Getches-Wilkinson Center: The Colorado River Upper Initial Units Take Center Stage — Eric Kuhn, Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara

Click the link to read the report on the Getches-Wilkinson Center website (Eric Kuhn,* Anne Castle,† Jack Schmidt,‡ Kathryn Sorensen,§ Katherine Tara**). Here’s the Introduction:

October 6, 2026

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

In 1956, Congress authorized the Upper Initial Units—Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Navajo Reservoir, and the Aspinall Unit (UIUs)—for a variety of water use purposes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact (1922 Compact). The historical record is clear that the primary reason these reservoirs exist is to satisfy the math of the 1922 Compact and the obligations it imposed on the Upper Division States regarding flows at Lee Ferry.

The size and operation of the UIUs was based on the math of the river as we understood it from the 1930s through the mid-1950s (natural flows, projected uses, and the drought of record). This math no longer works. Total water use in the Colorado River Basin has consistently exceeded the available supply since 2000. Until this fundamental problem is solved, releasing water from the UIUs only delays necessary permanent reductions in water use and provides some degree of temporary management flexibility.

The 1948 Upper Basin Compact contemplates delivery of a required quantity of water at Lee Ferry. Article V gives the Upper Colorado River Commission (UCRC) the authority to allocate the capacity of the UIUs between providing water for use within the Upper Division States and providing water for common benefit purposes (delivering water to Lee Ferry). The policy has always been that 100% of the capacity of Navajo Reservoir is allocated for water use in New Mexico and 100% of the capacities of Blue Mesa and Flaming Gorge Reservoirs is allocated for common benefit purposes.

There is no doubt that Flaming Gorge and Blue Mesa Reservoirs exist to meet a portion of the obligation of the Upper Division States under Article III of the 1922 Compact. As of October 1, 2026, the ten-year Lee Ferry flow will be about 81.2 million acre-feet (MAF), and under the Lower Division States’ interpretation of the 1922 Compact, the Upper Division States may be in a compact deficit by 800,000 acre-feet (or more).

Yet over 2.0 MAF of water remains in active storage in Flaming Gorge Reservoir; more than enough water to erase the deficit and put the Upper Division states back in compact compliance as interpreted by the Lower Basin, if only for the short term.

The Upper Division States assert that they are in full compliance with the 1922 Compact.¹ Thus, in their view, delivering additional UIU water to Lee Ferry now would be a waste of stored water that they may need in the future. They question why yet another reservoir should be further drawn down when the Basin has not solved the fundamental problem of demand exceeding supply.

The stored water available in Flaming Gorge Reservoir has increased in importance to the entire basin. The Lower Division states view it as a source of water that can be delivered at Lee Ferry to supplement the releases from Lake Powell and thereby fulfill the obligations of the Upper Division States under the 1922 Compact. The Bureau of Reclamation is using Flaming Gorge as a source of water to protect critical infrastructure at Glen Canyon Dam, including hydropower generation. The Upper Division States view Flaming Gorge as a source of water for their current and future benefit; the water stored there could be used to comply with an adverse decision by a court or Special Master.

There remain unresolved issues concerning the use of water stored in the UIUs, with seemingly conflicting provisions in the 1948 Upper Basin Compact and the 1970 Long-Range Operating Criteria that currently govern the operation of these reservoirs. These issues could govern future releases from the UIUs but have not been explicitly addressed in the Post-2026 Record of Decision or the 2027-2028 Operating Rules.

The math of the 1922 Compact and its Lee Ferry flow provision, together with the directives of the Long-Range Operating Criteria, can no longer be reconciled with today’s hydrology and long-term average basin-wide consumptive use. The Basin States can argue about compliance with various conflicting provisions, but the fundamental problem is that the rules were designed for a different river. We need new operating rules that reflect the river we have today. The choice in finding these new rules is likely to be between a compromise that is painful to all parties or a zero-sum Supreme Court decision that determines who gets what little water there is and who does not.

INTRODUCTION²

The 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act (1956 CRSPA)³ authorized construction of Glen Canyon Dam, which created Lake Powell, and three additional major upstream storage projects; Flaming Gorge Dam and Reservoir, Navajo Dam and Reservoir, and the Curecanti Unit (Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, and Crystal Dams and Reservoirs, now called the Aspinall Unit). The 1956 CRSPA was designed as a broad authorization for Upper Basin water development within the bounds of the 1922 Compact. The legislation authorized construction of storage dams, powerplants,⁴ numerous irrigation projects, and trans-basin diversions. Among the purposes of 1956 CRSPA were “regulating the flow of the Colorado River, storing water for beneficial consumptive use, making it possible for the States of the Upper Basin to utilize, consistently with provisions of the Colorado River Compact, the apportionments made to and among them in the Colorado River Compact and the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact, respectively . . ..”⁵ Flaming Gorge, Navajo, and the Aspinall Unit⁶ are collectively referred to as the “Upper Initial Units” (hereafter, UIUs). The three UIUs’ total live storage capacity is 6.15 million acre-feet (MAF), of which 5.10 MAF is “active” storage.⁷ On October 1, 2026, the total live storage in the three reservoir systems was 3.47 MAF. The Appendix contains a detailed description of each of the UIUs, with information on capacity, operations, and contract obligations.

For over 60 years, the three UIUs have been storing system water and producing hydroelectric power. These reservoirs, however, previously played a relatively small role in the operation of federal reservoirs of the Colorado River Basin (Basin) as a whole. The focus of the Basin’s competing interests has primarily been on operation of Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam that form Lake Powell and Lake Mead, respectively. These two reservoirs are the largest in the United States and presently store approximately 66% of all the water in the 12 federal reservoirs reported in Reclamation’s 24-Month Studies. During the debate and development of major policy actions for the Colorado River, such as the 1970 Coordinated Long-Range Operating Criteria,⁸ 2001 Interim Surplus Guidelines,⁹ and the 2007 Interim Guidelines,¹⁰ the operations of the UIUs were barely mentioned. However, as storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead has declined, the importance of the UIUs has increased.

The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) operates each of the three UIUs under separate Records of Decision (ROD). Each is operated in a manner that balances many competing interests such as: storage for 1922 Compact compliance, the delivery of stored water for Upper Basin consumptive uses, the delivery of water in fulfillment of Tribal water right settlement obligations, flood control, hydropower generation, on-reservoir recreation, downstream river recreation, sport fisheries in the reservoir and in the stream below the reservoir, and the flow needs of threatened and endangered fishes. Reclamation operates the UIUs in a transparent manner, and each has a local constituency that is closely involved in how their project is operated.

The UIU obscurity honeymoon ended in 2019 when the Upper Division States proposed what became the Drought Response Operations Agreement (DROA) as a component of their 2019 Drought Contingency Plan.¹¹ Arguably, under federal law, the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) has broad authority to unilaterally move water from the UIUs downstream to Lake Powell. However, Reclamation took a more collaborative approach in the DROA: it was an inter-governmental agreement among the US (through Reclamation) and the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. DROA authorized releases from the UIUs to the extent necessary to achieve the stated operational objective of minimizing the risk of Lake Powell falling below a target elevation of 3525 ft, and thereby:

helping to ensure the Upper Division States will continue fulfilling their interstate water compact obligations while exercising their rights to develop and utilize the Upper Basin’s Compact apportionment,

maintaining the ability to generate hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam, and

minimizing adverse effects on resources and infrastructure in the Upper Basin.¹²

DROA is subject to numerous constraints, including:

Water available in the UIU reservoirs,

Protection of authorized purposes of each CRSP unit (water supply, endangered species, recreation, hydropower, etc.),

Consultation with the Upper Division States and the Upper Colorado River Commission, and

Operating criteria established in the agreement and the associated Records of Decision.

In 2021, a total of 181,000 acre-feet of DROA releases were planned pursuant to the Secretary’s emergency authority: 125,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge, 36,000 acre-feet from Blue Mesa, and 20,000 acre-feet from Navajo. Due to dry conditions, the 20,000 acre-feet release from Navajo Reservoir was cancelled, resulting in a total release of 161,000 acre-feet.¹³ DROA was implemented again in 2022 pursuant to consultation and agreement with the Upper Division States—approximately 463,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir were released. Both releases were intended to help maintain an operational target elevation of 3525 ft in Lake Powell.¹⁴ The DROA water released from Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Blue Mesa Reservoir in 2021 and 2022 was completely recovered after the moderately wet winter of 2023.¹⁵ DROA includes specific provisions addressing storage recovery after a DROA release is made. DROA expires contemporaneously with the 2007 Guidelines, but operations to recover storage releases made before Oct. 1, 2026, continue for as long as necessary.¹⁶

In response to the near-record low 2026 runoff and the unprecedented low reservoir levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, DROA releases were again implemented to supplement Lake Powell levels, and this time with even greater urgency and impact. To help maintain the elevation of Lake Powell above 3500 ft, on April 23, 2026, Reclamation began making additional DROA releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir.¹⁷ According to the September 2026 24-Month Study, the planned release from Flaming Gorge will total one million acre-feet between April 2026 and April 2027, but Reclamation retains the flexibility to adjust the timing and amount based on actual hydrologic conditions. Citing contractual obligations and unusually low storage, there are no planned DROA releases scheduled for 2026 from either Blue Mesa Reservoir or Navajo Reservoir.¹⁸

As annual Colorado River Basin runoff in the 21st century is consistently lower than in the 20th century and the “Ratchet Effect” is evident in reservoir storage basin-wide, disputes over the operation of the UIUs between the Upper Division States and Lower Division States have increased and indeed now are nearly as critical and strident as the disputes over water deliveries from Lake Powell to Lake Mead.¹⁹ The Lower Division States’ May 1, 2026, Proposal for Short-Term Operations of the Colorado River included proposed operating criteria for the UIUs that would expand their role in maintaining Lake Powell elevations and effectively subordinate the refilling of the UIUs until there is sufficient water in Lake Powell to support the delivery of 8.23 MAF per year.²⁰ The stated intent is “to share the benefit of improved hydrology between both basins.”²¹ On May 13th, 2026, the director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources told the Arizona Re-Consultation Committee that under Arizona’s interpretation of the Law of the River, the 1956 CRSPA specifically subordinates the delivery of contract water from the UIUs and the refilling of those reservoirs to water deliveries to the Lower Basin and Mexico under the 1922 Compact.²²

The Upper Division States believe the operation of the UIUs proposed by the Lower Division States is outside the scope of the Post-2026 NEPA process and cannot be incorporated into the Record of Decision as part of the 2027–2028 operations plan.²³ Further, some UCRC commissioners pointed out that under the 1956 CRSPA, there are multiple purposes of the UIUs including supporting consumptive uses within the Upper Basin.²⁴ At the 2026 Getches-Wilkinson Center Conference on the Colorado River, then-Acting Reclamation Commissioner Scott Cameron noted that Reclamation would aggressively operate the UIUs under their RODs to help manage Lake Powell levels, but added that the Secretary has, and will use, if necessary, emergency authorities to operate the UIUs outside the bounds of their RODs.²⁵

The Record of Decision (ROD) released on August 21, 2026, for the “Decision Framework for Colorado River Guidelines: Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead (2027–2036)” addressed the operation of the UIUs in a general manner. The ROD states:

“In carrying out the Decision Framework, the Department will continue to coordinate the operation of Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) Upper Initial Units – specific reservoirs above Lake Powell – pursuant to Section 602 of the Colorado River Basin Project Act of 1968 (CRBPA). Consistent with each facility’s existing ROD, the CRSP Upper Initial Units remain an operational tool available to the Secretary, when necessary, to release additional water to increase the elevation at Lake Powell to protect critical Federal infrastructure.”²⁶

While the Decision Framework Operational Sideboards of the ROD include the “Potential for maximum use of CRSP Upper Initial Units within their respective RODs to release additional water if needed to protect critical infrastructure,” they also allow for greater releases than described in their respective RODs:

“The Decision Framework establishes consultation thresholds associated with critical reservoir elevations. When projected reservoir conditions approach or fall below the consultation thresholds identified in the operational sideboards, the Secretary will coordinate and consult with the Basin States, Basin Tribes and other affected parties, as appropriate, regarding additional operational actions that may be appropriate to reduce risks to critical Federal infrastructure and maintain system reliability.²⁷”

Further, “Such consultations may include consideration of additional reductions in water use, adjustments to coordinated reservoir operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, use of the CRSP Upper Initial Units, or other operational actions.”²⁸

Notably, the Decision Framework does not mention using the UIUs for making deliveries of water to Lee Ferry when there is insufficient water in Lake Powell for compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact (1922 Compact).

UIU storage recovery timing and amounts are not specified in the 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines,²⁹ but Interior’s response to the Lower Basin’s May 1st proposal stated that it:

“intends to refill the UIUs as soon as practicable to ensure water remains available for any additional infrastructure protection releases, while avoiding further risk to critical infrastructure during recovery operations. Based on prior operational experience, recovery operations were initiated once Lake Powell was no longer projected to continue declining. Reclamation would apply a similar approach for future UIU recovery operations and would consider actual hydrology and Basin-wide conditions before initiating recovery actions.³⁰”

What is clear is that the water stored in the UIUs is an increasingly important resource coveted by the Upper Division States, the Lower Division States, Basin Tribes,³¹ and Reclamation. It is also clear that each of these entities has a different perspective on the priorities under which the UIUs will be operated in the future. But it is important to recognize that while the water released by the UIUs in 2021, 2022, and 2026 provided critical benefits, especially for maintaining Lake Powell above target thresholds, DROA-like releases are not a solution to the Basin’s fundamental problem – systematic use of more than the available water supply. The operation of the UIUs may buy time and provide additional flexibility for reservoir system management, but it does not create any new water.

The debate over the future use of the UIUs has also exposed and amplified several long-standing disputes over the interpretation of the key provisions of the Law of the River,³² and ambiguities in the major federal legislation that authorized the construction and operation of the river’s major federal reservoirs. A primary disputed issue facing the Colorado River Basin today is how much water must flow at Lee Ferry to satisfy the Upper Division States’ 1922 Compact obligations. As stated above, delivering water to Lee Ferry was a core purpose for both Lake Powell and the three UIUs.³³

On August 24, 2026, the state of Nevada, the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority filed a complaint for declaratory action and injunctive relief requesting a declaration that the ROD, Final Environmental Impact Statement, and 2027-2028 Guidelines are in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Law of the River.³⁴ The complaint requests an injunction halting the implementation of the ROD and Operating Guidelines. Among other arguments, the plaintiffs claim that the Secretary failed to consider the exercise of authority to operate the UIUs in compliance with the Law of the River and NEPA.

The ROD states that the UIUs will be the subject of a new DROA agreement (referred to as a “framework”) that is currently being negotiated among Reclamation and the Upper Division States. This proposed agreement, drafts of which have not been released to the public, has already received criticism from the State of Arizona. If finalized, it could also be the subject of future litigation.³⁵ In the remainder of the paper, we explore the history of the UIUs from their conception to the present day to provide context and rationale for future operations.

^* Retired General Manager, Colorado River Water Conservation District.

^† Senior Fellow, Getches-Wilkinson Center, University of Colorado Law School; former US Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission; former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, US Dept. of the Interior.

^‡ Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University; former Chief, Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

^§ Director of Research, Kyl Center for Water Policy, Arizona State University; former Director, Phoenix Water Services.

^**Staff Attorney, Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico.

¹ The position of the Lower Division States is that the Upper Division States must not deplete the ten-year flow at Lee Ferry below 75 MAF PLUS deliver half of the annual treaty delivery to Mexico. The normal treaty delivery is 1.5 MAF, so the total ten-year delivery obligation could be 82.5 MAF. In recent years, under Minutes 323 and 330, the annual delivery has been less, but because these Minutes also create water that Mexico can store – calculating how much delivery the Upper Division States must share is not a simple matter. In any event, however, it appears that 81.2 MAF is less than the required 10-year flow pursuant to the Lower Division States’ legal position.

¹ The Upper Division States do not agree that their obligation to Mexico under Article III(c) of the 1922 Compact is half of the annual delivery to Mexico under the 1944 Treaty every year. For more information, see Eric Kuhn, et. al, The 1922 Compact is Now the Obvious Elephant in the Negotiating Room, Oct. 6, 2025, https://www.colorado.edu/center/gwc/media/707.

² This paper describes the authorization of the UIUs, the events leading up to that authorization, and some of the debate that resulted in the compromises in the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act (1956 CRSPA). The authors recognize that there are several detailed histories of CRSPA that address different aspects of its origins and come from a different perspective. Among these are: MARC REISNER. CADILLAC DESERT: THE AMERICAN WEST AND ITS DISAPPEARING WATER (1986, Viking Press); M. HARVEY, A SYMBOL OF WILDERNESS: ECHO PARK AND THE AMERICAN CONSERVATION MOVEMENT (Univ. N.M. Press 1994, 2nd Ed. Univ. of W.A. Press, 2000). Recognizing the value and insights of these previous works, this paper seeks to place the UIUs and their origins within the context of today’s hydrology and disputes.

³ P.L. 84-485, 70 Statute 105, 43 U.S.C. § 620 et seq.

⁴ The provision of hydroelectric power and resulting revenues prompted the label “cash register dam” to refer to projects in which the hydropower receipts finance other project construction. Long-Term Drought and Glen Canyon Dam: Potential Effects on Water Deliveries and Hydropower, Congressional Rsch. Serv., Apr. 4, 2023, at 4.

⁵ 1956 CRSPA Preamble.

⁶ The three reservoirs in the Aspinall Unit are Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, and Crystal. Only Blue Mesa is operated for river regulation and storage. Future references to storage in the UIUs include Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge and Navajo Reservoirs, but not Morrow Point and Crystal Reservoirs. A number of additional reservoirs were authorized by the 1956 CRSPA (and subsequent federal legislation) as components of participating projects. All of these reservoirs have specific project functions. Several of these reservoirs store a significant amount of water. Strawberry Reservoir, a component of the Central Utah Project, McPhee Reservoir, a component of the Dolores Project, and Fontanelle Reservoir, a component of the Seedskadee Project are three prominent examples.

⁷ The data sources for this paper are primarily the Hydrologic Database (HDB) and the 24-Month Studies, both maintained or prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. We use “live storage” to mean the amount of storage reported in the HDB or alternately, the 24-Month studies. The standard terminology for reservoirs is that live storage is the amount that can be physically withdrawn or released downstream. Active storage is the amount above the power plant penstocks (or primary outlet works for Navajo Reservoir). Inactive storage is the amount between the power plant inlets, and the low-level outlet works. Below the low-level outlet is the “dead pool.” In theory, live storage = active plus inactive storage. In practice, however, each reservoir has a different design and different management issues. It is possible that some live storage may not be accessible for downstream delivery and use. The figures provided for live and active storage in the UIUs do not include Crystal and Morrow Point reservoirs.

⁸ For more information on the 1970 Long Range Operating Criteria, see https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/pdfiles/opcriter2005FRN.pdf.

⁹ The Colorado River Interim Surplus Criteria were adopted in 2001, but were superseded by the 2007 Interim Guidelines, see https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/surplus/pdf/Attachments/Attachment_I.pdf.

¹⁰ U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, December 2007, https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/strategies/RecordofDecision.pdf.

¹¹ U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2019 Drought Response Operations Agreement, https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/dcp/droa.html.

¹² DROA, Sec. I.A.

¹³ Upper Colorado River Commission (UCRC) Seventy-Third Annual Report (2022), pages 16-17.

¹⁴ UCRC Seventy-Fourth Annual Report (2023), page 15. With the DROA releases, Lake Powell reached a low of 3519.92 ft. (MSL), in early April 2023.

¹⁵ UCRC Seventy-Fifth Annual Report (2024), page 15. With an estimated natural flow of 17.3 MAF, 2023 was the third wettest year since 2000. We refer to it as a moderately wet year based on comparisons with the 20th Century record. With a natural flow of 17.3 MAF, it is about the same as the ten-year average from 1980-1989 – 17.2 MAF. USBR natural flow database, https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/NaturalFlow/index.html.

¹⁶ DROA, Sec. II.A.6.

¹⁷ U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2026 Drought Response Operations Plan, https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/documents/dcp/DROA/2026/uc-2026droughtresponseoperationsplan-attachmentsa-h-508-20260423.pdf. Two measures were put in place to maintain the elevation of Lake Powell above 3500 ft. The 1.0 MAF of DROA releases and a reduction of the Water Year 2026 annual release from Glen Canyon Dam from 7.5 MAF to 6.0 MAF.

¹⁸ Id.

¹⁹ For an explanation of the Ratchet Effect, see Schmidt et al., The Colorado River Water Supply Crisis in a Few Graphs: Part 1 at 8 (June 2026), https://www.colorado.edu/center/gwc/2026/06/18/colorado-river-water-supply-crisis-few-graphs-part-1.

²⁰ Lower Division States’ Proposal for Short-Term Operations of the Colorado River, May 1, 2026, https://www.azwater.gov/sites/default/files/2026-05/2026.05.01%20LB2YearPlanFINAL.pdf.

²¹ Memo from John Entsminger to Andrea Travnicek, Subject: Lower Division States’ Proposal for 2026–2028 Colorado River Operations, Dated May 1, 2026.

²² AWDR presentation at the ARC Meeting May13, 2026, slide #9, https://www.azwater.gov/sites/default/files/2026-05/2026.05.13%20ARC%20Meeting%20%2313%20FINAL_0.pdf.

²³ Letter from UCRC Executive Director Cullom to Acting Commissioner Cullom, dated June 1, 2026, http://www.ucrcommission.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/UDS-response-to-BOR-response-to-LB-concept-June-1-2026.pdf.

²⁴ Comments of the individual UCRC commissioners at the April 26, 2026, special meeting of the UCRC where it reluctantly approved the DROA plan.

²⁵ Scott Cameron, Bureau of Reclamation presentation, 2026 GWC Conference, https://www.colorado.edu/center/gwc/2026/06/04/june-4-5-2026-conference-colorado-river.

²⁶ U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Record of Decision, Framework for Colorado River Guidelines: Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead (2027-2036) August 2026, https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/P26_RecordofDecision_Final.pdf.

²⁷ ROD at 30.

²⁸ ROD at 27, 30.

²⁹ U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines, https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/2027-2028OperatingGuidelines_Final.pdf.

³⁰ Department Response to Lower Division States’ Proposal for 2027-2028 Colorado River Operations, May 28, 2026.

³¹ The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Jicarilla Apache Nation, and Navajo Nation each have significant and unique interests in the operation of Navajo Reservoir. The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation has asserted claims to water stored in Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

³² The Law of the River is a complex set of agreements, treaties, court decisions, and regulations that govern the allocation and use of water resources in the Colorado River Basin. A Colorado River Overview: Education, Facts & Statistics, https://coloradoriver.com/statistics-facts/.

³³ 1956 CRSPA, supra note 3.

³⁴ Nevada v. Burgum, et al, U.S. District Court, District of Nevada, Case 2:26-cv-02665, filed 08/24/2026. See also, https://mavensnotebook.com/2026/08/25/courthouse-news-nevada-files-suit-over-colorado-river-plan/; https://www.gov.nv.gov/press-releases/nevada-files-lawsuit-against-department-of-the-interior-over-colorado-river-operations-record-of-decision.

³⁵ The term “framework” to describe the new DROA was used by the UCRC at its Sept. 15, 2026, Special Meeting. The comments by Tom Buschatzke were made at the August 24, 2026, meeting of the Arizona Reconsultation Committee.

Dawning is the day — Justin Hayward

Sunrise at Webster Lake off the Farmers’ Highline Canal Trail, Bike to Work Day, June 26, 2019.

How a century-old pricing system has emptied the #ColoradoRiver: An absurdity of the Colorado River crisis is the role of heavy government subsidization of agricultural water use — Daniel M. Frey (BigPivots.com) #COriver #aridification

Colorado River near Burns. Photo credit: Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Daniel M. Frey):

October 5, 2026

While fighting over water rights and priorities might take decades, the federal government can start aligning what agriculture pays for federal delivery with what municipal users already pay — without waiting for a new compact or a courtroom fight over title.

We are told that nothing can be done about the Colorado River water crisis while officials allow powerful agricultural interests to keep using more of the river for hay and alfalfa than all cities and other industries in the basin combined.

In the Lower Basin, agricultural water districts pay roughly 6% of what municipal utilities pay at wholesale. That pricing perpetuates waste and low-value irrigation, discourages conservation, and undermines any real chance of restoring the river’s supplies.

Part I of this series (see “Absurdity of the Colorado River crisis,” Big Pivots, Aug. 30, 2026) showed that nearly half the water put to human use in the Colorado River Basin goes to growing feed for cattle — alfalfa, hay and silage — while 40 million people depend on the same river for drinking water.

That is not a hydrology problem. It is a political one, built on the doctrine that the oldest water right always wins, no matter how the world around it has changed.

This installment goes one layer deeper, into the accounting. The story of the Colorado River is not only about who has the legal right to water. It is about how government pricing, contracts, and cost-shifting have supported overuse on low-value crops.

The volumes restated

Forage crops — mostly alfalfa and hay grown to feed livestock — consume close to half of all water used by people across the Colorado River Basin. In 2023, two separate studies by the Western Agricultural Economics Association and the Arizona Department of Agriculture (see Sources) concluded that in the Lower Basin’s desert valleys, a substantial share is shipped overseas: up to 30% of Imperial Valley alfalfa and more than a fifth of Arizona’s hay.

In the Upper Basin, including Colorado, forage crops make up roughly 90% of agricultural irrigation, more than three times what Upper Basin households, businesses and industries consume combined. The degree and complexity of irrigation and infrastructure vary across the upper and lower basin. There are small farms and communities that have closely and carefully integrated water with highly efficient and effective irrigation.

It should also be understood that many farms and ranches in the Colorado River Basin, particularly in the Upper Basin, do not depend upon federal-financed infrastructure. This essay is not about them. Rather, it is about both farms and cities who benefit from federal infrastructure. Cities that are home to millions of people are asked to justify every toilet flush and lawn sprinkler while a crop with a modest market value drains the river. That imbalance might be easier to defend if the irrigators paid a market price. Instead, Lower Basin irrigation districts pay about 6% of what cities pay at wholesale.

How the government built — and then discounted — this system

Almost none of the infrastructure that makes Southwestern irrigation possible was built or paid for by farmers alone. The dams, canals, and reservoirs of the Colorado River system were constructed and financed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a Department of the Interior agency that has spent more than a century as the largest wholesaler of water in the country.

Under federal reclamation law, the government fronts the capital, and the beneficiaries — irrigation districts, cities, power customers — are supposed to pay it back over time.

Political power derailed equitable pricing during this past century. Reclamation law splits repayment onto two tracks. Municipal and industrial water is repaid over roughly 40 to 50 years — with interest. Irrigation costs are repaid over the same window — interest-free.

Congress wrote the interest-free exemption into the original Reclamation Act of 1902 to spur Western settlement. Homesteaders on arid land had no way to finance dams and canals themselves. Lawmakers reasoned that irrigated farms would eventually generate enough tax base and repayment to justify the up-front public investment.

Cities were not part of that original calculation. Municipal and industrial water became an authorized Reclamation purpose only in 1939, and it was placed on the standard interest-bearing track. The exemption made sense when the goal was populating an unsettled frontier. It has been revisited many times since — always to loosen it — but never ended for a basin now serving forty million urban residents.

That alone would be a meaningful subsidy. It gets larger. Reclamation law also lets irrigation districts apply for “ability to pay” relief. That economic review can cut a district’s repayment obligation below its actual share of construction costs if the government decides the district cannot afford the full amount or that the land is not productive enough to justify full-cost pricing. When those obligations go unpaid, the shortfall does not vanish. It is folded into what other customers pay — chiefly hydropower sales and, on some projects, municipal and industrial users. Cities are not just paying full freight for their own water. On many federal projects, they and power customers are backstopping agriculture’s unpaid balance, too.

In the Colorado River Basin alone, the federal government has put more than $8 billion, in unadjusted dollars, into three programs: Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal, the Colorado River Storage Project and the Central Arizona Project. Compounded at 4.6%, roughly what cities have paid to borrow over the past century, $8 billion would be worth more than $75 billion today. The power and municipal shares of those costs carry interest; the irrigation share does not. The financing model was never hidden. The Storage Project — Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge, Navajo, and the Aspinall Unit — was promoted in the 1950s on the promise that power and municipal features would be repaid with interest and irrigation would not. Hydropower revenue from those dams still covers irrigation costs judged to be beyond farmers’ ability to pay.

At that rate, repaying a construction cost interest-free over 50 years wipes out about 60% of its value compared with what municipalities pay. Add debt forgiveness, stretched repayment periods and “ability to pay” relief, and the discount grows: economist Richard Wahl found that once interest was counted, irrigators repaid only about fourteen cents of every dollar of irrigation construction costs.

What this looks like in dollars

The gap is not subtle. A December 2025 report from the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed 217 water transactions across the Lower Basin states. The report found that agricultural water districts pay a weighted average of about $30 per acre-foot, while municipal utilities pay about $512.

An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, enough to supply two to three households for a year. Under this system, a hay farmer’s district pays about $30 and a utility serving a family in Phoenix or San Diego pays roughly $500 — before treatment and local delivery. That is seventeen times as much for the same unit of a scarce public resource.

Federal repayment terms are only one reason for that gap. Under Western water law and most federal contracts, the water itself is essentially free; prices reflect the cost of storing, moving, and treating it, and city systems carry heavier pumping and treatment costs. However, the federal subsidy is part of the gap the public has financed directly — and the part of Washington can most readily change.

Some agricultural districts, including California’s Imperial Irrigation District, the single largest holder of Colorado River water rights, pay the Bureau of Reclamation nothing at all for the water itself. Their contracts do not require payment for the raw supply. When the federal government paid for that same district in 2023 to leave water in Lake Mead, the contract rate was about $776 an acre-foot. The district had asked for as much as $840. Everyone involved already knows what the water is worth.

Who holds the cheap water — 20 large corporate farms

A 2023 ProPublica and Desert Sun investigation found that just twenty large farming entities in California’s Imperial Valley received roughly one-seventh of the entire lower Colorado River’s flow in 2022. That is more water than Wyoming, New Mexico, or Nevada each use in a year.

The water right itself is held by the Imperial Irrigation District, a public agency. Those entities are the largest users of that right, not its owners. As a whole — historic farm families, outside investors, institutional landholders and at least one foreign hay company receives 97% of IID’s water. Every home, school and business in the county combined receives 3%.

Cheap irrigation water is not propping up the rural economy. Imperial County sits on some of the most heavily and cheaply irrigated farmland in the country, yet its per capita income in 2021 was about $19,000 — half the national figure of about $38,000, according to Census Bureau estimates. It posted the highest unemployment rate in California that year.

A 2024 peer-reviewed study of agricultural water productivity across the Colorado River Basin found that the least economically productive counties consume 25% of the Basin’s agricultural water to generate just 3% of its crop revenue. Heavily discounted water is not building broad rural prosperity. Where it produces high value, as in Imperial County, that value is concentrated in a small number of landholders; where it does not, it props up low-value production.

Run the counterfactual. If those same operations paid municipal-scale wholesale rates — $300 to $500 an acre-foot instead of $20 to $30 — the economics of growing export-bound cattle feed in a desert would collapse on their own, without a single acre-foot needing to be fought over in court. Water would move toward higher value uses because it would finally cost what it is worth. That is what a functioning price signal does. Right now, the federal government is underwriting the draining of the river for cheap crops and powerful agricultural interests.

Immediate action does not require new water-rights litigation

The most common argument against fixing this is that it would take years. Because water rights are property, this argument holds, any change must move through negotiation, buyouts, and courts.

That is true if the goal is changing who legally owns the water. It is not true if the goal is changing who pays for the infrastructure that delivers it.

Cost allocation is an administrative and budgetary process, not a property right. The Bureau of Reclamation and the Interior Department already have the statutory tools to reassess “ability to pay” determinations on a going-forward basis, to stop extending new construction-cost discounts to districts irrigating low-value forage crops, and to fully enforce the Reclamation Reform Act’s full-cost pricing for large landholdings. Congress, which wrote the interest exemption into law, can require interest-bearing repayment in new and renegotiated contracts.

Those are the same terms municipal and industrial users already face. Existing repayment contracts cannot simply be rewritten in midstream; they run until they expire or are mutually amended. None of that touches a single farmer’s decreed water right. It stops asking cities and power customers to keep underwriting the next generation of discounts for overuse on low-value crops.

That change would not resolve the Colorado River crisis itself. But it would start doing what a century of “first in time, first in right” has never done: make the cost of water reflect its scarcity. It would let price — not another emergency federal curtailment — begin moving water toward its most essential uses.

Why hasn’t it happened?

The authority sits with the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation, which set repayment terms and administer ability-to-pay determinations under reclamation law. Legislative jurisdiction belongs to the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Water and Power. Reclamation’s annual budget is funded through the Energy and Water Development appropriations subcommittees in both chambers — not the Interior-Environment subcommittees, whose jurisdiction excludes the Bureau of Reclamation.

The last time Congress meaningfully touched this structure was the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982. Even that act left interest-free repayment and ability-to-pay intact while expanding the size of farms eligible for subsidized water. Since then, as reservoirs have fallen toward dead pool and the federal government has spent billions on emergency conservation payments and drought relief, no bill addressing the underlying interest-free, cost-shifted pricing structure for Colorado River irrigation has reached a committee markup, let alone the floor of either chamber. A review of Congress.gov and GovTrack through August 2026 found none.

The leverage is not confined to a handful of committee chairs in Washington. It runs through the states that depend on the river. Of the 14 U.S. senators representing the Basin’s seven states, seven sit on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has direct jurisdiction over the Bureau of Reclamation and reclamation law:

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.); Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), also on the Water and Power Subcommittee; Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), committee chairman; Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), ranking member; Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), also on Water and Power; Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), also on Water and Power; and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), also on Water and Power.

In the House, 11 basin-state representatives sit on the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries: Chair Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Celeste Maloy (R-Utah), Jeff Crank (R-Colo.), Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), Dave Min (D-Calif.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Luz Rivas (D-Calif.), Julia Brownley (D-Calif.) and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.). Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the full committee, serves ex officio.

Four basin-state members — Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Celeste Maloy (R-Utah), Mike Levin (D-Calif.), and Susie Lee (D-Nev.) sit on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, which writes Reclamation’s budget every year.

According to the same review, none of these lawmakers, of either party, has introduced legislation addressing the interest-free, ability-to-pay repayment structure at the center of this piece. The people with the most direct stake in the outcome — whose constituents are either the cities paying full price or the districts paying a fraction of it — already hold seats on every committee with the authority to change it.

The hard conclusion

This complicated system of senior rights and subsidies, built and protected for a hundred years, leads to an unavoidable conclusion. Under the banner of property rights and support for agriculture, we have allowed a small number of large, politically connected agricultural users to capture much of the water that forty million people depend on.

Almost half of the water put to human use across seven states, from the high Rockies to California, has been turned to private benefit for irrigation of low-value crops, to the detriment of everyone else in the region. Having secured water rights at no cost and federal infrastructure at a steep discount, those same users are demanding to be paid top dollar — more than $800 an acre-foot — to leave that water in the river.

None of this is a call to end Western agriculture or to strip farmers and ranchers of property they hold in good faith. It is a call to stop asking the public to underwrite, at steadily mounting costs, a pricing structure that a small number of landholders have had a century to defend and a well-organized lobby to protect. The technical authority to change the next round of contracts and ability-to-pay reviews already exists inside agencies Congress funds every year. Using that authority still takes political will the basin’s own delegation has not yet shown.

Taking on powerful agricultural interests requires action from representatives of the forty million people who need a sane and sustainable water policy.

Daniel Frey is a Boulder resident, non-practicing CPA and Certified Energy Manager (CEM). He researches and writes on energy and sustainability issues.

Sourcing for essay

Series

Frey, Daniel M. “Absurdity of the Colorado River crisis.” Big Pivots, Aug. 30, 2026. bigpivots.com/the-absurdity-of-the-colorado-river-crisis/ [Part I of this series]

Water use and forage crop exports

Richter, Brian D., et al. “New Water Accounting Reveals Why the Colorado River No Longer Reaches the Sea.” Communications Earth & Environment, vol. 5, 2024, article 134. [source for forage crops’ share of basin water consumption and the Upper Basin 90% figure]

Sall, Ibrahima, Russell Tronstad, and Chia Yi Chin. “Alfalfa Export and Water Use Estimates for Individual States.” Western Agricultural Economics Association, 2023. waeaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Alfalfa-Export-and-Water-Use-Estimates-for-Individual-States.pdf [state-level alfalfa export shares and water embedded in exports, 2022]

Frisvold, George, and Dari Duval. “Understanding the Economics of Arizona Alfalfa.” University of Arizona Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, via Arizona Farm Bureau, June 26, 2023. azfb.org/Article/Understanding-the-Economics-of-Arizona-Alfalfa [source for exports equal to 22% of Arizona hay and forage production in 2022]

Yachnin, Jennifer. “Can Alfalfa Survive a Fight Over Colorado River Water?” E&E News by Politico, Sept. 8, 2023. eenews.net/articles/can-alfalfa-survive-a-fight-over-colorado-river-water/ [source for up to 30% of Imperial Valley alfalfa exported, citing Family Farm Alliance data]

Water pricing and cost allocation

Garrison, Noah, Isabel Friedman, and Mark Gold. Free Water While It Lasts: An Analysis of Wholesale Water Pricing in the Lower Colorado River Basin States. UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability & Natural Resources Defense Council, Dec. 11, 2025. ioes.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Water-Pricing-Report.pdf

Griffiths, Claire. “Report Puts Numbers on Massive Gap in Water Costs in the West.” UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Dec. 11, 2025. ioes.ucla.edu/article/report-puts-numbers-on-massive-gap-in-water-costs-in-the-west

“Colorado River Water Is Too Cheap, Particularly for Agricultural Users.” Inside Climate News, Dec. 11, 2025. insideclimatenews.org/news/11122025/colorado-river-water-too-cheap/

Mendoza, Katya. “UCLA Report Finds Farmers Pay Far Less Than Cities for Colorado River Water.” AZPM, Dec. 16, 2025. azpm.org/s/102329-ucla-report-finds-farmers-pay-far-less-than-cities-for-colorado-river-water/

“California Cities Pay a Lot for Water; Some Agricultural Districts Get It for Free.” CalMatters, Dec. 11, 2025 (also republished by U.S. News & World Report). calmatters.org/environment/2025/12/price-of-california-water-cities-growers/

Voice of San Diego. “How Imperial Valley Spends San Diego’s Cash for Water.” Nov. 2, 2023. voiceofsandiego.org/2023/11/02/how-imperial-valley-spends-san-diegos-cash-for-water/ [source for San Diego’s ~$730/acre-foot wholesale price vs. Imperial’s $20]

The 2023 Imperial Irrigation District conservation payments

“The Colorado River’s Biggest User Will Conserve Some Water in Exchange for Federal Dollars.” KPBS Public Media, Dec. 5, 2023. kpbs.org/news/environment/2023/12/05/the-colorado-rivers-biggest-user-will-conserve-some-water-in-exchange-for-federal-dollars [source for the $776/acre-foot payment rate]

Stanford University Water Programs. “Colorado River Allocation.” water.stanford.edu/research/projects/colorado-river-allocation [source for the up-to-$840/acre-foot figure from the 2023-2026 System Conservation Implementation Agreement]

Land, water rights and county-level economics

Wilson, Janet, and Nat Lash. “The Historic Claims That Put a Few California Farming Families First in Line for Colorado River Water.” ProPublica / The Desert Sun, Nov. 9, 2023. propublica.org/article/california-farm-families-gained-control-colorado-river

Lash, Nat, and Janet Wilson. “The 20 Farming Families Who Use More Water from the Colorado River Than Some Western States.” ProPublica / The Desert Sun, Nov. 9, 2023. projects.propublica.org/california-farmers-colorado-river/ [source for the twenty entities and their 2022 water use]

Frisvold, George B., and Jyothsna Atla. “Agricultural Economic Water Productivity Differences Across Counties in the Colorado River Basin.” Hydrology, vol. 11, no. 8, 2024, article 125. doi.org/10.3390/hydrology11080125

U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey (ACS), 1-Year Estimates, Table B19301 (“Per Capita Income in the Past 12 Months”), 2021. data.census.gov [national and Imperial County per capita income figures]

Reclamation law, repayment structure, and federal cost allocation

Congressional Research Service. “Bureau of Reclamation Project Authorization and Financing.” CRS In Focus IF10806, Congress.gov. congress.gov/crs-product/IF10806

Congressional Research Service. “Bureau of Reclamation Support for Water Storage Projects.” CRS Report R47987, Congress.gov. congress.gov/crs-product/R47987

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Bureau of Reclamation: Availability of Information on Repayment of Water Project Construction Costs Could Be Better Promoted.” GAO-14-764, 2014. gao.gov/assets/gao-14-764.pdf

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Bureau of Reclamation: Reclamation Law and the Allocation of Construction Costs for Federal Water Projects.” GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-97-150. govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-97-150/html/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-97-150.htm

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Bureau of Reclamation: Information on Allocation and Repayment of Costs of Constructing Water Projects.” GAOREPORTS-RCED-96-109, 1996. govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-RCED-96-109/pdf/GAOREPORTS-RCED-96-109.pdf

Wahl, Richard W. Markets for Federal Water: Subsidies, Property Rights, and the Bureau of Reclamation. Resources for the Future, 1989. [source for irrigators’ repayment share once interest is counted]

Congressional Research Service. “Bureau of Reclamation: History, Authorities, and Issues for Congress.” CRS Report R46303, April 3, 2020. congress.gov/crs-product/R46303 [1939 authorization of municipal and industrial water; history of repayment changes]

U.S. General Accounting Office. “Power Marketing Administrations: Cost Recovery, Financing, and Comparison to Nonfederal Utilities.” GAO/T-AIMD-96-169, Sept. 19, 1996. govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-T-AIMD-96-169 [WAPA required to recover about $1.5 billion in irrigation construction costs through power rates]

Reclamation Reform Act of 1982. Pub. L. No. 97-293, tit. II, 96 Stat. 1263.

Federal investment in Colorado River projects

Central Arizona Project. “Explaining CAP’s Federal Repayment: A Cheat Sheet.” Know Your Water News, May 13, 2020 (updated March 8, 2023). knowyourwaternews.com/explaining-caps-federal-repayment-a-cheat-sheet/ [$4.4 billion total cost, 1973-93; $1.646 billion repayment obligation]

U.S. Census Bureau. “September 2025: Hoover Dam.” Stories From the Census Bureau’s History, Sept. 1, 2025. census.gov/about/history/stories/monthly/2025/september-2025.html [$165 million authorized for Hoover, Imperial Dam, and the All-American Canal; power revenue repaid Hoover’s cost with interest by 1987]

Stene, Eric A. “The All-American Canal: Boulder Canyon Project.” Bureau of Reclamation History Program. usbr.gov/projects/pdf.php?id=80

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. “Colorado River Storage Project.” Upper Colorado Basin Region. usbr.gov/uc/rm/crsp/index.html [Basin Fund repayment of irrigation costs beyond ability to pay]

U.S. General Accounting Office. “Federal Electric Power: Information Concerning the Colorado River Storage Project.” GAO/RCED-90-2FS, Oct. 3, 1989. gao.gov/products/rced-90-2fs

Upper Colorado River Commission. The Colorado River Storage Project to Build a Stronger America. Promotional booklet, 1950s. Colorado River Compact Collection, Utah State Archives. images.archives.utah.gov/digital/collection/p17010coll70/id/21155/

Congressional committee jurisdiction and membership

U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Clerk. “Committee on Natural Resources” and “Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries,” 119th Congress. clerk.house.gov/committees/II00 and clerk.house.gov/committees/II13

U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Rules, Membership, and Jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.” S. Prt. 119-13, March 2025. congress.gov/committee-print/119th-congress/senate-committee-print/59371

U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Subcommittee on Water and Power” membership list. energy.senate.gov/water-power

Heinrich, Martin, and Mike Lee. “Heinrich, Lee Announce Subcommittee Assignments for 119th Congress.” U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Feb. 11, 2025. energy.senate.gov/2025/2/heinrich-lee-announce-subcommittee-assignments-for-119th-congress.

U.S. House Committee on Appropriations. “Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (119th Congress)” and “Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies (119th Congress),” membership rosters. appropriations.house.gov and democrats-appropriations.house.gov

U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations. “Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.” appropriations.senate.gov/subcommittees/energy-and-water-development

Note: Committee chairs, ranking members, and subcommittee rosters reflect the 119th Congress (2025-2026) as of this writing and are subject to change with reassignments, retirements, or a new Congress. The claim that no relevant bill has reached committee markup reflects a review of the sources above and standard legislative trackers (Congress.gov, GovTrack) as of late August 2026, not an exhaustive search of every bill introduced in the 119th Congress; readers relying on this claim for further reporting should verify independently. All committee membership and pricing figures should be verified at their original sources before publication or reproduction.

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

The latest El Niño/Southern Oscillation Diagnostic Discussion (October 8, 2026) is hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center

Click the link to read the discussion on the Climate Prediction Center website:

ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Advisory

Synopsis: El Niño continues to strengthen, with a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely through January-March 2027 (remaining greater than an 83% chance).

El Niño strengthened further last month, with sea surface temperature anomalies exceeding +4.0°C in portions of the eastern equatorial Pacific. Most Niño indices increased in the past month, reaching +2.1°C in Niño-3.4, +3.0°C in Niño-3, and +3.9°C in Niño-1+2. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100°W) was well above average, reflecting a deeper-than-average thermocline. Subsurface temperatures remained in excess of +10.0°C at depth in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly wind anomalies stretched from the western to the east-central equatorial Pacific. Enhanced convection and rainfall persisted from the central to the eastern Pacific, while anomalies remained suppressed over Indonesia.The traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation indices were significantly negative. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected a strengthening El Niño.

The CPC Official ENSO outlook, which synthesizes multiple models from North America and abroad, indicates El Niño will continue to strengthen through the end of the year. Chances remain high for a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950 (+2.5°C or more for a 3-month RONI value): the chance is 54% for September-November, 83% for October-December, and 70% for November-January. With an event of this magnitude, the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, though not guaranteed (see CPC outlooks for probabilities of seasonal anomalies). In summary, El Niño continues to strengthen, with a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely through January-March 2027 (remaining greater than an 83% chance).

September 2026 Monthly #Climate Summary — #Colorado Climate Center

Click the link to access the report on the Colorado Climate Center website:

The World Meteorological Organization launches State of Global Water Resources 2025 report

Click here to access the report on the WMO website:

September 11, 2026

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has launched its “State of Global Water Resources 2025” report, a comprehensive science-based annual assessment of the hydrological cycle and extreme events in 2025 and over the past five years.

The report finds that rivers across the globe in 2025 had one of the driest years in more than three decades. It shows a continuation of the long-term decline in Earth’s freshwater storage and of glacier retreat, while the water cycle has become more erratic and unpredictable, swinging between too little or too much. The past seven years have seen the fewest rivers with “normal” flows since 1991.

Terrestrial water storage has been in decline since the mid-2010s, while 2025 marked the fourth consecutive year with widespread glacier loss across all regions. Asia and Africa together accounted for at least half of all recorded water-related extreme events and more than 80 per cent of reported associated deaths over the past five years.

Water data availability has improved, but important gaps remain. Africa and Asia are still among the least represented regions in terms of hydrological observations in the report, even though they are most affected by extremes.

The annual State of Global Water Resources report provides a comprehensive quantitative overview of global water resources, with a focus on hydrological variability and trends.

Explore more findings and download the full report here.

The #ColoradoRiver basin’s 2025-26 water year (October-September) was the warmest on record. It was also the least snowy on record. Only 16.8% of the (below average) precipitation fell as snow – shattering the previous record low — Climatologist49 #snowpack

The Colorado River basin's 2025-26 water year (October-September) was the warmest on record. It was also the least snowy on record. Only 16.8% of the (below average) precipitation fell as snow – shattering the previous record low.
— Climatologist49 (@climatologist49.bsky.social) 2026-10-09T04:05:19.877Z

Unexpected voices in the national #climate debate: A few paragraphs in a #Meeker newspaper triggered a legal brief supporting #Boulder in Supreme Court case heard on Monday — Allen Best (BigPivots.com)

Suncor refinery Commerce City. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

October 6, 2026

Four paragraphs buried in a story published by the Meeker Herald-Times during mid-June triggered the entry of several Colorado ranchers into the Boulder-Suncor case argued on Monday morning before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Herald Times is the newspaper of record (and the only one) in Rio Blanco County, which is in the state’s northwestern corner. It’s distinctly rural. Cattle numbers vary by season, somewhere between 16,000 and 25,000. In all seasons they outnumber humans: 6,529 as of the 2020 census.

The newspaper story recounted a June 9 meeting of county commissioners. They heard about agrivoltaics from Longmont’s Byron Kominek (Jack’s Solar Garden) and their county attorney advised them on best legal procedures for setting meeting agendas. The new Colorado State University County extension agent had stopped by to say hello, and the state transportation director for the region delivered an update on highway plans.

In the story’s 32nd paragraph, news was delivered that the county commissioners had agreed to participate in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case siding with Suncor and Exxon Mobil at a cost to the county up to $17,500.

“The outcome of this decision by the Supreme Court will affect 100 other cases across the United States, so we felt that it was well worth our time and money to try and do the right thing,” explained Commissioner Doug Overton of why Rio Blanco County should add its name to the filing by the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado.

Deirdre Macnab later read that story at her nearby ranch along the White River. She had a different and visceral reaction as to what constituted the “right thing” in this case.

Unlike many of her neighbors in Rio Blanco County, who have family trees several generations deep, she had arrived in 2020 from Florida and, before that, Manhattan. She has her own Wikipedia entry, which describes her as an “American women’s rights and voting rights activist and sustainable agriculture rancher.”

Macnab decided other voices were needed from Rio Blanco County in this case.

“I called Boulder County and spoke to some of the attorneys there,” she related in a noon-hour session with students at the University of Colorado Law School on Oct. 1. “Would you be interested in hearing from some of the people who are involved in agriculture in the state?” she asked. Yes, they said.

“And it wasn’t very difficult to find a number of ranchers.”

One rancher, a veterinarian, lives near Grand Junction, Macnab told the audience in Boulder, speaking from a remote source.

“She is currently selling her herd of cattle because it does not make financial sense to try to feed her cattle hay through the winter because the heat and the drought this year was so extreme that she was not able to grow the forage that she usually grows. We’re seeing hay prices that have increased by more than 50%. This is just one example of many ranchers that I’ve spoken to.”

Another among her agricultural acquaintances, she said, has pigs near Hayden. “He said his pigs were dying of sunstroke, and he was facing the decision of having to go out of business because for the first time he was having to haul water at a cost of $2,000 to $3,000 a month.”

Meeker and other parts of the Western Slope have been warming at a faster rate than Colorado altogether. And Colorado, of course, has warmed rapidly in the last 125 years, particularly during the last 25. A map posted on the Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center website tells the story of temperature increases from 1895 to 2025 in shades of pink, orange and red. Far western Colorado from the San Juans north to Wyoming — including both Grand Junction and Rio Blanco County — is deep red.

Macnab began her comments to the law students with a description of the two wildfires in 2025 that afflicted Rio Blanco County. The Lee, the fifth largest in Colorado’s recorded history, and the Elk together covered more than 137,000 acres.

“I have a neighbor rancher,” said Macnab. “He had 60 cows that burned to death. I had another neighbor and close friend whose entire ranch burned, and she nearly lost her house. There were flame marks on her house. A number of ranchers lost miles and miles of fence.”

Kathleen Kelley in June explained to visitors the devastation of the Lee Fire of the previous summer. Photo/Allen Best

That good friend who nearly lost her house and a great deal of fence, too, was Kathleen Kelley. Kelley had grown up in Meeker and had been ranching since the 1980s, as her father had before.

Like Macnab, Kelley differs from many other ranchers in the White River Valley, where Meeker is located. She drives an electric car. As for the house that didn’t burn, it had triple-pane windows, a rarity everywhere, more costly but more energy efficient. In this case, the triple panes prevented heat from exploding the windows and allowing the flames to leap into the house.

Kelley was unusual in other ways, too. When still in her 20s, she had been elected a Colorado state legislator, the youngest ever female to do so. Now in her 70s, she retired earlier this year after a 20-year stint as a teacher in Meeker. She contributed an essay to Big Pivots in September after the death of Windell Berry. It can be found here.

Being retired, she told Big Pivots, she feels more freedom — and responsibility to speak out. She has had many opportunities in recent months. It began in an account in the The Denver Post last year about the fire. Then, earlier this year, the Trump administration refused funds to aid the ranchers of Rio Blanco County, an apparent case of spite against Colorado. An enterprising New York Times reporter, who had grown up in Colorado Springs, contacted her, resulting in a story in that newspaper this summer.

In recent weeks, she has in turn been contacted first by a reporter from Colorado Newsline and then by other reporters from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. They want to know about her involvement in the lawsuit. Recent days brought more mentions in publications such as Mother Jones and Grist.

Kelley was interviewed by a radio station in Boston in a report that was broadcast on Monday. The radio station also interviewed a county commissioner in Mesa County, which is on the other side of this fence.

These inquiries were not the result of a PR machine. Rather, it appears to have been a case of journalists reading each others’ stories. And it happened very, very quickly..

“I have been involved in a lot of grassroots efforts, but this one was was the least orchestrated one I have ever seen,” she said. It was, she added, not a message massaged by an advocacy group, but rather a group of ranchers saying what they had to say.

“For Colorado ranchers, climate change is not an abstract possibility, but a lived reality that is threatening the economic viability of a way of life that has been central to communities for generations,” says the amicus brief that was filed on behalf of the ranchers.

The PIceance Basin in Rio Blanco County was full of drilling rigs in 2007 when gas prices reached $14/million Btu before tumbling rapidly as the recession arrived. Photo/Allen Best

The brief filed on behalf of Rio Blanco County — the government, not the handful of ranchers — also includes seven other Western Slope counties: Archuleta, Delta, Grand, Garfield, Mesa, Montezuma, and Montrose. That brief argues that the economic interests of the counties would be harmed because they depend upon oil and gas extraction. In Montezuma County (Cortez), between 40% and 50% of county tax revenue has historically come from oil-and-gas production,” the brief says. “The potential impacts of this litigation on those counties are staggering.”

A clear exception is Grand County, which has virtually no oil and gas extraction. (This writer used to live there). Apparently, Grand County is just along for the ride.

The Suncor-Boulder case fundamentally involves climate change, although the specific question before the Supreme Court is over jurisdiction. Boulder and Boulder County (and on the coattails, San Miguel County) sued Suncor and ExxonMobil in 2018, claiming monetary damages resulting from warming and other climate changes caused by greenhouse gas emissions. It cites floods, heat and drought.

This filing was in Colorado courts. The fossil fuel companies tried to get the case moved to federal court, but the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2025 that the state courts do have jurisdiction. Suncor, ExxonMobil and their supporters want the Boulder case — and dozens of others like it from elsewhere in the country — decided in federal courts.

Lawyers from the law school in Boulder at the noon session last Thursday sorted through the legal twists and turns of this case in the noon-hour session. It’s complicated.

“You may be experiencing what I’m experiencing, which is kind of a Kafka-esque disorientation of confusion,” said Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School. The federal government, he said, wants to have it both ways. It is arguing that this is a federal case while it also says it has no statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

“So that’s awfully confusing. I’m confused. I know a lot of you are confused as well.”

The New York Times, in a report published Sunday, said critics had called the federal government’s position a paradox. “The federal government is trying to get out of the business of regulating greenhouse gases, while also saying it has sole authority to regulate greenhouse gases.”

Confusion continued into Monday morning’s two-hour hearing before the Supreme Court. The Times reported that at least two justices admitted to being confused at various junctures in what the newspaper described as a “complex dispute.”

The question arose whether the federal government could have it both ways. “As I understand it, the EPA has disclaimed the power to regulate greenhouse gases,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch. The Wall Street Journal also reported that questions from Chief Justice John Roberts suggested an openness to Boulder’s argument.

That leaves open some potential for a 4-4 vote next year, which would leave the case in the Colorado Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito announced on Sept. 28 that he would not participate because of his ownership of stock in oil and gas companies. In the case of a tie, Boulder would win the question of jurisdiction, leaving the case in Colorado.

The decision will likely not be delivered until next June, possibly July, according to the national reporters who camp out at the Supreme Court.

“The argument was harder to read than most,” said the Times’ Adam Liptak. “The three Democratic appointees were likely votes for Boulder, and Justice Kavanaugh was adamant in his support for the energy companies. But the remaining Republican appointees’ questions were more mixed, and Boulder needs only one of their votes to prevail in light of Justice Alito’s recusal.”

But, once again, it’s a complex case deep into the legal weeds.

In question, at least in part, is whether this case has parallels with the litigation against a handful of tobacco companies in the 1990s that ultimately yielded a $206 billion settlement. In this case, though, the sources of emissions are much more diffuse – and importantly, global. Too, as Gale Norton, a former attorney general in Colorado (and interior secretary in the Bush administration) told the New York Times, fossil fuels have benefited people broadly. The same claim for tobacco is a much more difficult case to make.

Bloomberg, in an Oct. 1 story, said that climate suits, unlike the tobacco suits, have had trouble getting off the ground. The Supreme Court closed one avenue, ruling unanimously in 2011 that states cannot invoke federal law to force utilities to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Boulder has tried a different approach, filing in state law and using traditional tort doctrines in arguing the oil companies misled the public about the risks of climate change while simultaneously contributing to the problem by producing and promoting fossil fuels.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, took a dim view of Boulder’s case. Boulder, it said, “cannot supplant Congress’s power to regulate commerce among the states. Tolerating Boulder’s raid would blow the Constitution’s doors open to laws like those in New York and Vermont that seek to raid U.S. oil and gas producers for alleged damages caused by global CO2 emissions.”

William Barr, the former attorney general, had something similar to say in a guest commentary in the same publication under the headline: “Boulder Has No Business Making Foreign Policy.”

Boulder’s suit, wrote Barr, “asks a state court to impose potentially enormous liability on selected American energy companies for their alleged contribution to a worldwide phenomenon. Yet the overwhelming share of the conduct at issue lies beyond not only Colorado’s borders but America’s.”

The U.S. Constitution, he said, does not allow state and local governments to make that kind of judgement.

These legal abstractions were largely absent in the remarks of Boulder and Boulder Count officials after the oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Instead, Mayor Aaron Brockett issued a statement that talked about “hotter summers and extreme heat, to drought, declining snowpack, worsening wildfire risk and devastating fires. And every time those impacts intensify, our community pays,” he said.

At her 2,000-acre ranch near Meeker, Kelley on Sunday pondered what connected her and the other ranchers who had filed the brief in August. Jay Fetcher, who has been profiled in Big Pivots, has a ranch northwest of Steamboat Springs, where he has continued the observations of his father, who since the late 1940s began noting the date of the last snow on the ranch. Snow has disappeared earlier over the decades — especially so this year. See: “Along the Elk River, earlier springs and more uncertainty.”

Cattle far outnumber people in Rio Blanco County, and when water is available — as it obviously was on this pasture near Meeker in August — the meadows can turn vibrant green. Photo/Allen Best

Another rancher, Mike Callicrate, lives in Evergreen but was a bull rider in his younger days and married a Kansas farm girl and has feedlots there. He has an opinionated website called nobull.mikecallicarte.com, where he inveighs against the “oligarchs and multinational corporations” of our food system.

The common theme among these and others who signed onto the brief, said Kelley, was a belief in regenerative agriculture.

Last week, reviewing the filings with the Supreme Court in this Boulder-Suncor case, Kelley noticed the date the oil companies had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case — arguing that Colorado had no jurisdiction: Aug. 8, 2025.

That same day, she said, she and her family were evacuated a second time because of the Lee Fire, leaving her to wonder whether they would have a house to which they could return.

“On one hand these guys are evading responsibility and on the other hand is my family not knowing whether we will be able to afford the impacts of the Lee Fire on our property.

Kelley confides that she rarely cries, but she did when she saw that date.

“That was like a two-by-four with nails.”

Data Dump: Western Hay and Alfalfa Exports — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Graph from the 1946 federal report, “The Colorado River: A Natural Menace Becomes a Natural Resource,” showing the value of livestock to Upper Basin states.

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

September 30, 2026

☘️ ANNALS OF ALFALFA 🍀

It seems like only a few years ago that a PR person from the East Coast emailed me to tell me how surprised she was to read in the Land Desk that alfalfa and other livestock forage crops guzzled up a lot of the West’s water. “I didn’t even know they still grew alfalfa,” she wrote, incredulously. Actually, it was only a few years ago, but my how things have changed in the realm of alfalfa discourse. I’m guessing she and just about everyone else who pays attention has figured that one out by now, as it’s become vogue in certain circles to assert that the solution to the West’s water crisis is simply to stop growing alfalfa and other “low-value” agricultural crops and use the water for cities and data centers, instead. At the very least, they argue, we shouldn’t be exporting alfalfa overseas.

I’m not going to jump into that hornet’s nest again, at least not today. Instead, I dug up a bunch of data and used them to build a handful of graphs that will, hopefully, illuminate the situation a bit and give all parties — alfalfaphobes and alfalfaphiles alike — something to chew on. Call it statistical cud that I’ve gnawed on, masticated, partially digested, and now am handing over to you to derive some nutrients from. (Eww. That’s gross. Sorry.)

From the 1946 report, “The Colorado River: A Natural Menace Becomes a Natural Resource.”

This is for each state as a whole, and includes acreage that is not in the Colorado River Basin and that is not irrigated with Colorado River water (in California’s Central Valley, for example, or Colorado’s San Luis Valley, or around the Great Salt Lake in Utah). Note that this graph singles out alfalfa, and does not include acreage planted in other types of hay or forage (the other graphs look at hay generally). Data Source: National Agricultural Statistics Service.

While hay and alfalfa are often maligned as “low-value” crops, farmers also grow it to make money. As you can see from the chart below, farmers in Colorado River Basin states harvested nearly $5 billion worth of hay in 2022. That’s on a par with the Colorado ski industry’s annual economic output.

Over the last two decades or so, Western state farmers have sold an increasing amount of hay, especially alfalfa, to overseas buyers. This is largely due to the growing global taste and demand for cow-milk products. Alfalfa is favored by dairy operations because its high protein content increases milk yield. So if you’re trying to reduce alfalfa demand by quitting beef, you’re barking up the wrong tree; you’ll have to ditch the ice cream and cheese, as well (or switch to goat or sheep milk products).

While hay exports are a billion-dollar-per-year industry, they are dropping off for a variety of reasons, from tariffs and trade wars to China’s shrinking dairy herds and gradually decreasing production here at home.

Source: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.

While the Western hay-export industry brought in over $1 billion in 2022, it’s not quite accurate to say that most of the region’s hay production is for export. Still, more than 20% is quite a lot of Western water to be sending overseas on giant container ships.

In 2025, exports accounted for about 17% of all Colorado River Basin state hay production value. Source: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.

The largest hay exporter in the West is California, with Arizona and Utah trading second and third places. Other Colorado River Basin states export insignificant amounts of hay, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

California’s biggest overseas hay customers have been Japan and China, though the China market has been shrinking since 2022. Source: USDA FAS

China has been Utah’s biggest hay buyer by far, though it also ships hay to Korea and Japan. Source: USDA FAS.

Most of the hay exported from Arizona has traditionally gone to Saudi Arabia via Fondomonte Farms, which is owned by Almarai, a huge Saudi dairy and food company. Fondomonte owns farms in Arizona where it grows its own alfalfa for export. Fondomonte pumps groundwater for irrigation, which is not counted against Arizona’s allocation from the Colorado River (even though groundwater and surface water are connected). Source: USDA FAS.

So what’s the takeaway from all of this? Well, like I said, I’m just providing the fodder for you to ruminate on, so to speak.

But it does definitively show that alfalfa and hay aren’t just some kind of side gig for Western farmers. They are important crops. And trying to convince farmers to give them up — along with the nearly $5 billion per year they can generate — is going to be tough, even if it is necessary.

⛏️ MINING MONITOR ⛏️

In last week’s dispatch on more mining claims staked in the shrunken Bears Ears National Monument I mentioned a few dozen that appeared to have been located by Land Survey Advisors, including some in the former monument. I was able to finally get past the glitches in the San Juan County database and get confirmation that all 36 claims were, in fact, staked within Bears Ears’ pre-shrinkage boundaries. That brings the total number of new claims in Bears Ears to 72.

I’ll map all of the claims for a future dispatch and will continue to keep my eyes open for more new ones.

📖 READING (&LISTENING) ROOM 📰

The Magic Southwest podcast has an insightful episode about the lost working-class neighborhoods that once lined the Animas River in Durango. Well, I shouldn’t say they’re “lost.” They were mostly destroyed by the city to make way for roads, sewage treatment plants, parks, or just as a form of urban renewal, if you will. Give it a listen below:

Heads up Four Corners area folks: I’ll be giving a presentation on the Dolores River as part of a Dolores River Boating Advocates’ event on Friday, Nov. 6, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Powerhouse in Durango. Following a short film about Snaggletooth Rapid I’ll speak about my personal relationship with the Dolores River, its history, the way it is a sort of microcosm of the Colorado River as a whole, and about its potential futures. I’ll also throw in a funny little tale about the time I saw Ed Abbey go through Snaggletooth. Tickets are $10 — which will help DRBA defray costs — and seating is limited. There will also be a cash bar. Reserve your spot now.

⛈️ WACKY WEATHER WATCH⚡️

Things are getting crazy down in southern New Mexico, especially near Hatch, where the Rio Grande has jumped its banks and inundated fields, homes, and even I-25. Check out the video below for more. And stay tuned next week when I have a recap of the 2026 water year, which may have been the wackiest on record.

#Drought news October 8, 2026: Widespread heavy precipitation abetted robust improvement across eastern #Colorado, central and western #Kansas, and parts of southern Nebraska, 2-category improvements in portions

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

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

This Week’s Drought Summary

Heavy to excessive rainfall impacted significant parts of the Contiguous States this past week. Amounts of 4 to locally over 8 inches of rain were common across south-central and southeastern Georgia, northeastern Florida, the Florida Panhandle, portions of the immediate Gulf Coast, and a swath from central Texas through the middle Red River (South) Valley. This brought an abrupt end to a protracted spell of hot and dry weather across the southern Great Plains that dated back through most of the summer. Dallas, TX recorded 4 inches of rain from September 30 through the first week of October, including a daily total of 3.47 inches on October 1. Prior to that, Dallas recorded only 0.01 inch of rainfall July 16 through September 29 (76 days), and a total of 2.27 inches going back to June 8. Elsewhere, a few broad areas recorded at least 2 inches for the week, including most of the Gulf Coast, southern Alabama, central and southern Georgia, the northern half of Florida, a large stripe through central and adjacent eastern Texas, central through southeastern Oklahoma, and in numerous patches from southeastern Colorado and much of Kansas through southeastern Nebraska, portions of Iowa, northern Missouri, northern Illinois, and the central to southern Great Lakes Region. In some of the wetter locations across the central Plains and adjacent Front Range, impacts improved substantially enough to justify 2-cagegory improvements on the Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, several patches across northern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri, and the adjacent Lower Ohio Valley also received 2 or more inches of rain. Moderate totals exceeding 0.5 inch, with localized totals topping 2 inches, affected areas from the central High Plains and southern half of the Great Plains eastward and northeastward through much of the Mississippi and Lower Ohio Valleys, the central and southern Great Lakes, the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic Region, and the St. Lawrence Valley. Meanwhile, light precipitation at best was observed through most of the Northeast, the Upper Ohio Valley, the far Upper Mississippi Valley, the northern Great Plains, and most areas from the High Plains to the Pacific Coast outside Kansas, Colorado, and northern New Mexico. Many existing areas of drought that were impacted by the heavy precipitation experienced marked relief, but despite expansive areas receiving little or no measurable precipitation, drought intensification was limited in extent, largely due to the lower temperatures and the typical autumnal decline in human and environmental water demand…

High Plains

Widespread heavy precipitation abetted robust improvement across eastern Colorado, central and western Kansas, and parts of southern Nebraska. Numerous locations reported 3 to locally over 6 inches of rain, which was sufficient to support 2-category improvements in portions of southeastern Colorado and the western half of Kansas. Precipitation amounts declined abruptly north of a line from central Colorado through northeastern Nebraska, and only a few tenths of an inch at best was observed beyond this delineation. Still, improvements were introduced in parts of the central and northern Dakotas where earlier precipitation may have been more beneficial than initially assessed. The only areas of deterioration noted were in northeastern Colorado and part of north-central Wyoming, which consistently have been north and/or west of the heaviest precipitation. Elsewhere, dryness and drought intensities did not markedly change from last week…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending October 6, 2026.

West

Moderate to heavy precipitation (0.5 to locally approaching 2.0 inches) fell early in the period across north-central and northeastern New Mexico, but conditions were quiet across the rest of the West Region. There were scattered small areas reporting a few tenths of an inch of precipitation last week, primarily in Montana and the lower Four Corners States, while most sites observed no measurable amounts. But despite the predominantly dry week, fairly substantial areas of improvement were noted as the environmental response to earlier above-normal to heavy precipitation continued. Improvement was most common this week across New Mexico, Arizona, and Montana, with a few areas also noted in southeastern Idaho and Utah. Across almost all of Nevada, Idaho, and the three West Coast States, dryness and drought were essentially unchanged from the prior week…

South

A variable precipitation pattern was observed across Tennessee and the Lower Mississippi Valley last week, resulting in some areas of nominal improvement (scattered across eastern Tennessee, southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, and northern and northwestern Arkansas) and other areas of somewhat increased moisture deficits and deterioration (scattered across central and western Tennessee, southern and eastern Arkansas, northern Mississippi, and central through southwestern Louisiana). Farther west, across Texas and Oklahoma, broad areas recorded heavy to excessive precipitation, resulting in several sizeable areas of widespread improvement. Multiple inches of rain – for the second consecutive week in some areas – induced improvements across most of southeastern and Deep South Texas, and in a swath from central Texas through much of the Red River (South) Valley into central Oklahoma. Farther west, across the Big Bend and the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, light to moderate precipitation following the excessive amounts recorded last week led to widespread one-category improvements. Enough precipitation was observed to support 2-category improvements at a few locations in Deep South Texas, south-central Oklahoma, and the western Oklahoma Panhandle. There were a few patches in southwestern Texas and the northern interior missing the heavy precipitation that hit most locations over the past couple of weeks, resulting in scattered spots of deterioration. Improvement was far more common across Texas and Oklahoma, however, as opposed to the mixed bag of changes noted farther east…

Looking Ahead

During October 7-12, Tropical Storm Isaias in the southwestern Gulf is expected to intensify into a category-2 hurricane and head northeastward and then northward toward the United States. After peaking in intensity and beginning to weaken, landfall is expected somewhere along the north-central or northeastern Gulf Coast late October 9. Once inland, Isaias should weaken more quickly as the remnant circulation tracks northward into the Southeast or adjacent Lower Mississippi Valley. Sustained winds are expected to peak around 105 mph in the northern Gulf, but with weakening expected to start prior to landfall up to a couple hundred miles inland. A surge of tropical moisture is expected to accompany Isaias into the Southeast, bringing moderate to heavy rains into the region, reaching as far northward as the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic Region. By the end of the period, upwards of 7 inches of rain are expected in a few parts of the Florida Panhandle, and amounts exceeding 3 inches are forecast as far north as northern Alabama and adjacent areas in Mississippi and Georgia. Most areas along the Carolinas Coast are also expected to receive over 3 inches of rain. Farther west, another push of tropical moisture into the interior West could bring 3 to 6 inches of precipitation to isolated spots in the higher elevations of northeastern Utah and west-central Wyoming. At least 1.5 inches of rain are anticipated from central Mississippi eastward, reaching as far north as the Tennessee Valley, southern Appalachians, and Mid-Atlantic Region. Scattered locations in the higher elevations of the interior West and southern California Coastal Ranges are also forecast to record over 1.5 inches of precipitation by October 12. Moderate amounts exceeding 0.5 inch should cover southernmost Florida along with the greater Ohio Valley, most of the Appalachians, central and southern New York, and southern New England. Many lower elevations across the interior West are also expected to see at least 0.5 inch. In contrast, little or no precipitation is expected in many areas impacted by dryness and drought, including the Far West to the north and west of the Sierra Nevada, most of the Plains and Great Lakes Region, and western reaches of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Above-normal temperatures are anticipated across a broad swath of the Nation’s Midsection from the southern and central Plains through the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes Region. Daily high temperatures are expected to average at least 4 deg. F above normal there, with anomalies exceeding +10 deg. F from north-central Texas through most of Oklahoma and adjacent parts of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. Farther west, most locations from the northern and western Rockies to the Pacific Coast are expecting below normal temperatures, along with most of Montana. Daily highs are expected to average at least 3 deg. F below normal from the Cascades southward and eastward, with anomalies of -8 to -12 deg. F forecast in the northern Great Basin, northern Rockies, and High Plains of Montana.

Wetter than normal conditions are expected over the ensuing 5 days (October 13-17) across a large part of the Contiguous U.S. from the Rockies and northern High Plains eastward through New England, the Mid-Atlantic Region, the southern Appalachians, and the Florida Panhandle. The best odds for unusually heavy precipitation extend from the central and lower Four Corners Region eastward through Texas, the Red River (South) Valley, and the western Lower Mississippi Valley. At least marginally enhanced chances for surplus precipitation also cover all of Alaska and Hawaii. Only west-central and northern California and southwestern Oregon have nominally increased chances of subnormal precipitation. Meanwhile, above-normal temperatures are favored across much of the Pacific Northwest and over a large area including the Southeast, central and southern Appalachians, southern Great Lakes Region, Middle and Lower Mississippi Valley, central and southern Great Plains, and southern High Plains. Warmer than normal conditions are also favored across Hawaii and the central and eastern sections of Alaska. Increased odds of below-normal temperatures are limited to the Northeast and New England.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending October 6, 2026.

Just for grins here’s a slideshow of early October US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.

US Drought Monitor map October 6, 2026.
US Drought Monitor map October 7, 2025.
US Drought Monitor map October 8, 2024.
US Drought Monitor map October 3, 2023.
US Drought Monitor map October 4, 2022.
US Drought Monitor map October 5, 2021.
US Drought Monitor October 6, 2020.
US Drought Monitor October 1, 2019.
US Drought Monitor October 2, 2018.
US Drought Monitor October 3, 2017.
US Drought Monitor October 4, 2016.
US Drought Monitor October 6, 2015
US Drought Monitor October 7, 2014
US Drought Monitor October 1, 2013
US Drought Monitor map October 2, 2012.
US Drought Monitor map October 15, 2010.

How the QSA improved water conservation, reliability, technology, and infrastructure

By Brad Barham & Robert Marcos

It’s now painfully clear that the Colorado River is a limited resource which has been decreasing in flow for the past 25 years. Therefore new water conservation and transfer initiatives are more critical than ever to the continued economic and social vitality of the Southwest. An excellent example of this was provided in 2003 by the QSA between San Diego and the IID.

In 2003 the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) and the Imperial Valley Irrigation District (IID) forged a mutually beneficial water partnership that demonstrated that urban sustainability and agricultural prosperity could thrive together. In their “Quantification Settlement Agreement“, the SDCWA provided major infusions of capital to the IID in exchange for an annual allotment of 200,000 acre feet of Colorado River water, accounting for more than half of the region’s water supply. The SDCWA received an additional 77,700 acre-feet of water that was conserved by lining long stretches of the All-American and Coachella canals.^{1, 2}

At the time of the historic agreement San Diego County’s population had just passed the 3 million mark and 95% of its water had been coming from a single source: the Metropolitan Water District’s Colorado River allotment. Worse – it would be 12 more years until San Diego’s very expensive desalination plant would come online, offering a new source of water that supplies only about 10% of the county’s water use.. This meant that prior to the QSA the county’s water supply was exceptionally vulnerable to shortage.

From the IID’s point of view, their massive 3.1 million acre-foot (AF) Colorado River allotment had a major vulnerability: unlined earthen canals had been losing up to 100,000 AF of water every year through seepage. In addition to this the IID wanted farmers to employ more advanced irrigation systems but their investment costs limited adoption. That changed after the influx of hundreds of millions of dollars from San Diego and the State, which provided the financial lifeline needed to pay for the upgrades.

1. San Diego paid for an array of on-farm conservation upgrades: Under the QSA only water that was saved due to the following efficiency upgrades could be transferred to San Diego. ³

Drip Irrigation Systems
Portable & Fixed Sprinkler Systems
Tailwater Return (Recovery) Systems
Cascade Systems
Laser Land Leveling

2. System and Infrastructure Conservation: San Diego funds IID’s internal delivery system improvements to generate water efficiency. ⁴

Regulating & Mid-Lateral Reservoirs
Delivery System Automation
Main Canal Seepage Interception projects

3. All-American and Coachella Canal Concrete Lining: Paid for via QSA Partnerships

Through the QSA, San Diego secured $257 million in State of California subsidies to pay for the massive physical construction of concrete-lined sections of these earthen canals. This prevents massive water loss from seepage and provides San Diego with an additional ~80,000 acre-feet of water annually. ⁵

4. Historical Land Fallowing — Paid for through 2017

During the initial years of the QSA (2003–2017), before farmers had time to build modern drip and tailwater systems, San Diego paid for temporary land fallowing to kickstart the water transfer volumes. They also provided $30 million to mitigate environmental and economic impacts on the Imperial Valley from idling those fields. ⁶

San Diego and the Imperial Irrigaton District weren’t the QSA’s only beneficiaries

• Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD)

Prior to the QSA the Coachella Valley Water District received as much as 330,000 acre feet of Colorado River water, but those deliveries had been unreliable, and as a result the Coachella Valley’s groundwater was in a state of severe overdraft. Thanks to the QSA, CVWD’s water rights were officially quantified, the district received an immediate, additional 35,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water, and its long-term imported supply was scheduled to steadily increase over time. ⁷

• Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD)

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the massive wholesale supplier for cities across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties—was a core player. While MWD took a reduction in some historic surplus supplies to help California stay within its strict 4.4 million acre-foot total river limit, the QSA secured and stabilized MWD’s baseline water rights. It granted MWD reliable access to dry-year water transfers from agricultural areas (like the Palo Verde Valley) and canal-lining projects. This reliably safeguards the water supply for more than 12 million urban Southern Californians outside of San Diego. ⁸

• The San Luis Rey Indian Settlement Parties (Native Tribes)

A crucial portion of the water saved from the All-American and Coachella canal lining projects was legally designated for five San Diego-area Native American tribes. These included the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, Pala Band of Mission Indians, Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians, Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, and the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. For decades, these tribes had been locked in a fierce federal water rights dispute with local cities. The QSA permanently resolved this by allocating 16,000 acre-feet of water per year from the canal lining projects to these tribes and their partner cities of Escondido and Vista. ⁹

Topsoil Moisture % Short/Very Short by @usda_oce: 37% of the Lower 48 is short/very short, a 6% decrease from last week. Highest short/very topsoil spans parts of the West and Lower Mississippi River Basin, led by #Nevada at 90%, #Mississippi at 88%, #Arkansas at 87%, and #Wyoming at 86%.

Denver Water to reduce Fraser River flows amid extreme #drought — The October 13 reduction will lower #FraserRiver flows to 2 cubic feet per second as Denver Water responds to drought and systemwide water shortages — Sky-Hi Daily News

Rivers and creeks in Grand County are part of Denver Water’s North Collection System. Water flows through the Moffat Tunnel, under the Continental Divide, to Gross and Ralston reservoirs. Image credit: Denver Water.

Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi Daily News website (Isabel Del Mastro). Here’s an excerpt:

Grand County residents will see considerably less water flowing down the Fraser River starting Oct. 13th. Denver Water typically diverts water from the Fraser River through the Moffat Tunnel to serve customers during the winter, according to Trout Unlimited. But because of extreme drought conditions caused by a lack of snowpack and record-high temperatures, the Fraser River has considerably less water to give…

Since 1969, Fraser River flows have been required to maintain a minimum of 4 cubic feet per second, or cfs, when Denver Water diverts water, a requirement tied in part to U.S. Forest Service requirements. Now, Denver Water is reducing Fraser River flows to 2 cubic feet per second starting Oct. 13 to accommodate extreme drought conditions, according to a Denver Water email forwarded to Sky-Hi News. Reductions remain in place until May 15, unless drought conditions improve or if Denver Water encounters “unforeseen operational issues” that require them to increase reductions, according to Denver Water Communications Manager Travis Thompson, in an email to Sky-Hi News. Along with reducing Fraser River flows, Denver Water will reduce flows in its tributaries; Vasquez Creek and St. Louis Creek will be reduced to 2 cfs, and Ranch Creek to 1.5 cfs, according to the Denver Water email and Kirk Klancke, president of the Colorado River Headwaters Grand County Chapter.

Supreme Court wrestles with who should pay for #ClimateChange: The Supreme Court’s decision on a #Colorado lawsuit could shape dozens of efforts to make fossil fuel companies pay for #climate damages — Austin Corona (Grist.org)

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Austin Corona):

October 6, 2026

The Supreme Court opened its 2026-2027 term Monday with a climate case: a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, against ExxonMobil and Suncor, a Canadian oil company, over the costs of a warming planet. The case is one of dozens across the country in which local governments have sued fossil fuel companies for their role in driving climate change and are seeking compensation as they now deal with its effects. The Supreme Court’s decision could decide the fate of all those other cases and the idea that oil companies must pay for the damages their products caused.

The justices gave no clear signs of how the court will rule, but over the course of two hours of questioning, they did demonstrate unison on one point: It is a hard and consequential task to identify who is legally liable for the impacts of climate change.

Although Boulder’s case was first filed in Colorado courts, oil and gas companies asked the Supreme Court to step in, arguing that important climate change matters shouldn’t play out at the state level. Instead, they say, the issue belongs to Congress and the White House. Boulder wants the court to send the case back to Colorado, where it can proceed.

Eight justices — Justice Samuel Alito removed himself from the case — attempted repeatedly to cast the case into something legible and simple. Multiple times, justices from both sides of the ideological spectrum asked attorneys, “Why make this argument so complex?” Yet they seldom openly agreed on what the simpler argument would be. The consequences for oil companies weighed heavily on some parts of the discussion, while the consequences for communities dealing with a warming planet went largely unexplored.

Some judges attempted to describe it as a case about reducing emissions — a framing that aligns closely with what ExxonMobil and Suncor argue. If Boulder’s case is an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through state court, it opens the possibility that a state court could police activity all over the country, and even the world. No state law could be appropriate to apply to the cumulative impact of global pollution, the companies argue.

“This case involves an unprecedented effort to use state law to regulate global conduct,” said Kannon Shanmugam, the attorney representing oil companies.

Several justices seemed to agree with that general picture. Kavanaugh said he could see no difference between allowing a state court to order oil and gas companies to pay damages for climate-related harms and allowing a state to effectively regulate greenhouse gas emissions all over the world. He told Boulder’s attorney, Kevin Russell, that he was downplaying the effect this case could have on oil companies, arguing it could “bankrupt” some of them. In his closing arguments, Shanmugam reinforced the idea that the chaotic consequences of the case could reach the scale of climate change itself.

“Boulder could tag me … when I am in Colorado in two weeks and sue me on a nuisance claim for refilling my car and thereby contributing to global climate change,” he said.

Marshall Fire December 30, 2021. Photo credit: Boulder County

Ironically, these questions were far from what Boulder claimed it wanted to do with its case. The city hasn’t asked to stop companies from producing oil and gas, or to stop those who burn them from sending greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Rather, it wants oil companies to pay for deceiving the public into thinking those products weren’t producing large-scale harms through climate change.

Justice Elena Kagan argued Boulder’s case was similar to suits that states brought against cigarette companies in the 1990s, seeking compensation for health care costs linked to tobacco consumption. The companies weren’t required to stop selling cigarettes, but to roll back their pro-cigarette marketing and fund awareness campaigns around the effects of smoking.

“This is not an effort to reduce emissions,” said Russell. “Under our deception theory, they can continue to produce as much fossil fuels as they like and contribute to as much air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as the market will bear when consumers are properly informed about the consequences of that decision.”

“It doesn’t prohibit them from engaging in the conduct. It requires them to internalize a portion of the cost of their activities by paying for some of the damage,” Russell said later.

Kavanaugh called Russell’s phrasing “cavalier,” saying that those costs could be significant to oil and gas companies. Some firms, including Suncor, have told their shareholders the accumulating climate cases against them could affect their bottom lines.

An Exxon gas station lies only blocks from the Supreme Court building on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. Exxon Mobil is one of the defendants in Boulder’s climate case. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, looms behind the station. Austin Corona / Grist

If the case is allowed to proceed in Colorado courts and Boulder wins, it could open the floodgates for other cases, Shanmugam argued: “More [suits] are being filed by the week … so given the extraordinary magnitude of these cases, where, in each of these cases, plaintiffs are seeking billions of dollars of damages, we need an answer to this question sooner rather than later.”

Justices typically hear opening arguments and ask questions at the beginning of the court’s term and then take months before publishing a decision. This thread was only one of several they teased apart during the arguments, including arguments over states’ regulatory authorities under the Constitution and the intent of the Clean Air Act. Judges could use a range of rationales for their ultimate ruling, each of which would affect other climate suits against oil companies differently because those suits depend on different legal bases.

“States and local governments are trying to recoup costs related to harms from climate change in a lot of different types of lawsuits,” said Erika Kranz, an attorney with Harvard Law School’s environmental and energy law program. Whether these other cases “run into trouble will depend on how justices write their decision.”

It’s also possible justices send the case back to Colorado, either by deciding the Supreme Court isn’t the right place for it or by voting 4-4, which would leave Boulder able to carry on with its state-level lawsuit. (Alito has not explained why he removed himself from the case, though he has faced accusations that his investments in oil and gas companies not related to the case made his participation inappropriate.)

Kranz and Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School, said it’s hard to know whether that emphasis showed the court was leaning toward the oil companies, but it suggested that at least some justices were deeply concerned about the case’s potential financial consequences for the industry.

Boulder’s lawyers must now convince them that this risk to oil and gas companies was beside the point, Winter said. To do that, Boulder will have to overcome justices’ claims that it’s trying to reduce emissions through the court.

“There’s a lot of concern from the oil industry, from corporate actors, and from the conservative justices about the significant consequences of these cases,” Winter said. “One way to get at that is to equate this case with previous cases, which were much more directly about regulation of pollution.”

Colorado statewide annual temperature anomaly (°F) with respect to the 1901-2000 average. Graphic credit: Colorado Climate Center

Native nations sue over Endangered Species Act changes: Environmental work being done by tribes across the country will be made more difficult now that the Trump administration has more narrowly defined ‘harm.’ — Anna V. Smith (High Country News)

Steve Edwards, chairman of the Swinomish Tribal Community at Lone Tree Point, on the Swinomish Reservation in Washington. Jovelle Tamayo

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

October 5, 2026

The Smokehouse Tidal Marsh project on the Swinomish Indian Reservation, which began in 2022, will turn 250 acres of former agricultural land into estuaries and wetlands. It’s one of many tribal community projects aimed at restoring endangered and threatened populations of Puget Sound chinook salmon, Puget Sound steelhead, bull trout and southern resident killer whales in the Skagit River Watershed. A primary cause of decline for each of these species is habitat loss and degradation caused by development and agriculture.

“Over the past 150 years or so, there’s been significant damage to the habitat, and (the habitat is) what salmon needs,” said Swinomish Tribal Indian Community Chairman Steve Edwards, who has fished in the area for over 50 years.

In July, the Trump administration dealt a massive blow to tribal efforts when it finalized changes to the federal government’s interpretation of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Previously, the definition of “harm” to a species included the habitat and resources a species needs to survive. Now, agencies will interpret “harm” to mean only the intentional killing or harming of an individual of a species, dramatically narrowing the reach and scope of the law formerly focused on ecosystem-wide protection.

On July 14, the same day the rule change was finalized, the Swinomish and Squaxin Island tribes sued the federal government over its “radical reinterpretation” of the law, arguing that the Trump administration’s changes ignored over 50 years of congressional intent and Supreme Court case law.

“Squaxin’s cultural and economic well-being depend upon the health and sustainability of Pacific Salmon and other freshwater and marine resources, which play a central role in the daily lives of Tribal members,” the tribes wrote in the lawsuit.

Chairman Edwards told High Country News that federal agencies never responded to the Swinomish Tribe’s request for government-to-government consultation, despite the United States’ trust obligation to Native nations.

“Squaxin’s cultural and economic well-being depend upon the health and sustainability of Pacific Salmon and other freshwater and marine resources, which play a central role in the daily lives of Tribal members,” the tribes wrote in the lawsuit.

Chairman Edwards told High Country News that federal agencies never responded to the Swinomish Tribe’s request for government-to-government consultation, despite the United States’ trust obligation to Native nations.

“It feels almost like we’ve been betrayed by our federal trustees,” Edwards said of the change, which he said diminishes their treaty rights. “It’s super disturbing that we had to fight this fight.”

Many Native nations opposed the changes in public comments when they were proposed in 2025. They highlighted the lack of tribal consultation, as well as the devastating impacts the new interpretation could have on the recovery of imperiled species, many of which have cultural, spiritual and relational meaning and importance to tribal citizens.

The change could also disrupt fishing communities’ economies and deprive those who rely on salmon for subsistence.

While the majority of the comments came from Native nations in the Pacific Northwest and were related to salmon, others came from tribes like the Pueblo of San Felipe, which cited impacts on the monarch butterfly and Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebee. The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe voiced concern for the Dixie Valley toad, which the tribe considers a relative.

“It is obvious that removing water from a species that needs water to survive harms both individual members of the species and the species’ population,” wrote Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe Chairwoman Cathi Williams-Tuni, about the change and the potential impacts of a nearby proposed geothermal project.

That geothermal project was halted in 2022 after the toad was listed as endangered, but the Trump administration’s changes could allow it to resume.

“These harms in Dixie Valley would be catastrophic, permanently ruining the Tribe’s sacred site and ending the ability to use the springs for medicine and ceremonies,” said Williams-Tuni in public comments.

The tribes asked the court to prevent the regulatory changes from moving forward, which took effect Sept. 14, and requested a decision declaring the changes unlawful and reverting to the previous definitions of “harm.” Although they hope for a timely response, the tribes are prepared for the lawsuit to take months to resolve.

The rule change is advantageous for developers and industry, who may no longer need to consider or mitigate broader habitat impacts of their actions. Previously, if an activity would destroy habitat in a way that harmed a protected species, the business responsible would have to go through a permit process that normally triggered tribal consultation. Under the new changes, such permits would be required much less frequently, effectively cutting tribes out of the process. The changed definition will also require proof that the harm was intentional, which is something difficult to prove in the legal system, according to Bob Anderson, Oneida Indian Nation visiting professor of law at the Harvard Law School and a member of the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

“Companies won’t have any incentives to negotiate with the government or environmental groups or tribes about how their activities are going to affect the listed species,” Anderson told HCN.

The change could also impact large-scale agreements on rivers with ESA-listed species, according to Anderson. Currently, river systems like the Klamath, Elwha and Columbia all require water to be released from their dams at certain times of year to support the migration and spawning cycles of endangered or threatened salmon, in accordance with the ESA. The new interpretation throws existing agreements and laws into question and would make salmon recovery exponentially harder.

“We’re not even close to delisting these species,” said Kayeloni Scott (Nez Perce and Spokane), executive director of the Columbia River Snake Campaign, a coalition of conservation groups, businesses and the Nez Perce Tribe. “Our goal is abundance — healthy and abundant populations — that’s a whole other level, a whole other tier. Even getting to delisting, we’re pretty far off.”

Anderson believes that the tribes and environmental groups’ legal arguments are strong but added that they involve a level of political risk, given the administration’s reputation for being highly retaliatory. One striking example is that of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, which joined a lawsuit against the administration in July 2025 over the construction of an immigration detention center in the Everglades. That December, President Donald Trump vetoed an unrelated bipartisan bill that would have returned land to the tribe, citing the tribe’s opposition to the detention center as his reasoning for the veto, calling the Miccosukee Tribe “unaligned with my Administration’s policy of removing violent criminal illegal aliens from the country.”

“That’s a real message there to plaintiffs that they’re going to retaliate against you,” Anderson said. “You’re locking horns with the federal government.”

Despite the latest development, Edwards’ priority is upholding the nation’s sovereign rights for future generations. He says the tribe will not stop its restoration work.

“It does impact our sovereignty,” Edwards said of the change to species protections. “Generations down the road, I want (Swinomish citizens) to be able to exercise their treaty rights like I have done in the past.”

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

This article appeared in the October 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Tribes sue over ‘harm’.”

U.S. Supreme Court justices appear skeptical of allowing Boulder climate lawsuit to proceed: Case could be turning point in efforts to hold fossil fuel industry accountable — Chase Woodruff (ColoradoNewsline.com) #ClimateChange

An aerial view of a Boulder County neighborhood that burned in the Marshall Fire, on Dec. 31, 2021. (Hart Van Denburg/CPR, pool)

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Newsline websilte (Chase Woodruff):

October 5, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority Monday appeared broadly sympathetic to fossil fuel companies’ argument that allowing two Colorado local governments to sue them over climate change in state court would be a “recipe for chaos.”

Attorneys for both sides in Suncor v. Boulder, along with the Trump administration, presented oral arguments in a two-hour hearing, the first of the Supreme Court’s 2026-27 term. The case originated in Colorado in 2018, when Boulder’s city and county governments sued Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, seeking monetary damages under state tort law for their role in contributing to climate change.

Despite being filed eight years ago, the case has yet to proceed to trial, as the fossil fuel companies have repeatedly tried to have it dismissed or moved to federal court by arguing that the Constitution and federal clean-air laws preempt such state-level proceedings.

As justices waded into a thicket of jurisdictional issues raised by Suncor and Exxon when they petitioned the nation’s highest court to weigh in last year, Chief Justice John Roberts noted the “practical matter” of what could happen nationwide if Boulder’s case is allowed to proceed.

“Presumably if you prevail, the next day, a municipality in every single state will file a lawsuit, probably copy your pleadings, and then there’ll be at least 50 … causes of action filed,” he told the attorney representing Boulder. “How would you think that will work out on the ground?”

With more than 30 similar lawsuits already filed by state and local governments across the country, environmental advocates say the outcome in Suncor v. Boulder could be a turning point in efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change.

Justice Elena Kagan, the most senior of the court’s three liberal justices, compared the wave of climate litigation to state-level efforts against tobacco companies in the 1990s and against opioid manufacturers in the 2010s. She asked the attorney for Suncor and Exxon if those lawsuits should have been preempted, too.

Kannon Shanmugam, representing the companies, said the tobacco litigation involved “a more traditional misrepresentation claim” and consumers “suffering injury quite directly.”

“I’m waiting to see the distinction,” Kagan replied. “Because this complaint talks a lot about misrepresentations that are made by the defendants.”

Climate change in Colorado

In a statement Monday, Boulder County said that its case seeks to hold the companies “responsible for knowingly contributing to climate alteration while concealing the dangers of their products.”

The Suncor v. Boulder proceedings come after another unprecedented summer of record heat, extreme drought conditions and destructive wildfire activity impacting Boulder and other Colorado communities, as human-caused climate change, mostly the result of fossil fuel combustion, pushes average global temperatures to dangerous new highs. In December 2021, Boulder County was the location of the Marshall Fire — the most destructive fire in Colorado history, and one in which scientists say climate change was a factor.

“Faced with these rising costs, we ask, is it fair for communities to shoulder these costs alone? We believe it is not,” Boulder County’s statement said. “For decades, the companies producing and selling fossil fuels knew that their products contribute to a changing climate. These companies are asking the Court to help them evade responsibility.”

Alito absent

Absent from Monday’s oral arguments was Justice Samuel Alito, one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative members. Alito recused himself from further proceedings in the case last week, after environmental advocates had called for him to step aside because he owns stock in at least two oil companies.

Alongside the two parties to the case, Sarah Harris, U.S. deputy solicitor general, appeared before the court on the Trump administration’s behalf, asking the justices to side with the fossil fuel companies. In an unusual move, the administration filed an unsolicited brief in support of Suncor and Exxon’s initial petition to the court shortly after it was filed in August 2025.

“We agree with petitioners: interstate air pollution is an inherently federal area, and Congress hasn’t authorized this suit in the Clean Air Act,” Harris told the justices.

Though he posed multiple questions to Shanmugam about the companies’ legal arguments, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to agree, saying that the court had multiple precedents making it “crystal clear” that issues involving interstate air and water pollution are subject to federal preemption.

“We don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Kavanaugh said. “Because we’ve said this multiple times — and Congress, presumably, when doing the Clean Air Act and doing the Clean Air Act amendments, has relied on this court’s precedents, establishing that this kind of pollution is a federal law matter.”

Attorney Kevin Russell, representing Boulder, reiterated that the plaintiffs’ case against Suncor and Exxon goes beyond an attempt to merely regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“The deception claims, I think, are far outside anything the Clean Air Act is designed to deal with,” Russell said. “The Clean Air Act doesn’t give the EPA authority to figure out what is the ideal amount of emissions … or the right mix of fuels, or the right level of economic activity. It is a much more precise mandate that is limited to putting a cap on the amount of emissions from particular point sources.”

But both Kagan and Roberts sounded skeptical of Boulder’s position that its litigation isn’t seeking to regulate emissions.

“Everything depends on this idea that the defendants are responsible for excessive emissions,” Kagan said.

“Isn’t your suit an attempt to evade those (Clean Air Act precedents)?” asked Roberts. “It’s an effort to reduce emissions. The fuel production itself doesn’t have the sort of universal harm that we’re talking about.”

As Monday’s hearing began in Washington, climate activists gathered at a rally in Boulder, where Mayor Aaron Brockett, survivors of the Marshall Fire and other speakers urged the Supreme Court not to issue a ruling that lets the fossil fuel industry off the hook.

“Our community and many others have suffered terribly from worsening wildfires, floods and drought because of the deception of big oil companies, who knew that burning fossil fuels would overheat our planet, but chose to obfuscate the truth to prioritize their profits,” Micah Parkin, an advocate with climate group 350 Colorado, said in a statement. “Boulder deserves to have our day in court to hold these corporations accountable for the costs our community is having to bear.”

Looking towards Boulder at the Marshall Fire December 30, 2021 From 53rd and Stuart in Adams County. Note the atmospheric mountain wave, where winds accelerate down the slope of mountains, extend only a short distance downwind from the mountains, then subside further downwind and blow in the opposite direction, much like the backward flowing current behind a rock in a swift river.

Colorado Parks & Wildlife increases fish habitat with 220 boulders — The Mountain Mail #ArkansasRiver

Click the link to read the article on The Mountain Mail website (Cailey McDermott). Here’s an excerpt:

September 29, 2026

In a continued effort to improve fish habitat and areas of rest for trout, Colorado Parks and Wildlife added about 220 native boulders to the sides of the Arkansas River in four sections between the bridges on CR 166 and CR 175. Sean Shepherd, CPW area wildlife manager, said the project has been in the works for about four ears and is a continuation of work after the removal of the low-head dam, which Shepherd said was Phase 1. Doing the actual in-river placing of boulders had a short timeline. They started Sept. 8 and had to be done by Sept. 30, as spawning season officially starts Oct. 1. The crew finished Sept. 28. Improving the connectivity through this section of river will support all stages of aquatic life, especially brown and rainbow trout, he explained.

Map of the Arkansas River drainage basin. Created using USGS National Map and NASA SRTM data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79039596

Denver just saw its fourth-warmest September on record, sixth in a row without snow — The #Denver Post #snowpack

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

October 1, 2026

Another month of unusually warm temperatures cemented September as the fourth-warmest on record for Denver, and the sixth in a row without snow, according to the National Weather Service. Denver’s average temperature last month was 69.2 degrees, more than 4 degrees above the city’s normal September average of 64.8 degrees and just short of the 70-degree record set in 2024, according to weather service data. The coldest September average on record was 54.7 degrees in 1912…

Despite the warmth, about 2.23 inches of precipitation fell in the city in September, weather service meteorologists said. None of it was snow, marking Denver’s sixth snowless September in a row. Denver has recorded measurable snowfall only once in September in the past 20 years, with 1 inch of powder stacking up in 2020, according to weather service records. The city documented traces of snow in 2014 and 2012, but the rest of Denver’s Septembers since 2006 have been snowless.

CoCoRaHS precipitation map for Colorado for the past 30 days. Credit: Colorado Climate Center

What’s next for the Colorado River? — Page Buono (AmericanRivers.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Yuma wetlands restoration, Colorado River, Arizona. Photo credit: Fred Phillips

Click the link to read the article on the American Rivers website (Page Buono):

September 9, 2026

For more than the last century, the flows of the Colorado River have been managed and dictated by the demands of a rapidly growing and changing West. There are founding legal documents, and then agreements stacked on those, often known as the “Law of the River.” These agreements are between states, between sovereign nations, including Tribal Nations and Mexico; between districts and companies and branches of the US Government. It’s hard to find the appropriate metaphor for how all of these agreements work together (and at times against one another) to manage the Colorado River system. But even fraught metaphors are sometimes the only way to get through something so complicated.

Imagine the web of agreements and founding legal documents that guide the management of the Colorado River as a body. The 1922 Colorado River Compact would be the skeleton, the framework upon which all the other functions of the body are built. The limbs could be the communities, farms, Tribes, businesses, ecosystems, and economies that rely on the river’s blood (Colorado River water). The agreements that build on the framework of the Compact, such as the 2007 Interim Guidelines or the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), act as nerves that facilitate or trigger movement and action. Perhaps the brain is the network of decision makers – the Bureau of Reclamation, the states, the Tribes, Mexico and others whose decisions and cooperation keep the system functioning, underscoring why coordination and consensus are so important: a body whose different parts are working at cross-purposes cannot function effectively. The blood then, of course, is the Colorado River water allocated to parts of the body.

Continuing the body metaphor for the contemporary management of the Colorado River system, additional agreements (or the nerves that trigger certain action) were added to the body.

Colorado River, Colorado | Trout Unlimited Joshua Duplechian

On Friday, August 24, the Bureau of Reclamation released three documents outlining a 10-year framework for how the Colorado River will be managed for the next two years and how management decisions for the subsequent 8 years will be made. You can read the Bureau’s summary doc here.

The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS): evaluates the many proposed plans Reclamation considered for how the river should be managed going forward, and identifies a preferred alternative, a 10-year framework built on operating plans developed in at least two-year increments;

The Record of Decision (ROD): adopts the 10-year operating framework and sets the principles and guardrails for future operations including how water can be stored, shortage sharing, critical infrastructure protection, consultation, and the movement of water between Lake Powell and Lake Mead; and

The 2027-2028 guidelines: establish the specific operating approach for the first two years under the new framework.

While the two-year guidelines put real numbers and real movement on the table, the ultimate test is whether the guidelines, alongside the side agreements, investments, and management tools needed to support them, are put in place and function as intended – and whether, together, they can keep the body upright.

Six months from now, the more consequential questions will be whether the new guidelines:

provide more certainty and transparency, including clear pathways for addressing disputes and disagreements when they arise;

support flexible and adaptive management tools that can respond to changing hydrology and conditions;

meaningfully include Tribal Nations in both decision-making and implementation;

reduce reliance on emergency operations and short-term crisis response; and

create a workable path toward long-term resilience — one that can withstand disagreement, including litigation, without bringing implementation and collaboration to a halt.

Colorado River flowing through the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Photo credit: Nick Kelley

Finally, and critically, these new guidelines must recognize healthy rivers and watersheds as a core element of the Basin’s resilience infrastructure, because in the middle of all the agreements – at the core of all the collaboration and controversy, the skeleton and nerves and muscles that move it, there is a river – there is a heart; the whole reason blood moves through the system at all.

Healthy rivers and forests, connected floodplains, and intact watersheds are essential to the body, to the Basin. They support the reliability of our water supplies, reduce the risks and impacts of wildfire; they sustain fish and wildlife, support recreation, and strengthen the Basin’s ability to withstand drought and changing conditions. They are invaluable.

Which is to say, at the center of all the agreements and negotiations and collaboration and controversy, is the river. Has always been the river. And if we succeed at all in our management, if we have any hope of keeping this body upright, there will always be the river.

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

Much of Southwest #Colorado had the wettest September on record: Needed moisture was brought after a low-snow winter and dry summer — The #Durango Herald

Vallecito Lake back in the day via Vallecito Chamber

Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Jane Rooney). Here’s an excerpt:

October 2, 2026

“Much of the area reported the wettest September on record,” said David Byers, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Grand Junction.

The late-September rainstorms delivered steady precipitation over several days, and Southwest Colorado reported no flash floods, he said. The NWS was particularly concerned about the Gold Mountain burn scar near Ouray because many homes are in the area. Because the rain came in steadily over time, no flash floods were recorded, he said…

Durango-La Plata County Airport recorded rainfall totals of about 3.2 inches of rain from the late September storms, Byers said. In the mountains above 12,000 feet, that rain became snow. Vallecito Reservoir rose about 18 feet, or about 30,000 acre-feet, from this fall’s moisture. Although water levels have increased significantly, a decent winter is still important for the reservoir, said David Hofmann, superintendent of the Pine River Irrigation District…The water discharge of the Animas River, measured in cubic feet per second, went from about 230 cfs on Sept. 1 to a high of a little over 2,400 cfs on Tuesday after the storms. Vallecito Creek went from about 45 cfs on Sept. 1 to a peak of about 2,500 cfs on Sept. 17, according to USGS continuous data.

Now comes the test of the anticipated #ElNiño: Water resources personnel are closely watching weather forecasts to find out how much snow is predicted — AlamosaCitizen.com #RioGrande #aridification #ENSO

The view of Mt. Blanca from Blanca Vista Park in Alamosa on Friday, Oct. 2. Credit: The Citizen

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

October 2, 2026

hat will do it for now when it comes to moisture for the Upper Rio Grande Basin.

The 2.3 inches of rain that fell in September, or 1.29 inches more than what’s normal for the month, felt like a godsend after a summer of intense heat, when fishermen were asked to leave their rods at home and bears wandered into the lower elevations seeking food and water.

Not to mention the odd spring that delivered a string of days that reached 80 degrees or higher in March and ruined the potatoes in storage.

No doubt 2026 has been warm, days and nights.

Now comes the test of the anticipated El Niño winter season, which is expected to peak in November and persist through February 2027. Winter doesn’t begin until Dec. 21, but for the Upper Rio Grande Basin it’s the snowpack from the San Juan Mountains that is vital, which translates into wanting to see a good amount of snow by Thanksgiving for the Wolf Creek area. Even better if Poncha Pass to the north and La Veta Pass to the east see the snow fly as well.

“If we don’t get an above normal, or at least normal snowpack this winter and subsequent runoff next spring, that will just exacerbate the dire condition that we are already in,” says Craig Cotten, San Luis Valley division engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources.

His office measures the water to determine Colorado’s obligations to neighboring New Mexico under the Rio Grande Compact.

From January through August, Colorado has delivered 67,000 acre-feet of water to the state line with New Mexico to meet its obligations under the shared three-state water agreement. Cotten says the state Division of Water Resources is anticipating that the September through December deliveries will be more than enough to meet Colorado’s obligation, and likely significantly exceed it.

“In a typical year, Colorado delivers around 80,000-90,000 acre-feet during the winter, non-irrigation season, so that is why we have not had any curtailment of ditches to provide specific compact deliveries,” he said.

It was mid-October a year ago when historic rains saved the Rio, a rare large precipitation event that dramatically increased the river flows, filled irrigation ditches, and helped ensure the planting fields went into winter wet and in good shape for spring.

Only it didn’t last because rain is no substitute for snow when it comes to the health of the Upper Rio Grande Basin.

Will El Niño deliver this year? Will late fall into the winter bring the needed freezing temperatures to sustain a long winter of snow pack?

If not, you don’t want to know what next spring and summer will mean.

South Platte River Basin #climate for the week ending October 5, 2026: Happy New Water Year! #SouthPlatteRiver

It’s the start of a new water year! I’m full of hope that Russ Schumacher is correct in pointing out that water year 2026 was an outlier and that a more normal water year can’t be ruled out for 2027.

Below is the Snow Water Equivalent in South Platte graph from the NRCS for October 5, 2026. This morning’s snowpack numbers are N/A at the SNOTEL stations. There are 203 days until the median peak. I’ve added the lines for 2026, 2018, 2012, and 2002 since the statewide drought is still very pronounced.

Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for October 5, 2026. This morning precipitation, at the SNOTEL stations, is at 5% of the median, and 0% of the water year median. There are 361 days left in the water year. I’ve added the lines for 2026, 2018, 2012, and 2002 since the statewide drought is still very pronounced.

There is a chance for showers Tuesday, with a slight chance for showers Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday in the central mountains. There is a slight chance for showers Tuesday, a slight chance for thunderstorms Wednesday, and a chance for showers Sunday, in the northern mountains. It looks dry and sunny for the next week, down here, about 0.7 miles from Baker’s Crossing on Clear Creek, named for mountain man Jim Baker. From Wikipedia:

On July 3, 1859, Baker took up a homestead west of Denver along Vasquez Creek (now Clear Creek). The area became known as Baker’s Crossing, where he established several businesses, at what is now 53rd and Tennyson in [southwest Adams County]. He built an adobe house and raised cattle. He operated a stone coal (anthracite) mine, a toll bridge on the Denver Boulder Wagon Road, and a store operated by his two wives. His customers were European American settlers and Native Americans…known as “Honest Jim Baker”, [he] was a frontiersman, trapper, hunter, army scout, interpreter, and rancher. He was first a trapper and hunter. The decline of the fur trade in the early 1840s drove many trappers to quit, but Baker remained in the business until 1855. During that time he was a friend of Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and John C. Frémont…He had at least three Native American wives and fourteen children.

Jim Baker, mountain man, 65 years of age, ca. 1883. By Unknown – https://www.google.com/books/edition/Twenty_Years_Among_Our_Savage_Indians/7HxNAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&pg=PA593, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113686446

Along the Clear Creek Trail, east of Tennyson Street near Baker’s Crossing, June 2021.

Here’s a look at the Colorado 7-Day precipitation map through October 4, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 0.00” to 1.00″.

Here’s the Colorado 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through October 4, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas was 0% to 400% of normal.

Here’s the most recent 7-Day Departure from Normal Temperature (F) for Colorado through October 4, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center.

Below is the 7-day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast for the week of October 5, 2026. Precipitation is anticipated for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin and may total up to 0.25″.

Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued October 4, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting October 12, 2026. The CPC expects above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor map from September 29, 2026. There were one class improvements in Weld, Logan, Elbert, Arapahoe, Adams, Denver, and Sedgwick counties. There were one class degradations in Morgan, Logan, and Adams counties. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 91.06% of Colorado. The South Platte Basin is experiencing Abnormally Dry, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, and Exceptional drought conditions.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 29, 2026.

Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.

Finally, the Colorado Water Conservation Board hosts a briefing most months of the year, the Water Conditions Monitoring Committee. Regular participants are the Colorado Climate Center, with climate data and insight, and the NRCS, with snowpack and precipitation data from their SNOTEL network, and streamflow forecasts. Click here to view the recording of the September 22, 2026 webinar. Below are some screenshots from the meeting.

R.I.P Ken Sleight: “It was Glen Canyon that changed my whole life…it made an environmentalist out of me” #GlenCanyon #ColoradoRiver #COriver

The Colorado River flows through Glen Canyon in 1958, before the dam was built. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s Zak Podmore’s and Brook Larsen’s tribute from The Salt Lake Tribune website. Here’s an excerpt:

October 3, 2026

Ken Sleight may be most well known for something that he probably never did: kneeling on the bridge in front of the Glen Canyon Dam, his hands clasped and eyes closed, praying to the Almighty to produce a “precision-type earthquake” that would free the Colorado River from its imprisonment in Lake Powell. The Sleight-inspired character Seldom Seen Smith acted out the scene in “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” Edward Abbey’s 1975 cult classic of ecosabotage. But although the character was fictional, Sleight’s lifelong hatred of the dam was very real, as was his love of Glen Canyon, the area drowned by Lake Powell.

“It was Glen Canyon that changed my whole life,” Sleight told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2018. “It made an environmentalist out of me.”

(Photo by H. Bennett. Courtesy of Ken Sleight.) Ken Sleight making breakfast along the river in Glen Canyon before the dam, circa June 1960.

[…]

In 1957, Sleight purchased eight Army surplus rafts, quit the tire business, and opened a river guiding company that would soon take the name Ken Sleight Expeditions. For the next six years, Sleight led river trips through Glen Canyon on the Colorado River where he showed artists, environmentalists, reporters and curious members of the public the labyrinthine sandstone canyon country that would soon be flooded by Lake Powell…He found common cause with the writer Edward Abbey when the two met in 1967 at the Lees Ferry boat ramp. Sleight was launching on a Grand Canyon trip, and Abbey, who was working as a ranger for the National Park Service, helped Sleight rig his boats.

“[We] sat on the edge of the raft talking and thinking, eating and drinking until the wee hours of the morning,” Sleight would later write, “making creative commentary on how best to eliminate the Glen Canyon Dam.”

The friendship lasted through Abbey’s death in 1989, and Sleight never seemed to mind being immortalized as the anarchist Seldom Seen Smith. Sleight often said that Abbey was able to put into words his anger and sorrow over seeing Glen Canyon flooded and so many other wild places transformed by development…Even though Sleight took on numerous environmental and political fights, he never forgot about Glen Canyon, which he often used religious terms to describe.

“I’d still like to see the water from the reservoir — what I call Lake Foul — I think it all ought to be drained and the water be flushed downstream to be stored in Lake Mead,” Sleight told The Tribune in 2021. “One thing is for sure: We’re still trying to resurrect Glen Canyon.”

Ken Sleight the original Monkey Wrencher photo via Salon

New film chronicles environmental ‘outlaw’ Ken Sleight’s fight to restore #GlenCanyon — The #SaltLake Tribune #ColoradoRiver #COriver — Coyote Gulch

Seldom Seen: A Poignant Look Back at Glen Canyon Before the Dam — Yale Environment 360 #ColoradoRiver #COriver — Coyote Gulch

In #Colorado, the majestic ponderosa pines are dying: A historic #drought, #ClimateChange and a tiny beetle put 600,000 acres of Ponderosa pine at risk. Already, their gray skeletons line the highways — Jennifer Oldham (capitalandmain.com)

Pine trees killed by mountain pine beetles cover the hillside on Tuesday, May 12, 2026 near Foxton, Colorado. Ponderosa pine forests in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains are experiencing elevated mortality rates from the pine beetles as their populations expand in part due to a warming climate and drought conditions. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Capital and Main/LightHawk)

Click the link to read the article on the Capital & Main website (Jennifer Oldham):

September 30, 2026

The white Cessna banked right to reveal dense forests of Douglas fir, pines and quaking aspen in varying shades of green bathed in the early morning light. Yet secreted under the layered bark of some pines is a pest whose upcoming flight places Colorado’s highest concentration of real estate and infrastructure values at risk.

Damage wrought by the mountain pine beetle is already evident in thousands of dead and dying red-needled ponderosa pine knitted throughout these stands. Their gray skeletons line highways, heighten already elevated wildfire risk and threaten watersheds that millions of residents rely on for clean drinking water.

On some mountain properties about 40 miles west of Denver most every pine is dead. Many residents cannot afford to remove the infested century-old ponderosas. One quote ran $15,000 an acre. The growing price tag to mitigate the damage and protect high-value trees from the next onslaught presents a quandary for local, state and federal agencies.

An historic drought weakened ponderosa pines, allowing the beetles to chew their way through hillsides of trees bordering mountain towns at the gateway to popular ski areas and hiking trails. Impacted acreage increased 148% to 5,544 acres in 2025, when compared with 2024, alarming foresters, communities and lawmakers.

This year, the breadth of the insect’s footprint and the intensity of its attack is expected to expand exponentially. At stake: More than 600,000 acres of ponderosa pine forest woven throughout areas where about 4 million people live in nine counties on both sides of the Rocky Mountains.

“We anticipate there to be anywhere from twice as much, to three times as much, activity as we saw last year,” Dan West, an entomologist with the Colorado State Forest Service, told Capital & Main in June.

“That is startling.”

A U.S. Forest Service map of the endemic pest’s potential to spread through 2030 is equally startling: Dark red blotches indicating infestation intensity cover forests at every latitude from Boulder, north of Denver, to the Black Forest, where high-end suburbs hug Colorado Springs, to areas behind Pikes Peak to the south. The counties most at risk contain thousands of acres of ponderosas. Some of the pines sit just outside the state’s Capitol.

To minimize the spread, foresters are prioritizing early detection and response. It’s no easy task. Forests harbor twice as many trees as those better able to resist a beetle outbreak. A century of fire suppression and more intense and extreme weather caused by heat-trapping emissions from expanding oil and gas extraction in Colorado and elsewhere contributed to the dire outlook.

Across the country, climate change is ravaging ecosystems, bringing more robust storms, rising sea levels, record-setting conflagrations and fatal heat waves. In Colorado, the staggering die-off of the majestic pines is difficult to stomach.

To track the outbreak, West regularly hikes to infected stands to inspect last year’s broods. What he found this spring surprised him: Females who burrowed into large green trees in 2025 laid double the number of larvae the scientist observed in previous infestations. The lack of sub-zero temperatures this winter — which marked the state’s lowest snowpack on record — ensured their survival.

Peeling the bark off ponderosa pines with his hatchet, West counted between 60 and 120 larvae coming off each female pine beetle. The insects tunnel their way into the trunk, impeding the tree’s water and nutrient supply and killing it within a year. During wetter years, trees are healthier and can more easily repel the beetle with sap. This year, many are defenseless against the rice-sized insect’s relentless assault.

Its small stature belies its ability to wreak havoc. The last major outbreak, which spanned 1996 to 2013 and decimated about 82%, or about 3.4 million acres, of the state’s pine forests, is fresh in Coloradans’ minds. In some ski communities, such as Winter Park, entire mountainsides of trees perished, dramatically altering the landscape.

The Cameron Peak fire soon after it started on Aug. 13, 2020. By Sept. 11, the fire had grown to more than 102,000 acres (now >200,000 acres) and was not expected to be considered out until Oct. 31. Photo credit: InciWeb via The Colorado Sun

Dead lodgepole pines intensified the two largest wildfires in state history in 2020. The Cameron Peak Fire swept through 326 square miles of forest in Larimer and Jackson counties and Rocky Mountain National Park, along with 492 structures, while the East Troublesome Fire burned through Grand County and Rocky Mountain National Park, reducing to ash over 300 square miles and 500 structures and killing two.

The insects started to migrate from higher elevations to coniferous forests, but a historic 2013 rainstorm stopped their advance. Now, following the state’s warmest climatological spring on record, the beetles are poised again to expand their territory.

Left: Pitch tubes, small nodules of yellowish-red sap, are an external sign of a beetle infestation. Photo: Steve Rudolph, CSFS. Right: Bark removed from a lodgepole pine tree reveals burrowing mountain pine beetles. Photo: CSFS.

Their advance threatens Denver Water’s 2.5 million acre watershed — at least a quarter of which is covered with ponderosa pine. The utility has spent $96 million since 2010 to restore forests in this region, including spraying some pines in hopes of protecting them from infestation, said Madelene McDonald, watershed planning manager.

“The threat of high intensity wildfire is not theoretical — it’s one we’ve experienced,” she added. “High intensity fires lead to brown, sediment-laden water flowing into treatment plants, which is really expensive to treat.”

McDonald is among 39 people who sit on a Ponderosa Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force created by an executive order Democratic Gov. Jared Polis issued in December after West, the entomologist, and the state forester warned him to get ahead of the outbreak.

The governor stressed an urgent need to educate residents, protect high value pines and prioritize the removal of diseased trees that harbor broods. This work must be planned around the insect’s annual flight to find new trees between June and September. The task force is charged with quickly mobilizing resources to mitigate the infestation, which has overwhelmed residents and muncipalities alike.

“It’s hard emotionally as somebody who cares deeply about our forests — in areas of our district there’s not a tree left,” said Jess Moore, wildland project coordinator for Evergreen Fire & Rescue. “We encourage homeowners to reach out to contractors, arborists and foresters so they can get the best support they can to protect their current trees.” The “sheer volume of impact” has prompted some residents to take such steps, and to thin their trees, she said.

It’s expensive and time consuming. Just ask retired environmental science professor Harv Teitelbaum, who lives in Evergreen on a wooded property that’s long, narrow and hilly. He teaches people how to climb trees, including pines. Yet the infestation required him, with the help of volunteers and a tree care service, to remove 45 ponderosas from his land. The bill: $10,000. Another 40 or so are dead or dying.

“This has been a lot more devastating — in the past, you would have isolated trees here or there that were killed,” he said. “This is more widespread.”

A few years ago, Teitelbaum lost his favorite training tree, a ponderosa nicknamed “Gramps,” to the beetle. This year, to protect his remaining pines he stapled pheromone packets to their trunks and injected some with a chemical treatment. He hopes it works so he can continue to train new generations to climb on his property.

“Up there, you see a country you haven’t seen,” he said. “The tree is a living, breathing thing. You feel it swaying, and you’re breathing oxygen it’s giving off from its crown.”

About a dozen miles south near Conifer, Brad Huddleston used similar methods to protect pines on his property. The arborist founded Splintered Forest, a fire mitigation company, 22 years ago after losing his family home in a wildfire. He advises clients to inject large pines with insecticide before the tree’s green needles start to change color. The every-other-year treatment runs up to $300 per tree. Pheromone packets and spraying, which cost up to $25 a tree, are other alternatives. The pheromone treatments release a scent that tricks beetles into thinking a tree is full, causing them to go elsewhere.

“A lot of homeowners take solace when I tell them that despite them seeing major beetle destruction along our two main corridors, their properties are not destined for the same thing,” he said. “We can turn the tide on individual trees.”

Fallen trees lay crisscrossing each other on the ground in a dense forest of mostly standing dead trees — Trees killed by mountain pine beetles crisscross the forest floor in Grand County. Photo: CSFS.

Huddleston’s company has been busy removing hazardous diseased trees near homes and access roads and thinning overgrown stands. The downed wood must be covered to smother the beetle, or hauled away to sites designed to handle infested timber, known as “hot logs.”

Such work increased this year. Jefferson County, home to both Evergreen and Conifer, collected 10.3 million pounds of slash, or woody debris, in 2025, up from 9.5 million in 2024. The response underscored the stakes — the region’s wildfire risk is 98% higher than that of counties nationwide, said Jefferson County Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper, who is the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

“I went to a recent breakfast at the Conifer Chamber of Commerce, and the scale of the crisis and how its impacting constituents became crystal clear,” she recounted. “I asked who was dealing with mountain pine beetles on their land and every hand went up.”

Little infrastructure exists statewide to accommodate the amount of wood now coming off properties. The dry winter prompted counties statewide to ban slash burning, which some rural landowners rely on in part to dispose of beetle-kill. This practice allows property owners to burn small piles of wood on their property, in some cases with a permit and during certain weather conditions.

Clear Creek watershed. Credit: Upper Clear Creek Watershed Association

In smaller counties, a reduced tax base provides officials no wiggle room for mitigation funding. About 24 miles northwest of Conifer in Idaho Springs, lawmakers are seeking funds to mitigate the damage and to take protective measures. Of major concern is the stability of the Clear Creek Watershed, which 450,000 people rely on for drinking water.

“We are kind of raising the flag — we just need more work, faster,” said George Marlin, a Clear Creek County commissioner. “It’s complicated to accomplish mitigation on interlocking federal, state and private land — we need all of these entities to have adequate funding to get it done.”

The challenge Marlin and his colleagues face is evident from the white Cessna’s window. Red and brown ponderosas crown hillsides ringing the former mining town. The mosaic prompted pilot Evan Anderman, a volunteer with LightHawk, a nonprofit that works with pilots who donate their time and aircraft for conservation causes, to bank his craft yet again.

What’s most worrisome is not yet visible from his aircraft. For every red tree, there are between 2½ and 10 green infested trees. In the early stages of infestation, these trees are only identifiable by sawdust at their base, sap on the trunk, or tunnels under the bark. West urges homeowners to prioritize these trees for removal.

Residents in Jefferson and Clear Creek counties are getting the message. People in both areas approved tax increases in 2025 for fire protection services. Identifying additional funding for wildfire mitigation is among action items Polis’ task force included in a June 30 work plan. The document identified numerous gaps in the current outbreak response.

These included “fragmented public communication,” inconsistent coordination across governmental boundaries, a constrained workforce and “uneven community and landowner engagement.” It also contained a stark warning: “The outbreak will persist for a decade or more, trees will die at a visible scale, and fire risk will remain elevated.”

Keith McMillan knows how beetle-kill influences fire risk. The former fire captain worked 21 years with Breckenridge’s Red, White & Blue Fire Protection District. The ski town lost 90% of its lodgepole pines between 1999 and 2013. Fire risk is highest when red and brown needles remain on the pines — they can help speed a blaze through the canopy, he said.

McMillan, who today is the only fire mitigation specialist for a homeowner’s association in the West, is using his experience to encourage residents in Ken-Caryl Ranch, a 4,400-home Denver subdivision, to protect their ponderosa pines.

The retired firefighter advises homeowners in what he calls an “urban forest” to spray or use pheromone packets on trees, or to remove them if they are too close to homes. It’s emotional work. People are attached to trees they planted when they moved in, or to celebrate a child’s birthday. And he doesn’t have enforcement power.

“We are trying to stay ahead of it — my No. 1 challenge is public perception” of public safety risks that accompany large tree die-offs, McMillan said. “We are just on the edge of the mountain pine beetle epidemic making it to our land.”

A young Ponderosa Pine at the Dolores Canyon Overlook September 16, 2026.

#Utah is paying farmers to conserve #ColoradoRiver water. Is it working? — The Salt Lake Tribune #COriver #aridification

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

Click the link to read the article on The Salt Lake Tribune website (Brooke Larsen). Here’s an excerpt:

September 30, 2026

Utah is betting that voluntary conservation like this can help protect the state as the Colorado River shrinks and the seven states that depend on it fight over who should use less.

“We want to develop a block of water in Powell with Utah’s name on it, so if we have to do mandatory curtailment, that’s the first block of water that we have to use to meet that demand,” [Kent] Stilson said…

Those states — Arizona, California and Nevada — and Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have been in tense negotiations about how to share the diminishing Colorado River. With no deal reached, the Bureau of Reclamation moved forward with a plan that requires the Lower Basin to conserve 1.25 million acre-feet of water next year, with steeper cuts possible in the future. The plan includes no mandatory cuts in the Upper Basin, just a goal to conserve 200,000 acre-feet per year. Given the Upper Basin’s limited conservation in the past, that’s a “very ambitious goal,” said Eric Kuhn, retired manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District. The burden of conservation has been a major sticking point among the states: if the Lower Basin has to take cuts, those states want the Upper Basin to commit to measurable conservation. But Utah and its neighbors argue that Mother Nature already forces shortages in dry years. If states can’t agree, the Lower Basin could sue the Upper Basin over the Colorado River Compact in an attempt to force cuts to water use. So Utah is preparing. By paying water users to temporarily send water downstream, it’s hoping to bank credit to pay for future cuts.

#Drought has decimated #Colorado’s biggest reservoir, and the livelihoods of those who depend on it — Colorado Public Radio #GunnisonRiver #COriver #aridification

Blue Mesa reservoir seen in August 2026 at about 21% full. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Stina Sieg). Here’s an excerpt:

September 30, 2026

Anyone can see that something is deeply wrong at Blue Mesa Reservoir on the Western Slope. It’s historically been the biggest body of water in the state. But not anymore. The deep, long-lasting drought has shrunk it so much it lost that title to Lake Granby up north. Now it looks like someone’s opened the drain on a gigantic, rocky bathtub, with only a bit of shiny blue water pooled at the bottom…For 60 years, Blue Mesa Reservoir has stored water that flows to communities and generates electricity. It’s also a popular recreation spot, a 20-mile-long lake sandwiched between Montrose and Gunnison. Growing up on the edge of this vital water source, Riser has watched decades of visitors bobbing on their motorboats and jet skis, with their coolers and kids, dogs and music…Del Piccolo said he’s never seen algae “that blue and vibrant.”[…]The neon-blue algae is like a warning sign of just how bad things are at Blue Mesa. There are actual warning signs posted, too, saying the water is now dangerous to people and pets. Sonja Chavez, executive director of the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, thinks it’s the worst Blue Mesa has ever looked…

Colorado SNOTEL basin-filled map May 31, 2026.

Blue Mesa is not a naturally occurring lake but instead is man-made, designed by the federal government to store water for downstream communities, farms and ranches. It also generates electricity and is federally mandated to release water that provides habitat for threatened and endangered fish, including the native razorback sucker and humpback chub. Federal officials take all of that into consideration when they determine how much water to discharge. This year, they were faced with an abysmal snowpack — that accumulation of snow that builds up throughout the winter. Chavez believes the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which controls how much, and when, water flows out of Blue Mesa, needs to adjust more quickly to lean water years like this one.

Chavez thinks the BoR was releasing too much water too early in the season, which drove Blue Mesa into crisis. In an email statement, the agency said it does work from 24-month forecasts of how much water will melt into reservoirs, but that it also adjusts water releases as conditions change.

“Moving forward, Reclamation is already working with our forecasting partners and water users on ways to improve modeling for dry year water use, enhance forecasting … and review historic operations to identify opportunities for increased drought resiliency,” said Bart Deming, BoR Western Colorado Area office manager.

What if? What would a #ColoradoRiver Compact Call mean for #Colorado? A significant Compact tripwire may hit next month and the Lower Basin States might take the Upper Basin States to court — Ken Neubecker (Ken’s Substack) #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on Ken’s Substack (Ken Neubecker):

September 16, 2026

Walter and I frequently walk along the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs’ Two Rivers Park, where the Roaring Fork joins in. The Colorado has been running reddish brown lately due to some intense rain and blowouts from small tributaries upstream, gullies that normally are dry. Not this summer. The Roaring Fork runs clear, creating a distinct division between the flows, a narrow ribbon of clear cold water that runs alongside the warmer and muddier stream for a long ways before they mix.

Both streams and most others are extremely low, even for late summer. Many of the USGS gauges have exclamation points next to them on the map, meaning “extremely below average”. There are rocks exposed to the air that I’ve never seen before. What little monsoon rain we had didn’t do anything, not even for the dry soils that will likely soak up much of the snow melt next spring before it can reach the rivers.

Years ago when I’d go to water meetings and conferences, back when people referred to our current situation as an unusually long drought, there was some talk about the Colorado River Compact’s requirement that the Upper Basin not cause the river flow to drop below 75 million acre feet (maf) over a ten year running average. Oh, we’ll see that train wreck coming with plenty of time to do something, they all said. That train wreck is now happening. The engine is sliding over the cliff as the States argue about the menu back in the dining car. All that really happened was serious can kicking along the tracks.

The first Upper Basin “tripwire” of 82.5 maf, the 75 maf plus 7.5 maf for Mexico could come as soon as next month. Now the can being kicked is full of lawyers.

So, what does the 1922 Compact actually say? The meat is in Article III:

This is what each basin could expect every year.

This is where the additional 1.5 maf per year, split as 750,000 acre feet due from each basin comes in. There was no agreement on Mexico’s share of the river in 1922, or in 1928 when the Compact was finally ratified. That came in 1944 with a formal treaty regarding Mexico’s share in both the Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers. The Compact negotiators anticipated such an agreement, hence paragraph (c). What they didn’t anticipate were decades of no “surplus”. That’s another story.

The more serious tripwire comes next:

October 1, 2026, may well see the flow at Lee Ferry cross the first line in the sand of a dry riverbed if the ten year running average drops below 82.5 maf for the first time since Lake Powell began filling. Back then water was held in the new reservoir to fill it. Everyone was OK with that. The Colorado River flows upstream were still quite robust on average and Lake Mead had plenty to satisfy the Compact requirements for the Lower Basin and Mexico as Powell filled.

Not anymore. Powell is shrinking rapidly. As of this writing the reservoir is at just under 22% full, and only about 27 feet from the elevation where the dam can no longer run water through the power plants penstocks. And the outflow is still about twice the inflow.

The monsoon rains turning the river reddish brown in Glenwood won’t help.

So what happens if that 82.5 maf tripwire is triggered and one or more states of the Lower Basin place a Compact Call?

It’s complicated.

It would mean a lawsuit between the states, which would go straight to the US Supreme Court. No lower courts would be involved, and it could take years to resolve. The last time there was a lawsuit about Colorado River apportionment it was between Arizona and California. The case was filed in 1952. The Court appointed a Special Master to work it out and recommend a solution. That took ten years. The case was finally argued in the Court in 1963, with a final decision handed down in 1964. That decision finalized the legal structure for allocations in the Lower Basin, based on the 1928 Boulder Canyon Act.

Twelve years for a resolution. We don’t have that much time for any new case on the Colorado River, especially with how the Upper Basin might comply with Article III, paragraph (d), and Mexico’s share thrown in.

In 2018 and 2019 the Colorado River Conservation District (River District) commissioned a risk study to look at how flows might augment storage in Lake Powell as well as what might happen should Lake Powell ever reach a level where Compact deliveries dropped to a point where the 82.5 maf over ten years wasn’t met, causing a Compact Call. It was, in light of today’s situation and the worsening hydrology, a tad optimistic. The first point in the Executive Summary’s Takeaway states:

The critical low level used for the analysis was 3525 feet, the Bureau of Reclamations critical low as well. Today, September 16, 2026, the elevation at Glen Canyon dam is just under 3517. It continues to drop every day, counting down to October 1.

If the Lower Basin states place a Compact Call it very well could be “catastrophic” for water users in the Upper Basin. But there are scenarios where it could be less so. At the very worst all diversions junior to November 24, 1922, or possibly June 25, 1929 when the Boulder Canyon Act was signed, would be curtailed, cut off, until the Compact deficiency is resolved. But that truly is a worst case scenario.

Curtailment would likely be based on what the flow deficit is at Lee Ferry when the call is placed and what increase through Upper Basin curtailment might make up the deficit. Diversions could be cut on a sliding scale, with the most junior taking the biggest hit, going back from today to that date in 1922 or 1929. We wouldn’t probably notice much at first as October 1, the start of the new water year, coincides pretty closely with the end of the irrigation season for most.

Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office

The River Districts study looked at various scenarios for Colorado, based on appropriation dates, river basins vs entire West Slope, and amounts of water that might be needed to satisfy the deficiency at Lee Ferry. The biggest hits would be in the Colorado River mainstem, especially with the large trans-mountain diversions taking water to Eastern Slope cities and farms. The Front Range cities, where most of Colorado’s population resides and who rely on as much as 50% or more of their water supply coming from the Colorado River, along with the significant agricultural areas along the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers, could see some pretty significant cuts regardless.

The State, through the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) and Attorney General’s office did a Compact compliance study some years ago but is keeping that confidential. I can’t blame them. It could become a basis for court arguments and negotiations should a compact call become a reality. The River District study could be as well. It’s worth a read if you are really interested in all this, and anyone who uses water in Colorado, East or West, to fill a tea pot from the faucet, flush a toilet or raise crops should be. They River District study can be found here or on their website.

Monsoonal moisture is still floating water laden clouds over us today, and some have dropped a good bit of rain. But that won’t help much. We are facing a “super El Nino” this winter, which may or may not provide a healthy snowpack. Anything would be better than last winter, except a repeat of that dry season. In any case it will take many years of “normal” snowfall to begin to refill the reservoirs. Given the trend of aridity and climate warming that is not something we should be counting on.

Perhaps, hopefully, the most important part of the compact written at the beginning will be called upon:

Of course the rub here will be in how “equitable division” is defined, and I imagine this could take much of the courts time in a Compact Call. In 1922 that meant an equal share of the rivers water for each basin. Now it could hinge on where the greater “value” is, and what that means. Back in 1922 “beneficial uses” were pretty straight forward. Now there are many more uses of the river deemed “beneficial”.

The needs and values today are quite different from what they were 104 years ago. The Tribes, the environment, recreation, local economies and traditions. All were either excluded in 1922 or covered by broad undefined ambiguity. Climate change wasn’t heard of, even though some scientists at the time had warned about it.

It’s a brave new world we are entering. Business as usual based on a 104 year old piece of paper and the other paper agreements founded on it won’t help us adapt to that world, nor will wishful thinking and other optimistic dreams based on hope. As Brad Udall noted during a recent PBS Newshour Tipping Point presentation, we need to re-think the whole thing. It won’t be easy, but as Udall pointed out it could be good. We need to rethink both what the river can provide and the reality of adapting to that. We also need to rethink the “values” we base our water needs on. It’s not just about endless economic growth anymore. Throwing lawyers at each other only enriches lawyers while it impoverishes us.

Meanwhile Walter and I will continue our ramblings with the river. We’ll also stop by the River District offices to say hi to the many friends there, to add some stress relief and try to keep their heads from graying any faster than they already are.

Toxic algal blooms are spreading across the West: #ClimateChange is increasing the frequency of the blooms. Here’s what you need to know — Christine Peterson (High Country News)

*Sand island on a cloudy day on the Columbia River in September 2026.* ***Evan Benally Atwood***

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Christine Peterson):

October 2, 2026

By the time Tanya Bachman noticed something was wrong with her border collie, Jax, it was too late.

She and her family had taken their boat and two dogs out on the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon, in August 2024 to celebrate her birthday, a summer ritual as important to them as fireworks on the Fourth of July. That afternoon, Bachman let the dogs loose on an island beach to play. When Jax returned, his tail drooped.

As Bachman tried to attach Jax’s leash, he vomited, began convulsing and then lost consciousness. Bachman screamed for her husband, and the couple raced the dog to a veterinarian. It was no use; less than an hour after Bachman noticed Jax’s droopy tail, he was dead.

“It was just so shocking,” she said.

The veterinarian told them that Jax had likely ingested a toxic, algae-like microorganism called cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, from a benthic bloom, a phenomenon scientists began documenting in the West about five years ago. Benthic blooms, which resemble globs of snot, form on stream bottoms or submerged logs or rocks, sometimes breaking free and rising to the surface. They are less familiar to Westerners than planktonic blooms, which form on the surface of lakes and reservoirs and look more like floating grass clippings or spilled green paint.

The cyanobacteria that cause planktonic and benthic blooms have existed in Earth’s waters for billions of years. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural fertilizers or air pollution can cause them to proliferate. Research suggests that climate change is also contributing to more frequent and widespread blooms as warmer water stagnates during hot, dry years like this one, said Hannah Bonner, a professor and water scientist at Brigham Young University who studies benthic cyanobacteria.

It’s a cruel twist: As the West warms, once-inviting cool-water refuges may become a threat not just to pets, but to people and wildlife.

Cyanobacteria in both benthic and planktonic blooms can secrete toxic chemicals that irritate human skin, or, if consumed, cause nausea or even liver damage. The same toxins can kill any pets, livestock and wildlife that drink the contaminated water or lick their wet fur. No backpacking water–filtration systems can removecyanobacteria toxins.

Most Western states only began tracking planktonic blooms — which are easier to spot and monitor than benthic blooms — in response to health concerns in Eastern waters. In 2014, toxic cyanobacteria blooms in Lake Erie shut down Toledo, Ohio’s drinking water system. Wyoming began monitoring blooms in 2018, first with satellite imagery and then, starting in 2021, with on-the-ground water sampling. Utah ramped up monitoring in 2016. California and Oregon’s programs, which are among the oldest in the West, started about 20 years ago.

Benthic Cyanobacteria. Photo credit: USGS

Results from those and other programs suggest that planktonic blooms are popping up earlier in the season in more lakes and reservoirs and are lasting longer into the fall. Some experts believe the reported increases could be the result of more monitoring. But a nationwide Environmental Protection Agency study published in 2021 found that increased nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are combining with the warming and drying effects of climate change to create more and longer-lasting blooms.

“We’re affecting so much of the land surface and creating disturbances and introducing nutrients,” said Theodore Dreher, a microbiology professor emeritus at Oregon State University. Unlike climate change, where one continent’s emissions can affect the climate of another, nutrient pollution’s sources are often localized and can be more easily regulated. Utah, for example, has implemented regulations requiring improvements at places like wastewater treatment plants. It’s also created voluntary incentives for treating agricultural runoff and restoring floodplains. The combination has helped stem nutrient flow into Utah Lake, near Provo, where blooms were once so bad that people sold T-shirts with the slogan “Ski the Scum.”

In order to address the causes effectively, however, officials need to collect water quality data, not just monitor for blooms. Unfortunately, not enough are doing so, said Justin Hayes, Northern Rockies conservation director with American Rivers. “States need to take this really seriously and start trying to solve it rather than just warning people.”

Researchers are also still struggling to understand why recent blooms are turning up in unusual places. Planktonic blooms in high-elevation lakes far from septic systems and feedlots are becoming more common, possibly because of runoff from melting glaciers or atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and phosphorus from dust and air pollution, Bonner said. And benthic blooms may become more common as snowpack declines and produces less snowmelt. At the same time, parts of the West are seeing fewer monsoon rainstorms that can flush algal mats away.

“I was just in the mountains last weekend, in a pristine creek, and they were everywhere,” she said.

Bonner doesn’t think people should stay home to avoid blooms, but said they do need to know what to look for. A benthic bloom “is like a big ball of snot,” she said. “Find a stick, poke it, lift it up, and if you see hairlike strands or fibers, most of the time it’s not cyanobacteria or toxic. If it is a boogery consistency, it likely is.”

Meanwhile, more states are installing signs, sending email alerts, and posting public-health advisories that warn recreationists about toxic blooms.

And Bachman keeps talking to local and regional media, hoping Jax’s death will save someone else’s pet. “Everything upstream flows downstream,” Bachman said. “Just because you have a patch of it upstream doesn’t mean it won’t move down to you.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation.

Toxic Algae website from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.

The Benefit of Generating Power Locally

by Robert Marcos

There’s a growing shift toward locally generated power, sometimes called Distributed Energy Resources (DER) or Non-Wire Solutions, (NWS). While its far from replacing large privately-owned utilities, it represents one of the fastest-growing movements in energy policy and technology.

America’s power grids are not only expensive to build and to maintain, they’re also highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and even terrorism. One obvious solution is to generate power where its used instead of using a vast network of high-power transmission lines to convey power to where its needed.

1. Why Centralized Power is More Expensive

• Massive Infrastructure Overhead: Building and maintaining thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines, long-distance towers, and step-down substations requires hundreds of billions in capital expenditure—costs passed directly to ratepayer electric bills.

• Line Losses (Energy Wasted in Transit): Moving power over long distances dissipates 5% to 10% of total generated electricity as heat. Consumers pay for power that burns off before ever reaching their meters.

• Surging Interconnection Costs: Connecting a new massive utility-scale plant to the main regional grid often requires costly regional grid upgrades and takes 5 to 7 years in utility review queues.

2. Why Centralized Power is More Vulnerable

• Single Points of Failure: A single downed transmission line (from wildfires, storm winds, or physical attacks) or an issue at a regional substation can instantly sever power to hundreds of thousands of homes at once.

• Cascading Grid Outages: Interconnected long-distance grids are susceptible to wide-area blackouts when an unexpected surge or fault trips neighboring circuit breakers across entire state lines.

• Extreme Weather Exposure: High-voltage lines run through unpopulated, exposed terrain, making them far harder to monitor, protect, and quickly repair during major severe weather events.

3. How Local Power Resolves Those Issues

Locally generated power (such as rooftop solar, microgrids, and local battery storage), generates electricity close to where its needed. This obviates the need for long-distance transmission infrastructure, increases reliability, minimizes heat-loss waste, and allows local micro-grids to stay powered up even when the main regional grid goes down.

NEWSWIRE: More flood warnings; Grid news — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

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

September 28, 2026

⛈️ WACKY WEATHER WATCH⚡️

Welcome to another edition of the Land Desk’s NEWSWIRE, and yet another one in which the big news is the big, end-of-the-water-year rain. Yes, 88% of the Western U.S. is currently experiencing some level of drought — with the most severe impacts in the Four Corners Country. Yet these same areas have also been barraged with rain and inundated with flood watches and warnings for the last few weeks, and yet another big doozy is on its way.

As of Monday morning (9/28), all of New Mexico, most of Arizona, and southern Utah and southern Colorado were all under a flood watch in effect through Wednesday morning. The National Weather Service is warning that rainfall rates in some places could be up to one to two inches per hour.

The latest round of storms will hit already sodden ground in places that have received more rain in the last couple of weeks than they normally do during the entire monsoon season.

🌵 PUBLIC LANDS 🌲

The Trump administration is reportedly considering Major League Baseball’s request to build a stadium and host a game in Grand Teton National Park, but a White House spokesperson says it is not an administration priority. (WyoFile) [Note: MLB has backed off this proposal since Jonathan published on the 28th.]

Western Watersheds Project and Basin and Range Watch formally protest the proposed 300-megawatt Bonanza solar-plus-storage project on 5,133 acres of public land in southern Nevada, saying it would fragment desert tortoise habitat and degrade vegetation and soils the tortoise depends on. (news release, BLM project page)

A Western journalist details the ways Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has disappointed conservationists and all Americans by “pulverizing environmental safeguards, leaving America’s public lands vulnerable for corporations to plunder at will.” (High Country News)

The Bureau of Land Management begins an aerial herbicide campaign on about 3,800 acres of public land in Sandoval and Cibola counties in New Mexico that will distribute Tebuthiron pellets in an effort to “enhance native plant diversity by reducing dense stands of sagebrush, juniper trees, and rabbitbrush.” (BLM news release)

The Bureau of Land Management greenlights the Indian Creek “watershed restoration” project that will include clearing piñon-juniper forest via chaining, mastication, and other methods on about 561,000 acres of public land in southwestern Utah. (news release)

The U.S. Forest Service seeks public input until Oct. 9 on its proposal to turn management of the Maroon Bells Scenic Area over to Pitkin County amid funding shortfalls. (news release, CBS News)

🌨️🦦🚣🏽 WATER WATCH 🌊

Washington County, Utah, plans to construct a wastewater treatment-recycling plant demonstration facility to help educate residents on water recycling and get them past the “ick factor” associated with “toilet-to-tap” facilities. (Salt Lake Tribune)

👩🏽‍🔬 SCIENCE! 🧫

University of California, Davis, researchers find orange water released by thawing permafrost into Alaska rivers can be more acidic and contain higher concentrations of metals than acid mine drainage. (news release)

⛏️ MINING MONITOR ⛏️

A federal study finds a major tailings spill at the proposed Donlin Gold mine in the Kuskokwim River watershed of southwest Alaska would inundate thousands of acres of land and portions of a village in the Crooked Creek drainage, alter stream channels, cause long-term harm to aquatic and terrestrial wildlife, and result in downstream heavy metal contamination that could last for over a century. (Mining, Draft Supplemental EIS)

Ivanhoe Electric relinquishes 642 unpatented mining claims covering 13,264 acres in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico where it planned to explore for copper following widespread local opposition. (news release)

Scene from the 2024 White Mesa rally and spiritual walk. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

The White Mesa Concerned Community and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe will hold their annual rally and spiritual walk to protest the White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah on Oct. 17 at 11 a.m. at the White Mesa Community Center. (Grand Canyon Trust)

🛢️ FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES 📈

Screenshot from the Protect Navajo Air map.

Earthworks’ Protect Navajo Air campaign develops an interactive map showing oil and gas facilities’ proximity to schools and health care facilities and related air and water polluting incidents in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico. (Protect Navajo Air)

An energy economics firm urges the Rural Utah Infrastructure Coalition not to invest as much as $54 million in two proposed coal export terminals on the West Coast, saying they are too risky and may not open Utah coal to foreign markets. (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis)

🔥 WILDFIRE LOOKOUT 🔥

San Juan County, Utah, drops charges against a former resident and journalist accused of sparking the 2025 Deer Creek Fire near La Sal after flaws in the state’s investigation are revealed and amid questions about the county’s political motivations. (Salt Lake Tribune)

🤑 GENTRIFICATION JOURNAL 💰

An analysis of IRS data finds Teton County, Wyoming, was again the nation’s richest county in 2023 — with a per-capita income of $313,373 — followed distantly by Pitkin County, Colorado, and Blaine County, Idaho; yet even as residents became wealthier, they became less charitably inclined. (CoThrive)

🔋 THE GRID⚡️

The U.S. Energy Department awards Xcel Energy two $250 million grants for high-voltage transmission projects in southeastern Colorado designed to expand connections between the Western and Eastern power grids and bring wind power from the Great Plains to Colorado’s Front Range. (Big Pivots)

Weld County, Colorado’s commissioners vote to approve Enyo Energy’s 805-megawatt Chalk Bluff wind and solar-plus-storage project on mostly private land in the oil and gas-rich northeastern corner of the state. (Colorado Sun)

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission pauses its licensing process for rPlus Hydro’s proposed pumped hydropower storage project at Seminoe Reservoir in Wyoming to allow the Bureau of Land Management to complete an environmental review of the contested project. (WyoFile)

Phoenix-area utility Salt River Project’s board votes to approve the proposed Marigold Energy Center in Stanfield, Arizona. The project will include 600 MW of solar, 400 MW of battery storage, and 675 MW of natural gas generation, along with a new substation and four miles of transmission lines, in an effort to meet growing demand and enhance grid reliability. (news release)

Nevada utility NV Energy becomes the ninth Western entity to join the California Independent System Operator’s extended day-ahead wholesale electricity market that will help integrate the balkanized Western grid. (Public Power)

OTHER NEWS

The National Congress of American Indians files an amicus brief in Tohono O’odham Nation v. Mullin challenging the Trump administration’s plan to build a border wall through the Tohono O’odham nation in southern Arizona, calling it an “unlawful infringement on tribal sovereignty.” (news release)

🥵 ARIDIFICATION WATCH 🐫

New Mexico farmers say this summer’s extreme heat stunted green chile crops’ growth, leading to a roasting-season shortage in many parts of the state, adding that a “Biblical” grasshopper infestation also curtailed yield. (KRQE)

🤖 DATA CENTER DIGEST 👾

Nevada-based Arevia Power proposes a “multi-building” data center on about 3,700 acres of federal public land near Boise, Idaho; the Bureau of Land Management says the agency is in the “pre-planning phase” and has released few details. (Idaho Statesman)

🐟 COLORADO RIVER CHRONICLE 💧

Colorado River watcher Ken Neubecker speculates about how a Lower Basin compact call might play out in Colorado. (Ken’s Substack)

📸 PARTING SHOT 🎞️

Ute Mountain after a storm. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Gaps narrowing between high-speed EV chargers on #Colorado’s highways: Ironically, sale of EVs has faltered in 2026 even as drivers now are within 30 miles of fast-charger on 83% of federal and state highways — Allen Best (BigPivots.com)

DC Fast Chargers at Walmart. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

September 7, 2026

Colorado has nearly 500 fast-charging EV stations compared to 2,350 gas and diesel stations.

EV drivers will not find an EV fast charger on every street. However, state officials say Colorado is fast approaching the time where EV drivers can travel between the state’s four corners — not just along the Front Range and major interstates — and be confident of being relatively close to a fast-charging station. This, say state officials, represents a milestone.

“Public investment has helped make it possible to establish charging in locations that are essential to a truly statewide network but can be more difficult for the private market to serve on its own,” said Shoshana Lew, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, in a press release.

Gaps have been fast receding since 2020. Today, 83% of Colorado’s state highway network is within 30 miles of a DC fast-charging station, more than double the 40% six years ago.

Now, a new round of state funding is focused on providing drivers confidence they will be no more than 30 miles from a fast-charging station on federal highways.

Animation of DC Fast Charger build-out in Colorado. Credit: CDOT Note: Tesla and Rivian DC Fast charging facilities are not on this map and they are available to other EV brands. One exception that I know of — the Cortez location is a joint Tesla/Colorado Energy Office operation.

Decline in sales

Ironically, the boom in sale of new EVs has slackened. New battery-electric vehicle registrations declined 55% this year through June compared to the same period in 2025, according to the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association’s 2026 second quarter report.

Colorado in the final months of 2024 led the nation in the percentage of sales adoption rate for EVs and plug-in hybrids. At one point, about a third of new car sales in Colorado were battery-electric, plug-in hybrids or hybrids. In 2025, sale of electric-only vehicles began slowing in favor of plug-in hybrids.

This most recent decline can be explained in part by the end of generous state and federal tax-based discounts to buyers. Tax credits of up to $6,000 offered by Colorado in 2025 dropped to $750 in January. The federal tax credit of $6,000 ended in September 2025.

Also relevant is that car sales altogether have slowed 15% in Colorado. This decline in EV sales is part of that broader decline.

Travis Madsen expects EV sales to recover.

“The investment Colorado is making recognizes that the future of road transportation will be electric,” said Madsen, the director of transportation programs for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an environmental advocacy organization. “These investments are smart. Coloradans will save a ton of money, because it’s cheaper to drive an EV than an internal combustion engine vehicle.”

Madsen also expects improving incentives will be part of the discussion when Colorado legislators gather again in January for the 2027 session. Too, he suspects that a shift in the political makeup of Congress and perhaps the presidency in 2028 may result in restored federal tax incentives.

In addition, Madsen suspects the introduction of new models of bare-bones pickup trucks will spur sales. One new pickup, called Slate, comes in at $25,000 and will have a range of 205 miles. Ford’s Fathom will sell for a bit less than $30,000. Ford says the Fathom will have a range of 300 miles, but some auto writers seem skeptical. EV Charging Stations, for example, said an optional higher-capacity battery may be necessary to get this range.

Colorado currently has 217,000 registered EVS and plug-in hybrids among its 5.54 million cars, pickups and vans, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. The state has a 2030 goal of 940,000 and a 2035 goal of 2.1 million.

A lot of federal help

Federal funding of $56.5 million administered through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program, has bolstered Colorado’s efforts to create its EV fast-charging network. So far, 17 of the fast-charging locations supported by the federal program have opened, but another 33 are under development.

Several of the EV fast-charging gaps on the lesser traveled highways of Colorado’s lightly populated eastern plains have been narrowed in the last year with the help of this federal program. For example, somebody driving southeast from Limon on Highway 287 toward Lamar or east on Highway 24 to Kansas would have had no way to charge an electric vehicle until fast-charging stations were added in 2025 at both Eads and Kit Carson. Wray also gained a station.

Walden, seen here during Christmas 2020, is in line to get an EV fast-charger. Photo/Allen Best

Another gap was filled in southwestern Colorado for drivers traveling the 80 miles from Durango to the Four Corners Monument. That station is at Cortez.

Other stations installed with help of the federal program are operating in Frisco, Longmont, Monument, Seibert, Grand Junction, Limon, Montrose, Maybell, Sterling, Durango, Lyons, Pagosa Springs and Walsenburg.

Now CDOT and the Colorado Energy Office are evaluating applications from the ninth round of the DCFC Plazas Grant Program. The state expects to have $14 million available. In this funding round, the state introduced a “gap incentive” of $174,000 per charging port aimed at attracting projects to high-priority communities and segments with persistent charging gaps:

Bennett/Strasburg,

Cheyenne Wells,

Fraser/Winter Park,

Gunnison,

Holly,

Ignacio / Southern Ute Reservation,

Julesburg,

Saguache,

Walden,

Wellington.

See details here.

State officials did not provide information about how much state money has been used to expand this fast-charging network. Also unclear is how the fast-charging stations installed by Tesla figure into this statewide matrix of fast-chargers. Nearly every major EV brand now has access to Tesla’s supercharging network.

Achieving scale

The goal all along in this effort to electrify transportation has been to achieve scale.

A website at the Colorado Department of Transportation shows the slow and then accelerating spread. First the stations were entirely along the Front Range. The first fast-charger in a rural area was installed in 2017, at a location in the San Luis Valley, followed by more along the interstate highways and then secondary highways. The expansion has been particularly rapid since 2020.

“Colorado has reached the point where we are no longer simply building the foundation of an EV fast-charging network — we are filling in the remaining gaps and making that network increasingly useful for travel throughout the state,” said CDOT’s Lew.

“Widespread EV adoption in Colorado would not be possible without convenient access to charging all across the state, from the Eastern Plains to the Western Slope and everything in between,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.

Sifting through the numbers, though, the International Council on Clean Transportation in April released a report that paints a slightly less rosy picture of Colorado’s fast-charging infrastructure. “Meeting Colorado’s EV goals will require significant continued investment in charging infrastructure,” the council said.

The council said existing state and federal grants and utility investments, if made, could cover about 84% of non-home DC fast-charger needs through 2035.

And there is also this. Charging stations still take more time and are somewhat less assured, especially when traveling beyond Colorado’s borders. Consider the story of Florence resident Steve Andrews, an EV driver (Bolt) for many years.

In driving to Wisconsin this year, he will use an internal-combustion engine. Driving his Bolt, with its range of 250 to 300 miles, he says, would take close to a day longer. [Note: He could have rented a Tesla from Turo. This was the option I chose because my Leaf, like the Bolt, was not a road EV.]

Just how the charging infrastructure will evolve is anybody’s guess. It currently takes maybe 30 minutes to juice up a depleted battery, compared to 5 minutes to gas up a car or 10 or more minutes to fill the 36-gallon tank of a hulking pickup like a Ford 250 or 350.

In both cases the fast-chargers and the gas dispensers are located adjacent to shopping convenience stores. Operators make their money selling potato chips and soft drinks while also offering rest rooms.

Madsen said high-speed charging technology may evolve in uncertain ways. China already has very-fast-charging that can fill a depleted battery in 9 minutes, but that technology is not yet available in the United States.

“The way it works right now is you need to stop for 15 to 20 minutes, 30 minutes if you get a really big charge. It therefore makes sense to put these (charging stations) at places where drivers can spend time taking care of their other needs.”

U.S. 160 between Trinidad and Springfield in southeastern Colorado carries little traffic, even on a Fourth of July weekend. Photo/AllenBest

Highways with few travelers

Colorado — luckily — still has places where you need to think ahead no matter what kind of car you are driving. Consider U.S. 160, which connects Trinidad and Springfield, in the state’s southeastern quadrant. The landscape is delightfully sparse. You can drive 20 minutes or more, even on a holiday weekend, without encountering another vehicle. It’s you and the cows and likely pronghorn, too.

That 122-mile stretch of highway currently has one place to buy gasoline or diesel. It has no place to charge your EV, whether slowly or fast. It’s not among the “gaps” identified in state transportation planning. Probably, it will stay that way for a while.

Coyote Gulch’s Ariya at the summit of Loveland Pass September 19, 2026.

Here’s the link to my last post from my first road trip in my excellent road EV. I charged at ChargePoint, Tesla, Tesla/Colorado Energy Office, Rivian, and Ionna chargers.

A new legal path for stream restoration in #Colorado runs into old water conflicts: Projects repair degraded headwaters, but downstream users have concerns — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org)

Abby Burk with Audubon Rockies leads a tour of a flagship stream restoration project on Dry Fork Creek in Western Colorado. The project, located on High Lonesome Ranch, is one of the first completed under SB 270. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

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

September 30, 2026

After the 2020 Pine Gulch Fire scorched 95,000 drought-stricken acres of High Lonesome Ranch in Garfield and Mesa Counties, the rainstorms that followed eroded hillsides and washed mud and rocks into the Dry Fork Creek valley bottom.

“It was a major impact to operations here,” said High Lonesome’s General Manager Travis Brooks. “The wildlife habitat obviously was erased, populations disappeared… The flooding, the debris flows, the devastation that comes after the fire is almost as bad as the fire itself and we’re still seeing the effects of that.”

Brooks has overseen work to repair the riparian corridor and control erosion; now the area is green and wildlife – including beavers – have returned to the watershed. The area’s recovery is due, in part, to a piece of 2023 legislation that cleared the way for minor stream restoration projects in Colorado. High Lonesome Ranch is the site of one of the first of these types of projects completed since the passage of Senate Bill 23-270.

In 2023, Colorado lawmakers recognized the need to restore the environmental health of the state’s waterways, especially after wildfires. The legislation allows minor stream restoration projects to take place without being subject to water rights administration, provided they meet certain criteria. But this is uncharted legal territory and early projects are highlighting old tensions between water rights holders and proponents of stream restoration.

The Dry Fork Creek project, which is wrapping up its third and final year of work on High Lonesome Ranch, was spearheaded by Audubon Rockies.

Over three years, crews installed about 200 simple, porous structures over two miles of stream, with the goal of trapping sediment, slowing the flow of water, raising the water table and rewetting the sponge of the floodplain. The structures, sometimes called Beaver Dam Analogues for the way they can mimic beaver activity, are built by weaving willows and tree branches across the channel between posts hammered into the streambed.

The official name for these low-tech, process-based restoration methods is Post-Assisted Log Structures, and they can turn a deeply incised, V-shaped stream with steep banks into a wider, gently sloping, U-shaped streambed. The structures act as speed bumps for the torrents that wash down the valley during summer storms and can improve watersheds that have been degraded by fire as well as human activities like road building and cattle grazing.

“I really do believe that we’re improving the water quality out here by doing this work, which is helpful to everybody downstream,” Brooks said. “I think that’s the biggest takeaway.”

On a sunny day in late September, Abby Burk, Western Rivers program director for Audubon, led a tour of the flagship project, showing how stream restoration is put into practice under the new legislation.

“All of these different types of structures are really looking at arresting sediment, holding sediment, spreading water on the landscape and slowing it down so that we can have a bit more of a connected floodplain,” Burk said.

Beavers have recolonized part of the Dry Fork Creek valley after restoration work. The burn scar from the 2020 Pine Gulch Fire is visible on the hillside. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Putting policy into practice

Senate Bill 23-270 allows for six categories of minor stream restoration activities, such as stabilizing the banks or reconstructing a channel of a natural stream system. If a project falls under one of the six categories, it is presumed to not harm other water users and can move forward with little scrutiny from state officials.

Environmental groups that worked on the legislation had originally wanted to set a size standard for stream restoration based on the historical footprint of the floodplain before it was degraded. But opponents, some of whom were agricultural water users, argued this area was too large and ill-defined, and floated the idea of placing a cap on how much new surface area of water that projects were allowed to create. Their concern was that projects could create more surface area for evaporation and reduce streamflows.

That’s a problem because in Colorado’s system of water law where the oldest rights get first use of rivers, water is usually already spoken for by someone downstream. Without SB 270, stream restoration proponents could have to go through an expensive and lengthy process to buy into an augmentation plan, which replaces the water consumed by evaporation.

The final bill represented a compromise between the two sides, and required that these minor restoration projects don’t back up water past the “ordinary high-water mark” of the stream.

“I think this is an elegant compromise,” said Burk, who helped shape the bill. “We landed at a bipartisan solution that was unanimously supported.”

Immediately after the passage of the bill, stream restoration proponents were disappointed in the final version. But in the three years since, SB 270 seems to be providing the necessary legal and political cover for groups to move forward with low-tech, process-based projects, with several underway on the Western Slope.

“We started taking more time to process it and read it, and then we actually realized, you know, I think we actually got something pretty good here that we’re going to be able to do some great stuff with,” said Jackie Corday, a natural resources consultant who worked on the bill and the Dry Fork Creek project.

Clay Ramey with the U.S. Forest Service works on a stream restoration project with volunteers at the headwaters of Middle Thompson Creek in August. The project installed about 40 post-assisted log structures, designed to repair degraded streams. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Downstream conflicts

As more groups take on projects under SB 270, it means the bounds of the legislation will be tested as potential conflicts arise with downstream water users.

On a Saturday in late August, the National Forest Foundation and Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers kicked off another restoration project, installing about 40 PALS in the White River National Forest in the headwaters of Middle Thompson Creek, a tributary of the Crystal River. The area was identified as a prime spot for stream restoration in a beaver inventory conducted in 2023 and 2024 by the U.S. Forest Service and funded by Pitkin County.

“Ideally, the changes in the channel that these [structures] provoke, and the changes in the vegetation will be enough to make those areas attractive to beaver again and beaver will just recolonize the site,” said Clay Ramey, a fisheries biologist with the White River National Forest.

The Forest Service is planning another, similar project next year in the headwaters of Four Mile Creek, one drainage over from Thompson Creek. But the size and scope of the proposed project has raised concerns from a local water conservancy district. The Rifle-based West Divide Water Conservancy District owns several small reservoirs and provides supplemental irrigation water and augmentation water for domestic water users.

West Divide says the project could impact water supply for its planned expansion of Martin Reservoirs. It contends the work would increase both the surface area of the stream, which causes evaporation, and the water consumed by wetland vegetation.

In a January letter to the state Division of Water Resources Division 5 Engineer Tyler Benton, the conservancy district said that the 152 structures planned over three phases is outside the scope of what is allowed by SB 270 and asks state officials to assess the project’s potential for injuring water rights holders.

“It’s not the healthiest stream by any stretch and so some restoration efforts are in order,” said West Divide board member Chris Treese. “But we don’t want those efforts to result in an impact to our water rights or any other water rights downstream that are within the West Divide district.”

This post-assisted log structure was installed on the headwaters of Middle Thompson Creek in August. The stream restoration project aims to rewet the sponge of the degraded watershed. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

More data needed

Part of the source of the disagreement comes from a lack of data about how exactly these types of projects that mimic beaver activity influence how water moves through valley bottoms.

Joel Sholtes, a water resources engineer and instructor at Colorado Mesa University, is aiming to answer that question. In August he was awarded a three-year $15,000 grant from Pitkin County Healthy Rivers to study how beaver activity alters ecosystems in the North Thompson Creek area. The sites with beavers can be a reference point to compare with areas restored by humans.

Sholtes will take seasonal measurements to try to better understand how much water beaver ponds detain, how it changes throughout the year and the differences in stream conditions between areas with resident beavers and those without. Sholtes’ early findings on a long-term study of headwaters across the state show that restoration projects do not produce large or sustained reductions in streamflow.

“The evolution and passing of SB 270 became contentious, and that conversation brought to bear a lot of knowledge gaps that we have related to stream restoration in headwaters,” Sholtes said. “There’s just not a big, robust body of literature, so the study’s number one effort is to address that in whatever ways we can. It’s not going to answer the question definitively, but it’s going to bring more data and nuance to the conversation.”

The Forest Service is monitoring and measuring the streamflows at the Four Mile project site to see what they are dealing with and the effects of their work – information West Divide is also interested in – with the intention of installing the first structures next summer.

For now, Burk says SB 270 is a good tool to accomplish 75% to 80% of the stream restoration projects that happen in Colorado. Most of these fall under three of the legislation’s six categories: stabilizing the streambanks with natural materials that allow water to flow downstream and don’t back up water past the ordinary high-water mark; stabilizing an intermittent stream by installing porous structures into the banks; and installing structures or reconstructing a stream channel for recovery from a wildfire or flood.

“This was designed for a subset of projects that are the majority to go forward because of the ecological and community benefits and watershed benefits,” Burk said.

A working group led by Burk and Corday has also created a training manual for best practices that groups can use to make sure their projects stay within the bounds of SB 270.

Abby Burk with Audubon Rockies stands in front of a post-assisted log structure, part of a restoration project on Dry Fork Creek. The project is one of the first completed under new state legislation that allows for minor stream restoration activities. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Communication with DWR essential

So what happens when restoration proponents believe their project fits within these parameters, but downstream water users argue the project goes too far?

Division of Water Resources officials have a limited role in refereeing these types of disagreements. Project proponents are not required to get approval from state officials and state officials do not have the authority to approve or deny projects. But as the administrator of the state’s water rights, DWR officials could still force a project to be removed if they determine it is harming downstream water users or require the project to get an augmentation plan from a water court that replaces the water it uses.

In the case of the Four Mile project, Division 5 Engineer Tyler Benton wrote in a February letterto Ramey that he does not have sufficient information to determine if the project would harm downstream water users, but that the Forest Service should communicate with the local DWR water commissioner to ensure the project complies with the law.

Both Burk and Ramey stressed the importance of communication and transparency with DWR officials to ensure the projects are in compliance with SB 270 from the beginning. Ramey said the water commissioner has visited both the Middle Thompson and Four Mile sites and is familiar with the projects.

Back at High Lonesome Ranch, beavers have moved back into the restored area and created ponds, amplifying the humans’ restoration work. Brooks said the project fits with the ranch’s philosophy of conservation and regenerative ranching, and he has aspirations of doing more work to revitalize the property’s other fire-damaged drainages in the future.

“The beaver activity that we saw is a big indication that we’re doing something right,” Brooks said. “Wildlife are coming back and utilizing the space the way a healthy riparian system should be utilized.”

#Drought news October 1, 2026: Many areas experienced beneficial rainfall, with #Colorado, #Kansas, and #Nebraska being beneficiaries of the east-Pacific “El Niño” tropical connection #ENSO

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

US Drought Monitor map September 29, 2026.

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

This Week’s Drought Summary

This week featured a dynamic and changeable drought environment across the country, partially thanks to the rapidly intensifying El Niño resulting in much above-average temperatures in the eastern Pacific waters. These warm ocean temperatures have been fueling numerous hurricanes in the East Pacific; three of which indirectly impacted the Unites States. Hurricane Nolo affected parts of the Hawaiian Islands with heavy rains, although mainly impinged on the east-facing slopes that are not in any drought or unusually dry conditions. Meanwhile, moisture from Hurricanes Odalys and Polo both contributed to a near-record moist environment over the normally dry Desert Southwest. Very heavy rains fell on much of New Mexico, and parts of Arizona, Utah, and Colorado both early in the period and again on Monday and Tuesday when Hurricane Polo curved northeast into the Baja of California and tracked into southern New Mexico. Weekly rainfall totals were very impressive across the Southwest, with totals reaching 5-10 inches, accounting for a large portion of the annual rainfall in some places. The heaviest rains fell across eastern New Mexico into northwestern Texas, helping to alleviate drought conditions. Beneficial rains also extended into southern and eastern Colorado into western Kansas and Nebraska, leading to drought relaxation. Coastal New England and the Mid-Atlantic states experienced a substantial Nor’easter that produced heavy rain, gusty winds, and storm-surge flooding from Delaware and New Jersey up to New York’s Long Island and southeastern Massachusetts.

The south-central and southeast states were not so fortunate this past week, however. Continued unseasonably hot dry conditions prevailed across the rest of Texas and Oklahoma eastward into the Tennessee River Valley, leading to worsening drought conditions in many states. The combination of persistently hot weather with virtually no rainfall during much of August and September has led to rapid onset drought in much of Texas and Oklahoma, resulting in widespread severe, extreme, and exceptional drought coverage, which again intensified this past week. Intensifying dryness and drought also prevailed across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. And for those residing up north, the upper peninsula of Michigan and northern Wisconsin continues to suffer with worsening drought as precipitation was again meager there this past week. Outside of the Southwestern states, the remainder of the western U.S. had fairly steady-state drought conditions this past week, with only a few improvements occurring in the northern Rockies and in Oregon…

High Plains

The High Plains states experienced almost exclusively drought improvements this week, as many areas experienced beneficial rainfall, with Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska being beneficiaries of the east-Pacific “El Niño” tropical connection. Despite temperatures being up to 6 or more degrees above average, the plentiful rainfall has contributed to drought improvement in many areas this week. Northern and eastern North Dakota also experienced substantial reduction in drought coverage and intensity as heavy rain fell near the Canadian border…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 29, 2026.

West

Outside of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, which experienced deep and substantial drought-busting rainfall this past week, the western states generally had unchanging drought conditions. The Pacific Northwestern states of Washington and Oregon began experiencing the first of its fall rainy systems, helping to ease drought pressure across western Oregon, where drought was downgraded in a couple spots. Drought and dryness also improved in southwest Montana and northwest Wyoming this past week…

South

The southern states have taken the brunt of recent drought intensification since August, which continued this past week across most of Oklahoma and Texas. Worsening drought also occurred across most of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Virtually no rain fell this past week in this region except for far western Texas, the Oklahoma Panhandle, and eastern Tennessee. Combined with temperatures of 6-12 degrees above average, the lack of rainfall contributed to the rapid intensifying drought. Most of central and eastern Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are under severe, extreme, or exceptional drought classifications. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee are quickly degrading as well into severe to extreme drought conditions due to the September heat wave and continued lack of rainfall. Much of Texas and Oklahoma need to receive 20 to 25 inches of rainfall over a 3-month span to break out of the present drought. The lone exceptions to the drought worsening were in far western Texas and the western Oklahoma Panhandle, where several inches of rain fell as eastern Pacific tropical moisture associated with Hurricanes Odalys and Polo moved across the region. Far eastern Tennessee experienced temperatures around 3 degrees below normal along with the plentiful rainfall resulting in no drought conditions…

Looking Ahead

Ongoing substantial rain was falling Tuesday morning at the onset of the new U.S. Drought Monitor week, from Arizona and New Mexico into the Central and High Plains. This excessive rainy system connected to Hurricane Polo is projected to continue eastward this week into the High Plains, Midwest, and South regions. The Weather Prediction Center has moderate threats for excessive rainfall from the Southwest into Texas, Oklahoma, northward into Nebraska and Iowa. Drought-busting rains may be possible across the South as this weather system evolves this week. Looking into the next week, the Climate Prediction Center’s 6–10-day outlook indicates that well-above average temperatures will shift into the western states, along with below normal precipitation chances. Meanwhile, above average precipitation chances are projected from southern Texas into the southeastern states, including Florida. Above average precipitation chances are also projected for southeastern Alaska, with near neutral rainfall forecasts.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 29, 2026.

More mining claims staked at #BearsEars: Plus, the story of #LakePowell’s 26,000-ton pile of radioactive waste — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Several of the latest claims located within the pre-shrinkage Bears Ears National Monument are on the north side of the Tables of the Sun, seen here in the background on the right. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

September 25, 2026

⛏️ MINING MONITOR ⛏️

The mining claim game continues to heat up in the areas Trump illegally slashed from Bears Ears National Monument, and the top player is, once again, Kimmerle Mining of Moab. Since the Land Desk last wrote about this mini-land rush, Kimmerle has filed seven additional claims areas that had been within the national monument, and therefore off limits to new mining claims.

The latest claims are in the White Canyon area. During the post-War uranium frenzy, the federal government, county crews, prospectors, and mining companies webbed this area with roads, poked it full of prospect holes and mine adits, and contaminated waters with radioactive materials. Part of that legacy includes a 26,000-ton pile of uranium tailings entombed within the ~~waters~~ silt of Lake Powell.

It’s important to keep in mind that the presence of active mining claims does not necessarily mean anyone is going to mine or even explore these pieces of land. And while the claims may be active, which simply means the claimant is up to date on their $200/year location and maintenance fee, they may not be valid. That requires, at least theoretically, proof that the claim contains valuable minerals.

But it does appear as if Kimmerle is targeting viable mining areas, which indicate that the firm either intends to mine the claims, or consolidate enough of them to sell them to a larger company. The newly revealed claims are located in two clusters on either side of Natural Bridges National Monument.

The notices of location have been declared with the San Juan County Recorder, but have not yet shown up on the Bureau of Land Management database. Just before publishing this, I checked the San Juan County records search and found that an entity called Land Survey Advisers — which typically stakes claims for other firms or individuals — filed location notices on more than three dozen claims in San Juan County. At least some of those claims appear to be within the pre-shrinkage BENM boundaries, but the location description on many of them included sections that don’t exist (43, 47) in the public land survey system, and the document download function isn’t working for me, so I have yet to confirm any of this. Still, it’s potentially alarming.

Map showing the approximate location of the claims filed by Kimmerle Mining in Sept. 2026. It also shows pre-existing active claims (in pink) that were staked before Bears Ears’ 2016 establishment, or following the Trump I-shrinkage. Map: BLM and Land Desk.

The Kimmerle claims include:

Six lode claims (each at 20.66 acres) on the north slope of the Tables of the Sun formations in the upper Fry Canyon drainage, just on the boundary line of the original Bears Ears National Monument. While this specific area has seen little mining activity in the past, it is in the same vicinity as the Daneros Mine, which was up for expansion as recently as 2016. And the new claims are adjacent to Kimmerle’s Lucky group of claims.
The nearest historic mining activity was at the Fry # 4 mine ¹, an underground uranium mine with over 400 meters of workings. In 1977, the operator was Utah Power & Light Co., which was the main mining company of the area at the time.

One lode claim on the east slope of Upper Lost Parks, an appendage of Elk Ridge just north of Natural Bridges National Monument and south of the Woodenshoe formation. It’s across Deer Creek Canyon from Kimmerle’s Geitus and Cedar claims, which the firm staked just before President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears, and right after President Donald Trump shrunk the monument for the first time. It’s also in the vicinity of the Sandy claims that Kimmerle held, but that [those?] were closed in 2015. The area was mined and prospected heavily during the Cold War. The nearest historical mines and prospects were the Big Red, the Sandy, and the Hideout. In 1977, the Big Red — operated by Utah Power & Light — was reported to have a flooded, a caved, and an open adit. While the Hideout sparked a 1950s prospecting boom in the area, none of these were ever large producers. However, a 1965 USGS report did indicate this part of Elk Ridge was favorable for uranium deposits, which is likely one reason the Trump administration stripped it of national monument protections.

The White Canyon area was known to contain rich uranium reserves back in the 1940s and 1950s, but its remoteness and the rugged landscape created challenges for mining companies looking to exploit the resources. One of the biggest hurdles was getting the ore to the Monticello processing plant, which required driving gnarly roads across the crinkled landscape and up and over Elk Ridge.

So in 1949, the Vanadium Corporation of America built a small mill at the confluenceof White Canyon and the Colorado River, primarily to process uranium ore from the nearby Happy Jack Mine, located upstream in the White Canyon drainage (and just within the original Bears Ears National Monument boundaries). For the next four years, the mill went through about 20 tons of ore per day, crushing and grinding it up, then treating it with sulfuric acid, tributyl phosphate, and other nastiness. One ton of ore yielded about five or six pounds of uranium, meaning that each day some 39,900 pounds of tailings were piled up outside the mill on the banks of the river.

In 1953 the mill was closed, and the tailings were left where they sat, uncovered, as was the practice of the day. Ten years later, water began backing up behind the newly built Glen Canyon Dam; federal officials decided to let the reservoir’s waters inundate the tailings. There they remain today, though at current lake levels they are probably buried by and mixed in with the Dominy Formation of silt, rather than covered with water.

Satellite image showing the location of the White Canyon Mill and its silt-entombed tailings pile.

During the uranium days of the West, more than a dozen mills — all with processing capacities at least ten times larger than the one at White Canyon — sat on the banks of the Colorado River and its tributaries. Mill locations included: Shiprock, Mexican Hat, Monument Valley, Tuba City, Monticello, Rifle, Grand Junction, Moab, Uravan, Green River, and Naturita. There was even an ore upgrading mill at Fry Canyon, followed by a copper heap leaching operation. Groundwater contamination continues to today, and was partially responsible for the Fry Canyon Lodge’s demise.

At the Durango mill the tailings were piled into a hill-sized mound just a stone’s throw from the Animas River. They weren’t covered or otherwise contained, so when it rained tailings simply washed into the river. Worse, the mill’s liquid waste stream poured directly into the river at a rate of some 340 gallons per minute, or half-a-million gallons per day. It was laced not only with highly toxic chemicals used to leach uranium from the ore and iron-aluminum sludge (a milling byproduct), but also radium-tainted ore solids.

Radium is a highly radioactive “bone-seeker.” That means that when it’s ingested it makes its way to the skeleton, where it decays into other radioactive daughter elements, including radon, and bombards the surrounding tissue with alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. According to the Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry, exposure leads to “anemia, cataracts, fractured teeth, cancer (especially bone cancer), and death.”

It wasn’t any better at any of the other mills. In the early 1950s, researchers from the U.S. Public Health Service sampled Western rivers and found that “the dissolved radium content of river water below uranium mills was increased considerably by waste discharges from the milling operations” and that “radium content of river muds below the uranium mills was 1,000 to 2,000 times natural background concentrations.”

That was just from daily operations. In 1960, one of the evaporation ponds at the Shiprock mill broke, sending at least 250,000 gallons of highly acidic raffinate, containing high levels of radium and thorium, into the river. None of the relevant officials were notified and individual users continued to drink the water, put it on their crops, and give it to their sheep and cattle. It wasn’t until five days later, after hundreds of dead fish had washed up on the river’s shores for 60 miles downstream, that the public was alerted to the disaster.

Of course, what’s dumped into the river at any of these places doesn’t stay there, but makes its way downstream. In the early 1960s, while Glen Canyon Dam was still being constructed, the Public Health Service folks did extensive sediment sampling in the Colorado River Basin, with a special focus on Lake Mead’s growing bed of silt, which had been piling up at a rate of 175 million tons per year after Hoover Dam started impounding water in 1935. The Lake Mead samples had higher-than-background levels of radium-226. The report concludes:

And so, the billions of tons of silt that has accumulated in Lake Mead and Lake Powell serve as archives of sorts. They hold the sedimental records of an era during which people, health, land, and water were all sacrificed in order to obtain the raw material for weapons that are capable of destroying all of humanity. If the new mining claim mini-rush is any indication, some more records may be added to the archive before long.

📸 PARTING SHOT 🎞️

There’s snow in them thar hills!

There’s snow on the peaks just as the aspens are peaking around Silverton, Colorado. Sept. 23, 2026. Andy Gleason photo.

¹ This also appears on some maps and documents as Frey #4. In fact, many of the “Fry”s in the Fry Canyon area show up as “Frey” on older maps (while some still say “Fry.”). Oh my oh my I don’t know why it’s Frey or Fry.

Riverfront dining in southern Utah — Zak Podmore

Riverfront dining in southern Utah pic.twitter.com/EJ4drkRB15
— Zak 🦦 Podmore (@zak_podmore) September 29, 2026

Opening the black box: in situ imaging of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal structures in soil using synchrotron-based micro-CT — Henri M. Braunmiller, Michael Bitterlich, Nicolai Koebernick, Eva Jacob, Anna S. Heck, Andrea Schnepf, Johanna Pausch, Jussi-Petteri Suuronen, Bernhard Hesse, Sylvain Delzon, Jonathan Perrin, Andrew King, Jan Jansa, Mutez A. Ahmed (New Phytologist)

Fig. 7 Grayscale images and segmentations of intraradical arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) structures in Rhizophagus irregularis-colonized Solanum lycopersicum (cv 76R) roots. In the images, segmented materials include roots (in green), hyphae (pink), vesicles (light pink), arbuscules (white), a spore (purple, round shape at the bottom right), and air (light blue). Upper panel, cross section through a colonized root: (a) 2D grayscale slice showing intraradical structures; (b) corresponding 2D-segmentation; and (c) violin plot with horizontal median line of the gray value distributions of different tissues. Lower panel, longitudinal positioning of AMF structures: (d) Computed microtomography grayscale image showing extraradical hyphae and bright arbuscules (red arrows) in the underlying root cortex; (e) 3D segmentation of arbuscules and intraradical hyphae within the same 600-lm root segment; (f) same 3D segmented arbuscules in the root cortex in soil (extraradical soil structures have been left gray)

Click the link access the report on the New Phytologist website (Henri M. Braunmiller, Michael Bitterlich, Nicolai Koebernick, Eva Jacob, Anna S. Heck, Andrea Schnepf, Johanna Pausch, Jussi-Petteri Suuronen, Bernhard Hesse, Sylvain Delzon, Jonathan Perrin, Andrew King, Jan Jansa, Mutez A. Ahmed). Here’s the summary:

Summary

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) contribute to plant nutrient and water uptake via their extraradical hyphal networks. However, in situ methodologies to quantify architectural and morphological traits of these networks in soil are largely lacking, limiting our understanding of AMF-mediated resource transport.

Using synchrotron-based X-ray computed microtomography (micro-CT), we established a workﬂow to cultivate, noninvasively image, and quantitatively analyze AMF hyphosphere and rhizosphere structures in the interaggregate space across two soil textures and biological contexts.

We developed a pipeline for quantitative three-dimensional (3D) assessment of key architectural and morphological traits including structure counts, hyphal length, branching frequency, volume, and surface area. Our method further permits (1) measurement of AMF–soil and AMF–root interface areas and (2) microscale quantiﬁcation of pore space occupancy by AMF.

Micro-CT offers a tool for noninvasively visualizing AMF in air-ﬁlled soil pore space. We outline how such quantitative 3D information can be incorporated into image-based and functional-structural soil–plant models, thereby supporting a better mechanistic understanding of AMF-mediated processes in soils and plants

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may enhance host plant access to soil nutrients and hence contribute to global food security and nutrition (Antunes et al., 2012; Rodriguez & Sanders, 2015; Thirkell et al., 2020). These fungi can supply noticeable proportions of essential plant nutrients, including phosphorus, nitrogen, zinc, and copper (Marschner & Dell, 1994). In addition, numerous studies showed that AMF improve plant water uptake, particularly under dry soil conditions (e.g. Bitterlich et al., 2018; Kakouridis et al., 2022; Abdalla et al., 2023), suggesting a potentially increasing contribution to plant performance under future climate scenarios. A proposed mechanism for AMF-mediated enhancement of water and nutrient acquisition involves the formation of extensive extraradical hyphal networks (Kokkoris, 2026). These networks increase the absorptive surface area and enlarge the effective root radius (Abdalla & Ahmed, 2021), growing beyond depletion zones and thus facilitating access to yet undepleted soil (Schnepf et al., 2008). The degree to which AMF improve plant water and nutrient uptake likely depends on the architecture and morphology of their hyphal network, including hyphal length, diameter, and connectivity among individual hyphae, roots, and soil particles (Abdalla & Ahmed, 2021; Kakouridis et al., 2022). Thus, for a better mechanistic understanding of the role of AMF on water and nutrient transport, characterization of hyphal network structure in soil is indispensable.

Click the link to read Fungi Are Holding the Food Web Together. New Research Images This Underground Network on the EOS website (Emily Gardner). Here’s an excerpt:

September 29, 2026

More than 80% of plants on Earth partner with mycorrhizal fungi to extract nutrients from soil. Underground, in a zone of soil known as the rhizosphere, these fungi grow into vast networks of tubular cells called mycelium (individual cells are called hyphae). These tiny hyphae—about one tenth to one hundredth the width of a human hair—can gather nutrients in the soil and send them into plants. If plants don’t get enough nutrients, neither do the animals that depend on them or the animals that depend on those animals. Furthermore, some research has suggested that mycorrhizal fungi absorb the equivalent of 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. All of this makes the rhizosphere essential to the health of our planet and its inhabitants.

“Basically everyone on Earth is dependent on this really, really tiny zone around roots, in a way,” said Henri Braunmiller, a soil ecologist and graduate student at the Technical University of Munich.

#Colorado Selected for $250 Million to Strengthen Electric Grid, Lower Costs, and Prevent Outages: Project will upgrade a key connection between two of the nation’s major power grids — Governor Polis

Click the link to read the release on Governor Polis’ website:

September 24, 2026

Today, Governor Jared Polis announced that the Colorado Energy Office (CEO), in partnership with Xcel Energy Services, Inc., has been selected to receive a $250 million investment from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to strengthen a key transmission connection between Colorado and Texas, linking the Western and Eastern grids. The project will help Colorado meet growing electricity demand, improve reliability, and expand access to lower-cost power.

“This means lower costs and fewer outages for Coloradans. By strengthening Colorado’s electric grid and expanding our ability to share power with other regions, we can better protect families and businesses during extreme weather and periods of high demand while continuing to save people money. Electric grid improvements are exactly the kind of long-term investment our country should be making to strengthen our economy and save people money,” said Governor Polis.

The Colorado side of the connection will move from Lamar to the higher capacity May Valley substation, connecting it directly to the Colorado Power Pathway transmission network. Together, these improvements will help reduce strain on the grid, prevent outages, and give consumers access to more sources of lower-cost electricity by drawing from a larger pool of energy sources. By upgrading existing equipment and power lines instead of building entirely new transmission corridors, the project can also increase capacity while limiting construction costs and land use impacts.

“President Trump’s Department of Energy is making significant investments in energy infrastructure to power America’s future and lower costs for hardworking families and businesses. This $250 million investment will ensure that households in Colorado and across the Western United States have access to secure, abundant, and reliable power, even during severe weather and periods of increased demand. Affordable, reliable energy is the fundamental building block of a thriving economy and vibrant communities, and President Trump and Secretary Wright are committed to securing America’s energy future,” said Tim J. Walsh, Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The nation’s power grid is divided into large regional systems that currently have a limited ability to share electricity between them, making it difficult to manage the demands of multiple energy grids. The Colorado-to-Texas Western-Eastern Intertie Modernization Initiative, or CO2TX, will upgrade an aging connection near Lamar that allows electricity to move between the Western and Eastern grids. Critically, today’s announced federal funding will support the project’s total $1.2 billion cost with the Department of Energy’s $250 million dollar contribution and Xcel Energy Services Inc.’s 80% match, cementing the project’s financing.

A closer map view of the Colorado to Texas connection project with additional project information reading as follows: Increase tie from 210 MW to 700 MW with capability for 2000 MW in the future; 37 – 136% increase in the Western Interconnection/Eastern Interconnection transfer capability. Expands access to lower-cost energy and supports rapidly growing large loads. Strengthen resilience during extreme weather by providing link between the Eastern and Western Interconnections. Cost benefit scenarios of 1.2 – 4.6.

“Updating and improving our power grid infrastructure is essential to ensure Coloradans have access to reliable, low-cost clean energy throughout the day and year round. Xcel Energy Services Inc’s proposed project will allow optimized use of clean energy resources across a much larger geographical footprint which will save Coloradans money on energy costs. We are grateful to the Department of Energy for investing in Colorado’s grid resilience to benefit our regions for years to come,” said Will Toor, Executive Director of the Colorado Energy Office.

The project will replace older equipment with a modern system that can move electricity more reliably between the two grids. It will also upgrade existing power lines with higher-capacity wires, allowing lines to carry more electricity without building entirely new transmission corridors. Specifically, the project will increase the amount of electricity that can move between the two regional grids from 210 megawatts to 700 megawatts, with the ability to expand to 2,000 megawatts as demand grows.

Upgrading the connection and expanding Colorado’s ability to bring more energy onto the grid will also create new economic opportunities and good-paying jobs. Qualifying construction work on the project will be required to meet federal apprenticeship utilization and prevailing wage standards. This will help to train the next generation of skilled workers and ensures Coloradans building the state’s energy future earn competitive wages.

The funding behind today’s announcement was made available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which authorized DOE’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships initiative, and the Speed to Power through Accelerated Reconductoring and other Key Advanced Transmission Technology Upgrades (SPARK) funding opportunities. Colorado was selected through the SPARK program.

“Reliability is at the heart of this project and everything we do at Xcel Energy. Modernizing the Lamar Tie will strengthen the connection between the Western and Eastern electric grids, helping us better serve customers during extreme weather, meet growing energy needs and make the most of affordable energy resources across the region. With support from the Department of Energy, this smart, cost-effective investment will strengthen reliability and deliver long-term value for customers and communities today and into the future,” said Robert S. Kenney, President of Xcel Energy–Colorado.

CEO is the prime recipient, with Public Service Company of Colorado and Southwestern Public Service Company, both Xcel Energy Services Inc. subsidiaries, providing the funding match, system planning, design, and implementation. Southwest Power Pool will provide regional coordination and grid expertise.

La Jara Basin field trip marks importance of maintaining public land: National Public Lands Day excursion brings conservationists, archeologists and public officials out to celebrate anticipated completion of land transfer agreement — AlamosaCitizen.com #SanLuisValley

La Jara Reservoir and its surrounding lands have been used by cattle grazers and outdoorsmen of all sorts — fishermen, hunters, backpackers — for generations. Credit: The Citizen

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

September 27, 2026

Anna Vargas noted it first. There was more water in La Jara Reservoir on Saturday than when she had been weeks earlier. That in itself was a blessing.

Then there was the discovery of a piece of volcanic glass obsidian by Loretta Mitson that excited the group, along with evidence of a habitation site lord knows how many thousands of years ago just above the thin reservoir.

La Jara Reservoir holds millions of years of archeology, shown by a rock with markings and a piece of volcanic obsidian. Credit: The Citizen

Anna Vargas, left, and Chris Canaly, center left, of the SLV Ecosystem Council. Credit: The Citizen

Vargas and Mitson were part of a caravan of conservationists, archeologists and public officials who took a field trip to mark National Public Lands Day in the La Jara Basin.

They had another purpose as well.

Back in November 2025, the Colorado State Land Board voted to transfer ownership of the La Jara Basin property to a trio of public agencies — Colorado Parks & Wildlife, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management — through a $49.5 million transaction funded through federal tax appropriations, state tax dollars and money from agencies like Colorado Great Outdoors.

Vargas and her boss, Chris Canaly, executive director of San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, organized the outing that brought along Mitson, one of the Valley’s noted historians; Colorado State Sen. Cleave Simpson; Saguache County Commissioner Tom McCracken; and Mick Daniels and Estaban Salazar from San Luis Valley Great Outdoors, among others, to put attention back on the transaction. The expectation is that the thousands of pages of paperwork involved will be signed, money transferred, and the deal finalized by year’s end.

“We are setting the table for what is going to be happening, we hope soon,” said Canaly, promising a grand event for next summer when all the paperwork is complete.

State Land Board office manager Jenny Minich told Alamosa Citizen that a more definitive update on the closure of the transaction should be available in the next couple of months.

“I think it’s going to be quite a wonderful gathering,” said Canaly in anticipation of the finality of the deal and a celebration of the La Jara Basin to come.

Allen Law of the Western Rivers Conservancy talks about the history of the La Jara Reservoir land. Credit: The Citizen

How the La Jara Basin ended up in the hands of the state of Colorado is unique. Then how the state through its land board eventually came around to transferring ownership to federal partners and Colorado Parks & Wildlife rather than sell the land holdings to a private party is another tale.

“This property is really unique within their ownership because when states would come into being, the federal government would deed them a certain amount of land in every township and they were supposed to use those lands to raise money for schools in the frontier states,” said Allen Law of Western Rivers Conservancy, who joined the public lands day trip.

“And how La Jara came to be is, some of those sections that should have been state sections were already homesteaded or they were on reservation lands or treaty lands or things like that. So those sections weren’t available. The federal government instead gave the state land board a big block of, I think they call them in lieu of lands, and that is what the core of this place, La Jara, is. It was basically like the ‘Oops, we already gave away a bunch of your land. We’ll make it up to you here.’”

Cattle grazers and outdoorsmen of all sorts — fishermen, hunters, backpackers — have used the La Jara Basin for generations. The decision to move the property away from state land holdings was fraught with the idea that the state could sell the property into private hands to achieve the highest sale price.

But behind the scenes was Erin Minks, then-aide to Sen. Michael Bennet in the San Luis Valley. It was Minks who began to inform her colleagues of the importance of maintaining La Jara as public lands and that the senator needed to lead the charge.

What followed was a series of federal appropriations starting with fiscal year 2023 that saw the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management squirreling away dollars for the eventual purchase of the lands that surround the reservoir. The federal money, $43.5 million, is coming through the U.S. Department of Interior’s Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is used to “safeguard natural areas, water resources and cultural heritage.”

“We always get the question, ‘What’s going to change up here?’” said Law of Western Rivers. “Everybody’s vision is that what happens up here stays pretty much the same.

“That has always been the goal, is we want the community use to continue. We want the grazing to continue. We want folks to be able to cut wood, hunt, fish, camp, all of those things. So really at the end of the day, if we’re successful, hopefully people won’t notice any change at all and that’s kind of the core of conservation.”

The SLV Ecosystem Council organized an outing with this group to mark National Public Lands Day and to push for the finalization of the La Jara Basin land transfer. Credit: The Citizen

Once finalized, the U.S. Forest Service will take over 21,821 acres and BLM will manage 21,704 acres of the La Jara Basin. CPW, in turn, will manage the reservoir area.

Vargas read aloud a land acknowledgement as the group stood in a circle, acutely aware of their surroundings and the meaning of their Saturday journey to La Jara Reservoir.

“On this day, we gratefully acknowledge the Indigenous peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather,” Vargas read. “We acknowledge that our sustenance and prosperity is derived from the lands of our peoples and ancestors who have been caretakers of the San Luis Valley.”

A bigger celebration to come.

A view across La Jara Reservoir from a hill between the reservoir’s two dams, back in the day. The reservoir is in Conejos County, Colorado. By Jeffrey Beall – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=140180051

What will happen to the #GrandCanyon as water levels drop? The impacts will reverberate through recreation, river ecology and local tribes — Heather Hansman (High Country News) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Heather Hansman):

September 14, 2026

On August 29, monsoon storms sat over northern Arizona, pelting the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The rain unleashed flash floods that picked up momentum in the burn scar from the 2025 Dragon Bravo Fire. With burned trees, boulders and unanchored sediment in tow, the water pummeled down Bright Angel Creek, finding the fastest way to the Colorado River below. The floodwaters wiped out bridges, buildings and at least two human lives. It eliminated beaches and built new rapids.

This summer, and for the foreseeable future, the canyon is changing. In addition to increasingly catastrophic seasonal floods, a warming climate means the Grand Canyon will more often have too little water. The Glen Canyon Dam, which is located just above the canyon, is consistently releasing its lowest water levels in decades, and the Colorado River’s flows are projected to drop even lower. This is already impacting recreation, the river’s ecology and local tribes.

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

The river flowing through the Grand Canyon — arguably the most majestic and most managed in the country — is bookended between two dams that hold back the biggest reservoirs in the United States. Those reservoirs, which provide water for 40 million people in the Southwestern U.S., have been declining for decades thanks to scant snowfall and the rising temperatures tied to climate change.

There is so little water today that the combined water stored in both reservoirs has shrunk to a level not seen since the 1950s, when there was only one reservoir, Lake Mead, and it was only half full, according to Jack Schmidt, the director of Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies.

July inflows into the system this year were 12% of the historical average. And according to a Bureau of Reclamation study released in June, Lake Powell, the reservoir above the Grand Canyon, is projected to drop too low to create hydropower by January 2027, a situation that also threatens the structural integrity of Glen Canyon Dam.

In response, Reclamation has reduced the volume of water it releases from Powell each month: It’s currently releasing 482,000 acre-feet per month and is projected to drop to 401,000 in October. Those shrinking water levels will affect the entire river basin and beyond, but the Grand Canyon itself will feel the changes first.

“The Grand Canyon was used to low flows prior to the dam,” said Jen Pelz, water advocacy director for the Grand Canyon Trust. “But we’ve altered the system so much in the last 60 years by using the dam that we’re not going back to what natural conditions might be if we just drop the water.” The formerly high spring flows and low, warm summer ones are unlikely to return.

No one sees how much things have changed as clearly as the 11 tribes who have called the canyon home forever. “Tribal relationship is a millennium longer than any scientist has been studying the Grand Canyon,” said Kurt Dongoske, the Zuni tribal historic preservation officer and principal investigator for Zuni Cultural Resource Enterprise.

He said the Zuni believe the Grand Canyon is where they emerged into this world, and that there’s a direct spiritual, cultural and geographic connection between the Canyon and the Pueblo of Zuni, where the Zuni River feeds into the Colorado. Dongoske has attended decades of Reclamation meetings and said that historically, the tribe’s perspective about the value of consistent ecosystem management hasn’t been considered. He expects the agency will pay even less attention to the tribe’s views about ecosystem connectivity as water levels drop.

YOU CAN SEE THE CHANGES happening at the smallest scale, in tiny grains of sand: Glen Canyon Dam now blocks more than 90% of the sediment that previously flowed through the Grand Canyon. Pelz said that lack of sediment transport is one of the clearest impacts of low flows because sediment provides the canyon’s structural and ecological foundation, creating sandbars for fish habitat and beaches for rafters. Without sediment, vegetation can’t grow, destabilizing the banks and limiting forage and habitat for the wildlife and insects that are crucial to the food web.

Sediment also protects cultural resources, including Indigenous masonry dwellings, seasonal campsites and petroglyphs and pictographs. According to a 2023 report by the U.S. Geological Survey, windblown sand dunes prevent water-based erosion around the Grand Canyon’s sensitive archaeological sites. Nearly 400 of those sites are currently at risk as sediment levels drop.

Photo shows Lake Mead with a water elevation of 1078. Credit: USBR

Consistently low sediment-deprived flows erode the canyon little by little, pushing sand downstream into Lake Mead instead of keeping it in the canyon’s ecosystem. To counter that, since the late ’90s, Reclamation has typically released a big pulse of water annually in the spring or fall, known as a “high flow experiment,” to carry sediment into the canyon from upstream. Reclamation neglected to do this in 2025, and even though there was enough sediment to require one in 2026, the agency opted not to because it was deemed politically unpopular.

“If we lose those high flows, we lose all the sediment in the canyon,” Pelz said. “I see that as one of the most significant impacts to the Grand Canyon.”

WHEN THE RESERVOIR LEVEL DROPS and less water comes through the canyon, the water’s temperature changes, too, because it’s being pulled from the sun-warmed top layer of Lake Powell. Temperatures typically range between 45 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but as the lake drops, they’re now approaching 60. Schmidt explained that this causes algae blooms in the warm clear water near the dam, something that doesn’t happen when the water is rich with sediment.

Those changes also smother the blue-ribbon trout fishery just below the dam, because the fish can’t handle the heat. This alone has big local economic impacts: Recreation in the area is a $1 billion industry that supports thousands of jobs, from guiding to hospitality to public works.

That warm top layer carries another threat: smallmouth bass. These non-native fish thrive in warm water and are pulled down into the canyon through the dam’s turbines as water levels drop. This changes the ecosystem, especially for threatened native fish like humpback chub, whose young they eat.

Some 85% of the humpback chub in the U.S. live in the Grand Canyon, thanks to a decades-long recovery program that brought them back from endangered status in 2021 and now supports a nursery at the confluence of the Little Colorado River. But that could soon end as smallmouth bass move through the river. “It’s an ecological, biological issue and a cultural one,” Pelz said. “Fish have been there with the tribes for time immemorial. When I think about the Grand Canyon without native fish, it just changes what it is.”

At the same time, revenue from power generation at Glen Canyon Dam supports the native fish recovery program. When power generation drops, so does funding for the fish.

In past years, when temperatures in the river exceeded 60 degrees for three days in a row, Reclamation would release what it calls “cool mix flows,” pulling colder water from lower in the lake’s water column to discourage the smallmouth bass and algae and balance out the ecosystem. Now, with lower water levels, the agency has less flexibility to change how and when it releases water to reflect the canyon’s natural variability, even when long-term science and agreed-upon policy supports doing so.

The Grand Canyon Trust is monitoring a USGS gauge at mile 15 of the Colorado River to track temperature trends. As of September 10, the water there was 69.4 degrees Fahrenheit and had exceeded the temperature threshold at which a dam release with a cool-mix flow would normally be triggered for 87 consecutive days, since the end of June.

Dongoske, who has served as a representative to the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program since 1991, said there’s another aspect of river management has been too long ignored: The Zuni not only regard the native fish as kin, they believe that all fish are valuable, and that it’s not the non-natives fault that they ended up in the canyon.

“All life-forms deserve respect and their lives should be cherished, which is completely antithetical to how Reclamation treats non-natives,” he said. “Historically, they have not given Indigenous epistemologies equal consideration with Western science knowledge.”

RECREATION, TOO, IS deeply entangled in the river flows and the ecosystem’s health, said Ben Reeder, a long-time guide for Colorado River and Trail Expeditions. That’s become increasingly clear as the river drops.

Each year, approximately 20,000 people take commercial river trips through the canyon, because it’s the only way to truly see the length and the heart of the Grand Canyon. Those trips can range from three-day motorboat trips to 18-day oar-powered raft trips.

Reeder, who runs 36-foot-long motorboats through the canyon, said that as river levels drop it becomes harder to get through rocky technical rapids like Hance and Horn Creek. “Running low water, especially in a big boat, is what separates decent boatmen from really good boatmen,” Reeder said. “It’s definitely more nerve-wracking.”

He said that guides have had to adjust their routes, timing and scouting, and that some companies have already started running smaller boats to be able to get through the shrinking river channels. So far no one has been hurt, he said, but boats are getting stuck in the rapids.

Reeder, for his part, has changed the type of gear he travels with, bringing a slingshot to help get a rope to shore if his boat gets stuck. “It’s not just about river running, but what happens when things go wrong,” he said.

“The Grand Canyon is a living, breathing thing. When you spend a lot of time down there, you start to understand it,” said Reeder, who is also the Grand Canyon River Guides representative to the Bureau of Reclamation’s Technical Workgroup. He said that guides are looking out for each other as they try to figure it out, but he’s worried about the impacts on the industry.

In this photo we have Claude Birdseye (right) – expedition leader and Chief Topographic Engineer of the USGS, and Roland Burchard (left) – expedition topographer. Photo credit: USGS

Trip bookings are reportedly down by about 25%, after a post-COVID high. Reeder is worried about what will happen in the future as the river drops lower, possibly preventing bigger boats from getting through the canyon at all and cutting off the entire motorized sector of the industry.

“The history of Grand Canyon boatmen has always been this resiliency,” he said. “I’m confident we’ll have solutions, but I’m not confident that I’m necessarily going to be able to guide and run boats there the way I am now for the long term. We will have to adapt.”

RIGHT NOW, releases from Lake Powell are fluctuating between 6,000 and 9,200 cubic feet per second, compared to the typical average summer flows of 13,000 cfs, according to Jennifer M. Erickson from the Department of the Interior Public Affairs. Such low flows make it impossible to do cool mix flows or high-flow experiments; the latter requires releasing between 31,500 and 45,000 cfs for one to four days.

Low flows also eliminate options like the steady-state releases called “bug flows,” which the Grand Canyon Trust’s Pelz said aim to keep fluctuations at a minimum to give bugs the chance to hatch, supporting the food web, including bird populations farther downriver.

Dongoske said it’s also important to think about the cascade of impacts outside of the river corridor. “Whatever happens in the Grand Canyon will have impacts on the community of Zuni,” he said. “There’s a continuous spiritual connection.”

On a grand scale, Pelz said, low water levels create a feeling of scarcity that inhibits creativity and flexibility. The recent flash flood also raises questions. “We really need to rethink how we’re going to manage the river or how the infrastructure is going to work,” she said.

This story was produced by High Country News in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent reporting initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

A workgroup, of sorts, on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

‘Like driving off a cliff at 2 mph’: A water expert’s take on what’s coming for the #ColoradoRiver — Scott Franz (CU Boulder Today) #COriver #aridification

The Colorado River flows near Hite Marina in Utah. (Credit: Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk)

Click the link to read the article on the CU Boulder Today website (Scott Franz):

September 2, 2026

The Colorado River is on the brink of collapse because of climate change and overuse of water.

Reservoirs supplying water to tens of millions of people in the southwest reached record lows this summer. The nation is racing to refill them with conservation measures so they can still generate hydropower and reliably deliver water to users downstream.

Fish are struggling. Rafters are having trouble navigating low water.

Despite all this, the seven states sharing the water supply remain at a yearslong impasse over how to conserve the river.

“The Colorado River is in as bad a shape as it’s ever been,” said Doug Kenney, chairman of the Colorado River Research Group at CU Boulder’s Getches-Wilkinson Center.

The Interior Department announced Aug. 21 it will significantly cut back the amount of water that will flow to the lower basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona for at least the next two years.

“To the people who really study this river, everything that’s happening this year has been expected for decades,” Kenney said. “This is a classic, slow-moving crisis. I’ve equated it to driving a car off a cliff at 2 miles an hour. You can look out the windshield and see that cliff coming. And we’re now right at the edge.”

Kenney spoke to CU Boulder Today about the latest efforts to conserve the river and what he thinks is coming next.

Are these cuts to the lower basin states enough to save the river?

There’s nothing in this plan that will save the river. It hasn’t made it to the ocean since the 1960s. That’s not going to change. What they’re really trying to accomplish is to prevent the reservoirs from going even lower. They’re trying to avoid further disaster. And the cuts they’re anticipating for the next two years—I don’t think are going to get us there.

If we have a good water year or two with heavy snowpack, we can maybe hold where we’re at. But by the time we get to year three and beyond, those cuts will probably have to be about twice as big as they are now.

Nevada is suing the federal government to stop the cuts. What’s at stake?

One of those stakes could be that the Bureau of Reclamation is told to go back and redo its plan to cut water to the lower basin states. That would be chaotic. The last thing water users want is chaos. They want to know how much water they can expect.

Doug Kenney at the Getches-Wilkinson Center 2026 Conference on the Colorado River June 5, 2026. Photo credit: Allen Best

With lawsuits starting, is there any hope left for states to agree on a plan?

There are two problems on the river. One is stopping the current trajectory of reservoirs dropping. And that’s a heavy lift. But if you manage to do that, then there’s the other problem of rebuilding those reservoirs. Which requires even further conservation and cuts.

We have to rebuild some storage in those reservoirs. At the moment, we’ve decided let’s just deal with what we have to deal with immediately—this short term crisis—and even that’s proving to be a lift that the states can’t do themselves. And the federal government has had to step in.

Their plan doesn’t force water cuts for upper basin states like Colorado. Can we get out of this crisis without mandatory cuts in the upper basin?

The upper basin is tricky here in that it uses significantly less water than it was promised. And people in the upper basin will tell you, this is the deal they made a century ago in the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

So when you talk to the upper basin states about conserving water on any sort of permanent basis, that’s the sticking point that you’re going to get is people saying ‘we were promised this water.’

The scientists will say this is a different river than 100 years ago. So you have that sort of impasse. If the upper basin could just cap what they’re using today, long term, that would be tremendously helpful. And that might very well happen. But I don’t think the upper basin would want to commit to that in any sort of formal way.

Then how do we get out of this crisis?

A truly long-term sustainable solution has to look at the fact that we’re using 75 percent of the water in agriculture. And some of that agriculture I think is going to just have to go away. So the policy decision there is: Which agriculture goes away? And does it just go away through bankruptcies, and let the market do what the market does? Or do we do that in a structured and more humane manner, such as a federal program to buy out large amounts of it?

But when you start talking about retiring a lot of agriculture, that’s not popular. There’s no easy way out of this. [ed. emphasis mine]

Is the fate of the river heading to the US Supreme Court?

I would guess we end up in interstate litigation. I’m not sure of that, but I think the odds of that happening are greater than 50-50 in my mind. But you have to appreciate that no negotiation and no court fight creates water. The weather systems create water. And as long as the earth continues to heat, this basin figures to get drier and drier.

Twenty years from now, we’re gonna look back and say, ‘Oh, those were the days when we got healthy snowpack,’ and ‘Oh boy, we had it good back then.’ That’s the trajectory we’re on in terms of the climate part of this.

Is there anything that gives you hope for the river’s future?

Hope comes from the fact that at some point, Mother Nature imposes cuts. At some point, the water just isn’t there and people have to be creative and do more with less or at least try to do the same with less. And there’s a good track record of doing that.

The southwest is a great example. Las Vegas over the last 30 plus years has been the fastest growing big city in America. And during that period, they slashed their water use dramatically. Other cities have been on the same trajectory: Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson have shown that they can use a lot less water. And that’s really encouraging.

It’s tougher to save water in agriculture. But there are some things we can do to adapt. Some of it’s technology. Some of it’s using different systems for irrigating crops. It’s also changing to different crops. There are tools in the toolbox here.

But it’s really hard to get that sort of adaptation going as long as you’re still in the mindset that the other guy is the problem, and what I do is fine. That mindset stops a lot of good innovations from happening.

Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR

There are 30 tribal nations with a stake in this river as well. What can we learn from them?

They say, ‘Why is there a table with seven chairs. Why is it only seven states negotiating? There should be at least 37 chairs.’ They should be involved in this process at every level. And by and large they aren’t.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes have dubbed their portion of the river as basically having personhood status. It is a living independent being. It’s important, I think, to challenge the rest of the users in the basin to think about the obligation we have to the river itself. Because that’s just not a viewpoint that comes up in these negotiations, but it really needs to.

NEWSWIRE: Four Corners rain, flooding, Also: Public Lands, Data Center Digest, Mining Monitor, more — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Lightning and city lights. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

September 21, 2026

⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️

Tropical disturbances have moved into the Four Corners Country in recent days, bringing massive amounts of moisture, raising river levels, and causing flash flooding. The pattern — and high danger of flooding — is expected to continue this week [September 21, 2026], with the highest rainfall forecast for New Mexico.

Snow-nerd Andy Gleason reported that, as of Sept. 18, 3.5 inches of rain had already fallen in Silverton during the storm cycle. The National Weather Service also says the percentage of water in the atmosphere, or PWAT, in the area was 300% of normal, higher than they have ever recorded before.

Streamflows across the region shot up once again, with the San Juan River at Four Corners reaching 13,000 cubic feet per second on Sept. 19. That was enough to send it over its banks in some places in and around Shiprock, and Navajo Nation police evacuated residents near the San Juan Bridge, which high waters threatened.

The high flows sent a surge of water into Lake Powell, causing inflows to exceed releases and bringing the reservoir’s surface level up by a few inches. However it remains below 53,517 feet — or a mere seven feet above the level the Bureau of Reclamation plans to “defend.”

It’s increasingly likely that this series of September storms will bring total accumulated precipitation in Four Corners watersheds up to or above median levels by the 2026 water year’s end on Sept. 30.

Notice how accumulated precipitation in the San Juan River watershed for the 2026 water year, indicated by the black line, was at record levels during its first weeks and didn’t drop below the median until February. The latest round of storms — along with those to come — could push the levels back up to or above the median before the water year ends Sept. 30. Source: USDA.

That may seem surprising given how dry last winter was, how severe the drought is in much of the West, and how low streamflows have been all summer. But big storms in the early part of the water year (last October) and now at the end of it have buoyed accumulated precipitation levels, which exceeded those in water year 2025. The problem this year was one of timing, with most of the moisture coming before snow-season, and of warmth: It is shaping up to be the warmest water year on record across most of the West.

🐟 COLORADO RIVER CHRONICLES 💧

Tech giant Amazon plans to invest $20 million into Colorado River Basin water conservation projects as part of the newly formed Colorado River Basin Collaborative. Amazon’s first two funded projects include a leak-detection and repair effort in Orange County, California; and working with Arable on irrigation efficiency efforts on tribal farmland in Arizona. (Amazon News)

🐓 REGULATORY CAPTURE RECORD 🦊

Idaho investigators find that a 5,600-acre wildfire in 2024 was initially ignited on Trump appointee Michael Boren’s ranch by Boren’s brother, Steve, who did so without a permit. The fire cost approximately $950,000 to contain. (Public Domain / High Country News)

🌵 PUBLIC LANDS 🌲

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (MAGA-Utah) moves to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke the Bears Ears National Monument management plan and block the development of a substantially similar plan in the future. While this would not prevent a future administration from restoring the original national monument boundaries, it would hamper efforts to to create a new management plan for a restored monument and could throw the entire area — even BLM lands removed from the monument — into a sort of regulatory chaos. (news release, Wes Siler’s Newsletter)

The U.S. Forest Service considers turning over management of the Maroon Bells Scenic Area near Aspen, Colorado, to Pitkin County, saying it can no longer sustain the $300,000 annual loss at the site. The USFS plans to use a categorical exclusion to skirt the environmental review process, raising concerns about setting a dangerous precedent that would allow similar public lands transfers without analysis. (Westwise)

The Trump administration’s ongoing dismantling of the National Park Service continues, as it funnels funds intended for repairs and maintenance in popular Western parks to President Donald Trump’s vanity projects in Washington, D.C.. (New York Times)

Confluence of the Little Colorado River and the Colorado River. Photo credit: DMY at Hebrew Wikipedia [Public domain]

SACRED LANDS

The Navajo Nation council formally recognizes as a sacred site Tooh Ahidiilíní — the confluence of the Little Colorado River and the Colorado River, the Little Colorado River Gorge, and surrounding areas. The legislation provides additional protection against development such as the now defunct Escalade project or once-proposed pumped hydropower storage projects. (Grand Canyon Trust)

⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️

The Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency pushes back on NuFuels’ proposed Crownpoint Uranium Project in-situ-recovery facility, per the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, which bans uranium mining and processing on the Navajo Nation. The facility would be located near the site of the 1979 Church Rock uranium tailings spill, the largest release of radioactive materials in U.S. history. (Navajo Times)

Laramide Resources said it is moving ahead with its proposed La Jara Mesa uranium mining project on the Cibola National Forest west of Mt. Taylor in New Mexico, despite intense opposition and a federal permitting pause. (Santa Fe New Mexican)

🛢️ FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES 📈

The Bureau of Land Management considers opening the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge near Vernal, Utah, to oil and gas leasing. If developed, the leases would come with “no surface occupancy” stipulations, meaning directional drilling would occur outside the refuge to reach the federal minerals underneath it. (news release, Times-Independent)

U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) join the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in opposition to the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to auction oil and gas leases within the tribe’s reservation in southwestern Colorado, saying they are in an “environmentally and culturally significant” area. (news release)

Today (9/21) is the last day to submit comments to the Bureau of Land Management on 43 proposed oil and gas leases on almost 75,000 acres in Utah, including parcels near Hatch Point just outside the pre-shrinkage boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument. (BLM, SUWA)

The Bureau of Land Management receives no bids for offered oil and gas leases covering 20,600 acres in Nevada, triggering a replacement sale and making the parcels available for noncompetitive bidding. (Taxpayers for Common Sense)

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon lauds Peabody Energy’s pilot shipment of Powder River Basin coal to Vietnam via a newly opened Union Pacific rail line to Mexico export terminals. (Oil City News)

🤖 DATA CENTER DIGEST 👾

Bureau of Land Management documents show multiple developers are proposing to build data centers on public land in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, although most of the projects are still in the conceptual phase and have yet to begin the federal permitting process. (Washington Sun)

The Hualapai Tribal Council in Arizona passes a resolution opposing “the irresponsible development of hyperscale data centers, saying they pose a “direct and severe threat to the tribe’s sacred water, lands, environment, and way of life.” (KJZZ)

A new study explores siting data centers on abandoned mine lands and using the acid mine drainage to cool the facilities. (Science Direct)

New Mexico Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland says if elected she would implement a temporary moratorium on new large-scale data centers to allow state lawmakers to develop regulations for the facilities. (Source NM)

Holy Cross Energy officials say they expect developers to propose data centers in Garfield County, Colorado, within the next five years, adding that the electric cooperative can accommodate the increased demand. (Aspen Daily News)

🔋ENERGY TRANSITION 🔌

Bannock County, Idaho’s commissioners consider rescinding their 2024 ban on new utility-scale solar and wind energy installations, with supporters saying the projects could provide badly needed economic development and tax revenues. (Canary Media)

A federal judge rules that the Trump administration illegally terminated the $7 billion Solar for All program aimed at bringing rooftop and community solar to low-income people, and revokes the cancellation. (Associated Press)

South Platte River Basin #climate for the week ending September 28, 2026, and the latest Seasonal Outlooks, through December 31, 2026, from the CPC #SouthPlatteRiver

Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for September 28, 2026. This morning precipitation, at the SNOTEL stations, is at 75% of the median (down 1% one week), and 75% of the water year median (down 1% one week). There are 2 days left in the water year.

Showers are likely today, Tuesday, and Wednesday, with a slight chance for showers Sunday in the central mountains. Showers are likely today and Tuesday, with a chance for showers Wednesday, and a chance for showers Sunday in the northern mountains. Showers are likely today, Tuesday, and Wednesday, with a chance for showers Thursday, down here, about 441 miles from Mesa Verde National Park. From the NPS:

The Far View area was once an extensive farming community and one of the most densely populated regions of the Mesa Verde. This mesa top community includes Far View House, Pipe Shrine House, Coyote Village, Far View Reservoir (currently dry), Megalithic House, and Far View Tower. In ancient times, it was a place of modest homes interspersed with small farm fields. It was a place filled with people, vibrant life, and constant change.

Beginning around 800 CE, Ancestral Pueblo people lived here for several centuries, farming the deep mesa-top soils, building their homes, and raising their families. This was not always a quiet woodland. On a summer day in 1050 this ancient community would have been filled with the smell of juniper smoke and the sounds of everyday life: conversations between people working together, barking dogs, laughing children, ravens calling overhead, and the wind rustling through the shiny corn leaves. In the mid-1100s, there may have been at least 35 occupied villages and surrounding farm and garden plots within a half-square-mile area, including those you can visit today.

Looking across Pipe Shrine House at Far View House. NPS/Sandy Groves

Here’s a look at the Colorado 7-Day precipitation map through September 27, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 0.00” to 1.50″.

Here’s the Colorado 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through September 27, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas was 0% to 800% of normal.

Here’s the most recent 7-Day Departure from Normal Temperature (F) for Colorado through September 27, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center.

Below is the 7-day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast for the week of September 28, 2026. Precipitation is anticipated for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin and may total up to 1.50″.

Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued September 27, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting September 28, 2026. The CPC expects above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor map from September 22, 2026. There were one class improvements in Weld, Logan, Elbert, Arapahoe, and Sedgwick counties. There were one class degradations in Weld, Boulder, Broomfield, and Adams counties. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 93.52% of Colorado. The South Platte Basin is experiencing Abnormally Dry, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, and Exceptional drought conditions.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 22, 2026.

Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.

Finally, here are the latest Seasonal Outlooks, through December 31, 2026, from the Climate Prediction Center. The CPC expects near normal temperatures, above normal precipitation, and drought improvement or removal for the South Platte River Basin.

In the American West, do two households really consume an acre foot of water a year?

A person wearing an apron washes dishes in a modern kitchen sink, with various kitchen utensils and plants in the background. — ^{Photograph of a woman saving water as she washes dishes. Image by Storyblocks.}

by Robert Marcos

A commonly cited metric claims that two households typically use an acre foot of water a year. But thanks to conservation in western cities an acre foot is often enough for 3-1/2 to 6 households. So why are government agencies, academics, and news agencies continuing to use an obsolete metric that makes residential water users look like they’re wasting water? ¹

It’s bad enough that “40 million people” are reported to depend upon the Colorado River, while agriculture – which uses 80% of that water isn’t mentioned, while at the same time claiming that households are using twice as much water as they really are. The fact is that while the populations of cities have increased, per capita water use has fallen, dramatically.

A bar graph showing water withdrawals in billion gallons per day from 1950 to 2015, categorized by groundwater, surface water, and total. A pink line indicates population growth in millions. — *^{A US Geological Survey chart from 2015 shows America’s population rising (purple) as surface water use (blue) fell.}*

Here are recent statistics of residential water use from 7 western cities –

SAN FRANCISCO, California A typical household in San Francisco consumes approximately 0.14 to 0.17 acre-feet of water per year. Because San Francisco households use so little water, one acre-foot of water can supply about six households for an entire year. Mathematically, this equals roughly 0.166 acre-feet per household annually. ²

DENVER, Colorado A typical household in Denver uses between 0.25 – 0.28 AF per year. Residents of Denver practice moderate outdoor summer watering balanced by high indoor winter efficiency. Single-family residential customers average about 50 gallons per person per day for indoor use, with overall annual use split roughly 50/50 between indoor and outdoor needs. ³

LAS VEGAS, Nevada A typical household in Las Vegas uses between 0.28 – 0.35 AF. While 60% of residential water in Southern Nevada is consumed outdoors for landscape irrigation, nearly 99% of indoor water is recycled. Water that flows down the drain or into the toilet is treated and pumped straight back into Lake Mead, which generates “return-flow credits” for the city.

TUCSON, Arizona Average annual residential water use is between 0.20 – 0.22 AF per year. The city of Tucson has dramatically reduced residential water usage during the past two decades. Tucson residential customers average about 74 to 76 gallons per person per day, ranking among the lowest per-capita residential consumers in the desert Southwest. The city of Tucson has been proactive in encouraging water conservation by offering a wide range of rebates and incentive programs to residential and commercial customers. ⁵

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona An average household in Flagstaff consumes about 0.25 acre-feet of water per year – or about one acre-foot for every four homes. Flagstaff residents use about 84 gallons of water per person daily, which is roughly half of the Arizona state average. ⁶

SAN DIEGO, California Average annual residential water use is between 0.22 – 0.24 AF per year. Multi-family housing density and strong baseline state efficiency standards. County-wide residential water use averages approximately 76 gallons per person per day, down from historical averages due to ongoing state and local efficiency standards. ⁷

PHOENIX, Arizona Average annual residential water use is between 0.29 – 0.45 AF per year. Large variations between newer low-water developments and older properties with pools and grass lawns. City residents average between 100 and 155 gallons per person per day total residential use, with the majority consumed outdoors via landscaping and pools. ⁸

Contain a Wildfire? Call in the Cows — Dave Marston (writersontherange.org)

Click the link to read the article on the Writers on the Range website (Dave Marston):

September 21, 2026

When fire commanders try to figure out how to contain a major wildfire, the last thing you might expect them to deploy is a herd of beef cattle. But on the recent Gold Mountain Fire in western Colorado, cows are eating the “fine fuels” along a three-mile fire line on the Big Cimarron River.

Putting that idea into practice five years ago would have required miles of electric fencing and a range rider to gather strays. Now, new technology has changed the game for cattle grazing by putting electronic collars — all solar-powered — on cows and linking them by satellite.

Using satellite technology, scientists from the Food Futures Flagship have helped to develop a prototype, animal-friendly virtual fencing system for cattle that enables the animals to be confined without using fixed fences. With virtual fencing, boundaries are drawn entirely by global positioning satellite (GPS) and exist only as a line on a computer. There are no wires or fixed transmitters used.The animals wear collars containing software that identifies where they are and emit a sound when they approach the boundary. The sound replaces the visual cue of a conventional electric fence that cows learn to avoid. The sophisticated software embedded in the system enables it to respond to varying animal temperaments. The research, overseen by an independent animal welfare expert, also showed the animals are not unduly stressed by the virtual fence. CC 3.0

“The Halter Collar is similar to a dog collar, has a tone, vibrate and a shock,” explained Mike Higuera, agricultural manager of Western States Ranches, based in Eckert, Colorado. An app on a smartphone allows range riders to draw electronic fences and track each cow by GPS.

“Gathering cattle in fall used to take four or more weeks and hundreds of person hours, but now it’s a few days,” said Higuera.

The idea for using cows to help contain wildfire came from Sean Brown, a 23-year veteran of range management at the U.S. Forest Service, who pulls in overtime organizing logistics for major forest fires near his base in Montrose, Colorado. He said he and the fire commanders realized that cattle would offer a safer way than setting a hazardous back burn to add to an “indirect” fire line, one away from direct flames.

Once Brown had permission from his bosses, he called Tyler Westhoff, Western States Ranches ranch manager. Westhoff quickly agreed to bring 350 radio-collared cows onto the fringes of the fire zone, which at that point, in mid-August, was 87% contained.

“Tyler flew into action,” Brown said. It turned out that Higuera and Westhoff were relieved to put cows onto their Big Cimarron federal grazing permit. “We’d been trucking water on another permit on the Uncompahgre Plateau, but this is better feed and good water,” said Higuera, who stressed that fire officials were ready to remove the cows if fire conditions turned ugly.

Brown said equipping the cows electronically gave him confidence that they could eat their way to an expanded fire line. This would reduce the burden on fire crews trying to keep the 39,000-acre fire contained until a season-ending event, typically rain or snow.

Westhoff loves what he calls the “Big Cim” grazing permit: “The top of it goes from 8,800 up to 12,000 feet. It’s northern San Juans and a prime grazing permit.” Best of all, he added, “There’s lots of grass.”

Brown took me on a Big Cim tour five days after the herd went to work. Standing in a field where tall grasses were now three inches tall, he explained that cattle are typically kept off burned permits for two years. Nature comes back, Brown said, but without constant herding cattle can move into sensitive areas and exacerbate erosion.

“We’ll have this herd in the Cimarron Valley next year, and fire-affected areas will be excluded with a virtual fence.”

The wildfire work on the Big Cim is good news for Western States Ranches, which was having a dismal summer. The Gold Mountain Fire started near the tourist town of Ouray, quickly roared across the ranch’s Owl Creek permit outside Ridgway, and traveled 26 miles onto the ranch’s Big Cimarron permit.

David Marston. Photo credit: Writers on the Range

“We felt like we had a target on our back,” Higuera said. “We were geared to release cattle above Ridgway, then four days later our evacuated cow camp was in flames.”

What does an cost? The leased equipment costs $96 per cow per season. “But for sprawling operations, when you add up person hours, diesel, and trucking water, a Halter pays for itself quickly,” Higuera said.

The collars have other uses besides wildfire work, especially for weed control. Often the first grasses to return after a burn are cheatgrass, which grows quickly in spring and then dries to become highly flammable. “But cows love it,” Westhoff said, “and on lower elevation permits, we’ve made it through a couple winters on cheatgrass.”

The ranchers said they were grateful to Brown and fire commanders for letting the cows perform. “Typically, there’s a risk aversion in the agency… but we showed we can be part of the solution,” Higuera said.

As for Brown, he said that sending in cows to expand a fire line was unique: “Never in my 23 years have I ever done something like this.”

Dave Marston is publisher of Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

President Trump guts the Endangered Species Act: Also, more mining claims filed in Bears Ears National Monument — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

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

September 18, 2026

Hey, guess what! I friggin’ hate putting Tr*)*p in the headline of this newsletter once again. It makes me nauseous. But the thing is, his administration has significantly stepped up its attacks on the environment, public lands, and wildlife over the last few months. I don’t know if this is an attempt to distract from ridiculous wars and crazy gasoline prices, or if it’s a rush to roll back as many protections as possible before the midterms. Whatever it is, I have to respond and cover the news, especially when it’s as big and consequential as today’s.

🦫 Wildlife Watch 🦅 🐓 Regulatory Capture Chronicles 🦊

Last week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nes~~bit~~vik sent out a memo to directing agency leadership to effectively eviscerate the Endangered Species Act by exempting industry from its purview, leaving imperiled wildlife vulnerable to slaughter and even extinction, so long as the action wasn’t “intentionally directed against a particular animal or animals.”

The Endangered Species Act declares it “unlawful for any person” to “take” — meaning to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect — any species listed under the ESA. Since the law was passed in 1973, “take” has always been unqualified and absolute, meaning that killing or harming one of these animals is illegal whether the animal is targeted or not. This not only protects the animals from hunters, say, but also from industrial activities that may incidentally kill protected species.

The Sept. 14 memo, however, directs the agency to adopt U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s interpretation of “take” in his dissenting opinion on a 1995 case, where he wrote that “take is a term of art” that “describes a class of acts (not omissions) done directly and intentionally (not indirectly and by accident) to particular animas (not populations of animals).”

Scalia expanded by writing that setting out poison with the intention of killing a wolf or other particular animal or chopping down a tree in which a bird is nesting would be a take if the “actor acted to reach the animal.” He then went on:

What this means is that hunting and killing a Valley Dixie toad to eat it would be a prohibited take. Wiping out the entire species with a lithium mine or geothermal operation would not constitute a take under this new interpretation because it isn’t targeting a specific animal. Therefore it would be acceptable under the ESA. The Trump administration gutted the Migratory Bird Act in a similar fashion last year.

Dixie Valley toads are found only in a hot-spring fed wetland in Dixie Valley, northeast of Fallon, Nevada. Dixie Valley toads were emergency listed as an endangered species in April 2022. Primary threats include geothermal development, disease, predation by other non-native frog species, groundwater pumping for human and agricultural use and climate change. By USFWS Pacific Southwest Region from Sacramento, US – Dixie Valley toad in its wetland habitat., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120784750

To be clear, industry has killed endangered wildlife and migratory birds even under the stricter interpretation of “take.” But the prohibition on doing so, and the sometimes substantial fines that go along with it, incentivize industries to take measures to avoid incidental takes.

The new interpretation essentially gives industry carte blanche to harm or kill endangered species without accountability or recourse and reduces the ESA to no more than a ban on hunting certain species of wildlife. If this directive holds, the consequences will be dire.

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

President Donald Trump’s unlawful shrinkage of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments went into effect Sept. 11. That same day, two separate parties filed 16 new mining claims with the San Juan County recorder in the reopened areas (but they are not yet in the BLM’s records).

George W. Schultz filed three claims in the Lockhart Basin area, which is on the northern end of the pre-shrinkage monument below and north of Needles Overlook. And Kimmerle Mining staked 13 claims in the Cottonwood Creek drainage near the Cheese & Raisins Hills (they had previously filed seven claims in that same area).

Schultz owns and operates a Jeep tour outfit in Moab and is active in the off-road vehicle advocacy community. His father was a geologist who staked dozens of claimsin southeastern Utah, and the younger Schultz has also staked claims in the past, including several inactive ones in Lockhart Basin, near the new ones. While the area had a few prospects, it was not an especially active area for uranium mining historically.

The Kimmerle family and its various firms hold hundreds of mining claims across southern and eastern Utah, including several within Bears Ears National Monument. Kyle Kimmerle proposed mining unpatented claims within the monument, but did not go through the process of proving the claim’s validity that was a prerequisite for obtaining an operating permit. Kimmerle then joined Utah’s lawsuit seeking to block the Biden administration’s restoration of the monument’s original boundaries.

Kyle Kimmerle’s firm, Three Step Resources, was the underground contractor at Energy Fuels’ La Sal Complex uranium mine in 2024 and early 2025, when the federal Mine Safety & Health Administration issued 16 citations for violations related to radon concentration and radon monitoring requirements, worker training, personal protection equipment use, and explosive material storage. In late 2024 Kimmerle was appointed to the board of Urano Energy, now Manhattan Uranium, which holds claims in the Lisbon Valley and near the San Rafael Swell.

In 2024, Sassy Gold was set to acquire 345 uranium mining claims on 8,206 acres in La Sal Creek, the Lisbon Valley, the Uravan Mineral Belt, and on the San Rafael Swell from Kimmerle Mining and its associated firm, Three Step Partnership. But a few months later, Sassy retracted its offer, saying it “identified a number of material political, environmental and technical risks associated with the properties” that “fundamentally altered the value of the proposed transaction.”

Kimmerle’s new claims are in an area that was heavily mined historically.

Check out the Land Desk Mining Monitor Map.

Also, to get a better idea of where uranium has happened in the past, see the Land Desk’s Uranium Mining in the Four Corners Country Map.

📈 Dataviz of the Day 📊

The rains have finally arrived in the Four Corners, which is a big relief, but also has had tragic consequences: A flash flood on Wednesday swept three people to their deaths near Newcomb, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. A flash flood watchremains in effect in northern New Mexico today.

As one might expect, the rains bolstered streamflows significantly. Here are a couple of graphs for some of the biggest beneficiaries of the extra precipitation:

The 1911 Flood: Could it happen again? — Jonathan P. Thompson

Heavy rains cause localized damage, closure of Chimney Rock monument — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver

Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Clayton Chaney). Here’s an excerpt:

September 24, 2026

Pagosa Country has experienced both record-low river levels and flooding that caused closures over the last week, including the ongoing closure of Chimney Rock National Monument. The San Juan River in downtown Pagosa Springs hit a new record low flow on Thursday, Sept 10, falling below 12 cubic feet per second (cfs), before trending back up with this week’s rains. On Friday, Sept. 11, the Piedra River near Arboles set a new record low flow of 10.4 cfs. The previous record for that day was set in 2018 at 17.3 cfs. By Wednesday morning, the San Juan River was flowing above 60 cfs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and had an instantaneous reading over 55.1 cfs at 2 p.m. According to 90 water years of USGS records, the record low flow for Sept. 16 was set in 2018 at 12.9 cfs. The record high was recorded in 1970 at 1,190 cfs. The median cfs for that date is 85 cfs, and the mean is 144 cfs. As of 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the Piedra River was flowing at a rate of 25.2 cfs. According to 63 water years of USGS records, the record low for that date was set in 2018 at 11.2 cfs, and the record high was set in 1970 at 1,630 cfs. The mean flow for that date is 216 cfs, and the median flow is 123 cfs. Pagosa County experienced multiple rain events beginning on Monday, Sept. 14, with reports from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network in Archuleta County showing anywhere from just under an inch to more than 2 inches of rain received from Monday to Wednesday.

Colorado Drought Monitor map September 22, 2026.

The most recent drought map released by the U.S. Drought Monitor was published on Sept. 10, before the area’s most recent rain events, and shows just over 50 percent of Archuleta County being in a stage three, extreme drought. That was up from just over 22 percent of the county falling under extreme drought as of Sept. 1.

Giving a Dam. How #Colorado Is Making Beavers Welcome Across the State: #Beaver are having a moment — Frani Halperin (H2ORadio.org)

Colorado Parks and Wildlife recently released a Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy to help beaver coexist with human activity in the state. | Credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Click the link to read the article, and listen to the radio program, on the H2ORadio website (Frani Halperin):

September 20, 2026

Long hunted for their fur or extinguished as a nuisance, states like Colorado are promoting coexistence policies for the animals in recognition of their engineering abilities to move water where it’s needed most—especially in times of drought and increasing wildfires.

Honestly, I thought it was a prank. Running in my park in southeast Denver this summer, I saw several small cottonwood trees cut down along the creek. They had that distinctive hourglass-shaped stump that beavers make, but I live in an urban area, so clearly not felled by large aquatic rodents with buck teeth?

“So many people that live in Denver don’t even realize that beaver live in our creeks,” says Vikki Vargas-Madrid, the wildlife program manager for Denver Parks and Recreation.

Count me among those who did not know that anywhere there’s a creek, river, or stream along the Front Range of Colorado, (a term many people use to describe an urban corridor that stretches from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs and includes cities like Denver) you will find the animals.

Have water, will travel—but the beaver are not always welcome. Vargas-Madrid says her office gets calls every day from the public asking, for example, “why aren’t you protecting the trees in Bear Creek? The beaver are eating them all.” In the old days, Vargas-Madrid says, “the easy answer was, well, we’re just going to kill them all.”

But times have changed and management practices have evolved—something I was able to see firsthand. I met Vargas-Madrid at a creek called Sanderson Gulch that runs through a park in a residential area of southwest Denver. On a summer morning, we bushwhacked through some willows on the bank to get a closer look at a beaver dam with a large corrugated PVC pipe running through it that allows water to pass while maintaining the pond that the beaver created.

Denver Parks and Recreation wildlife & open space team install a pond leveler in a beaver dam at Sanderson Gulch that will allow water to pass. | Credit: Vicki Vargas- Madrid, wildlife program manager

Vargas-Madrid explains that the intent of installing the flow devices, which are made up of a pipe with cages to keep the structures in place, is to allow the beaver to remain. She says that beaver are important for ecological benefits, but some of the public don’t necessarily see that.

American beaver, he was happily sitting back and munching on something. and munching, and munching. By Steve from washington, dc, usa – American Beaver, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3963858

North American beaver (Castor canadensis), which are a “keystone species” in riparian communities, create wetlands that support aquatic vegetation that provide food for other wildlife, like the Swainson’s hawk that Vargas-Madrid spots overhead. She says her staff see more diversity in the birds, fish, and waterfowl that exist in the pools of water that the beaver create.

It’s not just the city of Denver that sees the value of beaver in the urban landscape. Kris Inman with Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), a division of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, says that urban areas are great places to see beaver doing what they do well.

Inman is the new beaver conservation program manager for the agency. Her job is to implement the new Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy released in March. The state wants to promote coexistence practices with beaver and she’s in luck, as beaver are having a moment. States, especially across the West but also around the country and even places internationally, are recognizing how the animals help protect ecosystems. Inman says that when beavers construct dams, they reconnect surface water to the pond that forms behind it with groundwater, and that enables the ground to act as a sponge. It can hold onto winter snowpack a little bit longer, and then slowly release it back into streams, providing us water when we—especially in the arid West—need it most.

Inman says there’s also been a lot of momentum to use beaver and their engineering prowess to help with wildfire prevention. Beaver efforts can be a natural way in which to store water longer, potentially having natural fuel breaks. She says the state can take advantage of this attribute by mimicking beaver dams and putting beaver dam “analogs” out in the field.

According to Inman, the hope is that beaver will adopt the human-constructed dams—the analogs—and maintain them, but that still doesn’t eliminate the potential conflicts with landowners, especially agriculture. Beaver “basically eat themselves out of house and home,” comments Inman, and then move on, adding that “they’re constantly doing forays and traveling up and down rivers and streams looking for new places to live.”

That new place could be someone’s private pond or fishery where beaver have moved in because water flows have become too low during droughts. Deep water is one of the primary protections beaver have against predators, but undoubtedly, it’s frustrating when dams disrupt water flows. Inman notes that a farmer might have a canal that’s blocked preventing water from going where it’s needed. Also, beaver activity could cause trails to flood or bridges to be washed out.

The Colorado beaver management plan includes strategies to relocate beaver, take out troublesome dams, paint trees with a sand-like texture to make them less tasty, install fencing around culverts—or add flow devices like the one at Sanderson Gulch.

Back at Sanderson Gulch in Denver near the beaver dam, a jogger along the adjacent path stops to talk to Vargas-Madrid and me. She says she sees the creatures early in the morning when she walks her dog. They’ll be on the side of the creek or occasionally in deeper water, and spotting them, she says, is “pretty cool.”

Her appreciation for having beaver in her local park was a sentiment expressed by other residents of the area when a project for the creek was being considered at a recent Denver City Council meeting. On September 14, 2026, the Denver City Council approved $20.6 million for improvements along Sanderson Gulch. As Denverite reports, among other improvements, the money will be used to deepen the creek. The city won’t remove the beaver but did acknowledge that the project will likely mean they will relocate. Gordon Robertson, of Denver Parks and Recreation said at the meeting that the goal was to widen the creek, and make it flatter to create more ecological benefits. Other work in city parks has disrupted beaver to leave temporarily, but, Robertson said, they will likely eventually return and this project will create more opportunity for them and hundreds of other species.

At the council meeting, beaver advocates from the local neighborhood organization voiced their concerns with some saying the project was not designed with beaver in mind. The group’s interest in coexisting with the animals and being eager to have beaver as their neighbor, makes the new state management plan’s objectives that much closer to being met.

A beaver dam on the Gunnison River. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

A landmark #Boulder climate case is heading to U. S. Supreme Court: What’s at stake? — Yvaine Ye (CU Boulder Today)

The Suncor refinery in Commerce City, Colorado. (Credit: Nico Goda/CU Boulder)

Click the link to read the article on the CU Boulder Today website (Yvaine Ye)

September 24, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a landmark lawsuit next month in which oil and gas companies argue that state courts cannot decide who pays for damages caused by climate change.

The court’s decision, expected before next summer, could set a precedent for dozens of similar climate accountability lawsuits around the country.

“This is a historic moment where our home is going to be presenting these issues to the United States Supreme Court,” said Chris Winter, an environmental attorney and executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at Colorado Law. “Here in Colorado, we are experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand. This is a case that’s happening in our backyard.”

On Oct. 5, the court will hear arguments on a petition filed by Exxon Mobil and Suncor, a Canadian oil giant. The city and county of Boulder are suing the companies, alleging that they knowingly concealed the environmental dangers of their activities, and that their actions contributed to a shifted climate that made wildfires, droughts and floods worse.

After the Colorado Supreme Court allowed Boulder to advance the case in the state legal system last year, Suncor and Exxon Mobil brought the case to federal court. The companies argue that climate change is a national and international issue, and federal law preempts, or overrides, state law on the issue.

“What the Supreme Court will decide is not whether the oil industry is ultimately responsible for climate change, or if they were deceptive in their marketing practices. Instead, they will decide whether state courts are properly equipped to play a role in deciding how we allocate the costs of responding to climate change,” Winter said.

The Boulder case is one of about three dozen lawsuits filed by state, local and tribal governments across the U.S. seeking to hold the oil and gas industry liable for climate change. None of them has progressed to trial yet.

The Supreme Court has previously declined to hear similar petitions. It took up the Boulder case as the administration doubled down on efforts to shut down other climate accountability lawsuits nationwide.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice preemptively sued the states of Michigan and Hawaii to prevent them from suing oil companies. Federal judges have dismissed both cases.

CU Boulder Today sat down with Winter to talk about the Boulder case and the ruling’s potential implications.

What does the petition by Exxon Mobil and Suncor argue?

The oil and gas companies argue that whether they’re responsible for climate change damage is an issue that should be decided by federal law or Congress, and that federal law pre-empts state authorities. The companies believe the federal Supreme Court can step in and basically kill the case before it’s able to go back to the state trial court.

Why does Exxon Mobil and Suncor want the case before the Supreme Court?

The core of their argument is that state law has been pre-empted by federal law, and they are therefore asking the Supreme Court of the United States to kill the case.

But the industry’s broader strategy is to avoid liability for causing climate change and to protect its financial interest in continuing to produce fossil fuels. Congress, our law-making body, hasn’t enacted a comprehensive climate change law. Thus, if federal law pre-empts state law, but Congress hasn’t implemented effective climate laws at the federal level, we could end up in a situation of not having any meaningful climate policy.

Could the Supreme Court establish a precedent for similar cases in the country?

Possibly. But there is another possibility. The oil industry is asking the Supreme Court to step into the case very early, before there’s been any trial or rulings on the merits by the state court. This is an unusual ask.

So, it’s possible that the Supreme Court may send the case back to the state courts and ask them to do more work before the federal courts can review it. In that case, we will be left without a clear answer on the question of preemption.

Have other climate lawsuits moved forward in other jurisdictions?

There has been extensive climate litigation in the United States and around the world, and some of those cases have moved forward.

For example, in the case of Held v. Montana, a group of young people successfully sued the State of Montana under the Montana Constitution for failing to protect their right to a clean and healthful environment. After an extensive trial on the merits, the trial court ruled in favor of the youth, which was upheld on appeal by the Montana Supreme Court in 2024.

There are also examples from other countries around the world. In, KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz, or the Senior Women for Climate Protection, an advocacy group in Switzerland, sued the Swiss government for insufficient action to curb climate change, leading to extreme weather that threatened their health. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland’s inaction violated human rights.

In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court won’t be looking to those other examples as precedent. The Boulder case involves allegations of fraud and deceptive business practices under state tort law, which is a unique legal theory.

What does Boulder hope to accomplish by progressing this case?

Local municipalities are spending a lot of public money to take care of their citizens, to protect infrastructure, and to protect local economies in the face of increased drought, fires, floods, and heatwaves. Boulder wants the oil industry, which profited from the marketing and sale of fossil fuels, to share in those costs.

Congress has failed to pass meaningful climate legislation at the federal level. Boulder’s case is critically important, because without action by the courts, the costs of climate change will be imposed on all of us, and the oil industry will not have a sufficient financial incentive to protect the climate.

To hold the oil companies accountable, Boulder hopes to get to a trial where the science of climate change and the evidence of the oil industry’s deceptive practices, can all be put before a jury. Then we can have a determination in a court of law on whether those activities are causing climate change and causing harms.

Beyond the preemption question, what is at stake in this case?

Climate change is hurting people in Colorado and across the country, and those effects are accelerating. Fundamentally, we’re trying to get an answer to this bigger question of who is going to pay for the enormous costs of adapting to climate change?

What Boulder is asking is that we need some monetary help from the oil industry to adapt to the effects of climate change, because the oil industry caused the problem, knew it was causing the problem, intentionally deceived consumers about it and then profited to the tune of trillions of dollars.

What are the broader implications of this case?

This case will potentially say something about the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court takes an aggressive stance in support of the oil industry, it will indicate something troubling about how the Supreme Court is thinking about its role in our constitutional system. The Supreme Court has long upheld the role of states to protect their citizens from wrongful corporate behavior. If the Supreme Court sacrifices this bedrock constitutional principle to serve the ends of the oil industry in this case, we should be very concerned about corporate influence over the rule of law.

Exxon’s private prediction of the future growth of carbon dioxide levels (left axis) and global temperature relative to 1982 (right axis). Elsewhere in its report, Exxon noted that the most widely accepted science at the time indicated that doubling carbon dioxide levels would cause a global warming of 3°C. Illustration: 1982 Exxon internal briefing document

Making sense of the crazy outlier year of 2026 — John Fleck (InkStain.net) #RioGrande

Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):

September 16, 2026

Updating my “drought and climate change” lecture each fall is a useful exercise – this year more useful than most. Much like the year itself, my slide deck is setting all time records for new data visualizations needed to make sense of the remarkable 2026.

Update

Great questions from the comments. (I love my commenters.) First, a request to include a smoother to make the trend more legible:

Second, an observation that it looks like it tracks the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large scale pattern linked to drier conditions in the southwest. Good eye! A quick run of the numbers based on prior-year fall PDO shows a statistically significant but small (r squared explaining 6 – 9 percent of the variance) relationship.

Worth noting that this is all of the water flowing past Otowi, which is a function of climate and all the many human activities upstream (irrigation reducing flow, San Juan-Chama adding to flow). So it’s not solely a climate signal.

Weirdly, when I redid the analysis for the Del Norte gage, which is above the San Luis Valley diversions and should be a clearer climate-alone signal, the relationship disappears. No correlation at all with PDO, which surprised me.

Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868

Hail is a multibillion-dollar problem — and could get worse: At a #Colorado cold lab, scientists race to better understand hail in a warming world — Hannah Covington (High Country News) #ClimateChange

*The rings in a cross-section sample of a large hailstone reveal the environmental conditions in which it formed.* ***Courtesy of ICECHIP***

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Hannah Covington):

September 24, 2026

At a specialized cold lab in Boulder, Colorado, where indoor temperatures hover around minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Celsius), atmospheric researcher Anthony Bernal Ayala slices hailstones with a band saw, revealing layers of icy growth like the rings of a tree. These frozen rings — clear or cloudy, thick or thin — indicate the conditions in which the hail formed: A clear layer signals the water froze slowly, while a cloudy layer means it happened quickly, trapping air bubbles. Bernal Ayala then analyzes the crystalline structures, particles and isotopes preserved in these layers. “All that information can tell you a wonderful story of how the hailstone was growing, but nobody — not until now — was able to tap into that history,” said Bernal Ayala, who works for Atmospheric and Environmental Research, part of the JANUS Research Group.

Bernal Ayala’s research, conducted at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is part of a historic effort to study one of the costliest weather hazards. Researchers hope their findings will help protect lives and property from the stones that careen to Earth, battering roofs, pummeling crops and pockmarking cars.

From 2023 to 2025, annual severe thunderstorm losses exceeded $50 billion nationwide, according to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety — more than double the losses seen just a decade earlier. Hail accounted for 60 to 80% of the damage.

In Colorado, one of the country’s most hail-prone states, hail — not wildfire — is the main factor driving up insurance premiums. And researchers expect larger, more damaging hailstones to become more common with climate change.

“It’s going to just keep getting costlier and costlier,” Bernal Ayala said.

Atmospheric researcher Anthony Bernal Ayala works in the cold lab at NCAR.
Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

EVEN BASIC QUESTIONS about hail have been notoriously hard to study. But a long-awaited resurgence in research, including the first major U.S. field campaign to study hail in more than 40 years, could help change that.

ICECHIP — the “In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail In the Plains” — aims to improve forecasts, make warnings more precise and help communities better prepare. It received $11 million in funding from the National Science Foundation in 2024, just before deep cuts hit the foundation in 2025.

For six weeks in spring 2025, about 100 scientists and university students chased hailstorms across the Central Plains and Front Range, from the Canadian to the Mexican border, using radar trucks to track storms and drones to take aerial footage. Researchers photographed hail with high-speed cameras, measured its impact with a tool called a disdrometer, recorded hail’s distribution and size based on its imprints on foam pads, captured it in specialized funnels and crushed it to test its strength.

Scientists from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology also used balloons to release golf ball-sized sensors into storms. Once aloft, each hail-like probe collected data on how fast it was traveling and whether ice was growing on it; a microphone even recorded water droplets and hailstones hitting it.

“This has really been the first time where we’ve been able to do a real comprehensive look at hail on the ground, hail aloft, the storm itself, the environment around the storm — just everything all at once,” said Becky Adams-Selin, ICECHIP’s lead investigator and a principal scientist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, JANUS Research Group.

A hail sample sits on a tripod to be photographed for 3D rendering (left). Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

Bernal Ayala holds a 3D-printed replica of one of the largest hailstones in the ICECHIP archive (right). Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

ICECHIP’S SAMPLES were packed into 26 cooler-sized boxes and brought to NCAR. This internationally renowned hub for weather and climate research has been used to study hail for decades. In one of its last major campaigns, in the 1970s, the U.S. investigated Soviet claims that it could suppress hail.

Researchers say there’s no other U.S. lab like it; the backup plan to store ICECHIP’s samples involved using a walk-in freezer from a fast-food restaurant.

Now NCAR’s own future is uncertain: In late 2025, the Trump administration said it would dissolve the center and transfer its work out of state. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages NCAR, sued the administration in March, alleging that it’s targeting NCAR to punish Colorado for retaining its mail-in voting system and because Gov. Jared Polis initially refused to release former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, a 2020 election denier imprisoned for breaching election security and undermining election integrity.

In June, a federal judge temporarily blocked the White House from dismantling NCAR. The government has until Sept. 30 to respond to the lawsuit.

“I can’t even quantify the impact that it would have to our community if we lost NCAR,” Victor Gensini, professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University, told HCN. “They are the beating heart.”

PREVIOUS RESEARCH HAS PREDICTED climate change’s effects on hail, noting that warmer temperatures could melt smaller hailstones before they land but also fuel stronger updrafts, keeping hailstones airborne longer and allowing them to grow bigger, enabling the most damaging hail to become more common.

A record-setting stone recovered in Yuma County, Colorado, in 2023 measured more than 5 inches across. That year, the state logged 176 reports of hail 2 inches or greater, surpassing the previous record of 91 reports in 2018, according to the Colorado Climate Center.

Scientists say it’s difficult to know how much of the rise in damage is due to the increase in large hail versus the increased development in hail hotspots. The connection between a rapidly growing human footprint and higher insured losses has been dubbed the “expanding bull’s-eye effect.”

Gensini, a principal ICECHIP investigator, cites the development boom east of the Front Range, along Colorado’s Interstate 25 corridor, which has grown explosively in recent decades. The population of the Fort Collins metro area alone has doubled since 1990 to around 375,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

This is happening across the Western U.S., as previously rural or open areas become densely populated, increasingly expensive targets for hail.

“Colorado is the poster child for what I expect the next 25 years to look like for hail,” Gensini said.

Photographs made in the 1970s by researchers Nancy Knight and Charles Knight at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) show the detailed crystalline structure of a hailstone. The Boulder, Colorado, lab has a new project underway to study hail, one of the costliest and least understood weather hazards currently facing the Western U.S. Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

IN 2019, FORT COLLINS became one of the first cities to adopt hail-specific roofing requirements for new builds and remodels. Marcus Coldiron, the city’s chief building official, said it was partly in response to all the shingles and roofing materials taken to the landfill after a catastrophic hailstorm in 2018.

It’s still unclear how well the requirements are working: Coldiron said fewer permits were being issued for roof replacements and fewer shingles were going to the dump. However, Fort Collins also hasn’t experienced a hailstorm as devastating as the one that hit in 2018.

A growing number of Front Range communities now require impact-resistant shingles in their building codes, and Colorado legislators recently passed a law offering grants to residents who install more resilient roofing.

ICECHIP’s researchers are also investigating how they can improve building materials as billion-dollar losses from single storms become more common.

“The dollars are simply piling up so fast,” said Ian Giammanco, a lead research meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, one of ICECHIP’s key partners. “We’re still trying to understand how do we get the best materials onto roofs, onto people’s homes, onto businesses to actually start shaving off these losses.”

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

This article appeared in the October 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Hail Alley meets climate change.”

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