Day: February 21, 2025

Latest storm cycle brings #snowpack above normal in the northern mountains — The Summit Daily

Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

February 19, 2025

Since Valentine’s Day, several storms have brought six straight powder days and up to 50 inches of snow to some Colorado ski resorts — having varied but mostly positive impacts on the state’s snowpack…For example, the last six days and 50 inches of snow have brought Vail Mountain from 81%
 to 103% of its 30-year normal… At the Steamboat Resort, 40 of snow inches fell at the mountain, bringing the resort’s snowpack to 110% of the 30-year median…

As of Tuesday, the water supply in the Colorado River Headwaters was just above the 30-year normal in the basins around Kremmling and Eagle. Further west, in the Roaring Fork basin and near Glenwood Springs, the supply was still below average.

February storms offer some relief from dry #ColoradoRiver conditions, but water outlook remains poor — Shannon Mullane (Fresh Water News) #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):

February 20, 2025

February snowstorms brought some relief to parched landscapes in the Colorado River Basin, but the river’s reservoirs are less than half full heading into a spring runoff season that is expected to be lower than normal, according to a briefing this week at the Upper Colorado River Commission.

The dry conditions underline water concerns in the drought-strapped river basin and come as high-stakes negotiations over new, post-2026 operating rules continue. If similar conditions occurred under any of the options for the new operating rules, it would mean deep cuts for Lower Basin states, which include Arizona, California and Nevada, officials said during the commission’s meeting Feb. 18.

It was a “stark” report, said Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado’s representative on the commission and the state’s lead negotiator on Colorado River issues.

“We have to acknowledge that cuts [in water use] are probable, possible and likely,” she said. “I want to reiterate: We are committed to working with the Lower Basin states toward that seven-state consensus.”

The Colorado River’s system of reservoirs store water to ensure critical supplies reach 40 million people across seven states, 30 tribal nations, and parts of Mexico.

As of Monday, the water stored in all of the basin’s reservoirs was 42% of the total capacity, according to a presentation during the commission meeting when the latest reservoir conditions were discussed. 

Lake Powell, an immense reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border, was 35% full. And Blue Mesa, a federal reservoir and the largest reservoir in Colorado, was 62% full.

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map February 20, 2025 via the NRCS.

The reservoir levels will rise once the mountain snowpack melts in the spring. But the spring runoff forecast is low for all of the federal reservoirs in the Upper Basin, which includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The runoff into Lake Powell is forecast to be 67% of average for April through July.

These conditions can change as more snow falls on the region, but the two-week outlook shows a return to dry conditions, according to the commission presentation.

The snowpack so far this season has hovered just below average in the Upper Basin. It was 86% of the 30-year norm as of Feb. 1, but the recent storms boosted it to 94% as of Wednesday, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.

In Colorado, the February snowstorms also helped boost the snowpack to 94% of the 30-year norm. The state’s snowpack typically peaks in early April.

“The snow brought us some positivity. I still like to remind folks, when we see Lake Powell at 35% full, that means it’s 65% empty,” Mitchell said. “That’s troubling.”

Negotiating Colorado River operations

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has outlined five ways the Colorado River could be managed after 2026.

If any of those alternatives governed water in the basin right now, then the three Lower Basin states would need to cut their use by 1.8 million to 2.8 million acre-feet based on the conditions in February, said Chuck Cullom, the commission’s executive director. In the worst possible scenarios, the cuts would deepen to between 2.1 million and 3.2 million acre-feet.

How such cuts would play out among the four Upper Basin states, like Colorado, is less clear. Some options include cutting use by 200,000 acre-feet.

Each of the basins has the legal right to use about 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to three homes.

The post-2026 operating plans are not final, and negotiators from the seven basin states are still at odds over how cuts should be made in the river’s worst years.

Graphic credit: The Colorado River water crisis its origin and future Jock Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Charles Yackulic.

Lower Basin officials have said everyone needs to cut back in dry years, and voluntary conservation does not provide enough certainty.

Upper Basin officials say their states should not have to make mandatory water cuts but could do voluntary conservation. The Lower Basin is using more than its legal share and should cut its water use first, Upper Basin officials have said.

“The opportunities for conservation and other activities in the Upper Basin is limited by water supply,” Cullom said. “You can’t conserve water that isn’t available.”

“Everyone is suffering”

Upper Basin water users already experience water shortages every year — and this must be acknowledged in how the river is managed in the future, officials said during this week’s meeting.

According to the commission’s analysis, water users in the Upper Basin end up using about 1.3 million acre-feet less than their full supply each year, based on data from 1991 to 2023.

The full supply is the maximum amount of water used. Across all four states, this maximum use typically totals about 5.18 million acre-feet per year. The commission says shortages happen when water users must use less than their normal maximum supply. 

The Upper Basin hasn’t developed its full 7.5 million-acre–foot share because of the uncertain water supply, officials said. 

Scott Hummer, former water commissioner for District 58 in the Yampa River basin, checks out a recently installed Parshall flume on an irrigation ditch in this August 2020 photo. Compliance with measuring device requirements has been moving more slowly than state engineers would like.
CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

To cut water use, ditch riders tell water users to shut their headgates, which control how much water runs from one river, stream or ditch to another. Farmers get two cuttings of hay instead of three, which reduces their profits. Ranchers, facing higher hay prices or hay production challenges, might end up raising smaller cattle herds, impacting beef and dairy production, officials said.

The impacts keep going from there: People hire fewer ranch hands. Cities tighten their summer watering restrictions. Local recreation economies take a hit — as do ecosystems that are overstressed by higher temperatures and drought.

Tensions rise between community members who need water for different reasons and are trying to share an uncertain supply, said Commissioner Brandon Gebhart of Wyoming.

“And trying to do that without completely destroying one or the other,” he said. “Oftentimes, this means that everyone is suffering.”

More by Shannon Mullane

DALLE Image by Scott Harding American Whitewater

Colorado College’s 15th annual (February 2025 State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West Poll

A bunch of Utah public lands. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Click the link to read the release on the State of the Rockies Project website (Cyndy Hines and Jacob Hay):

Westerners Who Prefer Public Land Conservation Over Energy Development Reaches All Time High

Fifteenth annual Conservation in the West Poll reveals there is no mandate from voters in the West to roll back public lands protections or expand oil and gas development

COLORADO SPRINGS—Colorado College’s 15th annual State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West Poll released today shows Western voters continue to support strong conservation and protection policies as a new presidential administration takes power, promising rollbacks, budget cuts, and expanded energy development.

The poll, which surveyed the views of voters in eight Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), found Westerners prefer public land conservation over oil and gas development at the highest margins measured in the poll’s 15-year history.

Western voters continue to express concern about issues related to land, water, and wildlife. Strong majorities of Western voters – including self-identified “MAGA” voters – support policies that focus on the protection and conservation of public lands and oppose policies that would open public lands up to drilling, mining, or other development.

Given a choice between protection and development, 72 percent of Westerners prefer their elected officials to place more emphasis on protecting clean water sources, air quality, and wildlife habitat while providing opportunities to visit and recreate on public lands. By contrast, only 24 percent prefer their elected officials to prioritize the production of more domestic energy by maximizing the amount of national public lands available for responsible oil and gas production. Self-identified MAGA voters are split on the question, with 51 percent favoring an emphasis on protecting public lands and 44 percent wanting to maximize oil and gas production on public lands.

The first Trump administration reduced the size of national monuments, an unpopular decision in the West at the time. Reducing or removing national monument protections are even more unpopular now, with 89 percent of voters opposing the idea, compared to 80 percent when the question was asked in
January 2017.
Similarly, proposals to give state governments control over national public lands are more unpopular now,
with 65 percent of Westerners in opposition, compared to 2017 when 56 percent were opposed.

“The consensus favoring public lands conservation remains consistent and strong in the West,” said Katrina Miller-Stevens, Former Director of the State of the Rockies Project and an Associate Professor at Colorado College. “Westerners do not want to see a rollback of national monument protections and there is no mandate for oil and gas development. Voters from all political ideologies are united in support of public land conservation in the West.”

Proposals to reduce protection and expand energy development on public lands are deeply unpopular in
the West:

  • 72 percent oppose removing protections for parts of existing national public lands to allow more drilling, mining and other development.
  • 63 percent oppose reducing protections for some of the rare plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act.
  • 60 percent oppose expanding the amount of national forest and other public lands available to private companies for logging.

Instead, Westerners are supportive of initiatives to protect public lands and natural resources from the impacts of development:

  • 92 percent support keeping the requirement that oil and gas companies, rather than taxpayers, pay for all of the clean-up and land restoration costs after drilling is finished.
  • 88 percent support continuing to require oil and gas producers that operate on public lands to use updated equipment and technology to prevent leaks of methane gas during the extraction process and reduce the need to burn off excess natural gas into the air.
  • 71 percent support only allowing oil and gas companies the right to drill in areas of public lands where the likelihood of actually producing oil is high.
  • 84 percent support maintaining or increasing the royalty rates that oil companies pay for producing oil and gas on national public lands.
  • 89 percent support managing public lands to ensure there are more outdoor places free of light pollution to see the stars at night.
  • 86 percent support ensuring Native American Tribes have greater input into decisions made about areas within national public lands that contain sacred or culturally significant places to their Tribes

With hiring freezes and a reduction of the federal workforce underway, Westerners are clear about who they prefer to make decisions about public lands, water, wildlife and other natural resources. 87 percent prefer these decisions be made by career professionals such as rangers, scientists, fire fighters, and other specialists in the field, compared to just 9 percent who prefer decisions be made by new political appointees.

Overall, voters gave positive marks – ranging from 61 percent approval to 86 percent approval – for the federal agencies charged with protecting public lands and the environment, including the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management. Three-quarters of Western voters – including bipartisan majorities – are opposed to reducing funding to these agencies. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of MAGA voters oppose funding reductions for these federal agencies as well.

Despite 81 percent expressing serious concern about the rising cost of living, Westerners do not want to sacrifice public lands to build more housing. 82 percent of Westerners prefer building more housing within or close to existing communities, compared with 14 percent who favor selling off public lands to develop housing on natural areas.

Westerners value the natural beauty of their states, with more than three-in-ten naming nature as the thing they like most about living in the West. 67 percent of Westerners report visiting national public lands three or more times in the past year, and 24 percent visited them more than 10 times.

That connection translates into concern around the loss of habitat and natural areas, wildlife declines, pollution, and inadequate water supplies. All the land, water, and wildlife issues tested in the poll are viewed as extremely or very serious problems by more than half of Western voters, with a level of concern that is consistent with prior years.

Against that background of concern, voters support a variety of efforts to reduce or mitigate the impacts of climate change:

  • 72 percent support the federal government taking action to reduce the carbon pollution that contributes to climate change.
  • 71 percent support the federal government taking action to ensure the reliability of water supplies that may be threatened by climate change.
  • 91 percent support allowing private landowners the ability to conserve their lands as working farms, ranches, natural areas, and wildlife habitat through voluntary land conservation easements.
  • 92 percent support promoting nature-based solutions to improve water quality, such as conserving forests and lands along rivers, lakes, and streams.
  • 94 percent support allowing trained fire teams to use controlled burns to remove growth in forests that could fuel wildfires when and where it is safe to do so

This is the fifteenth consecutive year Colorado College gauged the public’s sentiment on public lands and conservation issues. The 2025 Colorado College Conservation in the West Poll is a bipartisan survey conducted by Republican pollster Lori Weigel of New Bridge Strategy and Democratic pollster Dave Metz of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates. The survey is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The poll surveyed at least 400 registered voters in each of eight Western states (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, & WY) for a total 3,316-voter sample, which included an over-sample of Black and Native American voters. The survey was conducted between January 3-17, 2024 and the effective margin of error is +2.46% at the 95% confidence interval for the total sample; and at most +4.9% for each state. The full survey and individual state surveys are available on the State of the Rockies Project website.

About Colorado College
Colorado College is a nationally prominent four-year liberal arts college that was founded in Colorado Springs in 1874. The College operates on the innovative Block Plan, in which its 2,200 undergraduate students study one course at a time in intensive three and a half-week segments. For the past eighteen years, the college has sponsored the State of the Rockies Project, which seeks to enhance public understanding of and action to address socio-environmental challenges in the Rocky Mountain West through collaborative student-faculty research, education, and stakeholder engagement.

About Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates
Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3)—a national Democratic opinion research firm with offices in Oakland, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon—has specialized in public policy oriented opinion research since 1981. The firm has assisted hundreds of political campaigns at every level of the ballot –from President to City Council—with opinion research and strategic guidance. FM3 also provides research and strategic consulting to public agencies, businesses and public interest organizations nationwide.

About New Bridge Strategy
New Bridge Strategy is a Colorado-based, woman-owned and operated opinion research company specializing in public policy and campaign research. As a Republican polling firm that has led the research for hundreds of successful political and public affairs campaigns, New Bridge has helped coalitions bridging the political spectrum in crafting winning ballot measure campaigns, public education campaigns, and legislative policy efforts.

About Hispanic Access Foundation
Hispanic Access Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, connects Latinos with partners an opportunities to improve lives and create an equitable society. Our vision is that one day every Hispanic individual in America will enjoy good physical health and a healthy natural environment, a quality education, economic success, and civic engagement in their communities with the sum of improving the future of America. For more information visit www.hispanicaccess.org.

The latest seasonal outlooks through May 31, 2025 are hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center

New Poll Finds Broad Support for #Conservation and Action on #ClimateChange Across the West — Jake Bolster (InsideClimateNews.org)

People walk through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, designated during Obama administration, in Washington County, Utah. Credit: Bob Wick/BLM

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Jake Bolster):

February 19, 2025

Colorado College’s annual survey included residents of 8 Western states, the majority of whom identified as politically conservative or moderate.

As oil and gas production in the U.S. continues to reach record highs, the margin of Westerners who support public land conservation over increased oil and gas development also continues to climb. 

In a new “Conservation in the West Poll” released today by Colorado College, 72 percent of respondents from eight Western states said they would prefer their member of Congress to emphasize protecting clean air, water and wildlife habitat while boosting outdoor recreation over maximizing the amount of public land used for oil and gas drilling. 

The figure marks a two-percent increase from last year’s poll, and only 24 percent of those surveyed expressed interest in more oil and gas drilling and mining on public lands. The 48-point margin in favor of conservation is the highest in the poll’s fifteen-year history. 

“The consensus favoring public lands conservation remains consistent and strong in the West,” said Katrina Miller-Stevens, an associate professor at Colorado College and the former director of the State of the Rockies Project, which runs the annual polls, in a statement. “Westerners do not want to see a rollback of national monument protections and there is no mandate for oil and gas development. Voters from all political ideologies are united in support of public land conservation in the West.” 

Colorado College worked with Lori Weigel of New Bridge Strategy, a Republican pollster, and Dave Metz of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, a Democratic pollster, to survey 3,316 respondents, most of whom identified as politically conservative or independent. The poll, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, included at least 400 voters each from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. Just under 40 percent of the survey-takers said they supported President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” platform. 

The results come at a time when politicians in the nation’s capital and across the West are drumming up expansive, divisive plans for public lands. 

Last Friday, the Trump administration fired over 5,400 employees across the departments of the Interior and Agriculture, most of whom worked for the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. The date of the firings have led them to be called a “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” a reference to the murders in Chicago nearly a century ago by gangsters working for Al Capone. 

Since taking office, Trump has appointed people with close ties to the oil and gas industry to lead key federal agencies overseeing public lands. His secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, who ordered last week’s Interior Department firings, was previously the governor of North Dakota, where he joined industry lawsuits to halt or overturn Biden-era regulations on oil and gas production. The Associated Press reported that he has relationships with several oil and gas executives and lobbyists.

Kathleen Sgamma, who, as Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management would be responsible for stewarding hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, has spent close to two decades lobbying for oil and gas companies across the West.

Lawmakers in Utah and Wyoming have demanded the federal government give control of public lands in their states, including areas protected by the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, back to state legislatures. Neither initiative went very far—Utah’s was rejected by the courts and Wyoming’s failed to make it out of the state’s Senate after a series of dramatic revotes. 

“A lot of the actions that the Trump administration has taken or has proposed to take are pretty far out of step with what Westerners want to see in terms of our public lands,” said Rachael Hamby, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities. “Westerners care about public lands a lot and want to see them protected.”

No more than 40 percent of residents in any of the eight states offered approval for state-based land grabs, and an overwhelming majority of Westerners—87 percent—supported career officials at various federal departments making decisions regarding public lands; only nine percent wanted to see elected representatives appoint new officials “who come from other industries and may have different perspectives” on public land, water and wildlife decisions.

Nearly three-quarters of Westerners agreed with federal efforts to combat climate change, though state-by-state levels of approval varied widely. Of the respondents from New Mexico, which has voted for Democrats in all but one presidential election since 1992, 77 percent backed federal action to combat climate change; in Wyoming, the only state where a majority of respondents said they supported President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, 52 percent of those surveyed said they agreed with federal action on climate change.

Just under 90 percent of those surveyed expressed a desire to keep national monument designations implemented in the last decade in place. The new administration has begun to review those monument designations, and Trump shrunk some of them during his first term.

Other measures enjoying broad support across the West included giving private landowners the ability to conserve their land through conservation easements, using nature-based solutions to improve water quality and allowing the use of controlled burns to thin overgrown forests and lower the threats posed by wildfires.

As a new administration sets a different direction for public lands, Hamby warned that diverging from Westerners’ preferences would carry consequences. 

“If elected officials are straying too far from what their constituents want to see,” she said, “they’re going to have to answer to their voters.”