Good luck @LukeRunyon we hope to see you back on the #water beat soon

Luke Runyon KUNC is moving on in his career. I will miss his enthusiasm and rigor but most of all his story-telling ability. Let’s hope that he finds his way back to the Colorado water beat in the future.

✨Some professional news✨

I am so excited to be selected as a Ted Scripps environmental journalism fellow at @CUBoulder for this upcoming academic year:https://t.co/NnKfm1ludw

— Luke Runyon (@LukeRunyon) June 21, 2021

He posted one last story from the bottom of the Colorado River, “Even In An Epically Dry Year, Water Flows Into Parched Colorado River Delta.” Click through and read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s an attempt to reconnect portions of the river left dry from decades of overuse, and it’s happening in one of the driest years the basin has ever seen…

There’s no good substitute word for what the Colorado River delta is now. The Gulf of California’s tides still reach up into the Sonoran Desert. But there’s no river water. Dams along the Colorado River’s length in the U.S. and Mexico draw its water away to serve farms and cities throughout the region. Rather than emptying into the ocean, its water grows citrus in Arizona and greens up lawns in Los Angeles.

The delta’s exposed salt flats aren’t a wasteland. As Rivas explained, if you look close enough, you’ll see the animals and plants able to make a home: jumping spiders, tiny turquoise fiddler crabs, hardy species of saltgrass.

“These are harsh conditions here,” [Tomás] Rivas said. That day, it reached 120 degrees…

Rivas’ group, along with other Mexican and American environmental groups, are working to bring water back into this part of the estuary and study what happens…

Additional water releases into the delta began May 1 and will extend to October, with peaking flows in early summer. The water volume won’t be enough to fully revive the tidal bore, but Rivas said it can help restore riverine habitat.

‘A little bit of repair”

This spring and summer, portions of the Colorado River delta flowed again. But unlike 2014’s pulse flow, where the dam at the U.S.-Mexico border sent a huge volume all at once, this year’s releases of water are targeted to restoration sites…

“For Mexico, living with a dead river has been, I’ll say, sort of a wound,” said Jennifer Pitt, director of the National Audubon Society’s Colorado River program…

The Colorado River is grabbing national headlines this summer as water shortages become more urgent. Hot and dry conditions are coming home to roost in its reservoirs, dropping the two biggest — Lakes Mead and Powell — to record lows. Even in a dry year like this one, Pitt said both the U.S. and Mexico have agreed to set aside water for the environment.

“If we don’t figure out at this moment how to support the river itself and all of nature that it supports, I fear that we lose them permanently. So I think at this time it is more important than ever,” she said.

That idea of carving out water supplies just for the river itself remains controversial. Some skeptical city leaders and farmers in Mexico have said any water spilling into the ocean is wasted, said Carlos de la Parra, a professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, who’s acted as an adviser to the International Boundary Water Commission…

The flows happening this year were part of an update to the 1944 treaty that the U.S. and Mexico use to govern their shares of the Colorado River. Over the last 21 years of ongoing hot and dry conditions, de la Parra said the two countries have transitioned from a relationship held at arm’s length to one of mutual respect. That led to a commitment from the U.S. to fund irrigation efficiency projects in Mexico, with some of the conserved water from those upgrades being set aside for environmental flows…

But [Rocio Torres] Torres said the flows happening this year wouldn’t have occurred without the pulse flow seven years ago. The event galvanized communities in the region, she said. It built a base of support from water officials in both countries who agreed to set aside a small amount of water to benefit the plants and animals deprived for so long.

“I think that’s the way human beings, we learn,” she said. “We messed things up. We realized we shouldn’t have done that,” and bringing it back happens little by little.

David Bernhardt answers a question about climate change from Luke Runyon, December 13, 2019, Colorado River Water Users Association Annual Conference.

Luke Runyon near Hoover Dam power plant February 2018 via Colorado State University.