Day: July 25, 2026

Subdistrict 1 water trial heads to closing: SWAG attorney levels ‘bias’ accusations at former state engineer Rein during his Wednesday testimony — Chris Lopez (AlamosaCitizen.com) #SanLuisValley #RioGrande

Rein getting sworn in. Credit: The Citizen

Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Chris Lopez):

July 22, 2026

After four weeks of testimony and now closing arguments set for Thursday morning, the decision before the Colorado Division 3 Water Court and Judge Michael Gonzales boils down to this: Was the Colorado state engineer’s review of the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management proper and legally done?

Attorneys for farmers protesting the plan, namely groundwater irrigators organized as the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, accused retired Colorado Division of Water Resources state engineer Kevin Rein of “bias” during Rein’s testimony Wednesday. Rein, who retired as state engineer in December 2023, took the witness stand as a “lay” witness looking to add clarity for the court on his steps in reviewing and approving the new plan and to rebut the testimony of Ken Knox, SWAG’s expert witness who cast doubt on Rein’s review.

“Bias is always relevant to credibility, Your Honor. This line of questioning goes directly to the witness’s bias at the time he approved the fourth plan,” argued attorney Ryan Donovan.

Donovan and fellow SWAG attorney Brad Grasmick have been working to bolster their case by arguing the Fourth Amended Plan unfairly targets groundwater irrigators like their clients, and their clients are being asked to bear a disproportionate share of the burden in the subdistrict’s efforts to recover the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin. 

San Luis Valley Groundwater

It is the recovery of the unconfined aquifer to sustainable levels that is at the heart of the Subdistrict 1 water management plan and has been since the first plan was adopted in 2009 and certified by the water court in 2010. 

The SWAG attorneys contend Rein didn’t conduct a full legal review of the sustainability and proportionality rules contained in state statutes governing recovery of the unconfined aquifer and didn’t require all the necessary documentation to approve the plan.

Donovan then tried to show bias to the court by taking Rein back to July 2023 and the sudden end to another, but related water trial dealing with his clients’ efforts to get the Division 3 Water Court to approve an alternative augmentation plan for the SWAG farmers to operate in Subdistrict 1. Gonzales presided over that trial, as well.

The key to the July 2023 trial was the timing: SWAG was trying to get its alternative augmentation plan approved by the court ahead of the current court trial dealing with the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management. Instead, the SWAG augmentation trial ended when it lost a source of the water from the town of Del Norte that it was counting on its plan and withdrew the case.

On Wednesday, Donovan accused Ryan and the state engineer’s office of deliberately fast-tracking approval of the Fourth Amended Plan and then getting the town of Del Norte to terminate its agreement with the SWAG farmers for water to undermine the alternative augmentation plan.

“Mr. Rein, Did you feel the need to get the approval of the fourth plan fully completed? Meaning your approval and the subsequent approval by the district board prior to the start of SWAG’s trial on July 17th, 2023?” Donovan asked.

“I can say no, absolutely not. I did not feel that, any urgency other than the urgency that this is something we have been working on for a long time. We needed to move it along. And I can state unequivocally and absolutely that there was no consideration, there was no bias that this plan needed to be approved prior to the beginning of the SWAG case,” Rein answered.

In addition to closing arguments Thursday, Gonzales will also lay out a timeline for how the case proceeds with final submissions to the point where he issues a decision.

Donovan earlier in the week, as he argued against Rein testifying, accused the judge of creating an appearance of impropriety when Gonzales made known his interest to hear testimony from Rein.

Gonzales responded that from his perch, it has seemed throughout the trial that the attorneys involved have had the intent to file an appeal with the Colorado Supreme Court whichever way he rules.

Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868

Brief Report: The 2026 western US snow drought was about four times more likely due to climate change — Adrienne M. Marshall, Marianne Cowherd, Stefan Rahimi, and  Yuhong Ye (PNAS.org) #snowpack #runoff #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map May 31, 2026.

Click the link to access the report on the PNAS website (Adrienne M. Marshall, Marianne Cowherd, Stefan Rahimi, and Yuhong Ye). Here’s the abstract:

In the spring of 2026, anomalously low snow conditions in the western United States threatened winter recreation and water supplies. Here, we investigate: to what extent was this snow drought attributable to the climate change that has occurred since the pre-industrial period? We find that a snow drought this severe across the western United States was approximately 4.4 [95% CI: 2.6, 9.4] times more likely in the current climate than in the preindustrial period. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the snow drought was approximately 14 times more likely [0.09, 4,300]. Given a projected increase in the frequency of snow droughts at least this severe in a moderately high emissions warming scenario, the lived experience of this event may help scientists, resource managers, and the public consider what western US snow might look like if greenhouse gas emissions are not aggressively reduced.

In the winter and spring of 2026, a snow drought gripped the American West; “record-low” conditions were widely reported. The snow drought was associated with anomalously high temperatures, with moderately dry to average precipitation. While it is still too early to know how the consequences of this snow drought will materialize, the US Bureau of Reclamation projected for the first time in spring 2026 that Lake Powell would fall below its minimum power pool threshold by the following winter in median climatological conditions. The snow drought is also likely to increase fire risk and reduce water availability for energy, agriculture, and municipalities.

As the snow drought progressed, scientists, the recreation industry, and the press asked whether the low snow anomaly was attributable to climate change. The frequency, severity, and temperature of snow droughts increase in climate models but formal climate attribution has only rarely been applied to snow drought [see Mote et al. for one exception]. Since then, the science and data available for climate attribution studies have advanced substantially. Here, we ask: to what extent is the 2026 western US snow drought attributable to climatic changes that have occurred since the preindustrial period?