may come as a good reason to turn off their sprinklers.
“We need to use Mother Nature as much as we can,” Fisher said. “You can literally just take a week off.”
Colorado Springs is one of the few cities that hasn’t imposed special water restrictions because its reservoirs, at the start of the watering season, were fairly full. Its normal watering schedule limits sprinkler use to three days a week, according to Colorado Springs Utilities spokesperson Jennifer Johnson. The utility actually saw water use rise slightly in May.
On Colorado’s Western Slope, the situation is also dire. This month the Colorado River District and the Colorado Water Conservation Board agreed to use water from special conservation pools in Ruedi and Wolford Mountain reservoirs to help small towns that are in danger of running out of water, and to provide some help to Western Slope farmers and the fish trying to survive in streams that are drying out.
Roughly half of the water that serves Denver and other Front Range communities comes from the Western Slope and the Colorado River. It is transferred through tunnels to the Front Range. Reductions in water use by Denver and other cities will take some of the stress off the Colorado River.
Lindsay DeFrates, deputy communications director for the Colorado River District, said the district is asking Western Slope towns to water just one day a week.
The district manages the Colorado River and represents 15 Western Slope counties. It has no authority to impose restrictions on mountain communities, but it is still pushing hard for a broad-based commitment to turn off the sprinklers.
“And obviously,” DeFrates said, “we’re hoping Front Range cities will do the same.”
Public bicycle parking at W. 44th & Tennyson May 29, 2026. A family friend could not lock up his bicycle here last weekend when he rode in from Wheat Ridge to attend a concert at the Oriental Theatre.
Public bicycle parking near W. 39th & Tennyson May 29, 2026. Most of the public bicycle parking is available but Veo vehicles are in the Loading Zone area.
Public bicycle parking free of Veo vehicles at W. 41st & Tennyson May 29, 2026.
All the public bicycle parking available at W.43rd & Tennyson May 29, 2026. Note the Veo vehicles on the public right-of-way across the street, not in a loading zone or street parking for cars and trucks.
A mini-sandstorm partially obscures the Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell. Dropping reservoir levels are forcing officials to move the marina to a deeper part of the lake. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Maybe sitting next to the wall of plate glass windows was not the smartest move, I thought, as a sienna-colored cloud of sand lifted up from the lakeside and made its way in my direction. I had just tucked into my $16 grilled chicken sandwich at the Anasazi Restaurant at Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell when the wind kicked up, sandblasting the windows and causing a sizable milk crate to slide back and forth along the railings of the patio outside. It was an eerie scene. Had this been an apocalyptic cli-fi film set in a calamitously aridified West, this would have been the moment when a pterodactyl-like creature smashed through the window and plopped down all bloody and sandy in my plate of fries, an omen of the horrors to come.
It was not, however, a film. The dystopian scene was real as was the aridification, though it did not include any prehistoric creatures — only a handful of staff and other diners who, much to my dismay, seemed utterly unperturbed by the sandstorm and the havoc it was wreaking on a set of outdoor furniture. And, outside, a few ravens who seemed delighted to frolic in the gusts’ updrafts.
When we think of climate change’s effects, we might imagine communities inundated by rising seas, unhoused folks exposed to ever more severe heat waves, or entire towns wiped out by megafires. I was here at Bullfrog to see how a warmer and drier climate is affecting the communities, infrastructure, and economies that rose up around and depend upon Lake Powell-based recreation.
Bullfrog is the largest and most extensive marina on Lake Powell’s northern end. It has a 48-room hotel, the aforementioned restaurant, a gas station and convenience store, an RV park, and other lodging, along with its own school, which this year had four students in grades K-6. The population of some 50 to 100 consists mostly of employees of the National Park Service and Aramark, the private concessionaire that runs the reservoir’s marinas and other facilities. Nearby Ticaboo, which lies outside Glen Canyon National Recreation Area but also relies on Lake Powell recreation, has another 50 to 100 residents. The nearest incorporated town is Hanksville, some 67 miles to the north.
Bullfrog Creek along the southern end of the Burr Trail and Bullfrog Bay on Lake Powell in the distance. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Bullfrog lies at the end of the road on a bay at the mouth of Bullfrog Creek, where the water is shallower than on the main channel of the Colorado River, making the marina and its facilities more vulnerable to dropping water levels. While the main boat ramp is still being used, it will likely become unusable later this summer as the reservoir’s surface levels falls toward 3,500 feet. In coming weeks, the entire floating marina will be towed across the reservoir to deeper water adjacent to Halls Crossing Marina; Bullfrog’s fuel and boat rental docks have already been moved. The ferry between Bullfrog and Halls Crossing isn’t functional at low water levels, so is expected to be out of commission for the rest of this year, making for a 145-mile car trip between the facilities at Bullfrog and the boat ramps and marina at Halls Crossing.
I visited Bullfrog on a Sunday in mid-May. Because I needed to do some internet-related work early on Monday morning, I stayed in the hotel. I initially regretted not staying in the campground, since it was mostly empty and had a strong cell phone signal, but when the tent-shredding winds and skin blasting sands kicked up I was happy to be ensconced in more secure lodging, especially given the relatively reasonable price.
It was the high tourist season elsewhere in Canyon Country. The trailhead parking lots at Capitol Reef National Park were all full or overflowing that morning as I drove through, and Torrey had been busy during my stay there for a writing conference. As I slowly made my way down the Notom Road and Burr Trail, stopping frequently to gaze at the curves and crevices in the Waterpocket Fold and for a quick bike ride, I saw maybe a half-dozen other vehicles.
Waterpocket Fold. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Waterpocket Fold detail. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Bullfrog, meanwhile, was decidedly quiet. The hotel was nearly empty. Only a few sites in the RV park were occupied, and I later saw that most of the sites were out of order and closed. A couple of dozen cars, at the very most, were parked on the only operable boat ramp. The shelves on the little convenience store were sparsely stocked, and a box of Triscuits was going for $7.50 — though there was no cheese to accompany them — and gas was selling for $5.17. In May of 2000, the Bullfrog District received 33,000 visits, according to National Park Service statistics; in May 2025 only 10,886 visitors passed through the entrance gate. Current numbers aren’t yet available, but I imagine this year’s visitation will be far lower. And once the boat ramp ceases to function, I imagine the numbers will plummet further.
Boats, redrock, and snowy Henry Mountains at Bullfrog Marina. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The National Park Service is planning to build a new, deeper-water boat launch at Stanton Creek, a couple of miles from central Bullfrog, where the marina can be moved permanently. The project is expected to cost some $73 million, and won’t be completed this year. It’s a type of climate adaptation, I suppose, though one can’t help wonder how long the fix will last if the reservoir’s levels keep dropping.
Meanwhile, Bullfrog’s future is in doubt. A series of especially snowy winters in the high country might be enough to bring Bullfrog back from the edge of obsolescence. Maybe they won’t even need the Stanton Creek site. On the other hand, just one more below-average snowpack year could doom Lake Powell altogether. If Colorado River flows don’t increase substantially in the next year or two, the Bureau of Reclamation will have little choice but to build tunnels to bypass Glen Canyon Dam and effectively drain the reservoir in order to keep water running into the Grand Canyon and on to Lake Mead.
The question then would be whether Bullfrog could (or would even want to) adapt to a different sort of tourism.
The place might try to cater to hikers and small-watercraft users looking to check out newly revealed parts of Glen Canyon that have been inundated for the last several decades. And it could lure travelers exploring the greater region’s backcountry, though it’s not clear that type of visitor is going to be interested in the type of accommodations and services Bullfrog currently offers. Maybe it will just become a destination for disaster-tourist voyeurs looking to see the effects of climate change in real-time. Or, perhaps Bullfrog will become another Hite Marina, which the shrinking reservoir has left high and dry, its boat ramp separated from the lake by some six miles, the store and campground permanently shuttered and gated off.
Sightseers at Hite Overlook gazing down at the “Dominy Formation” of silt left behind by the receding waters of Lake Powell. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Hite Marina and boat ramp on what once was the northern end of Lake Powell. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The last time I visited Bullfrog was in the late 1980s. My dad, my brother, and I camped at Halls Crossing, then woke up and rode the ferry across the lake. From there we made an epic loop around and over the Henry Mountains along the then-unimproved Burr Trail and another gnarly road in our 1967 Pontiac Catalina. It took at least eight hours and involved some extensive road-building to keep the boat-like vehicle from bottoming out. Anyway, I remember Bullfrog as being a bustling resort with a sort of spring break party vibe, relative to the more bare-bones Halls Crossing. Of course, those were the glory days for Lake Powell, when the reservoir was full, and at the end of a bone-jarring drive across the desert one could stop at the Hite Marina for refreshments.
That night I listened to the sand batter the sliding glass door of my hotel room. The next morning, the reservoir’s placid waters reflected dawn’s first light, and the distant sandstone dunes seemed to glow from within. And to the north, a fresh coating of snow covered the craggy slopes of the Henry Mountains, promising a little bit of relief from these dry and trying times.
Henry Mountains. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
📸 Parting Shots 🎞️
Early light, the Colorado River canyon, and the Henry Mountains from the White Canyon drainage. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Apache Plume and canyon in Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
During the week, a highly variable weather pattern brought wide temperature swings to much of the contiguous United States. An unusually cold airmass that had settled over the Plains at the start of the week pushed eastward, bringing a rapid and stormy end to the early season heat wave across the Eastern Seaboard. In contrast, the West baked under much above normal temperatures. By mid-week, much above-normal temperatures had returned to the Plains, with daily maximum temperatures climbing into the upper 90s in some locations. As temperatures began to rebound across the East, cooler air overspread the Pacific states by the end of the week.
The strong temperature gradients that set up across the Nation, coupled with ample Gulf moisture streaming northward resulted in widespread heavy and persistent precipitation, with many locations exceeding two inches from eastern Texas and Oklahoma northeastward to the mid-Atlantic states, and isolated instances of 6 or more inches in some spots. Widespread rainfall, albeit with lighter accumulations, fell across the north-central Plains as daily temperatures warmed, but mostly dry weather prevailed across the upper Mississippi Valley and western Corn Belt. West of the Rockies, mostly dry weather prevailed for most of the week, but showers associated with a strong cold front overspread the Northwest at the very end of the period…
As below-normal temperatures transitioned back to a hot pattern across the High Plains, widespread precipitation moved through the region. Areas of convection brought up to 2 inches of rain to portions of eastern Nebraska and eastern Colorado, while amounts were generally an inch or less elsewhere. This precipitation was sufficient to bring some drought reduction across northern and northeastern Colorado, but drier conditions across southeastern Colorado and Kansas, coupled with hot temperatures, resulted in degradation. A sharp cutoff in precipitation was also noted across the far western Dakotas, where small areas of degradation were noted along the borders with Wyoming and Montana…
Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending May 26, 2026.
Mostly dry weather and above-normal temperatures dominated the Western Region during the week sparking some small-scale degradation across Montana, Idaho, and New Mexico, where the effects of the meager winter snow cover are beginning to be felt in falling streamflow values. Status quo was maintained west of the Rockies for the most part, as reservoir conditions remain good across California during a climatologically dry time of year. At the end of the week, a strong cold front brought abnormal moisture to the Northwest and northern Rockies. While not sufficient to substantively alter the drought depiction, a modest reduction in abnormal dryness was noted in far northwestern Washington…
Widespread heavy rainfall overspread the Southern Region, with amounts increasing from west to east. Accumulations of 2 to locally more than 5 inches fell across most of Tennessee, engendering widespread drought reduction. Rainfall was locally heavy but a bit spottier across Louisiana and Arkansas, which also saw widespread drought reduction but with less coverage. Across Texas, heavy rainfall across the eastern half of the state yielded drought improvements and also localized flooding. Across North Texas, localized convection brought relief to some areas, but hot conditions resulted in degradation where precipitation did not occur…
Looking Ahead
During the upcoming week, a late season storm system across the West is forecast to bring abnormal moisture to California, Oregon, and Washington, with precipitation spreading eastward to the northern Rockies by mid-week. The heaviest accumulations are forecast across the southern Cascades. Periods of convection are favored across the Plains states throughout the week, with the WPC 7-day quantitative precipitation outlook showing a potential for 1 inch or locally more across portions of Nebraska and Kansas, where Gulf moisture advection is most pronounced. Across the eastern third of the CONUS, unsettled weather is favored to continue across the Southeast, with the focus of heaviest precipitation shifting towards Florida and the south Atlantic coastal plain. A slow moving cold front is forecast to push east during the period, maintaining showery weather across the Deep South while cooler and drier conditions overspread the Corn Belt and Northeast.
During Week-2, the trough over the East is favored to rapidly de-amplify, with temperatures quickly moderating. Above-normal temperatures are favored across the West and northern tier of the CONUS on the latest CPC 8-14 day outlook, with mostly near-normal temperatures the most likely outcome across the South and Southeast regions. Unsettled weather and continued precipitation may play a role in keeping hot weather at bay across the southern tier. The CPC 8-14 day precipitation outlook favors above-normal precipitation across the Four Corners states eastward along the southern tier to the Atlantic coastline as far north as Virginia. Near normal precipitation is favored elsewhere, except for a small wet signal over the Pacific Northwest. Above-normal precipitation is favored for eastern Alaska, while above-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation are both favored for Hawaii.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending May 26, 2026.
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
May 26, 2026
Dissonance exists between life-close-to-normal policies regarding urban water use and the growing crisis on the river
Casually surveying the urban landscapes in much of Colorado’s Front Range, you’d never know that the Colorado River — the source for roughly half the water of the cities — has deteriorated to its most pitiful shape of perhaps the last century.
Oh, yes, some utilities — notably Denver Water and Aurora Water, which together serve 1.9 million residents — have imposed rigorous stage-one drought watering restrictions. Outdoor irrigation is allowed twice per week and never during the heat of day. Other water utilities that tap Colorado River water, however, have asked only for voluntary cutbacks, if any at all.
Jeff Lukas via the Western Water Assessment.
Jeff Lukas, a water consultant with several decades invested in climate change work, says this seeming aloofness of some cities will not persist indefinitely. That is certainly true if the record heat and abnormal dryness of the past winter continues into 2027. They may have no choice.
“I think Front Range cities will be asked, whether nicely or not, to reduce their Colorado River diversions,” said Lukas in a May 11 webinar. “The mechanism for that is unclear, but I think it’s going to happen.”
Water rights of the Front Range cities — and many of those on the Western Slope, too — are junior to the Colorado River Compact. It was negotiated in 1922, making diversions more recent than that junior.
Problems in the basin were becoming apparent in the 1990s. The warming climate in this century has provoked changes. By all accounts, they have not been enough.
Lukas, as a dendrochronologist at the Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research in Boulder 20 years ago, was teasing out evidence from tree rings to understand the climates of the Colorado River Basin during the last 1,200 years.
Later, as a scientist with the Western Water Assessment, Lukas co-authored (with Liz Peyton) a 2020 report called Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology: State of the Science. That 500-page report integrated more than 800peer-reviewed studies to help water managers understand physical processes, climate risks, and forecasting tools across the basin.
In 2024, with the state climatologist, Russ Schumacher, and several others, Lukas turned out the 100-page volume called “Climate Change in Colorado.”
Based in Lafayette, Lukas now works as a consultant. At Lukas Climate Research and Consulting, he specializes in the overlapping areas of climate hazards, water resources, and ecosystems.
Lukas, in a presentation he titled “Running dry on the Colorado River: The roots of the crisis & its implications for the Front Range,” explained the big picture and Colorado’s Front Range part in it.
Defined by the Continental Divide, Colorado has an inverse relationship between its eastern and western slopes. About 90% of the state’s residents live to the east, nearly all at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, whereas 80% of the state’s precipitation originates on the west side, in the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries.
Snow from the Gore Range and other “islands” of precipitation in Colorado provide 50% to 60% of the water in the Colorado River. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Colorado itself provides 50% to 60% of the water in the entire Colorado River, depending upon the year. This year has been a terrible year everywhere in the basin, Colorado included.
Lukas explained that “islands of moisture” provide nearly all the water in this 244,000-square-mile basin. The high mountains constitute these islands. Some places deliver more than others. Buffalo Pass, near Steamboat, famously has had prodigious volumes of snow. This snow, when melted, can produce 50 inches of water.
It takes 20 inches or more of precipitation in these mountain islands to produce meaningful runoff. Even then, it doesn’t all end up in the Colorado River. In Colorado and the three upper-basin states, he said, 16% of the rain and snow that falls becomes water in the Colorado River. In the hotter lower basin, the figure is 3%.
“The atmosphere takes back most of what it giveth, even in the wetter upper basin,” he said.
Evaporation and transpiration are the pickpockets of this water. Heat produces evaporation, and we’ve had plenty of that this year.
Temperatures during November through April were the warmest on record in Colorado for that span of months. March heat was exceptional. This produced runoff in the rivers that in most cases may surpass that of May or June, the traditional times for peak runoff. Peak runoff has been trending earlier by several weeks during the last few decades, but this was a leap of about two months.
Runoff for April through July — a time that normally accounts for 70% to 80% of annual streamflows — this year will likely deliver no better than 20% to 40%. In its May report, the Bureau of Reclamation said April flows into Lake Powell were 40% of the average during the last 30 years and it expects flows in May to sink to 9% of that average.
Can it get any worse? Count on it, said Lukas.
“We should expect not every year to look like 2026 from here on out, but more years in the future will look like 2026. And somewhere down the pipe, not as far in the future as we would like, there will be a year worse than 2026 for the Colorado River.”
Members of the Colorado River Commission, in Santa Fe in 1922, after signing the Colorado River Compact. From left, W. S. Norviel (Arizona), Delph E. Carpenter (Colorado), Herbert Hoover (Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of Commission), R. E. Caldwell (Utah), Clarence C. Stetson (Executive Secretary of Commission), Stephen B. Davis, Jr. (New Mexico), Frank C. Emerson (Wyoming), W. F. McClure (California), and James G. Scrugham (Nevada) CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY WATER RESOURCES ARCHIVE via Aspen Journalism
This is so very different from what was assumed by the delegates from the seven basin states who gathered in 1922 in Santa Fe to apportion the Colorado River.
The role of reservoirs
Taking the big, long-term view, Lukas pointed out that the overall story of the Colorado River is one of modifications needed to suit human uses. “It’s all about smoothing out the natural variability in the availability of water over space and over time.”
Reservoirs are the primary means by which humans have been able to “smooth out the natural variability.”
The Colorado River Basin has 60 million acre-feet of storage. That’s four times the annual flow. Five-sixths of the storage capacity is found in the desert in two vessels: lakes Mead and Powell. The headwaters have many reservoirs but they are relatively small. The total storage capacity is 2,000 times more than the volume of Dillon Reservoir.
Illustration from the report, “Antique Plumbing & Leadership Postponed” from the Utah Rivers Council, Glen Canyon Institute and the Great Basin Water Network. Courtesy of Utah Rivers Council
Since 2000, stored water in those two big buckets, Mead and Powell, has declined from 49 million acre-feet to 16 million acre-feet as of May. Of that, 9 million lies at elevations below the lowest outlets. These are called dead pools.
Those delegates in 1922 who crafted the Colorado River Compact, the legal document that provided the basis for nearly all these dams and aqueducts subsequently built, assumed annual flows of 17 million to 18 million acre-feet. They were overly optimistic. The 20th century average was 15.2 million acre-feet.
Now comes the 21st century, and the average at Lee Ferry has dipped to 12.2 million acre-feet. This has implications for the Front Range cities but also farms. If Colorado must reduce its diversions to accord with the compact, those rights dated before 1922 will be exempt from reductions. The giant transmountain diversions have come more recently, as have many of the diversions for towns and cities on the Western Slope.
Accumulating evidence fingers human-caused climate change with large amounts of responsibility for declined flows. Lukas said his rule of thumb is that the role of greenhouse gases overall are responsible for two-thirds of lower flows.
Colorado statewide annual temperature anomaly (°F) with respect to the 1901-2000 average. Graphic credit: Colorado Climate Center
As for the mechanics of this shift, rising heat is one important “knob,” said Lukas. As the atmosphere warms, it reduces “runoff efficiency” even more, sending water into the atmosphere instead of into streams and then rivers. Accumulating evidence fingers human-caused climate change with responsibility for most and possibly all of increased temperatures.
Precipitation has declined about 5% since 2000, with a larger reduction in spring, an important time of year to get moisture. Here, the link to the warming climate is less clear. “It seems increasingly likely that climate change is changing the dynamics of storm tracks and the persistence of, say, high-pressure systems over the interior West,” said Lukas. “That is, at least in part, responsible for why we’ve had less precipitation since 2000.”
The Colorado River, though, had problems even before the warming climate began throwing sharp elbows in water volumes. The reservoirs of the Colorado River Basin were 92% full in 1999, a wet decade overall. Even then, however, the Colorado River had ceased to reach the Pacific Ocean. There were too many straws inserted.
Less than 12% of the river’s flow goes to urbanized and industrial uses. Lukas pointed out that cities have become more efficient in their use of water. The rule of thumb for Denver and other Western cities is that one acre-feet of water meets the needs of a three households on an annual basis. That compares with two households a few decades ago.
Mining of fossil fuels and minerals uses a small amount. Evaporation from reservoirs and rivers and other “system losses” accounts for about 15%.
That takes us to agriculture. It uses 75% of the river’s water in the Colorado River for irrigation on 5 million acres. Some of that land lies outside the basin itself. That includes the South Platte and Arkansas River valleys of eastern Colorado.
Over half of that water — about 9 million acre-feet — gets used to grow feed for livestock, mainly alfalfa and pasture grass.
Might cities want to cut deals with farmers to “share” the water? This discussion has been underway for at least 15 to 20 years. Some pilot projects in Colorado and elsewhere have been launched to see what this might look like. A strong proponent has been James Eklund, a water attorney in Denver. Others question how this is done and, for that matter, whether we want to do it. But certainly, water for urban uses has higher monetary value than growing hay to feed cattle.
Why the restraint of cities?
As for the Front Range cities, the big question is whether they are planning for a river that produces even less than it does now.
In 2024, Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, suggested the need to start planning for a river that may deliver less than 10 million acre-feet in coming decades. Some thought then that the state engineer, Jason Ullman, needed to start sorting through this matter of junior vs. senior rights. Jim Lochhead, a former water attorney on the Western Slope and later CEO of Denver Water, pushed back, saying it was premature given the huge amount of work that would be required. See: “Heading for the Colorado River Cliff,” Big Pivots, Oct. 20, 2024.
At the Zoom session on May 11, I asked Lukas about the modest watering restrictions by Front Range water providers. He had previously described mixed signals from the water utilities. If 2027 is dry again, expect more uniformity around drought restrictions. “But it’s pretty weird right now,” he said.
With the attention to the Colorado River in the news media, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for the water utilities to mount more aggressive campaigns. Any idea why they had not, I wondered.
The utilities, he said, are reluctant to deliver regulations that produce discomfort around outdoor water-use restrictions. They don’t want to do this unless absolutely necessary.
Part of this is because of experiences during the covid epidemic. A lesson to public servants during that time made them more reluctant to push the public to do things they don’t want to do. “You only want to exercise that authority, that public legal authority, sparingly and only when it’s clear that is what is really necessary.”
Revenue was another consideration. Water infrastructure is expensive, and the money to pay for it comes from charges for water use. By imposing limits, you reduce revenue and hence must charge more for water. The conundrum is that reducing use doesn’t necessarily mean you pay less. In some cases, less water may require more infrastructure. This is a hard message to convey.
“What you’re seeing is a dissonance between the circumstances and what’s happening, at least this year,” he said.
Or at least right now. We have had rainy weather in May. Some meteorologists think we may end up with healthy rainfall this summer. If instead the summer is like the winter, very hot and dry, I expect the utilities might pick up their game.
