Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
February 27, 2026
It is hard to know where to begin. The Department of the Interior’s Post-2026 Colorado River draft environmental impact statement, and the deep questions it raises, is an “everything including the kitchen sink” sort of process.
But at its root, the question it raises is simple: Tell us what you’re going to do.
It is easiest to quote the Draft EIS itself on the central question: “In critically dry periods, all alternatives have unacceptable performance.” Roger that. Tell us what you’re going to do.
In the short run, with a meager snowpack and no clear explanation of how federal and state managers are going to operate the reservoir system, the basin’s dams and diversions now, we have no clear picture of what will happen in 2026. Tell us what you’re going to do.
Some specifics
The ad-hoc collective that Allen Best dubbed “the Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River” – Anne Castle, Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, Rin Tara, and me – took yet another stab at offering our suggestions in comments we submitted yesterday to Interior’s P26 EIS process.
I’ve been mentally largely elsewhere lately, finishing up the book and managing my health (I’m doing great! Thanks for asking!), so I mostly show up at the last minute on these things to dub my vocals, but my friends are very kind and inclusive, and they do good work. In particular, stuff like this full of both useful NEPA-speak and also substance:
As I said: Tell us what you’re going to do.
As I said: Tell us what you’re going to do.
This one’s on you, Secretary Burgum. We do offer suggestions, but if you don’t like ours, then tell us your alternative: Tell us what you’re going to do.
This one has seemed for a long time like a no-brainer to me:
This one’s on my Upper Basin leaders: Really?
Again, Secretary Burgum: Tell us what you’re going to do.
The colossal failure of the Colorado River Basin leadership is on display in this simple sentence from the draft EIS: “In critically dry periods, all alternatives have unacceptable performance.” [ed. emphasis mine]
You’ve spent the last few years telling us what you can’t do. It’s on you now: Tell us what you’re going to do.
(Lots more in the full comments, it’s a useful primer on the current state of play.)
