🚨 🎬 Colorado River Conference recordings and photos are available. Find a picture of your favorite panelist, audience reaction or candid while mingling. https://t.co/T97wuaVMIY#gwccololaw #gwcwti2026 #ColoradoRiver #ColoradoRiverBasin #waterlaw #waterpolicy pic.twitter.com/PJa7bmQtJg
— Getches-Wilkinson Center @ColoLaw (@CUBoulderGWC) July 8, 2026
Northern Water Board Approves Changes to #Colorado-Big Thompson Project Tracking Rule Procedures #ColoradoRiver #SouthPlatteRiver
Click the link to read the release on the Northern Water website:
June 23, 2026
The Northern Water Board of Directors has unanimously approved a change to Colorado-Big Thompson Project accounting procedures concerning C-BT water tracking.
During a rule-making hearing at the June 11 Board meeting, Directors heard about the changes to the rules surrounding the tracking of water from the Project. The new accounting procedures will require accounting of tracking data to be provided in a manner to allow for the administration of C-BT Project water return flows, which will help Northern Water protect them as described in the District’s Repayment Contract with the Bureau of Reclamation, the Water Conservancy Act and contracts with allottees.
The modifications affect only domestic and municipal users, and Northern Water staff met or contacted 26 municipalities, water districts and treatment plants in the months before the rule change was approved.
The July 9, 2026 #ENSO Diagnostic Discussion is hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center #ElNiño
Click the link to read the article on the Climate Prediction Center website:
ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Advisory
Synopsis: El Niño continues and will strengthen through the end of the year, with a 97% chance it will persist through early spring 2027.
El Niño strengthened over the past month, with a large area of sea surface temperature anomalies in excess of +1.0C across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index value was +1.2°C, with the westernmost (Niño-4) and easternmost (Niño-1+2) indices at +0.5°C and +2.7°C, respectively. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100W) increased, as a recent downwelling Kelvin wave deepened the thermocline and raised temperatures in the eastern Pacific. Low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly wind anomalies were observed over the western and central equatorial Pacific. Convection was enhanced over the central and east-central equatorial Pacific and was 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 North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) average, including the NCEP CFSv2, forecasts El Niño to intensify through 2026. Alongside model forecasts, a strong coupling of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation across the Pacific contributes to very high confidence that El Niño will continue through early 2027. There is an 81% chance of a very strong El Niño during October-December that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950. Even the strongest El Niño events do not lead to the typical impact everywhere, but stronger events can more significantly tilt the odds in favor of expected outcomes (see CPC outlooks for probabilities of seasonal anomalies). In summary, El Niño continues and will strengthen through the end of the year, with a 97% chance it will last through early spring 2027.
Assessing the U.S. Temperature and Precipitation Analysis in June 2026 — NOAA
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website:
July 9, 2026
Key Takeaways:
- Widespread June Warmth: The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. (CONUS) in June ranked in the warmest third of the 132-year record, with much of the West, Southwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast observing above-average temperatures.
- Hot and Dry Year-to-Date: The West and Southwest climate regions experienced their warmest January–June period on record and received less than 70 percent of their average year-to-date precipitation.
- Midwest Severe Weather: According to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, there were 374 preliminary tornado reports during June, with historic activity across the Midwest. Illinois (91 reports), Indiana (69 reports) and Missouri (32 reports) each set new June records.
- Drought Footprint: Drought coverage across the CONUS fell below 50% in June, though drought persisted across much of the interior West and developed in Puerto Rico.
- Hawai’i Precipitation: Following its wettest June since 1997, Hawai’i’s year-to-date precipitation reached a record 54.6 inches—more than two feet above normal.
Other Highlights:
Temperature
The average temperature for the CONUS in June was 70.6°F, 2.2°F above the 20th-century average. Above- to much-above-average temperatures were observed across much of the West, Southwest, southern Plains, Florida, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Parts of the northern Rockies and Plains experienced below-average temperatures, while portions of the Midwest and Southeast were near average.
The Southwest climate region tied for its fifth-warmest June on record, averaging 4.9°F above the 20th-century average. Nine states ranked among their 10-warmest Junes on record, including Rhode Island and New Mexico, which each recorded their third-warmest June. Rhode Island also recorded its warmest June average maximum temperature on record, with daytime highs averaging 80.7°F—the first June since 1943 with an average high above 80°F.
Average daytime temperatures were near or below average across much of the South and Gulf Coast, while overnight temperatures were above average. Texas tied its warmest June average minimum temperature at 71.9°F, and neighboring New Mexico and Louisiana each recorded their second-warmest June minimum temperatures. In contrast, several states observed below-average daytime temperatures, including Alabama, where average maximum temperatures were 2.0°F below the 20th-century average.
Alaska’s average temperature was 50.5°F, 1.3°F above the 1925–2000 average, ranking in the warmest third of the 102-year record. Above-average temperatures were observed across southern portions of the Alaska mainland and the Panhandle.
Hawai’i’s average temperature was 68.0°F, 0.3°F above the 1991–2020 average, ranking in the middle third of the 36-year record.Precipitation
Total precipitation averaged across the CONUS in June was 3.23 inches, 0.31 inch above the 20th-century average, ranking in the wettest third of the 132-year record.
Above- to much-above-average precipitation was observed across portions of the far northern tier, central and southern Plains, South, Gulf Coast, Midwest and Great Lakes. Kansas, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky each ranked among their 10-wettest Junes on record. In contrast, below-average precipitation was observed across parts of the West, Northwest, central and southern Rockies, as well as much of the Florida Peninsula, Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic region.
June precipitation patterns reinforced some of the spatial contrasts observed during the first half of the year, with above-average precipitation across parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes and persistent below-average precipitation across much of the western CONUS and portions of the East Coast. Michigan recorded its wettest January–June on record, 6 inches above average, while Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado received only about half to two-thirds of their average precipitation. Meanwhile, nine East Coast states from South Carolina to Massachusetts ranked among their eight-driest January–June periods on record.
Alaska recorded 1.78 inches of precipitation in June, 0.56 inch below the 1925–2000 average, ranking in the driest third of the 102-year record. Below-average precipitation was observed across portions of the western and southern mainland, the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutians, and the Panhandle.
Hawai’i averaged 7.03 inches of precipitation in June, nearly double the 1991–2020 average of 3.60 inches—its second-wettest June on record. Year-to-date precipitation totaled 54.62 inches, 24.87 inches above average, marking the highest January–June total in the record (1991–present).
Drought
According to the June 30 U.S. Drought Monitor report, about 47.8% of the CONUS was in drought, a decrease of about 10.5% since the beginning of June. Drought persisted or intensified across much of the Northwest, Southwest, Great Basin and Rockies, as well as parts of the western Plains and the Mid-Atlantic from the Carolinas to the Northeast. Drought contracted or decreased in intensity across portions of the Plains, Midwest, lower Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, Southeast and far Northeast. Drought developed across portions of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Monthly Outlook
Above-average July temperatures are favored across the West, South and East, with the greatest likelihood over the Northwest, southern Plains and Southeast. Above-average July precipitation is favored in the Great Basin and parts of the Southwest and Northeast, while below-average precipitation is favored for parts of the Pacific Northwest and western Gulf Coast. Visit the Climate Prediction Center’s Official 30-Day Forecasts for more details.
Drought is expected to persist or expand across much of the Northwest and Rockies, as well as portions of the Plains, Mid-Atlantic and Puerto Rico, while drought improvement or removal is expected for parts of the Southwest and Southeast. Visit the U.S. Monthly Drought Outlook website for more details.
Significant wildland fire potential for July is above normal across much of the Northwest, Great Basin and southern Rockies, as well as parts of the southern Plains, Carolinas, Florida Peninsula and Puerto Rico. For additional information on wildland fire potential, visit the National Interagency Fire Center’s One-Month Wildland Fire Outlook.
Dry fire weather continues, but experts say moisture-laden #monsoon convection may arrive later this month — Shannon Mullane (Fresh Water News)
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):
July 8, 2026
Coloradans can expect some rain this week before high temperatures return over the weekend. After that, experts have high hopes for monsoons to swing into Colorado from the southwest this month — though when exactly that will happen is still up for debate.
Large fires have ignited across the state, killing three firefighters, destroying homes, causing evacuations, and prompting air quality concerns around Colorado. National Weather Service meteorologists were tracking storms this week that dropped moisture on the Western Slope before raising the chance of rain for the Front Range and Eastern Plains. It’s not quite the start of the monsoon season, they said, but the moisture and humidity are offering a short reprieve from the hot, dry and windy conditions that contribute to rapid fire growth.
By this weekend, forecasters are warning of critical fire conditions once again, urging residents and visitors to carefully put out cigarettes, avoid dragging chains from their vehicles and keep a close eye on campfires (where they’re allowed).
“Just do the things to keep everybody safe,” Cameron Simcoe with the National Weather Service in Pueblo said. “Don’t start a wildfire.”
The benefits of this week’s showers in parts of Colorado are likely to dry up over the weekend as a summer heatwave brings triple-digit temperatures to parts of the state. After that, some relief may come this month in the form of monsoonal rains, a weather pattern that brings moisture from the southwest into Colorado. These rains typically arrive in mid-July.
Come fall and winter, Colorado may be able to expect more moisture from a strong El Niño swinging up from the Pacific Ocean. In mid-June, there was a 70% chance that the El Niño would become a “super El Niño,” a rare, strong pattern that impacts weather worldwide, according to climate experts.
“That there will be El Niño by this fall is pretty much guaranteed at this point,” state climatologist Russ Schumacher said. “The chances are better than not that it’ll be pretty strong.”
The Aspen Acres wildfire area is not expected to see critical fire conditions over the next few days, although that could change over the weekend into early next week, he said.
Looking ahead for the north and north-central region
In Boulder, Paul Schlatter, a meteorologist for the NWS Boulder office, does not expect critical fire conditions over the next few days for the north and north-central regions of Colorado, but that will change by Sunday.
“We’re hoping that nobody causes any sparks, especially on Sunday and beyond,” he said.
He is tracking chances for afternoon thunderstorms Wednesday through Friday. By Sunday, temperatures could reach the upper 90s while humidity is expected to hover between 10% and 15%. Wind speeds are likely to be 20 to 25 mph, slightly below the threshold for critical fire conditions. East of Denver, temperatures could reach close to 100 degrees with gusts over 25 mph Monday and Tuesday, Schlatter said.
Coloradans should find ways to stay cool — whether that’s shade, open windows or air-conditioning indoors, he said. Don’t leave pets or children in vehicles, which will reach high temperatures quickly in the summer heatwave.
Even with this week’s storms, fuels are primed to burn because of the drought, he said.
About 93% of the state was experiencing drought as of June 30, and 9% was in exceptional drought, the worst of four categories used by the U.S. Drought Monitor. This time last year, about 44% of the state was in drought and no areas were in exceptional drought, according to the Drought Monitor.
“Just the way things have been going around here, it doesn’t take a lot of wind. Because the fuels are so dry, because of the drought, any fire will quickly get going on a day like that,” Schlatter said.
The monsoon is coming — eventually
Colorado’s dry conditions are driven, in large part, by a record-poor snowpack in Colorado’s mountains this winter.
Colorado’s reservoir storage was 64% of the norm as of Tuesday, according to federal data. Its waterways were already struggling by June — typically the driest part of the summer. As of July, some of the major rivers, like the Colorado River which runs through the Western Slope toward Utah, are very likely to have record low flows in total for this water year, which started Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, Schumacher said.
The Colorado River, and major tributaries like the Eagle and White rivers, are at or near their record lows for the water year up to this point. For the Gunnison River, only two years have been worse than this year so far out of 100 years of data, he said.
“It’s not surprising to see the flows come down,” Schumacher said. “But they’re coming down from very low peaks and low water levels.”
That makes it hard for prized native, sport and threatened fish to swim through warmer-than-usual waters or make it through shallow areas as they search for refuge in deeper pools. Less water in rivers and streams means less water entering reservoirs and adding moisture to fields that grow food for Colorado and beyond. Some fire officials have worried about strained supplies to fight fires.
With a wet monsoon season, Colorado’s rivers and streams might escape reaching new record lows, Schumacher said.
The forecasts are showing a likelihood that Colorado will receive monsoon rains, which don’t always come to the state in the summer. When they will arrive this year is less certain. They might start within a week or two, on the optimistic side, experts said.
These southwestern storm patterns come with the promise of more humidity in the air, more afternoon clouds and regular chances for rain. How much rain actually falls is unpredictable, but the higher humidity levels should help mitigate fire risk, Schumacher said.
“It’s the days when it’s warm, no humidity, no clouds — those are the days where it’s ripe for fires to grow quickly,” Schumacher said. “When there are chances for rain and it’s cloudy, that all helps. It may not solve the situation, but at least, it moves things in the right direction.”
Forget Western Water War: Local Managers Choose Partnership; Collaboration keeps water flowing — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton):
July 7, 2026
The Colorado River, from one viewpoint, is a mess.
The iconic waterway, fundamental to the region’s modern existence – its desert metropolises, its high-tech industries, its agriculture, and its recreation economy – is on the verge of crashing. A two-decade drying trend, aided by carbon pollution in the atmosphere and water use that exceeds supply have nearly drained the basin’s liquid savings accounts.
Nature is now threatening to overwhelm human interventions. Lake Powell is 28 percent of its capacity. Lake Mead, just 24 percent. Climate pressures abound in these hot, dry times. A March heat dome obliterated temperature records. Snowpack was the worst on record. At least five fires larger than 25,000 acres are currently burning in the parched basin.
The basin’s seven states, unable to find consensus on how to live with a shrinking supply, are deadlocked after four years of attempting to negotiate the river’s management rules. State and federal authorities are deciding how much less Colorado River water will be available, anticipating that the reductions will hurt. Knowing that water enables economic growth, they don’t want to be viewed as selling out their constituents.
Look closer, however, and the narrative of warring factions fades a bit. At the local level, water managers are collaborating to ensure residents and businesses have adequate water supplies. They are signing multiparty deals and pursuing joint projects to share resources and keep water flowing to homes and businesses. Such dealmaking is not a remedy to all that ails the basin. But it is viewed as essential in a time of deep climate uncertainty and anxiety.
In June, six water suppliers in Arizona, California, and Nevada signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency, to facilitate interstate exchanges of desalinated and recycled water for Colorado River water. The exchanges, taking advantage of spare treatment capacity on the California coast, would introduce new water into a depleting basin.
Earlier this spring, Phoenix, Tucson, and other Arizona water users announced a venture to create an emergency reserve of water for cities facing shortages and to simplify voluntary water transfers in the state – “an easy button” to move water to where it is needed, said Max Wilson, Phoenix’s water resources management adviser.
On Colorado’s Western Slope, home to the river’s headwaters, irrigation districts are taking less water this summer than they are permitted in order to share with towns that would have faced supply cuts.
And in New Mexico, Santa Fe’s water utility is in early talks with neighboring pueblos about joint infrastructure for storing water underground, recycling water, and sharing water between systems in case wildfire pollutes a water source and renders it unusable.
“Cities have the ultimate responsibility to make sure there’s tap water,” said Kathryn Sorensen of Arizona State University and the former director of the Phoenix water utility. “And that means they have to be constantly vigilant and constantly innovate and constantly find new arrangements and new supplies.”
These arrangements, while not a new development, have taken on greater significance as the American West struggles through record heat and aridity this year that is an indicator of worsening water supply challenges in the drying region. Based on a decades-long track record, these arrangements also illustrate that neighbors helping neighbors can be a cost-effective form of climate adaptation.
“It makes sense to me that this happens at the local level because that’s where the risk is,” Sorensen said. She cited the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, as another example. CAP delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson and other customers in the state’s populous midsection.
“The risk to the CAP of there not being water in the canal is that the CAP doesn’t deliver water to its contractors and subcontractors,” she said. In other words, a contractual failure.
But for the cities who hold those contracts? A failure to deliver water would hasten a public health and economic crisis. “The risk to a city is there’s no tap water,” Sorensen said. “And that’s just a totally different level of risk. So you see these types of innovations happen at the level where the risk exists.”
Collective Action
Partnerships do not happen spontaneously. They are the product of months and years of discussion, negotiation, and relationship building.
“The biggest challenge is communication, understanding the needs of your partners and clearly their sensitivities,” said Bill Schneider, the Santa Fe water resources manager.
Schneider is part of discussions with four pueblos in the Santa Fe area on joint water infrastructure projects, including water recycling and underground storage.
One clear possibility is that Santa Fe could connect its water system to the Pojoaque Regional Water System, which will serve Pojoaque, Nambé, San Ildefonso, and Tesuque pueblos with Rio Grande water.
Connecting neighboring systems is a form of insurance, Schneider explained. Wildfires are a perpetual risk in the watersheds of northern New Mexico. If a severe wildfire sends ash and debris into the Rio Grande, the polluted water could force water systems to shut off their river intakes. It has happened before on the Rio Grande. The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority had to close its intake for two months in 2011 after the Las Conchas fire. With an interconnected system, water could be delivered to the pueblos from Santa Fe’s other sources, which include the Santa Fe River and groundwater.
Due to the high cost of building infrastructure, system interties and similar partnerships make financial sense, Schneider said. “It means you don’t have to go out and build an entirely new system.”
These infrastructure arrangements already exist in many places, but especially in Arizona. Nevada, for instance, has banked part of its Colorado River allocation underground in Arizona for more than two decades.
A decade ago, when Sorensen was the director of Phoenix Water Services, Phoenix and Tucson signed a trailblazing water deal. It allowed Phoenix to bank some of its Colorado River water underground in Tucson. When the water is needed, Tucson will be able to pump the groundwater and, in exchange, Phoenix will take some of Tucson’s share of Colorado River water. The deal, which has not yet had to be exercised, makes the most efficient use of the water treatment capabilities and infrastructure in the two cities.
That agreement, Sorensen said, paved the way for other exchange partnerships in central Arizona. Mesa, in a project completed this year, provides treated wastewater to the Gila River Indian Community in exchange for 8,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water. (An acre-foot – 326,000 gallons – can supply about 3.5 households in urban Arizona for a year.)
In Sorensen’s view, dealmaking is fundamental for utility leaders.
“They’re good horse traders, right?” she said. “That’s part of the job. ‘How can we make a win-win exchange or trade here that makes everyone happy and maximizes the resource?’ The water managers are really good at that.”
The latest iteration is the Secure Water Arizona Program, or SWAP, that Phoenix and Tucson are developing with other central Arizona cities.
Details are still being finalized, but the program will have three components. One is an emergency reserve of water that cities can tap as a last resort. A second piece is facilitating water exchanges between willing sellers and willing buyers. The third element is what Wilson calls “the sandbox” – a forum for collaboration on the next generation of central Arizona water projects.
The idea, said Max Wilson, the Phoenix water adviser, is a form of mutual aid. “At its core, the assumption of the SWAP is that water users shouldn’t be letting other water users go dry.”
Even with the benefits, Wilson acknowledged that collaboration needs to be carefully calibrated.
“People don’t want to see water being forcibly reallocated, for sure,” he said. “People don’t want to see their water going to uses that they necessarily wouldn’t see as beneficial. But when people have legitimate needs, I’ve been really impressed by how the water user community has come together and been willing to say, ‘Let’s talk and let’s figure out what a potentially mutually beneficial solution to those needs could be.’”
Trial vignette: How much water does the unconfined aquifer store? — Chris Lopez (AlamosaCitizen.com) #SanLuisValley #RioGrande
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Chris Lopez):
July 8, 2026
Attorney: ‘In order to evaluate the current state of the aquifer in context, you would need to know how much the aquifer holds, wouldn’t you?’
Engineer: ‘I don’t believe so’
How much water is in the storage area of the unconfined aquifer? That was a question SWAG attorney Brad Grasmick posed to state Division 3 Water Engineer Craig Cotten and left the Alamosa water court hanging on at the conclusion of Wednesday’s day in water court.
Grasmick represents the Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, farmers who operate in the subdistrict and have banded together to oppose the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management which is the matter before Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales.
In his first full day of cross examining Cotten, Grasmick covered a variety of territory from surface water credits to the one-to-one pumping feature of the new plan to Cotten’s responsibility to administer the plan. At times he got so deep into the proverbial weeds in grilling Cotten that Gonzales spoke of his own frustration in trying to follow along.
“You’re losing me on focus,” Gonzales told Grasmick as he called for a lunch break.
The question Grasmick posed at the end of his nearly six hours of cross examination offered a unique exchange. Grasmick started by saying he hasn’t seen a figure on how much water the unconfined storage area can hold. It’s been well-established in the testimony of Cotten and HRS hydrologist Matt Seitz that the unconfined aquifer functions as an underground reservoir and was built up initially through early subirrigation practices and then canal diversions.
Storage readings of the unconfined aquifer that go back to 1976 show it responsive to strong spring runoff seasons but now transitioning through the process of aridification to the San Luis Valley floor as it adapts to 25 years of drought and the lack of consistent snow melt.
“Nor have I seen how much water is presently in storage in the unconfined aquifer. Do you agree with that?” Grasmick asked.
Cotten: “Well, we have the Davis Engineering service change in storage, so we know the change in storage from 1976. The total amount of water in storage at the present time, I’m not aware of that number.”
Grasmick: “OK. In order to evaluate the current state of the aquifer in context, you would need to know how much the aquifer holds, wouldn’t you?”
Cotten: “I don’t believe so.”
Grasmick: “Well, and you would also need to know how much is in the aquifer in order to evaluate this decline in context, correct?”
Cotten: “No, I don’t believe so.”
Grasmick: “Well, as an example, if there was a one million acre-foot decline in storage, that’s very different if the reservoir holds one and a half million acre-feet than if it holds say four million acre-feet, isn’t it?”
Cotten: “There again, I don’t believe so if you’re shooting for an actual storage amount, change in storage amount as your goal.”
In the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management under consideration, Subdistrict 1 is charged with recovering the unconfined aquifer to a “sustainable” level of negative-200,000 to negative-400,000 acre-feet of water storage.
Grasmick continued his questioning: “So you disagree that contextual analysis of data is necessary to ensure that it’s not misinterpreted?”
Cotten: “I don’t agree that we need to know the total storage or the actual storage right now in developing this plan.”
The exchange continued for about another three minutes before Grasmick began to shift to another subject and Gonzales intervened.
“I apologize. I think it’s been a long day, so I think it’s probably a good place to stop,” the judge said.
The water trial on the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management resumes Thursday [July 9. 2026].
The June 2026 Colorado Monthly Climate Summary is hot off the presses from the #Colorado #Climate Center
Fishing for DNA – how a cup of river water can reveal secrets about human health, pollution and biodiversity
Jenny Whilde, University of Florida
The DNA in a single cup of water can track wildlife, monitor pollution and survey pathogens in waterways and their surroundings, all at the same time.
DNA is contained in each cell of every plant, animal, fungus and microbe. It carries the genetic instructions needed for an organism’s survival, growth and function, and the DNA of each species is unique.
Organisms shed DNA into their environments. This environmental DNA, or eDNA, can come from cells shed from skin, spores and pollen blowing on the wind, or even just a cough or sneeze. It can provide huge amounts of information. Researchers can use it to assess biodiversity, monitor the spread of invasive species and detect pathogens.
Traditional monitoring methods, such as field observation or trapping, can be difficult, intrusive and time-consuming. Tracking an elusive species in the wild can mean hours or days without a sighting, perhaps in difficult terrain or remote locations. Trapping wildlife can be stressful for the animals and relies on expert knowledge to properly handle wildlife and position traps.
With eDNA, researchers can collect information about a species without ever needing to see or interact with it. Moreover, a cup of water, a few ounces of sand or even air sucked through a filter can hold enough information to determine what has been in the area, including people, wildlife and infectious pathogens.
Cracking the DNA code
Researchers sequence DNA fragments collected from sand, water or air to decode the order of the chemical building blocks that make up DNA. These sequences can be used to not only identify the species that the fragments of DNA came from, but also to narrow down the area where the organism originated.
Until recently, researchers typically used an approach called metabarcoding to sequence eDNA. This method creates many copies of specific, short genetic markers that researchers can use to identify particular species.
Although powerful, metabarcoding is selective by design. It finds only what it is designed to find – typically small but informative regions of DNA called barcodes – and ignores everything else. Because the DNA fragments are so short, it’s difficult to link these bits of information. A single barcode cannot cover all species in an area, and it cannot provide information about the genetic traits of species in the area. https://www.youtube.com/embed/bdwU_ZPk1cY?wmode=transparent&start=0 Genetic information is everywhere, if you have the tools to sequence it.
My team at the Duffy Lab at the University of Florida took a different approach. Rather than focusing on one short region of DNA in a sample, we used a technique researchers call long-read shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing, which reads each fragment of DNA in long, continuous sections. All the DNA and traits in one long fragment clearly come from the same individual. As a result, we can sequence all of the DNA from every species, from viruses to vertebrates and everything in between.
Compared to metabarcoding, shotgun sequencing is faster and requires less lab manipulation and processing. The “shotgun” portion of the name refers to how the DNA is fragmented, read in short stretches and then reassembled. This random, explosive fragmentation resembles the firing of a shotgun.
By comparing the results of shotgun DNA sequencing to large reference genome databases, researchers can figure out which species the DNA came from. This process provides an all-in-one DNA readout of everything in a single sample.
Rather than identifying the presence of particular target species, like the barcoding technique, shotgun sequencing is a broad snapshot of the ecological communities in a specific area. In a single assessment, researchers can detect microbes, fungi, plants and animals in as little as 24 hours.
River rich in species
To test our new method, my team and I collected water samples from the Avoca River in Ireland, starting from near its source in the Wicklow Mountains all the way down to where it enters the Irish Sea in Arklow town. We also collected sand samples from beaches near the river mouth.
These samples revealed a wealth of genetic information drifting through the river system.
The DNA we filtered from the water samples came from many organisms living in or near the water, including otters and oysters, foxes and fish, badgers and bacteria. Some of the species we detected were common and easily visible along the river (cows, sheep, dogs and humans), while some were more difficult to see (leatherback turtles and octopi). Some required a magnifying glass (biting midges, microscopic worms and viruses).
Researchers can also use environmental DNA to evaluate whether biodiversity restoration is working as expected. From our samples of the Avoca River, we detected DNA from organisms with major economic and ecological consequences: a fungus called Leptosphaeria maculans that affects crops and a fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis that has caused catastrophic declines in frog populations around the world. This is the first time researchers have detected B. dendrobatidis in Ireland.
Not only can eDNA show which species are present, it can also reveal their origins and help researchers understand how they migrate and disperse. For example, the blue mussel eDNA we recovered near the mouth of the Avoca River most closely matches the DNA of mussels found off the coast of Wales (84%) and France (16%).
Pollution mitigation
Human impact on the river was clearly reflected in the eDNA we collected.
The samples we collected upstream in a sparsely populated area had very little human DNA. By contrast, the samples we took near the town of Arklow in 2022 contained high levels of human DNA, consistent with untreated wastewater entering the river at that time.
Additionally, we found DNA from human-associated pathogens in river water and beach sand. These included bacteria such as streptococcus, parasites such as entamoeba, and sexually transmitted pathogens such as chlamydia, herpes and gonorrhea.
When we returned to collect samples in 2024, the human DNA signal had practically disappeared. This coincided with the construction of pipework leading to the new Arklow Wastewater Treatment Plant, diverting human waste from the river.
The ability to identify wildlife, human activity and pathogens all from one water sample highlights the potential for a wide-ranging One Health approach to environmental health surveillance. In principle, it is possible to use eDNA to simultaneously identify pollution sources and emerging pathogens, track invasive species and monitor environmental reservoirs of disease, nearly in real time.
All of nature in a nutshell
Environmental DNA offers a new form of ecosystem monitoring. Rather than carrying out environmental surveillance through the separate lenses of zoology, botany, microbiology and epidemiology, eDNA acts as a continuous genomic observatory.
This “all-in-one” approach to ecosystem monitoring is becoming ever easier as DNA sequencing costs continue to fall, technology advances allow longer DNA fragments to be sequenced, and computational power improves.
A single cup of water can unlock the incredible secrets flowing beneath the surface of the river. Biodiversity in and around the water, the effects of pollution and recovery, and the beautiful complexities of entire ecosystems are just waiting to be revealed.
Jenny Whilde, Adjunct Research Scientist in Marine Bioscience, University of Florida
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Article: Urban water affordability crisis exacerbated by #ClimateChange — Jennifer Skerker, Christian Klassert, Baptiste Francois, Aniket Verma, Casey Brown & Sarah Fletcher (Nature.com)
Click the link to read the article on the Nature Sustainability website (Jennifer Skerker, Christian Klassert, Baptiste Francois, Aniket Verma, Casey Brown & Sarah Fletcher). Here’s the abstract:
July 8, 2026
Climate change intensifies water stress globally, necessitating expensive infrastructure interventions to maintain reliable supply. To fund infrastructure, utilities often raise rates, increasing water bills for low-income households. The resulting affordability impacts depend on utility costs and interactions between rate design, financing, climate and household demands. Here we develop a city-scale modelling framework to estimate climate change impacts on water affordability, integrating climate, utility adaptation decisions and demand. In Santa Cruz, California, we find that climate change alone could double water bills by mid-century, leaving an additional 7–16% of Santa Cruz households with unaffordable water. Our results suggest that climate change may lead to greater water affordability challenges than previously estimated in hotspots where supply is vulnerable to climate change. This highlights the need for policy intervention and financing to ensure climate adaptation does not compromise affordability. The magnitude of climate-related affordability challenges depends on local context, requiring city-scale assessments.
Pitkin County commissioners voice initial approval for another water buy: River advisory board recommends against spending $442,500 — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org)
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
July 8, 2026
Against the recommendation of an advisory board, Pitkin County commissioners on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to buy more water to boost flows in the often-depleted Roaring Fork River.
Commissioners approved on first reading a resolution and ordinance to spend $442,500 to buy 4.68 shares from the Twin Lakes Reservoir & Canal Co., which is about 3.5 acre-feet of water, according to a staff memo. The deal is in addition to the $6.5 million Pitkin County already agreed to spend earlier this year for about 71 acre-feet from Twin Lakes and another ditch company.
The water is currently taken across the Continental Divide to the Arkansas River basin to be used by entities on the Front Range. The deal would allow the water to be released out of Grizzly Reservoir to Lincoln Creek and could help boost the Roaring Fork through Aspen and upstream, which suffers from low flows in dry years.
“I think it’s really critical that we purchase water rights when we can, and this is an opportunity that we can, and we should,” District 1 Commissioner Patti Clapper said.
Pitkin County has long had a goal of increasing the amount of water in the Roaring Fork, a river that has about 40% of its headwaters diverted to the eastern side of the state through the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System to be used by Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Aurora. These diversions can often contribute to the depletion of the Roaring Fork through Aspen, and purchasing Twin Lakes water represents a rare opportunity to return water to the Western Slope.
Commissioner Greg Poschman said he supports acquiring the water shares.
“I think it’s great that we are doing this,” he said. “I know it’s expensive; there are some raised eyebrows about that, but I think this is something we have to do.”
Poschman added that he was concerned that the Healthy Rivers board members recommended against buying more water and said he would like to fully understand their reasons. County staff said they were trying to schedule a joint meeting with the Board of County Commissioners and the Healthy Rivers board in August.
Members of the county’s Healthy Rivers board, which advises the BOCC, are concerned that the water will have a small impact on river health but a big impact on the program’s budget. The board held a special meeting June 25 to consider acquiring the shares and approved a motion saying the water yield would potentially be only 1 additional cubic feet per second for two days.
“Additionally, the deleterious effects of the purchase price on the long-term fund balance of the Healthy Rivers Fund will reduce the Healthy Rivers Program’s ability to support programs to address other ballot measure mandates, including water quality, ecological health, recreation opportunities, wildlife and riparian habitat, and promoting water conservation,” the motion reads.
The motion goes on to say that in the future, the county should implement a framework for evaluating the true value of water shares to the Roaring Fork.
At Wednesday’s meeting, County Budget Director Connie Baker told the BOCC that the Healthy Rivers board will have to trim or reallocate about $500,000 from next year’s budget to account for the combined impact of this year’s two water purchases.
Healthy Rivers board member Ned Andrews said he is against the purchase, citing the impact that it will have on the program’s budget.
“None of the analysis or details that would justify such a purchase or a strategy going forward has been done,” Andrews told Aspen Journalism. “I think before you commit essentially a quarter of your budget for the next 15 years, you’d want to have an analysis that shows you what could be accomplished. My gut feeling is that it wouldn’t really accomplish much.”
Andrews also opposed the earlier, larger water share purchase, although the rest of the Healthy Rivers board was supportive.
At their regular June meeting, Healthy Rivers board members went through the budget line by line and considered where they could trim, although those cuts have not yet been finalized.
Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers Program is funded by a .1% countywide sales tax, and its mission is to improve the water quality and quantity of the local watershed. The program has funded projects such as beaver inventories, investigating water quality on Lincoln Creek, upgrades to diversion infrastructure and ditches, and an effort at a Wild and Scenic designation on the Crystal River.
Spending big bucks in an effort to rescue rivers is not new for Pitkin County, which has spent at least $3.5 million on the Roaring Fork River Park in Basalt, including a water court battle to secure the water right for recreation, several redesigns of problematic waves, and improvements to the riverbank and boat launch.
Bond for original purchase approved
The BOCC at Wednesday’s meeting also approved issuing a bond for the original purchase of Twin Lakes shares. That deal cost the county $6.5 million, although only 45 of those acre-feet represent Western Slope water that is currently diverted to the Front Range. The county plans to sell or trade the other 26 acre-feet, which is owned by the Fountain Mutual Ditch Co. in El Paso County and decreed for use on the east side of the divide.
The 45 acre-feet of water can be released down the Roaring Fork during the irrigation season when flows are low, and it must be used by a downstream water user on the Colorado River before the town of DeBeque. Instream flow for the benefit of the environment is not a decreed use of the water.
This year, according to Colorado Water Resources Division 5 Engineer Tyler Benton, at least some of Pitkin County’s Twin Lakes water was released as part of the Colorado River Water Conservation District’s emergency substitute water supply plan, which the district enacted in response to this year’s historic drought. Benton said he expects the River District to provide a full accounting of how much Pitkin County water has been released Friday.
Grizzly Reservoir is currently drained for dam maintenance, which may have affected how much water could be released under the River District’s plan.
At a time when drought impacts are being acutely felt across the state and climate change continues to rob rivers of their flows, for some, the unique opportunity to put water back into a depleted stream is worth the cost.
“This is expensive water, but it’s the only water you can get up at the headwaters of the Roaring Fork,” said Pitkin County Deputy Attorney Anne Marie McPhee. “So that scarcity makes it more valuable.”
The issue is scheduled for a public hearing and second reading July 22.
Havasupai Tribe slams #Arizona regulators over uranium mine arsenic easing: Plus, Wildfires keep on burning, and the weather isn’t helping — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)
Clink the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
July 7, 2026
🔥 Wildfire Lookout 🔥
The fire situation in the Four Corners area is not improving. The weather remains hot, dry, and windy, and this week’s forecast calls for more of the same. Next week may even be hotter, if longer-range models hold. Meanwhile, air quality has deteriorated in some places that previously seemed to avoid the worst of the smoke. The good news is that the Fourth of July weekend came and went without any new major fire starts in the region.
So far this year some 37,209 fires have burned through about 3.3 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s the second highest acreage for the first half of the year in the last decade.
Here’s a rundown of some of the Four Corners area fires. By no means is this a complete list.
- The Babylon Fire, burning in the higher elevation parts of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, had grown to over 96,000 acres by Monday night, making it the nation’s largest active blaze (the Cottonwood Fire in the western part of the state has gone through about the same amount of acreage, according to Watch Duty). The two are also tied for the fourth largest fires in the state’s recorded history. The Babylon Fire is at 0% containment, with the most active area moving up the west slope of the Abajo Mountains, between Shay Mountain and Mount Linnaeus. Air tankers are pulling water from Lake Powell, and officials are asking boaters to avoid the area between Dangling Rope and Rainbow Bridge.
Closed public lands include: The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Manti-La Sal National Forest lands within the Monticello Ranger District, and BLM lands in the Indian Creek Corridor, Beef Basin, Dark Canyon, and the Sweet Alice Wilderness Study Area. Still Open: Natural Bridges National Monument, Cedar Mesa, Grand Gulch, and other lower elevation areas in the southern reaches of Bears Ears National Monument.
- The Ferris Fire along the Dolores-Montezuma County line in southwestern Colorado initially burned in a northeasterly direction toward the Disappointment Valley. Then the winds shifted and the most active front of the fire curved back to the northwest, crossing the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River, and is within about 12 miles of the town of Dove Creek. As of Monday night the fire was at 51,622 acres and 22% containment.
- The Gold Mountain Fire north of Ouray, Colorado, has burned across almost 29,300 acres of San Juan Mountain high country and was 2% contained as of Monday night. Firefighters on Monday conducted strategic backfiring operationseast of Ridgway to provide more protection for structures in that area. There is a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, which could bring dry lightning along with gusty and erratic winds, with high temperatures reaching the high 80s and low 90s.
- The Pocket Fire north of Sedona, Arizona, has reached 26,442 acres and was at 48% containment as of Monday night. Forecasters are predicting more hot and dry weather today, with the mercury topping out around 100° F and sub-20% relative humidity.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
On July 6, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality approved Energy Fuels’ request to amend its aquifer quality permit for a groundwater monitoring well at its Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon. The change raises the allowable concentration of arsenic from .050 milligrams per liter to .055 milligrams per liter and the associated alert level from .040 to .050 mg/l.
The Havasupai Tribe strongly condemned the change in a written statement, calling the approval a “profound attack on the Tribe’s inherent responsibility to guard and protect the waters of the Grand Canyon.”
Energy Fuels asked for the revision — and ADEQ granted it — after finding that construction of the mine’s shaft had created a hydraulic sink that allowed naturally occurring arsenic — a known toxic substance — to move toward the facility’s perimeter wells, putting them in violation of their permit.
So, regulators simply altered the permit’s limits and, according to the tribal nation’s statement, “chosen to weaken environmental protections instead of strengthening them.”
Dr. Bradley K. Esser, a retired Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientist, submitted technical comments on the proposed revision last year. He cast doubt on Energy Fuels’ hydraulic sink explanation, and demonstrated that the arsenic concentrations detected in the monitoring wells are far higher than regional natural background levels. He posited that it was far more likely the elevated arsenic concentrations came from sump water from the mine’s workings contaminating the groundwater.
Esser also writes:
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Monsoon season officially kicked off in the Southwest in the middle of last month, but it has yet to bring significant amounts of moisture. Earlier forecasts predicting higher than average precipitation beginning later this month are still in place for some parts of the West, but they likely will be accompanied by above-normal temperatures just about everywhere.
‘As you might expect, the hot, dry weather is taking a toll on streams around the region. The Animas River through Durango is running at 190 cubic feet per-second; the median flow for this date is over 1,000 cfs.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
#Drought news July 9, 2026: Conditions worsened in parts of central and southwest #Colorado, where multiple large wildfires were occurring in areas of low soil moisture and large precipitation deficits
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
Dry weather enveloped much of the western U.S. this week, with a few exceptions, leading to persistence or worsening of ongoing drought in the Northwest and in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado. Farther east, in the Great Plains, a mix of degradations, improvements or no changes to drought status or lack thereof occurred, as scattered hit-or-miss showers and thunderstorms moved across the Great Plains this week. Improvements were most prevalent in western Kansas and northeast Colorado, in parts of west Texas and southeast New Mexico and along the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers in Nebraska and southeast South Dakota. Degradations occurred in parts of central and north-central Colorado, in north-central and northwest South Dakota and in parts of central and east-central Nebraska. This week’s rainfall and continued assessment of the impact of previous rains led to widespread improvements in Arkansas, northern Louisiana and portions of Kentucky and Tennessee. Heavy rains, locally exceeding 5 inches, drenched areas in central and northeast Iowa, southeast Minnesota and west-central Wisconsin, leading to widespread one- and isolated two-category improvements in areas where drought or abnormal dryness was ongoing. Short-term abnormal dryness emerged in parts of the Michigan Upper Peninsula and northeast Minnesota, and in areas just southeast of St. Louis after a drier-than-normal last couple of months. Heavy rains, locally exceeding 4 inches, drenched parts of the northern mid-Atlantic region, the New York City area and southern New England, leading to localized improvements. Ongoing groundwater shortages and long-term precipitation deficits somewhat tempered this week’s categorical improvements, though the rain improved the short-term picture in many areas. Similarly, localized heavy rains, in some places exceeding 5 inches, fell in the Florida Peninsula, locally improving conditions amid remaining low lake levels and longer-term precipitation shortfalls. Short-term dryness began to emerge again across parts of northern Georgia, the Carolinas and parts of adjacent Virginia, leading to low soil moisture and streamflow in areas already experiencing long-term dryness or drought. Recent very dry weather continued in much of Puerto Rico, leading to expansion of moderate drought and the expansion of severe drought along parts of the island’s southern coast. Short-term moderate drought also developed this week in northwest Alaska, while several areas of abnormal dryness developed or expanded…
High Plains
Temperatures in the High Plains region were mostly near- or warmer-than-normal this week, with temperatures in eastern Nebraska and eastern South Dakota ranging from 3-6 degrees above normal. (Temperatures west of the Continental Divide were mostly below normal, though conditions in Wyoming and Colorado will be discussed in the West section.) Deficits in precipitation and soil moisture grew in parts of eastern Nebraska, where abnormal dryness and moderate drought expanded. North-central and western South Dakota also saw expansion of abnormal dryness and drought as short- and long-term precipitation deficits grew amid declining soil moisture and streamflow. Parts of central Colorado, especially near and east of Denver and Colorado Springs, saw conditions degrade this week as precipitation deficits grew. Similar conditions in north-central Colorado and south-central and northwest Wyoming, leading to degradations there. A small area of improvement occurred in north-central Wyoming, where vegetation conditions improved after recent precipitation. Scattered heavier rains fell in showers and thunderstorms that moved across parts of the Great Plains of northeast Colorado, the northern half of Kansas, parts of southwest and southeast Nebraska, and the Missouri and Big Sioux River corridors in South Dakota and northeast Nebraska. These rains locally improved drought or abnormally dry conditions…
West
Precipitation fell in portions of the Idaho-Montana border and across parts of southern and eastern Montana, and in a few areas of northwest Washington. Rainfall amounts around an inch fell in parts of New Mexico, though heavier amounts were mostly confined to east-central and southeast parts of the state, where conditions were re-assessed and local improvements occurred. Otherwise, much of the West region was dry this week. Conditions worsened in parts of central and southwest Colorado, where multiple large wildfires were occurring in areas of low soil moisture and large precipitation deficits. Degradations also occurred in parts of Oregon and adjacent far northern California and in north-central Washington. In these areas, streamflow levels remained low and precipitation deficits at both short- and long-term timescales grew. Water deliveries to properties near Bend, Oregon, were shut off this week as water supplies rain low. Widespread severe and extreme drought also continued in the eastern half of Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and southern Idaho. Temperatures across the West region were mostly near- or cooler-than-normal, with temperature anomalies of 3-6 degrees below normal spreading across much of California, Nevada and parts of Arizona.
South
Near- or warmer-than-normal temperatures covered most of the South this week. Rainfall amounts varied, with some areas staying completely dry, though amounts over 2 inches fell in parts of southern Arkansas, northern and southern Louisiana, central and western Tennessee, northeast Texas and a few parts of the Texas Panhandle and western Texas. Deficits in soil moisture and precipitation lessened in parts of far western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and other areas of western Texas, leading to some improvements in ongoing drought. Likewise, long-term drought conditions were improved in portions of central Tennessee, aided by rains this week. A small area of severe drought developed in north-central Tennessee, where precipitation deficits grew and soils dried. Recent rainfall also improved soil moisture, streamflow and lessened precipitation shortages across much of northern and southeast Louisiana and central and southern Arkansas, leading to widespread improvements to drought or abnormal dryness. Isolated improvements also occurred in northwest Mississippi, though conditions across Mississippi were mostly stable as far as drought or dryness…
Looking Ahead
Through the evening of Monday, July 13, the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center’s precipitation forecast shows mostly dry weather west of the Continental Divide, with rain amounts over 0.5 inches in southeast Arizona and in some areas near the southern New Mexico-Arizona state line. Mostly dry weather is also likely in the northern and southern Great Plains, though parts of the central Great Plains, especially in the southern half of Nebraska and northern half of Kansas, may receive rain amounts locally over an inch or higher. Rainfall amounts near or over an inch are expected in parts of the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, plus portions of Missouri. Heavier rain amounts ranging from 1.5-3 inches are forecast from southern Illinois eastward through southern Indiana, Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and parts of West Virginia. Isolated rainfall totals at or above 0.75 inches are possible from Iowa eastward through the lower Great Lakes, though most areas should stay drier. Primarily dry weather is forecast in New England, especially in the southern half of the region.
For July 14-18, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecast favors drier-than-normal weather across the Great Lakes and central and northern Great Plains. Drier weather is also favored in far southern Florida. Wetter-than-normal weather is favored mostly across the Gulf Coast states and Carolinas, and in parts of the Desert Southwest, especially in southern Arizona. Hotter-than-normal weather is very likely across the northern Great Plains and West, and in the Florida Peninsula. Warmer-than-normal weather is also favored, though at lesser confidence, across most of the rest of the contiguous U.S., with a few exceptions. The forecast favors near-normal temperatures in southwest Texas and southeast New Mexico and in the eastern Great Lakes and most of the Northeast. Northern Maine is slightly favored to see cooler-than-normal temperatures.
The forecast in most of Alaska favors cooler-than-normal temperatures, except for the far northeast portion of the state and in the central and western Aleutian Islands, where temperatures near- and above-normal are favored, respectively. Above-normal precipitation is favored across most of Alaska, aside from a small part of northeast Alaska and the central Aleutian Islands.
Just for grins, here’s a slideshow of early July US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.
US Drought Monitor map July 7, 2026. 
US Drought Monitor map July 1, 2025. 
US Drought Monitor map July 2, 2024. 
US Drought Monitor map July 4, 2023. 
US Drought Monitor map July 5, 2022. 
US Drought Monitor map July 6, 2021. 
US Drought Monitor July 7, 2020. 
US Drought Monitor July 2, 2019. 
US Drought Monitor July 3, 2018. 
US Drought Monitor July 4, 2017. 
US Drought Monitor July 5, 2016. 
US Drought Monitor July 7, 2015 
US Drought Monitor July 1, 2014 
US Drought Monitor July 9, 2013 
US Drought Monitor July 3, 2012 
US Drought Monitor July 5, 2011. 
US Drought Monitor July 13, 2010
Climate change means an earlier spring, which can be disorienting and threatening for migrating birds
Morgan Tingley, University of California, Los Angeles
Spring migration has taken flight, but with rising temperatures and shifting seasons, birds are adjusting when and how they migrate to keep up with a rapidly warming climate.
Morgan Tingley, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, studies the effects of climate change on birds. https://player.vimeo.com/video/1188466289 Morgan Tingley discusses how climate change is affecting bird migration and behavior.
The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.
How is climate change affecting birds?
Morgan Tingley: In the spring, birds migrate north across the United States in order to get to where they will be spending their spring and summer. They try to time their migration so that they can arrive at their breeding grounds, build their nests and lay their eggs at the time of year when there’s going to be maximum food available.
But climate change is causing spring to happen earlier, which can cause real problems for birds. These earlier springs can result in birds falling behind local springtime because they arrive too late on their breeding grounds.
Are there particular birds climate change is affecting more than others?
Tingley: About 70% of the bird species found in the United States are migratory. Some migrate just 50 to 100 miles, and others migrate all the way from the farthest tip of South America in order to breed in Canada. Our work has found that the birds that migrate the farthest are the ones that are having the hardest time keeping up with climate change.
Why is that? If you can imagine going from Tennessee to New York and it’s an early spring in New York, it might be also an early spring in Tennessee. In that case, these birds can keep pace with an earlier spring.
But if you’re a bird living in Argentina and then migrating all the way to New York in the springtime, the temperatures and seasons in Argentina versus New York are going to be very disconnected from each other. So a bird in Argentina might not actually have the information it needs to arrive on time and keep up with the local pace of a changing climate in New York.
What happens when they can’t keep up?
Tingley: When the timing is off, it could mean that there’s not enough food available for their young, or it could be that they’re more susceptible to really extreme summer temperatures. Whether it is high temperatures or missing peak insect food, birds that are out of sync with the seasons may respond by laying fewer eggs or suffering reduced hatch success. Another issue is that once the eggs hatch, the birds might not be able to raise as many young.
As a result, we’ve seen that when birds become mismatched with climate and changing seasons, it can lead to population declines. In North America, we’ve seen many bird populations decline over the past 40 years. As bird populations decline even further, this can cause a variety of problems for humans.
For example, birds are a key link in many food supplies, as they can be key pollinators, important seed dispersers and critical consumers of insect pests.
In addition, birds generally make people happy! Recent work has even shown that bird-watching can help prevent mental decline in older adults.
Is there something people can do to help?
Tingley: Climate change is a stressor that is being added on top of everything else going on in the environment. A lot of the greatest effects of climate change are not in the past. They’re going to happen in the future. These effects are coming next year, or five years from now, or 10 years from now. So wildlife managers are trying to sustain bird populations as much as possible and help them grow.
Helping save birds means keeping populations high by conserving land, reducing other types of threats, such as by keeping pets indoors or installing bird-friendly glass, and allowing birds to adapt to this changing world as best as they possibly can.
SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.
Morgan Tingley, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Dozens of Colorado River rafters infected by Mysterious Illness
by Robert Marcos, photojournalist
The National Park Service Office of Public Health is actively investigating a cluster of undiagnosed, severe illnesses affecting Colorado River rafters in Grand Canyon National Park. The probe began in early July 2026 after numerous river runners used the “Grand Canyon Private Boaters” Facebook community group to report that members of their respective crews had returned home with highly concerning, unexplained medical symptoms.1
Current Situation and Symptoms
• Affected Trait: The reported cases belong to separate rafting groups traveling the Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek corridor between May and late June 2026. 2
• Core Symptoms: Rafters describe enduring severe localized muscle pain, persistent high fevers, intense fatigue, chills, weakness, and fluid in the lungs. 3
• Severity: Some patients have experienced symptoms akin to a severe, month-long summer flu, while others required hospitalization for localized infections or sudden loss of consciousness. 4
Potential Causes Under Investigation
Medical specialists and public health officials are currently tracking data via platforms like the infectious disease platform Beacon to rule out specific diagnoses. Because many rafters slept outside and swam in side canyons, doctors are currently testing for a wide range of potential ailments, including: 5
• Leptospirosis: A bacterial disease often contracted via freshwater exposure.
• Tick and Mosquito-borne Illnesses: Such as West Nile virus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, dengue fever, or Lyme disease.
• Fungal and Viral Infections: Including Hantavirus or Valley Fever.
• Note on Gastrointestinal Illness: While the Grand Canyon has historically dealt with norovirus outbreaks—including a smaller spike in Norwalk-like viruses linked to portable toilets in June 2026—the current investigation focuses on a distinct respiratory and muscular illness. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The National Park Service has stated that the investigation is ongoing, and they will release official diagnostic findings as soon as lab results become available.
Native American Tribes Came Together to Secure Their Rights to #ColoradoRiver Water. Four States Are Stalling the Deal — Mark Olalde and Alex Hager (ProPublica.org) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Pro-Publica website (Mark Olalde and Alex Hager):
June 29, 2026
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with KJZZ News-Phoenix.
Reporting Highlights
- Certainty on the River: Tribes have negotiated a settlement to resolve the largest outstanding claim to the Colorado River, while providing billions of dollars for water infrastructure.
- Upper Hand: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — the Upper Basin states — are resisting the deal because it allows the Navajo and Hopi to lease water outside their reservations.
- Unfulfilled Promise: It has been 118 years since the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government owes tribes water, but many are still fighting to resolve their rights.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.
The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history — the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe — was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being codified by Congress.
“We have significant unresolved concerns with the legislation that may affect each of our states’ rights to and interests in Colorado River water,” negotiators for Utah and Wyoming wrote in March to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in a previously unreported letter. New Mexico and Colorado sent similar letters.
Those four states, known collectively as the Upper Basin, are at a stalemate with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada over new rules governing how they share the Colorado River, a key water source for nearly 40 million people. Congress and the White House, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, have declined to approve the settlement until all parties reach an agreement.
For 83-year-old Marilyn Tewa, the stalemate means her family will continue to go without running water. Tewa serves on the Hopi Tribal Council, where her duties include working on the water rights agreement, but her village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation, lacks indoor plumbing.
Every other day, she loads 5-gallon buckets into her pickup and drives 5 miles to a windmill originally built for livestock that draws untreated water from underground.
“That’s what keeps us alive,” Tewa said, tapping the spigot on a May afternoon.
Back home, Tewa bustled about her kitchen while her daughter kneaded dough for dinner. There’s no faucet in the kitchen, which is decorated with a framed American flag and a painting of a katsina, a figure with spiritual significance in Hopi culture. Instead, the family stores water in large plastic containers. Because of the lack of indoor plumbing, the Tewa family and its neighbors use portable toilets that stand among the houses.
If passed into law, the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Actwould resolve the largest outstanding claim on the Colorado River while providing about $5 billion in federal funding to build infrastructure to transport the water across the reservations. The legislation would also go beyond water rights, creating a reservation for the San Juan Southern Paiute. The tribe’s effort to secure a permanent homeland was added to the settlement due to their difficulty getting it through Congress independently.
“That’s my prayer,” Tewa said, “that we get this settlement through for all three tribes.”
The tribes need pipes, pumps and treatment plants to use the water secured through the settlement. To defray the cost beyond the federal government’s expected contribution, the Navajo and Hopi plan to lease some of their water rights, almost certainly to growing towns around Phoenix. The towns would pay to use the tribes’ water for a set number of years.
While the Lower Basin states support the settlement, the Upper Basin states have latched onto this provision in particular as they stand in the way of the settlement.
The Colorado River’s upper and lower basins don’t precisely follow state borders. Some states have portions in both sections, and the line dividing the two basins cuts across northeastern Arizona and directly through the Navajo reservation. If water moves across that line, they argue, the rules governing the river give them veto power over the settlement. (It’s an open legal question whether approval from all seven states is necessary.)
The Upper Basin states fear that, in the future, water they currently control might be leased on an open market. They view any monetary transaction that moves water downstream as setting a precedent that could allow the highest bidder — possibly thirsty cities with money such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas — to buy vast quantities of their water.
In an effort to assuage that concern and close the deal, the Navajo and Hopi made major concessions over the volume of water and length of time they could lease. The tribes also offered to leave some of their water in one of the river’s drought-depleted reservoirs to help keep water levels high enough that it could continue flowing downstream. But the Upper Basin has not wavered in its opposition.
ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix reached out to the governor, senators and lead negotiator from every Upper Basin state for comment. Utah’s and Wyoming’s lead negotiators deferred to the letter they co-signed. A spokesperson for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that the tribes addressed most of the state’s concerns but that questions remain as to whether the water that the tribes would lease to Arizona cities could be counted as part of what the Upper Basin states are legally required to send to the Lower Basin. “New Mexico remains committed to finding a workable solution,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also said the state is “committed to finding a path forward” and pointed to the letter that Becky Mitchell, the state’s lead river negotiator, submitted to Congress. Mitchell wrote that the settlement’s leasing provisions violate laws governing the river and that the state was concerned about what the sale of water across the basin would mean for “the security and certainty” of Colorado’s share of the river.
Heather Tanana is an assistant professor at the University of Denver’s law school, where she focuses on federal Indian law. She is also a citizen of the Navajo Nation and said the Upper Basin is “trying to hide behind” how the river has traditionally been managed rather than find a way to give the tribes access to a resource that is rightfully theirs and one that they need to survive.
“It’s a fundamental human rights issue,” she said.
While negotiations drag on, the three tribes continue waiting for water they say will help them to build more housing, grow sustainable economies, better protect public health and preserve cultural practices.
The Hopi believe their ancestors return as clouds to bring the rain that nourishes their corn, but drought is wracking the region. An overreliance on groundwater has dried up springs that have been used for ceremonies and agriculture for centuries. When the settlement brings more water to the reservation, Tewa said, aquifers will have a chance to recharge, restoring the springs.
“I’m speaking on behalf of my children, my grandchildren and their children that haven’t come yet,” she said. “I hope, in the future, that they will have water.”
Fighting for Water Since Elvis Was on TV
That the settlement even reached Congress seemed like a small miracle to those involved.
The 30 federally recognized tribes with land in the Colorado River Basin are estimated to have a right to at least a quarter of the river’s flow. But there’s little incentive to hand tribes the water to which they are entitled. Their rights are the most senior on the river, meaning in times of shortage everyone else would see their water cut before the tribes. But because the tribes currently use a fraction of their water, farmers, cities and businesses are able to use the rest for free.
If the tribes were to use every drop to which they are entitled, the system of sharing the river that supports more than $1 trillion in annual economic output would collapse.
“Everybody’s getting free Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute water right now. The seven basin states are all benefiting in the absence of a settlement,” said Ethel Branch, a former Navajo attorney general who was involved in the negotiations, adding that the water had been “stolen for over a century.”
In 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that, if the federal government confined tribes to reservations, then it owed them enough water to sustain an agrarian economy on that land. But securing that promised water, referred to as “Winters rights,”has proven arduous.
Tribes were excluded from the compacts that apportioned the river. The Navajo in particular were barred from joining a seminal case quantifying other users’ rights, and members of the tribe themselves rejected a proposed settlement in 2012 when they viewed the deal as unfair. So the tribe went back to the Supreme Court, asking that the justices force the federal government to quickly settle the claims. The Navajo once again lost, with the court’s majority deciding that their treaty with the U.S. didn’t require the government to take any “affirmative steps” to deliver the water it owed the tribe.
“At each turn, they have received the same answer: ‘Try again,’” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote of the Navajo in his dissent. “When this routine first began in earnest, Elvis was still making his rounds on The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Arizona politicians and tribal leaders have since concluded that they needed to combine all three tribes’ claims to finally settle their rights.
That was no simple feat. The Navajo and Hopi have long had a contentious relationship. Underlining their thorny partnership, leaders of various tribes around the region have accused Navajo, the largest tribal nation in the U.S., of flexing their political strength to the detriment of other tribes.
Arizona also historically clashed with local tribes over water. The state often inserted unrelated provisions into proposed settlements, which some tribes viewed as poison pills and had the effect of stalling the agreements.
But Navajo and Hopi struck a deal, and Arizona moved off its bargaining position. Now in lockstep, the settlement’s supporters turned to Congress, only to hit more roadblocks: The House of Representatives balked at the spiraling price tag to fund the deals; presidential administrations were unwilling to expend political capital on such settlements; and more than a dozen settlements are in the works, clogging the system. (No settlement has been enacted since 2022.)
“Partisanship has gone to a new low in this country, and Indian water settlements have gotten swept up into that,” said Pam Williams, who spent about two decades as director of the Secretary’s Indian Water Rights Office in the Department of the Interior before she retired last year.
In November 2024, as President Donald Trump prepared for his return to the White House, the tribes believed they had an opening to get their settlement through Congress while President Joe Biden was still in office.
Navajo leadership had supported the Democratic presidential ticket and feared the incoming administration would be vindictive toward them.
Every basin state’s lead negotiator, tribes’ staff and a federal representative descended upon the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ offices in Phoenix for what several attendees described as a “Hail Mary.” At the meeting, the Navajo offered a major compromise: limiting how much water they could lease and for how long they could lease it.
But the Upper Basin states showed up with a list of grievances, multiple attendees told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix, and weren’t interested in negotiating over the Navajo leasing concessions.
“It’s difficult for the Upper Basin to wrap their heads around this settlement,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s Colorado River lead.
In March 2026, leaders from the tribes traveled to Washington for a Senate hearing where they made an impassioned plea for Congress to pass a version of the bill that now included the concessions they had offered in the Hail Mary meeting. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who ran the hearing, expressed support for the settlement but worried its $5 billion price tag was too high, a concern echoed by an Interior Department official who testified. (The tribes and department are currently negotiating to shrink that cost.)
All four Upper Basin states submitted comments opposing the settlement. Their main concerns were about the ability to lease across the basin and whether the water for the settlement would be counted against the upper or lower division of the river.
Leasing would last only as long as it’s needed to pay for infrastructure to distribute their newly acquired water, said Navajo President Buu Nygren. It would not set a precedent, he said, because no other tribe straddles both basins.
“We shouldn’t be punished for being in two basins,” Nygren said, “because other tribal nations, other settlements have been able to lease water.”
“How Precious Water Is to Us”
During the decades that the tribes fought to access their water, they helped quench the thirst of growing cities in the Colorado River Basin.
A water intake plant on Navajo land drew from Lake Powell to cool the nearby Navajo Generating Station. The coal plant powered pumps for the Central Arizona Project, the 336-mile series of canals that sends Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson.
The power station shut down in 2019, and the intake plant was handed over to the Navajo for the iiná bá-paa tuwaqat’si pipeline, which means “for life” in Diné and “water is life” in Hopi, to deliver water to the three tribes. But for now, the massive pumps remain mothballed, the building sitting musty and dark like a tomb, and the pipeline remains an engineering schematic, waiting for funding from the stalled settlement.
The irony is not lost on tribal leaders, they told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix: After helping deliver water beyond their lands, they are now blocked from using that same water and infrastructure to sustain their communities. The insult is compounded, they said, by the fact that water use is drastically lower on reservations.
“It’s not about green-grass lawns or golf courses or swimming pools,” said Crystalyne Curley, speaker of the Navajo Nation Council. “It’s just basically turning on the faucet and getting water to boil eggs for your children or turning on a faucet to wipe and clean the table or washing your hands after butchering a sheep.”
For the San Juan Southern Paiute, the settlement is also about having a permanent homeland. They have no reservation but struck a deal with Navajo in 2000 to transfer some of its land. Since the tribes already reached an agreement, it’s an uncontroversial proposition. But, without political clout to get Congress to take it up, the land transfer was pulled into the water settlement.
“During the COVID era, it took a lot of the tribal elders, and there are only a handful that saw the treaty signed and are really wanting to see this before their time is up,” said San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr., whose father signed the 2000 agreement. Finally securing a reservation, he said, means the ability to build housing and develop an economy for a tribe that currently rents its government building.
Nearby, on the Hopi reservation, Councilmember Marilyn Fredericks grabbed a pair of hiking poles, donned a hat with a roadrunner pin on it and set out from her village on a recent spring afternoon. To stay fit as she grows older, she walks up and down the hand-carved steps of a terraced garden that used to produce food for her community.
Seven natural springs once fed the garden, but only two still flow. Ponds that stored their excess sit dry, stains on the rock now just a memory of the water. It’s been six years since there was enough to plant.
The settlement would fund a pipeline that would be “our umbilical cord,” Fredericks said. Future generations of Hopi have a right to clean, reliable water, she said. “This is evidence of how precious water is to us.”
Water trial week 1: A history lesson; The #SanLuisValley’s water system — from ancient times to farmers’ early irrigation practices — sets the groundwork in making a case for Subdistrict 1’s Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management — Chris Lopez (AlamosaCitizen.com) #RioGrande
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Chris Lopez):
July 4, 2026
The Colorado State Engineer’s office opened its defense this week of Subdistrict 1’s approved Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management with a history lesson on the origins of the San Luis Valley and the development of irrigated agriculture over the past 174 years when the first water right was issued to the San Luis People’s Ditch.
Featured in the state engineer’s defense was testimony by Matt Seitz of HRS Water Consultants, who took the state Division 3 Water Court through ancient history and into the era of early irrigation and storage practices of farmers in the Valley.
“Yeah, so we covered 25 million years pretty quickly, see how long the rest of it takes here,” he said from the witness stand Tuesday. Seitz stayed on the witness stand for the better part of the week, working to bolster to the state engineer’s defense of the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management and then under cross-examination from a Sustainable Water Augmentation Group attorney, who worked to show faults in Seitz’ testimony and undermine the case of the state engineer in the eyes of Division 3 Water Court judge Michael Gonzales.
It is Gonzales who will decide this case. He will take in all the testimony around the various takes on the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management to rule on whether the plan will be implemented.
The subdistrict itself is charged with recovering the shallow unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and its Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management is the latest attempt to do so. The complexity of the basin’s hydrology has been an early theme.
“I think there’s been a lot of great research over the years,” Seitz said in speaking to the state’s modeling of groundwater in the Upper Rio Grande Basin and other studies on the Valley’s hydrology. “So I think we’ve made some good progress, but there’s a lot of complexity. Again, I’ve been saying that word a lot, but there certainly is and I think we’re on our way, but it’s never going to be fully understood.”
Week 1 of the trial ended with Craig Cotten taking the witness stand. He is witness number three for the state engineer’s defense of the plan, following Cleave Simpson, the general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District who was the lead witness, and then Seitz, the hydrologist consultant who endured four days on the witness stand.
“Wonderful way to start the Fourth of July weekend,” quipped Gonzales as Cotten, the state water division engineer for the San Luis Valley area, stepped into the witness box at 1:50 p.m. on Thursday. He spent the initial two hours testifying to his background and his credentials before Gonzales broke for the Fourth of July weekend.
Cotten is the enforcer of the state’s groundwater management rules in the San Luis Valley. His testimony will reignite the trial when it resumes on Monday for week two of the water trial.
Late June brings large wildfires to #Colorado and Utah — Becky Bolinger (ClimateBecky.com)
July 3, 2026
For the Interior Rockies, June marks peak wildfire season. This year, the risk of large wildfires is elevated due to record low snowpack and drought. For Colorado and Utah, wildfire activity was relatively quiet through the first half of June. So what led up to the explosion of activity in the last week of June?
THE DELAYED SETUP
Despite record low snowpack, some late season storms in May helped delay meltout and keep fuels a bit more moist than they would have been otherwise. Although precipitation was still below average, and drought conditions persisted, moisture in the air into early June limited the onset of wildfires.
July 3, 2026
For the Interior Rockies, June marks peak wildfire season. This year, the risk of large wildfires is elevated due to record low snowpack and drought. For Colorado and Utah, wildfire activity was relatively quiet through the first half of June. So what led up to the explosion of activity in the last week of June?
THE DELAYED SETUP
Despite record low snowpack, some late season storms in May helped delay meltout and keep fuels a bit more moist than they would have been otherwise. Although precipitation was still below average, and drought conditions persisted, moisture in the air into early June limited the onset of wildfires.
THE SWITCH TO DRY
Like flipping a switch, dry air took over the region. The graphic below shows EDDI, a drought index that estimates the dryness of the atmosphere due to a combination of temperature, solar radiation, wind, and humidity. Higher values (denoted in the map with oranges and reds) shows where the atmosphere is much drier than normal as of the end of June. The change map on the right shows the drying trend over the last 30 days. This rapid trend dried out the vegetation, on top of the existing drought conditions, setting the stage for enhanced wildfire activity.
All the ingredients for wildfires are present – hot temperatures, dry air, and windy conditions on top of a drought landscape. Once an ignition occurs, either from human activities or lightning, the wildfires start. But what is needed for large and uncontrollable wildfires?
A CLOSER LOOK AT WILDFIRE METRICS
One of the surprising contributors to wildfire activity begins months in advance, where precipitation provides the necessary growth for vegetation that ultimately dries out and becomes fuel for a fire. Prior to the onset of the snowpack season, The Four Corners region received much above average precipitation in October thanks to two tropical systems coming from the Pacific Ocean. Fast forward to spring, drought conditions have dried out that vegetative growth, adding fuel for fires. The graphic below shows 3 different wildfire indices. The first index is the Energy Release Component (ERC), which is a measure of the energy and heat of a wildfire. The second index is the Burning Index, which measures flame length and the difficulty of containing a fire. The third index is 100-hr fuel moisture, which measures the moisture content in dead vegetation. By June 27, all three indices indicated very high or extreme fire danger. The Burning Index was record high for many parts of the Four Corners area.
THE STAGE IS SET
With all the ingredients in place, the last week of June brought a sudden surge of wildfires to Colorado and Utah, with 11 wildfires starting between June 26th and June 29th. Wildfires have now burned more than 400,000 acres in Colorado and Utah. Unfortunately, extreme heat and dry conditions are expected into the middle of July, bringing little relief to the current wildfire situation.
New Mexico’s Looming Water Crisis
By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
New Mexico is facing a profound environmental transformation. The state is transitioning out of temporary, cyclical droughts and entering a permanent state of aridification—a structural shift toward a fundamentally drier climate. Driven by rising temperatures, record-low winter snowpacks, and unpredictable weather volatility, state climate models project that New Mexico will lose 25% to 30% of its available water by 2050. This looming shortfall presents an existential threat to the state’s population, economy, and natural ecosystems.
Who Is Affected?
Aridification will impact every single New Mexican, though the immediate crisis is hitting specific communities first.
Rural Towns and Communities: Small municipalities with shallow wells are on the front lines. The town of Estancia has already declared a local water emergency, forcing the municipality to actively truck in water to keep its pipes flowing.
Eastern Border Cities: Urban areas in Eastern New Mexico, most notably Clovis and Portales, are facing severe long-term threats to their survival as their primary water reserves dry up.
The Agricultural Sector: Farming and ranching consume the vast majority of New Mexico’s water. Growing political friction is mounting against water-heavy industries like mega-dairies and commercial alfalfa farming. Along the Rio Grande, over 35% of historical farmland has already been abandoned due to shrinking irrigation allocations.
Which Water Sources Are Drying Up?
The crisis is simultaneously draining both above-ground and below-ground water supplies, creating a compounding deficit.
Surface Water Supply: The Rio Grande, the state’s main surface water artery, increasingly dries up completely during peak summer months. Vital reservoirs are failing; the massive Elephant Butte Reservoir has repeatedly plummeted to near-empty levels (3% capacity or less) because water evaporates or is consumed up to 15 times faster than it flows in from the north.
Groundwater Supply: Groundwater provides 80% of New Mexico’s drinking water, but it is being depleted at an unsustainable rate as cities and farms pump aggressively to replace lost surface water. The fastest-dropping water tables are concentrated in the Ogallala Aquifer (beneath Clovis and Portales), the Mimbres Basin (Deming), the Estancia Basin, and the Albuquerque Basin. Scientists predict a total deficit of 750,000 acre-feet of water within the next 50 years.
What’s Being Done About It?
While the projections are stark, New Mexico is not standing still. The state has launched a comprehensive 50-Year Water Action Plan to reshape how it manages, conserves, and sources water.1
The Strategic Water Supply: The state has committed $75 million to build advanced desalination projects. These facilities will treat brackish (salty) groundwater, with the goal of delivering 100,000 acre-feet of brand-new drinking water to communities by 2028.
Infrastructure Overhauls: Rural communities lose anywhere from 40% to 70% of their treated drinking water to leaks in aging pipelines before it ever reaches a tap. State-backed infrastructure campaigns are underway to aggressively repair these systems.
Water-Right Buyouts: To satisfy legally mandated interstate water compacts with downstream neighbors like Texas—and to prevent legal warfare—the state is actively buying back water rights from domestic farmers, taking certain agricultural lands out of production to preserve remaining aquifer levels.
South Platte River Basin #climate for the week ending July 6, 2026
Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for July 6, 2026. Precipitation is at 7% of the median (down 1% one week), and 58% of the water year median (no change one week), this morning. There are 86 days left in the water year.
There is a slight chance for showers today, showers are likely Tuesday, with a chance for thunderstorms Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, in the central mountains. There is a slight chance for showers today, showers are likely Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with a chance for thunderstorms Friday, in the northern mountains. There is a chance for thunderstorms Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, down here about 181 miles from Julesburg where the Battle of Julesburg took place on January 7, 1865. From Wikipedia:
The Battle of Julesburg took place on January 7, 1865, near Julesburg, Colorado between 1,000 Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota Indians and about 60 soldiers of the U.S. army and 40 to 50 civilians. The Indians defeated the soldiers…The Julesburg Battle is unusual in that the main source of information about the battle comes from the Indian side, mostly from George Bent…a Cheyenne warrior who participated in the battle.
Here’s a look at the 7-Day Colorado precipitation map through July 5, 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 0.30”.
Here’s the 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through July 5, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged pretty much 0% of normal.
Note: the 7-Day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast by NOAA is not rendering for me this morning.
Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued July 5, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting July 13, 2026. The CPC expects above normal temperatures and near normal precipitation for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin.
Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor map from June 30, 2026. There was a one class degradation in Park County. There were one class improvements in Park, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Jefferson, Boulder, Weld, Logan, Morgan, Sedgwick, Adams, Arapahoe, and Elbert counties. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 100% 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 June 30, 2026.
Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.
Below is a screenshot of the USGS streamgages this morning that includes the South Platte River Basin.
Finally, Allen Best asks The nagging, unanswerable question for the Colorado River: What if next year looks like this one?:
What cannot be contested is Becky Mitchell’s assertion that demands cannot exceed supplies. This year, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Water is being taken from Flaming Gorge and other federal upstream reservoirs to keep water in Powell. Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison may have too little water to release any downstream, a condition called dead pool. The Bureau of Reclamation similarly sees that possibility for Navajo, the reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border.
The Bureau intends to release six million acre-feet from Powell for the lower-basin, leaving Powell 80% empty. The agency’s “most probable” projections see reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam early next year being too low to generate electricity.
In Grand Junction this week, people stood in the rain with sheer delight. It was a feel-good moment. But will El Niño save us from calamity? Maybe, but don’t bet on it. The warming climate seems to be rewriting the rules about how much water from the Pacific Ocean arrives on our mountains.
That was the takeaway from a recent presentation by Brad Udall, a scientist scholar affiliated with Colorado State University. El Niños in the past have produced big water years. One was in 1983, the year that flood waters nearly broke Glen Canyon Dam. Often, though, an El Niño produces no more moisture than a La Niña. Video ⬇️.
This year’s ‘peak:’ record-low runoff leaves reservoirs far below normal; Dillon, Williams Fork and Antero reservoirs hit hard — Jay Adams (DenverWater.org) #SouthPlatteRiver #ColoradoRiver
Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website (Jay Adams):
June 24, 2026
The full impact of this past winter’s record-low snowpack is rearing its ugly head in the form of:
- Record-low spring stream flows.
- Low reservoir storage levels.
- An empty reservoir.
- And one incredibly rare statistic.
On June 17, Denver Water’s reservoir system hit its peak storage level following a diminished spring runoff.
Water levels in the utility’s reservoirs collectively hit 81% of the system’s storage capacity — the second-lowest peak storage level on records dating back to 1983, considered the beginning of the modern Denver Water collection system.
“Peak storage” is the moment, or day, when the utility’s collection system holds the most water it will hold for the next year. It’s akin to topping off a swimming pool once a year in June to carry the pool through the next year of use.
Typically, the “peak storage” moment happens in mid-June, after the spring runoff.
But in 2026, due to the record-low winter snowpack and low spring runoff, Denver Water’s collection system held more water on Jan. 1 — 83% of capacity — than on June 17, as the runoff dwindled and storage levels inched to 81% of capacity.
There’s only one other year since 1983, when the Strontia Springs Dam was completed, that Denver Water’s storage was higher in the dead of winter than the dawn of summer — the drought year of 2002.
“Having our highest amount of water happen in January is incredibly rare. It speaks to how little snow we saw this winter and the impact of the record-setting warm weather,” said Nathan Elder, Denver Water’s manager of water supply.
“We’ve seen many records fall this year, and unfortunately, they were not good ones.”
During the spring peak, the amount of water stored in Denver Water’s reservoirs typically hits an average of 97.5% of capacity.
And since 1983, the utility’s peak storage levels have hit at least 95% of capacity (considered sufficient for normal operating conditions) in all but six years.
“Ideally, we like to top off our mountain reservoirs during the spring runoff, but this year our storage levels came up well short,” Elder said.
Record low ‘paycheck’
Why do water managers focus on peak storage numbers?
The peak reservoir storage figure is critical to determining how much water is available until next year’s spring runoff. It’s comparable to a family determining how much money they have to pay the bills until the next paycheck comes through.
“The spring runoff is our annual paycheck from Mother Nature,” Elder said. “The water filling our reservoirs is the cash that fills our bank account. But in our case, that paycheck only comes once a year — and this year we didn’t get anywhere close to the normal amount.”
This year’s meager paycheck was reflected in the record-low peak flows on the rivers and streams that feed Denver Water’s reservoirs.
Mountain snowmelt accounts for 90% of Denver Water’s supply, which provides water to 1.5 million people in metro Denver.
In Summit County, Denver Water recorded this year’s peak stream runoff into Dillon Reservoir at just 404 cubic feet per second, or cfs, on May 29. That’s a record-low “peak inflow” and less than a quarter of the normal peak inflow into the reservoir of 1,750 cfs, which typically happens on June 7.
In Park County, the South Fork of the South Platte River experienced a double-whammy, with record-low flows that occurred abnormally early in the season.
Flows on the South Fork peaked on March 25 at a record-low flow of just 18 cfs. That’s 15% of the normal peak flow of 120 cfs, which usually happens on June 10.
“In a typical year, the rivers and streams start rising in late-April as the snow starts to melt, then they peak in early June, and then they start to ease back to normal flows throughout the summer,” Elder said.
“This year the runoff started about six weeks early in March, and the normal spring surge of water we usually see was basically nonexistent.”
Reservoir impact
The results of the record-low spring flows are having a significant impact on three of Denver Water’s most popular reservoirs.
Dillon Reservoir in Summit County topped off on June 17 at 80% of capacity, with water levels about 18 feet below normal for this time of year. Water levels are expected to drop over the next year until the 2027 spring runoff — hopefully more boisterous than this year’s meager flow — begins.
In Grand County, Williams Fork Reservoir topped off June 21 at merely 53% of capacity, about 35 feet below normal for this time of year and forcing the closure of the reservoir’s boat ramp.
Because of the low snowpack, Denver Water also dipped into its emergency water supply at Antero Reservoir in Park County.
Using water from Antero Reservoir is only done in extremely dry years. It’s comparable to someone having to dip into their 401(k) savings to pay bills until their next paycheck.
Denver Water moved water out of Antero this spring and sent it downstream to Cheesman Reservoir to avoid losing water in shallow Antero due to evaporation.
Early forecasts for the abysmal spring runoff and low peak storage were two factors that led Denver Water to issue a Stage 1 drought declaration in March.
The declaration, which calls on customers to reduce water use by 20% and includes mandatory watering restrictions of two assigned days per week, seeks to stretch existing water supplies until next spring’s paycheck is deposited in the reservoirs.
“While the reservoirs are low this year, they are doing what they were built for, which is to help us get us through a dry year,” Elder said.
“We hope customers notice the low reservoir levels and take steps to conserve water at home so we can stretch our water supplies over the coming months.”
New #Colorado state law requires cities, water users to revegetate farmland before using water elsewhere — Rocky Mountain PBS #ArkansasRiver
Click the link to read the article on the Rocky Mountain PBS website (Cormac McCrimmon). Here’s an excerpt:
June 16, 2026
A new Colorado law requires water users that buy water tied to farms in the Arkansas Valley to revegetate land before using water elsewhere…
“When that water leaves, the impacts of the dry-up don’t leave with it. They stay with the land and the people who live here,” said Jack Goble, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Water Conservation District, which advocated for the legislation.Revegetation involves restoring native plant cover to the land to reduce erosion, maintain soil moisture and manage noxious weeds…
In Crowley County, where productive farmland has declined by more than 90% since the 1970s because of water transfers, so-called “buy-and-dry” transactions have spawned a sea of dirt that supports little more than weeds. According to a recent report from ProPublica, these water transfers have caused an “environmental catastrophe,” in Crowley County, in which birds, bees and wildlife have fled. A 2026 report from Colorado State University estimates that every acre of irrigated land taken out of production leads to an annual economic loss of $1,400 to $1,600. Governor Jared Polis (D) signed House Bill 26-1340 into law June 1. The new law, sponsored by representative Ty Winter (R), gained broad support in the House and Senate. The law takes effect January 1, 2027.
“If you look at other natural resources — coal, gravel, oil and gas — when that’s mined from the land the requirement is on the entity that profits off of, and mines that, to go and reclaim that land. We think water should be no different,” Goble said.
How sports betting became #Colorado’s ticket to funding $140 million in water #conservation projects: Colorado’s gamblers are paying for new irrigation systems, reservoirs and water research studies — The #Denver Post
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Noelle Phillips). Here’s an excerpt:
June 18, 2026
For the 18 ranchers who rely on the Maybell Irrigation District’s canal to funnel water to their fields, the 127-year-old headgate that diverted flow from the Yampa River meant a two-hour round trip through a rocky canyon whenever they needed water. The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal. Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways. The district received a $750,000 grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said Diana Lane, sustainable food and water program director for The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said. In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control. The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.
“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,’” Lane said of that initial state grant.
Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.
In revitalizing the #ColoradoRiver Delta, a little goes a long way — Daniel Stolte (University of #Arizona) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the University of Arizona website (Daniel Stolte):
June 18, 2026
Today’s Colorado River Delta is a far cry from the lush waterway that thrived before the river was forced behind dams that diverted much of its flow for half a century. Now, with just small amounts of water and funding, stretches of the parched riverbed have been transformed into healthy riparian habitats.
A new report from a University of Arizona-led team of researchers has evaluated the effects of the 2014-2025 controlled water releases along the lower Colorado River in Mexico to restore natural habitat. The report also lays out a roadmap for continuing the current binational restoration efforts. The report was published today by the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.
“It’s hard to find some good news about the Colorado River, but we believe we have some to share,” said first author Karl Flessa, professor emeritus in the U of A Department of Geosciences. “The lessons learned from more than a decade of work show that a small amount of water can do big things.”
The controlled water deliveries to the Colorado River streambed from 2014-2025 were mandated by two addenda of the U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty of 1944, which governs the allocation of Colorado River water between the two countries. The current addendum expires at the end of 2026.
To ensure the restoration sites continue to thrive, Flessa said sustaining this binational success will require a renewed commitment of water and funding by the United States, Mexico and non-governmental organizations.
The report reveals that bird numbers and diversity have increased since restoration began in 2014. The delta is an important rest stop for birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. Beavers and other wildlife have also increased.
The restoration of the Colorado River Delta began in 2014, in the form of a so-called pulse flow, a one-time water release from Morelos Dam that lasted 57 days. Before that, the riverbed below Morelos Dam was dry. The pulse flow was conducted to allow researchers to assess the effects on the ecosystem once water returned.
The pulse flow of 2014 kickstarted a concerted, binational effort to systematically restore riparian habitat along certain stretches of the formerly dry river delta. Environmental NGOs, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, developed three designated restoration sites by terrain-shaping and planting of native riparian vegetation, including cottonwood trees, mesquite trees and willows – species that once dominated the landscape when the Colorado flowed through a healthy delta.
In 2019, AZPM produced a story on revitalizing the Colorado River delta five years after the 2014 pulse flow.
“These NGOs actually have nurseries on site, in which they germinate an array of Sonoran Desert riparian plants. Those seedlings are then planted and carefully irrigated according to the habitat needs,” said Martha Gomez-Sapiens, a U of A research scientist and co-author on the study. “In some cases you will see irrigation drip lines that go to each individual tree – a system designed to maximize water efficiency in this desert environment.”
Subsequent creation, irrigation and maintenance of 1,381 acres of riparian vegetation attracted birds and other wildlife. Deliveries to the river channel raised water tables, supported existing vegetation and increased the length of the flowing river.
In addition, local communities have benefited from recreational, educational and job opportunities. All three restoration sites have visitor programs that cater to local communities and schools, and one – the Laguna Grande complex, managed by the Tucson-based Sonoran Institute – even boasts a visitor center. All offer recreational opportunities in a region dominated by water scarcity.
While the pulse flow of 2014 demonstrated the feasibility of revitalizing former habitats with controlled and planned water releases, the authors conclude that releasing large amounts of water during a limited timeframe has limited benefits for a long-term revitalization of the delta.
“Most of the pulse flow water infiltrated into the groundwater before it could be used by new vegetation,” Flessa said. “Since then, we have learned how to use the water more efficiently for restoration of riparian habitat.”
Importantly, the report points out that restoration sites are not self-sustaining. Revitalizing degraded river habitat will require continuing maintenance, occasional water allocations and monitoring.
According to the authors, just 6,890 acre-feet per year, which represents approximately 0.05% of the Colorado’s total annual average flow, would suffice to preserve the existing restoration sites. With a little more water and a little more funding, the number or size of the sites could be increased even more, according to the report.
“Effective and sustainable habitat restoration can be done with a little bit of water, a small amount of funding and a lot of hard work.” Flessa said.
Other co-authors on the report are Eduardo González-Sargas in the Department of Biology at Colorado State University and Roberto Real Rangel, of The Nature Conservancy in Mexicali, Mexico.
Archuleta County adopts septic system requirements — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Clayton Chaney). Here’s an excerpt:
July 1, 2026
The Archuleta County Board of Health (BoH) held a special meeting on June 15 to consider approval of Regulation 43, pertaining to on-site wastewater treatment system (OWTS), also known as septic systems…
According to the regulation attached to the meeting agenda, “The purpose of these Regulations is to establish the minimum standards for the location, design, construction, performance, installation, alteration, and use of OWTS with a design capacity equal to or less than 2,000 gallons per day within the Jurisdiction.”
[…]
It also states that the regulations apply to all OWTS in the unincorporated areas of the county and over all municipal corporations within the territorial limits of Archuleta County.
Furthermore, it explains that an “OWTS permit must not be issued to any person when the subject property is located within a municipality or special district that provides public sewer service, except where such sewer service to the property is not feasible according to the determination of the municipality or special district, or the permit is otherwise authorized by the municipality or special district.”
The document explains that Archuleta County Water Quality Department “may enter upon a private property at reasonable times and upon reasonable notice for the purpose of determining whether or not an operating OWTS is functioning in compliance with the OWTS Act and applicable regulations adopted pursuant thereto and the terms and conditions of any permit issued and to inspect and conduct tests in evaluating any permit application.”
Some good #ColoradoRiver news, some bad news, and a request for help — John Fleck (InkStain.net) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
June 18, 2026
A grab bag from my friends and colleagues working on Colorado River issues….
The good news
From friend of Inkstain Karl Flessa (the guy who helped get me started thinking about the Colorado River Delta), a new analysis concluding that despite the terrible hydrology and political difficulties, environmental restoration work in the delta is working:
The bad news
The minimum amount during this period occurred in mid-March 2023, when total storage was less than
at any time since late May 1965. The amount of increase or decrease in total Basin storage during the
accumulation and depletion periods of each year are shown. Updated to June 14, 2026. Credit: Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River
A request for help
And from friends of Inkstain Jason Robison, Matt McKinney, and Doug Kenney, a request for your input on a survey of folks attitudes toward the Colorado River Post-2026 management process.
USDA chief: Give me more cattle in the national forests!; Plus a Messing with Maps look back at the summer of 1776 — Jonathan P. Thompson
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
July 3, 2026
🐮 Grazing Gazette 🥩
Last month, U.S. Agriculture Department Undersecretary Michael Boren issued a memo, with a preamble by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, to Forest Service employees directing them on “advancing grazing on Forest Service” lands. It’s a curious, sometimes alarming memo. And, as is customary for the Trump administration, its authors are a bit confused about history.
While most public lands grazing occurs on Bureau of Land Management land, the memo reminds us that national forests also host more than 2 million cattle, sheep, and horses and burros. The current administration desperately wants more livestock on America’s forests, although it’s not clear why.
The memo directs the agency’s staff to streamline the permitting process, to treat public lands1 ranchers with deference and respect, and to bring more “flexibility” to prairie dog “management,” which I assume means they want more efficient ways to kill the animals. It also guides line officers to offer up unallocated forage “to the maximum extent possible” and work to “solicit interest/applications from the eligible ranching community” to occupy vacant and closed grazing allotments. The goal? To add 500,000 head months2 of cattle and other livestock to national forest lands over the next two years, purportedly in part to “maintain the fabric of rural America.”
The fabric of rural America very well may be frayed, but throwing a bunch of half-ton methane dispensers onto drought-addled national forests to gobble up what grass and wildflowers remain in high-country meadows, trample stream banks, sully trout habitat, and make a mess out of trails, isn’t going to repair it.
Boren acknowledges that grazing on national forests has declined over the last 60 years in part due to “changing rangeland conditions” and “catastrophic wildfire and variable moisture levels.” But he seems oblivious to the fact that in most of the West, moisture levels remain at an all time low, and putting livestock on that land would not only lead to some pretty skinny cows, but also would further decimate the drought-stressed soils and vegetation.
Ranchers nationwide are actually thinning their herds due to drought and rising overhead costs, and cattle numbers are at record lows this year despite high beef prices. That reduces the chances that Boren will actually have many takers for the vacant allotments.
Still, it’s concerning. With the top brass pressuring the entire agency to pull out all of the stops to get more livestock on the forests, it’s not hard to imagine a district ranger succumbing and permitting a vacant allotment — even one that a conservation organization bought out from a willing rancher to help wildlife or reduce conflicts.
Rollins, meanwhile, seems confused about the origins of the agency she oversees. She writes:
But she doesn’t seem to consider what Congress was trying to “protect” the forests from, because in the next paragraph she writes: “From those early beginnings, grazing has been an integral part of our nation’s national forests …” Yeah, not quite. Let’s step back a bit, shall we?
During the early and mid-1800s, the United States stole, conquered, purchased, or acquired by treaty hundreds of millions of acres of land in the West and declared it the “public domain.” The government then went about “disposing” of the land, giving it away or selling it for virtually nothing via the Homestead Act, the General Mining Act, the Pacific Railway Act, the Desert Land Act, and so forth. By the end of the 1880s, huge tracts of public land had been handed over to the railroads, to mining interests, to states, and to homesteaders, yet across the West hundreds of millions of acres still remained in the public domain, and nearly all of those lands were open to unrestricted grazing, timber-cutting, and the devastation that came with them.
Gifford Pinchot would later describe the period like this:
Albert Potter, the USFS’s first chief of grazing, called the 1880s the era of “spoilation,” writing:
Unfettered livestock grazing wasn’t just diminishing the forage, but also wrecking watersheds. In southeastern Utah, the big livestock companies, notably the New Mexico and Kansas Land and Cattle Company, ran thousands of cattle and sheep across the once abundant grasslands on the slopes of the Abajo and La Sal Mountains, reducing them to denuded, dusty, gullied, flash-flood-prone wastelands. At one point, allegedly out of spite, the Carlisle livestock concern turned out thousands of sheep on the upper branches of Montezuma Creek, Monticello’s source for drinking water. Bacteria from the sheep feces contaminated the water, leading to a typhoid outbreak in Monticello that killed eleven people.
In hopes of mitigating the wreckage, in 1891 Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, giving the president the authority to withdraw areas from the public domain3 as forest reserves, to be overseen by the Interior Department. Six years later Congress passed the Forest Management or Organic Administrative Act, which gave the previous law some teeth by providing a framework for managing the reserves. In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt transferred management of the reserves to the Department of Agriculture and named the agency the Forest Service, appointing Gifford Pinchot as his chief forester.
Together, Pinchot and Roosevelt represented a major shift in the way the government managed and society perceived and treated the public lands. Roosevelt set aside some of the nation’s most cherished landmarks as national monuments. Pinchot believed that humans should utilize the forests and grasslands but that they should do so in a more sustainable manner so as to save some of the timber and forage for future generations. This conservationist ethos came to be known as Pinchotism, a term spit derogatorily by western politicians who were beholden to the extractive industries, such as Republican senator Weldon Heyburn from Idaho. Employing the same rhetoric that would later be used by the Sagebrush Rebels, Heyburn derided the forest reserve laws, suggesting that they amounted to theft of the “people’s forests.”
The question of livestock grazing on the forest lands was a contentious one for years. Under the Forest Reserve Act, grazing was effectively banned on the new reserves. After the Organic Act passed, the General Land Office began permitting grazing by cattle and horses, but not sheep — which were generally seen as far more destructive4— on the condition that it didn’t harm the forests. Eventually, Pinchot succumbed to the sheep industry lobby and grudgingly allowed grazing on some forests, causing a schism between him and John Muir, who was strongly opposed to sheep in forests.
Over the ensuing years, the Forest Service developed a grazing policy, permitting system, and set fees — very low ones — based on the number of animals, much to livestock operators’ dismay. This was in stark contrast to the lands in the public domain, where grazing remained a free-for-all until Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934.
These minimal restraints, however, were not enough to stop the destruction. In the years following World War I, Forest Service officials found that grazing was still wreaking havoc on vegetation and spawning more erosion. Yet every time they tried to reduce the number of livestock on the land, they were hit with legal challenges, lobbying campaigns, and political pressure.
Ultimately the backlash to Pinchotism elevated Warren G. Harding, a friend to the industries that wanted free rein over the public lands, to the presidency. Harding chose Albert Bacon Fall to be his interior secretary, who immediately went about rolling back regulations and doing his best to erase the legacy left by Pinchot and Roosevelt, including opening up the public domain and Indian land to coal mining and oil and gas drilling. While Trump and his minions like to compare themselves to Teddy Roosevelt, in reality they much more closely resemble Harding and Fall.
A number of ferocious wildfires continue to rage across the Interior West. One of the largest is the Babylon Fire in Bears Ears National Monument, which had grown to over 81,000 acres as of Thursday night. It’s also on Forest Service land and is burning through some large, active grazing allotments, including the Babylon, Gooseberry, Twin Springs, and Cottonwood, and looks like it’s making its way onto some BLM allotments as well.
The Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray, Colorado, had grown to about 21,000 acres, with the Ferris Fire near Dove Creek reaching nearly 29,000 acres. Fire weather is expected to continue through the weekend.
🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭
Note: On the occasion of America’s 250th birthday, I’m rerunning this piece from a couple of years ago on the July 1776 Escalante-Dominguez expedition that occurred even as the American Revolution was unfolding far to the east.
I’ve been fascinated by maps of all sorts for as long as I remember. Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco’s map, drawn following the 1776 Escalante-Dominguez expedition, has intrigued me for nearly as long. And the more I look at old maps of the region, the more interesting this one becomes, in part because it’s far more accurate, especially in its depictions of the Four Corners Country, than maps made a century later by U.S. surveyors.
In July of 1776, Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a couple of Franciscan priests, headed out with a motley crew from Santa Fe in search of a route to California. Instead, they ended up going up what is now Colorado’s Western Slope and through the heart of Ute territory, across to the Great Salt Lake, dropping down through western Utah, and finally looping — somewhat erratically — back to Santa Fe. But if they didn’t find California, they did leave behind relatively detailed journals and maps that give us insight into what the region looked like prior to the Euro-American invasion, and into early European colonists’ perception of the region.
The party set out from the Pueblo of Santa Rosa de Abiquiu, on the first day of August, effectively leaving the Spanish Empire. The country beyond was the domain of the Weenuchiu, Tabeguache, Caputa, and Mouache bands of Ute. Not wanting to provoke the Ute people any more than necessary — they had made that mistake before — the Spanish Crown forbade settlers from wandering into the territory of or trading with the Utes.
Still, the path they followed was well-established. Juan Rivera had travelled it a decade earlier, and he had followed well-established routes through a land that had been inhabited for millennia, and that had been intimately mapped in the collective consciousness of oral histories. Rivera probably wasn’t even the first Spaniard to tread these paths; mavericks defied the travel and trade ban to acquire deerskins or to try their luck in the mineralized slopes of the high San Juan Mountains. The Spanish mavericks, in turn, were merely following paths already well trodden by Ute, Diné, Paiute, and Pueblo travelers long before.
So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that current day routes more or less follow Escalante’s and Dominguez’s path. From Abiquiu the party traveled northwest, roughly following Hwy. 84 about to Los Ojos/Tierra Amarilla, which they described as:
This sort of assessment of a site’s suitability for a settlement is common in Escalante’s journals. Most places he deemed good for a village now have a village on them, from Arboles to Ignacio to Dolores to Hotchkiss, though none would be established for another century or more after Escalante’s journey.
They then cut westward, meeting up with the Navajo River near Dulce, which originates in what they called the Sierra de la Grulla, or the Mountains of the Cranes — now known as the South San Juans. Later they note that the headwaters of the Rio de Los Pinos are in the Sierra de la Plata, indicating that the entirety of what we now think of as the Western San Juans were then called the La Plata Mountains. When they reach the confluence with the San Juan River near Carracas, they write:
They called their camp “Nuestra Señora de las Nieves,” or Our Lady of the Snows, because they could see snow-capped peaks from there. This seems odd given that it was early August and they would have been looking at the south faces of the San Juans, where the snow should have melted months earlier. Maybe 1776 was a cold year, because later, they describe the passage between Durango and Hesperus like this: “the terrain is very moist, since it rains very frequently because of its proximity to the Sierra; as a result, both in the mountain forest — which consist of very tall and straight pines, scrub oak, and several kinds of wild fruits — and in its narrow valleys there are the prettiest of pastures. The climate here is excessively cold even in the months of July and August.”
They make it to the Big Bend of the Dolores River and then do some bending of their own, deviating from their westward course by 90 degrees for reasons I can’t figure out. Were their guides trying to avoid the rugged Canyon Country of southern Utah? Were they blindly following the path of their predecessor, Rivera? For whatever reason, they ended up heading north, encountering the Dolores River a second time near Cahone and a third time near Slick Rock.
The party tried to follow the Dolores River downstream (north), but was stymied by the narrow, twisty gorge, writing: “The canyon we named El Laberinto de Miera because of the varied and pleasing scenery of rock cliffs which it has on either side and which, for being so lofty and craggy at the turns, makes the exit seem all the more difficult the farther one advances.” They turned eastward into the Big Gypsum valley, then toward Naturita and Nucla, before crossing the Uncompahgre Plateau where they found “deer and roe and other animals breed, and certain chicken fowl the size and shape of the common domestic ones, from which they differ in not having combs. Their flesh is very tasty.”
They dropped down to what they call the El Rio de San Francisco north of Montrose and that the “Yutas” call Ancapagri — i.e. Uncompahgre — or “Red Lake”, “because they say that near its source there is a spring of red-colored water, hot and ill-tasting.”
It seems that part of the reason Miera’s maps somewhat accurately depict areas the party never journeyed to is because they spoke with the Indigenous people who intimately knew the country. This is in sharp contrast to U.S. maps drawn a century later, which depict much of southeastern Utah as a big blank spot, with the San Juan River vanishing into the desert after passing the Four Corners. Miera y Pacheco’s map, meanwhile, accurately shows the stream meeting up with the Colorado in Glen Canyon.
That said, Miera y Pacheco does make some errors. He has the Gunnison River (San Xavier) running into the Dolores River near the present site of Gateway (passing through the Unaweap Gorge, perhaps?), and his maps appear to have the Green River (Rio San Buenaventura) flowing through the Wasatch Range and into Utah Lake.
At Montrose the party again took an odd route, going up the Gunnison River, in a northeasterly direction, rather than following it downstream to the northwest, up and over Sierra del Venado Alazan (Mountain of the Sorrel-Colored Deer), or Grand Mesa, before getting back on course (sort of) and making their way to the Great Salt Lake. It wasn’t until that point, when winter was starting to set in, that they realized maybe they should have taken a different route, and that Monterey, their final destination, was still a long ways off.
So they went south, all the way down to St. George, before turning back to the east, Santa Fe-bound. This is where it gets interesting, because their guides were not familiar with the country (what we would now call the Arizona strip) they were headed for. And yet, even though their route-finding was sometimes determined by drawing lots, they somehow managed to encounter the Colorado River at one of the few places they could get down to it, just downstream from the Paria River. Crossing the river, itself, wasn’t so easy.
So they built a raft of logs, and “Father Fray Silvestre, accompanied by the servants, tried to cross the river; but although the poles they used to propel it were about five yards long, they did not touch bottom even a short distance from the bank.”
It was late October by then and, “Not knowing when we would be able to leave this place, and having already eaten up the meat of the first horse, the pine kernels and the other provisions we had bought, we ordered another horse killed.” Desperate, they hiked up the Paria until they were able to climb up to the plateau, then dropped back down to the Colorado River in Glen Canyon in a place they called San Diego. Finally they found a place where the canyon and river widened — now inundated by Lake Powell — and they were able to cross. After climbing out of the canyon: “We found today many Indian tracks, but saw no one. So many wild sheep flourish here that their tracks look like great herds of domestic sheep. They are smaller than the domestic variety, of the same shape but much swifter.”
The party finally reached Santa Fe and in the ensuing years Miera y Pacheco created at least two maps of the country they had traveled through.
1 When I use the term “public lands” I’m referring not only to BLM lands, but also to national forests, national parks and monuments, and national wildlife refuges.
2 Head Month is the U.S. Forest Service term for a cow-calf pair eating public forage for one month. It’s similar to an Animal Unit Month on BLM land.
3 When land is “withdrawn” from the public domain, it simply means that it is no longer available for “disposal.” That is, it can’t be privatized via homesteads or mining claims.
4 During a meeting with Colorado stockmen in 1905 to discuss grazing fees, Teddy Roosevelt reportedly pounded the arm of his chair with his fist and declared: “Gentlemen, sheep are destructive.”
Happy Independence Day!
#Climate, conflagrations, and calamities: Plus: A little meditation on the water-energy-ag nexus — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Three federal firefighters were killed and two seriously injured when the Knowles and Gore fires overtook them southwest of Grand Junction near the Utah-Colorado line. The fires joined with others to become the Snyder Fire, which had grown to 30,000 acres as of Monday.
The fatalities were the tragic result of what has become a downright terrifying wildfire situation in the Interior West, with more than a dozen 1,000-acre-plus blazes tearing through forests in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico during the last days of June. Without substantial and soaking rainfall soon, it’s likely to get even worse.
The fury of these conflagrations is evident in their rapid rate of growth.
The Babylon Fire within Bears Ears National Monument, for example, was first reported on the afternoon of June 26 on Elk Ridge north of the Bears Ears Buttes. By the evening of June 29 it was mapped at over 48,000 acres and was spreading northward. The National Park Service closed the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park as a result and the Manti-La Sal National Forest shut down the entire Elk Ridge area.
Further east, in Colorado, the Ferris Fire was first reported late on June 27 just north of the Dolores River along the Dolores and Montezuma county line. It quickly tore through piñon and juniper, then scrub oak and ponderosa forest toward the Disappointment Valley, and had reached about 20,600 acres as of Monday night.
The Gold Mountain Fire, apparently ignited when a tree fell on a powerline, was first reported Saturday afternoon near the Bachelor Syracuse Mine Tour north of Ouray. By Monday night it was over 8,300 acres and had forced evacuations and the closure of Highway 550.
Instagram video here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DaKFedwOcXQ
On the eastern side of the Divide the Aspen Acres Fire grew to 23,000 acres in less than 24 hours, driven through a parched landscape by 100-mile-per-hour winds, and was threatening the towns of Beulah and Rye. The Willow Fire in Lake County is at a relatively small 1,900 acres, but is perilously close to Leadville.
Many factors contribute to the intensity, size, and frequency of the fires, from decades of fire suppression, to human encroachment in forests, to flammable noxious weed infestations. But the biggest driver of this regional calamity is clearly the hot, dry weather, which has been exacerbated by human-caused climate change.
Winter was an utter dud as far as the snowpack was concerned, in large part because of the unusually high temperatures. The hot, dry weather continued into the spring — with July-like temps at the end of March — sucking moisture from the soil and vegetation, and pushing huge swaths of the Interior West into severe to extreme drought conditions. Throw in gusty wind and a June heat wave — nearly 1,000 daily high temperature records were tied or broken in the West this month — and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
There have been hot and dry years in the past, along with catastrophic wildfires: In 1879 the Lime Creek Burn charred 26,000 high-country acres south of Silverton, burning through what later became known as the “asbestos forest” due to its apparent blaze-resistance.
Back then, however, 1879-like dry and warm years were anomalous, as were mega fires. The Lime Creek Burn stood as the state’s largest blaze until 2002; now it’s not even in the top 20 for acreage burned. This year, while relatively extreme, is no outlier. The West’s temperatures have been trending upward since reliable record-keeping began some 130 years ago, and the Southwest is suffering through year 26 of an ongoing megadrought, the most severe in at least 1,200 years.
Nor is the phenomenon isolated to the arid West. A heat dome is on its way to the Midwest and East Coast. And a record-breaking heat wave has gripped much of western Europe. France has recorded over 1,000 heat-related fatalities in recent days, and was forced to shut down nuclear reactors because the rivers from which they pull their cooling waters are too warm (and the discharged water is even warmer, threatening river ecosystems).
So it’s utterly surreal to, on the one hand, breathe in the blanket of smoke that’s settling into the West’s valleys, to observe new flame icons popping up on the Watch Duty map, and see satellite imagery smoke plumes stretch across the region, and on the other to hear U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright downplay the deaths in Europe. Unlike his boss, President Trump, Wright acknowledges that human-related greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet, but he says it’s not a crisis and that its effects are “manageable.”
Wright’s disrespect for the victims, including the injured and killed firefighters in Colorado, is dumbfounding. And his willful ignorance of the science and reality on the ground in order to perpetuate Trump’s drill-baby-drill agenda and bolster oil company profits is simply sickening. The same goes for Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. His department now oversees the nation’s wildland firefighting force. And yet he is also leading the charge to deregulate the oil and gas industry and allow them to spew more planet-warming methane in order to spur more oil and gas drilling on public lands — ultimately leading to more fossil fuel burning, carbon emissions, warmer global temperatures, and more severe fires.
It reminds me a little bit of the story of the California firefighter who admitted setting dozens of fires as a job-creation scheme, allowing him and his colleagues to earn overtime pay. The difference here is that Burgum is not only playing his dangerous game with the lives of the firefighters under his command, but also with the planet as a whole.
Climate change’s coal-smudged fingerprints — Jonathan P. Thompson
One of the many things I’m interested in is the water-energy nexus: The way a coal plant requires vast amounts of water to make steam to turn turbines to generate electricity to run the pumps on the Central Arizona Project canals, for example. Now, with dry times in full-swing and electricity prices on the rise almost everywhere, the spotlight is on the water-energy-agriculture/food nexus.
In the arid West, most agriculture is of the irrigated kind. In many cases, this means relying on pumps to move the water across the land, to bring groundwater up from a well, and to pressurize sprinkler systems. And pumps require energy, in the form of electricity from the grid, from distributed solar or wind systems, or from diesel or gasoline motors or generators.
During a dry year like this one, farmers need to start irrigating earlier in the season, meaning their pumps run more often and consume more energy, which costs more money. That’s the situation Wyoming farmers and ranchers Tim Teichert and Jason Thornock are up against this year, according to a June 11 WyoFile report by Dustin Bleizeffer. These guys fork out up to $150,000 annually for electricity, the drought is pushing that bill higher, and now Rocky Mountain Power — a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway — is looking for a 37.7% rate increase on irrigators. Ouch.
Here’s where the nexus comes in: If the rate hike goes through, it will make it prohibitively expensive for other farmers to switch from flood irrigation to more efficient sprinkler systems. While this would seem to be the perfect opportunity for farmers to go solar, that’s not so easy in Wyoming, either. State law caps the size of solar arrays eligible for net metering, or the system by which the utility credits a customer for exporting excess power into the grid, at 25 kilowatts, which is far smaller than most farmers would need to power their pumps.
Down in Arizona the stakes are even higher, according to a study by Andrew Berry and Mikhail V. Chester published in 2017 in Environmental Research Letters. They highlighted the fact that in Arizona, most irrigation is powered by electricity.
The Central Arizona Project’s 15 pumping stations guzzle 2.8 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually to move water more than 300 miles from the Colorado River to the middle of the state, with a total vertical climb of about 3,000 feet. Then the farmers have to pump it from the canal to their fields and rely on pumps to power sprinkler systems. Arizona farmers that don’t rely on the canals use groundwater, which also requires pumping.
When temperatures go up or precipitation decreases, the farmers need more water, which means they also use more energy, putting more strain on the electrical grid. And even without all of those irrigation pumps churning away, heat stresses the grid in other ways, primarily because power demand surges in the afternoons, when everyone cranks up their air conditioners. Also, hot power lines are less efficient, wildfires can take out transmission lines and other electricity infrastructure, smoke diminishes solar output, and low streamflows can deplete hydropower generation.
All of this has the potential to take down the power grid, which would cause the irrigation and water-movement systems to shut down, which would affect crops and food supplies.
Over the last century and a half, especially in the years following World War II, the federal and state governments, utilities, and private interests have created huge networks for generating and moving power and for diverting, storing, and delivering water. Research and stories like the ones mentioned here just go to show how inextricably intertwined the two systems have become, how important they both are to Western communities, and how fragile they can be. Climate change — along with increasing demand — is raising the risk of a catastrophic, cascading failure in these systems, which would be calamitous for the entire region.
Explainer: Warming planet, failing grid — Jonathan P. Thompson
Oregon wildfire knocks out power line — Jonathan P. Thompson
Video: Conference on the #ColoradoRiver, “Climate & Hydrology” Day 1 — Brad Udall and Katrina Grants (Getches-Wilkinson Center) #COriver #aridification
Brad Udall always lays out the hydrology and climate in an easy to understand, and often frightening, way. This YouTube video is well worth your time, particularly if you are a climate skeptic. Our political leadership needs to start paying attention to the scientists, the Colorado River Basin is a bellwether for the future. If you add energy to a system it responds and we are adding energy (heat) to the Water Cycle. As Brad has said, “Climate Change is water change.”
In the video above Katrina Grants from Reclamation explained how her agency is planning operations of Glen Canyon Dam for the next few years and emphasized that they can operate safely with just the outlet tubes, with increased maintenance activity. The planning shows the river hydrology is the primary driver of releases rather than limitations from the tube design. “We can release the water if it is there,” she said.
Last year the agency coated the tubes with Epoxy primer – applied directly to the blasted steel for corrosion protection and adhesion and Polysiloxane topcoat – a highly durable finish that provides abrasion resistance, chemical resistance, and long-term protection in a submerged environment. The coating was applied using a robotic sprayer after robotic abrasive blasting removed the old lining. Grants said that every six months one tube will need to be taken offline for a while for inspection and repair while using the other 3 tubes for releases. So, Reclamation does not believe that modifications to the dam are necessary at this time.
#Colorado’s glittering, lush resort towns are facing severe water shortages this summer — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News) #drought #runoff
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):
June 30, 2026
Historic water shortages are drying out the scenic mountains that lie at the heart of Colorado’s tourist economy, prompting the state to issue emergency orders earlier this month allowing water to be shifted to the towns and ranches most likely to run dry.
The Colorado River District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties, is running the emergency response effort and with financial support from the Colorado Water Conservation Board has anted up nearly $1 million to make sure even towns that can’t afford it, will have access to drinking water should it be needed.
To make the plan work, the river district opted not to lease portions of the water it normally holds in two high country reservoirs, Ruedi in the Roaring Fork Basin and Wolford Mountain, near Kremmling, on a first-come, first-served basis, as it normally does. Instead, the water is being doled out based on community need, with people and food production getting the water first, according to Andy Mueller, manager of the river district.
“We had a number of requests to lease that water out, but a lot of it would have gone to wealthy gentlemen rancher … but it wouldn’t have been for the common good,” he said.
Under Colorado law, water can only be diverted, stored and used for a designated purpose, such as city drinking water, farm irrigation, environmental streamflows, and industrial uses. Water rights are also tied to seasons, with some available only in the winter or summer.
But this spring, the river district, seeking more flexibility than the laws typically allow, went to Colorado State Engineer Jason Ullmann and asked for emergency authorization to use its water supplies differently. The state agreed, giving the district until the end of August to conduct emergency releases.
At the same time, large agricultural water users in the Grand Valley agreed to cut their water use in an effort to lessen strain on the Colorado River, and protect some of the small towns and ranchers who would have been cut off otherwise.
At issue is a special pool of water that lies within Green Mountain Reservoir, near Heeney, known as the historic users pool, or the HUP. The water is meant as a backup source that allows towns to pump wells and divert from streams even when their water rights are not in priority on the giant mainstem of the Colorado River.
But this year, because of the drought, Green Mountain’s HUP isn’t projected to fill, something that hasn’t occurred since the 1960s when the pool was created to protect mountain water users who had junior water rights, according to Ullmann. The emergency order means that even without the backup from Green Mountain, these communities and ranches will be unlikely to have their water supplies cut off.
The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, which serves Vail and other small towns in Eagle County, has water in the HUP.
Working in the shadow of a nearly snowless winter, the Eagle River District moved early to enact watering restrictions, limiting outdoor use to just two days a week back in April, after March saw temperatures soar to 80 degrees and the patchy snow cover evaporate months earlier than normal.
“The writing was on the wall,” said Siri Roman, CEO of the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District. “This is a benefit of being in the headwaters and being a resort,” she said referring to the headwaters of the Colorado River. “Our whole community is so connected to snowpack and snow-water equivalencies and what that means. By February we knew there wasn’t enough snow to change the picture for us. We wanted to get to the decision-makers early and say the red lights are flashing. We need to prepare for a water shortage this summer.”
Today a banner sign on its website warns that the risk of water shortages this summer “is very high.”
Eagle residents took conservation messages seriously
In Eagle, Tom Gosiorowski, the utilities manager, was standing in Brush Creek shooting videos for the town’s Facebook page, letting its 10,000 water customers know that the stream was the community’s only source of water and it wasn’t looking good. Eagle also relies on the HUP for some of its backup supplies.
“We are really wholly dependent on the streamflow and the water that is in the creek. It’s different from the big Front Range utilities” that have reservoirs, he said.
The district is limiting outdoor water use to two days a week and is sharply limiting the filling of hot tubs and swimming pools. Gosiorowski said he expects golf courses to be restricted as well as the summer wears on.
“We could get to a point where they can only irrigate tees and greens on the golf course,” he said. “We’ve never had to reduce use, but this is so extreme that I think there will be some.”
Gosiorowski said the town was still working on worst-case scenario planning for the end of summer, when streams are normally at their driest. “It’s hard to know exactly what’s going to happen. We’ve never experienced a drought to this degree in recorded history.”
Aspen has also enacted two-day-a-week watering and is prohibiting the filling of pools and hot tubs.
Grand Lake, another community that could be impacted by the shortages at Green Mountain, is not showing signs of strain yet, though officials there are concerned about lake levels.
Grand Lake, the deepest natural lake in Colorado, is linked to two other reservoirs, Shadow Mountain and Lake Granby. All three are part of Northern Water’s Colorado-Big Thompson Project. The C-BT delivers water from the Colorado River to 1 million customers and hundreds of farms on the northern Front Range.
Mike Cassio is a citizen activist who tracks Grand Lake’s health and works with a coalition of community groups and water agencies to help manage the system. Cassio said he’s worried about late summer water levels falling.
“We know Mother Nature controls everything,” Cassio said. If levels in Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain fall too low, water quality will suffer and that “will be the biggest issue.”
Kathy Chandler-Henry sits on the river district’s board and is a former Eagle County commissioner. She said the brown hillsides and dusty streambeds are unnerving.
“Before it was never a question,” she said. “There was always snowfall, there was always water. … Nothing like this year, when it was 80 degrees in March in Vail.”
Back in the 1980s, she said she participated in some regional planning efforts to help the Western Slope learn how to manage its growth. That there could be a winter without snow was unthinkable, if not downright funny.
“One planning consultant in the workshop asked folks what it would be like without snow,” she said. “And everyone just laughed.”
Despite this summer’s deep dry spell, water users say they are encouraged by recent light rains and cool weather. Just weeks ago, the HUP was projected to barely fill at all, but now the 66,000 acre-foot pool is rising again. It recently topped 33,000 acre-feet and is expected to move higher, providing some relief.
But Mueller, of the river district, said this summer is a dress rehearsal for what lies ahead as climate change and warmer temperatures continue to hamper mountain snows and spring stream levels.
“We are just beginning to grapple with the impacts of climate change. Science indicates that 30 years from now, this year may be on the wetter side.”
Shoshone flows: A treasured heirloom for the Western Slope — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel #ColordoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the guest column on The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Marc Caitlin). Here’s an excerpt:
July 1, 2026
Last month, leaders from across Colorado’s Western Slope celebrated the release of $40 million in federal funding for the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project. At a time when Colorado is celebrating its 150th anniversary and our nation approaches its 250th birthday, this investment represents more than a funding milestone; it marks one of the most significant water preservation achievements our state has seen in generations. It also would not have happened without the determination of our congressional representative, Jeff Hurd, who made this project a priority and worked tirelessly to deliver results for the communities he serves. What Rep. Hurd understands is the same thing that has united more than 100 local, state, and federal elected officials and leaders in support of preserving these critical senior water rights: the future of the Western Slope is inseparable from the future of the Shoshone water rights. Protecting these rights protects the flows of the Colorado River, sustains our agricultural heritage, strengthens our recreation- and tourism-based economies, and helps preserve the rural communities that make this part of Colorado unique…
I believe that 150 years from now, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will look back on the Shoshone Water Rights project as a turning point. They will see a generation of leaders who understood what was at stake and chose to act. They will see communities that put aside differences, came together, and made a long-term investment in the future of the Colorado River. History will remember the Shoshone project as a major milestone in the stewardship of our most precious resources. From Western Slope ditch companies and water conservancy districts to local governments, state leaders, and members of Congress, countless individuals are still working together to turn this vision into reality. The lesson is an important one. On the Western Slope, progress happens when we pull in the same direction. It takes communities working in harness together to move mountains and sometimes to move water. And it takes elected leaders like Jeff Hurd who are willing to put their shoulders into that work. The Shoshone project demonstrates what is possible when rural Colorado speaks with one voice about protecting its water, its economy, and its future.
Western Slope lawmakers take #ColoradoRiver managers to task: Missed deadlines, threat of litigation, conservation program prompt questions — Heather Sackett (AspenJounalism.org) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
June 30, 2026
Western Slope lawmakers had harsh words for water managers at a state committee hearing last week, questioning whether Colorado has done enough to avoid a lawsuit with its downstream neighbors.
Colorado Sen. Dylan Roberts, a District 8 Democrat who represents several Western Slope counties, including Eagle, Grand, Garfield, Routt and Summit, asked Colorado’s lead negotiator, Becky Mitchell, whether the people of Colorado should have confidence that negotiations among the seven states that share the Colorado River have put the state in the best possible position. The states have been at an impasse for more than two years without a deal for future management as reservoirs continue to decline to record-low levels.
“My constituents just see fighting and intransigence,” Roberts said. “And it’s concerning to me, especially as a Western Slope lawmaker … that the strategy is just ‘Let’s hire more lawyers; we’re going to court no matter what.’ That doesn’t give me confidence, because I don’t think Colorado fares well when we go to court against Arizona and California and Nevada, throwing our fate to the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The remarks came at Thursday’s meeting of the state Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee in Denver. Along with Mitchell, in the hot seat were state engineer Jason Ullmann and Amy Ostdiek, interstate section chief at the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The three are employees of the state Department of Natural Resources and have the backing of the Attorney General’s office in negotiations.
Roberts’ line of questioning seemed prompted by recent projections that show river flows dipping below a threshold that could trigger litigation. The Lower Basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) believe that the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) are bound by the 1922 Colorado River Compact to deliver 82.5 million acre-feet of water over a 10-year rolling average. According to the Upper Colorado River Commission, the 10-year average will dip later this year to about 81.3 million acre-feet because of persistent drought.
Some experts believe that this amounts to a “tripwire” that could trigger a lawsuit from the Lower Basin states (Arizona, in particular, has been openly preparing for litigation) that could result in mandatory cuts in water use for the Upper Basin. Upper Basin water managers don’t subscribe to this interpretation, saying their states are only required not to deplete the river’s flows by more than 75 million acre-feet over 10 years.
Mitchell was reluctant to share details of Colorado’s legal strategy in a public forum, but she answered “absolutely” that her team’s work was putting Colorado in the best position. She said cutting back prematurely just to satisfy the Lower Basin’s interpretation of the century-old agreement would be bad for the state.
“If we initiate curtailment now, that is worse for Coloradans,” Mitchell said. “I think that is an important thing to remember.”
Wracked by drought, climate change and a management crisis, the situation on the river has never been more dire. The current management guidelines expire this year, and in the absence of a seven-state deal to share shortages and operate the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the feds are poised to step in. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to release a more detailed, short-term plan to manage the river for the next two years by mid-to-late summer.
State Rep. Julie McCluskie, a District 13 Democrat, said communities in her district have been living with the incredible angst, anxiety and pain of no snow and low reservoirs.
“The frustration I hear in my community is that we have missed multiple deadlines; they are becoming a funny joke,” McCluskie said. “There is such a fear about the lengthy litigation process, the fear of an outcome that is far worse for Colorado than a compromise that we have some control over.”
Conservation conversation is the ‘bare minimum’
Lawmakers also had strong words for state officials regarding conservation, saying legislators must be involved in the creation of any program.
Colorado has dabbled with pilot conservation programs in the past, but traditional programs that pay farmers and ranchers to temporarily cut back on water use remain controversial. This is especially true on the Western Slope, which has long been the target for these types of programs, and where some worry that they could harm rural communities if not done carefully. After two years of exploring how the state could set up a temporary, voluntary and compensated conservation program, officials shelved the idea in favor of focusing on drought-resilience initiatives.
“Other states out of the seven have very clear and actionable roles for their general assemblies, their legislatures,” McCluskie said. “We have less so, and yet the stakes are so high. So I beg of you, decision-makers, that it is essential that we be a part of those next steps.”
Ostdiek said that any program would need to start slow and make sure it incorporates input from people throughout the state.
“I think that we can continue to assess as we go what we might need from you all, and what a program like that might look like,” Ostdiek said. “I think what we can certainly commit to is continuing this dialogue and continuing the discussion about what we might need to make this a success.”
In 2023, Colorado lawmakers tried to force stakeholders to come up with recommendations on conservation programs by creating a statewide task force, which met 10 times over six months. But the group failed to find a consensus, with some saying it was “premature” to create a conservation program.
As part of a post-2026 framework, the Upper Basin states plan to create a “contribution” pool in Lake Powell, which could be used to help stabilize the system, keeping water levels above critical thresholds to protect hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam and acting as an insurance pool against forced cutbacks. In a May 22 letter to federal officials, the Upper Basin states said they have a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of water year 2028, but only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow.
Three Upper Basin states have different methods for contributing to this pool: Utah has its own demand management program; Wyoming lawmakers passed a law this year allowing for a conservation program; and New Mexico plans to release water from Navajo Reservoir.
But precisely how — and how much — Colorado would contribute to this pool is unclear. The state’s share of the Upper Basin’s allocation is 51.75%, meaning Colorado could be on the hook for 51,750 acre-feet.
And ensuring that saved water actually gets into a pool in Lake Powell remains part of the problem. Currently, conserved water that stays in the river can just be picked up by a downstream user, with no net gain to Lake Powell. Colorado officials say they do not have the authority to “shepherd” water past other water users to the state line unless it is specifically for compact compliance. [ed. emphasis mine]
Last year, some Delta County ranchers asked lawmakers to take up the issue and pass a law that would address this issue, allowing water users to conserve and get credit for contributing water to a Lake Powell pool. But legislators did not take up a bill in the 2026 session.
Colorado officials told lawmakers they were continuing to explore what a program might look like and whether legislation would be needed.
Roberts said conversations with the legislature should be the bare minimum if Colorado is going to have a conservation program.
“If the department or any agency of the state were to pursue a conserved consumptive use program or demand management program that used state tax dollars to pay for it and did not go through the legislature in a formal process, I imagine that all of us on this panel and many of our colleagues would raise holy hell about the unilateral decision-making coming from Denver about programs impacting all parts of the state,” Roberts said. “So, please, let’s just cut that off at my recommendation. Let’s work together on this.”
Officials opened the hearing by highlighting the impacts of this year’s severe drought on Colorado’s farmers and ranchers, noting how even some of the most senior water users will experience shortages as streamflows dwindle. Orchards in the North Fork Valley and row crops in the Uncompahgre River Valley already have unprecedented shortages.
In response to Roberts’ concerns about the failure to find a compromise among the seven states, Mitchell posed a high-stakes rhetorical question: “I would ask, ‘What else do you think we can give?’”
#Drought news July 2, 2026: Pockets of worsening drought were observed in the Four Corners States, including a notable expansion of extreme drought (D3) across the northern half of #NewMexico
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
Active weather delivered heavy showers and locally severe thunderstorms east of the Rockies, with a few exceptions. Some of the heaviest rain, locally 4 to 8 inches or more, fell from portions of the central and southern Plains into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, leading to pockets of flash flooding and lowland flooding. At least five flood-related fatalities were reported in Kentucky and Tennessee. Exceptions to the wet pattern included the western Gulf Coast region, parts of the Southeast, and an area stretching from the east-central Plains into the lower Great Lakes region. At the start of the drought-monitoring period, hot, dry weather dominated the West. However, a pattern change soon delivered cooler weather across the western U.S., along with widespread Northwestern precipitation. Wet snow blanketed some high-elevation sites in the northern Rockies. During the transition from hot to cool weather, gusty winds and low humidity levels favored wildfire ignition and rapid expansion, especially in portions of the eastern Great Basin and Four Corners States. At the end of June, more than a dozen active Western wildfires had scorched more than 10,000 acres of vegetation apiece, with the largest being the 94,000-acre Cottonwood Fire near Beaver, Utah. On June 28, three federal firefighters perished in the Knowles Fire, west of Grand Junction, Colorado…
High Plains
Like other areas in the central and eastern U.S., a patchwork quilt of showers provided drought relief in some areas. Some of the heaviest rain, occasionally accompanied by thunderstorm-driven high winds and large hail, fell in portions of all six states in the region. However, southeastern Nebraska was one area that missed all the rain. One of the most impressive outbreaks of severe weather occurred on the night of June 28-29, when a swath of wind damage stretched from northwestern Nebraska into southeastern North Dakota and beyond. An unofficial wind gust to 131 mph was clocked in Hyde County, South Dakota, while a gust to 112 mph was recorded at a mesonet station near Ree Heights in Hand County, South Dakota. Despite all the rain, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that rangeland and pastures continued to struggle. On June 28, statewide rangeland and pastures were rated 66% very poor in Nebraska, along with 63% in Colorado…
West
During the transition from hot weather to cooler conditions, gusty winds fanned recently ignited wildfires across portions of the eastern Great Basin and the Four Corners States. Fire ignition and spread was also abetted by dry thunderstorms, low humidity levels, and near-record to record-setting dry fuels. Pockets of worsening drought were observed in the Four Corners States, including a notable expansion of extreme drought (D3) across the northern half of New Mexico. In the Northwest, however, heavy precipitation—including high-elevation snow—eased drought from central Idaho into western and northern Montana. Less significant precipitation fell in the Pacific Northwest. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on June 28, Western States reporting rangeland and pastures rated at least one-half very poor to poor included Arizona (70%) and Colorado (63%), while states with topsoil moisture more than one-half very short to short were Colorado (89%), Wyoming (81%), Utah (69%), New Mexico (68%), Nevada (65%), and Oregon (62%)…
South
The South experienced a second consecutive week of widespread reductions in drought coverage. In fact, flash flooding and lowland flooding plagued some of the hardest-hit areas, including the Arklatex and the southeastern corner of Oklahoma, where 2-week rainfall totals locally exceeded 10 inches. Much of the northern tier of the region, from Oklahoma to Tennessee, also received multiple rounds of heavy rain. Although mostly dry weather prevailed in south-central Texas, some additional improvements were introduced, as impacts of recent downpours on long-term drought became more apparent. By June 28, the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated that statewide topsoil moisture in agricultural regions was 28% surplus in Louisiana…
Looking Ahead
Hot, humid weather will persist through the Independence Day weekend in most areas along and east of a line from the southern High Plains into the upper Midwest. Some of the most extreme heat will affect the middle Atlantic States, parts of which will experience multiple days with triple-digit (100-degree) heat. Although the Midwest will remain hot, temperatures in most areas will barely reach stressful thresholds (95°F of higher) for corn and soybeans entering the weather-sensitive reproductive stage of development. Furthermore, many Midwestern crops are progressing through the hot spell with adequate to locally surplus soil moisture. Meaningful precipitation during the next 5 days should be limited to parts of Florida’s peninsula and the upper Midwest; both areas could see 1 to 4 inches, with locally higher totals. Other areas of the central and eastern U.S. should receive spotty thunderstorms, while little or no rain will accompany a Western warming trend.
The NWS 6- to 10-day outlook for July 7 – 11 calls for the likelihood of hotter-than-normal weather nationwide, except for near-normal temperatures along and near the Pacific Coast, extending as far south as central California. Meanwhile, odds will be tilted toward near- or above-normal rainfall across most of the country, with drier-than-normal conditions expected to be limited to the Great Basin and environs.
#Denver sunset June 30, 2026
Utah’s legal bid to kill Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument lives on; BLM looks to open #Utah land to motorheads; and Hoback water woes — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
June 26, 2026
While the Trump administration 2.0 has so far rexfrained from trying to shrink or eliminate national monuments, its non-executive-branch proxies just keep on trying.This week the 10th Circuit federal appeals court issued a decision keeping alive Utah’s lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s 2021 re-establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments following Trump 1.0’s shrinkage of the same.
The state and Garfield and Kane counties filed one lawsuit in 2022, with the Blue Ribbon Coalition and other parties filing their own suit. In 2023, a federal court dismissed both lawsuits; that ruling was appealed.
This week’s decision confirmed the dismissal of the Blue Ribbon suit. But it also determined that presidential national monument designations under the Antiquities Act are subject to federal judicial review, and sent Utah’s case back to the district court.
***
The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with three travel management plans in Utah that will determine which roads, trails, and areas of the respective field offices’ jurisdiction are open to motorized vehicles. Given that the stated aim is to bring the plans in line with Trump’s recent executive order rescinding restrictions on motorized vehicles on public lands, we can assume that the idea here is to expand motorized access to some remote areas. The plans include:
- The Moab Field Office has released preliminary alternatives for the Dolores River Travel Management Plan on about 127,000 acres in Grand County, Utah, east of Moab and abutting the Colorado border. This would include roads along the Utah section of the Lower Dolores River, and on mesas and in canyons on either side of it. Maps of the alternatives can be found here. This one is not yet open to public comment.
- The Kanab Field Office has released a draft environmental assessment for its Trail Canyon Travel Management Plan on nearly 330,000 acres in Kane County. It is open to public input.
- And the Vernal Field Office has also released a draft review for the Dinosaur North Travel Management Plan. The public comment period is open.
***
I typically stay away from electoral politics, especially the horse-race part of it and polls and such. But sometimes a particular contest or candidate can provide a lens on bigger trends or phenomena, and so are worth looking into.
The latest race that has caught my interest is the one to replace Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who is retiring at the end of this term. Since it’s Wyoming in 2026, it’s safe to assume the winner will be a Republican (though this wasn’t always the case), meaning the primary is the contest that matters. The front-runner, I suppose, is Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump sycophant and MAGA extremist who unseated Liz Cheney back in 2022 after Cheney failed to show adequate fealty to Trump.
But it’s one of her challengers that I’m interested in: Sam Mead. Mead is a fifth-generation Wyoming rancher, comes from a long line of Republican Wyoming politicians, and is the nephew of former governor Matt Mead. Mead is young (36), charismatic, has strong conservative credentials on fiscal issues and gun-rights, and a background in engineering and business, having run a whiskey distillery in Kirby. But what really distinguishes him from his opponents is his willingness to speak out against some of Trump’s policies, and his priority on protecting public lands and keeping them in the public’s hands.
Mead, in other words, appears to be an old-school, pre-MAGA Western Republican. He reminds me a bit of Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, back before extreme polarization pulled him more and more rightward and into MAGA land. Wyoming’s primary is on Aug. 18.
The death of the pragmatic Western Republican — Jonathan P. Thompson
Meanwhile, Utah just held its primaries, with some surprising results. Utah State Senate President Stuart Adams, a Republican, was defeated by challenger Stephanie Hollist. Adams was a strong supporter of the controversial proposed Stratos Project data center complex on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake. Also, incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy trounced challenger Phil Lyman in the GOP primary for the 3rd Congressional District, with about 70% of the vote.
While Maloy was endorsed by Trump, and has plenty of extreme views, Lyman is the more MAGA of the two. And Trump pardoned Lyman after his conviction for leading an OHV rally down Recapture Canyon in the southeastern part of the state. Political consultant Taylor Morgan told the Utah News Dispatch that Lyman’s resounding defeat showed that his “very angry, very conspiracy-based, populist, toxic form of Republicanism (is) frankly wearing very thin, especially here in Utah.” Let’s hope he’s right!
I wrote Tuesday about how the Trump administration is eviscerating Biden-era oil and gas rules aimed at reducing methane emissions and ensuring companies clean up their own messes rather than foisting them onto the taxpayers. Now the changes are open for public comment.
Comment on the waste prevention rule changes here.
Comment on the oil and gas leasing changes here.
Here are a few of the changes Trump and co. are proposing:
- Bring back pre-Biden reclamation bond rates, which amount to just over $2,000 per well, which is insane, since the cost to reclaim and plug a single well easily can exceed $100,000. These numbers incentivized petroleum companies to walk away, forsake the bond, and abandon the well, leaving the tab for the taxpayers.
- Reduce the current $10 minimum per-acre bid for leasing public land to $2, restore noncompetitive leasing, and slash royalties and filing fees for oil and gas companies.
- Implement a new fee for protesting leases. And they plan to cut the 90-day public input period to just 10 days. In other words, they’re trying to cut out the public from decisions regarding public lands.
- Gut the waste prevention rule (they wanted to roll it back altogether, but chose to revise it instead because it wasn’t clear which rule would replace it) by removing limits on royalty-free flaring and killing requirements that companies develop leak detection and repair plans.
- Trump’s changes to the waste prevention rule will turn back the regulatory clock to the days when oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land vented and flared an average of 44.2 billion cubic feet annually of methane, which is usually accompanied by nasty volatile organic compounds and other dangerous compounds. That’s as bad for the climate as burning around 9 million tons of coal. But it also amounts to lighting money — your money — on fire and throwing it away. That vented methane is basically the same stuff you pay for to run your furnace, or to generate much of the electricity running through the grid. And since operators don’t pay royalties on gas they throw away, that cost American taxpayers some $166 million in lost revenue over a decade.
The result of all of this (and more) will be to rob taxpayers and sacrifice public lands and the climate to subsidize the same energy corporations that are raking in obscene profits thanks to Trump’s disastrous war on Iran. The administration argues that their proposed changes will save petroleum corporations operating on federal lands $17 million annually in compliance costs.
That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that high oil prices have driven corporation’s profits to absurd highs. During the first quarter of 2026 alone, ExxonMobil raked in $8.8 billion in underlying, adjusted profits. Somehow, I don’t think several million in compliance costs is going to deter them from drilling.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
Many of the West’s streams have entered their summer low-flow phase, a period that falls between the end of snowmelt and the beginning of the monsoon, while irrigation diversions are in full-swing. One of the most dramatic cases of this is, perhaps, the Colorado River itself as it flows through Grand Junction. This morning, the river was running at just 366 cubic feet per second near Palisade, which as reader Dave Grossman pointed out is low enough to allow someone to walk across the sprawling river bed.
Some other notably low flows:
- Animas River in Farmington, NM: 104 cfs.
- Dolores River at Bedrock, CO: .76 cfs (effectively dry)
- White River near Watson, UT: 76.4 cfs
- Green River above Flaming Gorge: 551 cfs
- Green River below Flaming Gorge: 1,590 cfs
- San Juan River near Caracas, CO (above Navajo Reservoir): 85 cfs
- Colorado River near Hite, UT: 4,300 cfs
This has reduced daily average inflows into Lake Powell to about 4,800 cfs and dropping. It would be much lower than that, except that flows are being bolstered by upstream reservoir releases. Either way, inflows are far less than Glen Canyon Dam releases, which are averaging about 8,500 cfs daily (approx. 6,500 cfs at night and 10,600 cfs during the day). This disparity, exacerbated by reservoir evaporation, is lowering Lake Powell’s surface level, which currently sits at about 3,526.75 feet. Without substantial upstream rain, it will likely drop to 3,520 feet by early August.
📖 Reading (and watching) Room 🧐
Matt Jenkins wrote an excellent overview for the Water Education Foundation of the potential “Grand Bargain” on the Colorado River, which would require both the Upper and Lower basins to give up some of their Colorado River Compact claims not only to keep the system from collapsing, but also to avoid litigation.
The piece lays out the fact that the Compact is not only outdated, but also internally conflicted, in that it apportions the Upper Basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year, while also obligating it to allow the same amount of water to flow to the Lower Basin annually. That’s just not possible these days, given that there’s far less than 15 MAF in the river.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
Southeastern Utah is known mostly as a mining hotspot for uranium, copper, with lithium emerging more recently. But it also hosts a potash extraction industry, and at least one company is looking to expand the potash footprint. Sage Potash says it has secured permits from Utah and San Juan County to begin drilling at is Sage Plain Potash project.
While this is only exploratory drilling, it’s notable in that it’s not occurring in the Lisbon Valley or near existing potash sites near Moab. Rather it is on the Great Sage Plain southeast of Monticello, in the archaeologically rich zone north of Hovenweep National Monument.
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Yet another reason to worry about spewing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere via fossil fuel burning: It can exacerbate acid mine drainage, the phenomenon that leads to toxic heavy metal loading in streams and other waterways. That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study published in Communications Earth & Environment this April.
Acid mine drainage occurs when a mine excavation exposes once-buried sulfide-bearing rocks such as iron pyrite (FeS2) to oxygen and water. The hydrogen, sulfide, and oxygen come together to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Thus, the water becomes acidic, or its pH drops. The acidity dissolves heavy metals and the water picks them up. As the pH level of the water drops below 4.8, acidophilic bacteria begin feeding off the metals, releasing more acid into the solution and causing metal loading to occur up to 1 million times faster than in water with higher pH. Metal loading is bad for fish and other aquatic life.
The study found that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enhance the acidophilic bacterial activity, which accelerates iron and sulfur oxidation, acid formation, and metal loading. Zinc and cadmium, both of which are harmful to aquatic life, are more sensitive than other metals to rising carbon dioxide levels. Zinc loading is especially problematic in the Upper Animas watershed in southwestern Colorado.
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Okay, I really don’t care that Anfield bought its first underground haul truck for its Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley of southeastern Utah. But I found this press release interesting for another tidbit: The haul truck was built by Young’s Machine Company, located in Monticello, Utah. I never knew Monticello had this sort of manufacturing industry. I gotta say, it’s kind of cool.
🚣🏽 Water Watch 🌊
Water Quality in the Greater Yellowstone
A Guest Post by Robert Frodeman
Four million people visit Teton County, Wyoming, each year. They come to hike, float, and ski, snap pictures under the elk antler arches, and to partake in the myths of the American West. As the sign at the top of Teton Pass says, “Welcome Stranger. Yonder is Jackson Hole, the Last of the Old West.” Visitors expect to find a pristine environment. They don’t expect water quality problems reminiscent of a developing nation.
Teton County has some of the best drinking water in the country. Or most of Teton County does: Hoback, in the southern part of the County, has a nitrate problem. Nitrate is a health risk — most acutely to infants under six months, in whom nitrate is converted to nitrite by gut bacteria, interfering with oxygen transport in the blood and causing methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome). Many of the water systems in Hoback are on their last legs: two weeks ago, I had no running water and then a boil order at my home.
Jackson is the town, Jackson Hole is the valley that runs north of town in front of the Tetons. (‘Hole’ was what mountain men called a valley.) If you drill 20,000 feet into the valley floor you will hit the same sandstone layer that sits on top of the Tetons. This implies that the Tetons have risen some 25,000 feet over the last 10 million years.
Of course, mountains come down as they go up: the Tetons have been shedding sediment across all that time, piling up thousands of feet of gravel on the valley floor. Still more gravel was brought by the glaciers that flowed down from the Yellowstone Plateau. The Snake River meanders in front of the Tetons, but much of the river passes unseen below the surface, forming what is known as the Snake River Aquifer.
In effect, Jackson and Jackson Hole sit on top of a huge bathtub filled with gravel and water. This provides an abundant source of high-quality water for the town. But the bathtub only extends so far. The southern rim of the tub comes up at Munger Mountain five miles south of town. This is where the Yellowstone glacier stopped, and where the Snake River Canyon begins, which runs for 30 miles to Alpine and the Mormon communities of Star Valley.
Hoback lies four miles south of Munger Mountain — beyond the reach of the aquifer. Local residents must drill for their water. Local wells reach 200 feet down to the Bear River Formation. The water isn’t ideal – it’s brackish and can have a distinct sulfur smell (as do some of the local hot springs). The groundwater is also contaminated from horse farms and pig farms and (mainly) septic tanks and leach fields. Septic tanks can leak, and there is not enough biotic activity at this elevation and latitude for leach fields to function well. The result is nitrate levels in our drinking water which sometimes exceed EPA daily maximums.
Hoback is distinctive not only because of its geology. The billionaires live elsewhere in the County. There are two trailer parks nearby. Historically, local politicians have directed their attention to the Town of Jackson, Wilson, and the ski resort of Teton Village. But this has changed in recent years. Carlin Gerard of the Teton Conservation District formed a Hoback Stakeholders Group in 2019 to highlight drinking water problems. Covid disrupted that effort, but then a local non-profit called Protect Our Water Jackson Hole brought its energy and resources to southern Teton County.
In 2023 Hoback residents formed a water and sewer district. The district has now raised $7 million from the County and the State to build a municipal drinking water system. Water will be drawn from the Snake River just above the confluence with the Hoback. Construction should begin this fall and be done in a year or two depending on the weather.
At first it will only serve 125 residents: the district was made small out of fear of opposition. Teton County is solid blue, but past attempts had failed because of Hoback’s history of Red State, don’t-tread-on-me politics. In any case, it turned out that the demographic transition had already occurred: when the election was held the vote was 36-0 in favor. And there are now plans to annex a new affordable housing development that Teton County hopes will help address the local housing shortage.
Of course, the new system will only isolate residents from the nitrate problem. The environment will remain polluted, and people outside the district will still be on wells. The district has begun to price out a wastewater system, which is liable to be quite expensive. But you’d hope for nothing less for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem – and officials would hate to see an article in the New York Times about Teton County’s leaky septic systems.
Report: Purpose-Driven #Climate Data Selection and Application Case Studies for Water Managers, Planners, and Modelers — Jeff Lukas and Julie Vano
Click the link to access the report (Jeff Lukas and Juli Vano). Here’s an excerpt:
As water utilities expand climate considerations across business functions and climate hazards—amid a rapidly growing landscape of climate model datasets—selecting data that are truly “fit for purpose” has become increasingly complex. To address this, the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA) Climate Modeling Work Group sought to develop several case studies that would illuminate the factors behind the selection, processing, and application of climate model datasets in planning analyses.
The purpose of the case studies was not to identify general “best practices” or create formal guidance, which has been done elsewhere (here,1 here,2 and here3). Rather, it was to capture the specific circumstances and priorities that drove each utility’s decisions—what climate data to use, in what ways, and for what analyses—providing practical, real-world examples for other utilities to learn from. The case studies were informed by interviews with key utility staff and consultants as well as supporting project documents.
Each of the four case studies follows a WUCA member utility through selecting and processing climate model data, establishing a data workflow, conducting project analyses, and applying the results to planning and decision-making. Three of the projects centered on future water supply and/or demand, and the fourth focused on infrastructure flood risk. Two projects were complete at the time of writing, and the other two were in their final phases. Each case study begins with a brief overview of the utility, followed by sections addressing:
- Project context
- Project methods, including data selection and processing
- Results of the analyses
- Use of results in decision support (intended and realized)
- Lessons learned
Each case study also includes links to additional resources that describe the project, climate data, and workflow—such as utility reports and peer-reviewed studies—and a utility contact for further questions.
In all four projects, the workflows began with an ensemble of runs from 15 to 35 CMIP5 or CMIP6 climate models. From there, they followed quite different paths in processing those model runs to construct discrete climate and hydrology scenarios for the subsequent impact modeling (Table 1), illustrating that there is no one “right” approach to using climate models to effectively inform planning. Unsurprisingly, the results from all four projects showed the potential for greater climate-related stresses and risks to the utility in the decades ahead—more severe droughts, larger flood events, reduced water supply, and/or increased water demand.
Simpson first witness in state water trial: Testimony centers on overpumping fees and other options for groundwater irrigators under the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 — AlamosaCitizen.com #SanLuisValley #RioGrande
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website:
June 29, 2026
Rio Grande Water Conservation District General Manager Cleave Simpson testified it’s not a foregone conclusion that groundwater irrigators would pay the $500 per acre-foot fee for overpumping but have other options under the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1.
Simpson was the first to take the witness stand Monday in a state water trial that will determine if the Subdistrict 1 plan will go into effect. The plan, which calls for Subdistrict 1’s groundwater withdrawals not to exceed the amount of natural surface water that comes into the Upper Rio Grande Basin, has been approved by the state engineer and now is being tested in state water court.
Opponents to the plan argue the state engineer’s review was not thorough, did not follow Colorado water law and should not be allowed to go into effect. Other opponents have more nuanced arguments around surface water credits.
The linchpin to the subdistrict’s Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management is the overpumping fee, which some farmers and ranchers argue will put them out of business. Simpson testified that groundwater irrigators can purchase surface water credits from neighboring operations or submit their own plan of augmentation for approval from the state without incurring the subdistrict’s overpumping fee.
A 2018 letter sent by then-State Engineer Kevin Rein that warned of mass groundwater curtailment without progress on the unconfined aquifer “created a heightened sense of urgency,” within the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and Subdistrict 1, Simpson testified.
The federal government’s voluntary Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program became one program the water conservation district shifted into to reduce the amount of productive acres farmed. A Fourth Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 became another, Simpson said.
The water trial comes three and a half years after the subdistrict water management plan was adopted by Simpson’s Rio Grande Water Conservation District board. The effort is tied to recovering the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and restoring it to sustainable levels.
A group of subdistrict irrigators organized under the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group are opposing the plan. They irrigate on 11,000 acres in the Center area. Also in opposition are owners of the L Cross Ranch, who rely on La Garita Creek and Carnero Creek as water sources in addition to their own groundwater pumping.
The trial will continue through July.
U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on water battle between #Colorado and #Nebraska: #SouthPlatteRiver litigation comes as neighboring state pursues long-considered Perkins County Canal — The #Denver Post
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
June 29, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on a legal battle over one of Colorado’s critical water sources as a neighboring state seeks to use more water from the South Platte River. The nation’s highest court on Monday announced it would hear the case, in which Nebraska officials claim Colorado water administrators are violating a century-old water compact by failing to send enough of the river’s water across the border. They also say Colorado officials are interfering in the neighboring state’s efforts to build a canal that would allow it to take more of the river’s water. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Monday denied Nebraska officials’ allegations that the Centennial State was violating the 1923 South Platte River Compact.
“Colorado is complying with the South Platte River Compact and not interfering with Nebraska’s efforts to build the Perkins County Canal,” Weiser said in a statement. “Today’s court decision merely opens the door for Nebraska to bring its claims against Colorado. Nebraska’s burden to prove those claims is incredibly high and we will vigorously defend Colorado’s full entitlements under the compact.”
Nebraska officials last year surprised Colorado leaders by taking their allegations to the Supreme Court. The two states had been meeting for months to discuss the proposed canal project. The Supreme Court asked the Office of the Solicitor General to weigh in on whether it should take the case. In May, the federal office — tasked with representing federal interests at the Supreme Court — argued that the court should decide Nebraska’s claim that Colorado is not sending enough water over the state border, but deny consideration of Nebraska’s other issues…Controversy over compact-obligated water deliveries between two states is a “quintessential” Supreme Court question, the brief states. The solicitor general’s office suggested appointing a special master — a subject-matter expert outside of the nine justices — to handle the issue. The solicitor general’s brief argues that the Supreme Court should not hear Nebraska’s arguments that Colorado is obstructing its efforts to build the Perkins County Canal because, the office said, Nebraska has not identified any actions by Colorado officials that have substantially interfered in the project. Other potential canal-related problems identified by Nebraska are hypothetical, the solicitor general said, as the state has just begun the permitting process and, therefore, is not ready for Supreme Court consideration. It’s unclear which issues the Supreme Court will consider as it hears the case. The order Monday allows Nebraska to file its complaint against Colorado.
What if the Department of the Interior focused on buying out the water rights of large-scale forage producers, first?
By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
If the U.S. Department of the Interior (through the Bureau of Reclamation), decided that the most immediate way to stabilize water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell was for them to release less water, one way to achieve that would be to start buying up the water rights of farms in the Lower Basin. While this would save an amazing amount of water it would come at the expense of rural agricultural economies and domestic food production. But if the Bureau of Reclamation acted “surgically” and bought up water rights from major forage producers first, it would primarily disrupt only the livestock and dairy industries.
Key Benefits
Maximum “Bang for the Buck” Water Savings
Eliminates the largest single drain. Alfalfa is an incredibly water-thirsty crop which often requires up to 4 to 5 acre-feet of water per acre annually. A targeted buyout of just a portion of forage land could entirely wipe out the river’s structural deficit, leaving millions of acre-feet in Lake Mead.1
Saves vegetables for people. The Lower Basin (especially the Imperial and Yuma valleys) produces roughly 90% of the United States’ winter leafy greens. Leaving these high-value food crops untouched avoids an immediate national grocery crisis.2
More productive use of water. Fruit orchards and fresh vegetables generate much higher economic revenue per gallon of water than forage crops, preserving the highest-yield sectors of the agricultural economy.3
Easier target for public policy. Public and political support is much easier to secure when buyouts target cattle feed – a large portion of which is exported overseas to countries like Japan, China, and Saudi Arabia, rather than the reduction of fresh food for American families.4
Key Detriments
Negatively impacts Southwest Dairy and Beef Industries
Triggers a regional feed shortage. California and Arizona are major dairy producers. Local dairies rely heavily on a constant, nearby supply of fresh alfalfa to sustain milk production.5
Drives up dairy and meat prices. Moving forage production out of the Southwest forces dairies to truck feed from other states. The increased transportation costs will drive up consumer prices for milk, cheese, and beef.6
Eliminates operational flexibility. Farmers often use alfalfa as a financial safety net. It is cheap to plant, highly resilient, and requires very little human labor compared to vegetables.7
Increases farming risk. Without forage as a low-risk fallback option, farmers become entirely exposed to the highly volatile, expensive, and labor-intensive market of fresh produce.8
Harms rural agricultural hubs. While large cities often have many sources of employment, rural areas that are more focused on ranching, feedlots, dairies, forage sales, and the transport of livestock – would suffer from a wholesale loss of water.9
Massive Water Savings: Forage crops are incredibly water-intensive. Completely retiring the water rights of a significant portion of Lower Basin alfalfa fields would easily save 1 to 2 million acre-feet of water annually
Water trial of the century opens Monday, June 29, 2026: Four years after Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management was first approved by Subdistrict 1 and with the unconfined aquifer still in a historic decline, the plan now has its day in court — AlamosaCitizen.com #SanLuisValley #RioGrande
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website:
June 26, 2026
The most significant water trial the San Luis Valley has ever seen opens this Monday morning in Courtroom A of the Alamosa County Judicial Center. At stake is the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, which calls for a dramatic shift designed to match the amount of groundwater pumping to the amount of natural surface coming into the subdistrict.
Producers in Subdistrict 1 are under pressure to recover the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin, but so far the subdistrict has made little to no progress in creating a sustainable aquifer. The trial is scheduled for five weeks before Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales.
The San Luis Valley’s highly-anticipated district water court case — the water trial of this century if you will — was originally scheduled to last five weeks beginning in January. It was pushed back six months to this summer due to the departure of a key witness in the fallout from a series of contentious October emails.
The Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management by Subdistrict 1 in the Rio Grande Water Conservation District has lived a precarious life without ever being implemented, going back to 2022 when it was originally crafted by subdistrict managers and January 2023 when it was adopted by Rio Grande Water Conservation District board.
Later came approval by the state engineer, and then after objections were filed against the new amended plan, Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales set a trial date to commence on Jan. 5, 2026, and to last five weeks.
That is, until the week before Thanksgiving when Gonzales scrapped the January date in favor of June 29, 2026, some four years after the plan was first approved at the subdistrict level and the unconfined aquifer still in a historic decline. The judge did so after a series of emails sent by a key expert witness for the main objectors to the plan surfaced.
The effect is that a new plan to recover the Rio Grande’s unconfined aquifer, which has been approved at the local and state levels but still requires sign-off from district water court, remains in limbo.
Following filings by the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group requesting a six-month continuance to the start of the trial, and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and state Division of Water Resources objecting to the request, Gonzales ruled the two main objectors challenging the new aquifer recovery plan had good reason to ask for a six-month continuance after Taylor Adams, an environmental and water resources engineer for Hydros Consulting in Boulder, resigned from the case due to “personal and family circumstances.”
Adams was set to challenge the Subdistrict 1 water plan on a variety of engineering fronts until a series of emails he sent in October to State Engineer Jason Ullman and Senior Assistant Attorney General Preston Hartmann came to light. In one email, he tells Ullman, “Also, GFY.” In another, he emails that he is “no longer interested in anything other than publicly exploding the rampant corruption at DWR and the AG Office.”
And in an email sent Sunday, Oct. 19, to Attorney General Phil Weiser, Adams writes, “We haven’t met, but I understand that you’re running for governor of Colorado. You should know that if you continue this pursuit without addressing the persistent and laughable perjury that has been carried out in your name by Preston Hatman (sic) and Jason Ullman, you will be the subject of my attention throughout your campaign…”
The Rio Grande Water Conservation District asked Gonzales not to delay the water court proceedings due to the urgency to recover the unconfined aquifer and the lack of “credible evidence that demonstrates that Mr. Adams is unavailable. Rather, they now assert that he ‘should not be pressured into returning to the case at the risk of further harm to his mental health.’”
“In any event,” district water attorneys argued in their objection to a trial delay, “none of this changes the fact that the unconfined aquifer is still over 1.3 million acre-feet below the water levels measured in 1976, and more than 830,000 acre-feet below the water levels previously determined by this Court and the Colorado Supreme Court to be sustainable.”
Subdistrict 1 is home to the San Luis Valley’s richest crops of potatoes, barley and alfalfa. Without recovery of the shallow aquifer, the state is threatening mass shut down of groundwater pumping wells and requires both a master plan and annual replacement plans to show recovery efforts.
The subdistrict’s proposed Fourth Plan of Water Management is its most drastic effort yet to meet the state’s orders. The new plan, crafted in 2022 and adopted by the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in January 2023, is designed to “match the amount of groundwater pumping to the amount of water coming into the subdistrict.”
It does this through a 1-to-1 augmentation, meaning for every acre-foot of water used, an acre-foot has to be returned to the unconfined aquifer through recharging ponds. The amended plan relies on covering any groundwater withdrawals with natural surface water or the purchase of surface water credits.
Farmers in the subdistrict have expressed support for the plan, which includes a $500 per acre-foot overpumping fee that farmers would pay if they exceed the amount of natural surface water tied to the property in their farming operations.
Objections are coming from farmers who do not have natural surface water coming into their property and around the steep fee for purchasing surface water credits from a neighboring operation to offset groundwater pumping irrigation. Both proponents and opponents of the plan say the $500 per acre-foot overpumping fee could put farmers who rely on groundwater pumping out of business.
The five-week water trial will sort through these issues in much more granular detail. Any new strategy to recover the Valley’s ailing aquifer will shift into 2027 at the soonest.
South Platte River Basin #climate summary for the week ending June 29, 2026
Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for June 29, 2026. Precipitation is at 73% of the median (no change one week) and 58% of the water year median (up 1% one week), this morning. There are 93 days left in the water year.
There is a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday in the central mountains, otherwise breezy and warm. There is a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday in the northern mountains, otherwise breezy and warm. There is a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday down here, about 101 miles from Leadville, near the Willow Fire. From the Summit Daily: “A wildfire that grew to more than 1,000 acres in a matter of hours near Leadville in the evening Sunday, June 28, sent smoke rolling into Summit County and led emergency officials to ask residents not to call 911 unless they detect a distinct column of smoke or flames. Summit County’s emergency alert system notified residents shortly before 6 p.m. that smoke from what has been dubbed the Willow Fire had entered the county and may remain visible through the evening and coming days…The Willow Fire ignited Sunday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. on U.S. Forest Service land near Twin Mounds below Mount Massive — about two miles northwest of the Leadville National Fish Hatchery, according to the fire detection app Watch Duty and the Lake County Office of Emergency Management. Initial estimates placed the fire at three to five acres, but by around 4:38, incident commanders estimated it had nearly quadrupled in size, according to Watch Duty. Around 5 p.m., firefighters shifted focus toward evacuating residents near Turquoise Lake and the hatchery ahead of the advancing fire. By Sunday evening around 6:50 p.m., Watch Duty and Egp.Wildfire.gov estimates the Willow Fire has grown to 1,066 acres.”
Here’s a look at the 7-Day Colorado precipitation map through June 28, 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 2.00”.
Here’s the 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through June 28, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 5% to 400% of normal.
Here’s the 7-Day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast issued June 29, 2026 by NOAA. Precipitation is anticipated for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin and may total 0.01”.
Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued June 28, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting July 6, 2026. The CPC expects above normal temperatures and near normal precipitation for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin.
Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor map from June 23, 2026. There were one class degradations in Larimer, Weld, Jefferson, Clear Creek, and Park counties. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 100% 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 June 23, 2026.
Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.
Finally, since the Colorado River is a supply for many in the South Platte Basin, here’s an in-depth look, “The Colorado River states are deadlocked and the river is crashing. will a ‘grand bargain’ finally get its day?“, at solving the supply crisis in the basin from Matt Jenkins, writing for the Water Education Foundation:
For roughly 80 years after the Compact was signed, the prospect of a Compact call was purely theoretical. Then the Millennium Drought set in. By 2005, the two flagship reservoirs on the Colorado River — Lakes Mead and Powell — were half empty.
The drought was pushing the river’s flows closer to a Compact violation trigger, making the risk of a call by the Lower Basin a growing probability. The Lower Basin, particularly Arizona, was insisting on guaranteed releases of water from Lake Powell. And because Colorado has the biggest share of the river within the Upper Basin and uses a greater portion of its apportionment than the other upstream states, it is most at risk. It began searching for a way to slip out of the legal noose of a Compact call.
In September 2005, the seven states’ top negotiators met in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During a lunch break, Colorado’s team made its pitch. The state’s negotiators proposed that the Lower Basin waive its right to force a downstream delivery through a Compact call. In exchange, the Upper Basin states would limit their water use to less than what’s strictly apportioned in the Compact, thereby reducing potential demand in the headwaters of Colorado and Wyoming that supply nearly the entirety of the river’s flow.
Also, permanent acquisition of Ag rights in the Colorado River Basin is a hot topic lately. Here’s an article from Heather Sackett and Aspen Journalism, “Colorado River experts say agriculture must make permanent cuts to water use: Water managers say drying up farmland is not the solution.”:
But in the midst of a climate change-fueled megadrought that has already robbed the river of at least 20% of its flows, experts say temporary measures no longer cut it. Water managers are reckoning with the reality that the river will probably never again deliver what was promised a century ago by the Colorado River Compact. The demand for water now far outstrips the dwindling supply.
“Are we going to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and not have a permanent solution?” said author and Colorado River expert Eric Kuhn. “I think, at some point, it just makes economic sense to go ahead and say, ‘Let’s buy out the existing demand.’”
Sen. Mike Lee targets the Roadless Rule
by Jonathan Thompson, High Country News
June 25, 2026
This is an installment of the Landline, a monthly newsletter from High Country News about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In early June, as blazes raced across the drought-baked and heat-addled Western U.S., Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso’s Wildfire Prevention Act seemed to be sailing toward easy approval. If signed into law, it would direct federal land agencies to increase thinning and prescribed burning on public lands and make it easier for utilities to manage vegetation near power lines.
These tactics have often raised questions: Does a forest need to be “managed,” for example? Are high-intensity wildfires really so bad for forests? And is the urge to “thin” forests simply another excuse for logging? The bill’s provision directing agencies to step up public-land grazing as a wildfire mitigation tool is especially questionable.
Nevertheless, the legislation was cruising along with the support of prominent Western Democrats and no serious objections from environmental groups.
Or so it was, until Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah slipped in a last-minute amendment that would eliminate the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects some 45 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land from new roadbuilding and logging. It would also prevent any similar rule from being implemented in the future.
Lee’s amendment shattered the coalition that supported the legislation and fired up opposition to that provision, and, by extension, the bill as a whole. “We had a very bipartisan-focused wildfire bill here, and now we have a very partisan bill,” said a “disappointed” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., in a Senate committee hearing. “The wildfire legislation became a Trojan Horse for repealing the Roadless Rule.”
When the Bill Clinton administration first implemented the Roadless Rule in 2001, it marked the culmination of a multidecade effort to identify and set aside forest lands undisturbed by roads for possible wilderness designation. At the time, individual Forest Service offices managed the inventory of roadless areas. The Roadless Rule put prohibited timber harvesting, road construction and road reconstruction in designated roadless areas nationwide, though with a number of exceptions. Aside from preserving many relatively undisturbed areas, the rule saved a lot of money: By 2001, the Forest Service’s existing road network was over 386,000 miles long, with an estimated $8.4 billion in deferred maintenance and reconstruction. Building more roads would just exacerbate that deficit.
The Roadless Rule originally applied to almost 60 million acres, but in the years following its implementation, it was volleyed about by presidential administrations and the courts. In 2005, the George W. Bush White House revoked the rule and replaced it with the alternate roadless rule, which allowed states to petition the Forest Service to create their own standards; Colorado and Idaho chose to do so. When the 10th Circuit Court later reinstated the 2001 rule, the 2005 replacement was nullified, although Idaho and Colorado’s rules remained in effect. As a result, neither Lee’s amendment, nor the administration’s move to rescind the rule, would affect Colorado and Idaho’s plans.
While inventoried roadless areas share many of the same characteristics as wilderness areas, the Roadless Rule stops far short of wilderness-level protections, expressly allowing motorized uses of existing roads, off-highway motorized use in specified areas, livestock grazing and energy and mineral development.
All of which makes it hard to take Lee seriously when he argues that his amendment belongs in wildfire legislation because the Roadless Rule is hampering firefighting and wildfire prevention. In fact, the rule clearly allows for road-building to fight fires. It also allows for cutting, removing and selling “generally small diameter timber” for various reasons, including “reducing the likelihood of uncharacteristic wildfire.”
In a hearing, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., pointed out that 240,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas in his state alone had already been treated for wildfire hazard mitigation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, for better or worse, has lagged on forest thinning: A Center for Western Priorities analysis found the Forest Service treated 35% less acreage in 2025 than it did under Joe Biden in 2024. That suggests that vegetation management is being hampered less by regulations than by a lack of resources: The Trump administration has focused its thinning efforts on Forest Service staffing and budgets instead, slashing them considerably since taking office.
In fact, it seems that the Roadless Rule actually helps deter wildfires. A 2007 Pacific Biodiversity Institute study found that 88% of the nation’s wildfires are started by humans, and 95% of those blazes occur within a half-mile of a road. Roads act like syringes, injecting human beings and their detritus— errant cigarette butts, untended campfires, sparks from machinery and hot catalytic converters — farther into the backcountry than they would go by trail. If Lee wants to avoid future blazes, he’d be better off codifying the Roadless Rule’s protections into law.
U.S. Forest Service
But as is often the case with Lee, this appears to be yet another Trump-backed assault on public lands that was back-burnered due to its deep unpopularity. Last June, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins moved to repeal the Roadless Rule administratively, causing intense backlash not only from environmentalists, but also from the more conservative-leaning hook-and-bullet crowd as well as the general public, which barraged the department with comments supporting the rule. It’s worth noting that even Project 2025, the ultra-right-wing “blueprint” for the Trump administration, called for repealing only the portion of the Roadless Rule that pertained to Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
“We had a very bipartisan-focused wildfire bill here, and now we have a very partisan bill.”
Lee may have chosen to or been assigned to shoulder these despised schemes because of his relative political invulnerability. His extremism shields him from opposition during primaries, and these days a Democrat is extremely unlikely to win statewide office in Utah.
But some of Lee’s colleagues may not be so impervious. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican who has introduced a House bill to nullify the Roadless Rule, is currently running to replace Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., who is retiring.
One of Hageman’s opponents is Sam Mead, however, a fifth-generation Wyoming rancher and nephew of former Gov. Matt Mead. Mead has strong conservative credentials on gun rights, energy development and fiscal issues, but he distinguishes himself from his GOP rivals by advocating for protecting public lands and keeping them in public hands. At a recent campaign stop, he said Hageman’s support of Mike Lee’s failed bid last year to sell public lands for housing left him with a “sense of helplessness.”
Whether Mead can win the primary remains to be seen, but his high-profile presence in the race highlights something we’ve known about Lee for a long time. For all his talk about antifa super solders and globalist democrats, Lee is the true extremist, out of touch even with rural Western conservatives, people who often cherish America’s public lands over partisan ideology.
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Your news tips, comments, ideas and feedback are appreciated and often shared. Give Jonathan a ring at the Landline, 970-648-4472, or send us an email at landline@hcn.org.
Note: This story was corrected to fix a duplicate paragraph that was accidentally appended to the end of the story.
This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
What if next year looks like this one?: The nagging, unanswerable question as Colorado River states struggle to share the diminished river — Allen Best (BigPivots.com)
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
June 25, 2026
In haggling with their down-river states about sharing the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, the headwater states have delivered a consistent message.
We don’t have two big reservoirs named Mead and Powell sitting upstream from us, they say. Mostly we must make do with what the sky delivers.
At the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting in Denver this week, the states reiterated this message, offering ample evidence from places like Emery, Utah, and Kemmerer, Wyo.
Lest anybody miss the message, Chuck Cullom, the director of the upper-basin commission, showed aerial images of farming areas in Colorado and the other upper-basin states. Far less green was evident in the Montrose area and on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation during June than in 2024.
This exceptional year for drought and heat was described by several speakers in Denver as dire. “I want you all to recognize the significance and severity of the things we’re dealing with,” said the Utah representative, Gene Shawcroft. “Totally unprecedented.”
In western Colorado, a Meeker rancher used the same word to describe withered streams. “The situation here has gone from bad to dire.”
Upper-basin states have been in a tug-of-war for the last three years with lower-basin states about how to share this diminished river. As Becky Mitchell (above), Colorado’s representative, says repeatedly, we have a math problem. It’s impossible to continue releasing more water from reservoirs than flow into them. Upper-basin states, she says, “live within the means of the river.”
In crafting the Colorado River Compact in 1922, delegates assumed annual flows of roughly 17 to 18 million acre-feet annually at Lee Ferry, the legal division point separating the upper and lower basins. The 20th century delivered naturalized flows of 15.2 million on average.
In this century, flows have slackened even more. Since 2019 they have averaged 10.2 million acre-feet. This year less than 1 million acre-feet is expected to flow into Lake Powell other than releases from upstream reservoirs.
The compact pledged 7.5 million acre-feet to each of the two basins. The lower-basin states for many years over-used their allocation. Upper-basin states topped out at about 4.5 million acre-feet, using 3.5 million acre-feet in drier years.
Colorado and other basins states insist upon the right to use more water — if it’s there. Pre-compact rights of all Native American tribes have yet to be realized. All this creates a different math problem.
When the four upper basin states adopted their own compact in 1948, they wisely chose to use a percentage not an absolute number. That would make sense for the Colorado River Basin altogether — if the two basins could agree upon it. Tensions have elevated. Outwardly this marriage looks very rocky.
Might there be another way? Tanya Trujillo, New Mexico’s new representative, offered an intriguing statement at the Denver meeting.
“I think we need to think differently about some things,” she said. “In New Mexico, we’re going to be taking a fresh look at some of the issues that we are facing and really try to look for a collaborative process going forward.”
In time of crisis, she added, it’s important to “project calm, knowledgeable reassurance and try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
For whom was that message intended? It was not clear. However, even in Colorado, some have suggested upper-basin states have overstated their case.
What cannot be contested is Mitchell’s assertion that demands cannot exceed supplies. This year, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Water is being taken from Flaming Gorge and other federal upstream reservoirs to keep water in Powell. Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison may have too little water to release any downstream, a condition called dead pool. The Bureau of Reclamation similarly sees that possibility for Navajo, the reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border.
The Bureau intends to release six million acre-feet from Powell for the lower-basin, leaving Powell 80% empty. The agency’s “most probable” projections see reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam early next year being too low to generate electricity.
In Grand Junction this week, people stood in the rain with sheer delight. It was a feel-good moment. But will El Niño save us from calamity? Maybe, but don’t bet on it. The warming climate seems to be rewriting the rules about how much water from the Pacific Ocean arrives on our mountains.
hat was the takeaway from a recent presentation by Brad Udall, a scientist scholar affiliated with Colorado State University. El Niños in the past have produced big water years. One was in 1983, the year that flood waters nearly broke Glen Canyon Dam. Often, though, an El Niño produces no more moisture than a La Niña.
“The real question” said Shawcroft, the Utah representative, “is what happens if next year looks like this?”
The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District moves into stage two #drought restrictions — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:
June 25, 2026
The Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) entered stage two drought on June 22 due to decreasing water levels in Hatcher Reservoir and the San Juan River. Drought stage two imposes a variety of additional restrictions on water use in addition to the restrictions from drought stage one…
On Wednesday morning, the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs was flowing at approximately 35 cubic feet per second (cfs), about 5 cfs above the record low flow of 30.4 cfs, which the river reached in 2002. The mean flow for the river on June 24 is approximately 952 cfs…Two of PAWSD’s three water plants draw water from different locations on the San Juan River, while the third takes water from Hatcher Reservoir. The water level in Hatcher on June 22 was about 13 inches below full pool, which is down about 5 inches from June 9. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), 64 percent of Archuleta County is in severe drought, while 36 percent of the county is in extreme drought.
#ColoradoRiver experts say agriculture must make permanent cuts to water use: Water managers say drying up farmland is not the solution — Heather Sackett (AspenJounalism.org) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
June 22, 2026
Some Colorado River experts are floating a concept to address the basin’s water woes that is both radical and mundane: permanently reducing the amount of water used by agriculture.
Many cities have already reduced their water use in recent decades while adding residents, proving that population growth doesn’t have to be tied to an increase in water use. A 2024 study by Colorado River scientists found that agriculture is responsible for about 74% of water used by people in the basin, meaning urban conservation alone cannot solve the crisis.
“I think we need to have permanent reductions in use on the table and agriculture will have to be part of that,” said Anne Castle, a Colorado River expert and a former federal representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Castle was the lead author on a June 1 paper that urgently called on the entire basin to permanently decrease consumptive uses to avoid the worst impacts to reservoirs and water users. Castle and the paper’s other authors are Colorado River experts and academics, and are the brain trust of the basin sometimes referred to as the Traveling Wilburys, a joking reference to the rock music supergroup. But their message is anything but humorous.
The latest paper says another dry winter would deplete remaining storage and result in devastating consequences like run-of-the-river operations where the nation’s two largest reservoirs can only release downstream the same amount of water that flows into them. It’s the last stop before deadpool, when levels are too low to release water. The authors urge water managers to act immediately to reduce use and avoid a system crash.
But permanently cutting the amount of water that goes to agriculture remains a controversial topic, and water managers from both the Upper and Lower basins say drying up land is not a solution for their basin. Most conservation programs up until now either have been temporary or have allowed the saved water to be used elsewhere. Castle said the problem is especially difficult when people’s livelihoods are on the line.
“The folks who are vulnerable to those kinds of permanent reductions are understandably resistant,” Castle said. “But there’s not enough water. The river won’t allow us to use the same amount of water that we’ve been accustomed to using in the past.”
The seven states that share the Colorado River are under increasing pressure to cut water use as one of the worst droughts on record threatens the water supply for millions of people. On the heels of one of the hottest and driest winters since measuring began, spring flows into Lake Powell this year are projected to be the lowest on record.
Much of the $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act earmarked for drought mitigation has gone toward short-term conservation. Water users in the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) were paid to temporarily leave water in Lake Mead. And in the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming), the feds paid irrigators $45 million to leave fields dry during a two-year reboot of a pilot conservation program.
But in the midst of a climate change-fueled megadrought that has already robbed the river of at least 20% of its flows, experts say temporary measures no longer cut it. Water managers are reckoning with the reality that the river will probably never again deliver what was promised a century ago by the Colorado River Compact. The demand for water now far outstrips the dwindling supply.
“Are we going to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and not have a permanent solution?” said author and Colorado River expert Eric Kuhn. “I think, at some point, it just makes economic sense to go ahead and say, ‘Let’s buy out the existing demand.’” [ed. emphasis mine]
Buying out demand
Against this backdrop, some in the academic community are advocating for the federal government to either set up a voluntary program to buy and retire lands that use a lot of water or pay landowners who agree to permanent restrictions on water use.
A paper released last year and authored by Kathryn Sorensen and Sarah Porter, who are Colorado River experts at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State, lays out how this could be done. Eligible land would have to meet certain characteristics, including being in an area where the economic impacts of not using water are least painful and where impacted crops could be feasibly grown outside of the Colorado River basin, among others.
According to Porter, the federal government should be the entity that buys down demand. The large infrastructure projects funded by the feds in the 20th century are what created booming irrigated agriculture in the West to begin with. And the other entities in the basin that have the ability to buy agricultural water want to use it themselves, not keep it in the system.
“A reset in the Colorado River basin really is needed,” Porter said. “We have a lot of agriculture that’s really a legacy of how the United States was settled… . And now we’re grappling with overallocation and shortage and struggling to figure out a way to manage the Colorado River.”
The proposal is different from the much-derided “buy-and-dry” which usually involves an opportunistic transferring of water from agriculture to cities, not an overall reduction in water use. Still, the potential negative impacts to rural communities have to be considered.
“You have to have a provision for what happens to the land when you remove agriculture and what happens to the local economy when you remove agriculture,” Porter said.
And experts say there is a precedent for the type of federal buyouts that could help the drought-stricken river: the Bankhead-Jones Tenant Farm Act from 1937. This New Deal piece of legislation was a response to the Dust Bowl and allowed the federal government to buy and retire badly eroded or economically unproductive farmland.
The paper says a Colorado River program could start not with those that grow valuable vegetables in winter but, rather, with lands that use a lot of water but have low economic output. The paper says retired agricultural lands could be used for alternative purposes that support local economies such as recreational opportunities or low water-use industries.
Figuring out how to implement conservation programs without harming rural agricultural communities has been a main focus in recent years of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which works to keep water on the Western Slope. River District General Manager Andy Mueller said that agriculture has a role to play in reducing water consumption, but that permanently retiring agricultural land is a misguided approach that will put the country in danger of not being able to feed itself. Programs should remain temporary, and focus on efficiency improvements and growing less-thirsty crops, he said.
“If it’s temporary, if it’s well-designed in a way that respects local communities, traditions and practices, is custom-built for each community in a way that really tries to do as little economic damage as possible — potentially even bringing some benefits to those farming families that participate — there are ways to do it,” Mueller said.
On the fringe
Although certain academics and experts are talking about permanently drying up agricultural lands as a means of saving water, the concept remains on the fringe of Colorado River politics. It’s both the third rail and the elephant in the room.
“It’s going to pull away from the fringe really quickly when you’ve got to really justify continuing to pay on an annual basis forever,” Kuhn said. “We’re just trying to get the discussion out there, make it acceptable to have the discussion.”
On top of the abysmal hydrologic conditions, the basin is also in the midst of a management crisis. After two years of negotiating, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states have failed to reach a consensus on how they will share future cuts and have blown past deadlines to come up with a plan. The responsibility for river management now falls to the federal government, which is scheduled to release this summer a short-term operating plan for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Part of what makes the problem so tricky is that water managers are still guided by the Colorado River Compact, a century-old agreement that splits the river’s flows evenly between the two basins. Upper Basin water managers still cling to the notion that because their states are already living within the 7.5 million acre-feet of water allotted to them annually, cutbacks are the responsibility of the Lower Basin, which they say uses more than its fair share.
Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s lead negotiator in talks among the seven states, said that permanent dry-up of agriculture in the Upper Basin isn’t necessary because the Upper Basin states already send more than 8 million acre-feet — more than legally required — of water downstream per year. Dry-up may be part of the overall solution, she said, but each state should take its own individual approach to making cuts.
“Those durable reductions are going to be required (for the Lower Basin) to first get in line with their apportionment, but then getting in line with the available supplies is a whole ’nother conversation,” Mitchell said.
California’s representative, JB Hamby, said permanent fallowing doesn’t have a place in reducing the state’s demand either. California is home to the biggest urban and agricultural water districts, as well as the largest allocation of Colorado River water of any of the seven states that share the river.
“In the case of California, there’s no real discussion or interest whatsoever in the retirement of ag lands,” Hamby said. “Land in Southern California that receives Colorado River water is so extremely productive. There is a year-round growing season where every single day of the year there are things being grown.”
Past water savings in Southern California have mostly come from efficiency improvements on farms and in delivery systems, and from deficit irrigation programs in which water is temporarily taken off fields for part of a season. In the absence of a seven-state deal, the Lower Basin states have offered up 700,000 acre-feet of cuts per year through 2028, which is on top of an initial 1.5 million acre-feet in cuts. Most estimates say the basin needs to cut water use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet.
“There’s full agreement that water should be reduced,” he said. “There’s not agreement in how or where it should be reduced. So the Lower Basin is moving forward, doing our thing, making reductions.”
Ultimately, discussions about permanently reducing the amount of water that goes to farmlands in the basin remain difficult, in part because agricultural water rights are some of the biggest, oldest and most politically powerful in the basin. But there is also an attachment to the American West’s farming and ranching heritage.
“We love agriculture; it’s part of our roots,” Porter said. “We don’t like to think about losing agricultural production. I think we are generally hesitant to have that conversation, and we really haven’t had it as a basin.”
Low supply, low demand: Dillon Reservoir water level peaks early at 80% capacity with reduced demand from Front Range consumers — Summit Daily News #BlueRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily News website (Jessica Sachs). Here’s an excerpt:
June 26, 2026
Water levels in the Dillon Reservoir have now peaked for the summer, having reached a maximum 80% capacity on June 17 before decreasing over the coming months. It’s a 19.5% drop — as well as an earlier peak — compared to last year, when water levels reached 99.5% capacity on June 27, 2025.
“Last year, we were about 1,000 acre feet from full,” said Nathan Elder, Denver Water’s water supply manager. “This year will be about 50,000 acre feet from full. So that’s a pretty significant amount down.”
Elder said that this is a “bottom-four or five year for Dillon Reservoir storage,” due to this winter’s record-low snowpack, but is still currently far from the lowest water levels that the reservoir has ever seen.
“The lowest level it got was about 35% full, and that was in the spring of 1978 that followed the really bad, really dry year of 1977,” Elder said, noting that 1977’s snowpack was actually higher than this year’s, despite resulting in lower water levels. “We’ve seen it lower again, following a low snowpack in 1981 and then also in 2002 going into 2003.”
Elder said that part of the reason levels have been able to hold steadier than in other drought-afflicted years is because of lower demand for the reservoir’s water, particularly from consumers on the Front Range.
“People are aware of the drought restrictions in place so far this year, compared to normal weather,” he said. “We’ve seen our demands down about 18% and we’ve seen a really large decrease in demand from the past drought in 2002.”
Havasupai leaders oppose plan to raise arsenic limits at uranium mine — AZCentral.com
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral.com website (Arlyssa D. Becenti). Here’s an excerpt:
June 27, 2026
Key Points
- The Havasupai Tribe is concerned about a proposed increase in the allowable arsenic level near the Pinyon Plain uranium mine.
- State regulators claim the increased arsenic is naturally occurring, not a result of mining pollution.
- Tribal leaders and environmental groups worry the change could contaminate Havasu Creek, the tribe’s sole water source.
The Havasupai Tribe has raised new concerns about a proposal to allow higher levels of arsenic in a groundwater monitoring well near the Pinyon Plain uranium mine south of the Grand Canyon, warning that the changes threaten Havasu Creek, the tribe’s sole water source. A proposed amendment to a state Aquifer Protection Program permit would revise the mine’s alert level and aquifer quality limit for arsenic after groundwater monitoring detected changes in arsenic concentrations in the well. According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the changes were not the result of pollutants discharged from the mine into the aquifer, but naturally occurring.
In a June 25 public notice, the agency said that Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., the mine’s operator, and ADEQ have entered into a changed application agreement for an amendment to the Pinyon Plain Mine’s permit.
“The Havasupai Tribe first learned of the proposed amendment, which appears to have been a private deal between ADEQ and Energy Fuels, only after a concerned citizen discovered this new amendment on ADEQ’s website and promptly notified the Tribe,” said Havasupai Tribal Chairwoman Melinda Yaiva.
The Havasupai Tribe was shocked by ADEQ’s decision, she said, citing longstanding concerns that the Pinyon Plain Mine could contaminate Havasu Creek, the tribe’s only water source. Tribal leaders said the creek is vital to the community, its culture and its tourism economy, and reiterated their opposition to the mine.
Ruth Powell Hutchins Water Center: Last Monday, June 22, 2026, was the opening of conservation photographer Dave Showalter’s exhibit, Living River
Click the link to go to the water center’s LinkedIn page:
June 24, 2026
Last Monday was the opening of conservation photographer Dave Showalter‘s exhibit, Living River: The Promise of the Mighty Colorado at Colorado Mesa University‘s Tomlinson Library! Visit the second floor to view this 20-piece visual journey and see how it encapsulates the resilience of the Colorado River and its keepers, illustrating how we can create an enduring watershed. The exhibit is free to the public, and free parking is available in specified lots until August 16th! We are excited to host this exhibit in partnership with the Tomlinson Library with the support from Braided River, and we look forward to sharing it with you all!
📅 June 15th Through December 2026
📍 CMU Tomlinson Library, Second Floor
⏰ Library Hours: https://lnkd.in/g69UwSkR
📋 Parking Information: https://lnkd.in/gFfEX6a7
Photo Credit: Dave Showalter
Water Scarcity threatens the Transition to Clean Energy
A lack of available groundwater is threatening the future of domestic lithium extraction. Lithium is a mineral that’s currently an essential component for the storage of clean energy. 1
By Robert Marcos, photojournalist
A study conducted by Jennifer Dunn – a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience at Northwestern University in Illinois, said that the future of water availability may constrain whether new lithium mines will have sufficient water to operate.2
Three lithium operations in the American West that could be negatively affected by water restrictions –
Silver Peak, Nevada
Silver Peak – which is operated by Albemarle Corporation, is the only active producing lithium mine in the United States. Silver Peak uses evaporative technology that pumps lithium-rich geothermal brine from underground aquifers into a massive network of shallow, open-air surface ponds, where natural solar energy slowly evaporates the water which concentrates the dissolved lithium, which is later processed. The site has been in operation since the 1960s. Albemarle, which acquired the mine in 2015, has begun an expansion which will drastically increase their domestic production capabilities.3 Because Silver Peak’s extraction process relies on pumping billions of gallons of underground brine into solar evaporation ponds, a reduced amount of groundwater directly affects production capacity. The ongoing depletion has dried up local monitoring wells, sparking intense pushback from environmental groups, county officials, and competing mining projects.4
Salton Sea, California
Controlled Thermal Resources is developing the Hell’s Kitchen project at California’s Salton Sea, an innovative facility designed to utilize direct lithium extraction to recover battery-grade lithium from superheated geothermal brines while simultaneously generating clean, baseload electricity.5 Unfortunately this high-technology process still requires a lot of fresh water. It requires billions of gallons of freshwater primarily for evaporative cooling to manage the extreme temperatures of the geothermal fluids, and for purification and chemical washing to scrub impurities like iron and manganese from the extracted lithium. Additionally, massive amounts of freshwater are consumed during steam generation and the final chemical transformation needed to synthesize the lithium into a highly pure, battery-grade lithium hydroxide product.6
Thacker Pass, Nevada
The Thacker Pass mining operation is located in Humboldt County, Nevada. It’s owned by a joint venture between Lithium Americas (62%) and General Motors (38%).7 The facility will extract lithium via open-pit “hard rock” mining and will then process the claystone ore using a sulfuric acid leaching method, in order to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate.8 Fresh water is required at multiple opertional stages, though the Lithium Americas project has plans to recycle over 85% of the water that’s required, which includes: 9
Ore Processing & Leaching: Water acts as a carrier for claystone ore and is consumed during sulfuric acid production, leaching, and downstream neutralization to isolate lithium carbonate. 10
Evaporative Cooling: Significant quantities of water evaporate during the cooling phases of chemical processing and on-site power generation. 11
Dust Mitigation: Water is continuously sprayed on open-pit mining roads, ore stockpiles, and waste piles to suppress hazardous dust. 12
Tailings Management: While filter presses squeeze out water for reuse, a portion of water remains permanently trapped as moisture within the dry-stack tailings pile. 13
The Thacker Pass operation’s difficulty in securing fresh water stems from a series of high-stakes legal and logistical disputes regarding regional groundwater depletion. The mine’s plans to extract up to 5,200 acre-feet of water annually draw from the heavily over-allocated Quinn River Valley aquifer, prompting multi-year legal challenges from environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and local senior water rights holders like rancher Edward Bartell, (who documented declining natural spring levels) and successfully triggered a state-issued cease-and-desist order that temporarily halted unauthorized pumping in mid-2025. While Lithium Americas ultimately bypassed immediate pumping blocks by purchasing Bartell’s water rights in an August 2025 court-approved settlement and securing a favorable Nevada Supreme Court ruling in 2026, state regulatory restrictions still forbid them from drawing water close to the mine site. Consequently, the company has faced soaring infrastructural challenges, forcing them to construct a costly, 8-mile-long uphill pipeline to transport their newly relocated water supply from the valley basin up to the active construction site. 14