Navajo Reservoir, New Mexico, back in the day.. View looking north toward marina. The Navajo Dam can be seen on the left of the image. By Timthefinn at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4040102
According to the Lake Navajo Water Database, the lake was at 56.4 feet below full pool, an eleva- tion of 6,028.6 feet, on June 12 and at 55.78 percent by volume of full pool on that same date. Before this year, the lowest level that had been observed in Navajo Lake on June 12 in the last 10 years was in 2013, when the lake was at 6,029.17 feet of elevation. Last year, the water level on June 12 was 6,041.47 feet of elevation. The Navajo LakeWater Database also notes that the San Juan and Piedra rivers, which feed Navajo Lake, are at 11.92 percent of their combined aver- age and that inflows for water year 2022, which began on Oct. 1, 2021, and ends on Sept. 30, 2022, are at 89.6 percent of those for water year 2021.
In an interview with The SUN, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Manager for Navajo State Park Brian Sandy explained the impact the low water levels have had on the park. He commented that the low water levels have had a “really negative impact” on the park’s marina and the services it can provide, with the on-the-water fuel pump dock and the pump-out station for houseboats both inactive. He noted that no slips are available at the dock, with the few that remain usable reserved for patrol and rental boats. He added that the water level in the mooring cove is sufficiently low to render most of the mooring balls unusable. Sandy stated that the low water level has had a particularly severe impact on houseboats, many of which depend on the mooring cove and the pump-out station…
Sandy commented that water levels in the reservoir are likely to continue to drop over the season with water commitments for the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project and municipal water for communities including Farmington, N.M., contributing to the decrease in lake levels, along with the drought and high winds.
Sandy added that releases of water from the reservoir also occur for the purposes of improving endangered fish species habitat downstream by raising water levels in rivers.
Ross Ice Shelf, 1997 The Ross Ice Shelf from the NATHANIEL B. PALMER Ross Sea, Antarctica. Photo credit: Public Domain
Click the link to read the article on The Guardian website (Eva Corlett). Here’s an excerpt:
Microplastics have been found in freshly fallen snow in Antarctica for the first time, which could accelerate snow and ice melting and pose a threat to the health of the continent’s unique ecosystems. The tiny plastics – smaller than a grain of rice – have previously been found in Antarctic sea ice and surface water but this is the first time it has been reported in fresh snowfall, the researchers say. The research, conducted by University of Canterbury PhD student, Alex Aves, and supervised by Dr Laura Revell has been published in the scientific journal The Cryosphere.
Aves collected snow samples from the Ross Ice Shelf in late 2019 to determine whether microplastics had been transferred from the atmosphere into the snow. Up until then, there had been few studies on this in Antarctica…“We were optimistic that she wouldn’t find any microplastics in such a pristine and remote location,” Revell said. She instructed Aves to also collect samples from Scott Base and the McMurdo Station roadways – where microplastics had previously been detected – so “she’d have at least some microplastics to study,” Revell said. But that was an unnecessary precaution – plastic particles were found in every one of the 19 samples from the Ross Ice Shelf.
“It’s incredibly sad but finding microplastics in fresh Antarctic snow highlights the extent of plastic pollution into even the most remote regions of the world,” Aves said.
PFAS contamination in the U.S. via ewg.org. [Click the map to go to the website.]
Click the link to read the release on the EPA website:
Agency establishes new health advisories for GenX and PFBS and lowers health advisories for PFOA and PFOS
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released four drinking water health advisories for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the latest action under President Biden’s action plan to deliver clean water and Administrator Regan’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap. EPA also announced that it is inviting states and territories to apply for $1 billion – the first of $5 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law grant funding – to address PFAS and other emerging contaminants in drinking water, specifically in small or disadvantaged communities. These actions build on EPA’s progress to safeguard communities from PFAS pollution and scientifically inform upcoming efforts, including EPA’s forthcoming proposed National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for PFOA and PFOS, which EPA will release in the fall of 2022.
“People on the front-lines of PFAS contamination have suffered for far too long. That’s why EPA is taking aggressive action as part of a whole-of-government approach to prevent these chemicals from entering the environment and to help protect concerned families from this pervasive challenge,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Thanks to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are also investing $1 billion to reduce PFAS and other emerging contaminants in drinking water.”
“Today’s actions highlight EPA’s commitment to use the best available science to tackle PFAS pollution, protect public health, and provide critical information quickly and transparently,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox. “EPA is also demonstrating its commitment to harmonize policies that strengthen public health protections with infrastructure funding to help communities—especially disadvantaged communities—deliver safe water.”
Assistant Administrator Fox announced these actions at the 3rd National PFAS Conference in Wilmington, North Carolina.
$1 Billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Funding
As part of a government-wide effort to confront PFAS pollution, EPA is making available $1 billion in grant funding through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help communities that are on the frontlines of PFAS contamination, the first of $5 billion through the Law that can be used to reduce PFAS in drinking water in communities facing disproportionate impacts. These funds can be used in small or disadvantaged communities to address emerging contaminants like PFAS in drinking water through actions such as technical assistance, water quality testing, contractor training, and installation of centralized treatment technologies and systems.
EPA will be reaching out to states and territories with information on how to submit their letter of intent to participate in this new grant program. EPA will also consult with Tribes and Alaskan Native Villages regarding the Tribal set-aside for this grant program. This funding complements $3.4 billion in funding that is going through the Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) and $3.2 billion through the Clean Water SRFs that can also be used to address PFAS in water this year.
Lifetime Drinking Water Health Advisories for Four PFAS
The agency is releasing PFAS health advisories in light of newly available science and in accordance with EPA’s responsibility to protect public health. These advisories indicate the level of drinking water contamination below which adverse health effects are not expected to occur. Health advisories provide technical information that federal, state, and local officials can use to inform the development of monitoring plans, investments in treatment solutions, and future policies to protect the public from PFAS exposure.
EPA’s lifetime health advisories identify levels to protect all people, including sensitive populations and life stages, from adverse health effects resulting from a lifetime of exposure to these PFAS in drinking water. EPA’s lifetime health advisories also take into account other potential sources of exposure to these PFAS beyond drinking water (for example, food, air, consumer products, etc.), which provides an additional layer of protection.
EPA is issuing interim, updated drinking water health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) that replace those EPA issued in 2016. The updated advisory levels, which are based on new science and consider lifetime exposure, indicate that some negative health effects may occur with concentrations of PFOA or PFOS in water that are near zero and below EPA’s ability to detect at this time. The lower the level of PFOA and PFOS, the lower the risk to public health. EPA recommends states, Tribes, territories, and drinking water utilities that detect PFOA and PFOS take steps to reduce exposure. Most uses of PFOA and PFOS were voluntarily phased out by U.S. manufacturers, although there are a limited number of ongoing uses, and these chemicals remain in the environment due to their lack of degradation.
For the first time, EPA is issuing final health advisories for perfluorobutane sulfonic acid and its potassium salt (PFBS) and for hexafluoropropylene oxide (HFPO) dimer acid and its ammonium salt (“GenX” chemicals). In chemical and product manufacturing, GenX chemicals are considered a replacement for PFOA, and PFBS is considered a replacement for PFOS. The GenX chemicals and PFBS health advisory levels are well above the level of detection, based on risk analyses in recent scientific studies.
The agency’s new health advisories provide technical information that federal, state, and local agencies can use to inform actions to address PFAS in drinking water, including water quality monitoring, optimization of existing technologies that reduce PFAS, and strategies to reduce exposure to these substances. EPA encourages states, Tribes, territories, drinking water utilities, and community leaders that find PFAS in their drinking water to take steps to inform residents, undertake additional monitoring to assess the level, scope, and source of contamination, and examine steps to reduce exposure. Individuals concerned about levels of PFAS found in their drinking water should consider actions that may reduce exposure, including installing a home or point of use filter.
Next Steps
EPA is moving forward with proposing a PFAS National Drinking Water Regulation in fall 2022. As EPA develops this proposed rule, the agency is also evaluating additional PFAS beyond PFOA and PFOS and considering actions to address groups of PFAS. The interim health advisories will provide guidance to states, Tribes, and water systems for the period prior to the regulation going into effect.
The EPA’s work to identify and confront the risks that PFAS pose to human health and the environment is a key component in the Biden-Harris Administration whole-of-government approach to confronting these emerging contaminants. This strategy includes steps by the Food and Drug Administration to increase testing for PFAS in food and packaging, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help dairy farmers address contamination of livestock, and by the Department of Defense to clean-up contaminated military installations and the elimination of unnecessary PFAS uses.
To receive grant funding announced today through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, states and territories should submit a letter of intent by August 15, 2022.
To provide the public with more information about these actions, EPA will be hosting a webinar on June 23, 2022 at 12:00 pm Eastern. Learn more or register for the event.
A whistleblower and watchdog advocacy group used an EPA database of locations that may have handled PFAS materials or products to map the potential impact of PFAS throughout Colorado. They found about 21,000 Colorado locations in the EPA listings, which were uncovered through a freedom of information lawsuit. Locations are listed by industry category. (Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility analysis of EPA database)
Click the link to read “EPA warns toxic ‘forever chemicals’ more dangerous than once thought” on The Washington Post website (Dino Grandoni). Here’s an excerpt:
The guidance may spur water utilities to tackle PFAS, but health advocates are still waiting for mandatory standards
The new health advisories for a ubiquitous class of compounds known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, underscore the risk facing dozens of communities across the country. Linked to infertility, thyroid problems and several types of cancer, these “forever chemicals” can persist in the environment for years without breaking down…
The guidance aims to prompt local officials to install water filters or at least notify residents of contamination. But for now, the federal government does not regulate the chemicals. Health advocates have called on the Biden administration to act more quickly to address what officials from both parties describe as a contamination crisis that has touched every state…
Agency officials assessed two of the most common ones, known as PFOA and PFOS, in recent human health studies and announced Wednesday that lifetime exposure at staggeringly low levels of 0.004 and 0.02 parts per trillion, respectively, can compromise the immune and cardiovascular systems and are linked to decreased birth weights.
Those drinking-water concentrations represent “really sharp reductions” from previous health advisories set at 70 parts per trillion in 2016, said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. The announcement, he added, sends “an important signal to get this stuff out of our drinking water.”
More significantly, the EPA is preparing to propose mandatory standards for the two chemicals this fall. Once finalized, water utilities will face penalties if they neglect to meet them. The advisories will remain in place until the rule comes out. The EPA also said Wednesday that it is offering $1 billion in grants to states and tribes through the bipartisan infrastructure law to address drinking-water contamination.
The All American Canal carries water from the Colorado River to farms in California’s Imperial Valley. Photo credit: Adam Dubrowa, FEMA/Wikipedia.
Click the link to read the article on the Los Angeles Times website (Sammy Roth). Here’s an excerpt:
Alex Cardenas. J.B. Hamby. Jim Hanks. Javier Gonzalez. Norma Sierra Galindo. There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of them. But with the Colorado River in crisis, they’re arguably five of the most powerful people in the American West. They’re the elected directors of the Imperial Irrigation District, or IID, which provides water to the desert farm fields of California’s Imperial Valley, in the state’s southeastern corner. They control 3.1 million acre-feet of Colorado River water — roughly one-fifth of all the Colorado River water rights in the United States.
And if you live in Southern California — or in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver or Salt Lake City — the future reliability of your water supply will depend at least in part on what IID does next…
That’s because the Colorado River has been over-tapped for a century — and now climate change is making things worse, sharply reducing the river’s flow. Lake Mead is just 28% full, its lowest level ever. Lake Powell is at 27%. A federal official said this week that the seven states dependent on the river — including California — will need to cut their water use between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet next year to avoid outright catastrophe at the two major reservoirs…
Those kinds of cutbacks almost certainly won’t be possible without IID’s help. And that help is not guaranteed.
The Imperial Valley’s landowning farmers have fought bitterly to protect their senior water rights — hence the importance of the five individuals whose campaigns they fund, and whose actions they closely scrutinize. In 2002, for instance, the IID board voted down a proposal to sell lots of Colorado River water to San Diego County. Under pressure from the George. W Bush administration, they eventually reversed themselves — a move that invited the wrath of farmers, with long-lasting political consequences. As recently as last year, IID didn’t participate in a deal between California, Arizona and Nevada agencies to leave more water in Lake Mead. Two years earlier, the district sued to block a similar agreement known as the Drought Contingency Plan.
Colorado River drought contingency plans signing ceremony in May 2019. Photo: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
La Niña intensifies the average atmospheric circulation—surface and high-altitude winds, rainfall, pressure patterns—in the tropical Pacific. Over the contiguous United States, the average location of the jet stream shifts northward. The southern tier of the country is often drier and warmer than average. NOAA Climate.gov illustration.
Global warming is shifting cyclical temperature swings in the Pacific Ocean, and that affects floods in Australia, fires in South America and even temperature in the polar regions.
Other “unthinkable” extremes hit the Northern Hemisphere in the months before that. A December wildfire in the Rocky Mountain foothills of Colorado completely changed how some forest and fire scientists see the fire risk in that area, and the Pacific Northwest heat wave that started in June 2021 was an extreme not forecast by climate models. As that heat wave ebbed in July, parts of several German towns were destroyed by flooding rainstorms that were intensified by global warming. And in recent days, temperatures surged to 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the Siberian Arctic near the North Pole and above the adjacent Arctic Ocean.
Scientists exploring possible connections between the remarkable series of extremes in both hemispheres say they are increasingly certain that the powerful El Niño-La Niña cycle in the Pacific Ocean is one of the key links. New research shows the cycle has shifted in a way that is likely to fuel extremes, including wild swings between heat and drought and flooding rains.
In the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), huge masses of water surge eastward and westward every two to seven years along a vast region of the equatorial Pacific. One of the strongest El Niños on record in 2016 helped boost the average global temperature to a new record high that year.
It’s Happening. Now
The most recent global science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that the global warming fingerprint on the El Niño-La Niña cycle would become apparent after about 2050. But the accelerating pace of record-breaking weather events shows that the destructive effects are already here, said Wenju Cai, director of the Center for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia…
Oceans hold 93 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gasses, and the tropical Pacific is the biggest tank for this heat, pure energy for the climate system. The El Niño-La Niña cycle is the pump distributing that energy, as heat and moisture, to the global climate system, to the east and west of the equator, as well as the north and south.
Sustaining Lake Mead for the benefit of downstream water users in the Lower Colorado River Basin has been a key objective of the 2007 Interim Guidelines and the 2019 Drought Contingency Plans. (Source: Lighthawk via The Water Desk)
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
Colorado River water managers are facing a monumental task. Federal officials have given leaders in seven Western states a new charge — to commit to an unprecedented amount of conservation and do it before an August deadline. Without major cutbacks in water use, the nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are in danger of reaching critically low levels.
Camille Calimlim Touton being sworn in as Reclamation’s Commissioner by Secretary Deb Haaland.
On June 14, Bureau of Reclamation commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton came to a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing with a prognosis, a goal and a threat.
First came the prognosis for the beleaguered river that supplies 40 million people in the Southwest and has seen its flows reduced due to 22 years of higher temperatures…
The Colorado River’s big reservoirs are at record lows. Lake Mead sits at 28% of its capacity, and Lake Powell is at 27% capacity. They’re both projected to drop further as the year progresses.
Touton set the goal to keep them from dropping to levels where hydropower production ceases and where it becomes physically impossible to move water through the dams…
Touton finished her remarks with the threat. If the seven states that rely on the Colorado River can’t cut their own use, the federal government is prepared to do it for them, Touton said. She gave a 60-day deadline to craft a deal.
Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton). Here’s an excerpt:
The American West has been plumbed into a series of “mega-watersheds.”
Because basins are connected by pipelines and canals, drought in one region affects distant watersheds.
A big Southern California water agency plans to draw more water from the Colorado River this year because of inadequate moisture in the Sierra Nevada.
On a map that might grace the walls of a high school classroom, the watersheds of the American West are distinct geographical features, hemmed in by foreboding plateaus and towering mountain ridges. Look closer and those natural boundaries are less rigid. A sprawling network of pipelines and canals pierce mountains and cross deserts, linking many of the mighty rivers and smaller streams of the West. These “mega-watersheds” have redrawn the map, helping cities and farms to grow large and productive, but also becoming political flashpoints with steep environmental costs…
Upstream on the Colorado River, there are more links. Tributary streams in Colorado are diverted through the San Juan-Chama Project into New Mexico, where the water enters the Rio Grande system and supplies Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The Central Utah Project pulls Colorado River water into the orbit of the fast-growing Wasatch Front, which is not in the basin.
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
In the headwaters state of Colorado, 11 major interbasin transfers unite rivers on both sides of the Rockies. The Moffat and Adams tunnels cut through the Continental Divide, a feat of engineering that brings Colorado River water into the South Platte River basin, where it is gulped by Denver and other Front Range cities.
The Moffat Tunnel, heading east. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Entrance to the Colorado-Big Thompson project. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
For all the water supply flexibility they provide, these diversions are not risk-free. They have depleted water for native fish. Many of them — from the Owens River in California to the West Slope of Colorado — contend with legacies of acrimony and mistrust, feelings that arose decades ago due to the political imbalance between rural areas where water was extracted and urban areas that benefitted.
Scenic Unaweep Canyon. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
Xcel Energy asked for permission to spend up to $15 million in investigating whether a pumped-storage hydro project in Unaweep Canyon, south of Grand Junction, is feasible.
No, said Colorado Public Utility Commission members at a meeting on June 10. You can get $1 million that can be recovered from customers but no more.
Pumped hydroelectric generation illustrated. Graphic via The Mountain Town News
The company has filed for a preliminary permit application with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, putting it in more or less the same stage of the planning process as the Craig-Hayden projects. Which is to say early.
“I just see this project has having enormous environmental, financial and technological risks,” said Commissioner John Gavan.
Eric Blank, the commission chairman, had said he would be willing to go for $5 million as there seems to be a gap in funding for development of ideas and before they can be solidified. “It’s a little bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.”
Megan Gilman, the third commissioner, said she was inclined to reject Xcel’s proposal.
The canyon does have tremendous vertical relief. It’s a canyon without a river, although some geologists have conjectured it was originally a pathway for the Colorado River.
The 3.5-megawatt turbine was donated to Colorado State University by San Diego-based Solar Turbines and will support hydrogen combustion research at the CSU Energy Institute. Photos by Allison Vitt.
Colorado State University’s Energy Institute is revving up its hydrogen and natural gas research capabilities with the recent arrival of an industrial turbine generator slated to be installed at the Powerhouse Energy Campus. The acquisition positions CSU among just a handful of academic institutions across the U.S. that have similar engines for conducting large-scale research and testing.
San Diego-based manufacturer Solar Turbines donated the turbine, which will be stationed in the Powerhouse’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory. Solar Turbines is a subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer of diesel and natural gas engines.
The turbine’s arrival at the Powerhouse this past spring marked the beginning of its new life in higher education research.
Capable of producing 4,700 horsepower and 3.5 megawatts of electricity, the massive turbine will dwarf the existing research engines at CSU – and at nearly any other academic institution – by a long shot: In just one hour of runtime, the generator could produce enough energy to power the average U.S. household for more than three months.
“We have a track record of working with Caterpillar on large-scale energy solutions over several decades, and now this collaboration with Solar Turbines and the equipment they’ve provided will allow us to expand our work on clean turbine technology even further,” said Bryan Willson, Executive Director of the CSU Energy Institute.
The Energy Institute’s 30-year history partnering with Caterpillar on engine research projects has resulted in numerous applied solutions for improving engines and decreasing emissions across industries, he said.
“This new turbine will provide truly unparalleled access for faculty and students to advance their research on these critical greenhouse gas emission reduction technologies and develop solutions around combined hydrogen and natural gas power generation,” Willson said. “It will be an incredible addition to the facility and our research capabilities.”
The turbine being delivered to the Powerhouse Energy Campus on April 4, 2022. Photo credit: Colorado State Universtiy
Hydrogen combustion research
Bret Windom, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is leading CSU’s team of researchers developing kinetic models of hydrogen combustion. This work is part of a larger four-year, $4.5 million U.S. Department of Energy project led by Solar Turbines to develop a retrofittable dry, low-emissions gas turbine combustion system that can run on 100% hydrogen as well as blends of hydrogen and natural gas. Researchers from University of California-Irvine, Energy Research Consultants, Ltd., and the Southwest Research Institute are also contributors to the project.
“We’re currently in phase one of this project, where we’re developing combustion models and supporting computer-aided engineering of the combustor design,” Windom said.
In collaboration with Solar Turbines, Windom’s team will also be studying the turbine’s potential to run on varying fuel blends of natural gas and hydrogen and what, if any, modifications need to be made to the equipment to account for the enhanced reactivity of hydrogen and its unique combustion behaviors. This research could play a key role in advancing hydrogen-powered turbine technology, work that could have scalable impacts on decarbonization in the industrial and power generation sectors, he said.
“We have a track record of taking solutions from the laboratory and getting them into the field at-scale, and the addition of the turbine in our lab facility is going to allow us to do that now,” Windom said.
For CSU student Miguel Valles Castro, the addition of the turbine will bring more than just new equipment into the lab; it will broaden opportunities for students to develop and apply their research skills in a real-world setting. Valles Castro is a mechanical engineering doctoral student, graduate research assistant and Cogen Renewable Energy Fellow working with Windom on internal combustion engine modeling.
“The Energy Institute at CSU has many years of experience in internal combustion engines and other renewable energy devices to reduce emissions,” Valles Castro said. “The arrival of the turbine is exciting because it expands our areas of expertise.”
Do you recognize these plant names? Moonbeam coreopsis. Autumn joy stonecrop. Blonde ambition.
They may not be well known among most homeowners, but they are examples of water-wise plants gaining popularity in Colorado every year.
Water-wise plants mostly rely on what Mother Nature provides, requiring either no additional water or only a few inches during the growing season.
Plant Select, which promotes low-water plants that thrive in Colorado’s climate, describes this plant as an “impressive, highly ornamental form of Western native grass with tall, upright stems.” We think it lives up to its name: Blonde Ambition. Photo credit: Denver Water
The plants are an alternative to thirsty Kentucky bluegrass and thrive in Colorado’s semi-arid climate. Water-wise plants also offer additional benefits such as low maintenance and added color. Many also attract birds, bees and butterflies.
Check out stories and advice from Denver Water customers who have added Garden In A Box kits to their landscapes.
Good sources of information include Resource Central, which offers the popular Garden In A Box program, and Plant Select, which promotes plants that need less water and thrive in the high plains and Rocky Mountain regions.
Elie Zwiebel and his partner, Laura, stand in front of their home in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood showing off results of their Garden In A Box. Photo credit: Denver Water
Resource Central
Since 2012, Denver Water has regularly supported Resource Central, a nonprofit organization based in Boulder that promotes water conservation programs.
One of its programs, Garden In A Box, offers a variety of water-wise plants along with plant-by-number garden designs from landscape professionals. The kits also come with information about the care and maintenance needs of the plants.
A Garden In A Box, after a few years, will delight homeowners and those who pass by. Photo credit: Denver Water
Customers can choose from gardens with names like “Naturally Native” and “Painted Shade,” indicating the kind of plants in each garden and the type of conditions they thrive in.
Programs like Garden In A Box are important to Denver Water because among its customers, outdoor water use accounts for about 50% of single-family residential water use. Converting a section of lawn into a water-wise garden is one way to reduce a home’s outdoor water footprint.
“Garden In A Box started in 2003 and we’ve sold more than 41,000 kits through fall 2021,” said Elisabeth Bowman, conservation engagement manager at Resource Central.
“Interest in the gardens has grown every year in the metro area so we’re happy to see so many people looking for water-wise landscapes.”
Between 2003 through 2021, Resource Central estimates it’s helped plant 3.1 million square feet of low-water landscapes, saving 228.6 million gallons of water over the lifetime of the gardens sold to customers across the Front Range.
A homeowner near Denver’s City Park removed grass from his front yard and planted a Garden In A Box. Photo credit: Denver Water
Denver Water pays Resource Central more than $15,000 a year to set up four garden pickup events in Denver every spring, so customers who live in and near Denver Water’s service area don’t have to go far to get their gardens.
More than 10,000 gardens have been sold to Denver-area residents since 2014.
Garden In A Box offers water-wise plants and professional designs in each kit. Image credit: Resource Central
“Denver Water is a huge partner for us, the support they provide makes it easy for Denver residents to pick up their kits. Over 1,000 of our gardens go to Denver residents every year,” said Melanie Stolp, manager of Resource Central’s Garden In A Box and its water efficiency Slow the Flow programs.
And the results of the customers’ purchases are amazing.
Just take a look at Resource Central’s 2021 numbers for Denver Water:
1,834 Garden In A Box kits sold to customers who live in Denver and the surrounding suburbs of Centennial, Edgewater, Greenwood Village, Lakewood, Littleton and Wheat Ridge.
100,000 square feet of low-water gardens planted, according to Resource Central’s estimates.
9.5 million gallons of water saved over the lifetime of those new gardens, according to Resource Central’s estimates.
A Resource Central employee loads a Garden In A Box kit during the spring 2021 pickup event. Photo Credit: Denver Water
“The Garden In A Box program helps people start small, converting a section of the lawn from turf to low-water plants,” said Jeff Tejral, Denver Water’s former water efficiency manager who guided the partnership with Resource Central.
“It helps people learn about these plants, how to care for them and the beauty they can bring to their home. From there, they often convert more sections of grass to water-wise landscapes.”
Customer surveys indicate about two-thirds of Garden In A Box buyers have little or no experience with water-wise plants, according to Tejral.
The Garden In A Box kit comes with a plant-by-number guide for a landscape designed by professionals using water-wise plants. Photo credit: Denver Water
That’s why each garden comes with a guide that helps customers through the planting and early years of the garden’s life.
Gardens have been sold in the spring and typically sell out quickly. Resource Central continues to increase the number of kits available each year to meet the growing demand. The organization has also conducted a fall sale for about four years and in 2021 increased its offerings by 35%.
Plant Select helps gardeners find water-wise plants that thrive in Colorado and the retailers that sell them. See their Top 10 plants from 2020.
The fall 2021 sale sold out. Another fall is planned for 2022.
Bowman encourages anyone interested in purchasing a Garden In A Box to check out Resource Central’s website and sign up for their newsletter.
A Garden In A Box kit planted in southeast Denver’s Hampden neighborhood. Photo credit: Denver Water
In addition to Garden In A Box, Resource Central also offers other water conservation programs through its water utility partners, including:
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5, 2015. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]
A little less than seven years after contractors working at the site of an abandoned mine in southwest Colorado triggered a spill of toxic materials that led to perhaps the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Four Corners region. Federal and New Mexico officials announced during a June 16 press conference they had agreed on a settlement of $32 million to compensate the state for damages related to the incident…
The announcement came on the same day that Navajo Nation officials announced in a statement that they had reached a $31 million settlement with federal officials for damages caused by the same incident…
[Governor] Lujan Grisham noted New Mexico’s settlement with the EPA does not include an additional $11 million the state has received from private entities that shared responsibility for the Aug. 5, 2015…
“The river has largely healed, which is incredible,” Lujan Grisham said while announcing the settlement, adding that a variety of partners worked together to resolve the issues created by the spill. “What hasn’t happened is creating a holistic investment in the community.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to release the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project next year, followed by a record of decision one or two years later. As those milestones approach, details about the project’s final cost, design and environmental impacts are coming into sharper focus. The city now expects the expansion to cost $150 million, possibly more, and begin three years of construction by about 2026.
The expansion would involve enlarging the existing Halligan Reservoir from 6,400 acre-feet to 14,600 acre-feet. The city plans to rebuild, and raise by 25 feet, the existing dam on the North Fork of the Poudre River about 24 miles upstream of Gateway Natural Area. The expansion would reduce flows on portions of the North Fork and mainstem Poudre River by 1% to 6% during May and June. During the rest of the year, reservoir releases associated with the project would address dry spots on the North Fork.
The goal of expanding the reservoir is to increase Fort Collins Utilities’ storage capacity for Poudre River water, which makes up about half of the city’s water supply…
The projected cost of the project has quadrupled in the last eight years as the permitting process has dragged on, best practices for dam design and environmental mitigation have evolved, and the city has done more thorough estimations of the various costs associated with the reservoir expansion.
Some of the snowmelt flowing in the Blue River as it joins the Colorado River near Kremmling, Colo., will reach the Lower Basin states. Dec. 3, 2019. Credit: Mitch Tobin, the Water Desk
Click the link to read the opinion piece on The Salt Lake Tribune website (Bruce Babbitt and Brian Richter). Here’s an excerpt:
Water managers and political leaders are attempting to stave off [water] bankruptcy by juggling water balances among the reservoirs, by holding back and delaying water releases and by looking to cloudless skies for relief that is not coming. As the crisis deepens these short-term patches will no longer suffice. The only way to secure the future is to devise a long-term plan to balance our accounts, to withdraw and use only that amount of water that the river provides each year. For a long-term sustainable plan, the states will need to build upon existing drought response measures agreed to in 2019, called the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP). The DCP has two parts: one governing the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada and another for the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.
Signing ceremony for the Colorado River upper and lower basin Drought Contingency Plans. Back Row Left to Right: James Eklund (CO), John D’Antonio (NM), Pat Tyrell (WY), Eric Melis (UT), Tom Buschatzke (AZ), Peter Nelson (CA), John Entsminger (NV), Front Row: Brenda Burman (US), and from DOI – Assistant Secretary of Water and Science Tim Petty. Photo credit: Colorado River Water Users Association
The Lower Basin DCP sets out a schedule for California, Arizona and Nevada to achieve balance by reducing their use by 1.4 million acre-feet each year. To date these three states are less than halfway toward that target, having reduced withdrawals from Lake Mead by only 533,000 acre-feet each year. The DCP delays the remaining cuts by allowing the three states to continue depleting reserves in Lake Mead until the lake level approaches dead pool, at which point both power production and downstream releases are in jeopardy. The time for taking these risks, wagering that drought relief will soon arrive, is over. The Lower Basin states must agree to a definite timeline for making the remaining reductions.
The Upper Basin is even farther behind. The Upper Basin states have yet to set reduction targets, or even to agree on a procedure for making cuts.
Meanwhile the crisis deepens at Lake Powell, where waters have fallen to a level that threatens both power production and the integrity of the dam structure itself. A recent analysis by the Utah Rivers Council (“A Future on Borrowed Time”) demonstrates that Upper Basin states are presently diverting 500,000 acre-feet per annum more water than can be sustainably withdrawn under existing rules. If the Upper Basin states cannot soon reach agreement on necessary reductions, all options must be on the table. The federal Bureau of Reclamation has the regulatory authority to intervene to reduce water deliveries to federal irrigation projects in the Upper Basin states. Such an intervention in water allocation decisions, normally left to the states, would be unprecedented and unwelcome, but these are times that call for forceful action.
In remarks at the National Congress of American Indians 2022 Mid Year Conference today, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the launch of the first-ever Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee (STAC).
The STAC, which was announced as part of the 2021 White House Tribal Nations Summit, will ensure Tribal leaders have direct and consistent contact and communication with the current and future Department officials to facilitate robust discussions on intergovernmental responsibilities, exchange views, share information and provide advice and recommendations regarding Departmental programs and funding that impact Tribal Nations to advance the federal trust responsibility.
“Tribes deserve a seat at the decision-making table before policies are made that impact their communities. Tribal members who are joining the first-ever Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee will be integral to ensuring Tribal leaders can engage at the highest levels of the Department on the issues that matter most to their people,” said Secretary Haaland. “I look forward to continued engagement and ensuring that the Department honors and strengthens our nation-to-nation relationships with Tribes.”
The STAC is composed of a primary Tribal representative from each of the 12 Bureau of Indian Affairs Regions (BIA), and one alternate member from each region. The members are appointed on a staggered term for up to two years. The Secretary, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, will designate one member of the STAC to serve as chairperson.
The members of the STAC, listed by BIA Region, are below:
Alaska Region
Primary member: Robert Keith; President, Native Village of Elim
Alternate member: Gayla Hoseth; Second Tribal Chief for the Curyung Tribal Council
Eastern Region
Primary member: Kelly Dennis; Councilwoman, Shinnecock Indian Nation
Alternate member: Stephanie Bryan; Tribal Chair, Poarch Creek Indians
Eastern Oklahoma Region
Primary member: Gary Batton; Chief, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
Alternate member: Del Beaver; Second Chief, Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Great Plains Region
Primary member: Dionne Crawford; Councilwoman, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate for the Lake Traverse District
Alternate member: Cora White Horse; Councilwoman, Oglala Sioux Tribe
Midwest Region
Primary member: Whitney Gravelle; President, Bay Mills Indian Community
Alternate member: Michelle Beaudin; Councilwoman, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin
Navajo Region
Primary member: Jonathan Nez; President, Navajo Nation
Alternate member: Daniel Tso; Council Delegate, Navajo Nation
Northwest Region
Primary member: Kat Brigham; Chair of the Board of Trustees, Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation
Lees Ferry, located 15 miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam is the dividing line between the upper and lower Colorado River basins. Photo/Allen Best
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
The Colorado River Basin has suffered a handful of extended, deep droughts. We’re in one of them. But as bad as the current drought is, leaving reservoirs far more empty than full, new evidence has emerged of an even worse drought. It occurred 2,000 years ago.
“The new findings should “help water managers plan for even more persistent and severe droughts than previously considered,” said Subhrendu Gangopadhyay, the lead author of the study that was published in Geophysical Research Letters. Gangopadhyay is principal engineer for the Water Resources Engineer and Management Group at the Bureau of Reclamation.
September 21, 1923, 9:00 a.m. — Colorado River at Lees Ferry. From right bank on line with Klohr’s house and gage house. Old “Dugway” or inclined gage shows to left of gage house. Gage height 11.05′, discharge 27,000 cfs. Lens 16, time =1/25, camera supported. Photo by G.C. Stevens of the USGS. Source: 1921-1937 Surface Water Records File, Colorado R. @ Lees Ferry, Laguna Niguel Federal Records Center, Accession No. 57-78-0006, Box 2 of 2 , Location No. MB053635.
The definition of average used by the team of researchers was the average of flows recorded at Lees Ferry since 1906. This location below Glen Canyon Dam is the official dividing line between the lower Colorado River Basin and the upper basin. The latter is where nearly all of the river flows originate, more than half in Colorado.
The new research finds that compared to the current 220-year drought in the Colorado River, with only 84% of average water flow, it was surpassed by a 22-year period in the second century, when the average water flow was 68% of average.
Farview Reservoir Mesa Verde NP
Paleoclimatologists have long known of severe droughts in the Colorado River. One occurred in the late 16th century, about the time Spanish colonists were staking claims in the Southwest, and others occurred midway through the 12th century, and again in the late 13th century, about the time the ancestral Pueblo were vacating cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde.
This new study stretches the record deeper into the past.
“This new finding suggests that the range of natural hydroclimatic variability in the Colorado River is broader than previously recognized, setting a new bar for worst-case scenario from natural variability alone,” the study concludes.
In other words, Mother Nature could deliver even worse.
Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
That’s not even including the effect of artificial heating of the atmosphere caused by accumulating greenhouse gases. Previous studies have calculated that a third to a half of the reduced precipitation is due to global warming.
New tree ring studies in Alaska help shed light on climate-change impacts to forests.
Paleoclimatologists have a variety of tools for establishing precipitation of past centuries. Tree rings reflect growing conditions, especially precipitation. Wider bands correspond with more moisture, narrower rings less.
These tree ring studies have been catalogued at many areas. For example, one of the researchers in the current study, Connie Woodhouse, then affiliated with the University of Colorado at Boulder but now with the University of Arizona, has studied Douglas fir trees near Eagle among many other places.
San Juan Mountains December 19, 2016. Photo credit: Allen Best
Prominent in this study was research conducted in the San Juan Mountains southwest of Alamosa, near the former mining site of Summitville. It is not in the Colorado River Basin but it does reflect the climate in the San Juan Mountains, which provides a tributary for the Colorado River. That particular site showed a severe drought in the second century, the driest in the last 2,250 years.
For this study, tree rings were not enough. There were just a few fragments. “Tree-ring records are sparse back in the second century,” said Woodhouse. “However, this extreme drought event is also documented in paleoclimatic data from lakes, bogs, and caves.”
Researchers also used statistical method called grid-point reconstructions.
The take-away, once again, is that the natural drought could lift from the Colorado River Basin next year. Or it could deepen.
As for the aridification caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we’re likely stuck with that even if a miracle occurs and the world figures out how to stop the production of carbon dioxide and other gases.
The storm track remained active across much of the contiguous U.S. (CONUS) this week. Much of the Northern Tier states experienced beneficial rainfall and near to below-normal temperatures, predominantly leading to drought improvements from the Pacific Northwest to the Northern Plains. Storm systems and clusters of thunderstorms also resulted in some improvements from the Mississippi Valley to the East Coast. However, where the heaviest rains did not fall, there was some deterioration and slight expansion of abnormal dryness or drought conditions, particularly in parts of the Southeast and Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. Above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation was the main story across much of the southwestern CONUS, extending into Texas, leading to general persistence and degradation of drought conditions. Weak trade winds in Hawaii and below-normal precipitation in Alaska have continued, resulting in degradations this week. Warm and dry conditions also contributed to worsening conditions in Puerto Rico…
Much of the High Plains Region has seen beneficial rainfall and temperatures averaging near to below-normal over the past 30 days. However, above-normal temperatures finally crept in this week, as temperatures ran more than 3°F above-normal for much of the region. Despite the above-normal temperatures, precipitation was also above-average for many locations, warranting broad 1-category improvements in the drought depiction where more than 1 inch 7-day surpluses were observed and where longer-term deficits were appreciably diminished. Only areas in southwestern Colorado and just east of the Front Range in Wyoming experienced some degradation, as temperature anomalies were highest in those areas (6°F to 9°F above-normal). Also, high winds have helped to exacerbate ongoing drought in those locations…
Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 14, 2022.
Much of the Northern Tier of the U.S. from the Pacific Northwest to the Northern Plains, has seen marked improvements in recents months due to a persistent storm track and near to below-normal temperatures. That same pattern continued this week and continued to eat away at long-term precipitation deficits and indicators, such as groundwater. Additionally, some high-elevation locations have even picked up additional snowpack and stream flows are running near to much above-normal over the past 28 days. Given the wet conditions in recent months and the continuation of the active storm track, broad improvements are warranted again this week. The only exception is parts of north-central Montana, where precipitation has generally missed many areas near the Golden Triangle in recent months, warranting some slight degradation this week, as precipitation again missed these areas. Elsewhere in the Western Region, despite the much above-normal temperatures, a general status quo depiction was warranted, the exception being Nevada and New Mexico. A slight expansion of extreme drought (D3) was warranted in central Nevada, where 7 to 28-day average stream flows are running below the 5th percentile of the historical distribution, vegetation indices are indicating similar signals as D3 areas to the east, and KBDIs are indicating high soil moisture deficiency in the upper layers. Despite some nearby monsoon precipitation in parts of New Mexico and Arizona, accumulations were not enough to change the severe (D2) to exceptional (D4) drought depictions in areas where the rains fell. Given the temperatures were running anywhere from 5°F to 10°F above-average, and coupled with windy conditions, additional degradations were made in parts of western and southern New Mexico. Additionally, CPC soil moisture continues to remain below the 5th percentile much of the region and nearby stream flows are averaging in the bottom 2 percent of the historical distribution.
Short-term (30 to 60-day) rainfall deficits continue to mount across parts of the Lower Mississippi and Tennessee Valleys. Coverage of D0 (abnormal dryness) was generally expanded, although coverage is sporadic. Seasonal temperatures in these areas helped keep evapotranspiration rates at bay this week. However, daily soil moisture anomalies continue to become more negative, particularly over the past couple of weeks from northern Louisiana, extending northeastward toward the Tennessee Valley, as several locations have seen continued declines in surface moisture. Similar to the Carolinas, these areas will need to be watched in the coming weeks, as potentially excessive heat and below-normal precipitation is forecast through the end of the month. Drought deterioration is also warranted across much of Texas, which saw another week of much above-normal temperatures, high winds, and below-normal precipitation. Some of these degradations extended into western Louisiana also. However, in eastern Louisiana, a cluster of thunderstorms provided some relief to abnormally dry (D0) and moderate drought (D1) areas. Improvements are also warranted in western Oklahoma, particularly in areas that received at least 1 inch rainfall surpluses this week. Some 2-category improvements occurred in areas where year-to-date precipitation deficits declined and daily soil moisture estimates improved to near-normal down to 200 cm…
Looking Ahead
A storm system with a trailing frontal boundary will exit the northeastern contiguous U.S. (CONUS) over the next 2 days (June 16-17), bringing below-normal temperatures and chances for precipitation to parts of the Great Lakes and Northeast. High pressure is forecast to build over the central CONUS and spread eastward through Tuesday, June 21. Maximum temperatures across parts of the north-central CONUS may reach 15°F to 20°F above-normal. The northwestern CONUS is expected to remain active, as another storm system is forecast to push onshore into the Pacific Northwest and into the Intermountain West during the weekend and leading up to the Tuesday cutoff. With it will come increased chances for precipitation in areas that experienced improvements in recent weeks. Below-normal temperatures are also forecast across much of the western third of the CONUS, in the wake of this passing system.
The Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 day outlook (valid June 21-25, 2022) favors above-normal temperatures and near to below-normal precipitation across the eastern CONUS. Below-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation are favored across the Pacific Northwest and northern Great Basin, in the wake of a passing storm system near the start of the 6-10 day period. However, there is a weak tilt in the odds toward above-normal precipitation in northern Washington. A surge of moisture is expected to bring increased chances of precipitation to the Four Corners region, signaling a potential early start to the Southwest Monsoon season, with probabilities of above-normal precipitation extending northeastward into portions of the Central and Northern Plains. Near to below-normal precipitation and above-normal temperatures are favored over much of California.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 14, 2022.
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website (Anita Snow). Here’s an excerpt:
After experiencing global warming’s firsthand effects, U.S. Latinos are leading the way in activism around climate change, often drawing on traditions from their ancestral homelands.
Juan Roberto Madrid via LinkedIn
“There has been a real national uprising in Latino activism in environmentalism in recent years,” said Juan Roberto Madrid, an environmental science and public health specialist based in Colorado for the national nonprofit GreenLatinos. “Climate change may be impacting everyone, but it is impacting Latinos more.”
[…]
Latino activists are now sounding the alarm about the risks of global warming for their neighborhoods and the world. They include a teen who protested every Friday for weeks outside U.N. headquarters in New York, a Southern California academic who wants more grassroots efforts included in global climate organizing and a Mexico-born advocate in Phoenix who teaches young Hispanics the importance of protecting Earth for future generations.
“Many members of the Latinx community have Indigenous roots,” said Masavi Perea, organizing director for Chispa Arizona, a program of the League of Conservation Voters. “A lot of us grew up on ranches, so many of us already have a relationship with nature.”
[…]
A Pew Research Center study released last fall showed about seven in 10 Latinos say climate change affects their communities at least some, while only 54% of non-Latinos said it affects their neighborhoods. The self-administered web survey of 13,749 respondents had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points…
Colorado College’s Conservation in the West Poll published this year showed notably higher percentages of Latino, Black and Indigenous voters in eight western states concerned about climate change, pollution and the impact of fossil fuels.
Latino and other communities of color are disproportionately affected by climate change, such as more frequent, intense and longer heat waves in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Palm Springs and other arid western communities.
Graphic credit: Colorado College Conservation in the West poll 2022
A view of Reflection Canyon in Lake Powell, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, in 2013. Sedimentary rock forms the landscape surrounding Lake Powell, on the Colorado River at the Utah-Arizona border. (Gary Ladd/National Park Service/Public domain)
WASHINGTON — The federal agency in charge of managing much of the West’s water warned Tuesday that it will act unilaterally to reduce water usage in the Colorado River Basin if state and tribal leaders can’t reach an agreement this summer.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille C. Touton told a U.S. Senate committee that states within the region will need to cut usage between 2 and 4 million acre feet in 2023 to protect the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs.
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For now, Touton said, the bureau is “pursuing a path of partnership,” though she noted the agency has the authority “to act unilaterally to protect the system.”
“There is so much to this that is unprecedented and that is true. But unprecedented is now the reality and the normal in which Reclamation must manage our systems,” she testified. “A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today.”
Touton said the Bureau of Reclamation is currently prioritizing short-term actions to prevent Lakes Mead and Powell from reaching dead pool, a condition where water levels get so low they can’t flow past a dam.
“This is the priority for us, between the next 60 days to figure out a plan to close that gap,” she said.
The Colorado River Basin covers more than 250,000 square miles and provides water to Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Extreme drought
The hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on which Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado sits, gathered together officials from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Family Farm Alliance and the Southern Nevada Water Authority to look at short- and long-term solutions for extreme drought.
John J. Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told panel members that while the situation is bleak, it’s not unsolvable.
“I can assure you from on the ground that the ominous tenor of recent media reports is warranted,” Entsminger said. “What has been a slow motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating and the moment of reckoning is near.”
I can assure you from on the ground that the ominous tenor of recent media reports is warranted …What has been a slow motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating and the moment of reckoning is near.
– John J. Entsminger, general manager of Southern Nevada Water Authority
The solution, he said, is working toward “a degree of demand management previously considered unattainable.”
Entsminger pointed to his home state of Nevada as an example for others in the region to follow, noting that while the state’s population has increased by 800,000 people during the last two decades, its water consumption dropped by 26%.
The state, which gets 1.8% of the Colorado River Basin’s water allocation, has paid residents to remove grass, set a mandatory irrigation schedule and enforced water waste rules.
He said that long-term solutions cannot just focus on residential and urban water use, but must include changes to how farms operate in the region.
Eighty percent of the Colorado River’s water allocation is used for agriculture and 80% of that is used for forage crops like alfalfa, Entsminger testified.
“I’m not suggesting that farmers stop farming. But rather that they carefully consider crop selection and make the investments needed to optimize irrigation efficiency,” he said.
Patrick O’Toole, president of the Family Farm Alliance, told U.S. lawmakers that he believes water storage and improving forest health are important steps to addressing severe, ongoing drought in the West.
The Alliance formed three decades ago to “ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers” in 17 states.
O’Toole cautioned that taking water away from farms would increase the amount of food the United States needs to import from other countries.
“We are about to do with agriculture what we did with manufacturing and let it go overseas,” O’Toole testified.
Brad Udall: Here’s the latest version of my 4-Panel plot thru Water Year (Oct-Sep) of 2021 of the Colorado River big reservoirs, natural flows, precipitation, and temperature. Data (PRISM) goes back or 1906 (or 1935 for reservoirs.) This updates previous work with @GreatLakesPeck.
‘Aridification’
New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich, a member of the panel, pushed back against the committee using the term drought to refer to the situation in Western states, using aridification instead.
That word refers to a region gradually moving to a drier climate, whereas drought often refers to a shorter term reduction in water.
“This is not some random event, it’s frankly a direct result of the lack of action on climate that we have seen for more than 20 years,” Heinrich said. “And we all collectively own that.”
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.
Here’s the release from the Central Arizona Project:
The drought on the Colorado River is critical and we recognize the importance of taking additional actions now to protect the system.
Central Arizona Project has been participating with our partners in conservation efforts to protectLake Mead since 2014. This has included voluntary contributions of funding and water, mandatory
Tier 1 reductions and actions associated with the Drought Contingency Plan and the 500+ Plan.
In 2022 alone, this equals a contribution to Lake Mead of approximately 800,000 acre-feet. In Arizona, reductions have been borne primarily by CAP water users.
Despite our very best efforts, our reservoirs have rapidly declined to record low levels. This is a serious situation and it’s clear that Colorado River Basin users need to do much more. We support
the efforts of the Bureau of Reclamation to address this concerning issue.
Collaboration has been a hallmark in Arizona and across the Basin. Now, more than ever before, it will be essential to work together as we take action to address the effects of drought and climate change throughout the Colorado River Basin system.
SNWA intake #1 exposed April 2022. Photo credit: SNWA
Click the link to read “Major water cutbacks loom as shrinking Colorado River nears ‘moment of reckoning’” on The Los Angeles Times webasite (Ian James). Here’s an excerpt:
As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by climate change, the Colorado River’s reservoirs have declined so low that major water cuts will be necessary next year to reduce risks of supplies reaching perilously low levels, a top federal water official said Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said during a Senate hearing in Washington that federal officials now believe protecting “critical levels” at the country’s largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require much larger reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The needed cuts, she said, amount to between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet next year. For comparison, California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year, while Arizona’s allotment is 2.8 million.
The push for a new emergency deal to cope with the Colorado River’s shrinking flow comes just seven months after officials from California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take significantly less water out of Lake Mead, and six weeks after the federal government announced it is holding back a large quantity of water in Lake Powell to reduce risks of the reservoir dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate electricity. Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels. Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.
Click the link to read “Painful Colorado River cuts are coming, whether basin states agree or not” on the AZCentral website (Joanna Allhands). Here’s an excerpt:
The window to avoid even more painful cuts on the Colorado River just closed. The federal Bureau of Reclamation is asking states to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water, just to keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead out of critically low territory in 2023. And we’ll need a plan to do so by mid-August when shortage levels and other important operating details for the next water year are set…
Colorado River users have about 8 weeks to decide
We’re talking a mind-boggling amount of water. That’s roughly 650 billion to 1.3 trillion gallons…
If we were to carry out every cut contemplated in the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan, which applies to Arizona, California and Nevada, that would amount to 1.1 million acre-feet of water. That means the full basin would need to conserve at least twice as much as the deepest levels of shortage for which our three states have planned. In the best-case scenario. And we’ll need to agree on a plan to do so in about eight weeks – or else, the feds will act for us. Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton made that clear during a June 14 Senate hearing on drought.
Finding this much water will be tough
That’s going to be tough, considering that the Lower Basin has only met about half of this year’s target under the 500-plus plan, which calls for the three states to voluntarily save 500,000 acre-feet in Lake Mead, over and above what we are mandated to cut, each year through 2026. Most of what has been saved so far this year has come from tribes, cities and farmers in Arizona. California is not yet mandated to cut its use, so it has instead decided to take its full allocation this year, plus withdraw some of the water it had previously volunteered to store in Lake Mead, to help cushion the blow of a severely curtailed State Water Project. Meanwhile, the Upper Basin has not agreed to a plan to temporarily curtail use among states. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico have been talking about conservation and demand management ideas for years, including paying folks not to use water, but have never reached consensus…
It must be noted that saving 2 million to 4 million acre-feet next year won’t rebuild Lake Mead or Lake Powell; it just keeps them from falling to the point where hydropower can no longer be generated.
Remains from a batch plant used in construction of Glen Canyon Dam emerged from the receding waters of Lake Powell in February. Photos/Allen Best
Following a busy legislative session for the Colorado General Assembly, which ended May 11, Governor Polis signed several bills directing funding to numerous programs administered by the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).
“The Colorado Water Conservation Board is pleased by the support of the Colorado Legislative and Governor Polis for Colorado water issues in this past legislative session,” said CWCB Director Becky Mitchell. “This support is shown by the passage and signing of multiple bills that will do things like boost project funding for the Colorado Water Plan, help communities address watershed health issues and better prepare for future wildfires, and allow for so many other critical water programs to continue with needed funding.”
Below is a summary of signed legislation affecting CWCB in 2022:
Goose Pasture Tarn. Photo credit: City of Breckenridge
Construction Fund Projects Bill House Bill 1316, or the Projects Bill, annually supports multiple programs that fall within the Construction Fund. Programs supported through this bill, among others, include: floodplain map modernization, weather modification permitting (cloud seeding), the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, dam safety evaluations for reservoir enlargements, and the Colorado Water Plan Grant Program. This bill also for the first time includes funding from Proposition DD (taxes collected on sports betting in Colorado) to supplement Colorado Water Plan grant awards. Also unique to this year’s bill, it allows for CWCB to provide a low-interest loan to the Town of Breckenridge to rehabilitate the Goose Pasture Tarn Dam.
Wildfire Prevention Watershed Restoration Funding Bill House Bill 1379 directs $10 million for post-wildfire watershed restoration and wildfire mitigation grants, as well as $5 million for technical assistance for local governments when applying for additional federal funding and for hiring support staff.
Mrs. Gulch’s Blue gramma “Eyelash” patch August 28, 2021.
Turf Replacement Program Bill House Bill 1151 directs $2 million to CWCB to establish a new funding program to incentivize replacement of turf with water-wise landscaping. This voluntary program defines water-wise landscaping as a “water and plant management practice that emphasizes using plants with lower water needs.” Local governments, certain districts, Tribal Nations, and nonprofit organizations may apply to CWCB for funding to help finance their own existing turf replacement programs as well. More information about this pending program will become available in Spring 2023.
The Republican River basin. The North Fork, South Fork and Arikaree all flow through Yuma County before crossing state lines. Credit: USBR/DOI
San Luis Valley. In this perspective, S is on top. Costilla County is along the edge of the southeastern side of the Valley between the Sangre de Cristo sub-range known as the Culebra Mountains (on the E) and the Rio Grande (on the W); upper left quadrant within SLV on this map. Source: http://geogdata.scsun.edu.
Groundwater Compact Compliance Bill Senate Bill 028 creates the groundwater compact compliance and sustainability fund to help finance groundwater use reduction efforts in the Rio Grande River Basin and the Republican River Basin (such as buying and retiring irrigation wells and irrigated acreage in these river basins). Specifically, the bill appropriates $60 million to CWCB to administer the fund and its intended efforts in coordination with the Division of Water Resources, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, and the Republican River Water Conservation District.
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Map credit: CWCB
Species Conservation Trust Fund Senate Bill 158 appropriates $6 million for conservation programs designed to protect threatened or endangered native species. Funding is allocated to programs through the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, and this bill includes $1.9 million for the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, $800,000 for upper Colorado River endangered fish recovery and San Juan River Basin recovery implementation programs, and $250,000 for Ruedi Reservoir water releases for environmental benefits on the15-mile reach of the Colorado River.
Governor Polis signs SB22-028 at the Rio Grande Conservation District office in Alamosa. Photo credit: CWCB
Observed upper 2000 m ocean heat content and ocean salinity trends in the past half century. Data from IAP ocean dataset (http://www.ocean.iap.ac.cn/).
Click the link to read the article on the EurekAlert website (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences):
Even if society is able to slow all greenhouse gas emissions and get to “net zero” by mid-century as targeted by nations of the world in the UN Paris Agreement, there is a lag built into the climate system primarily as a result of ocean thermal inertia (also ice sheets) that means slow emerging changes such as deep ocean warming and sea-level rise will continue very long afterward.
Climate scientists argue in a new review paper that this means climate actions need to be established at multiple time scales. The paper has recently been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.
In the near term (∼2030), goals such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be critical. Over longer times (∼2050–2060 and beyond), global carbon neutrality targets may be met as countries continue to work toward reducing emissions. The climate actions need to extend far beyond the current period of focus to time scales of hundreds of years. On these time scales, preparation for “high impact, low probability” risks—such as an abrupt slowdown of Atlantic Ocean circulation and irreversible ice sheet loss—should be fully integrated into long-term planning.
The global ocean, which covers some 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, is slower to absorb and release heat than land. The large mass and heat capacity also means the ocean is much more capable of storing heat than air or land, and the ocean is hence the most important controlling component of the Earth’s climate.
This “ocean thermal inertia” offers both good news and bad news with respect to climate change. It means that the planet is not heating up as fast as it would without an ocean. But it also means that even once we halt greenhouse gas emissions by about 2050 to 2060, as laid out in the United Nations Paris Agreement—like a speeding train taking time to slow down once the brakes are hit—the climate system will still continue to change for a considerable amount of time afterward.
The ocean will keep on warming as heat is transported downwards into deeper ocean waters, and the climate system will only re-stabilize when that deep ocean stops warming and the Earth reaches an equilibrium between incoming and outgoing heat.
“This process means that while surface warming may stabilize at about 1.5-2℃ when global emissions reach net-zero emissions, sub-surface ocean warming will continue for at least hundreds of years, yet we normally only talk about climate action on the scale of a few decades to the end of the century at the most,” said lead-author, Prof. John Abraham, a mechanical engineering researcher with the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, “That needs to change.”
As a consequence, a system of scientific ocean monitoring with that time-scale in mind needs to be developed. Besides subsurface temperature and sea level, the tracking of ocean climate trends such as pH, sea ice, ocean surface heat flux, currents, salinity, carbon, will require long-duration consistent and calibrated measurements, and compared with temperature, these essential climate variables are currently much less observed.
“Changes to the ocean will also continue to impact extreme weather over these longer periods, as well as sea-level rise.” said Prof. Lijing Cheng, an ocean and climate scientist from Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “And infiltration of sea water into fresh water supplies can affect coastal food supplies, aquifers, and local economies. Other impacts that are connected to ocean warming and so need to be considered for the very long term include more damaging storm surges, coastal erosion, marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, and marine oxygen depletion.”
“Clearly this later group of measures will take a much longer time to implement but will also provide much longer lasting benefits”, added Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael E Mann, another co-author of the paper. “Multi-scale adaptation practices like this should be considered throughout the globe.”
Finally, the researchers argue, societies need to begin to consider ensuring they are resilient in the face of “high impact, low probability” events (an unlikely event that would have significant consequences if it happens), such as an abrupt slowdown of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, large methane emissions from the seabed or thawing permafrost, passing a tipping point for losing a major ice sheet, or an abrupt shift and transition of ocean ecosystem including a major extinction event.
Moving forward, the researchers hope to connect with key decision-makers, city planners, and vulnerable communities that will need to be involved with such very long-term social decision-making to ensure that are basing their conclusions on sound climate and ocean science.
The confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon, shown here in a September 2020 aerial photo from Ecoflight, represents an area where the humpback chub has rebounded in the last decade. That progress is now threatened by declining water levels in Lake Powell, which could lead to non-native smallmouth bass becoming established in the canyon. CREDIT: JANE PARGITER/ECOFLIGHT
As climate change continues to shrink the nation’s second-largest reservoir, water managers are scrambling to prevent the release of an invasive fish into the Grand Canyon.
Smallmouth bass, a voracious predator and popular game fish, have been introduced into reservoirs throughout the Colorado River basin, including Lake Powell. The looming problem now is that as lake levels drop to historically low levels, the invasive fish are likely to escape beyond Glen Canyon Dam, threatening endangered fish in the canyon, whose populations have rebounded in recent years.
Smallmouth bass are a warm-water-loving species, hanging out in the top part of the water column, which is warmed by the sun. Until recently, the intakes for turbines at Glen Canyon Dam had been lower in the water column, where colder temperatures kept the fish away. But as the lake level falls, the warmer water band containing the smallmouth bass is sinking closer to the intakes, making it more likely that they will pass through the dam to the river below.
Warmer water below the dam also means a more ideal environment for the bass, which thrive in temperatures above 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius).
“With the levels we are expecting to get to this coming year, water temperatures are going to be warmer than they’ve been in 52 years in the Grand Canyon,” said Charles Yackulic, a research statistician with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.
The research center has been modeling the likelihood that smallmouth bass will become established below the dam under different scenarios and providing that information to decision-makers and water managers.
Jack Schmidt, a Colorado River researcher at Utah State University and former director of the research center, co-wrote — along with Yackulic and others — a March 2021 paper that sounded the alarm that future warming is likely to disproportionately benefit nonnative fish species to the detriment of native species. The problem from which all others stem, including the changing fish communities, and the reason Powell is so low in the first place is the climate-change-driven supply-demand imbalance, Schmidt said.
Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
“If we are going to continue to load the atmosphere with carbon such that the atmosphere warms and the runoff in the Colorado River keeps getting lower and if we are going to keep consuming water, … then you can only play this game of staving off the inevitable for so long before it’s game over,” he said.
The Colorado River Water Conservation District spans 15 Western Slope counties. Voters across the district are considering a mill-levy increase that would raise the River District’s budget by $5 million, funding a variety of water-related projects. Colorado River District/Courtesy image
Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Eliza Noe). Here’s an excerpt:
Community Funding Partnership’s accelerator grants are designed to help Western Slope water users build a competitive application for federal funding. This includes support in grant-writing, feasibility, design, preliminary environmental review, benefits analysis and engineering. The Colorado River District will consider supporting up to 85% of funding needs for this limited funding opportunity.
Grant deliverables must include a timely application to a federal funding opportunity that must be submitted by Dec. 31, 2023 and in no cases later than Dec. 31, 2024. Priority will be given to applications targeting a 2023 federal funding round. For more information, visit http://ColoradoRiverDistrict.org.
Applications for the Community Funding Partnership grants are due Aug. 1.
Yellowstone National Park’s Northeast Entrance Road washed out near Soda Butte Picnic Area on June 13, 2022. (National Park Service)
Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Mike Koshmrl):
Unprecedented precipitation and flooding clobbered Yellowstone National Park starting Sunday, destroying bridges, making roads impassable, stranding scores of people and wreaking untold havoc on infrastructure within Northwest Wyoming’s tourism engine. The scope of the damage prompted park officials to close all park entrances Monday.
A U.S. Geological Survey gauge on the Lamar River near the Tower Ranger Station tells the tale of the remarkable weather event. The tributary to the Yellowstone River on Monday topped 18,000 cubic feet of water per second, which surpassed the previous daily record by nearly 50%. The Lamar rose so high that its peak water level, 17 feet over the riverbed, surpassed the gauge’s “operational limit” by 2 feet, and the water level was 5 feet higher than during any other time in 82 years of record keeping.
“It’s down to 15.5 feet right now, so at least it’s coming down,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Straub said Monday morning.
The weather calamity comes on the heels of an exceptionally dry winter, Natural Resources Conservation Service hydrologist Eric Larsen said. There was a record-low April 1 snowpack in the Yellowstone River headwaters, but that snow stuck around because of a wet, cool spring. Sunday and Monday’s torrential rains melted much of that snow, and the combined precipitation overwhelmed the waterways coursing through and surrounding the park.
“All the streamflows that would have been running over the last month, it’s all coming off right now, quickly,” Larsen said.
The Lamar River’s historic June 2022 flows eroded away the Northeast Entrance Road, which connects Yellowstone National Park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs with Silver Gate and Cooke City, Montana. (Yellowstone National Park)
Flows are setting new hydrological high-water records in the Yellowstone River headwaters and well downstream into Montana.
“The Corwin Springs gauge on the Yellowstone, which is just upstream of my house, hit like 52,000 CFS, which is way higher than it’s ever been before,” Larsen said.
“It wiped out the Carbella bridge,” he said of the raging Yellowstone River.
Infrastructure in Yellowstone took such a beating that the National Park Service took the extraordinary step of shutting down all entrances into the park midmorning Monday. Park gates won’t open to inbound traffic Tuesday or Wednesday, officials announced in a press release.
“Due to record flooding events in the park and more precipitation in the forecast, we have made the decision to close Yellowstone to all inbound visitation,” Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement. “We will not know the timing of the park’s reopening until flood waters subside and we’re able to assess the damage throughout the park. It is likely that the northern loop will be closed for a substantial amount of time.”
The community of Gardiner, Montana — home to many Yellowstone headquarters staffers — was “currently isolated,” as of Sholly’s midday statement: “We are working with the county and State of Montana to provide necessary support to residents, who are currently without water and power in some areas.”
A footbridge across the Gardner River along the Rescue Creek Trail was totally destroyed by the flooding event in Yellowstone National Park on June 13, 2022 (Yellowstone National Park)
Evacuations took place within the park and in locations just outside.
The Cooke City-Silver Gate Volunteer Fire Department reported that there was “major flooding” in those two neighboring communities and that the Bannock Bridge in Cooke City is “gone.”
Silvergate was evacuated at 3 a.m. Monday, a host for the Beartooth Cafe told WyoFile.
There were also overnight evacuations in the Roosevelt area, according to Yellowstone visitors who posted online.
Yellowstone’s southern loop fared better initially, but was still being evacuated over the course of Monday, Sholly said in the statement. That’s due, he said, to “predictions of higher flood levels” and “concerns with water and wastewater systems.”
The rain that fell in Yellowstone Sunday and Monday sailed past daily records, Straub said. A rain gauge on the Gibbon River near Norris Junction tallied 1.63 inches of precipitation by 9 a.m. Tuesday. A site on the north side of Yellowstone Lake recorded up 1.75 inches, beating the old daily record, 0.43 inches, by more than 400%, he said.
“Single day observations over an inch are very rare,” Straub said. “We were already getting snowmelt, and add this 1 to 2 inches of rainfall and it started flowing fast into the valleys.”
Northwest Wyoming was forecasting “periodic showers” into Tuesday, he said. Those rains could drop “a tenth or two-tenths” of precipitation at a time, but should abate by Tuesday evening.
In the meantime, Straud cautioned area travelers to make good choices.
“Keep away from any flooded roads,” he said, “and don’t go around barriers.”
It’s all but assured there will be longer-term impacts to commerce and business in Yellowstone, said Mike Keller, general manager for the park’s largest concessionaire, Xanterra.
“The road between Mammoth and Gardiner is pretty much gone in several places,” Keller said. “It’s completely eroded, plus into the hillside beyond. There are some roads in this park that are not going to reopen for a period of time.”
All of Xanterra’s guests in the park are in the process of being evacuated. Employees, for now, are being allowed to stay.
“We’ve closed everything in the park through Thursday night,” Keller said Monday afternoon. “We’re hoping to start opening things back up Friday, but the rivers still haven’t peaked yet.”
MIKE KOSHMRL
Mike Koshmrl reports from Jackson on state politics and Wyoming’s natural resources. Prior to joining WyoFile, he spent nearly a decade covering the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s wild places and creatures.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
Severe flooding due to unprecedented heavy rain on snow is forcing the closure and evacuation of Yellowstone National Park.
Mudslides, rockslides and flooding are wiping out roads and bridges across the region.
Aerial view from the south of Hayman Fire June 30, 2002. Road traversing from left to right is U.S. Highway 24. Town of Manitou Springs is in lower part of photo, Colorado Springs to the right. Garden of the Gods park defined by three upright orange rock formations in right center just below smoke line. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
When the Hayman Fire sparked in Colorado 20 years ago this week (June 8, 2002), it incinerated 138,000 acres of forest. Though many at the time thought it was an anomaly – burning bigger, faster and hotter than most fire managers thought possible and diminishing the natural vegetation’s ability to regenerate as a result— it turned out to be a harbinger of the region’s future fire regime. The lessons learned from the Hayman Fire, however, have led to systemic changes in forest management and post-fire restoration efforts that have helped many western communities recover from similarly uncharacteristic fires and begin to build more resilient forests.
For starters, the Hayman Fire brought much-needed attention to the effects of post-fire erosion and flooding. “It spurred us to action as we saw not only the effects of the fire, but the post-fire erosion and flooding that were more damaging than the fire itself,” Brian Banks, the South Platte River District Ranger, told the Pikes Peak Courier. That attention has prompted government agencies, utilities and even private companies to dramatically increase resources for post-fire restoration.
The White River National Forest in Colorado was recently allocated over $2 million for restoration work in the Grizzly Creek and Sylvan Fire burn areas. The funds are part of the 2021 Extending Government Funding and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act, which provided $85 million to the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region to recover and restore national forests, watersheds and communities impacted by 2020 and 2021 wildfires.
Using funds from the Forest Service’s 10-year strategy to confront the wildfire crisis and improve forest resilience, The Umpqua National Forest in Oregon partnered with the National Forest Foundation and the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 440,000 tree seedlings across the million-acre burn scar left behind by Labor Day fire.
But while money is always good, with so much acreage affected (20,000 acres within the Umpqua National Forest still need to be replated), new tools are needed to make a real impact. After the East Troublesome Fire tore through Colorado in 2021, crews used helicopters to re-seed and mulch 5,000 acres in the Willow Creek Reservoir watershed.
In New Mexico, crews working the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fire started post-fire erosion control before the fire had even been fully contained.
In Arizona, a coalition of government agencies, nonprofits and businesses are collaborating to restore the wildfire burn scar left behind by the Bush Fire by rescuing cacti from construction sites and replanting them in affected areas.
At the University of California Riverside, ecologists are collaborating with the US Forest Service to develop strategies for the restoration of chaparral shrublands so that these biodiversity hotspots rebound with native plants after a fire. They’re also tracking the progress of burned conifer forests that were replanted with more drought-tolerant pine species that normally grow at lower, drier elevations.
To help in these replanting efforts, researchers at New Mexico State University’s Forestry Research Center saved precious seeds used to rebuild resilient forests and created models that predict the best locations to plant seedlings after wildfires. Additionally, the state’s Forestry Division and several universities submitted an $80 million proposal to the federal government for a reforestation pipeline that includes seed collection, seed sowing in nurseries and the location.
Of course, some landscapes are so irreparably altered that communities have no other choice than to adapt. “Hayman is one of the many examples we have from the western U.S. of those fires from around 2000 that, really, (the forest) is not coming back,” Camille Stevens-Rumann, the assistant director of the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute…“But it’s really important to acknowledge that it’s not a lost landscape. There’s still value to grassland or shrubland. And it’s up to us to make sure that that’s still a healthy ecosystem — even if we can’t reforest every part of it.”
After the Caldor Fire destroyed five Sierra-at-Tahoe ski lifts in 2020, “we’re no longer dealing with a pristine forest,” John Rice, the resort general manager, said. “We’ve got a burnt landscape, so how do we utilize the terrain and the natural resources to create a ski product that will be next level for people?” Other wildfire-affected landscapes in California are seeing a ‘gold rush’ of morel mushrooms that have a symbiotic relationship with burned trees. The influx of mushrooms is creating a market for commercial and recreational hunters.
The Colorado River Compact turns 100 this year, but any celebration is damped down by the drying-up of the big reservoirs it enabled. The Bureau of Reclamation’s “first-ever” shortage declaration on the river acknowledges officially what we’ve known for years: the Compact and all the measures augmenting it, collectively known as The Law of the River, have not prevented the river’s over-development.
Nearly every pronouncement from the water establishment about the centennial of the Colorado River Compact calls it the “foundation,” “the cornerstone” of the Law of the River – as though before the Compact was adopted, the river was lawless.
It wasn’t. The real foundation of the Law of the River is the appropriation doctrine that all seven river basin states embraced from their start, an evolving body of common law foundational to all water development in the arid American West.
There is much to appreciate in the appropriation doctrine. It allows water to be claimed only by those who are actually putting it to beneficial use, thus precluding speculation. It protects existing downstream users from having their supply dried up by new upstream users. It has shown flexibility in incorporating new uses.
But the appropriation doctrine also evolved as a powerful engine for growth. Its “first in time, first in right” promise of perpetual secure use rewards those who get to the water first.
Map credit: AGU
Judicial decisions then increased its potential for spurring growth. The abstract “right to use water” came to be a property right that could be bought and sold like an automobile, and water whose use was so purchased could then be moved anywhere – along with its seniority. This enabled cities and other large entities with concentrated economic power to buy and move water far from its origin, including water they were not yet ready to use, which clashed with the appropriation doctrine’s anti-speculation intent.
The Colorado River Compact commission came together 100 years ago to impose some control on that growth engine. The seven Basin states had finally acknowledged that they would have to honor each other’s prior appropriations, and they knew that could precipitate a chaotic seven-state horse race, with each state trying to appropriate as much water as possible as quickly as possible.
Their initial strategy was to prevent that by determining what each state could “equitably” use. That failed because the cumulative sum of what they each believed they deserved added up to considerably more than the river’s average flow.
Finally, they just divided the seven-state horserace into three-state and four-state horse races, details to be worked out later, and that became the essence of the Compact. It wasn’t quite what they had set out to do, but it satisfied the federal government enough to allow Reclamation’s eager beavers to begin developing the river’s mainstem.
The Compact and subsequent laws, agreements, contracts and other measures we know as The Law of the River impose public priorities on the Upper and Lower Basins, limit water for California, designate water for Mexico, add recreation as a beneficial use, incorporate environmental restrictions, limit California again, construct shell games with reservoirs, et cetera.
But a good question for evaluating the Compact and the Law of the River today is this: Would the situation on the Colorado River today have been any worse, or different, had there been no Colorado River Compact and its augmenting “Law of the River”?
Brad Udall: Here’s the latest version of my 4-Panel plot thru Water Year (Oct-Sep) of 2021 of the Colorado River big reservoirs, natural flows, precipitation, and temperature. Data (PRISM) goes back or 1906 (or 1935 for reservoirs.) This updates previous work with @GreatLakesPeck.
Given that the desert empire watered by the Colorado River continues to grow virtually unchecked, with 50 to 80 percent more growth anticipated by mid-century, even as the water supply shrinks four to five percent for every degree of temperature increase, it may be time to stop trying to construct control systems around the growth engine, and look into the engine itself.
This is, of course, something no one wants to touch. But what can else be done when an appropriation doctrine has nothing left to appropriate and the growth it enables has become dollar-driven and spiraling out of control?
George Sibley as the Water Buffalo in “Sonofagunn.” Photo courtesy of the Gunnison Arts Center via the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District
George Sibley is a contributor to Writers on the Range, http://writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively discussion about Western issues. He writes extensively about the Colorado River.
Colorado has just enacted a statewide turf replacement incentive program. So, what does this mean for water conservation? WRA’s Laura Belanger joined us to explain the benefits for Colorado’s communities and water security.
Vail has begun methodically removing grass from its parks from areas that serve little purpose, partly with the goal of saving water. Buffehr Creek Park after xeriscaping. Photo: Town of Vail
Liza Mitchell, a natural resource planner and ecologist with Pitkin County, stands near the wetlands on the North Star Nature Preserve on Aug. 26. A restoration project aims to keep water in the fen, which is habitat for many kinds of wildlife, including ducks, plovers and moose. Photo credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) is pleased to announce the Colorado Wildlife Habitat Program (CWHP) 2022 Request for Proposals (RFP). The CWHP is a statewide program that supports CPW’s mission by offering funding opportunities to private or public landowners who wish to protect wildlife habitat on their property, and/or provide wildlife-related recreational access to the public.
The CWHP is an incentive-based program that funds conservation easements, public access easements, and fee title purchases to accomplish strategic wildlife conservation and public access goals.
Funding for the 2022 cycle is approximately $11 million and is made possible by revenue generated from the sale of the Habitat Stamp, hunting and fishing licenses, and through CPW’s partnership with Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO).
To Apply
The landowner or a third party representative must complete application forms which address one or more of the following CPW’s 2022 funding priorities:
Public access for hunting, fishing, wildlife viewing
Big game winter range and migration corridors
Protecting habitat for species of concern (specifically those Species of Greatest Conservation Need, as identified in the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Statewide Action Plan)
Riparian areas and wetlands
Landscape-scale parcels and parcels that provide connectivity to conserved lands
2022 funding preferences include working farms and ranches and properties adjacent to wildlife crossings. Application materials will be available on Monday, June 13, 2022 here: https://cpw.state.co.us/cwhp.
All proposals must be received by 5 p.m. on Thursday, October 13, 2022.
Completed applications are to be emailed to: Wildlife.RealEstateProposals(at)state.co.us.
Applicants will receive a confirmation email acknowledging receipt.
The CWHP funds conservation easements held by CPW or qualified third parties. Third parties may submit a proposal on behalf of the landowner and applications must be signed by the landowner(s). It is strongly recommended that applicants contact the CWHP manager before submitting an application.
Additional Information
CPW recognizes that maintaining wildlife-compatible agriculture on the landscape is an important benefit that can be achieved through conservation easements and land management plans. All conservation easements funded through the CWHP will require a management plan. The plan must be agreed upon by the landowner and CPW prior to closing, and may include provisions for the type, timing, and duration of livestock grazing, recreational activities, and overall management of wildlife habitat.
Landowners are encouraged to develop a clear vision for the future of the property prior to submitting a proposal. Proposals are scored and ranked through a rigorous review process to evaluate strategic conservation impacts, biological significance, public benefits, and project feasibility. Local CPW staff can help describe the wildlife and habitat values accurately. Local CPW office contact information may be found here: https://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Maps/CPW_Areas.pdf.
Initial funding recommendations will be deliberated in March 2023. Final decisions on which projects will move forward is expected to be determined at the Parks and Wildlife Commission’s May 2023 meeting.
All conservation easement properties are required by law to be monitored annually. Third Party conservation easement holders will be required to submit to CPW copies of the annual monitoring report for each conservation easement funded through the CWHP.
Public access is not required for all conservation easement projects, but compensation is available for granting wildlife-related public access to CPW. Landowners are welcome to submit proposals for projects where the sole purpose is to provide hunting or fishing access through a public access easement, without an associated conservation easement.
Under Colorado law, terms of the transaction become a matter of public record after the project is completed and closed. Additionally, it is important for CPW and major funding partners to provide accurate information to the public regarding the CWHP’s efforts to protect vital habitats and provide hunting and fishing access opportunities. Applicants should be aware that after a project has closed, information about the transaction, including funding amounts, may be used by CPW for internal planning and public information purposes.
All CWHP real estate transactions are subject to an appraisal and an appraisal review to verify value. Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult their legal and financial advisors when contemplating any real estate transaction associated with the CWHP.
Contact Information
For additional information about the CWHP or application process, please contact: Amanda Nims, CWHP Manager
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Real Estate Section 6060 Broadway
Denver, CO 80216
(303) 291-7269
Amanda.nims@state.co.us
A few days ago The Times published a report on the drying up of the Great Salt Lake, a story I’m ashamed to admit had flown under my personal radar. We’re not talking about a hypothetical event in the distant future: The lake has already lost two-thirds of its surface area, and ecological disasters — salinity rising to the point where wildlife dies off, occasional poisonous dust storms sweeping through a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people — seem imminent.
A comparison of the Aral Sea in 1989 (left) and 2014 (right). Credit: NASA. Collage by Producercunningham. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
As an aside, I was a bit surprised that the article didn’t mention the obvious parallels with the Aral Sea, a huge lake that the Soviet Union had managed to turn into a toxic desert.
In any case, what’s happening to the Great Salt Lake is pretty bad. But what I found really scary about the report is what the lack of an effective response to the lake’s crisis says about our ability to respond to the larger, indeed existential threat of climate change.
If you aren’t terrified by the threat posed by rising levels of greenhouse gases, you aren’t paying attention — which, sadly, many people aren’t. And those who are or should be aware of that threat but stand in the way of action for the sake of short-term profits or political expediency are, in a real sense, betraying humanity. That said, the world’s failure to take action on climate, while inexcusable, is also understandable. For as many observers have noted, global warming is a problem that almost looks custom-designed to make political action difficult. In fact, the politics of climate change are hard for at least four reasons.
First, when scientists began raising the alarm in the 1980s, climate change looked like a distant threat — a problem for future generations. Some people still see it that way; last month a senior executive at the bank HSBC gave a talk in which he declared, “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years?”
[…]
…the second problem with climate change: It’s not yet visible to the naked eye, at least the naked eye that doesn’t want to see.
Weather, after all, fluctuates. Heat waves and droughts happened before the planet began warming; cold spells still happen even with the planet warmer on average than in the past. It doesn’t take fancy analysis to show that there is a persistent upward trend in temperatures, but many people aren’t convinced by statistical analysis of any kind, fancy or not, only by raw experience.
Then there’s the third problem: Until recently, it looked as if any major attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have significant economic costs. Serious estimates of these costs were always much lower than claimed by anti-environmentalists, and spectacular technological progress in renewable energy has made a transition to a low-emission economy look far easier than anyone could have imagined 15 years ago. Still, fears about economic losses helped block climate action.
Leaf charging in Frisco September 30, 2021.
Finally, climate change is a global problem, requiring global action — and offering a reason not to move. Anyone urging U.S. action has encountered the counterargument, “It doesn’t matter what we do, because China will just keep polluting.” There are answers to that argument — if we ever do get serious about emissions, carbon tariffs will have to be part of the mix. But it’s certainly an argument that affects the discussion.
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (Eric Kuhn and John Fleck):
With a single statement, the United States Supreme Court changed the direction and tone of the compact negotiations:
“[T]he waters of an innavigable stream rising in one state and flowing into a state adjoining may not be disposed of by the upper state as she may choose, regardless of the harm that may ensue to the lower state and her citizens.”
In a unanimous ruling, on June 5, 1922, the court issued its decision in Wyoming v. Colorado, ruling that Colorado could not develop waters of the Laramie River in a manner that ignored and injured downstream senior appropriators in Wyoming.
Salt Lake Tribune, June 8, 1922 via InkStain
The decision, and its clear implications for the development of the Colorado River, echoed around the West. “State Lines on Colorado River Are Wiped Out”, blared a front page headline in the Salt Lake Tribune, adding “Federal Officials Say California is Already Owner of Stream’s Summer Use.”
This was the risk that states in the river’s upper basin had long feared – that the doctrine of prior appropriation, used by the states within their own borders, might be determined to apply across state lines. Nervously, they all eyed California.
Laramie and Poudre Tunnel inlet October 3, 2010.
The Laramie, the river at the center of the court’s ruling, has its headwaters in the Northern Front Range Mountains about 40 miles west of Ft. Collins. From there it flows 280 miles north into Wyoming, reaching the North Platte River near Ft. Laramie, WY. Wyoming farmers and ranchers began using the river for irrigation purpose in the 1880s and 1890s. Within Colorado there is little irrigable land along the river’s path, but its elevation just happens to be about 225 feet higher than the Cache La Poudre River where the two rivers are a little more than two miles apart. Thus, in 1909 two Colorado water companies, including the North Poudre Irrigation District, a client of Colorado’s Delph Carpenter, began construction of an 11,500 foot tunnel that would divert 800 cfs (essentially the entire river in low flow years) from the Laramie River into the already fully developed Poudre. In 1911 the State of Wyoming filed suit against Colorado to protect its existing irrigators.
Over the course of the eleven-year case, the Supreme Court held three oral hearings, the last in January 1921, only weeks before the Colorado River Commission first met. Wyoming’s basic argument was that Colorado’s proposed project would cause great damage and injury to its citizens who were already using the river for irrigation. Colorado’s basic argument was that it had a sovereign right to take and use any water within its boundaries without regard to the rights of states or individuals outside of Colorado. Both states used prior appropriation, but details of how the doctrine was administered were quite different. In Colorado water rights were adjudicated by the local district court. In Wyoming they were granted by a state Board of Control.
The opinion, written by Justice William Van Devanter, determined that since both states used prior appropriation, this doctrine would set the rule for the equitable interstate division of water on the Laramie River. The effect of the opinion was that to protect downstream senior appropriators in Wyoming, the Colorado project would be limited to an annual diversion of 15,500 acre-feet per year, about 20% of the original plan. The opinion was not a complete loss for Colorado. Wyoming had challenged the legality of the Colorado’s project because it was a transbasin diversion. The court found that there was nothing illegal with projects that move water.
As soon as the opinion was released, Colorado River Compact Commission Secretary Clarence Stetson sent copies of the opinion to the commissioners along with a six-point summary. For Colorado’s Carpenter, the loss was probably not a great surprise, but it was nonetheless a bitter defeat. He told his upper river colleagues that the decision left them badly exposed.
For the compact negotiations, the court decision required Carpenter to change his basic strategy. Up to this point, he and Utah’s Caldwell had held firm for a compact based on the concept that water projects in the Lower Basin would never interfere with water uses in the Upper Basin. The decision coupled with building public pressure for Congressional approval of a large storage reservoir to control floods, regulate the river, and produce much needed hydroelectric power meant that it was now time for Carpenter to propose a more practical alternative. He turned his attention to a concept proposed by Reclamation Service Director Arthur Powell Davis at the Los Angeles field hearing – a compact based on dividing the use of the river’s waters between two basins.
Stetson’s goal was to get the Commission back together in August. Hoover had asked New Mexico Governor Merritt Mechem for a recommendation on where they might meet in relative seclusion. Mechem found such a place, but finding a date that would work for Hoover and the other commissioners would push the meeting date out to November – stay tune[d].
Map of the North Platte River drainage basin, a tributary of the Platte River, in the central US. Made using USGS National Map and NASA SRTM data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79266632
In the 1930s, an archeologist from the Smithsonian wrote a short paper remarking on the exquisite vegetation around First Nation villages in Alaska. The villages’ surroundings were filled with nuts, stone fruit, berries, and herbs—several non-native to the area and many that would never grow together naturally. The significance of these forest gardens went largely overlooked and unrecognized by modern archeology for the next 50-plus years.
Location of Study Sites. Archaeological village complexes in this study: (1) Dałk Gyilakyaw on the Kitsumkalum River, a tributary of the Skeena River; (2) Kitselas Canyon (Gitsaex) on the Skeena River; (3) Say-mah- mit in Burrard Inlet; (4) Shxwpópélem on the Harrison River. Map credit: Ecology and Society
In the last few decades, archeologists have learned that perennial forest management—the creation and care of long-lived food-bearing shrubs and plants next to forests—was common among the Indigenous societies of North America’s northwestern coast. The forest gardens played a central role in the diet and stability of these cultures in the past, and now a new publication shows that they offer an example of a far more sustainable and biodiverse alternative to conventional agriculture.
This research, which was done in collaboration with the Tsm’syen and Coast Salish First Nations, shows that the gardens have become lasting hotspots of biodiversity, even 150 years after colonists forcibly removed the inhabitants from their villages. This work, combining archeology, botany, and ecology, is the first to systematically study the long-term ecological effects of Indigenous peoples’ land use in the region. The gardens offer ideas for farming practices that might restore, rather than deplete, local resources to create healthier, more resilient ecosystems.
Cultivated over millennia
Indigenous forest gardens in the tropics and subtropics have been increasingly appreciated as presenting a valuable model for more sustainable agriculture. The practices have been somewhat easier for researchers to identify because some are still in use today, and they also more closely resemble Eurocentric notions of agriculture—such as annual cycles of planting and harvesting.
In contrast, the forest gardens of the Pacific Northwest are cleared spots nestled alongside the native coniferous forests. The gardens contain collections of perennial plants and shrubs like Pacific crabapple, wild cherry, plum, soapberry, wild ginger, rice roots, and medicinal herbs. Rather than engaging in annual planting cycles, the Indigenous people collected, transplanted, and carefully tended these plants over many years—pruning, fertilizing, coppicing, and using controlled burns to promote productivity.
Four Corners potato (Solanum jamesii) growing in sand at the base of slick rock waterfall, just above site 42SA244, a two-story cliff dwelling in Bears Ears. The species reproduces only by tubers that have very limited dispersal capability. The situation repeats itself among archaeological sites in southern Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Photos by Kari Gillen via the paper “Plant species richness at archaeological sites suggests ecological legacy of Indigenous subsistence on the Colorado Plateau
These lasting effects are seen elsewhere in North America, including the semiarid Bears Ears region in Utah. The archeological sites in both regions have diverse plant species that cannot be explained by natural causes alone, suggesting the potential transplantation of these species over significant distances.
From above, the cultivated area is move obvious. Photo credit: Ars Technica
One of the cornerstone species of the Pacific Northwest gardens—hazelnut—was even transplanted from 700 km away. “Hazelnut is a big piece of our understanding of forest gardens because it was one of the first species recognized as having no business being there—but it’s in this nice pocket where we see a cultural explosion about 5000 years ago,” said Chelsey Armstrong, first author of the study. “As I studied, it was increasingly clear that it wasn’t just hazelnut—these were entire ecosystems. And it wasn’t just gathering—this was a completely different food system where there was clearly active management and investment in the landscape.”
Sustainable and biodiverse
For their latest research, Armstrong and her collaborators selected villages that had been continuously inhabited for more than 2,000 years before the residents were forced to leave. The team surveyed the plant species and an ecological metric called “functional diversity.” The researchers measured the range of traits represented, such as seed mass, shade tolerance, and the method of pollination and seed distribution.
By comparing the gardens to the neighboring forests, the researchers’ results clearly showed that the gardens had a much higher species and functional diversity. In addition, the gardens frequently showed a carefully overlapped structure, with a canopy of fruit and nut trees, a mid-layer of berries, and roots and herbs in the undergrowth. Thanks to the increased availability of fruit, nuts, and other edible plants, these places also supported local wildlife, such as moose, bears, and deer.
“There’s a kind of false dichotomy debate going on right now that biodiversity is at odds with food production, and what we see here is very clearly that it’s not,” said Armstrong. “Forest gardens are one of the examples of how you can get multiple species occupying multiple niche spaces—there are all sorts of ecological lessons there.”
Restoring a legacy
Although the First Nation people aren’t using the gardens as much as when the villages were inhabited, many have been returning to them over the past decades to preserve these places and the knowledge about them. Despite being confined to reservations and penalized for practicing their culture in the past, there’s been a strong movement to restore as much of the traditional knowledge as possible.
“There’s a conscious effort to revive traditional use of the land—it’s taught now in our schools, and it’s being shared more openly among all age groups,” said Willie Charlie, a former chief and current employee of the Sts’ailes Nation of the Coast Salish people who has helped form a working group to maintain and manage access to the gardens. “More and more people are going back to these traditional places to harvest the plants, herbs, medicine, and food.”
Dozens of tribes live in the region, each with different practices and different relationships to their ancestral lands, but land-based foods are a staple for many. Armstrong is collaborating with these communities and designing her research to aid the preservation and restoration of the gardens—and to provide additional evidence to counter local logging interests as well.
“Our people’s belief is that we don’t own the land—we are the land,” said Charlie. “Sharing our continued use of the land is a way of bringing awareness, which brings protection.”
K.E.D. Coan is a freelance journalist covering climate and environment stories at Ars Technica. She has a Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
Geneva, 10 June 2022 – There is a high probability that the ongoing protracted La Niña event, which has affected temperature and precipitation patterns and exacerbated drought and flooding in different parts of the world, will continue until at least August and possibly to the northern hemisphere fall and start of winter. This is according to a new Update from the World Meteorological Organization.
Some long-lead predictions even suggest that it might persist into 2023. If so, it would only be the third “triple-dip La Niña” (three consecutive northern hemisphere winters of La Niña conditions) since 1950, according to WMO.
La Niña refers to the large-scale cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, coupled with changes in the tropical atmospheric circulation, namely winds, pressure and rainfall. It usually has the opposite impacts on weather and climate as El Niño, which is the warm phase of the so-called El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa and southern South America bear the hallmarks of La Niña, as does the above average rainfall in South-East Asia and Australasia and predictions for an above average Atlantic hurricane season.
Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
However, all naturally occurring climate events now take place in the context of human-induced climate change, which is increasing global temperatures, exacerbating extreme weather and climate, and impacting seasonal rainfall and temperature patterns.
“Human induced climate change amplifies the impacts of naturally occurring events like La Niña and is increasingly influencing our weather patterns, in particular through more intense heat and drought and the associated risk of wildfires – as well as record-breaking deluges of rainfall and flooding,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
Graphic credit: WMO
“ WMO is providing tailored support to the humanitarian sector – as witnessed by a recent multi-agency alert on the worsening drought in East Africa. Improved seasonal forecasts are pivotal in this because they help plan ahead and gain substantial socio-economic benefits in climate sensitive sectors like agriculture, food security, health and disaster risk reduction, “ said Prof. Taalas.
“In addition to improving climate services, WMO is also striving towards the goal that everyone should have access to early warning systems in the next five years to protect them against hazards related to our weather, climate and water,” he said.
The current La Niña event started in September 2020 and continued through mid-May 2022 across the tropical Pacific.
There was a temporary weakening of the oceanic components of La Niña during January and February 2022, but it has strengthened since March 2022.
WMO Global Producing Centers for Long Range Forecasts indicate that there is about a 70% chance of the current La Niña conditions extending into boreal summer 2022, and about 50-60% during July-September 2022.
There are some indications that the probability may increase again slightly during the boreal fall of 2022 and early boreal winter of 2022-23.
Global Seasonal Climate outlook
El Niño and La Niña are major – but not the only – drivers of the Earth’s climate system.
In addition to the long-established ENSO Update, WMO now also issues regular Global Seasonal Climate Updates (GSCU), which incorporate influences of all other major climate drivers such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole.
The Global Seasonal Climate Update is based on forecasts from WMO Global Producing Centres of Long-Range Forecasts and is available to support governments, the United Nations, decision-makers and stakeholders in climate sensitive sectors to mobilize preparations and protect lives and livelihoods.
Despite the stubborn La Niña in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific, widespread warmer than-average sea-surface temperatures elsewhere are predicted to dominate the forecast of air temperatures for June-August 2022. However, the extent and strength of predicted warming is less than during March-May 2022, according to the GSCU. Models indicate increased chance of negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) over June-August 2022.
Precipitation predictions are similar to typical rainfall effects of La Niña.
Click the link to read the article on the NASA website:
The rugged, steep Rocky Mountains rise abruptly in the middle of Colorado, splitting the state roughly in half between the western high country and the eastern plains. The extreme contrast of these landscapes also brings an extreme disparity in water.
The Western Slope receives 80 percent of the state’s precipitation, as weather systems rising to cross the continental divide shed their loads of rain and snow before moving east. Water that falls to the west of the divide drains toward the Pacific Ocean, while water that falls to the east runs toward the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic.
The plains of eastern Colorado, however, are semi-arid. In 1820, explorer Stephen Harriman Long—for whom Long’s Peak is named—famously dismissed it as a “Great Desert” unsuitable for agriculture. But the sandy, loamy soil can make fertile farmland when irrigated.
Grand River Ditch
In the mid- to late-19th century, the Gold Rush and the arrival of the railroad brought an influx of settlers to Colorado, including ranchers and farmers. Then in the 1880s, the plains received higher-than-average precipitation. The new settlers plowed under native drought-resistant grasses and used eastern farming techniques to grow wheat and corn, practices that would later contribute to soil erosion and the Dust Bowl.
When drier conditions returned, the residents looked to the Rocky Mountain snowpack and the Colorado River, then known as the Grand River, as a reliable source of water for irrigation. One of the first efforts to tap that supply was the Grand River Ditch. Beginning in 1900, the ditch diverted water from the Never Summer Mountains through Poudre Pass and into the Cache la Poudre River.
First water through the Adams Tunnel. Photo credit Northern Water.
In the early 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, farmers and their representatives formed the Grand Lake Committee and conceived a more ambitious plan to divert water from the Western Slope of the Rockies and connect the Colorado and Big Thompson rivers. After much negotiation, construction of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project was begun by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1938. By the time it was completed and declared fully operational in 1957, it comprised 18 dams, 12 reservoirs, six hydroelectric plants, 95 miles (150 kilometers) of canals, and 35 miles (55 kilometers) of tunnels. The most critical of these is the tunnel that runs 13 miles (21 kilometers) under Rocky Mountain National Park and was named for U.S. Senator Alva B. Adams, who championed the project in Congress.
In 1940, two teams of workers began tunneling from either side of Rocky Mountain National Park: one from the West Portal at Grand Lake and one from the East Portal southwest of Estes Park, Colorado. In 1944, when the drilling teams met thousands of feet below the continental divide, the two sides of the tunnel were misaligned by just the width of a penny. The complex task of lining the 9.75-foot (3-meter) diameter tunnel with concrete took a few more years before first water flowed through the tunnel in 1947.
The portals are visible in the image above, which was acquired on September 2, 2021, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 and overlain with topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).
Photo credit: NASA
Snowmelt and runoff collected in Lake Granby is pumped to a canal that flows into Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Grand Lake, where it enters the West Portal of the Adams tunnel. Upon exiting the East Portal, the water flows into the Wind River toward Mary’s Lake, then proceeds through other tunnels and canals to multiple Front Range reservoirs. Between the West and East portals, the tunnel’s elevation drops 109 feet (33 meters). Driven by the force of gravity, water flows through the tunnel at a rate of 550 cubic feet (15.5 cubic meters) per second—traveling the length of the tunnel in about two hours.
It was a $160 million feat of civil engineering (roughly equivalent to $2 billion in today’s dollars). But it was not achieved without some controversy. Many residents of the Western Slope felt they were not being adequately compensated for the loss of water. Conservationists feared the project would despoil the natural beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park. The project proceeded after officials reached an agreement to construct the Green Mountain dam and reservoir to store water on the Western Slope, and to move the tunnel portals outside the boundaries of the national park.
Today, the Colorado-Big Thompson project delivers 200,000 acre-feet of water a year to northeastern Colorado, quenching the thirst of one million residents and irrigating more than 600,000 acres of farmland. Although the diversion project was initially built to irrigate farms and fields, it now also supplies water for cities and towns, industry, hydropower generation, recreation, and fish and wildlife. In Colorado, where more than 80 percent of the people live where only 20 percent of the precipitation falls, such transbasin water diversions have become a part of life.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Story by Sara E. Pratt.
Map of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project via Northern Water
Click the link to read the article on The Deseret News website (Amy Joi O’Donoghue). Here’s an excerpt:
Heat and dwindling water supplies have combined to result in an outbreak of a harmful algal bloom in the Virgin River watershed, according to the latest drought update issued by the Utah Division of Water Resources.
Southern Utah saw little to no precipitation in May and both Cedar City and St. George tied records for the driest May in 127 years.
Utah Drought Monitor map June 7. 2022.
The U.S. Drought Monitor this week shows that nearly 6% of Utah has reached exceptional drought, the absolute worst category.
West Drought Monitor map June 7, 2022.
Other states in the West are faring no better in this generational drought, with Nevada with more than 21% of its land mass in the exceptional category and California approaching 12%.
Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (Carolyn Sackariason). Here’s an excerpt:
For the third year in a row, the city of Aspen will continue to be under stage two water restrictions due to elevated drought conditions in Pitkin County. The U.S. Drought Monitor last month elevated Aspen and Pitkin County from abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions, according to Steve Hunter, the city’s utilities resource manager.
Map credit: The High Plains Regional Climate Center
Not only has the area experienced above-normal temperatures and below normal precipitation, Aspen started this spring with below average soil moisture. What that means is that drier soils will infiltrate snowmelt runoff reducing the amount reaching the streams, according to Hunter…
The city’s drought response committee has recommended in a staff memo to Aspen City Council that the municipality remain in stage two water restrictions, which it has been since the fall of 2020.
The 2021-22 snowpack was average to slightly above average for the Roaring Fork watershed as Western Colorado saw above average temperatures and below average precipitation in April and May, which have accelerated snowmelt, according to Hunter. Stream flows in the Roaring Fork watershed are estimated to be from 45% to 80% of average, and most rivers are predicted to have a smaller and earlier peak than normal.
Mrs. Gulch’s Moon Garden May 10, 2020.Click the link to read the article on the City of Boulder website (Jonathan Thornton):
Growing trees in our region is difficult in wet years, let alone in drought years. What can you do during the hot, dry summer to help our leafy friends?
During the growing season from April to October it’s important to maintain new and existing trees by watering them and placing mulch within the dripline. Here are some tips to help your trees weather Colorado summers:
Keep the soil moist. Check the soil moisture at least once a week by digging down four inches, approximately 20 inches from the base of the tree. If the soil is dry, then soak well. Maintaining consistent soil moisture allows for better root water absorption. Drought stressed trees are more vulnerable to disease and insect infestations and branch dieback.
Water throughout the dripline. Tree root systems can spread two to three times wider than the height of the tree with most of the tree’s absorbing roots in the top twelve inches of the soil. Water at the tree’s “dripline,” which is the outermost circumference of the tree branches (in the red box below), and three to five feet beyond the dripline for evergreens.
Water deeply and slowly. Apply water to many locations within the dripline. The best methods for watering are with a garden hose, soaker hose, or sprinkler. Water slowly to prevent runoff of water.
Provide the right amount of water. For newly planted trees, water approximately 10 gallons per inch of trunk diameter, two times a week. For an established or mature tree, water 15 gallons per inch of trunk diameter every other week. For example, if your tree is 15 inches in diameter, water using 225 gallons of water.
Mulch the dripline. Mulch conserves the soil’s moisture. Apply organic mulch (like wood chips, bark or evergreen needles) within the dripline two to four inches deep. Leave a one-inch space between the mulch and tree trunk. Eliminate turf prior to adding mulch; turf grass competes with the tree for water and nutrients.
Plant a tree. The city plants free trees in the public right of way. Apply for a free tree this summer, and Forestry staff will check the requested planting site in the fall. If your site qualifies, we’ll plant a tree there for free next spring! The Boulder Forestry annual tree seedling giveaways were canceled in 2020-2022 due to COVID restrictions but we hope to bring the events back in spring 2023. Check the Boulder Forestry website for announcements about upcoming events.
Properly maintained trees are critical to mitigating climate change, drawing down carbon, creating shade to cool heat islands, intercepting stormwater to reduce flooding, and improving air quality and public health. Thanks for taking care of the urban forest and for keeping your parched tree refreshed!
Sunrise March 16, 2022 San Luis Valley with Mount Blanca in the distance. Photo credit: Chris Lopez/Alamosa Citizen
Click the link to read the article on the Monte Vista Journal website (Priscilla Waggoner). Here’s a excerpt:
Two memos the commissioners received addressed Laydon’s hesitation in making a decision. The memos, both generated by Stephen Leonhardt — Douglas County’s legal counsel who attended the public meetings, including the one held April 23 — presented a 26-point list of significant obstacles the county would have to overcome if deciding to vote for the export, not the least of which involved the need to “develop a legislative strategy” to change state law and “numerous hurdles to obtain federal, state and county permits for the project”, including obtaining approval from the Secretary of the Department of Interior.
As the memo explains, that may be problematic in relation to the Wirth Amendment, which specifically applies, at the federal level, to conditions that must be met for any project to export water from the San Luis Valley. The memo also suggests that that will be a solo effort, stating, “The RWR project is not consistent with the Colorado Water Plan so it likely will not qualify for any state assistance in meeting permit requirements.”
Many of the points also validated concerns raised numerous times by opponents throughout the meetings, such as “RWR has not yet developed an augmentation plan in sufficient detail”, “there is no unappropriated water available in the confined aquifer for RWR’s proposed pumping” and RWR is presenting an inaccurate picture of how much water is available.
Agriculture, water and land experts urged the federal government to take decisive action on drought, wildfires and the climate crisis in the western United States on Wednesday at a U.S. Senate hearing.
The hearing was held by the Senate Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry and Natural Resources and was chaired by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. It included testimony from experts from Colorado and Kansas about water conservation, agriculture and climate issues.
West Drought Monitor map June 7, 2022.
The hearing focused on finding solutions to persistent drought and creating resilience for issues facing forests and farmlands in western states such as Colorado. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, almost all of Colorado is at least abnormally dry, with parts of the state falling into severe, extreme or exceptional drought categories. The drought affects the water supply of the Colorado River, which provides water to 40 million people.
Mark Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, discussed the prospects for summer monsoonal rains Tuesday during a meeting the agency held in Grand Junction to discuss monsoon planning and preparation with partners such as the Colorado Department of Transportation and area emergency management planners.
Summer monsoonal moisture pushing into Arizona and New Mexico and sometimes farther north can bring welcome relief from dry and hot conditions. But it also can pose challenges such as flooding, sometimes exacerbated by previous wildfires that leave slopes more flood-prone. That can lead to results like last year’s shutdown of Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon for about two weeks. Flooding also occurred last year in the area of the 2020 Pine Gulch Fire north of Grand Junction…
While monsoon moisture can largely fail to arrive locally some summers, Miller said La Niña periods, like the one that continues to persist now, tend to be associated with above-normal monsoonal rainfall in Arizona and New Mexico. That is helping create expectations for an active monsoon season in western Colorado as well…
[ Jaime Kostelnik] said vegetation recovery in Glenwood Canyon over the first year after the fire, while not uniform, was good, and experts are watching to see what happens this year in terms of further recovery. But she said understanding watershed response in year two and beyond in a burn area “is a complex problem.”
The Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: USBR
Click the link to read the release on the Reclamation website (Peter Soeth):
New study will help inform understanding of natural climate variability and assist the evaluation of the current drought compared to history
The drought currently impacting the upper Colorado River Basin is extremely severe. A new study from federal government and university scientists led by the Bureau of Reclamation and published in Geophysical Research Letters identifies a second-century drought unmatched in severity by the current drought or previously identified droughts.
“Previous studies have been limited to the past 1,200 years, but a limited number of paleo records of moisture variability date back 2,000 years,” said Subhrendu Gangopadhyay, lead author and principal engineer for the Water Resources Engineering and Management Group at the Bureau of Reclamation. “While there has been research showing extended dry periods in the southwest back to the eighth century, this reconstruction of the Colorado River extends nearly 800 years further into the past.”
The research finds that compared to the current 22-year drought in the Colorado River, with only 84% of the average water flow, the water flow during a 22-year period in the second century was much lower, just 68% of the average water flow.
“Tree-ring records are sparse back to the second century,” said Connie Woodhouse, a professor at the University of Arizona and a study co-author. “However, this extreme drought event is also documented in paleoclimatic data from lakes, bogs, and caves.”
The authors reconstructed the streamflow at Lees Ferry on the Colorado River to develop these findings. Paleoclimatic data for the reconstruction is from a gridded network of tree-ring-based Palmer Drought Severity Index values. These extended records inform water managers whether droughts in the distant past were similar to or more severe than observed droughts in the past centuries. The baseline for the study’s analysis uses the natural flow estimates data from 1906 to 2021 from the Lees Ferry gage.
What’s Next?
The reconstructed streamflow data developed in this research is now available for public use. It is anticipated that water managers will use this new extended data to understand past droughts better and to plan for future droughts.
“The results of this work can provide water managers with an increased understanding of the range of flow variability in the Colorado River,” added Gangopadhyay. “It should provide information to help water managers plan for even more persistent and severe droughts than previously considered.”
“For future work, collection and analysis of more remnant wood can further document this second century drought,” added Woodhouse.
The Colorado River basin is experiencing a severe 22-year drought with extensive impacts throughout the West. This includes water for homes and crops to the generation of electricity that supports everything we do. Drought impacts everything within the basin.
Study co-authors also include Greg McCabe of the U.S. Geological Survey, Cody Routson from Northern Arizona University, and Dave Meko of the University of Arizona.
Lake Mead now sits just 29 percent full, dropping below 30 percent for the first time since the reservoir was initially filled more than 80 years ago, according to the most recent weekly report released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
“We have been planning for this and preparing for this potential for more than two decades,” said Bronson Mack, spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “We anticipate that Lake Mead’s water level is going to continue to decline as a result of drought and climate change conditions. But this further emphasizes the seriousness of this issue. And it does serve as a very stark reminder that we all need to conserve the water that we use outdoors.”
Lake Mead’s continued drop is not a surprise. Beyond the rising temperatures and dwindling water supply in the Colorado River, the Bureau of Reclamation recently implemented a plan to hold back 480,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell that would normally be released downstream and to Lake Mead, a measure taken to ensure that Glen Canyon Dam can continue to generate electricity amid what the Department of Interior has said are the driest conditions in the American West in more than 1,200 years.
Summer numbers have remained stable for 25 years despite dire warnings
For years, scientists have warned that monarch butterflies are dying off in droves because of diminishing winter colonies. But new research from the University of Georgia shows that the summer population of monarchs has remained relatively stable over the past 25 years.
Published in Global Change Biology, the study suggests that population growth during the summer compensates for butterfly losses due to migration, winter weather and changing environmental factors.
“There’s this perception out there that monarch populations are in dire trouble, but we found that’s not at all the case,” said Andy Davis, corresponding author of the study and an assistant research scientist in UGA’s Odum School of Ecology. “It goes against what everyone thinks, but we found that they’re doing quite well. In fact, monarchs are actually one of the most widespread butterflies in North America.”
The study authors caution against becoming complacent, though, because rising global temperatures may bring new and growing threats not just to monarchs but to all insects.
Callippe Silverspot butterfly (Speyeria callippe callippe). By SACRAMENTO FISH AND WILDLIFE OFFICE; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – This image originates from the National Digital Library of the United States Fish and Wildlife Serviceat this pageThis tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing.See Category:Images from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15237505
“There are some once widespread butterfly species that now are in trouble,” said William Snyder, co-author of the paper and a professor in UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “So much attention is being paid to monarchs instead, and they seem to be in pretty good shape overall. It seems like a missed opportunity. We don’t want to give the idea that insect conservation isn’t important because it is. It’s just that maybe this one particular insect isn’t in nearly as much trouble as we thought.”
This study represents the largest and most comprehensive assessment of breeding monarch butterfly population to date.
Summer breeding makes up for winter monarch losses
The researchers compiled more than 135,000 monarch observations from the North American Butterfly Association between 1993 and 2018 to examine population patterns and possible drivers of population changes, such as precipitation and widespread use of agricultural herbicides.
The North American Butterfly Association utilizes citizen-scientists to document butterfly species and counts across North America during a two-day period every summer. Each group of observers has a defined circle to patrol that spans about 15 miles in diameter, and the observers tally all butterflies they see, including monarchs.
By carefully examining the monarch observations, the team found an overall annual increase in monarch relative abundance of 1.36% per year, suggesting that the breeding population of monarchs in North America is not declining on average. Although wintering populations in Mexico have seen documented declines in past years, the findings suggest that the butterflies’ summer breeding in North America makes up for those losses.
That marathon race to Mexico or California each fall, Davis said, may be getting more difficult for the butterflies as they face traffic, bad weather and more obstacles along the way south. So fewer butterflies are reaching the finish line.
“But when they come back north in the spring, they can really compensate for those losses,” Davis said. “A single female can lay 500 eggs, so they’re capable of rebounding tremendously, given the right resources. What that means is that the winter colony declines are almost like a red herring. They’re not really representative of the entire species’ population, and they’re kind of misleading. Even the recent increase in winter colony sizes in Mexico isn’t as important as some would like to think.”
Roadside milkweed. Photo: Katie McVey/USFWS
Changing monarch migration patterns
One concern for conservationists has been the supposed national decline in milkweed, the sole food source for monarch caterpillars. But Davis believes this study suggests that breeding monarchs already have all the habitat they need in North America. If they didn’t, Davis said, the researchers would have seen that in this data.
“Everybody thinks monarch habitat is being lost left and right, and for some insect species this might be true but not for monarchs,” Davis said. If you think about it, monarch habitat is people habitat. Monarchs are really good at utilizing the landscapes we’ve created for ourselves. Backyard gardens, pastures, roadsides, ditches, old fields—all of that is monarch habitat.”
In some parts of the U.S., monarchs have a year-round or nearly year-round presence, which leads some researchers to believe the insects may in part be moving away from the annual migration to Mexico. San Francisco, for example, hosts monarchs year-round because people plant non-native tropical milkweed. And Florida is experiencing fewer freezes each year, making its climate an alternative for monarchs that would normally head across the border.
“There’s this idea out there about an insect apocalypse—all the insects are going to be lost,” said Snyder. “But it’s just not that simple. Some insects probably are going to be harmed; some insects are going to benefit. You really have to take that big pig picture at a more continental scale over a relatively long time period to get the true picture of what’s happening.”
The study was funded by grants from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The paper was co-authored by Timothy Meehan, of the National Audubon Society; Matthew Moran, of Hendrix College; and Jeffrey Glassberg, of Rice University and the North American Butterfly Association. Michael Crossley, who worked on the study as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Entomology and is now at the University of Delaware, is first author of the paper.
This webinar looks at the past, present and desired water future of the Colorado Ute Tribes.
With speakers:
Chairman Manuel Heart, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
Council Member Lorelei Cloud, Southern Ute Indian Tribe
Amy Ostdiek, Colorado Water Conservation Board
Mike Preston, Weenuch-u’ Development Corporation President
Scott McElroy, Retired – McElroy, Walker, Meyer and Condon, P.C.
Steve Wolff, Southwestern Water Conservation District (moderator)
Aerial image of entrenched meanders of the San Juan River within Goosenecks State Park. Located in San Juan County, southeastern Utah (U.S.). Credits Constructed from county topographic map DRG mosaic for San Juan County from USDA/NRCS – National Cartography & Geospatial Center using Global Mapper 12.0 and Adobe Illustrator. Latitude 33° 31′ 49.52″ N., Longitude 111° 37′ 48.02″ W. USDA/FSA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):
In response to decreasing flows in the critical habitat reach, and a declining flow forecast, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 300 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 500 cfs for Monday, June 13th, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). This release change is calculated as the minimum required to maintain the target baseflow.
The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
Click the link to read the article on the Westminster Window website (Luke Zarzecki). Here’s an excerpt:
The biggest risk to Westminster’s drinking water is wildfires and algae blooms, according to Tom Scribner, water treatment superintendent with Westminster. The water flows from Loveland pass to Clear Creek to Farmers Highline canal and into the lake.
Borgers said wildfire risk is high.
“Unfortunately, Clear Creek is at a very high risk for having a catastrophic wildfire,” she said.
It is something the city is very aware of and Westminster is heavily involved with mitigating wildfire in the watershed, she said.
“If it were to get into Stanley Lake, Semper probably would have a hard time treating it. But we have the ability to divert water around Standley so that Semper is not having to treat that poor quality water,” Borgers said.
The Semper Water Treatment Plant was built in the 1960s and does not have the technology to treat wildfire contaminated water to make it drinkable, according to Scribner.
Standley Lake has about a year of water storage the city would use, she said. The city would be able to find a new, reliable source for drinking water in that year, she said. Standley Lake supplies water for Northglenn and Thornton as well as Westminster.
