Day: January 27, 2026

Five underreported factors influencing the aridification of the American West

Robert Marcos | Photojournalist | Grand Junction, Colorado

I’ve never been a strategic thinker so I’m grateful that I can utilize an AI that provides factual answers plus direct links to its sources, and while having coffee this morning Perplexity provided a response that I’d like to share. Note: while each of the first four responses deserves to be elaborated upon, in this post I’m just going to focus just on number 5.

Query: “Please provide 5 examples of under-reported factors influencing the aridification of the American West.”

Responses:

  1. Temperature‑driven evaporative demand (not just lack of precipitation).
  2. Groundwater depletion as a hidden component of aridification.
  3. Progressive salinization and water‑quality‑driven “functional” scarcity.
  4. Degradation of groundwater–surface water connectivity in headwaters.
  5. Institutional and legacy‑infrastructure lock‑in. Definition: Institutional lock-in refers to the way established rules, organizations, and physical infrastructure create powerful inertia that resists change, even when better options exist for addressing challenges like aridification in the American West.1

This “institutional lock-in” amplifies drying Western water law, infrastructure, and allocation rules that were created around 20th‑century hydroclimate and tend to favor maintaining large, evaporative surface reservoirs and extensive canal networks rather than flexible, low‑loss storage and delivery. These institutional and physical path dependencies increase evaporation losses, slow adaptation, and channel scarce flows into rigid prior‑appropriation commitments and uses that may be economically or ecologically inefficient under a hotter, drier regime. 2

For instance, efforts to manage Colorado River salinity and shortages must operate within existing compacts and project mandates, which can prioritize delivery targets over system‑wide efficiency, effectively deepening aridification by making it harder to reallocate or conserve water in response to temperature‑driven drying. 3

Here are four specific examples of institutional and legacy‑infrastructure lock‑in in the Colorado River system…

1. Law of the River and the 7.5+7.5 maf Structure

The 1922 Colorado River Compact and subsequent “Law of the River” documents hard‑wire an overestimate of available flow (7.5 maf to each basin, plus an extra 1 maf to the Lower Basin) into the management framework, even as mean flows decline under aridification. This basin split at Lee Ferry, plus the Upper Basin’s delivery obligations to the Lower Basin and Mexico, makes it institutionally difficult to reallocate water to match a smaller, more variable river without reopening a century of compacts, court decrees, and federal statutes.4

2. Glen Canyon Dam / CRSP as a “Must‑Operate” System

Glen Canyon Dam and the broader Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) were built to regulate flows and guarantee Lower Basin deliveries, embedding the assumption of large, stable storage and hydropower revenues into basin operations. Today, even with shrinking inflows and dead pool risk, operating rules, repayment contracts, and power‐marketing arrangements keep agencies oriented toward maintaining Lake Powell as a central regulating reservoir, rather than rapidly re‑optimizing for a different storage configuration or prioritizing ecological flow restoration.5

3. Transbasin Diversions and the Colorado‑Big Thompson Pattern

Projects such as the Colorado‑Big Thompson (C‑BT) move Upper Colorado River water across the Divide into the South Platte via large, fixed works—Adams Tunnel, canals, reservoirs like Horsetooth, Carter Lake, and Boulder Reservoir—which were sized for a wetter historical regime. Municipal and agricultural systems on the Front Range have grown around this imported supply, creating political and economic resistance to curtailing diversions or repurposing infrastructure, even as those exports reduce flexibility for in‑basin adaptation, instream flows, and tribal water development.6

4. Wellton–Mohawk Return Flows and the Yuma Desalting Plant

The Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act led to construction of the Yuma Desalting Plant to treat saline Wellton–Mohawk return flows so the U.S. could meet water‑quality obligations to Mexico while preserving higher‑quality water in Lake Mead. A “temporary” 1977 operational workaround—bypassing those return flows to the Ciénega de Santa Clara—became the de facto long‑term solution, locking in a fragile arrangement where restarting the plant would damage a large accidental wetland and disrupt established ecological and binational expectations, while not restarting it keeps the expensive plant largely stranded infrastructure.7

SOURCES

  1. Lifestyle Sustainability Directory
    https://lifestyle.sustainability-directory.com/term/institutional-lock-in/
  2. Climatehubs.usda
    https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/southwest/topic/megadrought-and-aridification-southwest-united-states
  3. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
    https://www.usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=494
  4. U,S. Bureau of Reclamation https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/lawofrvr.html
  5. Congressional Research Service https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2025-02-18_IN11982_f193ae261584f91c132c52da409ae312c977ca9a.html
  6. Poudre Heritage https://poudreheritage.org/history/growing-communities/
  7. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma_Desalting_Plant

As deal deadline approaches, #ColoradoRiver stewards debate a broad range of options — Scott Franz (KUNC.org) #COriver #aridification

The Colorado River flows through Grand County, Colo. on Oct. 23, 2023. Negotiators from seven states remain at an impasse over how to share and conserve the river’s water despite four days of recent meetings together in Utah.

Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Scott Franz):

January 25, 2026

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.

It’s crunch time for negotiators from seven western states trying to strike a deal before Feb. 14 on how to share the dwindling Colorado River.

But four days of talks in a Salt Lake City conference room earlier this month did not appear to have sparked a breakthrough.

“We got tired of each other,” Utah’s negotiator, Gene Shawcroft, said Tuesday at a public board meeting, days after the meeting ended. “And two of the days, we made some progress, but one day we went backwards almost as much progress as we made in two and a half days.”

The states in the lower and upper basins remain at an impasse over how cuts to water use should be handled during times of drought.

In another sign that talks remain stalled, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reportedly invited governors from the seven states in the river basin to attend a meeting in Washington on Jan. 30. 

A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis confirmed the meeting invitation to KUNC and said in a statement that Polis “hopes to attend this meeting if it works for the other Governors.”

Meanwhile, the Interior Department recently released a playbook of options for how to manage the river in the future.

John Berggren, a water policy expert at Western Resource Advocates, said many of the scenarios on the table can only be taken if all the states in the basin agree to them.

“The fact that the states don’t have a seven state agreement right now means that we can’t consider some of these really good, new, innovative tools that are in some of the alternatives,” he said Tuesday. And so that’s pretty frustrating.”

What could management of the vital waterway look like after the current rules expire in August?

Berggren, who got his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado focusing on sustainable water management in the Colorado River Basin, helped KUNC’s water desk summarize the five options on the table from the feds.

He said an eventual deal might incorporate pieces from several of the alternatives.

Basic coordination

This is the only path the feds say they currently have the legal power to take if the seven states fail to reach an agreement.

Berggren said this option would likely ‘normalize’ 1.48 million acre feet of water shortages each year in the lower basin states.

“And this would just basically say every year, that’s a given,” Berggren said.

Water in Lake Mead sits low behind Hoover Dam on December 16, 2021. The nation’s largest reservoir, which has reached record-low levels in recent years, serves as the main source of water for the Las Vegas area. It is mostly filled with mountain snowmelt from Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. Photo credit: Alex Hager/KUNC

Upper basin states, including Colorado, would not be forced to contribute more water in dry years.

Berggren said this option “does not do enough.”

“There’s many years where the system crashes,” he said.

A crash means Lake Powell and Lake Mead reach deadpool, a scenario where they’re so critically low that hydroelectricity stops and water stops flowing through their dams.

Millions of water users in the west could see impacts.

Enhanced coordination

Berggren calls this plan ‘a little more innovative.’

Highlights include the power to use conservation pools that encourage and incentivize states and water users to find ways to save water.

That could mean the feds paying states to conserve water. Lower basin states could also put water they save in Lake Mead to stay there until they need it.

“It’s water security, because if we can save water today, we’ll put it into storage and we can withdraw it later when we need it,” Berggren said.

This option also includes contributions from the upper basin states each year that would gradually increase over time.

The Interior Department writes this option “seeks to protect critical infrastructure while benefitting key resources (such as environmental, hydropower, and recreation) through an approach to distributing storage between Lake Powell and Lake Mead that enhances the reservoirs’ abilities to support the Basin.”

No action

This plan might sound like the path with the least impact, but that’s far from the case.

This path would revert the operating procedures at Powell and Mead to what they were almost 20 years ago.

“It basically says Reclamation will shoot to release 8.23 million acre feet of water from Powell, and that’s kind of it,” Berggren said. “Not a lot of authority for lower basin shortages, not a lot of authority to modify your reservoir operations to try and prevent the worst from happening. No action very clearly crashes the system quickly, and no one wants it.”

According to the Interior Department, “there would be no new mechanisms to proactively conserve and store water in Lake Powell or Lake Mead.”

This option was legally required to be included in the feds report on operating scenarios.

Maximum flexibility 

This proposal was developed by a group of seven conservation groups.

Interior said this alternative is “designed to help stabilize system storage, incentive proactive water conservation, and extend the benefits of conservation and operational flexibility to a wide range of resources.”

It’s also designed to give dam operators more flexibility to respond to the impacts of climate change.

As water levels in Lake Powell keep dropping, some say they could fall too low to pass through Glen Canyon Dam at sufficient levels. Ted Wood/The Water Desk

Berggren said this option allows water users to conserve water and store it in reservoirs.

It would also change the way water releases are handled.

A “climate response indicator” would be introduced to help decide how much water should be released from Lake Powell.

“If the last three years have been really dry or exceptionally dry, then you adjust your Lake Powell releases,” he said.

Berggren and his environmental group, Western Resource Advocates, had a hand in developing this alternative along with the six other organizations.

All seven of the organizations that crafted the river management proposal have received funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also supports KUNC’s Colorado River coverage.

Supply driven alternative

“All this does is say that what you release from Lake Powell down to Lake Mead is based on some percentage of the preceding three years,” Berggren said. “You look at the past three years, and you take some percentage of that, and that’s what you release from Glen Canyon Dam, and that’s basically it.”

He said the plan, which incorporates ideas from the states themselves, was nicknamed “the amicable divorce of the basins.”

“Because it was basically the upper basin will do its thing with Lake Powell and its upper basin reservoirs,” he said. “And then whatever gets released, lower basin deals with that, deals with Lake Mead, deals with lower basin shortages.”

Shortages in the lower basin could be up to 2.1 million acre feet a year in this scenario, according to the Interior Department.

Public comment is being accepted on all five alternatives through early March.

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

Can #Colorado get back to normal #snowpack conditions this winter?: History shows it’s possible, but forecasts aren’t promising — Sky-Hi News

Westwide SNOTEL January 26, 2026.

Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Ali Longwell):

January 25, 2026

During a Jan. 22 Water Conditions Monitoring Committee, Brian Domonkos, the Colorado snow survey supervisor for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, reported that the best snowpack conditions in Colorado, in the Rio Grande basin, still rank as the fourth worst in the last 40 years on record.  Statewide snowpack and snowpack in the Colorado River Headwaters basin are both at record lows for the period on record, Domonkos reported.

“At this point in the year, we are 51% of the way through the winter or the snowpack accumulation season,” Domonkos said. “There’s a very, very small chance that we could get back to normal at this point.”

“We have 4.8 inches of water content on average across all of our snow measuring sites in Colorado,” Domonkos said. “Typically, at this point in the year, we have about 8.5 inches of water content (in the snowpack).” 

While it’s a bit early to look at predictions for the spring runoff, “it’s very likely that we’ll wind up seeing below normal runoff projections this year,” Domonkos said. 

For Colorado to end the winter with a normal amount of snowpack, the state “needs about 145% of normal snow accumulation,” he said, adding that this is “close to needing the maximum amount of snow accumulation that we’ve ever seen in the last 40 years in order to get back to normal.” 

Why too much phosphorus in America’s farmland is polluting the country’s water — Dinesh Phuyal (TheConverstion.com)

A spreader sprays sewage sludge, which is rich in phosphorus, across a farm in Oklahoma. AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel

Dinesh Phuyal, University of Florida

When people think about agricultural pollution, they often picture what is easy to see: fertilizer spreaders crossing fields or muddy runoff after a heavy storm. However, a much more significant threat is quietly and invisibly building in the ground.

Across some of the most productive farmland in the United States, a nutrient called phosphorus has been accumulating in the soil for decades, at levels far beyond what crops actually require. While this element is essential for life-supporting root development and cellular chemistry to grow food, too much of it in the wrong places has become a growing environmental liability.

I’m part of a research effort to figure out how much phosphorus is already in the soil, to then determine how much more, if any, to add to particular fields.

Why farmers add phosphorus in the first place

Small dark pellets.
Pellets of monoammonium phosphate fertilizer. AP Photo/Paul Sancya

Phosphorus is one of the three primary nutrients plants require for growth, along with nitrogen and potassium. Without enough phosphorus, crops struggle and production suffers.

For decades, applying phosphorus fertilizer has been a kind of insurance policy in American agriculture. If farmers weren’t sure how much was already in the soil, adding a little extra seemed safer than risking a shortfall. Fertilizer was relatively inexpensive, and the long-term consequences were poorly understood.

Unlike nitrogen, which easily escapes from soil into the air or groundwater, phosphorus sticks to soil particles. Once it’s added, it tends to remain in place. That trait made phosphorus seem environmentally benign.

However, phosphorus can still be carried off fields when rain or irrigation water erodes phosphorus-rich soil, or some of the built-up phosphorus dissolves into runoff.

Years of application have led to something no one initially planned for: accumulation.

How much phosphorus has built up?

Since the mid-20th century, farmers across the United States have applied hundreds of millions of tons of phosphorus fertilizer. From 1960 to 2007, phosphate fertilizer consumption in the U.S. increased from approximately 5.8 million metric tons per year to over 8.5 million metric tons annually.

In more recent decades, fertilizer use has continued to rise. In corn production alone, phosphorus applications increased by nearly 30% between 2000 and 2018. Crops absorb some of that phosphorus as they grow, but not all of it. Over time, the excess has piled up in soils.

In many regions across the United States, soil phosphorus levels are now far higher than what crops actually require. In parts of Florida, for example, some agricultural soils contain phosphorus concentrations more than 10 times above levels considered sufficient for healthy plant growth.

Scientists call this buildup “legacy phosphorus.” It’s a reminder that today’s environmental challenges are often the result of yesterday’s well-intentioned decisions.

Green algae float on the surface of water.
Algae float on the surface of Lake Erie. AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File

When soil phosphorus becomes a water problem

If phosphorus stayed locked in the soil, farmers would have wasted money on fertilizer they didn’t need. And excess phosphorus in soil can hinder the uptake of essential plant micronutrients and alter the soil microbial community, reducing diversity that is important for good soil health.

Unfortunately, phosphorus doesn’t always remain in place. Rainfall, irrigation and drainage can transport phosphorus – either dissolved in water or attached to eroded soil particles – into nearby canals, streams, rivers and lakes. Once there, it becomes food for algae.

The result can be explosive algal growth, known as eutrophication, which turns clear water a cloudy green. When these algae blooms die, their decomposition consumes oxygen, sometimes creating low-oxygen “dead zones” where fish and other aquatic life struggle to survive. This process is primarily driven by phosphorus leaching, as seen in the Florida Everglades.

Another prime example is the largest dead zone in the United States, covering about 6,500 square miles (16,835 square kilometers), which forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. Cutting back on nitrogen without lowering phosphorus can worsen eutrophication.

Some algal blooms also produce toxins that threaten drinking water supplies. Communities downstream may be told not to drink or touch the water, and face high treatment costs and lost recreational opportunities. National assessments document toxins associated with algal blooms in many states, particularly where warm temperatures and nutrient pollution overlap.

Rising global temperatures are exacerbating the problem. Warmer waters hold less oxygen than colder waters, increasing the likelihood that phosphorus pollution will trigger eutrophication and dead zones.

A small white box sits in a field of grass, with a solar panel behind it.
A phosphorus monitor operates next to a small stream near an agricultural field in Ohio. AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel

Flawed testing hid the problem

Given the risks, a natural question arises: Why don’t farmers simply stop adding phosphorus where it isn’t needed?

Part of the answer lies in how the amount of phosphorus in the soil is measured. Most soil tests used today were developed decades ago and were designed to work reasonably well across many soil types. But soils are incredibly diverse. Some are sandy; others are rich in organic matter formed from centuries of decayed plants.

And those traditional soil tests use acids to extract phosphorus from the soil, delivering inaccurate findings of how much phosphorus plants can actually access. For instance, in soils that have more than 20% organic matter, like those found in parts of Florida and other agricultural regions, the tests’ acids may be partially neutralized by other compounds in the soil. That would mean they don’t collect as much phosphorus as really exists.

In addition, the tests determine a total quantity of phosphorus in the soil, but not all of that is in a form plants can take up through their roots. So soil where tests find high phosphorus levels may have very little available to plants. And low levels can be found in soil that has sufficient phosphorus for plant growth.

When farmers follow the recommendations that result from these inaccurate tests, they may apply fertilizer that provides little benefit to crops while increasing the risk of pollution. This isn’t a failure of farmers. It’s a mismatch between outdated tools and complex soils.

Three plastic containers show different levels of different chemicals.
Soil testing determines levels of various nutrients, but the results don’t always line up with what’s available to plants. Wayan Vota via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

A smarter way forward

The solution isn’t to eliminate phosphorus fertilization. Crops still need it, and many soils genuinely require additional nutrients. The challenge is knowing when enough is truly enough.

Researchers, including me, are developing improved testing methods that better reflect how plants actually interact with soil. Some approaches mimic plants’ root behavior directly, estimating how much phosphorus crops can realistically take up from any given field or type of soil – rather than only measuring how much exists chemically.

Other tests look at the amount of phosphorous a field’s soil can hold before releasing excess nutrients into waterways. These approaches can help identify fields where farmers can use less phosphorus or pause it altogether, allowing crops to draw down the legacy phosphorus already present.

The phosphorus problem is a slow-moving one, built over decades and hidden below ground. However, its effects are increasingly visible in the form of algal blooms, fish kills and contamination of drinking water supplies. Farmers can measure and manage soil nutrients differently and reduce pollution, save money and protect water resources without sacrificing agricultural productivity.

Dinesh Phuyal, Postdoctoral Associate in Soil, Water and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.