President Trump wages war on wolves: Plus, The Land Desk News Ticker — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Sign, La Plata County, Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

September 8, 2026

🦫 WILDLIFE WATCH 🦅

Just days after President Donald Trump angered U.S. ranchers by waiving tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef (and whatever other meat-adjacent-material may pass as beef), he threw the livestock industry a bone by ordering a “review” of federal Endangered Species Act protections for gray and Mexican wolves. The order also instructs the Interior Department to push states into removing any state-specific protections and to “revise their standards for lethal takings of gray wolves and Mexican wolves to assist ranchers in combating predation.”

In other words, Trump wants to revive the late 19th and early 20th century campaign to exterminate wild predators to benefit ranchers. Will this please a handful of public lands livestock operators who are ideologically inclined to hate wolves, whether they affect their operations or not? Sure. Will it save the American rancher, or even offset the influx of foreign beef? Nope.

Wolves do kill cattle if they are not adequately protected (and the rancher is compensated for the lost livestock), and they can have other impacts on ranching operations in wild areas. But study after study has shown that other factors — from weather and climate, to sickness and disease — account for a far greater share of cattle and calf mortalities.

This is the administration’s latest ploy in its quest to boost the number of cattle on public lands. It is also peddling vacated grazing allotments and easing the already decidedly lax regulations on grazing.

Longread: On wolves, wildness, and hope in trying times — Jonathan P. Thompson

Federal staffing rosters show the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has lost 36% of its staff under the Trump administration, dripping from 9,957 staffers to 6,333 between 2024 and 2026, likely exacerbating a backlog of Endangered Species Act listing decisions. (news release)

Milkweed and sweet peas along the Farmers Ditch in the North Fork Valley (and a reminder that irrigation ditches support more than just crops). Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

🐟 COLORADO RIVER CHRONICLES 💧

The irrigation canals, laterals, and ditches are going dry in the Colorado River’s Upper Basin weeks before the growing season comes to an end, forcing farmers to rely on September rains or their own storage to get their crops to harvest time. It goes to show that even without mandatory cuts, many Upper Basin water users experience water shortages during dry years.

The biggest and latest user to get cut off by low river flows was the Grand Valley Water Users Association, which began drawing down its Government Highline Canal as “the river flows drop to undeliverable levels.” Flows in that canal fell from almost 1,500 cfs at the end of August to about 725 cfs early this week. The more senior Orchard Mesa Irrigation District and Grand Valley Irrigation Company continued to pull water from the river and deliver it to irrigators.

In the North Fork Valley, all but the most senior ditches were shut off weeks ago, after Paonia Reservoir hit dead pool. And on the Dolores River, even the most senior water rights holders — the Montezuma Valley Irrigation District — lost their water at the beginning of this month. Usually it holds out for at least another couple of weeks. (Other water users received dramatically curtailed amounts throughout the irrigating season).

In the Grand Valley, the canal’s loss was the river’s gain: The Colorado River near Palisade, after running as low as 42 cfs this summer, bounced back to around 300 cfs at the end of August. A corresponding increase in flow can be seen at the USGS gage¹ near Cisco. This little boost, combined with a few intense, but patchy storms, and a slight increase in releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, have brought up inflows into Lake Powell, somewhat slowing the drop in surface levels.

The Dolores River, on the other hand, remains virtually dry downstream of McPhee Dam, and McPhee Reservoir’s surface level is currently about 12 feet lower than it was a year ago.

A tale of water inequality in the West — Jonathan P. Thompson, “I wrote the essay [click the link]—about my parents’ farm’s ditch in the North Fork Valley of Western Colorado—in 2018, which was one of the region’s driest years on record. The essay is every bit as pertinent today, an equally dry time for most of the Western Slope, even if some details have changed: My sister owns the farm now—along with the robust water rights—…”

The Central Arizona Project’s board of directors authorizes its attorneys to take legal action “if necessary” to protect its allotment of Colorado River against the Bureau of Reclamation’s plans for operating the river’s infrastructure in the coming decade. The CAP stands to lose the most water under a shortage, as Arizona agreed to junior water rights in exchange for federal funding for the vast plumbing project that delivers river water to the central and southern parts of the state. Nevada already sued the federal government over potential cuts to its share of water. (Arizona Republic)

Western Colorado anglers and boaters call on the Bureau of Reclamation to increase water releases from Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, and Crystal Reservoirs to preserve streamflows in the Gunnison River in the Black Canyon, the Gunnison Gorge, and further downstream, saying the decision to reduce releases to protect reservoir levels has “exerted a toll on a vital and cherished natural resource.” (Aspen Journalism)

🤖 DATA CENTER WATCH 👾

The Big Data Center Buildup drives up electricity demand in Wyoming and spurs a wave of proposed gas plants, some of which would serve the grid and others dedicated to powering server farm facilities. (WyoFile)

⛏️ MINING MONITOR ⛏️

The Southern Ute Indian Tribe says it will pull out all of the stops to block potential mining projects in the La Plata Mountains in southwestern Colorado, adding to the list of entities opposing Metallic Minerals’ exploratory drilling project on the western side of the range. (Durango Herald)

New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard puts state trust lands off-limits to new uranium mining leases, and orders her office to instead focus on cleaning up the more than 1,000 former uranium mining-related sites in the state. The order does not affect private or federal lands. (news release)

Anfield Energy looks to raise at least $50 million to finance its plan to refurbish and reopen the Shootaring uranium mill — which has been idle since 1982 — near Ticaboo, Utah. Anfield is the firm behind the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley and has designs on mining near Slick Rock, Colorado. (Northern Miner)

🌵 PUBLIC LANDS 🌲

A federal judge temporarily blocks the Trump administration’s effort to evict bison from public lands in Montana, finding that the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to kick the animals off American Prairie-held grazing leases was likely “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with the law.” (Public Domain)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture releases its final Forest Service reorganization plan, which includes moving the headquarters to Salt Lake City and shuttering 23 facilities nationwide, including four in California, one in New Mexico, and one in Oregon, with the remainder being in non-Western states. The USDA says “less than 200” of the agency’s 30,000 employees are expected to need to relocate, mostly from Washington, D.C. to Fort Collins, Salt Lake City, or a newly established center. (news release, OPB)

The Center for Western Priorities fact-checks Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s numerous erroneous statements about the administration’s dramatic reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments, finding that on this topic (and others) the cabinet member is a serial liar. (Westwise)

🏠 RANDOM REAL ESTATE ROOM 🤑

Anita Verma-Lallian, a real estate investor who made her name buying and selling multi-million-dollar Phoenix-area properties for data centers, unveils a plan for a massive development in Tonopah, Arizona. Tentative plans for the $6 billion to $10 billion development include a movie studio, amusement park, hotels, retail, and a data center complex. The property is adjacent to one where Bill Gates’ investment firm is planning a “futuristic smart city.” (Phoenix Business Journal via KTAR)

🛻 TRANSPORTATION 🚂

The Utah Department of Transportation completes the $152 million Energy Corridor highway improvement project on State Routes 162 and 262 in San Juan County. The routes pass through the Aneth Oil Field and could potentially be used for uranium ore haul trucks traveling from New Mexico mines to the White Mesa Mill near Blanding. (ABC4)

🤯 ANNALS OF INANITY 🤡

When will it stop!?! Amid a flurry of inane, bizarre, and cognitively-impaired social media posts, President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested New Mexico’s name should be changed to “New America.” (CNN)

📈 TODAY’s DATAVIZ 📊

Are coal and electricity consumption getting back together? For the latter half of the 20th century, U.S. coal consumption climbed in tandem with electricity demand: As Americans used more power, more coal was burned to generate that power, and vice versa. In 2008, electricity demand plummeted due to the financial crisis, dragging coal consumption down with it.

While electricity demand rebounded along with the economy, and then plateaued, coal-burning continued dropping precipitously; the two phenomena had been decoupled from one another. But over the last three years electricity demand has shot back up, in large part due to data centers’ guzzling up a lot of power, but also because of electrification of transportation and buildings, and an increasing need for air-conditioning to fend off rising temperatures. And last year the electric power sector’s coal consumption shot back up as well. Is the decoupling being undone? Or is this just a minor blip? Only time will tell.

Dataviz by the Land Desk using stats from the Energy Information Administration.

📸 PARTING SHOT 🎞️

Continuing with the opening theme … Sign near Bowie, Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

¹ Yes, I use the archaic “gage” instead of “gauge” when referring to USGS streamflow monitors, not just because I’m archaic, but because that’s what the USGS does.

South Platte River Basin #climate for the week ending September 14, 2026 #SouthPlatteRiver

Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for September 14, 2026. This morning precipitation, at the SNOTEL stations, is at 74% of the median (down 2% one week), and 72% of the water year median (no change one week). There are 16 days left in the water year.

There’s a chance for showers/thunderstorms today, showers are likely Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with a chance for thunderstorms Friday, and a chance for showers/thunderstorms Saturday and Sunday in the central mountains. There’s a slight chance for showers/thunderstorms today, a chance for showers are Tuesday, a chance for thunderstorms Wednesday, showers are likely Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, then a chance for a chance for showers/thunderstorms Sunday in the northern mountains. There’s a slight chance for showers/thunderstorms today and Tuesday, a chance for showers Wednesday, showers are likely Thursday, with a chance for thunderstorms Friday, and a chance for showers and thunderstorms Saturday with a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday, down here, about 350 miles from the La Plata River and Cherry Creek Ditch. From Wikipedia:

Hinderlider v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304 U.S. 92 (1938), is a US Supreme Court case…The Court emphasized that the La Plata River is an interstate stream, and its water must be equitably apportioned between Colorado and New Mexico. The 1898 Colorado decree could not grant the Ditch Company rights exceeding Colorado’s equitable share of the river’s water. The Compact, as a legislative agreement between the states with Congressional approval, was a valid mechanism for apportioning the river’s water and binding on all water claimants, including those with pre-existing rights. The Court rejected the argument that the Compact violated the Ditch Company’s vested rights, noting that the Compact’s provisions, including the rotation of water flow, were designed to maximize the beneficial use of the river’s water. The Court found no evidence of procedural infirmities or inequities in the negotiation, ratification, or implementation of the Compact.

The United States Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado. The Court held that the La Plata River Compact was valid and binding, and the actions of the State Engineer in administering the Compact were lawful. The Ditch Company’s rights under the 1898 decree were limited to Colorado’s equitable share of the river’s water, as determined by the Compact.

An archetypical example of such federal common law is that relating to disputes between states of the United States, Hinderlider was the first case to reaffirm the existence of federal common law for other purposes, specifically here, the interpretation of an interstate compact governing water rights between states.

La Plata and Cherry Creek Ditch headworks after new construction. Photo credit: Southwestern Colorado Water Conservancy District

Here’s a look at the 7-Day Colorado precipitation map through September 13, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 0.00” to 0.40”.

Here’s the 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through September 13, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas was 0% to 75% of normal.

Below is the 7-day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast for the week of September 14, 2026. Precipitation is anticipated for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin and may total up to 1.50″.

Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued September 13, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting September 21, 2026. The CPC expects above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor map from September 8, 2026. There were one class improvements in Weld, Logan, and Sedgwick counties. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 93.81% of Colorado. The South Platte Basin is experiencing Abnormally Dry, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, and Exceptional drought conditions.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 8, 2026.

Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.

Finally, the Colorado Climate Center released their monthly wrap-up of Colorado climate recently. From the summary:

August was another record-warm month for Colorado, the 3rd in calendar year 2026 and the 4th in Water Year 2026. August also ended the warmest climatological summer on record for Colorado. There were three more heat waves in August and several of the warmest August days the state has experienced in at least 75 years. Precipitation was varied across the state, with some locations getting intense thunderstorm rainfall and hazardous flash flooding, and other spots seeing very little rain and worsening drought. Water Year 2026 continues to be the warmest on record by a large margin, and the 6th driest. Calendar year 2026 through August is also the warmest on record.

Hay meadows in pristine #Colorado river basins put to work as water-quality test labs — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):

September 9, 2026

Colorado ranchers who own some of the state’s most scenic landscapes are joining new research efforts to better understand emerging water quality issues in the Yampa and Gunnison basins, among others.

Pressured by rising stream temperatures and shrinking flows due to climate change, rivers and lakes across the state are showing signs of distress, including algae blooms, some of which are toxic.

At the same time, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Colorado State University are analyzing water quality and testing how voluntary best management practices, rather than strict regulations, can protect these hallmark water bodies.

Philip Rossi grows hay and runs a cattle operation in the Upper Yampa River Basin above Stagecoach Reservoir. He is among the first ranchers to agree to allow scientists to monitor the water quality, and soon the temperature, of the irrigation water that runs off from his hay meadows.

So far the news has been good, Rossi said. Little if any of the fertilizer he applies to his hay reaches the stream and in the years he’s been working with the CSU researchers, the use of nonfertilized grass strips along the creek that runs through his property has reduced that number even further.

“What I learned is that I wasn’t wasting money. The fertilizer I was putting on was being used, and just as important I wasn’t affecting the stream.”

With results from the first three-year study officially out, another even broader effort involving more ranches is underway. It will add the monitoring of stream temperatures to the analysis.

Erik Wardle, director of Colorado State University’s Agricultural Water Quality Program, said there was little water quality data available in remote regions such as the Yampa Basin. “We wanted some real world data on what’s happening on our ranches and our cow-calf operations.”

As word of the research has spread, more ranchers have come forward to participate, despite skepticism and worry about government efforts to monitor what they’re doing. “Early on I was doing a lot of cold calling, asking ranchers to participate. And a lot of them said, ‘Are you crazy?’ But now I would say 85% of what we’re doing is being driven by these producers. These ranchers have put themselves out there,” Wardle said.

Even in these pristine areas of Colorado, no one expects water quality worries to subside in the warmer future. In response, water agencies in the area are looking for ways to change the way they operate to help streams.

“Water quality on the West Slope has always been assumed to be great,” said Andy Rossi, general manager of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which owns Stagecoach Reservoir. He is not related to Philip Rossi, the rancher.

“Here we are in snowpack-dominated basins with pristine wilderness areas driving our water supply. But 10 years ago we started seeing changes, like toxic algae blooms in Stagecoach Reservoir and Steamboat Lake.”

Since then, the water district has shifted into high gear to understand what’s happening and why, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a water quality modeling and monitoring program.

Nothing that has been uncovered yet has exceeded a state standard, Rossi said, “yet we still have potentially toxic algae blooms. The assumption has always been that ag is the source of our troubles. But we felt it was unfair to jump to that conclusion without doing the strict science to figure it out.”

Can best practices be shared between ranches?

With early research results in hand, Tyson Ingels, a veteran water quality regulator at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the state hopes to avoid a strict regulatory approach for these remote high country lakes and streams, relying on voluntary efforts instead.

“This is a very positive study,” he said. “For mountain hay we didn’t have the best data on how best management practices could impact nutrient levels. This was an area that needed to be better understood.”

Looking ahead, Ingels said the state wants to take a measured approach to these regional water quality issues. That the best management practices that are being used on the Rossi Ranch and elsewhere are working well indicates that water quality goals can likely be achieved without a heavy-handed regulatory effort.

Philip Rossi said he’s feeling optimistic, in part because of all the scientific groundwork that is being laid, as well as the early encouraging results of the studies.

He believes that the temperature studies of the water that is returning to the streams, will also show minimal impact.

The rationale, he said, is that water used to flood irrigate fields seeps into the groundwater, flowing to the stream later, when it has cooled down. This was the belief held by his father and grandfather, and Rossi believes the new studies will uphold those beliefs. “The researchers are going to find out the things that my dad told me and that my grandpa used to say” are true, he said.

More by Jerd Smith

August 2026 Monthly #Climate Summary — #Colorado Climate Center

Click the link to go to the Colorado Climate Center to download the summary:

September 10, 2026

August was another record-warm month for Colorado, the 3rd in calendar year 2026 and the 4th in Water Year 2026. August also ended the warmest climatological summer on record for Colorado. There were three more heat waves in August and several of the warmest August days the state has experienced in at least 75 years. Precipitation was varied across the state, with some locations getting intense thunderstorm rainfall and hazardous flash flooding, and other spots seeing very little rain and worsening drought. Water Year 2026 continues to be the warmest on record by a large margin, and the 6th driest. Calendar year 2026 through August is also the warmest on record.

The La Paz Gold Rush

A historic black and white photo showing a group of people standing around a large wooden structure shaped like a star, with men wearing hats and women in period clothing, while one boy is climbing on the structure. — ^{Early gold mining operations before Arizona became a state. Photos provided by Western Mining History.}

by Robert Marcos

The gold fever that brought tens of thousands of miners into Northern California in 1848 led to related discoveries of gold at La Paz in 1862 (before Arizona was a state), and in 1896 on the Klondike River.

Smaller gold deposits – like those in New Mexico’s Ortiz Mountains, had been identified earlier than these but they lacked the massive infrastructure, communications, and population density that was needed to turn small gold deposits into a major excavations. Furthermore, before the signing of the Treaty of Hidalgo, most of the American West was under Mexican rule which made the large-scale migration to the region more difficult.

At La Paz – a full year before Arizona was even a territory – there were 5,000 miners working hundreds of gold claims on both sides of the Colorado River. These miners and the hundreds of workers who supported them were desperate to find a way to transport people and the tons of supplies needed at these remote sites: which included the small Arizona towns of Quartzsite, Ehrenberg, and Bouse.

Steamboats came to the rescue

The first steam-powered paddleboat to navigate the Colorado River was the Uncle Sam. Designed by Domingo Marcucci and built in San Francisco, the 65-foot-long, side-wheel paddle steamer was shipped in pieces to Port Isabel on the river’s delta. It was reassembled and launched in November 1852 to carry military supplies 120 miles upstream to Fort Yuma. Driven by a tiny 20-horsepower steam engine, the Uncle Sam struggled to make headway against the strong currents (going in the opposite direction), and it took 15 long days in order to complete its first voyage.¹

The Cocopah – the River’s Largest Steamboat

Cocopah was the largest ship used during the Colorado River steamboat era. The sternwheel paddle steamer was built for $35,000 by the George A. Johnson & Company in San Francisco and it was the fifth steamboat to work along the Colorado River. Cocopah’s sturdy engine could carry 100 tons of cargo against the strongest of river currents. The Cocopah was 140 feet long, 29 feet wide, and had a (very shallow) draft of 19 inches, even fully loaded – which was perfect for navigating over shallow water and sandbars.

After being assembled the at Gridiron Landing in Sonora, Cocopah was launched in August of 1859 and captained by David C. Robinson – an experienced captain who formerly steered the steamboat Explorer in a Colorado River voyage. The Cocopah continued its travels along the Colorado River until 1867. Afterward the Cocopah was moved onshore and used to house workers at Port Isabel, near the point where the Colorado River meets the Sea of Cortez.²

Steamship Operations Brought to a Sudden End by the Railroad

The arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Yuma, Arizona, in 1877 dealt a fatal blow to the Colorado River steamboat era. The railroad broke the riverboats’ monopoly on the transportation of cargo and passengers to regions that had previously been hard to reach. Trains moved goods across the desert in a fraction of the time and at significantly lower cost than the steamboats. As rail lines expanded across the Southwest over the following decades, they systematically bypassed the river, rendering the expensive process of shipping supplies upstream entirely obsolete.³

The latest #ElNiño/Southern Oscillation (#ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion is hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center

Click the link to read the discussion on the Climate Prediction Center website:

September 10, 2026

ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Advisory

Synopsis: El Niño is strengthening, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2026-27.

El Niño strengthened further over the past month, with sea surface temperature anomalies exceeding +3.0°C in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Except for the Niño-4 index, which decreased to +0.1°C in August, values in the other Niño indices increased, reaching +1.8°C in Niño-3.4, +2.5°C in Niño-3, and +3.4°C in Niño-1+2. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100°W) remained steady during August, reflecting a deeper-than-average thermocline. Subsurface temperatures continued to be significantly above average, with widespread anomalies in excess of +10.0°C at depth. Low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly wind anomalies extended from the western to the east-central equatorial Pacific. Enhanced convection and rainfall persisted from the central to the eastern Pacific, while anomalies remained suppressed over Indonesia. The traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation indices remained negative. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected a strengthening El Niño.

The CPC Official ENSO outlook, which synthesizes multiple models from North America and abroad, indicates El Niño will continue to strengthen through the end of the year. During the October-December 2026 season, there is a 75% chance of a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950 (+2.5°C or more for a 3-month RONI value). With an event of this magnitude, the chances of experiencing impacts consistent with El Niño are larger, though not guaranteed (see CPC outlooks for probabilities of seasonal anomalies). In summary, El Niño is strengthening, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2026-27.

Monitoring Global Temperature and Precipitation in August 2026: Record-warm August for the globe and global oceans — NOAA

Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website:

September 10, 2026

August Highlights:

August was the warmest on record for the globe, eclipsing the previous tied records of 2023 and 2024 by 0.14°F (0.08°C). The June–August three-month season was also record-warm.

Global sea surface temperature reached an all-time high in August.

El Niño conditions persisted during the month, driving record-high temperatures across vast areas of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.

Global land surface temperature was near-record warm for August and June–August.

The Northern Hemisphere experienced its warmest summer, while the Southern Hemisphere had a near-record warm winter.

The Arctic and Antarctic had a below-average sea ice extent.

Global tropical cyclone activity was above average with 19 tropical storms.

Map of global notable weather and climate events in August 2026. Credit: NOAA

Temperature

The global surface temperature in August 2026 was 2.38°F (1.32°C) above the 20th-century average—the warmest August in the 1850–2026 record, eclipsing the previous tied records set in 2023 and 2024 by 0.14°F (0.08°C). It marked the 48th-consecutive August with global temperatures above the 20th-century average (the last below-average August occurred in 1978), and all 10 of the warmest Augusts on record have occurred since 2016. Global ocean temperatures set a new record high, while global land temperatures were near-record warm.

Global Temperature Percentiles for August 2026. Red and orange indicates warmer than average, blue indicates colder than average and gray indicates that it tied with more than 10% of the record. Credit: NOAA

During August 2026, above-average temperatures covered most global land and ocean surfaces. Notable temperature departures of at least +3.6°F (+2.0°C) spanned Europe, Africa, Asia, Antarctica, parts of North and South America, North Pacific Ocean, and a vast area of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (consistent with ongoing El Niño conditions). Record-high August temperatures were mainly present across Greenland, Africa, and parts of Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Canadian Arctic oceans as well as extensive areas of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Below-average temperatures were limited to parts of the Arctic, eastern Russia and Antarctica. However, no land or ocean areas had record-cold August temperatures.

Regionally, most continents experienced a top-10 warmest August on record. North America and Africa both experienced their warmest August on record, while Asia experienced its second-warmest August. The Arctic recorded its third-warmest August, followed by South America and Europe each recording their fourth-warmest. Oceania had its eighth warmest, while Antarctica experienced an above-average August, its rank fell outside its top 10.

Seasonal

Globally, the average surface temperature from June–August 2026 was the highest (+2.18°F / +1.21°C) in NOAA’s 177-year record. The June–August period marks the meteorological summer for the Northern Hemisphere and winter for the Southern Hemisphere.
During this three-month period, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its warmest meteorological summer, while the Southern Hemisphere experienced its second-warmest meteorological winter.

Year-to-date

Looking at the year-to-date, the January–August global surface temperature was second highest on record. According to NCEI’s Global Annual Temperature Outlook, it is very likely that 2026 will rank among the five warmest years on record, with the highest probabilities favoring the second-warmest year on record.

Sea Ice

Global sea ice extent was the fourth smallest for August in the 48-year record, covering 8.50 million square miles, which is 870,000 square miles below the 1991–2020 average. The Arctic had its 11th-lowest August extent on record, falling 340,000 square miles below average. Meanwhile, the Antarctic sea extent was 530,000 square miles below average and the third-smallest August extent.

Map of the Antarctic (left) and the Arctic (right) sea ice extent in August 2026. Credit: NOAA

Tropical Cyclones

Global tropical cyclone activity was above average in August, producing 19 tropical storms. Of those, five reached hurricane or typhoon intensity, with four attaining major status (Category 3 or higher). Driven by ongoing El Niño conditions, activity varied by basin. The Atlantic was unusually quiet, producing two weak, short-lived tropical storms: Cristobal and Dolly. In contrast, warmer waters across the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean fueled the development of eight named storms across the Eastern North Pacific basin. Of note, Hurricane Lala passed near the Big Island of Hawaii as a Category 1 hurricane. Although Lala remained offshore, it was the first storm in decades to bring hurricane-strength conditions to Hawaii’s Big Island. Torrential rainfall triggered widespread flooding and mudslides across the region.

The West Pacific basin also had an above-average month with nine storms. Notably, Super Typhoon Dolphin brought heavy rain and strong winds to parts of southern Japan and China. The storm brought historic rainfall to parts of China.

No storms formed in the North Indian Ocean nor in the Southern Hemisphere basins, which is typical during this time of year.

For a more complete summary of climate conditions and events, see our August 2026 Global Climate Report or explore our Climate at a Glance Global Time Series.

Aspinall Unit Operations Update – Ramping down Gunnison Tunnel diversions, variable river flows through the Black Canyon #GunnisonRiver

Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Photo credit: NPS/Kris Toy

From email from Reclamation (Andrew Limbach):

On Monday, September 14^th at 8:00 AM (MDT), the UVWUA will begin ramping down tunnel diversions to 675-700 cfs. In coordination with that effort, Crystal releases will decrease to 875-900 cfs from 1240 cfs, and flows through the Black Canyon will be between 200-225 cfs. Tunnel diversions are anticipated to be at 700 cfs through October 31.

The Crystal outlet works typically experiences increased levels of cavitation between 900 and 1200 cfs. Therefore, Crystal releases may need to be adjusted as needed to find an optimal operating zone. Recreators and boaters in the Black Canyon should expect fluctuations of river flows until the final releases and diversions are set. Another notification will be sent out once the releases are finalized.

Map of the Gunnison River drainage basin in Colorado, USA. Made using public domain USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69257550

We can’t build our way out of this ‘drought’: Some of those on the campaign trail call for more storage, they need to visit #GreenMountainReservoir — Allen Best (BigPivots.com) #BlueRiver #COriver #ColoradoRiver #drought #aridification

Green Mountain Reservoir August 17, 2026. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

September 7, 2026

No place in Colorado that I have visited offers such blunt testimony to the warming, drying climate than Green Mountain Reservoir. It also poses a question to those politicians whose answer to non-winters and ever-hotter summers is more dams and reservoirs.

The reservoir between Silverthorne and Kremmling was 14% full during Labor Day weekend, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the operator. Put another way, it was 86% empty.

That’s worse even than the roughly 78% empty at Lake Powell, the reservoir located roughly 700 river miles downstream from Green Mountain.

Green Mountain was part of Colorado’s mission begun in the 19^th century to put water to “beneficial use,” a central axiom of state water law. Pioneer settlers did an admirable job of this, in the beginning using nothing more than horses, oxen and human labor.

In 1902, the federal government became a partner, creating the Bureau of Reclamation. Over the next roughly 90 years, the federal treasury was visited repeatedly to prevent “waste” of any portion of the Colorado River flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

Green Mountain Reservoir, back in the day. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Construction of Green Mountain Dam was part of that work. During the hot, dry 1930s, farmers in the Fort Collins-Longmont-Greeley area wanted to import water from the Colorado River headwaters near Grand Lake. Western Slope irrigators objected. Farms in the Grand Junction area would lose late-season water needed to get their crops and orchards across the finish line.

Green Mountain was the compromise. And it has worked out well. A pool of 66,000 acre-feet of water was reserved for down-stream irrigators in the Grand Junction area. Deliveries in this canal usually continue through October, sometimes later.

This year was different. For the first time in 110-plus years, deliveries ended in late August.

DeBeque Canyon has changed somewhat since this photo of the Roller Dam was taken in 1916. Most notably, now the canyon has an interstate highway. Photo/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. For a more complete history, see the Palisade Historical Society page.

In April, the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District issued a warning. Green Mountain was the lowest it had been since filling during World War II. This jeopardized the late-summer flows to irrigators who took delivery of water from the Government Highline Canal. The canal diverts water from the Colorado River at the Roller Dam, a short distance upstream from Palisade. It then distributes water to farms and orchards for 55 miles, nearly to the Utah border.

Wolford Mountain Reservoir back in the day. An aerial view of Wolford Reservoir, formed by Ritschard Dam.

This year, in a testament to cooperation, the Colorado River District and Colorado Water Conservation Board ponied up more than $1 million to buy use of water. Water was tapped from headwaters reservoirs, most notably Wolford and Williams Fork, near Kremmling, and Ruedi, near Basalt. Others, including Front Range diverters, helped.

Williams Fork Reservoir back in the day. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Irrigators got only 50% of their normal water. In response, many switched crops to varieties of plants that could survive with less water.

Even so, by late August, the water was running out. The Grand Valley Water Users Association, operator of the canal, stopped deliveries on September 3. Maybe monsoon rains will deliver water to resume operations, but that’s the story for now.

Once again, the idea that we just need to store more is entirely too simplistic. Yes, saving for a rainy day is always good, but this idea that we can build our way to more water defies ample evidence about the warming, drying climate.

We can have droughts, yes. They come and go. But the science clearly shows that these hot, dry years of the 21^st century will not be ephemeral. They have been driven by a warming climate caused by accumulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall

In the 20^th century, the Colorado River delivered about 15.2 million acre-feet. In this century, the annual flows have declined to 12.2 million acre-feet. Since 2020, average flows have declined even more, to 10 million acre-feet. And this recent span included a very, very big snow year, in 2022-23, a three-wire winter like those of old. But the spring was like those of the 21^st century, early and uncommonly warm.

The pitiful storage in Green Mountain, whose shoreline is seen in the above photograph I took on Aug. 17, testifies to this warming, drying climate. So does the canal near Grand Junction where deliveries were cut off last week for the first time in 110 years. And then we have near doubling of 95 degree-plus days in Denver during last 30 years as compared to the three decades before as reported by KUSA.

Might we figure out better infrastructure? Maybe. The idea of storing water underground, as Greeley began doing several years ago, intrigues. It requires more energy but greatly reduces evaporative loss.

The federal government in its documents has excised climate change. So have many politicians in Colorado speaking on the stump, hewing to the recent version of political correctness.

If there are ideas for storing water that don’t assume a return to the climate of the 20^th century, I’m all for hearing them. But to think this is just another drought defies tons of evidence.

See also:

“Does 80% of Colorado’s precipitation really fall west of the Continental Divide?” Russ Schumacher, Jan. 17, 2024.

“A first in the 110-year history of this canal,” Big Pivots, Sept. 3, 2026

“Amid the y’alls, two themes at the Colorado Water Congress conference,” Big Pivots, Aug. 31, 2026

“Rare optimism about the Colorado River,” Big Pivots, Aug. 24, 2026

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

Mormon Pioneers treated water as a Shared Resource

Black and white image of a line of covered wagons pulled by horses alongside a riverbank, with a hilly landscape in the background. — ^{An 1866 party of pioneers in Echo Canyon east of the Salt Lake Valley. Photograph from Newsroom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints}

by Robert Marcos

The Lifeline of the Wasatch: Pioneer Irrigation in the Great Basin

When the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, they encountered a landscape starkly different from the humid climates of Illinois and Missouri. Receiving less than sixteen inches of annual rainfall, the valley was an arid expanse. However, the settlers quickly recognized a crucial geographic asset: the Wasatch Range. Towering over the eastern edge of the valley, these mountains acted as a massive cold-weather reservoir, capturing vast amounts of winter snowfall. As spring and summer temperatures rose, this snowpack melted, sending high-volume runoff down steep canyons into local mountain streams like City Creek, Red Butte Creek, and the Provo River. To survive, the pioneers had to capture and control this mountain runoff for agriculture, effectively executing the first large-scale Anglo-Saxon irrigation system in modern American history. ¹

Gravity-Fed Engineering and Infrastructure

The physical redirection of the water relied entirely on gravity. Because the Wasatch Range drops steeply into the low-lying valley, water flowed downward naturally with substantial force. Within hours of their arrival on July 23, 1847, the pioneers built a rudimentary timber and earthen dam across City Creek. This initial barrier pooled the fast-moving runoff, forcing it into a hand-dug ditch that redirected the water onto five acres of dry land, softening the sun-baked earth enough to allow plowing and the planting of potatoes. As the settlement grew, this experimental ditch expanded into a massive, organized network of canals. Main canals tapped into mountain streams right at the canyon mouths where the water exited the Wasatch Range. Using simple tools like shovels, pickaxes, and ox-drawn scrapers, the pioneers dug primary ditches that followed the natural contours of the valley slope, maintaining a gentle decline. From these primary canals, a lattice of secondary and tertiary ditches branched out directly into individual communities and agricultural fields. Inside the towns, irrigation ditches ran down both sides of the wide streets to provide water for residential gardens and orchards. _²

Communal Management and Legal Evolution

The infrastructure required to channel the Wasatch runoff could not have succeeded through individual effort alone; it demanded centralized planning and communal labor. Under the direction of Brigham Young, the territory departed from traditional American riparian water law—which dictated that water belonged exclusively to whoever owned the riverbanks. Instead, the pioneers established a doctrine of communal ownership where water was treated as a public resource. The construction and maintenance of the canal systems were divided among ecclesiastical units known as “wards”. Local bishops doubled as water masters, organizing community members to dig and clear the ditches. Water distribution was tightly regulated through a system of “turns”. Farmers were assigned a specific day and hour to open their wooden headgates, allowing the mountain runoff to flood their fields. This highly disciplined approach to water management proved incredibly scalable. By 1865, less than two decades after their arrival, the settlers had constructed over 1,000 miles of canals across Utah, transforming an unforgiving environment into a highly productive agricultural oasis. ³

The Radical Cooperative Theology of Mormon Water Sharing

The early Mormon approach to water sharing in the Great Basin was not merely a pragmatic response to a dry climate; it was a direct extension of a radical, communal theology. While standard 19th-century American culture championed rugged individualism and private property rights, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operated under a philosophy of theocratic collectivism. This worldview, deeply rooted in the revelations of founder Joseph Smith and enforced by his successor Brigham Young, reshaped how natural resources were legally, spiritually, and physically distributed. ⁴

September 11, 2001

Re-upping this post from 2017.

The morning of 9/11 I was working at the computer. My son barged into the computer room and said, “Papa a plane hit the the World Trade Center building!”

I will always remember the people that died that day.

The best coverage of the event turned out to come from the bloggers. The talking heads on TV kept interviewing the same people and showing the same footage over and over. Meanwhile the bloggers reported what was going on from the point of view of those most affected by the losses of loved ones and what they observed on the street.

From my post on the first anniversary of the event:

The events of that day led me into the world of weblogging. I started reading Dave Winer’s Scripting News regularly. At the time he was pointing to people writing about the tragedy, in real time, in their own voices, and I was stunned by the effectiveness and quality of the reporting and opinion being published. Here’s the 9/11/2001… Scripting News. No one got much work done that day. A couple of TV’s were on in the building but people mostly sat around talking, working through the events, getting comfort from human conversation and interaction.

#Drought news September 10, 2026: Heavy rain amounts of 1-3 inches fell in parts of S.W. #Nebraska and the Panhandle, and adjacent N.E. #Colorado, lessening precipitation deficits and improving drought conditions

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

US Drought Monitor map September 8, 2026.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Drought and abnormal dryness continued to expand or intensify this week across parts of the central and south-central United States as flash drought conditions continued from much of Texas northeast to the middle and lower Mississippi River Valley. Warmer-than-normal temperatures, ranging from 10-15 degrees F above normal in much of the central Great Plains, Corn Belt and Missouri, combined with mostly dry weather in these areas to support worsening drought. Largely drier weather also continued this week in New England, in parts of the Michigan Upper Peninsula, along parts of the North Dakota-South Dakota border, in southeast Montana and in southwest Colorado, leading to degradations occurring in parts of these areas. In contrast, heavy rains fell from southeast South Dakota into western Iowa and southern Minnesota, in eastern Wisconsin, in northern North Dakota, in western Oregon and in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains in Montana and Idaho. Scattered heavy rains, locally 2-3 inches or more, also occurred in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, eastern North Carolina and Florida. Tropical Storm Edouard and its remnants delivered very heavy rain amounts, locally 10-15 inches or more, in a narrow corridor in southeast Texas. Lowell, in the central Pacific Ocean, delivered heavy rain amounts to Niihau, Kauai and Oahu as it passed west of the islands as a hurricane earlier this week, alleviating abnormal dryness in a few areas. Conditions continued to improve in localized areas of Puerto Rico this week after recent heavy rains. While the central United States dealt with an early-autumn heat wave, near- or below-normal temperatures occurred from the Great Basin west to the Pacific Ocean…

High Plains

Conditions in the High Plains region this week were mixed. Scattered heavy rains fell in northeast and southwest Nebraska, southeast South Dakota, northern North Dakota and far southwest Kansas, leading to localized or widespread improvements in these and neighboring areas. However, temperatures across the region were warmer than normal, leading to abnormally high atmospheric thirst and widespread degrading conditions in parts of the region. Temperatures were mostly 10-15 degrees above normal in Kansas, eastern Nebraska and southeastern South Dakota. Eastern Kansas and southeast Nebraska were particularly hot and dry this week, leading to large expansions of moderate, severe and extreme drought in south-central and southeast Kansas, and the introduction of abnormal dryness in much of northeast Kansas. Unusually wet weather in August kept conditions in southeast Nebraska from drying as much as areas farther south and southeast. Severe and extreme drought also grew in coverage in southeastern North Dakota, where warm and dry weather this week worsened precipitation deficits and soil moisture conditions. Drought conditions improved in southeastern South Dakota, and adjacent far northeast Nebraska, where rain amounts of 2-5 inches fell. Similar amounts of rain fell in parts of northern North Dakota, leading to improvements in soil moisture and streamflow there and improving drought conditions. Heavy rain amounts of 1-3 inches fell in parts of southwest Nebraska and the Nebraska Panhandle, and adjacent northeast Colorado, lessening precipitation deficits and improving drought conditions…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 8, 2026.

West

Most of California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho were cooler-than-normal this week, with some areas of northern California and southern Oregon finishing the week 10-15 degrees below normal. Eastern portions of New Mexico and Montana, by contrast, were warmer than normal, with temperatures in most areas 5-10 degrees above normal. Widespread moderate to heavy precipitation fell from northern California across portions of Oregon, central and northern Idaho and western and northern Montana. Precipitation amounts in western Montana and northern Idaho ranged from 2 to 6 inches. This led to increased soil moisture and streamflow and lessened short- and long-term precipitation deficits, and the coverage of moderate and severe drought and abnormal dryness lessened in some areas. Precipitation also improved conditions in south-central Oregon, as long-term precipitation deficits lessened in severity. Long-term precipitation deficits grew amid groundwater and soil moisture shortages in south-central Nevada, leading to an increase in severe drought coverage there. In southeast Montana, warm and dry weather led to decreased streamflow and soil moisture in a few areas, leading to localized expansion of severe and extreme drought…

South

Large parts of the South region continued to quickly dry this week amid mostly above-normal temperatures and dry weather. A few exceptions include southern Louisiana, southeast Texas (where former Tropical Storm Edouard dropped rain amounts that locally exceeded 10 inches), and parts of the western Oklahoma Panhandle, where scattered thunderstorm rains occurred. Isolated one-category improvements occurred in the Oklahoma Panhandle, while one- and two-category improvements occurred in southeast Texas, where precipitation deficits were either reduced or erased entirely, along with improved soil moisture and streamflow. Elsewhere, mostly dry weather and hot temperatures (5-15 degrees above normal) covered a wide area from western and northern Texas through most of Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern Mississippi and Tennessee. Short-term rainfall deficits continued to grow across much of the region, along with dropping soil moisture and streamflow levels, leading to widespread agricultural drought impacts. Large areas of degrading conditions spread from much of Texas into eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern Mississippi and portions of Tennessee. The rapidly drying weather in Tennessee came after much wetter recent weather, somewhat lessening the impact of the recent heat and dryness there and in neighboring Kentucky…

Looking Ahead

From the evenings of Wednesday, September 9-Monday, September 14, the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center precipitation forecast is for mostly dry weather in the West, and in the western half of the Great Plains, except for parts of north-central Idaho eastward across Montana into North Dakota, where over 0.75 inches of precipitation are forecast in most areas. Eastern parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma may also receive 0.75 inches or more of rain, with some parts of eastern Kansas and western Missouri forecast to receive 1.5 inches of rain or more. Much of northern Iowa, Minnesota, northwest Wisconsin and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan are forecast to receive at least 1.5 inches of rain. Rain amounts at or above 0.75 inches are also likely in parts of the Ohio River Valley, southern Mid-Atlantic, southeast Louisiana, and parts of southern Mississippi, Alabama, northern Georgia and the Carolinas. Parts of the Florida Peninsula may receive 1.5-4 inches of rain. Generally drier weather, with local exceptions, is forecast in Texas, the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, northern parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and southern New England.

For September 15-19, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecast favors above-normal precipitation for much of the contiguous United States, especially in the Four Corners states. Near-normal precipitation is favored near the Gulf Coast and in parts of central and northern California and Nevada and eastern Oregon and Washington. Below-normal precipitation is favored in western parts of Oregon and Washington. Warmer-than-normal temperatures are favored across much of the southern and eastern United States, especially in the Southeast. Cooler-than-normal temperatures are favored in North Dakota, northern South Dakota, northwest Minnesota and most of Montana. Above-normal precipitation and temperatures are both favored in Hawaii. In Alaska, warmer-than-normal temperatures are favored across the state. Above-normal precipitation is favored in most of Alaska, though below-normal precipitation is likelier in southeast Alaska, and near-normal precipitation is favored in the central Aleutian Islands.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 8, 2026.

Western states step up to save their wetlands — Natalia Mesa (High Country News)

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Natalia Mesa):

July 1, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency dramatically weakened protections for millions of acres of the West’s essential wetlands and streams. Under the ruling, only bodies of water with a “continuous surface connection” to a “relatively permanent” traditional, navigable water body can be legally considered part of the waters of the United States (WOTUS) and therefore covered by the Clean Water Act.

The court’s definition excludes wetlands with belowground connections to bodies of water as well as those fed by ephemeral or intermittent streams. In effect, an estimated 60% of wetlands have lost federal protection, according to a National Resources Defense Council report. The language in the decision was ambiguous — exactly how wet a wetland has to be to fall under WOTUS and qualify protections was left up to federal agencies.

Wetlands are critical to both human and ecosystem health as well as for climate change mitigation. But they are also prime targets for dredging, filling and other disruptions because of their proximity to water and rich, fertile soil.

Under President Biden, the EPA broadly interpreted Sackett, focusing on protecting wetlands adjacent to bodies of water, with no explicit threshold for how often they had to be flooded. In March, however, Donald Trump’s EPA released a memo indicating that it plans to restrict all WOTUS, although it’s not yet clear by how much.

“The current EPA seems to be using Sackett as a springboard to find any perceived ambiguities and narrow the definition of WOTUS further,” said Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel at Earthjustice.

“The current EPA seems to be using Sackett as a springboard to find any perceived ambiguities and narrow the definition of WOTUS further.”

In the absence of federal regulations, state dredge-and-fill permitting programs can protect wetlands, and California, Oregon and Washington all have broad protections for non-WOTUS wetlands and streams. And since the Sackett decision, Colorado and New Mexico have passed laws restoring clean water protections for waters excluded from WOTUS. “It’s a dereliction of duty on the federal government’s part by not appropriately protecting the waters of the U.S. and that leaves it up to the states to fill in those protections,” said Rachel Conn, deputy director of Amigos Bravos, a New Mexico conservation organization.

The result is a patchwork of laws protecting the nation’s wetlands. But if more Western states were to emulate their neighbors’ efforts and take action, millions of acres of wetlands could be saved, even in the absence of strong federal protections.

National Resources Defense Council estimates are based on scenarios in which the federal government adopts two interpretations of Sackett that are supported by industry and some states: one, excluding wetlands adjacent to intermittent or ephemeral streams (bottom of range), and another, excluding wetlands that are not wet or flooded most of the year (top of range). According to legal experts, the EPA’s current guidance suggests that the administration will limit WOTUS significantly, excluding most wetlands. Alaska is excluded from this graph due to lack of data.

Arizona

Wetland oversight is primarily conducted through the Surface Water Protection Program (SWPP), administered by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. House Bill 2691, passed in 2021 before Sackett, established the SWPP, which allows the state to protect some waters not covered under the Clean Water Act.

Wyoming

While Wyoming lacks a permitting program, it does bar the discharge of any pollution or wastes into its waters without a clean water permit. In addition, Wyoming established a Wetland Banking Fund before Sackett to encourage individuals and companies to preserve wetlands. It enables entities to bank wetland credits earned from wetland conservation projects and use them later to offset a development’s impacts on wetlands, with the goal of achieving “no net loss of wetland function and value in the state.”

Colorado

Wetland protections are primarily governed by House Bill 24-1379, a law passed in 2024 that aims to restore Clean Water Act protections to state wetlands that lost them owing to Sackett. It establishes a state permitting program.

New Mexico

The Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Act (SB 21), which was signed into law on April 8, gives the state authority to regulate surface waters. It creates a statewide permitting program and addresses polluted groundwater that falls outside federal programs.

How wetlands work

Approximately 40% of species, including half of all federally listed species, rely on wetlands, which act like sponges for excess water, offering billions of gallons of flood protection and storing this water for later use. Their plants, roots and microbes filter pollution from drinking water and also store 20%-30% of the world’s total soil carbon. But Western states have lost 50% of their wetlands since colonization, and roughly half of the region’s remaining ones are degraded.

Illustrations by Hannah Agosta/High Country News

SOURCES: From Gold, 2024 in Science/Environmental Defense Fund, National Resources Defense Council, U.S. Fish and Wildlife National Wetlands Inventory, Wetlands International.

This article appeared in the July 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “In defense of wetness.”

Iron Fen. Photo credit from report “A Preliminary Evaluation of Seasonal Water Levels Necessary to Sustain Mount Emmons Fen: Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests,” David J. Cooper, Ph.D, December 2003.

Tiny backpacks reveal the secret, sometimes circuitous migrations of small songbirds — Stephanie Szarmach (TheConversation.com)

A small black, white and yellow bird perched on a branch with a green background. — A tracker must be light enough to not weigh down a bird that weighs only as much as a spoonful of sugar. Thor Veen

Stephanie Szarmach, Smithsonian Institution

Squinting through my binoculars, I scanned the dense branches of a black spruce, trying my best to catch a glimpse of the thin legs of a small black, white and yellow songbird. I was on the hunt for a yellow-rumped warbler – a bird affectionately called “butter-butt” by bird-watchers after the distinctive buttery yellow patch of feathers above its tail.

A woman in a veiled hat holds a small bird with red and yellow bands on its legs. — Stephanie Szarmach holds a yellow-rumped warbler that was banded as part of a study. Johanna Beam

Once I spotted a flash of red on one of the bird’s legs, I knew that this individual was special – in fact, it was one that I already knew well. That’s because I had placed identifying bands on it the previous year as part of my Ph.D. research, and it was carrying a very important piece of new technology.

I played the high pitched “warble” of its song through a speaker placed below a mist net of fine, nearly invisible mesh. Thinking another male had intruded on his territory, the bird quickly descended. My tactic worked – he got caught in the net. As I gently removed him, I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the Tic Tac-size device sitting on his back.

A hand holding a bird that has a small grey device on its back — A yellow-rumped warbler wears a multisensor geolocator backpack. Stephanie Szarmach

Over the past year, this warbler carried a multisensor geolocator backpack throughout his migratory journey, recording the long trek from his breeding grounds in Anchorage, Alaska, to a yet unknown winter refuge and back again. Working with my Ph.D. adviser, evolutionary biologist David Toews, I deployed dozens of these cutting-edge tags to illuminate the migratory journeys of these high-latitude breeding warblers at a scale not previously possible for small birds.

Now, after a year of waiting, I finally had the data in hand.

How can scientists track small birds?

Researchers began tracking the movements of migrating birds in the late 1960s using radio telemetry, a technique that requires tagged birds to be physically followed with receiver equipment, sometimes aided by a small aircraft.

Then, as GPS became more widely available in the early 2000s, satellite tags let researchers accurately track birds remotely. However, GPS transmitters are hefty – even just the battery that powers them is too heavy to be carried by the majority of small migratory songbirds, which often weigh less than a spoonful of sugar.

To address this problem, researchers developed ingenious little light-level geolocators. These miniature tags minimize weight by containing only a tiny battery, clock, computer chip and light sensor. They store data internally rather than transmitting it – hence my need to recapture tagged birds a year later. Researchers infer a bird’s locations from the timing of sunrise and sunset, which vary predictably across the globe and throughout the year.

Light-level geolocators have opened new windows into the migrations of small birds, but they also have limitations: Their estimated locations can err by hundreds of miles, and this uncertainty becomes impractically high around the equinoxes, when day length is the same worldwide.

Two small grey devices sitting on a scientific data sheet. — Each harness loop of the multisensor geolocator goes around one of the bird’s legs and the tag sits on the bird’s lower back. Stephanie Szarmach

More recently, researchers developed a newer method of geolocation that uses atmospheric pressure to circumvent these limitations. When a bird ascends during a migratory flight, a barometric geolocator records a steep drop in air pressure, capturing the timing of departure and arrival for every stop along a bird’s migration route. In between flights, the pressure the tag records reflects the elevation at the bird’s position.

Knowing the bird’s elevation helps to narrow down possible locations, which researchers can then refine further by comparing the change in pressure over time recorded by the tag to global weather data using the computer program GeoPressureR. The unique pattern of rises and falls in pressure acts as a kind of pressure fingerprint for a specific location. Including light and wind data in the model of the bird’s movements can increase precision even more.

A graph showing atmospheric pressure over time. There are periods of steady pressure, with sharp drops in pressure occurring once per day. — Atmospheric pressure data collected from a multisensor geolocator carried by a yellow-rumped warbler over five days in spring. When the bird is stationary, such as when resting at a stopover site, the measured pressure remains steady. During migratory flights, when the bird ascends into the sky, the pressure drops and fluctuates dramatically. Stephanie Szarmach

New tech answers an old question

We used these new multisensor backpacks to study the migration patterns of myrtle warblers, the northern subspecies of yellow-rumped warbler, which breed across North America’s boreal forest. Myrtle warblers in the northeast are known to winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, but where northwestern populations migrate has been more of a mystery. In 1899, ornithologist Richard McGregor observed myrtle warblers wintering in coastal California, and hypothesized that these birds might breed in Alaska and British Columbia.

Using these new tags allowed us to test whether warblers breeding in Anchorage, Alaska, actually followed the shortest migration route to winter in California. To our surprise – and probably to McGregor’s as well, if he were still alive – we found that all the birds we tracked traveled east across the boreal forest of Canada before shifting south to the Gulf Coast – certainly not the Pacific Coast route we expected.

All told, this 6,800-mile (10,900-kilometer) round-trip journey was much longer than we anticipated for a species commonly considered a short- or medium-distance migrant.

A map showing six geolocator tracks. All tracks start in Anchorage Alaska, before moving eastward across boreal Canada and then after reaching the Great Lakes curving south to end at the Gulf Coast. The predicted wintering area in California is circled. — Researchers tracked the routes six myrtle warblers flew on their fall migration southeast from Anchorage, Alaska. Figure by Stephanie Szarmach. Warbler illustration by Emily Griffith

Why take such a circuitous route?

The long, seemingly suboptimal route taken by our Alaskan myrtle warblers is actually mirrored by some other songbird species tracked from northwestern North America, including blackpoll warblers and Swainson’s thrushes.

Part of this pattern may relate back to the glaciations that isolated ancient populations of birds millions of years ago. The thinking goes that as these glaciers spread, they squashed the ranges of formerly northern species into the south. Then, as the glaciers slowly receded, the forests gradually reexpanded.

As more land opened up, birds moved farther north and west into that habitat. Each season some birds went a little farther as the forest available in their northern breeding grounds expanded. For migratory species such as myrtle warblers, the farther north and west their breeding range expanded, the longer the migration to their southern wintering ground became.

Scientists think migration routes are genetically encoded. The birds’ genes may have traced this expansion front, like Hansel and Gretel putting down breadcrumbs as they journeyed deeper and deeper into the forest. Today’s migration routes still trace that incrementally expanded path, even though the glaciers that shaped the original boundaries are long gone.

We’re still not sure exactly where the California-wintering myrtle warblers spotted in the 1800s are breeding. We suspect that a small proportion of the Anchorage-breeding birds may migrate to California, but that most of them travel from more distant, unstudied regions of Alaska or Yukon. Future research, potentially tagging myrtle warblers directly on the California wintering grounds, will shed more light on this population and why certain individuals follow a different migration route.

Barometric geolocation provides new data

Today, this new geolocation approach improves scientists’ ability to study the migrations of small birds and supports more effective conservation actions across the course of the entire year. More precise location estimates help researchers identify key stopover and wintering sites in need of protection and better understand the threats birds face throughout their journeys. These geolocators also reveal the altitude of migratory flights, which is important for understanding the risk of birds colliding with buildings or wind turbines.

Because these new tags capture pressure data for every migratory flight, they’re especially valuable for studying migration timing. Researchers have combined data from over 50 bird species to understand at what time of day or night different birds migrate. Now, as a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, I am integrating multisensor geolocator data with satellite imagery to investigate how arrival and departure decisions throughout a bird’s migratory journey relate to seasonal changes in plant growth.

Scientists have now tracked dozens of bird species with multisensor geolocators, and that number increases every year. Each mapped migratory journey improves our understanding of how small birds migrate, what factors shape their movements and how best to protect them.

Stephanie Szarmach, James Smithson Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution

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

Another big milestone for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project — Reclamation

Example of open pipe trench install being utilized on the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project. Photo credit: USBR

Click the link to read the article on the Reclamation website:

September 8, 2026

The Bureau of Reclamation announced an $81 million contract award to Carstensen Contracting, Inc. for the construction of the Block 2-3 pipeline for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project in northwest New Mexico. This award now moves Reclamation one step closer to completing its largest project to deliver clean, reliable water to nearly 250,000 people on the Navajo Nation, proudly fulfilling this historic water rights settlement.

The Bureau of Reclamation is advancing construction of the Block 2-3 Pipeline, a critical component of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project. This segment begins at the Frank Chee Willetto Reservoir east of Shiprock and extends south to the San Juan Lateral Water Treatment Plant.

“Awarding this contract is a defining moment for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project,” said Reclamation’s Western Colorado Area Office Manager Bart Deming. “With the Block 2-3 pipeline construction underway, we are taking the final steps toward delivering reliable water to Navajo communities and regional partners. This achievement reflects years of dedication and collaboration and brings us closer to fulfilling our commitment to provide sustainable water for generations to come.”

The Block 2-3 Pipeline will convey raw water through buried transmission pipelines. After it is treated to drinking water standards, it will be further conveyed along the San Juan Lateral delivering long-term, reliable water supply to Navajo communities and regional partners.

With this award, all major components of the San Juan Lateral are either completed or under construction for future water conveyance along the mainline transmission system. The San Juan Lateral is more than 75% complete with initial water deliveries slated for late 2028 and final project completion by the end of 2029.

Major project work elements include:

Installation of 42-inch and 48-inch buried water transmission pipe, forming the backbone of the Block 2-3 conveyance system.

Construction and equipping the pipeline system with regulating tanks, crossings, structural supports, valves, erosion control, and cathodic protection to ensure safe, reliable operation and environmental stability.

Integration of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and fiber‑optic cabling, enabling remote monitoring and automated control of pipeline operations.

This contract, which will be Carstensen Contracting’s first on the project, is funded through the Reclamation Water Settlement Fund authorized in Public Law 111-11.

The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project is the cornerstone of the Navajo Nation Water Rights Settlement in the San Juan River Basin in New Mexico and was authorized for construction by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, known as Public Law 111-11. Construction began in 2012, and the completed project will include approximately 300 miles of pipeline, two water treatment plants, 19 pumping plants and multiple water storage tanks. The project helps address the needs of the Navajo Nation, where more than one in three people do not have indoor plumbing and must haul drinking water to their homes.

For more information, visit the NGWSP website.

The #ColoradoRiver is on a knife’s edge. We need long-term solutions that protect the river and our communities” — John Berggren (Western Resource Advocates) #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Western Resource Advocates website (John Berggren):

August 31, 2026

Communities across the West have been anxiously waiting for a plan to manage the Colorado River. The states that share the river have been unable to reach an agreement over how to manage it, forcing the federal government to move forward without one.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently published a management framework for the next 10 years.

This is not the long-term agreement many had hoped for, but it does leave room for collaborative solutions.

Communities across the West have been anxiously waiting for a plan to manage their water supply from the Colorado River. They watched as the states that share the river talked in circles behind closed doors. They attended conferences where state negotiators repeated the same tired arguments, did not present together, or were entirely absent.

Outside the conference rooms, conditions on the ground were deteriorating. The Colorado River Basin experienced its warmest winter on record. The meager snowpack in the mountains was sucked into parched soils, rivers dwindled, and the Basin’s two major reservoirs hit record lows.

And the situation continues to worsen.

While negotiators were struggling to find consensus, farmers were fallowing fields, raft guides were staring down an uncertain season, neighbors were reporting each other for overwatering, families were discovering that their favorite fishing spots had closed, and municipalities were on the hunt for alternative water supplies.

Three years ago, the U.S Bureau of Reclamation set out to work with the Basin states, Tribes, and stakeholders on a 20-year management plan for the Colorado River. But the states never reached a long-term agreement, forcing the federal government to move forward without one.

On Aug. 21, Reclamation published a framework for managing the river over the next 10 years. While it is not the long-term agreement many had hoped for, it does leave room for collaborative solutions.

What happens next will shape the river for generations.

What Is the Record of Decision?

A Decision-Making Framework

The record of decision lays out a 10-year framework for managing the river.

Under this framework, the Bureau of Reclamation will issue preliminary guidelines every two years for operating the river’s reservoirs and distributing shortages. Those guidelines will inform Reclamation’s annual plan for the river, which will be released every summer. Reclamation can adjust that plan each April depending on the winter’s snowpack and current reservoir levels. It is a tedious process, but one that allows the agency to modify operations as river conditions change.

State officials have raised concerns that the two-year framework will result in never-ending negotiations while making it difficult to plan ahead and finance solutions. These are valid concerns, but there is an off-ramp. If the states collaborate, they could replace the framework with a long-term deal that provides more certainty to their constituents and removes the need for prolonged negotiations.

Rafting the Colorado River. Photo credit: Western Resource Advocates

A Plan for Managing Water Shortages

In addition to the record of decision, Reclamation issued operating guidelines for 2027 and 2028. These guidelines outline Lake Powell and Lake Mead operations and include shortages the Lower Basin offered earlier this year. Under the guidelines, the Lower Basin will reduce its use of the Colorado River by 1.25 million acre-feet in both 2027 and 2028. It will also pursue 700,000 acre-feet in additional conservation by 2028.

The record of decision allows Reclamation to impose even deeper cuts on the Lower Basin — up to 3 million acre-feet per year — if Lake Mead starts to approach the minimum levels needed to produce hydropower and to avoid hitting deadpool.

Reclamation is not mandating cuts in the Upper Basin because its authority to do so is less clear. But that doesn’t mean conservation isn’t urgently needed in the Upper Basin. In the record of decision, Reclamation includes up to 200,000 acre-feet of voluntary conservation each year collectively by Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

While this conservation is considered voluntary, it is in the Upper Basin’s best interest to be part of the solution. Flows on the Colorado River have declined by over 30% since 2020. The river will continue to be on a knife’s edge unless everyone contributes.

By saving water now, the Upper Basin can help keep things from getting worse and reduce the need for emergency releases from upstream reservoirs to prop up Lake Powell. This can help rebuild storage and support the outdoor recreation economy in places like Flaming Gorge in Utah and Blue Mesa in Colorado.

Conservation in the Upper Basin can also help avoid expensive and risky legal battles over the river. The 1922 Colorado River Compact says that the Upper Basin will not cause the flow of the river to be depleted below a certain amount over a 10-year period. The Upper Basin argues that this volume is 75 million acre-feet. The Lower Basin says the amount includes water deliveries for Mexico and is set at 82.5 million acre-feet. We could hit the 82.5 trip wire as soon as this fall, potentially triggering litigation from the Lower Basin. Such a dispute would likely cost taxpayers millions of dollars, take years to resolve, and leave the river’s future in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Lower Basin prevails, water users in the Upper Basin could see drastic cuts to their supply and little time to implement solutions or secure funding to ease the pain.

The four Upper Basin states are at various stages of developing programs to pay water users to decrease their consumption. WRA is advocating for long-term programs that prioritize projects that keep rivers healthy.

Is the Latest Plan Enough?

Reclamation’s models show that the reductions planned for the next two years will just barely allow the Basin to scrape by. In the worst-case scenario, the Basin could drain its accessible water savings in Lake Powell. The only water left would be what flows in the river, and that is nowhere near enough to meet current demands.

What’s Next?

Implementing Solutions or Handing the Reins to the Supreme Court

The Basin states have an important decision before them — implement the new guidelines and work toward a long-term deal or take their chances in court.

Nevada was the first to take the plunge. Three days after Reclamation released the record of decision, Nevada filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of Reclamation. The state claims that the plan and the potential cuts to Nevada’s water supply violate federal law and seeks to halt its implementation.

Nevada’s lawsuit underscores the need for a deal that all seven states can agree to, rather than a plan imposed by the federal government. There is still an opportunity to reach such an agreement — the Nevada case does not preclude the seven states from continuing to negotiate or from entering into agreements to stabilize the river.

The states must not let this one case spiral out of control. Litigation between all seven Basin states over the Colorado River Compact would make things much worse.

History shows that multistate water disputes can take at least a decade to be resolved and often have unintended consequences. Arizona v. California, a dispute over Colorado River allocations in the Lower Basin, began in 1952 and was not resolved until 1963. The court settled the disagreement over water allocations and ruled that the Secretary of the Interior has broad authority to act as watermaster in the Lower Basin — giving the federal government greater control over Lower Basin water deliveries. Texas v. New Mexico, a dispute over the Rio Grande, went on for 13 years before reaching a resolution last spring. And a dispute between Kansas and Colorado over the Arkansas River was on-again, off-again for more than a century. The court ruled that Colorado was overusing water and awarded both water and monetary damages to Kansas. And these cases all involved two states — not seven.

The Colorado River does not have decades. Researchers predict that it will only take one more dry winter to drain the Basin’s accessible water savings.

On top of lost time, state litigation over the 1922 Compact would cost millions of dollars — money that is better spent implementing conservation programs, restoring watersheds, and increasing water efficiency. And litigation would leave decisions with the Supreme Court, not the communities that depend on the river and know it best.

Nevada’s lawsuit against the federal government does not change the fact that we have a river to manage. New guidelines are still needed by Oct. 1. The decision-making process must continue and the Basin states must act now to prevent a seven-state legal brawl.

In the coming months WRA will be advocating for:

Protections for the river: Protecting river health and our communities are two sides of the same coin. The day-to-day operations of the river’s reservoirs affect everything from fish habitat to hydropower production to local water supplies and outdoor recreation. Operating guidelines must consider the full range of impacts and incorporate policies that maximize benefits for both our communities and the environment.

Transparent decision making: The record of decision includes a plan for issuing new operating guidelines every two years. Those guidelines will affect 35 million people and must not be developed behind closed doors. A clear public process is needed to incorporate input from the Basin states, Tribes, Mexico, water users, communities, scientists, and conservation organizations.

Sustained federal funding: Federal funding will be critical to implementing the changes that are needed to secure the West’s future, including restoring watershed health and incentivizing water use reductions. The river that supplies water to 1 in 10 Americans is worthy of federal investment.

Equitable water access and Tribal inclusion: The 30 federally recognized Tribes in the Colorado River Basin have long been excluded from key decisions and denied their fair share of the river’s water. The new guidelines and programs must uphold Tribal water rights and provide clear pathways for Tribal collaboration.

State collaboration: The states have been talking past each other for the last three years and it’s resulted in a federal management plan that few decision makers are happy with, and one state has already filed a lawsuit on. It is time to try a new approach before things get worse. The states must enlist the help of a professional mediator who can facilitate more productive negotiations. And the states must finalize and sign implementation plans — like the Lower Basin’s proposal to reduce its water use by 1.25 million-acre feet in 2027 and 2028 — as soon as possible.

Basinwide collaboration: Many of the river’s most successful programs — including those that restored hundreds of miles of fish habitat and put tens of millions of dollars toward water conservation — were the result of collaborations between states, federal agencies, Tribal nations, water users, conservation organizations, and others. The challenges the river faces are growing. We must accelerate our efforts, build new partnerships, launch new programs, increase investment, and expand on successful initiatives.

The record of decision has set the stage, now it is time for the river’s next act.

Political theater at the Ray Nixon plant: Energy secretary Wright, Rep. Jeff Crank and Rep. Gabe Evans make the case that #coal keeps the lights on and electricity affordable. To make that case they must be selective in their facts — Allen Best (BigPivots.com)

Ray Nixon Power Plant. Photo credit: Colorado Springs Utilities

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

September 8, 2026

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was at a coal plant near Colorado Springs last Friday to talk about the virtues of coal. It’s what keeps the lights on, you know, and it’s not expensive, not like renewables.

To make those claims, as he did in not so many words, he had to stubbornly turn a blind eye to another coal plant not more than 30 miles away. Comanche 3, the state’s youngest and largest coal plant, went down on Aug. 12, 2025, and hasn’t produced electricity since then.

Wright is the front man for President Donald Trump’s alliance with fossil fuel companies. It would seem to be a comfortable fit for Wright. Until he joined Trump’s team, Wright was CEO of Liberty, an oil and gas field services company based in Denver that he founded. While there, Wright consistently argued that while human-caused climate change was real, it was a distant threat. Far more important, he said, was to elevate the world’s living standard.

After he joined Trump’s cabinet, Wright went about implementing Trump’s order that fossil fuel plants should not be retired. First in 2025 was a coal plant in Michigan. On Dec. 30, he issued another order, this one for Craig No. 1. The coal-burning unit began production in 1980 and was scheduled to formally be retired on New Year’s Eve 2025.

Wright’s order cited several reasons that added up to an emergency. Collectively they fell under the heading of worries about resource adequacy in the regional grid.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the operator and part owner, said it didn’t need the electricity. Ditto for another part owner, Fort Collins-based Platte River Power Authority. The plant has three other part owners, including Xcel Energy.

As for the emergency, how severe was it? Not so much. Sources tell Big Pivots that the plant has been operated about three weeks since January, most of that time during April. That was just after Southwest Power Pool launched its electricity-sharing regional market, the West Balancing Authority Area.

On Aug. 20, the day this photograph was taken (and a particularly hot day it was), only one of the three units at Craig Generating Station appeared to be in use. Photo/Allen Best

Resumed electrical production Craig No. 1 has been in response to SPP’s level 1 resource advisories, which do not suggest imminent threat to reliability.

Since that order from Wright last December, he has reissued the three-month emergency orders twice more, again in late March and late June.

The irony of Wright’s order for Craig last December was immediately noted by the team of Gov. Jared Polis. The 427-megawatt coal plant ordered to be available for the emergency had broken down about 10 days before.

Of course coal plants keep the lights on! Except when they don’t!

As for Comanche 3, the giant coal plant at Pueblo, it has literally been down for 25% of the time since operations began in July 2010. “It has been reliably unreliable,” says Danny Katz, the executive director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group. CoPIRG and other groups are arguing that Xcel, the company, and not its customers should be saddled with the repair costs of Comanche 3 or the replacement costs for purchasing power. Those costs also included bringing an older coal unit, Comanche 2, out of retirement.

The Nixon plant that Wright toured along with two members of Congress from Colorado has no blatant problems comparable to those of Comanche 3. It was to have been closed in 2029, but Colorado legislators this past session agreed to give Colorado Springs Utilities, the owner, a pass. It is now scheduled to be closed by 2032. That would make it, according to current schedules, the last in Colorado.

So what exactly is the fuss about?

In statements issued after their tour, Wright and the two congressmen he had in tow — Rep. Jeff Crank and Rep. Gabe Evans — emphasized the reliability of coal and the cost of renewable energy.

“Coal has powered American prosperity for generations and continues to provide the reliable, around-the-clock electricity our grid needs,” said Wright in a statement. “The Trump administration is committed to adding reliable power to the grid, not prematurely shutting down generation that is already keeping the lights on.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, right, and U.S. Rep. Gave Evans answer questions after an event held in Thornton during June. Photo/Allen Best

Evans, a former police officer in Arvada, calls Fort Lupton home. Early in his first term in Congress, he showed up at solar farms to get his photo taken. In at least three appearances with Wright so far this year, it has become evident that Evans has learned to talk the fossil fuels language more purely.

“Denver Democrats spent years attacking reliable coal generation, only to run headfirst into reality: you cannot shut down dependable baseload power without something ready to replace it,” said Evans in the statement issued after the tour.

“Keeping Ray Nixon online longer will protect grid reliability and save ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars. With electricity demand skyrocketing, Colorado needs more safe, affordable, reliable energy – not political mandates that take power off the grid and leave families paying the price.”

As for Crank, he played the party line in the Colorado Springs version. “Colorado’s burdensome energy mandates continue to cost our region, not only with higher utility bills but they also threaten our national security assets,” he said.

It’s all political theater, but exactly to what purpose?

The harder question is why Colorado Springs needed to keep Ray Nixon operating longer than planned. And also, whether keeping this coal plant operating is better than building a new gas plant, as Wright told reporters, according to a report in the Colorado Springs Gazette. And a new wild card of the last two years is what exactly data centers will need — and under what terms.

As for utility costs, they are indeed rising. But why? That’s a complicated story. What can be said is that renewable energy comes in cheapest, but transmission is a pickle, and we do have supply chain issues.

What also must be said is that Holy Cross Energy, the Glenwood Springs-based electrical cooperative, has consistently had among the state’s lowest electrical rates even as it stretches to decarbonize. Through July, it was at 87% renewable energy for the year.

Granted, it’s easier to pivot when you’re a smaller dancer. Holy Cross has 58,000 meters compared to the 264,000 of Colorado Springs Utilities or the 1.6 meters of Xcel Energy in Colorado. And in an ironic footnote, Holy Cross actually has an 8% ownership interest in Comanche 3.

Whether Wright’s emergency orders for Craig No. 1 were legal are yet to be resolved. Environmental groups and others argue that the orders issued by Wright go beyond what the federal law passed by Congress in 1935 (and amended twice since then) allowed. A federal judge heard the case involving the Michigan plant in May but has not issued a ruling. That ruling, whatever it is, almost certainly will have bearing on the orders for Craig.

To be clear, this pivot from fossil fuels to non-emitting sources of electricity is not an easy one. It might yet get expensive. Also be clear that the story told at the Ray Nixon plant was political theater, nothing more.

Credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk

The #ColoradoRiver Has New Guidelines, but the Underlying Challenges Remain: What we do next will determine the river’s future — Moira Mcdonald and Ted Kowalski (WaltonFamilyFoundation.org) #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Walton Family Foundation website ( Moira Mcdonald and Ted Kowalski):

August 28, 2026

Tens of millions of people across the West depend on the Colorado River for drinking water, food, power and their livelihoods. But years of drought, rising temperatures and declining reservoirs have put that lifeline under extraordinary strain. The newly released Record of Decision and federal Operating Guidelines for the river provide a framework for operations, but they cannot resolve the region’s underlying challenges on their own. The work that happens next will determine the future of the river and the communities that rely on it.

2026 marks one of the worst water years on record for the Colorado River Basin and throughout the American West, as river flows dwindle and megafires consume landscape after landscape. Water in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., has dropped to its lowest level since it was filled more than 90 years ago. Long-term planning and investment is critical to stabilize the river while protecting communities from increasingly severe fire, floods and drought.

Reclamation announces 2026 operating conditions for Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Hoover Dam. Photo credit: USBR

The release of the guidelines is a milestone, not the finish line. A document can’t ensure safe water supplies or combat the impacts of severe drought and wildfires. Significant federal, state and local funding needs to be directed towards strategies that make the health of rivers, forests and wetlands a priority. Without it, the Basin will remain at risk of chronic shortages, food supply disruption, energy grid vulnerability and rising economic instability that breed disruption and conflict for the entire region.

It is critical that we take this opportunity to invest in work that focuses on ensuring healthy watersheds, sustainable water use and collaboration between Colorado River Basin states and Tribal Nations.

Nature-based solutions—including river and forest management and wetland restoration—are a crucial part of the Basin’s infrastructure. They enable dependable water supplies, reduce threats from wildfires and flooding, sustain fish and wildlife and support local communities and economies. With so much attention focused on water allocations, reservoir levels and operational decisions, the role of these natural systems cannot get lost in the mix.

Fortunately there are projects throughout the Colorado River Basin that offer a blueprint for how to work with the power of nature to create a more sustainable path forward.

Projects designed to better manage forests and restore wetlands can improve water quality and create natural firebreaks. Regenerative agriculture practices like growing crops that use less water, and limiting the disruption of soil, can help create healthier farmland that better absorbs and retains water so farmers can use less. These approaches are an important part of a broader portfolio of tools that help communities conserve water, reduce risk and strengthen watersheds.

As the Colorado River endures one of its worst water years on record, long-term planning and investment is critical to stabilize water supplies while protecting communities from increasingly severe fire, floods and drought. Grand Canyon and Colorado River by Brian Richter

Transparency and collaboration between the federal government, Basin state leaders, Tribal Nations and Mexico is essential. We know that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution and that we will be more effective when we draw on the collective expertise of everyone who relies on the river. Basin states have not yet been able to negotiate a long-term management plan but that cannot stand in the way of continued work to create a more reliable and resilient Colorado River system.

Philanthropy also has a vital role to play in the future of the Colorado River. We are continuing to collaborate with our grantees to advance innovative, nature-based solutions for the region. Philanthropic investment can help test and scale approaches, fill gaps, build partnerships and demonstrate what is possible in complement to the much-needed federal, state, Tribal and local investments. Together we can help make sure the river can continue to provide for the next generation.

The U.S. Forest Service-owned parcel known as Janeway is adjacent to the Crystal River. A potential nature-based aquifer recharge project could reconnect the historic floodplain to the river and retime spring flows as part of a water supply replacement plan. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

50 years later: What caused the Big Thompson Flood? — Allie Mazurek (#Colorado #Climate Center) #BigThompsonRiver

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado State University Source website (Allie Mazurek):

August 10, 2026

Editor’s note: Allie Mazurek, engagement climatologist and researcher at the Colorado Climate Center, wrote this piece following a July 31 symposium in Estes Park convened by the Colorado Climate Center to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood. The event brought together experts, including several from CSU, to share flood-related research and practices with water managers, government officials, academics, flood survivors and others. Participants reflected on the progress made since the Big Thompson Flood while emphasizing the work that remains to strengthen preparedness and resilience for future flooding.

Flash floods are one of several extreme weather-related phenomena that Colorado faces. And at the end of July, we reflected on the 50th anniversary of one of the deadliest, most devastating floods in our state’s history: the Big Thompson Flood of July 31, 1976.

Damage to Highway 34 from the Big Thompson Flood.

July 31, 1976: It was a Saturday, the eve of Colorado’s 100th anniversary of statehood. Hundreds of people, including many from out of state, were spending the holiday weekend recreating in the Big Thompson Canyon: a winding topographic feature that provides a scenic thoroughfare between Loveland and Estes Park.

The weather was reported to have been partly cloudy that afternoon, but conditions began to shift in the early evening. Around 5:30 p.m. local time, a large group of nearly stationary thunderstorms began forming just east of Estes Park. The storms grew quickly and ultimately produced roughly a foot of rainfall in the span of the next several hours: about five times the amount of precipitation that the area typically receives in an entire July.

Most of the precipitation fell during an even shorter time frame, a little over an hour. That sudden surge of water triggered a fast-moving flash flood along the Big Thompson River and steep adjoining canyon. The river rose upward of 20 feet in some locations and peak flow rate of more than 31,000 cubic feet per second was over four times as fast as the river’s previous maximum.

The devastation was tremendous: Hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed, sections of Highway 34 were washed away and, tragically, 144 people lost their lives. There has not been a deadlier flash flood in the U.S. since that event, and it remains one of the deadliest weather disasters in Colorado’s history.

The ingredients

One way that atmospheric scientists examine flash flood potential is using an “ingredients-based” approach, which involves examining the characteristics of several atmospheric variables. For flash flood-producing rainfall, the key factors we consider are: rain rate, precipitation duration and surface conditions.

The Big Thompson Flood had numerous ingredients come together to support thunderstorms with very heavy rain rates. First, a cold front pushed westward across Colorado’s eastern plains, which brought moisture-rich air into the Front Range Foothills. The cold front also provided a “cap” atmosphere: bottling up very unstable air in the atmosphere above.

As the front continued to move west, air was forced upwards as the elevation of the terrain continued to increase. This upward motion helped the atmosphere to destabilize, eroding the cap and unleashing plenty of instability for thunderstorms to grow. This localized lift combined with larger-scale upward motion forced the moist, unstable air to cool and condense into thunderstorms.

The ingredients of the Big Thompson Flood (Courtesy of USGS, adapted from UCAR).

As the ingredients were in place for very high rainfall rates, the atmosphere also had very weak “steering currents,” or the layer of winds in the atmosphere that move storm systems. Those weak winds meant that the thunderstorms forming at the mouth of the canyon were nearly stationary, allowing the very high precipitation rates to persist over the same area.

This extreme-rain-producing, slow moving thunderstorm set up near the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon, a high-risk area for flooding due to its pervasive steep, rocky terrain and susceptibility to rapid runoff. These environmental ingredients coupled with social vulnerability factors all combined to create a disaster that evening.

Damage during the September 2013 flood on U.S. 34 leading up to Estes Park. (Courtesy of the town of Estes Park)

The future

The 2013 Front Range Flood was a reminder that the Big Thompson Canyon continues to be a flash flood-prone area. And throughout Colorado, flash floods have always been and will always be a part of our climate, though climate change could potentially make them worse.

Research suggests that in a future, warmer climate, flash flood-producing rainfall will likely become more extreme. The reason behind this expected trend is that as temperatures warm, water is more eager to exist as vapor rather than liquid — allowing storms to tap into more moisture. Wildfire burn scars, which enhance flash flood risk by making soils repellent to water and cause debris flows, are expected to have an even more profound effect on flash flooding. Climate change is expected to increase wildfire risk in Colorado, leading to more widespread burn scar areas (and thus greater flash flood potential).

CSU research has helped contribute to the knowledge on the Big Thompson event and continues to advance research on heavy precipitation and flooding. The Colorado Climate Center, located in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU, serves as a conduit for conducting and disseminating such research to stakeholders and the public.

50th Anniversary of The Big Thompson Canyon Flood of 1976: A Final Recap — Allie Mazurek (#Colorado #Climate Center) #BigThompsonRiver

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Climate Center website (Allie Mazurek):

August 13, 2026

We’re now nearly a couple weeks past the 50th Anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood, one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in our state’s history. There were several commemorative events on July 31st that stretched from Loveland to Estes Park, including our symposium that we hosted. We heard great feedback from several of the ~100 folks who attended, and we hope to do more public events like these in the future. If you were able to make it, thank you for joining us!

We thought we’d use our blog as a medium to highlight some of the content that was covered during our event. If you’re interested in learning even more, we published an article in CSU Source, summarizing the key atmospheric ingredients that triggered the flood that day. And lastly, we’d like to highlight that the Loveland Museum has an exhibit for the flood that will be showing through the end of November. (Several folks from our team are planning to check it out)!

And while we’re on the subject of flooding, we’ll go ahead and remind you that this time of year is peak flash flood season in Colorado. As precipitation looms in the forecast, check the weather before you recreate, never drive through flooded roadways, and have ways to receive flash flood warnings.

The Colorado Climate Center’s Dr. Russ Schumacher presented first, summarizing the meteorological factors that contributed to the Big Thompson Flood. He also shared his output from a high-resolution model simulation of the event, showing that it successfully captured the extreme rainfall rates but displaced the location of the storm. Credit: Colorado Climate Center

Patricia Rettig, archivist for the CSU Water Resources Archive, transported the audience back to the year 1976. She shared a series of harrowing photos of the aftermath of the Big Thompson Flood, detailing how the flood altered communications and reshaped lives. Photo courtesy of Theresa Barosh.

Mike Nelson, former chief meteorologist at Denver7 News, shared local news clips from the day after the Big Thompson Flood.

Dr. Lori Hodges, Director of the Larimer County Office of Emergency Management, has done extensive research on the Big Thompson Flood. She detailed the complexities of the recovery efforts that took place after the flood and described how communications have improved since. She also engaged with participants on the topic of the lack of cellular service in the canyon, explaining that that infrastructure would need to be put in place by service providers. Photo courtesy of Keil Neff.

The National Weather Service Boulder’s Jennifer Stark and Greg Heavener further detailed how the flash flood-producing storm evolved. They also explained that warning systems and collaboration between meteorologists and emergency responders have improved immensely in the last several decades. Photos courtesy of Ken Langford.

Dr. Robert Jarrett, formerly with the USGS, helped conduct post-flood surveys in the Big Thompson. The goal of these surveys was to determine where the flood waters went and how they reshaped the canyon. He also discussed USGS research on determining flash flood potential in Colorado’s canyons, including his own work on “paleoflood hydrology”–the assesment of historic environmental flood markers used to inform future flood risk. Photo courtesy of Keil Neff.

Dr. John England, Lead Civil Engineer at the US Army Corps of Engineers Risk Management Center, discussed flash flood research that has been used to inform risks surrounding dam safety, including the Olympus Dam in the Big Thompson.

Dr. Kelly Mahoney (NOAA Physical Sciences Lab) details NOAA’s initiatives to better understand and predict extreme precipitation, including their work on probable maximum precipitation–or determining the maximum amount of precipitation that is possible over a given area. Photo courtesy of Ken Langford.

CSU Department of Atmospheric Science PhD Candidate Lexi Sherman presented some of her dissertation research. Lexi’s work examines how heavy rainfall and flash flooding in Colorado is expected to change in a future warmer climate. Photo courtesy of Keil Neff.

Our final presenter was Dr. Kristen Rasmussen, an Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. She provided information on ingredients-based flood forecasting, illustrating how that approach can apply to both floods in the US and abroad. Credit: Colorado Climate Center

Drs. John England and Robert Jarrett convene the flood tour at Viestenz-Smith Mountain Park. The field trip covered several topics including paleoflood evidence, differences between the 1976 and 2013 Big Thompson floods, and how peak discharges were determined. Photo courtesy of Keil Neff.

Robert Jarrett stands near the remnants of Loveland’s former hydroelectric power plant, which was destroyed during the flood. Credit: Colorado Climate Center

Thank you again to all who attended! Credit: Colorado Climate Center

President Trump looks to motorize public lands: Also — Bears Ears/GSENM lawsuits; data center halted — for now; Navajo coal mine approval; More — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Debris from the Bright Angel flash flood event in the Grand Canyon. Photo taken the next morning, August 30, 2026. Source: Grand Canyon National Park.

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

September 4, 2026

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

The Trump administration continues its crusade to make America’s public lands motorized again. This time it’s the Forest Service launching a revamp of its travel management rule by “simplifying regulatory requirements” to “increase access, including for motorized vehicles, e-bikes, and other mobility devices.” The move follows, and is an attempt to implement, President Donald Trump’s rollback this summer of Nixon-era restrictions on off-highway vehicles on public lands. Comments are being accepted on the proposal until Sept. 23.

This rule would bolster the administration’s rollback this summer of the 2001 Roadless Rule, which prohibits roadbuilding and commercial timber operations — with exceptions — on 45 million acres of National Forest lands.

The current action starts the process of developing an environmental impact statement, which will give more specific details. But the notice of intent gives an overall look at what the administration proposes. Most basically, it aims to open the door for individual forests to relax motorized travel restrictions and open currently closed areas to the vehicles. The “public access rule,” as they’re calling it, would:

“… establish a presumption that existing roads, trails, airfields, trailheads, and other access routes and points on NFS lands are open to appropriate public use,” unless the closure is required by law (or other specific reasons). This is a switch from the current “closed unless designated open” policy to an “open unless closed” framework, with possibly dramatic effects.

“ … establish a requirement to consider new roads, trails, airfields, trailheads, and other access routes and points where appropriate to increase access.” This appears to be aimed at optimizing, if you will, the Roadless Rule rollback by encouraging new roadbuilding.

“… establish processes and conditions for authorizing limited off-route motor vehicle and other motorized equipment use for, among other things, downed big-game retrieval, firewood collection, dispersed camping, and for designating areas for over-snow and other motorized recreation.” This one’s pretty scary, because it would open the door to allowing OHVs or snowmobiles to drive just about anywhere in a forest (except in designated wilderness areas).

You have until Sept. 23 to weigh in on the proposal. To do so electronically (preferred)through the Federal eRulemaking Portal, go to https://www.regulations.gov, docket number FS-2026-0100, and look for the COMMENT button. Or send snail mail to: Director, Public Benefits, 201 14th Street SW, Public Benefits Office, Washington, DC 20250.

The arrogance of the off-road vehicle lobby — Jonathan P. Thompson

Upper White Canyon and tributaries and Bears Ears in the clouds. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Several tribal nations, advocacy groups, and Patagonia have filed lawsuits — and/or revived dormant ones — seeking to block President Donald Trump’s proclamations this summer shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The legal argument behind the lawsuits is clear and potent: The 1906 Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to establish national monuments, but not to shrink or revoke them. Therefore Trump’s 2017 and 2026 shrinkages are illegal and should not stand.

History backs the plaintiffs. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to revoke the Castle Pinckney National Monument, a former military installation in South Carolina. His attorney general’s analysis, however, determined that the Antiquities Act “does not authorize [the President] to abolish [national monuments] after they have been established.” FDR, respecting the rule of law, let the monument stand. Eventually, Congress, which does have the power to alter national monuments, voted to revoke national monument status for the site.

In 2017, a quartet of legal scholars, including Mark Squillace, of the University of Colorado Law School, published their own analysis in the Virginia Law Review. They, too, found that in 1906 Congress did not delegate to the president the authority to downsize or abolish a national monument or weaken the protections granted by the original national monument proclamation. Furthermore, the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 clarified that only Congress has the power to modify or revoke a national monument.

The cases likely will take years to wend their way through the courts, and may ultimately lead to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the power of the Antiquities Act.

Boaters on the Colorado River a few miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

🌨️🦦🚣🏽 Water Watch 🌊

While climate change-exacerbated drought most notably diminishes the amount of water in rivers, it also raises the temperature of streams, which is especially problematic for fish and other aquatic life. The Colorado River downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, which includes the long stretch through the Grand Canyon, is warming up fast.

When the river stalls out and becomes Lake Powell, the reservoir’s surface just sits in the sun and bakes, while the deeper waters remain chilly. Some fish, like non-native smallmouth bass prefer the warm water, and stay near the surface. When the reservoir is full, the depth of the water at the penstock intakes — where released water exits the dam — is too cold for the bass, so they aren’t likely to escape the reservoir into the river below. But as the surface level drops, the depth of the water at the penstock intakes on the dam decreases, meaning that the water released through the dam’s turbines and into the river below gets increasingly warmer — and is more likely to include warm-water fish.

Currently, Lake Powell’s surface is a mere 28 feet above the penstock intakes, meaning the released water is warm and includes a lot of bass. This, in turn, warms up the river below, making it more favorable to the invading bass, which prey on and compete with endangered native fish. Meanwhile, the warmer water stresses the trout, potentially harming the recreational fishery between Lees Ferry and the dam.

So in 2024 as it became clear low reservoir levels were chronic, the Bureau of Reclamation began doing “cool-flow mixes.” When the river water temperature downstream of the dam hit 59.9° F, dam operators would begin releasing cooler water from the lower river outlet tubes. This dropped the river temperature enough to help downstream fish, and hurt the bass.

This year, however, the feds halted the cool flow mixes to ensure that all releases go through the turbines and generate hydropower. The Grand Canyon Trust built a nifty online gadget that shows the consequences, which aren’t good: The water temperature at the monitor just below Soap Creek Rapid in the Grand Canyon soared above 70° F during the waning days of August, and has been above the cool-mix threshold for 78 days this year so far. Click on the interactive graph to see how water temperatures have changed over the years — and how well the cool-mix flows worked in 2024 and 2025.

🤖 Data Center Watch 👾

The first data center project on public lands has been halted — for now.

On Tuesday, the Interior Board of Land Appeals granted a stay on the Townsite Solar 2’s planned data center on federal land near Boulder City, Nevada, blocking further development while legal challenges are considered. The order also expedites consideration of the appeals filed by environmental groups and the city.

In 2023, the Bureau of Land Management authorized Townsite Solar 2 to develop a solar-plus-storage installation on public land in southern Nevada. Then, in November 2025, before beginning construction on the solar facility, the firm requested an amendment to its right of way that instead would allow it to develop a hyperscale data center, a 70-megawatt battery energy storage system, a substation, and biodiesel generators on the same site. The BLM approved the amendment without conducting a new environmental review or public scoping after determining that the new project “is substantially the same” as the former one.

Both the Biden and Trump II administrations proposed opening national laboratories and other federal properties to data center development. However, this was the first such project to be approved for BLM land.

Boulder City, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club appealed the approval and requested the stay, arguing that the agency failed to adequately consider the data center’s potential impacts. The board’s ruling notes, “Appellants are likely to prevail on that question because the two projects are not ‘substantially the same.’” The board also determined the appellants “demonstrated that permanent and irreparable harm is likely to occur to its members’ aesthetic and recreational interests in the project site.”

⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️

Federal regulators on Tuesday approved the Navajo Transitional Energy Company’s proposed Navajo Mine expansion, authorizing the tribal-owned company to extract some 503 million tons of coal over the next 110 years. Yes, you read that right: The coal industry may be in decline, but these folks just got permitted to keep digging up the dirty fuel for over a century more, despite strong opposition from residents and advocacy groups.

The surface mine sits on the Navajo Nation north of Burnham and about 22 miles southwest of Farmington, New Mexico. It was built in the 1960s to serve the nearby Four Corners Power Plant, and remains the facility’s sole fuel provider.

NTEC says it needs the expansion to continue serving the plant until its closure; its primary owner, Arizona Public Service, plans to shutter the facility by 2041. After that the firm, which also owns coal mines in the Powder River Basin, would apparently try to peddle Navajo Mine coal elsewhere.

This has set off alarm bells for anyone concerned about the landscapes and air quality of the Four Corners region. Not only would the mine tear apart another 9,000 acres of land, displace residents and dwellings, and destroy dozens of historic cultural properties, but that coal would also be burned somewhere, releasing climate-warming and health-harming pollutants in the process. Also concerning is the prospect that the Four Corners plant, which has sullied the region’s air for more than 60 years, would continue operating indefinitely.

***

The San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance have filed a lawsuit seeking to stop further exploratory drilling or other development at Faraday’s proposed Copper Creek mining project. The groups accuse the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of failing to consider drilling’s impacts on endangered Mexican spotted owls that are known to inhabit the area.

The mine is proposed for about 78 square kilometers in the Galiuro Mountains east of Mammoth, Arizona, on private, state, and Bureau of Land Management parcels. Last June, the Bureau of Land Management approved Faraday’s plan to construct 67 drill pads, along with associated roads and infrastructure, and the company recently completed the first round of water-intensive drilling.

The complaint also says the BLM failed to consult with the San Carlos Apache Tribe, as required under the National Historic Preservation Act.

The water footprint of Arizona’s copper mines — Jonathan P. Thompson

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

Desert water and smoky sunset. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Chasing the water — John Fleck (InkStain.net) #RioGrande #NewMexico

“Game on!” as a friend texted yesterday afternoon. Credit: John Fleck/InkStain

Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):

September 2, 2026

At 2 p.m. Monday (Aug 31, 2026) the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, along with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and Audubon Southwest, began releasing a pulse of water from Abiquiu Reservoir on the Rio Chama in Northern New Mexico as an experiment – what might a several day pulse of water do to help the aridification-starved riverside forests along New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande?

Here’s Bernalillo County Commissioner Barbara Baca, chair of the ABCWUA board:

As I and others have written previously, we’re seeing extraordinary stress on the riverside trees, the ribbons of green that flank the Rio Grande through New Mexico’s largest city.

The tradeoffs that we talk about every fall semester in the water resources class I teach, tradeoffs among competing and conflicting values, are becoming real. The motivating question I’ve used in my writing on water since my old newspaper days was to ask, as pointedly as I could, “When supplies run sort, who actually doesn’t get water?”

Two answers have become increasingly obvious in recent years along the Middle Rio Grande. What we’ve come to call the “accordion” of irrigated agriculture is squeezing, as pastures and fields without the super-senior water rights that apply to some of the irrigated lands of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande (or a supplemental well) go dry.

“The environment” is the other.

The question has never been “What do we say we value?”, but rather “What do we value enough to give up water in some other place?” This is about tradeoffs. More water in one place – an irrigated field or the river channel itself – necessarily means less water in some other place. My “what do we value enough to give up water” formulation shifts this from a question of what we say we value to what we actually value enough to give up water to preserve?

Behind the scenes for the last couple of weeks there has been an extraordinary effort underway to scrounge up some water currently in storage upstream for other purposes, and to rapidly put in place the tools to monitor the results. Nobody’s quite sure how much water will get how far into the bone dry Albuquerque reach of the river, how far downstream the pulse will make it, what the results might be for the riverside forest.

For my whole professional life, long before I shifted from newspapers to writing books, I had a joke when something remarkable happened: “That’ll be great material for my book!” This is that.

Sun’s almost up, I’m off to chase the water.

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

South Platte River Basin #climate for the week ending September 7, 2026 #SouthPlatteRiver

Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for September 7, 2026. This morning precipitation, at the SNOTEL stations, is at 76% of the median (up 1% one week), and 72% of the water year median (up 1% one week). There are 23 days left in the water year.

There is a slight chance for thunderstorms today, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms Saturday and Sunday in the central and northern mountains. There is a chance for thunderstorms today then a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms Saturday, and a chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday, down here about 55 miles from Berthoud Pass, where the Berthoud Pass Ditch brings water to Clear Creek from the Fraser River. From Clear Creek County:

The little stone bridge at the Summit is hard to see, but it is still used both by U.S. Highway 40 and the Berthoud Pass Ditch. When viewed from the north side of the road, and behind the new wetland constructed as part of the U. S. Highway 40 widening project, the bridge can be seen and is the same design as three others on the Grand County side of the Pass. A culvert funnels the water from the Ditch under this bridge and across U.S. Highway 40. The Berthoud Pass Ditch is now owned by the City of Northglenn. The ditch has long been a part of the history of Grand County and Berthoud Pass.

The Berthoud Pass Ditch is now owned by the City of Northglenn. Photo credit: Clear Creek County

Culvert under US-40 that funnels water in the Berthoud Pass Ditch from the Fraser River watershed to Clear Creek. Credit: Clear Creek County

Here’s a look at the 7-Day Colorado precipitation map through September 5, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 0.10” to 1.20”.

Here’s the 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through September 6, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas was 25% to 125% of normal.

Below is the 7-day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast for the week of September 7, 2026. Precipitation is anticipated for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin and may total up to 0.50″.

Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued September 6, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting September 14, 2026. The CPC expects above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor map from September 1, 2026. There were one class improvements in Douglas, Arapahoe, Adams, Morgan, Weld, and Logan counties. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 93.81% of Colorado. The South Platte Basin is experiencing Abnormally Dry, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, and Exceptional drought conditions.

Below is the Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 1, 2026.

Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.

Finally, Peter Goble recently wrote, What Super El Niño Means for Colorado, on the Colorado Climate Center blog. From the post:

Historical correlation analysis shows El Niño is also linked to changes in Colorado weather, where conditions are generally wetter during El Niño years (image 5). This is especially true in fall and spring, when much of the state averages higher precipitation. Furthermore, the Front Range and Eastern Plains are more prone to large spring snowstorms and experience fewer dry and windy spring days (though such days remain frequent regardless). Unfortunately, the link between the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and peak seasonal snowpack levels in Colorado is weak. Southern river basins, such as the San Juan and Rio Grande, show a loose positive correlation between El Niño and snowpack.

Image 5: Statistical relationship between El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and precipitation in Colorado. Green areas tend to be wetter during El Niño and blue areas tend to be wetter during La Niña.

More utility-scale battery storage in #Colorado: Black Hills Energy plans 50 megawatts at Pueblo to allow it to store excess wind energy to help meet peak demands — Allen Best (BigPivots.com)

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

September 4, 2026

The integration of batteries into Colorado’s energy picture continues, this time in Pueblo. There, Black Hills Energy has announced plans to add 50 megawatts of storage that will enable it to capture excess renewable energy when it is available.

The four-hour Tesla Megapack batteries (pictured above) will be located next to the company’s 420-megawatt natural gas plant near the Pueblo Airport. However, the intent is to use the batteries to store excess electricity generated by the company’s three wind installations in southern Colorado. They have a combined capacity of 149 megawatts.

“We’re very proud that our company’s first large-scale battery storage project will be built right here in Pueblo,” said Campbell Hawkins, vice president of Colorado Utilities at Black Hills Energy.

Black Hills expects to have the battery storage in place by late 2027. The company explains that batteries will enable it to better meet peak demands, such as on hot summer evenings, with renewable energy.

This is part of the company’s work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2030 as compared to 2005, as required by Colorado law.

The batteries in Pueblo can best be understood as part of a near explosion in energy storage in Colorado during the last two to three years. The amount of storage now on line is remarkable given that the very first _ and very small — set of batteries were put into place in 2018 at the United Power headquarters along I-25. And that 4 megawatt-hour of battery storage remained the largest in Colorado until 2022.

For a short recap of the battery story in Colorado, see this short story from Big Pivots in March: “Why big batteries are a Colorado game changer.” Or this longer piece, “How batteries are changing Colorado’s energy game.”

American Clean Power will host its Recharge conference in Colorado on Sept. 22-24. The opening session will include a very strong Colorado component on its opening day with both Eric Blank, chair of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, and Chris Hansen, CEO of La Plata Electric, having half-hour time slots. See more here.

At Pueblo, project partners are Linxon, a global engineering, procurement and construction company, and Cloudbreak Energy, a national developer and independent power producer of distributed resources and utility-scale solar and storage projects.

The Crossing Trails Wind Farm between Kit Carson and Seibert, about 150 miles east of Denver, has an installed capacity of 104 megawatts, which goes to Tri-State Generation and Transmission. Photo/Allen Best

Map showing where the January-August 2026 temperature ranks when compared to all January-August periods since 1895 — @Climatologist49

Map showing where the January-August 2026 temperature ranks when compared to all January-August periods since 1895. It's as if something has changed. 🤔
— Climatologist49 (@climatologist49.bsky.social) 2026-09-02T00:16:35.750Z

Situation: #ColoradoRiver Water Crisis — Real-time intelligence platform delivers key data and information as #LakePowell and #LakeMead hit combined record-low water levels, putting at risk agriculture, industry, and a $1.4 trillion regional economy #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the release on the Circle of Blue website (J. Carl Gantner):

August 27, 2026

Circle of Blue and True Elements Launch Situation: Colorado River from Stockholm World Water Week

Colorado River faces a “collective nightmare.”

New platform delivers a shared view to help inform decisions and collaboration.

Situation: Colorado River is part of Designing Water’s Future, the initiative to create “a new operating system for the world’s fresh water” — aligning across finance, policy, media, and innovation.

STOCKHOLM (August 27, 2026) — As some 2,000 experts gather for World Water Week to address global water challenges and solutions, Circle of Blue and True Elements today launch a new, live data, information and context platform for the Colorado River basin, which faces unprecedented stress as the river and its reservoirs set record lows that are forcing a dramatic reset of water use across the American West. The river supports approximately $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity and 16 million jobs across seven basin states, 30 Tribal Nations, and northwestern Mexico.

Situation: Colorado River begins with real-time and historical data collected into a strategic, user-friendly dashboard. In the face of increasing stress on the basin, the team, which includes reporters from Circle of Blue, will add on-the-ground context to deliver critical insights for policymakers, negotiators, journalists, businesses, and the public.

The core data is assembled from True Elements’ TrueQi system — an advanced and comprehensive resources platform that includes satellite observations and river gauges as well as drought indicators, wildfire detections, and reservoir measurements.

The platform arrives at an inflection point for the American West as Lake Mead and Lake Powell reach record low levels amid a warming climate. The combined storage of the two reservoirs is now lower than at any point since 1957 — before Glen Canyon Dam existed. Ninety-five percent of the basin remains in drought.

“The basin’s assumptions are being reset in real time, and everyone — federal, state, Tribal, corporate, business, communities — needs a trusted, shared view of what is actually happening,” said J. Carl Ganter, co-founder and managing director of Circle of Blue, the international nonprofit reporting on fresh water and its “nexus” intersections with food, energy, infrastructure, and health.

The TrueQi platform from True Elements collects real-time and historical federal, state, satellite, and sensor data across the Colorado River basin, the broader American West and globally. As it expands, Situation: Colorado River layers Circle of Blue’s journalism, along with reporting from network partners, on top of key data points, with additional context from academic and research collaborators.

“Real-time and cross-sector data is the foundation while the context makes it real and relevant,” said Kim Kobza, CEO of True Elements. “TrueQi already delivers the most granular water intelligence in the field. Pairing it with Circle of Blue’s award-winning reporting turns raw numbers into shared guidance.”

“Situation: Colorado River pulls the data together and makes it accessible to everyone making decisions under the pressure of declining water supplies. We do this with a sense of urgency, humility and collaboration in the face of increasing water crises globally,” Ganter said. It is part of Designing Water’s Future, Circle of Blue’s international initiative to better inform and align action across finance, policy, media, innovation, and the public.

The situation is forcing a reckoning for farmers, developers, cities, and industries, including silicon chip manufacturers and data centers. “We have a colossal failure to act in the face of an inevitable collective nightmare — and all the predictions are coming true faster than we thought,” Felicia Marcus, past chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, told Circle of Blue.

As the basin’s operating assumptions are tested, Situation: Colorado River asks a core question:

What data points and contexts are necessary to inform the most important decisions across the Colorado River basin, and how can new data and intelligence approaches be applied across the U.S. and globally?

The initiative launches with a call for public and expert input at an historic moment. Submit thoughts, questions, suggestions and corrections to coloradoriver@circleofblue.org. This will shape the initiative’s next iterations of data selection and analysis, editorial focus and priority coverage.

Also available now is Water Savvy 3.0, a free mobile app from True Elements available on the Apple App Store that puts real-time water quality data, alerts and reporting into the hands of the public and students.

The platform is live online today from Stockholm. It is free and designed to be a trusted source for newsrooms, businesses, policymakers, academic researchers, students and the public. A more comprehensive enterprise insights system is available to businesses, agencies, and governments. Circle of Blue original content publishes under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

#Durango receives little rain in August — The Durango Herald #AnimasRiver

North American Monsoon graphic via Hunter College.

Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Gabrielle Wallace). Here’s an excerpt:

September 2, 2026

Durango experienced a drier-than-normal August…The month of August accumulated 0.28 inches of precipitation, 0.12 inches of which occurred Monday. Monday was the highest precipitation day of August, Gillian Felton, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Grand Junction office, said. August traditionally averages closer to 1.3 inches of rain, according to the weather service, and precipitation this August was down about an inch comparatively. A plethora of reasons contributed to the dry spell, said Brooke Scholtens, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Grand Junction.

“For the earlier parts of the summer, we were experiencing those drought-like conditions,” she said. “So that makes things incredibly difficult, especially since the pushes that we did see of the monsoon, most of the time, we had dry air in the way that was kind of preventing moisture from entering the region.”

This monsoon has been drier than traditional years, Scholtens said. She added that the weather service measures moisture at Durango-La Plata County Airport, so some areas around Durango may have differing precipitation levels…Monsoons don’t have a specific end date, but it usually wraps up mid- to late-September, Scholtens said…According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, 91.6% of La Plata County is in a severe drought and 8.4% of the county is in an extreme drought. Durango has been in Stage One water restrictions since early April as part of the city of Durango’s Drought Management Plan.

Colorado Drought Monitor map September 1, 2026.

Absurdity of the Colorado River crisis: Nearly half the river’s water goes to growing livestock feed and low-value exports — Daniel M. Frey (BigPivots.com) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

A windrower cuts alfalfa for drying prior to baling in the Imperial Valley of California in June 2007. Photo by Timothy Hearsum/AgStock

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Daniel M. Frey):

August 30, 2026

Forty million people depend on the Colorado River. Some of its largest cities are facing real shortages. Yet nearly half of the water put to human use in the basin goes to growing feed crops such as alfalfa, hay and silage for cattle, with a meaningful share exported overseas.

This is not a hydrology problem. It is a political one.

The misuse of water

Growing alfalfa and hay to feed livestock consumes roughly 46% of all the water put to human use in the basin—more than every city and industry combined, and more than any other single use of the river. In the Imperial Valley, a material portion of alfalfa is exported. Foreign agribusinesses, including Saudi Arabia’s Fondomonte and the UAE’s Al Dahra, have leased Southwestern land to grow water-intensive feed and ship it home to countries that have banned the same crop domestically to protect their own water. Arizona’s governor already canceled state land leases with one of these companies over exactly this issue. We are draining a river that 40 million Americans depend on to grow low-value cattle feed.

This is not even a true market outcome. Between 2017 and 2023, the federal Crop Insurance Program paid $5.6 billion to farmers in the seven Colorado River states for drought-related losses, including more than $2 billion to alfalfa and hay growers alone. Separately, the federal government has committed $1.2 billion over three years under the 2023 Lower Basin conservation agreement to pay some of those same farmers to leave water in the river instead — and under “use it or lose it” water law, that money does not necessarily translate into lasting reduced consumption once the payments end. We are subsidizing the least essential, most water-intensive use of the river while barely funding a lasting transition away from it. These policies ignore urgent human needs and support the continued subsidized irrigation of low-value crops.

Because so much of this crop is exported, converting these acres would not meaningfully affect the U.S. or global food supply. Foreign and domestic buyers would simply source feed from places where water is not scarce. What we would lose is a low-value export that is consuming precious water.

Nobody needs Southwestern agriculture to disappear. Israel farms one of the driest landscapes on Earth and still exports produce because it rebuilt its water use around efficiency instead of volume.

Drip irrigation, which Israel pioneered in the 1960s, delivers water at 70% to 90% efficiency, compared with roughly 40% to 60% for the flood irrigation still common in the Colorado River Basin.

Israel recycles 85% to 90% of its municipal wastewater, supplying more than half its total agricultural demand. Israeli farming also shifted deliberately from low-value, high-water fodder crops to higher-value, lower-water produce such as tomatoes, peppers, dates and avocados. None of this is exotic or new.

Why the status quo persists

So why has nothing changed here? Under prior appropriation law, the oldest agricultural water rights, some dating to the 1800s, are legally senior to every city built afterward, including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. That seniority is the leverage in every negotiation.

The Imperial Irrigation District alone holds senior rights to roughly 3.1 million acre-feet a year — nearly a fifth of the river’s average flow, and on its own equal to Arizona’s and Nevada’s entire combined state allocations. That gives a handful of districts a permanent seat at every basin-wide deal because the law guarantees it. When $4 billion in federal conservation funding was distributed through the Inflation Reduction Act, much of it paid agricultural districts to conserve water they were under no legal obligation to relinquish, thanks to their senior water rights.

This is organized and specific, not a vague farm lobby. The Family Farm Alliance, representing irrigated agriculture across 16 Western states, has testified before Congress repeatedly over the past two decades and led a 2025 push for at least $2 billion in near-term drought funding to sustain current agricultural use, not reduce it.

What should change

None of this is an argument against private property or against farmers and ranchers as people. Water rights in the West are real property, built into land value, farm equity and family inheritance. Any transition worth pursuing must compensate people fairly for what the law actually gave them. Conservation is not agriculture’s job alone. Cities owe real cuts too, through tiered pricing, continued investment in water reuse, limits on ornamental turf and honest accounting of growth in already stressed areas.

But fairness among water users does not mean treating every use as equally necessary. Water for people—for drinking, sanitation and food—comes before subsidized hay exports. That ranking is not radical. It is what “beneficial use” was always supposed to mean before the term became a shield for the status quo.

The technical plan is not the missing piece; versions of it have circulated for years. What is missing is the political will to say, plainly and before the next crisis, that human need outranks irrigated hay, even when the institutions built to avoid that choice are loud, organized and well funded. The reservoirs will not wait for a more comfortable moment. Neither should we.

The 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River should demand that political and business leaders protect their most precious, life-sustaining resource.

Daniel Frey is a Boulder resident, non-practicing CPA and Certified Energy Manager (CEM). He researches and writes on energy and sustainability issues.

Top ten Western counties for acreage planted in alfalfa. Data Source: USDA NASS.

Yosemite, again in corporate crosshairs, embodies the long war over US national park privatization — Michael Childers (TheConversation.com)

Several massive reddish tree trunks rise from grass-covered ground. — Yosemite National Park is home to three groves of massive ancient sequoia trees. Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Michael Childers, Colorado State University

Reports that the Trump administration is working to transfer part of Yosemite National Park to a private land developer have heightened concerns among park advocates and the public about privatization of public land.

The proposed deal, which a government spokesperson said has not been finalized, would involve a land swap: The government would give the developer a small area of the park’s land on which to build a private access road between a proposed resort and the park itself. In exchange, the developer would buy land of similar value near the park, or elsewhere in California, and transfer that land to federal ownership.

Environmental advocates and park staff have worried for more than a year that the administration’s cuts to the National Park Service’s budget and staffing would lead to further privatization of the national parks’ land and business operations.

The nation has a long history of similar efforts, including a wildly unpopular 1980 attempt by Reagan administration Interior Secretary James Watt to promote development and expand private concessions in the parks. But debate over using public national park land for private profit dates back more than a century before that.

As I explain in my book, “The Mountains Are Calling: Tourists and the Unmaking of Yosemite National Park,” no park has played a more central role in that debate than Yosemite, in California.

Early concerns

In early 1864, Central American Steamship Transit Company representative Israel Ward Raymond wrote a letter to John Conness, a U.S. senator from California, urging the government to move swiftly to preserve the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees to prevent them from falling into private hands. Five months later, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act, ceding the valley and the grove to the state of California, “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation.” This was years before Yellowstone became the first federal land designated a national park in 1872.

A sepia-toned image of a lake with massive trees and even bigger mountains behind it. — For centuries, the natural beauty of the Yosemite Valley has impressed visitors. Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Controversy arose quickly at Yosemite. Two men – James Lamon and James Hutchings – had claimed land in the valley before the federal government gave it to California. Both began commercial operations, Lamon growing cash crops and Hutchings operating a hotel.

California said their businesses threatened the state’s ability to develop roads and trails in Yosemite by competing for tourist dollars. A legal battle ensued and was not resolved until an 1872 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that the men’s land claims had not been fully validated according to the procedures of the time. The California legislature paid both men compensation for their land, and both left the park.

In 1890, neighboring parts of the Yosemite area became America’s third national park – and in 1906, the federal government again took possession of the Yosemite Valley itself and the Mariposa Grove, specifically to incorporate them into an expansion of the national park.

Development rights

Yet, as my research has found, the role of private interests in the park remained unsolved. Private companies under contract to the National Park Service have long provided needed amenities such as lodging and food within the national parks. But questions over what is acceptable in national parks in the pursuit of profit have shaped Yosemite’s history for generations.

In 1925, I found, the question centered on the right to build the first gas station inside the park, in Yosemite Valley. Two private businesses, the Curry Camping Company and the Yosemite National Park Company, had long competed for tourist dollars within the park. Each wanted to build a gas station to boost profits.

A large building stands in front of a massive set of cliffs. — The Ahwahnee is a privately run hotel inside Yosemite National Park. George Rose/Getty Images

Frustrated over the need to decide, National Park Service Director Horace Albright ordered the rival firms to simplify management of the park’s concessions. The companies merged, and the newly formed Yosemite Park and Curry Company was granted the exclusive rights to run lodges, restaurants and other facilities within the park, including the new gas station.

But as I found in my research, the park service and the concessions company did not always see eye to eye on the purpose of the park. The conflict between profit and preservation is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the construction of a ski area within the park in the early 1930s. The park service initially opposed the development of Badger Pass Ski Area as not conducive to the national park ideal, but the Yosemite Park and Curry Company insisted it was key to boosting winter use of the park.

In 1973, the Music Corporation of America, an entertainment conglomerate, bought the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. The company already had a tourist attraction operating near Hollywood, where visitors could pay to tour movie sets, but had not yet changed its name to Universal Studios or launched major theme parks in Florida and California. Its purchase of the park’s concessions set off a firestorm of controversy over fears of turning Yosemite into a theme park.

That didn’t happen, but annual park visitor numbers climbed from 2.5 million to 3.8 million over the 20 years MCA ran the concessions, which sparked concerns about development and overcrowding in the park. Conservationists argued the park service had allowed the corporate giant to promote and develop the park in ways that threatened the very aspects of the park most people came to enjoy.

With three restaurants, two service stations with a total of 15 gas pumps, two cafeterias, two grocery stores, seven souvenir shops, a delicatessen, a bank, a skating rink, three swimming pools, a golf course, two tennis courts, kennels, a barbershop, a beauty shop, Badger Pass Ski Area and three lodges, the Yosemite Valley was a busy commercial district. Critics argued that such development contradicted the park service’s mandate to leave national parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

A few people stand in a large gap within a tree trunk while other people stand nearby. — Crowds gather at some of Yosemite’s most popular sites, such as the California Tunnel Tree. David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

Who owns the names?

Falling profits and consolidation within the music industry led MCA to sell its concessions rights in Yosemite in 1993. The Delaware North Companies, a global hospitality corporation, took over and ran the park’s concessions until 2016, when it sold the rights to Aramark.

But in that sale, the question of public resources and private profits arose again. Delaware North demanded $51 million in compensation for Aramark continuing to use the names of several historic properties within the park, such as the Ahwahnee, a hotel, and Curry Village, another group of visitor accommodations. The company claimed those names were a part of its assets under its contract with the park service.

The park service rejected the claim, saying the names, which dated back more than a century, belonged to the American people. But to avoid legal problems during the transition, the agency temporarily renamed several sites, including calling the Ahwahnee the Majestic Yosemite Hotel and changing Curry Village to Half Dome Village. Public outrage erupted, denouncing the claim by Delaware North as commercial overreach that threatened to distort Yosemite’s heritage. In 2019, the park service and Aramark agreed to pay Delaware North a total of $12 million to settle the dispute, and the original names were restored. https://www.youtube.com/embed/LXfnTKLw8Qg?wmode=transparent&start=0 Protesters unfurl an upside-down U.S. flag from the top of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in February 2025, protesting Trump administration changes to the National Park Service.

Renewed interest in commercial efforts

In June 2025, Yosemite again took center stage in the dispute over the role of federal funding versus private interests at the start of the second Trump administration when a group of climbers unfurled an American flag upside down off El Capitan in protest of the administration’s cuts in personnel and slashing of the park service’s budget.

Conservationists, including former National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis, argued that by defunding the park service and laying off as much as a quarter of its workforce, the Trump administration was “laying the groundwork to privatize” the national parks by allowing corporate interests more access to public lands. Those concerns echo ones raised during the first Trump administration, when the White House argued privatization would better serve the American public by improving visitor experiences and saving federal dollars.

Members of Congress and former park service officials say the reported effort in 2026 to turn over park land to a private owner would be a major blow to federal efforts to protect parks and conserve land.

Whichever side prevails in the short term, the debate over the role of private interests within national parks like Yosemite will undoubtedly continue.

This article contains material previously published July 31, 2025.

Michael Childers, Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University

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

Water districts move forward on water right diligence applications — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver

Map of the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, USA. Made using USGS National Map data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47456307

Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:

September 2, 2026

At recent meetings, the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) and the Pagosa Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) boards of directors approved applications for findings of reasonable diligence for several water rights held by the districts…At an Aug. 13 meeting, the PAWSD Board of Directors unanimously approved applications for findings of reasonable diligence for three sets of water rights, including rights for the San Juan River intake, a group of rights associated with the Dry Gulch Reservoir project that the SJWCD leads development on, and a second enlargement on a water right in Dutton Ditch. The Dry Gulch and Dutton Ditch water rights are held by both PAWSD and the SJWCD, while the San Juan right is exclusive to PAWSD. PAWSD board member Bill Hudson pointed out that these water rights are not rights PAWSD is currently using, but are rights that could be developed in the future if the district needs them…At an Aug. 17 meeting, the SJWCD Board of Directors also unanimously approved diligence filings for the Dry Gulch and Dutton Ditch water rights. SJWCD legal counsel Jeffrey Kane explained to the board that he would file the joint application for the Dry Gulch water rights, while PAWSD’s legal counsel would file the application for the Dutton Ditch water rights.

The Colorado River Water Supply Crisis in a Few Graphs: Part 2 — Agricultural Water Use in the Lower Basin — The Traveling Wilburys of the #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the report on the University of New Mexico Digital Repository website (Jack Schmidt¹, Anne Castle², Eric Kuhn³, Kathryn Sorensen⁴, Katherine Tara⁵):

September 2, 2026

KEY POINTS

Reductions in Lower Basin water use during the last four years, including forecast use in 2026, are similar to the initial targets for Lower Basin shortages described in the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead (FEIS) and the accompanying Record of Decision (ROD). ⁶ Lower Basin consumptive use in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and forecast for 2026 has been the smallest for the entire 2010-2026 period. These four years of smallest use are between 1.4 and 1.7 million acre feet/year (maf/yr) less than the 7.50 maf/yr amount generally recognized as the Lower Basin’s mainstem allocation.

Reductions in Lower Basin use have been achieved by large reductions implemented by Central Arizona Project (CAP) contractors and subcontractors, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), and non-CAP water users in Arizona. The reductions in use in the IID have been in summer water use and have not aﬀected consumptive use in winter when garden crops, such ass lettuce, onions, carrots, and broccoli, are grown.

There is no historical analogy for implementing Lower Basin shortages of 3 maf/yr that would reduce annual consumptive water use to 4.5 maf/yr. We identified the lowest use in each month between 2010 and 2026 in each Lower Basin state and summed those monthly values, even when those months did not occur in the same year. The annual total of the summed lowest monthly uses yielded a minimum total Lower Basin use of 5.03 maf/yr. Thus, implementation of 3 maf/yr shortages would require reductions in monthly use greater than the sum of the smallest monthly uses during the past 17 years.

INTRODUCTION

This paper is part of a series, The Colorado River Water Supply Crisis in a Few Graphs, whose goal is to provide readers with summary information about the natural water supply, reservoir storage, and consumptive uses and losses in the Basin so that readers can better understand and consider the current water crisis. The long-term fate of the water supply provided by the Colorado River depends on many complex and interconnected factors: the natural flow of the river, the amount of water stored in the Basin’s reservoirs, the consumptive uses of that water, the losses caused by reservoir evaporation, and the losses associated with water flowing through natural channels (i.e., transmission losses).

In 2024, approximately 60% of all uses and losses of Colorado River water in the United States occurred in the Lower Basin (Table 1).⁷ In this paper, we summarize water use in the Lower Basin since 2010, primarily focusing on consumption by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), the largest user in the entire Colorado River Basin, and on the aggregate consumption by Arizona users not served by the Central Arizona Project (CAP). We focus on these agricultural users, because agriculture makes up approximately 60% of consumptive uses in the Lower Basin,⁸ and the agricultural sector will play a significant role in future reductions in water use in the Lower Basin.

Table 1. Consumptive uses and losses in the United States part of the Colorado River Basin in 2024.⁹

This paper provides historical context in which to consider the magnitude of recent reductions in Lower Basin water use by comparing current water use with typical rates of use since 2010. We also provide historical context for the shortage goals described in the recently released ROD and Operating Guidelines for 2027 and 2028. ¹⁰ The ROD lists a potential maximum Lower Basin reduction of 3.0 maf/yr but also includes language that seems to allow for even greater reductions, after consultation, in extraordinary circumstances.

We analyze the Lower Basin water use data summarized by the Bureau of Reclamation in annual decree accounting reports formally titled Colorado River Accounting and Water Use Report: Arizona, California, and Nevada.¹¹ These reports are issued each May and summarize monthly water use by every Lower Basin user. Reclamation also provides monthly provisional data on the current year’s water use, and the agency provides forecasts of annual use for the current year.¹² Similarly extensive and precise data describing Upper Basin use are not readily available.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell are the largest reservoirs in the United States and essentially are one gigantic reservoir separated into two parts by the Grand Canyon.¹³ Inflow to this gigantic reservoir primarily is snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, and a significant amount of that runoff is put to beneficial use by Upper Basin users before it reaches Lake Powell. A small amount of additional inflow occurs within the Grand Canyon, and there are occasional inflows to Lake Mead from the Virgin River. Southern Nevada Water Authority directly withdraws water from Lake Mead, and other Lower Basin users divert stream flow after it is released from Lake Mead.

RECENT LOWER BASIN WATER USE

In 2025, total consumptive use in the three Lower Basin states was 5.755 maf, the smallest annual total use since at least 2010 (Fig. 1) and 17% less than the average for 2010-2025.¹⁴ This small amount resulted from the lowest annual use in California (3.647 maf) since at least 2010 and the second lowest annual use since 2010 in Arizona (1.911 maf). Lower Basin use in 2026, 5.961 maf, is forecast to be slightly more than in 2025.¹⁵

Figure 1. Consumptive use in the Lower Basin since 2010. Estimated use in 2026 based on forecast of September 1, 2026.

Water use in California since 2023, including forecast use in 2026, has been 13% less than between 2010 and 2022.¹⁶ Decreased use in California in those years has been primarily due to reductions in use by IID (Fig. 2). IID’s consumptive use of 2.187 maf in 2025 was the lowest since 2010 and forecast use in 2026 of 2.242 maf is also very low. Average use by IID between 2023 and 2026 will be 12% less than average use between 2010 and 2022.¹⁷ Annual consumptive use by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) between 2023 and 2026 will be 13% less than between 2010 and 2022, although the savings are not as great because MWD uses less water than does IID.¹⁸

Figure 2. Consumptive use in California since 2010. Estimated use in 2026 based on forecast of September 1, 2026.

The proportionate reductions in water use in Arizona have been much larger than in California. Average statewide water use between 2023 and 2026 will be 25% less than between 2010 and 2022.¹⁹ CAP has reduced its uses by 40% between those two time periods, while non-CAP users have reduced consumption by 6%. The smallest use by Arizona was 1.890 maf in 2023 (Fig. 3). Use in 2025 by non-CAP customers, 1.004 maf, was the lowest since at least 2010. Non-CAP use has exceeded CAP use since 2022.

Figure 3. Consumptive use in Arizona since 2010. Estimated use in 2026 based on forecast of September 1, 2026.

LOWER BASIN AGRICULTURAL WATER USE

Imperial Irrigation District

IID is the largest individual user of mainstem Colorado River water in the Colorado River Basin, exceeding use by any state in the Basin except California itself. Much of California’s ongoing reductions in use are due to decreased use by IID resulting from various compensated agreements. Future reductions by IID have the potential to significantly affect the Basin’s effort to balance consumptive use with declining supply.

In comparison to typical annual use since 2010, IID’s use in 2024 and 2025, as well as forecast use in 2026, has been notably reduced, as represented in a box-and-whisker plot (Fig. 4).²⁰ The box in Figure 4 encloses 50% of the years since 2010, and the length of this box is called the Inter Quartile Range (IQR), bounded by the 25th and 75th percentile of the 17 years of data, including forecast use in 2026. The line through the middle of the box is the median value for this period. Lines extending up and down from the box (i.e., whiskers) extend from the box to values within an acceptable range. Values that are greater than 1.5 times the IQR above the 75th percentile or below the 25th percentile are beyond the acceptable range and are outliers and individually plotted. Thus, 2024, 2025, and forecast use in 2026 are outliers, indicating that use in those years has been significantly less that typical use during the entire period since 2010.

Figure 4. Box-and-whisker plot showing distribution of annual use by IID since 2010. The box is the Inter Quartile Range, defined by the 25th and 75th percentile of the years of annual use data. The line inside the box is the median. Whiskers extend from the box to an acceptable range, and outliers are circles that are labeled. The three most recent years are outliers of low water use. Estimated use in 2026 based on forecast of September 1, 2026. See text for explanation of a box-and-whisker plot.

The largest proportion of irrigated land in IID is devoted to field crop production, the largest proportion of which is devoted to alfalfa (Fig. 5).²¹ The area devoted to alfalfa production changes little from year to year and during the year and was approximately 150,000 acres in 2025.²² In 2025, other significant field crops were Bermuda grass and kleingrass, whose average irrigated area was 80,000 and 20,000 acres, respectively. The area devoted to garden crop production changes greatly throughout the year and is largest between November and March. Little land area is devoted to garden crop production in the heat of summer. The most significant garden crops are lettuce, onions, carrots, and broccoli.

Figure 5. Area of IID irrigated for diﬀerent categories of crops in 2025. Field crops include alfalfa that is also plotted separately.

Water use by IID is typically lowest between November and February when garden crops are grown (Fig. 6). Water use increases greatly in March and remains high through October when field crops are the primary focus of production (see Appendix).

Figure 6. Box-and-whisker plots of total monthly consumptive use by the IID between 2010 and 2026. Each box is the Inter Quartile Range, defined by the 25th and 75th percentile of the years of data for that month. These boxes represent the typical monthly use pattern since 2010. Red dots are the average use in each month between 2024 and 2026. See text for additional explanation of a box-and-whisker plot.

Reductions in consumption during the past few years have been accomplished primarily by reduced water use between June and September when alfalfa and grass hay are the primary crops. These reductions are reflected in Figure 5 where red dots are the average monthly water use since 2024. Red dots plot below the grey boxes of the IQR in June, July, August, and September, demonstrating that recent water use in these months has been significantly less than typical since 2010. In contrast, recent water use between December and May has been within or slightly less than the IQR.

Agricultural use of mainstem Colorado River water in Arizona

We estimated agricultural use of mainstem Colorado River water in Arizona by subtracting the total diverted by the CAP from the total use in Arizona. This remainder includes all the agricultural uses along the Colorado River as well as a small amount used by the City of Yuma, other towns along the river, and military bases.²³

The monthly pattern of water use is similar to the monthly pattern by the IID. The smallest uses are between November and February (Fig. 7). Consumptive use increases in March and is highest between April and August.

Reductions in water use by these Arizona growers have been more modest than by IID. Recent average use has been somewhat less than the typical range between April and July and has been within the typical range in other months, except for November when there was significant precipitation near Yuma in 2025.

Figure 7. Box-and-whisker plots of total monthly consumptive use in Arizona by users of mainstem Colorado River not served by the CAP between 2010 and 2026. Each box is the Inter Quartile Range, defined by the 25th and 75th percentile of the years of data for that month. These boxes represent the typical monthly use pattern since 2010. Red dots are the average use in each month between 2024 and 2026. See text for additional explanation of a box-and-whisker plot.

Management and Policy Implications

Consumptive water use of mainstem water in the Lower Basin has been less than 7.5 maf/yr in every year but one since 2010. Since 2023 including forecast use in 2026, this reduction ranged between 1.4 and 1.7 maf/yr. The Lower Basin states have reduced water use comparable to the initial targets for Lower Basin shortages described in the recently released ROD²⁴ and Operating Guidelines for 2027 and 2028.²⁵ Thus, the good news is that the initial shortage goals of the FEIS have been achieved in recent years.

These savings have been achieved by large reductions in use by the CAP (Fig. 3) and by reduced agricultural water use in summer by IID (Fig. 6) and non-CAP water users in Arizona (Fig. 7). These reductions in agricultural water use have not resulted in changes of the amount of water consumed in winter when garden crops are grown.

The ROD allows for potentially large Lower Basin shortages of up to 3 maf/yr and potentially more in the event that Basin runoff continues to be low and reservoir live storage drops to critical levels. We placed these potential shortages in perspective by summing the smallest monthly use in each Lower Basin state since 2010 even though these months of smallest use did not occur in the same year. In some cases, the smallest water use was not due to significant water conservation but to unusually rainy conditions when demand for supplemental irrigation water was low, such as in November 2025. In other words, there is no historical experience with implementing the annual sum of these smallest monthly uses, because the smallest monthly uses did not occur in the same year.

Nevertheless, summing the lowest monthly use in each state provides perspective to the magnitude of the proposed 3 maf/yr shortages. The summed value of smallest monthly uses yields a potential minimum annual Lower Basin use of 5.03 maf/yr for the three Lower Basin states (Table 2). Although many of the months of smallest use occurred between 2022 and 2026, some were unique months of very low use in the 2010s. There is no historical analogy for imposition of the largest Lower Basin shortages envisioned by the recently released ROD and 2027-28 Operating Guidelines. [ed. emphasis mine]

Table 2. Smallest monthly consumptive use in each Lower Basin state since 2010.

CONCLUSION

The analyses summarized in this paper demonstrate that agricultural water use that supports winter garden crop production has not changed despite recent reductions in annual water use by IID or by non-CAP water users in Arizona. To date, water use by IID and by non-CAP water users in Arizona has been reduced in summer when garden crops are not grown. In times of acute water shortage, it is likely that continued and additional water savings can be achieved by reductions in irrigation of field crops in summer, without causing shortages to garden crop irrigation in the winter.

It is notable, however, that summing the lowest monthly water use in each state since 2010 results in a theoretical reduction from the Lower Basin allocation of 7.5 maf/yr of approximately 2.5 maf/yr, less than the maximum potential Lower Basin shortage envisioned in the recently released ROD. Our calculation of a theoretical shortage is based on summing the smallest use in each month between 2010 and 2026, and these months are not all in the same year. In some cases, the lowest use resulted from unusually large precipitation that reduced irrigation demand, rather than explicit conservation efforts.

The Priority Shortage Allocation Model utilized in the FEIS distributes shortages among the Lower Basin states in a much different manner than the way shortages have been achieved in the past.26 Tabulating the historical minimum monthly uses demonstrates that achieving the 3 maf/yr reductions described in the FEIS and ROD would be very difficult and is without historical precedent. Implementation of such large shortages would likely require new management policies, including compensated fallowing, permanent retirement of irrigated acreage and corresponding water rights, and unprecedented investment in increased irrigation efficiency.

We recognize that our theoretical comparison of minimum monthly uses since 2010 in no way captures the economic dislocation and secondary impacts that might result from implementing such shortages now. A full economic analysis of the impacts of the largest potential Lower Basin reductions described in the FEIS and the ROD is critical for understanding the consequences of significant reductions in water use in the Lower Basin. That type of analysis is beyond our expertise. Nevertheless, we recognize the importance of such an analysis, and we recognize the real-world distress that such large reductions of use might cause.

¹ Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University, former Chief, Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

² Getches-Wilkinson Center, Univ. of Colorado Law School, former US Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission, former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, US Dept. of the Interior.

³ Retired General Manager, Colorado River Water Conservation District.

⁴ Kyl Center for Water Policy, Arizona State University, former Director, Phoenix Water Services.

⁵ Staﬀ Attorney, Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico.

⁶ FEIS is available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/final-eis/index.html. ROD is available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/P26_RecordofDecision_Final.pdf.

⁷ All annual data in this paper are calendar year. 2024 is the most recent year that consumptive uses and losses data are available for the entire Basin.

⁸ Richter et al., 2024, New water accounting reveals why the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea. Communications Earth & Environment 5:134. available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01291

⁹ Upper Basin state uses in Table 1 do not include state reservoir evaporation. Total major and minor state reservoir evaporation is listed separately in Table 1. Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) reservoir evaporation is evaporation from Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, Flaming Gorge, and Lake Powell reservoirs. Source of Upper Basin data: J. Prairie, Upper Colorado Basin Research and Modeling Group Chief, Bureau of Reclamation. Source of Lower Basin state uses: Reclamation. 2025. Water use report: Arizona, California, Nevada, calendar year 2024. Source of mainstem reservoir evaporation (Mead, Mohave, Havasu) data: S. Tighi, Hydrologist, Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region. Evaporation at Senator Wash and diversion dams estimated at 28,000 af.

¹⁰ Department of the Interior, August 2026, Operating Guidelines: Colorado River Guidelines for Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Operating Years 2027 and 2028 (2027-28 Operating Guidelines), available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/2027-2028OperatingGuidelines_Final.pdf. We note that these Operating Guidelines provide for 1.25 maf/yr of shortage, allocated among the Lower Basin states as previously proposed: 760,000 af/yr in Arizona, 440,000 af/yr in California, and 50,000 af/yr in Nevada, The distribution of shortages greater than 1.25 maf/yr is not specified but would presumably be subject to consultation. See 2027-28 Operating Guidelines at 5.3.A. The ROD allows for the development of different methods of shortage allocation. See ROD at 5.

¹¹ Colorado River Water Accounting and Water Use Report: Arizona, California, and Nevada, available at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/wtracct.html.

¹² Lower Colorado River Water Accounting – Actual Water Use and Official Water Use Forecast, both available at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/wtracct.html. Throughout this paper, we refer to the forecast for 2026 that was made on September 1, 2026. The forecast is frequently revised.

¹³ There is no significant water use in the Grand Canyon.

¹⁴ Average Lower Basin consumptive use between 2010 and 2025 was 6.880 maf/yr.

¹⁵ Reclamation, Lower Colorado River Basin, available at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/hourly/forecast.pdf.

¹⁶ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 4.326 maf/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 3.764 maf/yr.

¹⁷ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 2.600 maf/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 2.290 maf/yr.

¹⁸ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 925,000 af/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 804,000 af/yr.

¹⁹ Average use between 2010 and 2022 was 2.590 maf/yr. Average use between 2023 and (forecasted) 2026 will be 1.930 maf/yr.

²⁰ IID used 2.187 maf in 2025, 2.312 maf in 2024, and is forecast to use 2.242 maf in 2026. Median use between 2010 and 2026 was 2.546 and use in 50% of the years of that period was between 2.481 and 2.558 maf/yr.

²¹ Imperial Irrigation District, 2025, written communication, Monthly crop acreage summary, 2011-2025.

²² Total net area of crops in 2025 was approximately 350,000 acres.

²³ Forecast use in 2026 for Bullhead City, Lake Havasu City, Parker, Yuma, U.S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds, and the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma is 35,000 af.

²⁴ Department of the Interior, August 2026, Record of Decision, Decision Framework for Colorado River Guidelines: Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead (2027-2036), available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/P26_RecordofDecision_Final.pdf.

²⁵ Department of the Interior, August 2026, Operating Guidelines: Colorado River Guidelines for Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Operating Years 2027 and 2028 (2027-28 Operating Guidelines), available at https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/post2026/decision-doc/2027-2028OperatingGuidelines_Final.pdf. We note that these Operating Guidelines provide for 1.25 maf of shortage in each year, allocated among the Lower Basin states as previously proposed: 760,000 af in Arizona, 440,000 af in California, and 50,000 af in Nevada. The distribution of shortage greater than 1.25 maf/yr is not specified but would presumably be the subject of consultation. See 2027-28 Operating Guidelines at 5.3.A. The ROD allows for the development of diﬀerent methods of shortage allocation. See ROD at 5.

²⁶ See FEIS Appendix C, Shortage Allocation Model and Alternative Distribution Model Documentation, at C.4.2. However, the ROD specifies that other methods of shortage allocation may be developed. ROD at 5.

Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

What Super #ElNiño Means for #Colorado — Peter Goble (Colorado #Climate Center) #ENSO

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Climate Center website (Peter Goble):

September 3, 2026

You have likely heard news about El Niño recently. The National Weather Service reports that El Niño officially began in June. Observations from the International Research Institute show that it continues to strengthen. There is a greater than 90% chance of this becoming a “super” El Niño, and a greater than 50% chance of it becoming the strongest event since modern record-keeping began in 1950. Here is a look at what El Niño is and why it matters for Colorado.

El Niño refers to a climate pattern characterized by unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (image 1). Normally, waters in the eastern Pacific (off the coast of South America) are much cooler than those in the western Pacific (near Indonesia and Papua New Guinea) (image 2). Earth’s rotation drives tropical trade winds from east to west, pushing warm surface water westward and pulling cool, deep ocean water to the surface along the coast of South America. During El Niño, these trade winds weaken, allowing warm water to spread east and suppressing the normal upwelling of cold water.

Image 1: Sample sea surface temperaure anomalies (Celsius) during El Niño (left) and La Niña (right). Source: climate.gov

Image 2: Average sea surface temperatures (Celsius). Source: nasa.gov

El Niño conditions typically peak during northern hemisphere winter. Peruvian fishermenoriginally named the phenomenon (Spanish for “little boy,” or “Christ child”) after noticing coastal waters warmed around Christmas. While this meant less productive fishing in South America, El Niño also alters global oceanic and atmospheric circulation. Its most predictable weather impacts include warmer, wetter weather in the eastern Pacific, drier conditions across the Amazon, and warm, dry weather in Indonesia (image 3). These circulation shifts ripple into natural and human systems—for instance, El Niño correlates with higher mosquito-borne mortality in South America.

Image 3: Typical El Niño impacts to global weather. Source: noaa.gov

North America is impacted by El Niño as well. In response to weaker tropical trade winds, the northern hemisphere polar jet stream tends to weaken, and split with a more active southern flank. This raises the odds of cooler, wetter conditions across the U.S. Sunbelt, drier weather to the Ohio River Valley, and warmer conditions to the Pacific Northwest, north-central U.S., and a wide swath of Canada, and Alaska (image 4).

Here are the typical outcomes from both El Niño and La Niña for the US. Note each El Niño and La Niña can present differently, these are just the average impacts. Graphic credit: NWS Salt Lake City office

Historical correlation analysis shows El Niño is also linked to changes in Colorado weather, where conditions are generally wetter during El Niño years (image 5). This is especially true in fall and spring, when much of the state averages higher precipitation. Furthermore, the Front Range and Eastern Plains are more prone to large spring snowstorms and experience fewer dry and windy spring days (though such days remain frequent regardless). Unfortunately, the link between the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and peak seasonal snowpack levels in Colorado is weak. Southern river basins, such as the San Juan and Rio Grande, show a loose positive correlation between El Niño and snowpack (image 6).

mage 6: Linear correlation between ENSO RONI and peak season snowpack in major Colorado river basins. Blue = more snow on average during El Niño. Brown = more snow on average during La Niña.

Does a stronger El Niño guarantee more intense impacts? Not necessarily. Linear correlation models assume stronger events yield stronger outcomes, but real-world evidence is limited. Modern records include only three “super” El Niños (sea surface temperature anomalies of +2.0 °C or higher): 1982/83, 1997/98, and 2015/16. While 1982/83 delivered huge snowfall to Colorado, the latter two yielded roughly average conditions. Drawing firm conclusions from three events is unreliable, and our physical understanding of Earth’s climate system offers no clear threshold where impacts suddenly scale. On the positive side, dynamical seasonal climate models and the Climate Prediction Center both indicate elevated odds of above-normal precipitation across most of Colorado through spring.

Climate change complicates our understanding of what we can expect from a strong El Niño. Earth’s climate system has changed since the super El Niño and major snow year of 1982/83. Colorado is warming, and average precipitation is likely decreasing in western Colorado. The correlation analyses shown above do not account for these shifting baselines. A wet year is not guaranteed. Even if the storms do come, less of the precipitation may fall as snow than in a typical year, especially at lower elevations. Colorado continues to suffer from severe droughtlargely driven by snowpack deficits last winter and record warm temperatures. There is a strong appetite among people for moisture. The brewing super El Niño may offer some hope, but a wide array of outcomes are possible this winter. It is a bit like playing a game of poker with a few extra aces and kings in the deck. The deck may be stacked in our favor, but we could still draw a crummy hand.

#Nevada preached peace on the #ColoradoRiver. Now it’s suing to protect its water. The state’s lawsuit claims the federal government’s plan for the river could strip Las Vegas of two-thirds of its water supply — Austin Corona (Grist.org) #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Austin Corona):

August 28, 2026

Nevada officials have long presented themselves as a voice for compromise and conservation in debates over the Colorado River. The Las Vegas area, home to two-thirds of the state’s population and most of its economy, has become a model of urban water conservation. As the river has declined from overuse and a decades-long drought exacerbated by climate change, southern Nevada water planners built extensive water reuse facilities and implemented tight restrictions on new turf and fountains, dropping the region’s per capita water use by 58 percent in roughly 20 years. Meanwhile, in interstate negotiations over the management of the Colorado River, state representatives have positioned themselves as bridge-builders, sometimes referring to themselves as the “middle basin” between the river’s divided upper and lower basin states.

When the federal government’s new management plan for the river was announced earlier this month, most observers thought Arizona, which stands to take the largest immediate cuts, would launch the first lawsuit over the plan’s implications for its water supplies. So it came as a surprise to many Colorado River experts when Nevada became the first to sue the federal government over the plan this week.

“I expected that there would be litigation, but it was surprising to me that Nevada fired the first shot,” said Anne Castle, former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

The natural flow flow at Lees Ferry, which is a calculation of what the Colorado River’s flow would be without any upstream dams, diversions, or human consumption. Land Desk graph using Bureau of Reclamation data.

Nevada’s lawsuit comes after more than two years of negotiations among the seven Colorado River states and the federal government over how to reduce water use on the declining river. The states failed to reach a long-term agreement before the river’s current management procedures expire in October, leaving the Interior Department to impose its own plan. The federal government’s plan largely relies on cuts to water use among the Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada, and California — to prop up water levels in the river’s largest reservoirs. Those reservoirs have been draining so quickly that the dwindling water depth could threaten hydropower and dam operations within months without intervention.

Nevada argues that the federal government’s plan illegally forces it to take too much of those cuts. In a worst-case scenario, the plan could allow for a 71 percent cut to the Las Vegas area’s water supply, the state argued, calling it an unacceptable risk to the state’s largest population center and economic hub. Nevada believes this outcome results from a misreading of the law and also claims the government didn’t consider important alternatives to such drastic cuts.

This worst-case scenario, which experts say is an interpretation of the plan’s implications by Nevada, would become possible if reservoir levels continue to drop and if Nevada couldn’t reach an agreement with Arizona and California to help it absorb more of those cuts. Those three states already have such an agreement, which is incorporated into the federal plan and meant to last through 2028, at which point the plan allows the states to update the operations with a new agreement. Without an agreement, the federal government will implement cuts based on preexisting water rights and agreements, cutting the most from Arizona and leaning increasingly on Nevada and California as potential shortages increase. The plan was created through a decision-making process required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which mandates that federal agencies gather public input and consider environmental and socioeconomic impacts of major decisions.

#Denver announces $50 million cleanup plan at Sloan’s Lake to help prevent algae blooms and dead fish: Funding plan includes call for DURA to add the lake to nearby tax-increment financing district — The #Denver Post

Sunrise, Denver skyline, from Sloan’s Lake September 2, 2022.

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elliott Wenzler). Here’s an excerpt:

September 2, 2026

On its surface, Sloan’s Lake is a beautiful oasis that offers a refuge from city life. Part of one of the largest parks in Denver, it features glistening water, mountain views and plenty of paved paths to walk a dog, catch up with a friend or train for a race. But just beneath its gentle waves is a murky, sometimes smelly truth. The [North] Denver lake is slowly filling in with stormwater sludge. The surprisingly shallow water is often quite warm, making it a difficult environment for fish to survive and an easy place for dangerous algae blooms to thrive. If the accumulating muck isn’t addressed soon, the lake is at risk of becoming fully stagnant and bereft of life. On Wednesday, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston stood alongside members of the City Council and advocates for the lake’s future to announce a plan to invest tens of millions of dollars to prevent that from happening.

“A lake that used to be 12 feet deep is in some places only 4 feet deep. It affects the lake’s health. It affects algae blooms. It affects our most beloved events,” Johnston said from the lake’s shore. “We think there’s nothing more important for the long-term health of this neighborhood than to support the long-term health of this lake.”

Dragon boat practice at Sloan’s Lake August 29, 2026.

To raise more money for the cleanup effort, Johnston’s administration will ask the Denver Urban Renewal Authority to add the lake to a nearby urban renewal district south of the park. That would allow it to benefit from money raised through an already-approved tax incentive in the area…The 177-acre lake, which plays host to the annual Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, is only 3 feet deep on average…Swaths of neighborhoods in Denver, Edgewater, Lakewood and Wheat Ridge drain into the lake, bringing sand, sediment and street crud. Over time, that has built up and begun filling in the bottom of the lake. The cleanup project will include dredging sediment out of the bottom of the lake and disposing of it. Crews will also work on ways to prevent more sediment from building up in the lake. Kurt Weaver, the executive director of the Sloan’s Lake Park Foundation, asked the community to keep advocating for the project throughout the entire construction process to ensure it’s completed.

“To be able to have an opportunity to write a new future for the lake is massive for us, the community around it and everyone who spends time here at the lake,” he said.

Cormorants on old pier pilings at Sloans Lake April 12, 2026.

#Colorado Water Congress: Watch the Recordings from the 2026 Summer Conference

From email from the Colorado Water Congress:

September 4, 2026

Thank you so much for attending the 2026 Summer Conference! We enjoyed hosting you, and we hope to see you at our Annual Convention in January.

Recordings from the Conference are now available on our website! These recordings are only for conference attendees, so please do not share this information.

Recording Page: https://www.cowatercongress.org/2026-summer-conference-recordings/

Password: SC26Videos

If you have any questions about accessing the page or Summer 2026 content, reach out to blair@cowatercongress.org.

Municipal Water Recycling in Six Western Cities

^{Aerial photograph of a municipal waterwater plant, provided by Storyblocks.}

by Robert Marcos

Cities in the Western United States are deploying advanced municipal water recycling technologies to combat chronic drought and to establish local, climate-resilient water supplies. By combining multi-barrier purification, natural filtration, and direct or indirect potable reuse, these municipalities are pioneering sustainable water management.

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles relies on a multi-tiered water recycling system that treats municipal wastewater to fit-for-purpose standards. At a minimum, the city utilizes tertiary treatment involving screening, biological neutralization, chemical coagulation, and filtration. This water is distributed via an extensive network to over 400 commercial facilities for landscape irrigation and cooling towers. For its ambitious Pure Water Los Angeles and Groundwater Replenishment initiatives, LA applies advanced treatment—including micro-filtration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light disinfection with hydrogen peroxide. This highly purified water is injected into local aquifers for groundwater recharge, creating a sustainable, drought-resilient local supply. ¹

Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix maximizes its treated wastewater through a combination of non-potable distribution and advanced purification planning. Currently, the city treats municipal wastewater to Class A+ standards, delivering it to regional partners for agricultural use, park irrigation, and tech sector demands like data center and industrial cooling towers. To secure long-term water sustainability, Phoenix is constructing dedicated advanced water purification facilities under the Pure Water Phoenix initiative. This system will subject pre-treated recycled water to multi-barrier technologies—specifically ozonation, membrane ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet advanced oxidation—safely transforming reclaimed wastewater into high-quality drinking water distributed directly to thousands of area homes. ²

San Diego, California

San Diego is in the process of implementing its multi-phase program to drastically reduce its heavy reliance on imported water. The city utilizes a rigorous five-step advanced purification process to clean municipal wastewater at its demonstration and upcoming production sites. Secondary effluent undergoes ozonation, biologically active carbon filtration, membrane filtration, reverse osmosis, and high-intensity ultraviolet disinfection. While Phase One routes this purified water into the Miramar Reservoir for an environmental buffer and further blending, Phase Two adapts to updated California regulations. This allows the San Diego Pure Water Project to utilize direct potable reuse, piping the ultra-pure water directly into the drinking water distribution system after remineralization. ³

Orange County, California

Orange County operates the Orange County GWRS, the world’s largest advanced water purification facility for indirect potable reuse. The system takes secondary-treated municipal wastewater that would otherwise be discharged into the Pacific Ocean and subjects it to a rigorous three-step purification process. This advanced flow includes microfiltration to remove solids, reverse osmosis to eliminate dissolved salts, pharmaceuticals, and viruses, and ultraviolet light combined with hydrogen peroxide advanced oxidation to destroy remaining trace organic compounds. The near-distilled quality water is then pumped to inland basins to naturally percolate into the groundwater basin, serving as a primary drinking source. ⁴

Aurora, Colorado

Aurora utilizes the innovative Aurora Prairie Waters project, a pioneering potable reuse system designed to maximize its fully consumable water rights. After municipal wastewater is treated and discharged into the South Platte River, Aurora recaptures the water downstream using a natural-technical hybrid method. First, riverbank filtration wells pull water through hundreds of feet of sand and gravel. Next, an aquifer recharge and recovery process allows the water to percolate through additional natural filters. Finally, the water is piped uphill to an advanced purification facility for state-of-the-art technical polishing before blending with mountain snowmelt for public consumption. ⁵

El Paso, Texas

El Paso is building the Pure Water Center, which will be the nation’s first direct-to-distribution water reuse facility that sends purified wastewater straight into the city’s drinking water system. Currently the city’s Fred Hervey plant treats municipal wastewater and injects it into the underground Hueco Bolson aquifer to recharge drinking supplies. The City’s Pure Water Center will take secondary effluent and subject it to multi-stage membrane filtration, advanced oxidation, and disinfection. Instead of utilizing an environmental buffer, this purified water will flow directly into the municipal drinking water system, after being blended with treated brackish groundwater. ⁶

#GunnisonRiver anglers question feds’ plan to reduce #BlueMesa Dam releases: Flows in Gunnison Gorge could drop as low as 200 cfs in effort to maintain #hydropower and rebuild storage — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org)

Blue Mesa Reservoir on the Gunnison River, seen Aug. 30, 2026 at about 21% full. Anglers and boaters say federal water management decisions are negatively impacting fish and recreation below the reservoir. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):

September 3, 2026

As this year’s historic drought drags on, conflicts over how to share and manage water are bubbling over. Gunnison River anglers and boaters say federal water-management decisions are causing increased water temperatures, prompting fishing closures, and creating serious economic impacts to outfitters and businesses.

An Aug. 26 letter from Drew Peternell, Colorado state director of Trout Unlimited, to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Area Manager Bart Deming, asks the federal agency to change its approach to drought management. The river conservation nonprofit organization asked Reclamation to increase streamflows in the Black Canyon and Gunnison Gorge to alleviate damage to the fishery; to evaluate water use by downstream irrigators; and to better understand the drivers of storage depletion.

“We acknowledge that the extraordinary drought conditions of the current water year present significant operational challenges,” the letter reads. “Nevertheless, the decision to reduce flows in the Gunnison River has exerted a toll on a vital and cherished natural resource.”

At a public Aug. 27 operations meeting in Grand Junction, Reclamation officials said they plan to reduce flows out of Blue Mesa Reservoir to as low as 200 cubic feet per second through February, in an effort to recover some storage in the reservoir, which is depleted after this year’s record-breaking drought and hot temperatures. Flows so far this month have hovered around 245 cfs.

Peternell said Trout Unlimited would like to see flows of at least 300 cfs in the Gunnison River, the minimum threshold for a healthy environment set by a federal reserve water right. The Black Canyon and Gunnison Gorge are home to a 27-mile-long Gold Medal trout fishery and are downstream of the federally operated Aspinall Unit, which is made up of Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal reservoirs.

“It’s been a tough year for everyone and there’s not enough water to go around, unfortunately, so we appreciate that Reclamation is in a tough spot,” Peternell said in an interview with Aspen Journalism. “But 300 cfs is a minimum flow target for the Black Canyon and it’s the minimum amount of water the fishery really needs to survive down there, and we’re below that. We’re down to 250 or 240, and that’s hard on the fish, it’s hard on the people who make a living off that fishery.”

Federal water managers control how much water flows out of the Aspinall Unit in the highly engineered Gunnison River system, which is the largest tributary of the Colorado River in the state. Reclamation officials project storage in Colorado’s largest reservoir could fall to just 128,000 acre-feet, or 15% full, by the end of the year under the most probable scenario.

At the Aug. 27 meeting, officials presented modeling that showed releasing water at a rate of 300 cfs could cause Blue Mesa to fall below the level needed to make hydropower, but 200 cfs will allow storage to build back up slightly over the winter. Reclamation officials presented modeling projections that showed if they don’t reduce releases now, the amount of water coming out of Blue Mesa may need to be dialed back to just 150 cfs this winter to preserve the ability to make hydropower.

“If we didn’t act, this slide right here is a plane going down and we pull up at the last second,” said Reece Carpenter, a Reclamation staffer with the Resources Management Division at the Western Area Office in Grand Junction. “So it’s very important for Reclamation and all of our partners to have that coordination to make some decisions.”

This management decision rests on a sentence in the Record of Decision for the Aspinall Unit’s environmental impact statement, designed to protect endangered fish, that says “the minimum downstream flow through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area is 300 cfs, except in severe drought when the flow may decrease.” And the Colorado River Basin is experiencing the most severe drought in recorded history.

Tim Patterson, owner of RIGS Fly Shop & Guide Service in Ridgway and who has been guiding for more than 30 years, said Gunnison Gorge trips represent more than half of his company’s guiding and outfitting business, and that flows of 200 cfs are a deal breaker. Low flows contribute to higher water temperatures, which can lead to fishing closures, and make navigating some rapids difficult, if not impossible.

Patterson would like more advance notice from federal water managers when flows will be dropping, and real-time temperature and flow monitoring. Patterson said he has already canceled a handful of trips this year and may have to cancel more if flows stay below about 250 cfs.

“The Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area, as far as a guided fly-fishing trip, is a bucket-list trip known around the world and a must-do,” Patterson said. “So people have planned for over a year in advance for this experience, and it just puts us in a real tough spot.”

Boaters in the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area. A Ridgway outfitter said he has had to cancel trips this year because of low flows in the river. CREDIT: RIGS FLY SHOP & GUIDE SERVICE

Farmers facing ‘immeasurable hardship’

While flows in the river decline, downstream irrigators are still taking nearly their entire allocation of water. The Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association is still diverting just more than 1,000 cfs through the Gunnison Tunnel. The association is a vast expanse of farmland that extends from just south of Montrose to Delta, and is the largest water user in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Water from the Gunnison River transforms the arid high desert into lush green fields of corn, pinto beans, onions and alfalfa.

The association normally gets half of its water supply from the Uncompahgre River. But this basin saw some of the worst snowpack in the state at just 14% of median. That means farmers in this area are experiencing deep water cuts this year. And some growers made the tough decision to leave fields dry and unplanted this year.

“I’ve got a senior water right, and I got 50% of my system that’s fallowed right now,” Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association General Manager Steve Pope said at the Aug. 27 meeting.

This field in the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association district has been fallowed this season due to a lack of water. The state of Colorado announced Wednesday that it will set up a conservation program using federal dollars, which means more fields on the Western Slope could soon look like this. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

This year’s conditions on the Gunnison River highlight how tensions are exacerbated among water-user groups — especially in times of extreme drought. Colorado’s prior appropriation system of water law says the oldest water rights have first use of the river, which almost always means agricultural water users get their water first.

The state didn’t begin to grant water rights for the environment until the 1970s and for recreation until around the early 2000s. Although a large part of the Western Slope’s economy, culture and identity is now centered around outdoor recreation, keeping enough water in rivers for boating and fish is often the last priority.

The letter from Trout Unlimited asks Reclamation to evaluate power contracts with the Uncompahgre Water Users Association, which has several hydropower generating stations on its system of canals, and implement clear efficiency standards for water use. The letter lists reasons that suggest more water is being diverted from the Gunnison River than is necessary for irrigation.

Pope called their concerns “absolutely ridiculous.”

“These farmers have suffered immeasurable hardships this year, and for someone to say, ‘We think you should further reduce to maintain water temperatures and fish flows in the Black Canyon,’” Pope said. “They don’t bring a water right to the table; they don’t bring anything but a demand, and I don’t agree with it. Irrigation and agriculture is the senior priority, and it’s going to be used.”

Pope said he plans to dial back Gunnison River diversions to about 700 cfs by mid-September, but the river won’t see a bump in flows because of Reclamation’s plan to keep dam releases low to build back storage.

This rock formation known as the Dillon Pinnacles on the shores of Blue Mesa Reservoir on Aug. 30, 2026. Federal water managers say they will hold reservoir releases to between 200 and 300 cfs until February in an effort to recover storage in the reservoir. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Patterson is hoping his business can get through September — which is the busiest month for multiday trips through the gorge — relatively unscathed. He would like to see more collaboration and communication between water managers and water users, and he wants anglers to have a seat at the table.

Patterson framed the issue not as a fight among water users, but as an unevenly built safety net in times of shortage. For now, river recreation remains largely at the mercy of upstream decision-makers.

“We’re seeing it all over the Colorado drainage,” Patterson said. “You can’t demand water that isn’t there. But passing it through a special place like this and working with us on times of years to minimize water temperature issues and things like that is a great step. I think it starts with acknowledging that this place is special and important and deserves to be protected.”

A first in the 110-plus-year history of this canal — Allen Best (BigPivots.com) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The Government Highline Canal, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

September 3, 2026

Farmers served by the Government Highline Canal as of today will get no water, a result of last winter’s dismal snowpack and low levels in Green Mountain Reservoir

The Government Highline Canal has delivered water to farms in Colorado’s Grand Valley during irrigation season for more than 110 years.

Thursday will be a first in that long history. No water will be available in that canal to farmers, even though the growing season has not ended.

“This will be the first time since around 1914 the Government Highline Canal has been at undeliverable levels during the irrigation season, which usually runs until Nov. 1 (and sometimes later),” said Tina Bergonzini, general manager of the Grand Valley Water Users Association.

Water supplied by reservoirs upstream in the Colorado River headwaters has essentially run out.

The predicament on the Colorado River had become apparent by April. Record-breaking heat of March made it extremely likely that runoff would be anemic. It got a bit better in May, but not much.

This was clearly evident at Green Mountain Reservoir, between Silverthorne and Kremmling. The dam had been built between 1938 and 1943, as part of a quid pro quo. Farmers in northeastern Colorado, particularly in the Fort Collins-Longmont-Greeley triangle, wanted to divert water from the Colorado River headwaters.

Western Slope representatives objected. They worried that they would lose irrigation water they needed after spring runoff subsided in June and July. The federally financed dam was the answer. It can hold nearly 154,745 acre-feet of water. Of that, 66,000 is marked for delivery to downstream irrigators, most in the Grand Junction area.

Green Mountain was the quid for the quo of the Colorado Big-Thompson Project annual diversion of between 200,000 and 230,000 acre-feet through the Continental Divide.

It worked — until this year.

In April, the low levels in the reservoir made it clear that the farmers would not get the full amount of water they had come to expect. The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River District created a plan to ease the shortage.

The district — which had been created to look out after Western Slope interests in the 1930s — looked into how it could tap various pools of water, getting a thimbleful here, a cupful there. Irrigators wouldn’t become whole, but they would get help, said Andy Mueller, the general manager of the River District at the board’s April meeting.

Water for the Grand Valley Canal is diverted from the Colorado River at what is called the Roller Dam on the Colorado River just east of Palisade. It continues 55 miles down the valley, mostly north of I-70, ending near Mack, 10 miles from the Utah border.

The canal is called the “government” for a good reason. It was built with federal money via the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, an agency created in 1902 to help turn arid places like the Grand Valley into gardens and orchards. Accounts vary about when the water began flowing in the canal. Some say 1913, others 1914 or 1915. Regardless, the water has always flowed since before the United States entered World War I.

Until this year.

Early in the irrigation season, irrigators benefitting from the canal agreed to curtail their water use in exchange for getting water from reservoirs near the Colorado River headwaters later in the season.

That sounds simple enough. The mechanics are complicated. Crucial to understand is the seniority of the “Cameo call” at the Roller Dam, where water is diverted. Upstream users have to honor that very senior call.

The call is for 1,950 cubic feet per second. Grand Valley’s Bergonzini said her district lowered the target by 300 cfs and then another 200 cfs, or 1,450 cfs. That left a little more water in Green Mountain. Altogether, the reduced water diverted from the Colorado — combined with the two storms during May — brought the amount of water available in Green Mountain up to 50% of the allotment for the Grand Valley farmers.

This story has endless details. The essential story is that those with rights to water on the Colorado River within Colorado — including a transmountain diverter, Northern Water — have worked with the irrigation district to ensure the farmers in the Grand Valley had some water during the growing days of summer. Water officials stress what Bergonzini calls “teamwork and collaboration between entities.”

Upstream reservoirs tapped included Wolford and Wiliams Fork, both near Kremmling, and Ruedi, near Basalt. An additional 5,000 came from Granby Reservoir late in the season.

Helping out were appropriations of $450,000 from the River District in April and then, in May, $585,000 from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

Still, farmers dependent upon the ditch only got 50% of the water they normally would from Green Mountain.

Some of the teamwork involves Orchard Mesa Irrigation District. The Grand Valley and Orchard Mesa districts have an agreement to share shortages.

A short distance east of Palisade, water from the Colorado River is pumped up to Orchard Mesa. Photo/Allen Best

Orchard Mesa pumps water uphill from near Palisade to the mesa, site of many of the peaches for which Palisade is famous. Farther down on the Government Highline Canal, other farms grow alfalfa, wheat, and usually corn. This year, however, little corn was grown, yielding to Sudan grass, triticale, and barley, as they are shorter season and can be grown with less water, said Grand Valley’s Bergonzini.

Both peach and grape orchards on Orchard Mesa have done quite well, said Rob Talbott, president of the irrigation district’s board of directors.

The fundamental story, he said, is that “everybody is doing whatever they can to share their water.”

The sharing continues. The peach orchards need water now if they will be productive next year.

“The peach trees (primarily on Orchard Mesa) need water right now to get ready for hibernation whereas my growers (served by Government Highline Canal) can wait for a bit to water in winter wheat and hay. They crop switched earlier this year to shorter season crops, so we have different needs,” explained Bergonzini.

The canal is designed for flows of 730 cfs, not for the 100 cfs now available. As such, she said, it’s better to let the peach trees have the water now.

“Then, IF THE RIVER HAS RISEN SOME,” said Bergonzini, using all-caps for emphasis in her e-mail, Grand Valley will take Orchard Mesa’s irrigation water and augment it with what is available in the river to get some crops watered along the 55-mile canal.

That could happen at the end of September.

“We are planning on running late — perhaps the middle of November if the weather allows without freezing, to assure our growers get good moisture on their fall crops,” she said.

As for Green Mountain Reservoir, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, yesterday it was 14.8% full.

Green Mountain Reservoir had plenty of beach on Aug. 17, and the reservoir has declined since then. Photo/Allen Best

#Monsoon madness and Mormon Marxism(?) — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Ute Mountain after autumn rain. Jonathan P. Thompson photo/illustration.

Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

September 1, 2026

⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️

Wow. Just wow. Huge flash floods in the Grand Canyon this past weekend, with the biggest damage along Bright Angel Creek and Phantom Ranch. Bridges were washed away, dozens of people were evacuated, the Trans Canyon Waterline was destroyed (forcing the closure of rim hotels), and there was so much debris in the river that National Park Service officials had to shut down the river to rafting — though it is now reopened. As of Tuesday morning, two fatalities had been confirmed and one person were still missing.

The storm cells plowed across the Colorado Plateau during the waning days of August, and of meteorological summer, dumping large volumes of rain in short periods of time, leading to hot-chocolate-hued waterfalls cascading off of cliffs and down canyons. In some cases, wildfire burn scars from last year or earlier this summer exacerbated the impacts. In the Grand Canyon it’s likely that the Dragon Bravo Fire scar contributed to the severity of the flooding.

The storms tended to be isolated, pounding one area, while leaving others just miles away virtually dry, as can be seen in wildly varying streamflows.

Video from the Grand Canyon shows that the storm and its impacts were widespread, but certainly the most significant flooding was on Bright Angel Creek, which joins the river at Phantom Ranch. The normally clear and burbling brook was flowing at about 14 cubic feet per second at 11:20 on the morning of August 29; at 12:50 p.m. the gage showed a flow of 347 cfs; then the readings vanished as the gage was overwhelmed by a torrent, disabling the gage. Witness accounts and videos show a wall of water that sounded like a freight train slamming into the Phantom Ranch area.

Always wanted to float one of those classic, usually un-runnable desert rivers but could never get big enough flows? Now’s the time to hit at least one of them, if you dare. The San Rafael River’s USGS gage near Green River was reading 800 cfs as of early Tuesday morning, which is runnable for the intrepid and skillful folks out there. But you’d better hurry: The forecast is calling for clear skies starting Wednesday. Meanwhile, flows on the Escalante River near Escalante, the Paria River near Kanab, and the Dirty Devil exceeded 2,000 cfs on Monday afternoon. But for these one’s it’s probably best just to sit on the canyon rim and watch the show, since American Whitewater recommends against running any of these rivers at these levels. But maybe this is just the dramatic ushering in of more gentle, widespread rains, and the flows will level out in the low-200s, making them quite floatable indeed.

The Big flows on three of the above mentioned rivers will give a bit of a boost to Lake Powell inflows, while the Paria will supplement the waters moving past Lee Ferry from the Colorado River’s Upper Basin to its Lower Basin. So far, however, the storms are too isolated and short-lived to significantly slow Lake Powell’s decline. The reservoir’s surface level is currently at about 3,517.6 feet.

Speaking of classic desert rivers, the sorrowful Lower Dolores River got a little bit of life back over the last few days as the storms moved into Western Colorado, pushing streamflows near its confluence with the Colorado above 600 cfs (after running below 30 cfs for the previous week). That’s good enough to float the lowest section of the river, which includes Stateline rapid, but the flows dropped back down below 100 cfs pretty quickly, which would leave anything but a SUP high and dry. What the rain gave to the river, it took from the roads: Highway 141 between Gateway and Whitewater was shut down Monday due to multiple debris flows; it had reopened as of Tuesday morning, according to the CDOT website.

Zion National Park was hit by the same wave of storms, leading to flash flooding and big water in the Virgin River. Rockslides shut down the Zion Mount Carmel Highway.

Note: I wrote the following essay for the Utah Monthly, an insightful newsletter that provides an inside look at the sometimes maddening, always spectacular, and often confounding state.

This historical piece jumps off from a feature story I wrote for High Country News back in 2012. The thesis behind that story was that even as Utah and the Mormon Church moved rightward politically with a full-throttle embrace of capitalism, they paradoxically held onto slivers of the collectivism espoused by Brigham Young. Since then, Utah has continued its rightward slide, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has continued to grow its corporate empire.

Reporting from Bloomberg shows the Church and its real estate arms own some 2.4 million acres in the U.S. worth more than $20 billion, and that they are ramping up efforts to develop some of that land. Tributary is a planned community under development in Aurora, Colorado, south of Denver International Airport and adjacent to I-70. It covers about 960 acres of former farmland along a creek, and it is designed to eventually house some 12,000 people.

Where will the water come from? Given that this will be in Aurora, I’m guessing it will be from Aurora water, which is currently under stage 1 drought restrictions.

Anyway, on to a bit of Western history …

Mormonism’s Collectivist Roots
And what remains of it in our era of financialized capitalism

The curiously named community of Orderville sits in a narrow valley in southern Utah on the banks of the East Fork of the Virgin River. It is propitiously placed along the highway between Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, yet it wasn’t until the last decade or so that businesses—a couple coffee shops, food trucks, and upscale glamping and vacation rentals—popped up to capitalize on the thousands of visitors passing through. But this isn’t just a modest farming community now taking up tourism. It was once the stronghold of the United Order communalist system, perhaps the most audacious economic experiment ever undertaken in the American West. Orderville, wrote historian Dean L. May, was for the Latter-day Saints a “near-successful effort to build the City of God on Earth.”

Hayfield just outside Orderville, Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Over the last half-century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has wholeheartedly embraced free-market capitalism, and not only in ideological terms. The church is decidedly corporate, and owns Utah’s second-biggest newspaper, a book publisher, dozens of radio stations, financial companies, hotels, and restaurants. It spearheaded the $2 billion redevelopment of its land comprising a major portion of downtown Salt Lake City, and is one of the nation’s largest landowners, with about 2 million acres of agricultural, residential, and commercial properties across the United States. Up until McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, however, the church leaned strongly in the opposite direction, favoring a communal, even socialist approach to economics.

When Brigham Young led his followers into present-day Utah in 1847 to build a homeland, he championed industriousness combined with cooperation and central planning over the frontier individualism commonly associated with the western frontier at the time. The Mormons began with a cooperative effort to build an irrigation system that belonged to everyone, and then laid out the towns. “The towns and villages were not established inadvertently or by individual initiative … they were a result of very definite plans,” wrote Hamilton Gardner in Cooperation Among the Mormons in 1917.

This relatively loose-knit system worked to build communities, but it wasn’t clear that it could protect them from the Gentiles pouring into the region in search of land and wealth. In the 1860s, as the transcontinental railroad approached Utah from both sides, bringing with it an orgy of capitalism and greed, financed with credit that the banks handed out like lollypops, Young buckled down in an effort to protect his holy land from the invaders.

He formed the School of Prophets, which, writes Leonard J. Arrington, the late LDS church historian, “countered an energetic and powerful laissez-faire capitalism with a vigorous, well-organized, socially minded and theocratically directed program of economic action.”

That program included creating an organization to build the section of railroad that came closest to the capital, to keep out the riffraff that might otherwise do the work. It funded the creation of cooperative furniture and wool manufacturing along with other businesses, to reduce reliance on eastern imports. The School created the Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution and instituted uniform pricing controls to minimize competition among Mormon merchants.

The Utah Territory successfully resisted becoming a mineral colony for the eastern industrialists, and the School disbanded in 1872. But Young, whose collectivist leanings grew as he aged, wanted yet more.

A chance for radical change emerged in September of 1873, when the Jay Cooke & Co. bank—one of the big railroad backers—collapsed. Other banks toppled like dominoes, foreclosures were rampant, and the Panic of 1873 swept the nation and the world, leading to one of the worst depressions in history.

Utah’s mining towns were hit hard. But Brigham City, a settlement of about 1,500 people, actually thrived. It had organized a mercantile cooperative in the pre-railroad days, and, by the time the panic hit, it had expanded into a major manufacturing enterprise mostly owned by the worker/shareholders. It built houses for the poor and widows and provided labor for jobless drifters, and its leaders instituted central economic and land-use planning and zoning, dictating where houses and factories and public transit should be built. Novelist Edward Bellamy, who visited Brigham City after the panic, reportedly drew inspiration for Looking Backward, his 1888 utopian novel set in a socialist Boston in the year 2000, when greed and capitalism are no more.

Young didn’t need to wait another century for utopia to arrive. In the aftermath of the 1873 panic, he set about spreading the Brigham City model—combined with an element of Joseph Smith’s Order of Enoch wealth-redistribution plan—across Deseret. He started in St. George and worked his way northward, converting communities to the order as he went.

Each adopted the order in its own way, but the core principals were the same: communalism, cooperation, and equal distribution of wealth. That this occurred just after the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, had been published in America bears noting, if nothing else. The language in the St. George United Order Constitution gives a sense of what Young was trying to do, mentioning the struggle between capital and labor, bemoaning the “oppression of monied monopolies” and railing against “a growing … spirit for extravagant speculation and over-reaching the legitimate bounds of the credit system; resulting in financial panic and bankruptcies.”

“It was clear to all that the United Order,” writes Arrington, in Great Basin Kingdom, “was an attempt to retard, and, if possible, to prevent the development of a market-oriented economy dependent on extensive importation and exportation.” About 200 communities implemented the Order. Some, like Brigham City, took a moderate approach. Others were quite radical.

Orderville fits into the latter category. The community was founded in the spring of 1875 by twenty-five families who had broken off from the Mount Carmel community a few miles down valley. The Orderville citizens pitched in to build houses surrounding a central plaza and common dining hall. All property was turned over to the community corporation, including land, livestock, and machinery. Decision-making was centralized. The population grew to 600, with around 200 acres of communal fields. The citizens built a sawmill, cabinet shop, woolen mill, shoe shop and tannery. Wealth was distributed evenly. Everyone ate together and wore locally made uniforms.

Orderville thrived in its collective state even as other southern Utah communities abandoned all or parts of the United Order. The community gained population and was able to quadruple its communal assets over just several years’ time.

Orderville’s successes, however, only highlighted the failures of the predominant, free-market system in use everywhere else, drawing resentment from the outside world. The timing wasn’t so great, either: In 1882, in a direct affront to the Utah Territory and the church, Congress passed the Edmunds Act, banning polygamy. A few years later, the feds rounded up and jailed hundreds of suspected polygamists, including in Orderville, leaving many communities leaderless. Church leaders, looking to remove yet another source of negative outside attention, urged Orderville to abandon its communal ways. The town’s leaders eventually complied—the central dining hall had been wiped out by a flood a few years earlier anyway—but kept the industries under communal ownership for another couple of decades.

By the early 1900s, the United Order had died in practice. For its part, the church continued to start its own businesses and to invest in other firms—sometimes to its own detriment. The aim, for the most part, was not to turn a profit, but to provide resources for its members. Still, the communalist spirit lived on, permeating the politics and the economics of the church for years afterward.

One of the embodiments of this spirit came in the form of a Utah Mormon banker and conservative Republican named Marriner S. Eccles. Eccles had long believed that hard work and thrift were all one needed to be successful. His father, David Eccles, had built up an empire on those principles, most famously owning the Utah Construction Company, one of six firms that built Hoover Dam and the largest company of its kind in the nation. The senior Eccles died in 1912, leaving everything to his children from two wives, one in Logan, one in Ogden. Though Marriner was in the lesser-endowed Logan branch, he ended up in Ogden, rose to the top of the bunch with his business acumen, and became president of Utah Construction Company, First Security Corporation, and several other interests. Then the Depression hit. Though Eccles’s wealth insulated him and his businesses, he noticed all around him people who had toiled and saved their whole lives, and who were now ruined, unemployed, even homeless.

“It is a national disgrace that such suffering should be permitted in this, the wealthiest country in the world,” he said. “The present condition is not the fault of the unemployed, but that of our business, financial, and political leadership.”

In 1933, Eccles and forty-five other citizens addressed Congress on ways to stop or slow the downward economic spiral. Most witnesses suggested that extravagance, nature, or God had caused the crash, and that balancing the federal budget was the only solution. Not Eccles. He said the root cause was maldistribution of wealth. There was plenty of money out there, it had just all ended up in the hands of a small group of the ultra-rich—the 1 percent, if you will—leaving the other 99 percent broke. That left the bulk of Americans not only hungry, but also without any of the purchasing power necessary to fuel the economy, and that’s what led to the crash.

How to fix the problem? The federal government had to raise taxes on the rich, forget balancing the budget, and spend like crazy in order to redistribute the wealth. Eccles’s five-point plan included allocating $500 million for unemployment and poverty relief, increasing funding to state and local governments for public works and infrastructure projects, and refinancing farm mortgages.

The approach was both compassionate and coldly rational. It would feed the hungry with direct handouts. And it would push a little bit of the wealth back into the hands of the working class, restoring the purchasing power of the masses. That, in turn, would revive consumption and jump-start industry, creating more jobs and more wealth. For as Eccles often said, “Labor is our only source of wealth.” Meanwhile, it would bolster the infrastructure of the nation, providing a foundation for future economic growth.

Trickle-down economics simply wouldn’t work. “The orthodox capitalistic system of uncontrolled individualism … will no longer serve our purpose,” Eccles said, echoing Brigham Young and presaging John Maynard Keynes’s 1936 work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money—the basis for one of the principal schools of modern economic thought. “We must think in terms of the scientific, technological, interdependent machine age, which can only survive and function under a modified capitalistic system controlled and regulated from the top by government.”

Eccles, who was not a church leader but whose family remains powerful in Utah, became the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and his theories provided the seeds of the New Deal. In 1936, around the same time that the federal government was launching its wealth redistribution effort, the church created its Welfare Program, which today spans the globe, providing food, shelter, medical help, and emergency aid to those in need.

The church adhered to the collectivist values of Smith, Young, and Young’s successor, John Taylor (also a strong proponent of wealth redistribution) for the next couple of decades. But when McCarthyism infected the nation in the 1950s, the Church’s communalist ways once again put them at odds with the nation’s mainstream. Then, maybe fearing more persecution, church leaders started an effort—perhaps concerted, perhaps not—to change their public image from borderline theocratic communists to full-on capitalists.

The ideological leader of this new, free-market, staunchly conservative Mormonism was Ezra Taft Benson, whom the church named to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1943. He served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture from 1953 until 1961, during which he became more and more rabidly anti-communist. In 1961, he told the church’s general conference: “No true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or a communist or support programs leading in that direction.”

Benson was a contemporary, friend, and ideological twin of W. Cleon Skousen, the ultra-conservative political theorist whose teachings would influence the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, the Wise Use and Patriot movements of the 1990s, and the violent right-wing uprisings of the mid-2010s, including the armed occupation led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016. Benson and Skousen both were strong supporters of the John Birch Society, which was considered extreme even by the likes of hardcore conservatives such as Barry Goldwater. The society’s founder, Robert Welch, derided Eisenhower as a communist and Benson concurred. And in 1963 Benson predicted that within the decade the United States would be ruled by a communist dictatorship, which would include military occupation, concentration camps, and the like.

Many church leaders considered Benson’s beliefs not only to be too radical, but also blatantly racist, and at times he was chided for being too political and too extreme—though his status as apostle was never threatened. Still, his beliefs trickled down into more tempered elements of the church. In 1966, Apostle Marion G. Romney, former Sen. Mitt Romney’s father’s cousin, felt compelled to use his entire speech to the annual LDS general conference to outline the differences between socialism and the United Order (distillation: the United Order has God, socialism doesn’t). And in 1999, Phillip J. Bryson, a professor at Brigham Young University, wrote a paper called “In Defense of Capitalism” to counter some LDS scholars’ anti-capitalist leanings.

These efforts served gradually to pull the church rightward politically, and in 1985, Benson was named the church’s thirteenth president, a position he held until his death in 1994.

Utah’s politics have long been dominated by the church—nearly 90% of the state’s legislature identify as practicing Mormons. As a result, the state’s politics tend to reflect the church’s. Prior to 1980, for example, the state’s voters were as likely to elect a Democratic governor or federal or state lawmaker as they were a Republican one. But during the Reagan era and, for that matter, the Ezra Taft Benson era, the state has become bright red, only electing Democrats to represent isolated liberal strongholds such as Salt Lake City.

During the same time-frame, the church shifted economically, as well. In 1960, a Canadian oil company executive named N. Eldon Tanner was appointed by then–church president David O. McKay as an assistant to the twelve; two years later he became an apostle. He introduced corporate financing to the church and pointed it to not only achieve solvency, but to become a full-on business empire within a few decades.

It’s the latter, capitalist version of Mormon history that the modern media has glommed onto. And it’s not inaccurate—under Young’s leadership, the church had its hands in a number of business enterprises, just like today—but it’s also not complete. There still is a faint undercurrent of the old United Order beliefs. The church’s welfare program and Deseret Industries continue to be a significant part of its larger workings, providing humanitarian assistance across the globe as well as food and clothing and jobs to people closer to home. And it’s safe to say that the church’s current capitalist successes are rooted in, and wouldn’t be possible without, Brigham Young’s collectivist, quasi-communist experiment from the late 1800s that played out in a tiny town called Orderville.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

Agathla Peak near Kayenta, Arizona. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Amid the y’alls, two themes at the Colorado Water Congress conference — Allen Best (BigPivots.com) #CWCSC2026

Lauren Boebert at the Colorado Water Congress Annual Summer Conference. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

August 31, 2026

Many political office-seekers spoke at the annual summer conference in Steamboat. Some ‘y’alled to the attendees. Others not so much. Most called for more water storage and “forest resilience.”

“God bless, y’all,” said Victor Marx, the Republican candidate for governor in Colorado in wrapping up his allotted 15 minutes at the podium at the Colorado Water Congress summer conference in Steamboat Springs.

Lauren Boebert, who represents the Fourth Congressional District in Colorado, followed him on the agenda. “It is wonderful to be back with y’all at Water Congress,” said Boebert, a Republican seeking her fourth term in Congress.

Y’alls were common during her quarter-hour on stage. It being a water conference, one of them had to do with water. “So y’all better get real good at that xero-scaping for your lawns and everything you’re building out there because your cactus, your cacti might do just fine, but we’re taking it back,” she said of Arizona.

Dwayne Romero, the Democratic candidate in Boebert’s former Third Congressional District, who preceded them, used none.

What this says exactly, I’m not sure. Y’all is a Southern locution that has become somewhat more common across the United States. I do note that Romero grew up in southeast Texas while Marx was reared in Louisiana, both of those places thick with y’alls and drawls. As for Boebert, she came to Colorado from Florida at the age of four.

Water Congress’s twice-annual conferences always have elected officials as well as water leaders from across Colorado. This being election season in 2026, the time devoted to the pols was greater than normal.

Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for Colorado governor, says Colorado must be prepared adequately for when the rain and snow returns. Photo/Allen Best

Like Marx, some are seeking statewide offices, while others, including Boebert and Romero, are running for Congress in districts with more rural areas.

That makes sense, as the Water Congress has a strong rural constituency. Denver Water is well represented, but so is Logan County. I also noted that Rod Lenz, the chair of the Republican River Water Conservation District’s board of directors, managed to get to the conference by Wednesday morning after a meeting in Holyoke that lasted long into the previous afternoon. That’s a good five-hour trip by car.

As for the y’alls, I have no idea whether Jeff Hurd, the Third Congressional District incumbent, Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee for governor, drawled y’alls. I suspect not. I have heard both speak several times. Neither is a y’all guy. Both are also attorneys.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Romero and Boebert started out on much the same note in their remarks about the Colorado River. Romero mentioned “decades of lower-basin use” and urged solidarity with Colorado’s negotiating team on “protecting Colorado’s compact entitlements.” Boebert struck the same tone but with more pugilistic language. “We’re fighting for what belongs to us and for our future generations.”

Beyond those obligatory remarks, the two candidates differed greatly. Boebert talked about what she has done for her constituents regarding water and mentioned her work on the Arkansas Valley Conduit Project. “Even though my dear great president may have vetoed that, we are still working to get that over the line for Southeast Colorado.”

Boebert was typical Boebert, saucy and sort of interesting in how she played to her base. She wore blue jeans, as that seems to be her style when making the rounds in Colorado. In what may be more revealing, she also tried to talk about her bi-partisan work. I also noticed she did so when running in a tight race in her former congressional district, the third, in 2022. She won that race by a mere 546 votes, precipitating her move across the Continental Divide.

Maybe it’s because she is in what appears to be a tougher contest with the Democratic candidate, Eileen Laubacher, a retired Navy rear admiral, in a district that in the past has been unflinchingly Republican. Laubacher’s resume, money and growing institutional support could, noted Axios in a story last week, “make Boebert sweat.” Laubacher also spoke at the conference. But again, I was elsewhere.

Themes

Two themes were evident in remarks made by the office-seekers and others at the conference. One was the need for more storage, the other for more “watershed restoration” via Proposition 137, the proposal on the November ballot to divert sales tax revenues from sporting goods to do work in the forests and expand funding for parks.

The discussions in a general way crossed party lines but the storage case was cited more prominently by Republican speakers. Absent, though, was the sort of specifics I thirsted for.

Politicians rarely get into the details when on the stump, of course. And 15 minutes isn’t much time. Boebert’s comments will likely be echoed in the next two months.

“Forest management is not optional anymore. It never was, and for anyone to come up and present policy that is more reactive then proactive is failing you and each and every one of us — is failing future generations,” said Boebert. “Healthy forests hold snow longer, release water cleaner, and protect our watersheds from catastrophic fires that turn drinking water into ash.”

Boebert then took aim at clean energy.

“We hear all the environmental claims about carbon emissions, but these wildfires that are too quickly growing out of control, burning down our beautiful state, neighboring states in the West, with more than 6 billion standing dead trees that no one will allow us to harvest or not harvest enough of, unfortunately even taking lives of first responders…”

Boebert attributed to NASA a statistic: A wildfire produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the cars fueled by fossil fuels in a year.

“So EVs aren’t the answer. Sending your money to DC for wind and solar isn’t the answer. It’s being good stewards of our land, managing our forests.”

The storage theme also got lots of attention. It was bipartisan. Little of the conversation went very deep. Some of it was almost insultingly oversimplified.

Consider what Marx had to say: “We can’t make it snow. We can’t make it rain. But we can decide whether we’re prepared for when the water comes. So I believe we should store water in good years. Lord, please send it.”

It sounds good, being “prepared adequately.” But that statement assumes good years will come. Examining the science, Colorado State University’s Brad Udall has suggested there may not be any good years, let alone enough to fill all the [reservoirs] already built.

Consider that we have two giant reservoirs on the Colorado River sitting 75% empty. And in the headwaters, Green Mountain Reservoir is 15.1% full, as of Sunday, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. Blue Mesa Reservoir was only marginally better. Navajo, on the Colorado-New Mexico border, is doing better at 40% to 45%.

Romero’s call for partnership

Of the three office-seekers I heard, Romero was most interesting. It was obvious to me he had taken the time to study the Colorado River issues. As for Marx, he rambled.

Romero’s comments were calculated, of course. He was making a case for stability after the chaos of the Trump presidency.

“We have to restore Congress and our federal agencies as institutions that work. Congress has to legislate. It has to authorize projects. It has to appropriate money. It has to conduct oversight. Those are all the rules that were stipulated in the Constitution for our Congress,” he said.

I suspect Jeff Hurd would agree with at least parts of that statement.

Green Mountain Reservoir, seen here on Aug.17, sits about 85% empty. Most other reservoirs have more water stored, but not that much. Photo/Allen Best

He later talked about what this meant on the ground. “A rancher can’t make long-term conservation investments around a pilot program that could disappear with the next administration,” he said.

What must be restored, he continued, is a federal partnership with the state, “where federal dollars turn local grit into lasting resilience. So here’s the heart of it: We have the right people, we have the expertise, we have the will. Now we need to bring real, sustained funding and solutions and resources to bear, enough to help us build resilience for the next 50 years of demand. And we need genuine, reliable partners.”

As for resilience, said Romero, it comes from many projects. “It’s a modernized diversion that lets a farmer grow more with less. It’s a storage that gives a community room to breathe in a drought. It’s a treated watershed that doesn’t burn catastrophically. And it’s securing an historic right like Shoshone, so it benefits Colorado permanently.”

Shoshone, of course, is the hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon, and the Colorado River District is nearing success in its multi-year effort to make sure that the very senior water rights continue to ensure water flows downstream. It’s complicated, of course.

“These things take money. The federal government has helped build the water structure that made this modern American West possible. It is their responsibility to be a reliable partner with us, adapting that infrastructure and those institutions to the 21^st century. They need to stay with us for capital and capital improvements.”

Romero wrapped up his speech with this observation: “Our hardest moments are often when we find our common ground.” That means, he said, “creating solutions that last beyond the next drought, the next negotiations, or the next administration, but for generations to come.”

Sounds good – but where does additional storage make sense that allows communities to breathe?

As for forest resilience, it sounds good — but what exactly is being proposed? Most environmental organizations seem to support Proposition 137, as do Denver Water and Northern Water. Western Resource Advocates and other environmental organizations are pushing it.

I still have major questions about the mechanics even after sitting through an hour-long press conference on Monday morning. Sometimes I can be fuzzy in my thinking, but in this case I think there’s some fuzziness about what is being proposed.

#Drought news September 3, 2026: Locally heavy rains from the #Monsoon fell in parts of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, parts of W. #Colorado to the west of the Front Range saw conditions improve given recent rainfall

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

US Drought Monitor map September 1, 2026.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Dry weather continued this week across much of the central U.S., especially from the southern Great Plains to the Mississippi River Valley and Corn Belt. Flash drought conditions were occurring across a large area spanning from Texas northeastward to Oklahoma and southern Kansas, southern Missouri, Arkansas, northern Mississippi and portions of far western Tennessee. Due to the drier- and warmer-than-normal weather in most of these areas, drought and abnormal dryness expanded and intensified in many areas, as widespread adverse impacts to agriculture continued and fire danger continued to grow in some areas. Widespread showers and thunderstorms, some locally heavy, dotted parts of the Northeast and Southeast regions, leading to localized improvements to ongoing drought or abnormal dryness. Some areas that missed out on the rains saw conditions worsen. Hot and dry weather continued near the borders of the Dakotas with Minnesota, leading to worsening drought conditions. Widespread improvements occurred in some areas from Wyoming and the plains of eastern Colorado northeast into the Nebraska Sandhills and southern South Dakota, where either heavy rainfall this week improved conditions or conditions were reassessed following recent heavier rains. Recent hot and dry weather, combined with a lack of winter snowpack, led to the expansion of moderate drought in northern California. Heavy rainfall associated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Dolly in eastern Puerto Rico led to a few improvements there, though widespread severe and extreme drought continued across much of Puerto Rico. Recent rainfall led to the removal of short-term moderate drought from Alaska’s Central Interior…

High Plains

A swath of 0.5-2 inches of rain fell from parts of western Nebraska and western Kansas into portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Scattered similar rain amounts also fell in portions of east-central and northern South Dakota, as well as in parts of central and western North Dakota. The impacts of recent rainfall in southern South Dakota and the Nebraska Sandhills were re-evaluated this week, and widespread improvements were made as soil moisture and streamflow locally improved, while short-term rainfall deficits were alleviated. Long-term precipitation deficits and their impacts continued across much of this region, and abnormal dryness and long-term moderate drought remained. Scattered improvements to drought also occurred from southern and eastern Wyoming into the western Dakotas and much of eastern Colorado. Short-term precipitation deficits improved in these areas, with some improvement in soil moisture and streamflow, leading to improvements in drought conditions. Streamflow still remains low across portions of the western High Plains region given the poor high elevation snows and warm temperatures during the water year. Temperatures across the region were hotter than normal, especially in Kansas, where temperatures ranged mostly from 6-10 degrees above normal, resulting in high atmospheric demand for moisture in southeast Kansas…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 1, 2026.

West

Locally heavy rains from the North American Monsoon fell in parts of Arizona, Utah and the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Parts of Colorado to the west of the Front Range saw conditions improve given recent rainfall, though widespread short- and long-term drought remained across central and western Colorado. In a few areas in south-central and southwest Colorado that missed out on heavier rains, long-term precipitation deficits grew even worse. Temperatures from 4–6 degrees above normal also kept atmospheric thirst high, and extreme and exceptional drought locally expanded. Short-term precipitation deficits and poor streamflow in some areas led to drought degradation in parts of the Idaho Panhandle, the Spokane, Wash., area, and nearby northwest Montana. Short-term dryness and warmth in northern California led to the expansion of moderate drought there. Moderate drought locally expanded in north-central Montana where short-term rainfall deficits grew and soil moisture declined in a few areas. Recent precipitation in southwest Montana led to improvements in mid- to long-term precipitation deficits and overall conditions, and moderate drought coverage decreased. Recent precipitation in western Utah helped to lessen long-term precipitation deficits, and extreme drought coverage lessened slightly. Temperatures were warmer than normal across much of the West, excluding areas from western Nevada and far northern California through Oregon and Washington. In the rest of the region, temperatures were mostly at least 2-4 degrees above normal, with many areas 4-10 degrees warmer than normal…

South

Widespread expansion or worsening of ongoing drought or abnormal dryness occurred across the South, especially in parts of Mississippi, Texas, eastern Oklahoma and portions of Arkansas. Heavier rains, locally over 2 inches, fell in southeast Louisiana and southwest Mississippi. Otherwise, weather conditions were mostly drier, with many areas receiving less than a half inch of rainfall and some receiving none at all. Temperatures were warmer than normal across most of the region, especially in Oklahoma and the northern half of Texas, where temperatures were 6-10 degrees hotter than normal. This continued a very hot August across much of Oklahoma. Degradations in drought conditions were especially prevalent in southwestern and northern Texas, deep south Texas, northern Mississippi and eastern Oklahoma, as ongoing hot and dry weather worsened conditions in areas already suffering a myriad of drought impacts. Burn bans were enacted across much of western Oklahoma, while Oxford, Miss., residents were asked to conserve water due to high water demand and recent extreme heat. Streamflow across much of central and western Oklahoma and northern Texas was quite low, along with low soil moisture and intense short-term precipitation deficits…

Looking Ahead

Through the evening of Monday, Sept. 7, the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center is forecasting dry weather to continue across much of the central and south-central U.S., especially from southeast Nebraska through Oklahoma, Arkansas and western north Texas into southwest Texas and eastern New Mexico and Colorado. Heavier precipitation amounts through Monday evening will likely be confined to parts of the southeastern and northern Lower 48. Heavy rain is forecasted, or occurring on Wednesday afternoon, in east-central and southeast Texas, while the remnants of Tropical Storm Edouard pass through. Heavier rain is also forecast across the central and eastern Gulf Coast and Florida Peninsula. Rain amounts from southern Louisiana to near Panama City may approach 1-2 inches, while heavier rain amounts, locally 2-3 inches or more, are forecast in the Florida Peninsula. Heavier precipitation amounts, mostly in the 0.75-2 inch range, are also forecast in parts of the Pacific Northwest, northern Idaho, northern parts of Montana and North Dakota, and from Minnesota southeastward across Wisconsin and the lower Great Lakes into Pennsylvania and New York.

The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 day outlooks, covering Sept. 8-12, favors warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the central and eastern U.S. The highest confidence for above-normal temperatures is centered around Kansas City and the mid-lower Missouri River Valley southward to the central and western Gulf Coast. Near-normal temperatures are favored in the western half of the West, with below-normal temperatures slightly favored in western Nevada and adjacent parts of California and Oregon. Near- or below-normal temperatures are also favored in central and northern New England. Above-normal precipitation is favored across much of the Great Plains and western U.S., especially from the Continental Divide into the Great Basin and in northern Minnesota and environs. Above-normal precipitation is also slightly favored in east-central Florida. The forecast favors drier-than-normal weather in the Tennessee and Ohio River Valleys and from Lake Erie to southern parts of the Northeast.

In Hawaii, both precipitation and temperatures are expected to be above normal for Sept. 8–12. Above-normal precipitation is also favored across large parts of Alaska, except for the northwest portion of the state and the central Aleutian Islands. Above-normal temperatures are favored in southeast and central Alaska and in the central Aleutian Islands, while near-normal temperatures are favored in northeast and southwest Alaska and the eastern Aleutian Islands.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending September 1, 2026.

Just for grins, here’s a slideshow of early September US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.

US Drought Monitor map September 1, 2026.
US Drought Monitor map September 9, 2025.
US Drought Monitor map September 3, 2024.
US Drought Monitor map September 5, 2023.
US Drought Monitor map September 6, 2022.
US Drought Monitor map September 7, 2021.
US Drought Monitor September 1, 2020.
US Drought Monitor September 3, 2019.
US Drought Monitor September 11, 2018.
US Drought Monitor September 5, 2017.
US Drought Monitor September 6, 2016.
US Drought Monitor September 1, 2015
US Drought Monitor September 2, 2014
US Drought Monitor map September 3, 2013.
US Drought Monitor map September 6, 2011.
US Drought Monitor map September 14, 2010.

The #MissouriRiver: A Long History, A Hopeful Future: The “Big Muddy” deserves a healthy future — American Rivers #MissouriRiver #aridification

Upper Missouri River, Montana | Scott Bosse

Click the link to read the article on the American Rivers website (Michael Sertle):

August 26, 2026

From its start as a pure snowflake in the Rocky Mountains of Montana to its clouded, churning confluence with the Mississippi River in St. Louis, the “Big Muddy” has for centuries been incrediby impactful to the communities that call it home. Native Americans were first to recognize the importance of the Missouri River, with twenty-nine Tribal Nations recognized to hold cultural, economic, or water rights to this current day. Followed by Lewis and Clark on their historic “Corps of Discovery Expedition”, the river opened up a new horizon for the newly established United States of America to expand.

Map of the Missouri River drainage basin in the US and Canada. made using USGS and Natural Earth data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67852261

As time moved on, the Missouri and its floodplain became more developed, heavily farmed, tightly constricted, and eventually dammed. The Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 changed the wild and free Big Muddy like never before; building massive dams and reservoirs, and thousands of miles of levees to facilitate flood control, farm irrigation, commercial navigation, and hydropower generation. While it can be debated as to the successes of Pick-Sloan, one thing is certain, a new wave of threats to the health and function of the river itself was set in motion and continues to grow today.

Confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, Missouri | Mitch Paine Photography

One of the first major rivers that was a focus of conservation efforts by American Rivers, we pushed for the endangered species listing of the pallid sturgeon, piping plover, and interior least tern. Changes in the river connectivity, historic hydrology, and natural sandbar creation severely impacted these species’ ability to survive. We were also a primary advocate in the subsequent actions for the Congressional creation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Missouri River Recovery Program (MRRP).

The MRRP is focused on:

(1) avoiding actions that jeopardize federally listed species, and

(2) the Bank Stabilization and Navigation Project Fish & Wildlife Mitigation Project (BSNP).

While advances have been made, including the de-listing of the interior least tern and the slow completion of levee-setbacks to establish floodplain re-connection, there is still over halfway to go to complete the total 166,750 acres of Missouri River floodplains that were approved to be acquired and restored as part of the BSNP.

Coyote Gulch and daughter at the confluence of the Missouri River and Mississippi November 25, 2022. The Mississippi is to the left and the Missouri is to the right. Note the huge gaging station on the far bank.

A drought-tolerant grain could help #Colorado farmers save water. First, they need customers — Colorado Public Radio #SanLuisValley #groundwater

Photo credit: The Rye Resurgence Project

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Hayley Sanchez). Here’s an excerpt:

August 18, 2026

The San Luis Valley is searching for ways to use less water without shrinking agriculture. [The Rye Resurgence Project] effort believes rye could help. But turning the grain into part of the valley’s future will require more than convincing farmers to plant it.

“The situation is urgent, and we have to take action to reduce water use,” said Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District…

For years, groundwater has been pumped from the valley’s aquifer faster than nature can replenish it. If that continues, Dutton said, state regulators could eventually require irrigation wells to shut down. One option would be farming fewer acres. But Dutton said that would come at a steep cost.

“It wrecks our economy. It wrecks the fabric of our society of having people employed in agriculture and the heritage of this place,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important that we figure out other alternatives and ways that we can remain in farming, but use less water.”

[…]

The effort, launched by Dutton and Hooper farmer Sarah Jones, is exploring whether rye can help farmers reduce water use without taking more land out of production.

“This is a rye field that’s being used strictly for grazing and green manure,” project manager Morgan Neely said while walking along the perimeter of a lush green field in the San Luis Valley. Cows were cornered off to a section of the field.

Rye requires less than 12 inches of water each year — roughly one-third to one-half as much as many traditional valley crops, Neely said. Its living roots help hold down topsoil during the valley’s powerful spring winds, and it can be grazed by cattle, incorporated into the soil or harvested for grain.

#Climate ‘Overshoot’ Is Coming—Are We Ready?: If global warming remains above 1.5 degrees Celsius, a new U.N. report says “there are no good outcomes” — Bob Berwyn (InsideClimateNews.org)

May 6, 2023 – Volunteers with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) ESCAPES (Education, Stewardship, and Community Action for Promoting Environmental Sustainability) program. The report from the United Nations Environmental Programme identifies the need to accelerate the phaseout of fossil fuels and the transition to renewable energy. (Photo by Bryan Bechtold / NREL)

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Bob Berwyn):

September 2, 2026

Fossil fuel emissions are pushing Earth’s climate toward a dangerous new phase of climate “overshoot,” scientists warned Wednesday in a new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme.

The report, Limiting Overshoot, projects that global temperatures will exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold identified in the Paris Agreement within a few years, intensifying deadly climate impacts. It says the best chance of restoring a safe climate is to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately, halve them by 2035, and figure out ways to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the end of the century.

The 1.5 degrees of warming identified in the report and the Paris pact refers to the increase in global temperatures since the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900, before humans altered the atmosphere and climate with billions of tons of fossil fuel emissions and other industrial and agricultural pollution.

Under the 2015 agreement, more than 190 countries pledged to keep the global temperature below that level because they knew warming above that would mean even greater intensification of extreme weather events, ecosystem losses and the potential submersion of small island countries.

Multiple scientific studies, including global assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, project that warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius will cause severe damage to human health, food and water supplies, as well as infrastructure and economies.

Scientists have calculated that at the current pace of emissions, warming could reach a catastrophic 2.7 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. If all the measures promised by governments under the Paris Agreement are implemented, warming could be limited to about 1.7 or 1.8 degrees Celsius, which would make it easier to return below the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold.

If Earth’s fever stays in the ‘overshoot’ zone too long, it could push ice sheets and key heat-carrying ocean currents past tipping points “that become difficult or impossible to reverse on human timescales,” the report concludes.

“We must make the overshoot as small and short as possible, limiting how high

temperatures rise and how long they remain above 1.5 degrees Celsius,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

The new report, he added, identifies a triple play of climate action: accelerating the phaseout of fossil fuels and the transition to renewable energy, slashing methane pollution and protecting climate allies, such as lands, forests and oceans, that take heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“We’ve failed to act on the options that were available 15 or 20 years ago to reduce emissions rapidly,” said report co-author Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and a professor at Imperial College London. “The reality is that we have failed in that endeavor, and it needs to be acknowledged.”

The new report does just that, and it is alarming because the climate impacts projected for warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius are “unacceptable or unbearable for at least the poorest and the most vulnerable communities around the world,” he said. This summer, with heatwaves that killed thousands in Europe and burned parts of towns in North America, showed that developed countries in the Global North are not immune, he added.

“We need to face the consequences of this failure by dealing with the unavoidable impact,” he said. He added that there is a wide gap between doing nothing by allowing warming to continue for the rest of the century, and acting now to limit the peak temperature and the length of time the global temperatures remain above the threshold.

Co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, another climate researcher at IIASA, said the report doesn’t just document the state of the global climate. Given the climate impacts happening at about 1.4 degrees Celsius warming, he said the report is “more about what it means for us here now, and what the response needs to look like.”

As warming heats the planet at the rate of half a degree Celsius every 20 years, he said “extreme events and climate-driven natural disasters are increasingly exceeding the capacities of ecosystems and of human systems.”

This summer’s extremes show this happening now, not in the distant future, he said, with extreme heat in Europe hitting places where it’s been rare and overwhelming the adaptive capacity of hospitals, schools and retirement homes. Extreme heat contributed to about 15,000 heat-related deaths in Germany, one of the most developed countries in the world.

“We are seeing what it entails to adapt to climate change, and we are seeing that we have an enormous gap,” Schleussner said. “We are really lagging behind. We are not prepared for what’s coming.”

UN Environment Program: World set to cross 1.5°C global warming, but can still limit, adapt to and return from higher temperatures

Click the link to read the release on the UNEP website:

Report puts best-case scenario peak temperature rise at 1.8°C; others suggest over 2°C

Above 1.5°C, climate impacts and risks of tipping points intensify with every fraction of a degree

‘Overshoot, peak and decline’ pathway best remaining option to help vulnerable nations and communities cope and return to below 1.5°C

Nairobi, 2 September 2026 – Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years, pushing climate risks and impacts to increasingly dangerous heights, but it is still possible to bring temperatures down and achieve global goals in the Paris Agreement, according to a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

The report, Limiting Overshoot, identifies an ‘overshoot, peak, and decline’ pathway as the best remaining option to minimize the magnitude and duration of this overshoot and try to return to below 1.5°C as soon as possible.

“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead. We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible. That demands an overshoot of ambition” said UN Secretary-General Antőnio Guterres.

This pathway would minimize peak temperature rise through immediate and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, on the road to net-zero, and bring down temperatures through long-term net-negative emissions, with carefully governed Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) – the process of removing carbon from the air and storing it through afforestation or other means – an essential part of the mix.

At the same time, following this pathway would involve adaptation actions that reduce vulnerability to the current, expected and unexpected impacts of climate change on societies, communities and economies – although there will likely be limits to adaptation and irreversible impacts, especially if peak temperatures are not minimized. The report stresses such a pathway would reduce risks and impacts, make adaptation less difficult and expensive, and increase the chances of lowering temperatures.

“There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5°C. Across the globe, extreme heatwaves are already proving that climate impacts will strike faster, hit harder, and last longer – costing more lives and causing deeper disruption,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Now is the time we must double down on climate action. We can – and must – get on the right path. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening resilience and adaptation, and ensuring exceedance of 1.5°C is as small and short as possible.”

Devastating impacts

The most optimistic scenario will see temperature rise peak at 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels, above the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C set by the Paris Agreement. Most other scenarios predict higher peaks.

Above 1.5°C, risks and impacts will intensify with every extra fraction of a degree and every year. Anticipated impacts include intensified extreme weather, ecosystem loss, and submersion of Small Island Developing States and low-lying coastal cities. Severe damage to human health, food security, water supplies, nature, cities, infrastructure, and economies is expected.

The report warns that the likelihood of crossing irreversible tipping points increases with the magnitude and duration of higher temperatures. These include the destabilization of major ice sheets, degradation of the Amazon rainforest and disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (the system of currents that moves warm surface water north and cold deep water south, playing a key role in regulating the climate). Some impacts may emerge abruptly, while others will accumulate over time.

Considering the scale of the risks and the co-benefits of climate interventions such as a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy – improving air quality and public health, lowering energy costs and increasing access to electricity – the report urges accelerated, collective and global action to get on an overshoot, peak and decline pathway. How quickly and strongly this action happens will define the shape and trajectory of the pathway.

Conditions for success

Strong political will and multilateralism, effective policies, inclusive governance, and finance are all important enabling conditions for action – and equity and justice must underpin all responses. Countries with greater responsibility for climate change should act the fastest with the greatest ambition.

The report also finds that mitigation and adaptation, which are mutually reinforcing, must advance together, while being responsive to emerging risks. Interventions that achieve both mitigation and adaptation goals – such as nature-based cooling – should be prioritized.

Adaptation set up now forms the foundation for efforts to come, but it must become transformational and responsive to evolving non-linear and abruptly arising risks – including those that will harm mitigation efforts.

The report emphasizes that net-zero is a milestone towards net-negative, with CDR needed in addition to, not instead of, sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. However, CDR can only contribute credibly to a return below 1.5°C if peak warming remains well below 2°C and all residual emissions are reduced. Strong governance frameworks for CDR will be critical to allow responsible deployment and manage implications for environmental integrity, equity, scale.

Responding to a changed future

Years of inaction mean that even if a return to below 1.5°C is secured, irreversible losses and permanently changed conditions are certain. Many communities may be forced to relocate or change livelihoods, while societies will face the challenge of re-adjustment. This raises issues of justice, power, and political legitimacy, which will require new, inclusive governance arrangements to resolve difficult issues.

This report is a reminder that an overshoot, peak and decline pathway is a next generation climate frontier, but one which cannot be left unattended to for the next generation to tackle. Immediate action is required for such a pathway to remain possible.

Additional Quotes

“Every fraction of a degree of warming above 1.5 leads to increasing and increasingly severe climate impacts, with our Pacific family standing on the frontlines. While we know the challenge is growing, so too is momentum. The recent energy crisis has reminded the world of the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, accelerate the transition to renewable energy and bolster climate cooperation. COP31 is an opportunity to turn our ambition into action — with Türkiye, Australia and the Pacific delivering a practical, solutions-focused COP.” – Chris Bowen, Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and President of Negotiations for COP31.

“Every fraction of a degree matters, and every year spent in overshoot increases climate risks and the potential for irreversible losses. The Overshoot Report makes clear that exceeding 1.5°C should not be seen as a new destination, but as a pathway we must urgently work to minimize and reverse. This requires rapid and sustained emissions reductions, alongside ambitious adaptation to protect people, communities and ecosystems.

COP31 must turn this urgency into concrete action. We need to accelerate global electrification, reduce methane emissions from waste, strengthen the climate resilience of cities, and enhance the resilience of marine and coastal ecosystems. At the same time, mitigation and adaptation should advance together. The choices we make today will determine how high temperatures peak, how long they remain there, and how safely we can return to 1.5°C.” – H.E. Murat Kurum, COP31 President-Designate

🔥 August 2026 not only beat the record for the warmest August on record, but it beat July 2023 for the warmest overall month on record for Planet Earth since 1940 – and likely the warmest during the entire Holocene. 😢
— Climatologist49 (@climatologist49.bsky.social) 2026-09-02T10:03:46.418Z

Water Deal Could Upend the Narrative About Agriculture — Joanna Allhands (#Arizona Farm Bureau) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Water flows to fields in Pinal County. Photo by AZFB

Click the link to read the article on the Arizona Farm Bureau website (Joanna Allhands):

August 28, 2026

Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District (CAIDD) is formally considering a deal to import water from California.

Take a second to let that sink in — because it’s counter to what most folks think about agriculture.

The assumption has long been that water augmentation is only for major cities, those that can pay the higher cost that new water sources require.

But farmers are leading the way on this conversation.

And that could impact a lot more than the Pinal County fields they irrigate.

CAIDD lost water years ago

CAIDD already knows the deep pain of Colorado River cuts.

It was among the first to see its lower-priority water eliminated in the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan.

The Eloy irrigation district secured state and federal aid to resume pumping groundwater, but those wells only produce a fraction of the water that the Central Arizona Project once delivered.

In a gravity-fed system like CAIDD’s, less water in canals means less momentum to push water to every customer.

“Some laterals are better than others,” said district president Dan Shedd, who irrigated 2,200 acres when Colorado River water was still flowing.

That’s down to about 600 acres now.

“My neighbor can’t farm as much as I can because of where the wells are situated. Most of us are less than 50%.”

Farms need extra in summer

Farmers across the district have adapted to this new reality.

Most have fallowed land. Some have sold or leased parcels to solar projects to help make ends meet.

Many remaining fields have been reconfigured into smaller plots, so lower-pressure water can move uniformly across them.

And farmers are diversifying what they grow.

“Normally, I’d have 1,600 acres in cotton,” Shedd, an Arizona Farm Bureau member, said.

“But now I’m growing wheat and garbanzo beans in the winter when there’s more water. It’s just a break-even deal.”

Summer is a different story.

Though more profitable alfalfa, cotton, corn and Bermuda grass can be grown then, it can be a struggle to pump enough water when the heat’s on and everyone needs irrigation at once.

In past years, the irrigation district has secured extra supplies from nearby providers to supplement when needs are highest.

But that water is growing scarce as others across Arizona now face cuts.

CAIDD knows it needs to do more.

Cadiz has groundwater to sell

Meanwhile, a California company called Cadiz is looking for interested parties to sell its groundwater, which it says would otherwise be lost to evaporation in a dry lakebed.

The water and land management company has secured rights to pump up to 75,000 acre-feet of water a year from an aquifer roughly the size of Lake Mead.

Its Mojave Groundwater Bank, located about two hours west of Lake Havasu City in Arizona, is neither new nor universally welcomed in California.

Opponents have tried to stop the project multiple times over 30 years.

But Cadiz recently secured the last federal permit it needs to begin converting a natural gas line to transport its water north and west.

The idea, at least initially, is to exchange that water with users who receive supplies from the State Water Project.

That water would flow to Los Angeles, in an agreement that has yet to be cemented, where users there would agree to conserve a commensurate amount of Colorado River water.

Central Arizona Project map via Mountain Town News

And then, in other agreements that still must be negotiated, 10,000 acre-feet of that water would flow to CAIDD through the Central Arizona Project canal.

Effort now is to lower the price

If this sounds complicated, it is.

Finalizing complex agreements to move water every year for at least five decades is one thing.

Lowering the price for CAIDD to officially bite on this deal is another.

“We can’t pass the cost onto food,” Cadiz CEO Susan Kennedy said, particularly when farmers already operate on slim margins.

Kennedy — a long-time California political operative — is rustling the bushes for private investment and an 80% federal funding match.

She is also working with the Bureau of Reclamation to develop a model exchange agreement that could be used to expedite other interstate water transfers.

This could change the narrative

Ten thousand acre-feet is a drop in the bucket for CAIDD, which even at diminished capacity delivered about 160,000 acre-feet last year.

It’s not enough water to restore fields that have been taken out of production.

But it is enough to provide more long-term certainty for those that remain.

If the deal comes together, it could prove to other irrigation districts that new supplies aren’t necessarily out of reach, and that agriculture has a more secure future in Arizona, despite its current water challenges.

And even if it doesn’t, district leaders contend, the conversation could open doors to other ideas and opportunities.

“This could bring water to Arizona, whether or not we can utilize it,” said Ron McEachern, CAIDD’s former general manager.

“That’s worth something.”

Prop 137 to invest in protecting and conserving water and land, preventing wildfires, coming to #Colorado voters this fall

Click the link to read the release on the Yes on Prop 137 website:

August 31, 2026

Yes on Prop 137 campaign to protect Colorado’s land and water and prevent wildfires officially launches

Supporters of Proposition 137 today officially launched their statewide campaign for the November ballot initiative to invest in preventing severe wildfires and protecting the state’s rivers, drinking water, and landscapes.

Without increasing taxes, Prop 137 would invest an estimated $175 million annually to reduce wildfire risk, protect and conserve water and land, strengthen watershed and forest health, expand access to the outdoors, and sustain Colorado’s outdoor economy.

“Your vote of ‘yes’ on Proposition 137 supports local, regional, and state-level change that prepares our communities for wildfires and keeps our homes, lands, and waters protected. Wildfire preparedness is generational; community-based solutions and state-led funding are key,” said Jennifer Mueller, CEO of The Ember Alliance  . “If you want to ensure that our kids and future generations can also enjoy the places we love as Coloradans today, then a ‘yes’ on Prop 137 is a priority.”

Prop 137 would redirect money from the state’s existing sales tax on sporting goods and outdoor equipment, and dedicate those funds to protect drinking water, prevent catastrophic wildfires, and preserve Colorado’s forests, lands, and open spaces.

“Colorado’s lands and water are foundational to our communities, economy, and way of life,” said Robyn Paulekas, executive director of Keep It Colorado  . “We have a unique opportunity to make smart, long-term investments that conserve working lands, protect water resources, expand access to the outdoors, and reduce wildfire risk. Prop 137 would provide dedicated, year-after-year funding to help meet those goals without raising taxes.”

Colorado is running out of time to protect the lands, water, and forests that define our state. As temperatures rise and drought places increasing pressure on rivers and water supplies, and wildfires intensify, this initiative will safeguard water for all.

“Denver Water is responsible for delivering clean water to more than one and a half million Coloradans. Our drinking water starts as snowpack and rainfall in the mountains, filters through our forests and flows into the rivers that supply our communities,” said Alan Salazar, CEO of Denver Water  . “But bigger, more intense wildfires are increasingly damaging our forested watersheds and degrading our source water supplies. Proposition 137 would provide crucial funding to restore our forests and make them more resilient against the threat of catastrophic wildfire, helping ensure the high-quality water supply that Coloradans depend on.”

A broad and growing coalition of water and wildfire experts, outdoor recreation leaders and small businesses, community advocates, and conservation organizations from across Colorado has endorsed the measure, which would support:

Watershed protection projects that safeguard drinking water supplies

Work to help prevent severe wildfires and restore forests in fire-prone watersheds

Conservation protection of working lands and ranches

Trail and park improvements and new state parks and open space

Wildlife corridor, habitat restoration projects, and invasive species removal

Support for Colorado’s growing outdoor recreation economy and gateway communities

Enhanced outdoor recreation opportunities across the state

“Colorado’s outdoors are the foundation of our recreation economy and a defining part of what makes our state such a special place to live, work, and play. As someone who has spent a career helping people experience these landscapes firsthand, I know how important it is to invest in protecting them for future generations,” said Bill Gamber, co-founder of Big Agnes  , a Steamboat Springs-based outdoor gear company. “Funding from Proposition 137 would enable us to conserve our land and water and expand outdoor recreation opportunities, all without increasing taxes. That’s a win for our communities, our economy, and for Coloradans now and in the years to come.”

The campaign has received dozens of endorsements   to date from groups that include: American Rivers, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Colorado State Grange, Community Agriculture Alliance, Conservation Colorado, Denver Water, Ducks Unlimited, Eagle Valley Land Trust, The Ember Alliance, Environmental Defense Fund, Great Outdoors Colorado, Keep It Colorado, Mountain Towns 2030, National Wildlife Federation, Wildfire Mitigation Council, Rural Is Rad PBC, The Conservation Fund, The Greenway Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Pikes Peak Outdoors, Routt County Wildfire Mitigation Council, San Luis Valley Great Outdoors, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Trust for Public Land, Western Resource Advocates, and The Wilderness Society.

In areas that experience low-severity burns, fire events can serve to eliminate vegetative competition, rejuvenate its growth and improve watershed conditions. But, in landscapes subjected to high or even moderate burn severity, the post-fire threats to public safety and natural resources can be extreme. Photo credit: Colorado State Forest Service

A 4.2-million-gallon sewage spill in #Colorado’s #ArkansasRiver was expected to reach John Martin Reservoir, August 31, 2026 — 9News.com

Click the link to read the article on the 9News website (Alexander Kirk). Here’s an excerpt:

September 1, 2026

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) said the sewage has been moving downstream in the Arkansas River and was expected to reach John Martin Reservoir near Las Animas beginning Monday. The City of Pueblo Wastewater Department said that state and city stormwater officials were notified of the discharge issue early Thursday morning, and said the discharge was halted by approximately 11:45 a.m. According to the wastewater department, a pipe inside of the stormwater pipe had a hole cut in the top many years ago. That hole was patched with concrete, and over time the concrete slipped from the hole. The pressure of the sanitary sewer pipe to keep the bypass pumps running caused untreated wastewater to come out of the hole and flow into the stormwater pipe, which flows into the Arkansas River.

Arkansas River Basin — Graphic via the Colorado Geological Survey

Denver man arrested on charges of tampering with Front Range water supply systems, diverting ditch — The #Denver Post

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:

August 28, 2026

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the 14th District Attorney’s Office this week charged Fabrizio Lorenzin, 65, with four felonies in connection with repeated sabotage of the Berthoud Pass Watershed Ditch and its security cameras over several years. The remote ditch system begins at 11,200 feet high on its namesake pass in the mountains and helps funnel water to Northglenn and Golden. The ditch’s water is stored…in Standley Lake in Adams County. Lorenzin allegedly forced open headgates on the system’s ditches, damaging the infrastructure and diverting millions of dollars’ worth of drinking water from its intended destination downstream. Prosecutors allege that he also stole cameras meant to watch the district’s property…

Law enforcement first began investigating the possible tampering with the headgates in August 2019, according to an arrest affidavit documenting the investigation. That’s when four of the gates that control the direction of the flow of water were vandalized, diverting water worth approximately $1.3 million, the affidavit says…Headgates were damaged again in 2022, diverting $4.3 million in water, the affidavit says. Trail cameras again photographed the same man with the same backpack. Another headgate was damaged in 2023 when it was forced open and propped up with rocks. This time, the trail cameras were also stolen. In 2024, the affidavit says, federal investigators with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency installed three cameras with Apple AirTags attached. More images from the area showed the same man with the same backpack. In August 2024, the AirTags on the stolen cameras pinged from inside Lorenzin’s home, the affidavit says, and investigators searched it on two occasions, finding the disassembled EPA cameras and a laptop that contained images from other stolen cameras. A review of the search history on the laptop found multiple searches for information related to sabotage on the Berthoud Pass system as well as information about trail cameras and headgates, the documents says.

Graphic via the Clear Creek Watershed Foundation

Amid exceptional drought in Eagle County, #Colorado Division of Water Resources places call on #EagleRiver — #Vail Daily

Eagle County is currently within the region of Colorado facing D4 conditions, which is the most extreme level of drought. Colorado Drought Monitor map August 25, 2026

Click the link to read the article on the Vail Daily website (John LaConte). Here’s an excerpt:

August 28, 2026

Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority now required to replace diversions with more water

On Aug. 14, the Colorado Division of Water Resources placed what’s known as a “call” on the Eagle River, meaning that any water user with junior water rights is now required to stop diverting, or replace their diversions with augmentation water. The call came as no surprise to water managers, and is not uncommon in drought years when the Eagle River between Gore Creek and Lake Creek reaches an average flow that is less than 85 cubic feet per second between May 1 and Sept. 30. That minimum average threshold was set in a court decree issued Oct. 7, 1981, which said that minimum streamflow is “required to preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree on the Eagle River.” What is uncommon, said Tim Friday, director of water & utility resources for the Eagle River Water & Sanitation District, is the fact that the Colorado Division of Water Resources consulted with the district before placing the call on the Eagle River. The call could have been placed a month earlier, as the average minimum flow had dropped below 85 cfs back in July, but the Division of Water Resources stalled it a month in case flows came back up…The Eagle River Water & Sanitation District isn’t as affected by the call, as many of the water rights in the district are senior to the 1981 court decree, but the Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority, which also supplies water to many properties in Eagle County, has water rights that are junior to the 1981 decree…For more information about the instream flow rights on the Eagle River, visit Colorado’s Decision Support Systems website.

🦫 WILDLIFE WATCH 🦅

📸 PARTING SHOT 🎞️

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Can best practices be shared between ranches?

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The gold fever that brought tens of thousands of miners into Northern California in 1848 led to related discoveries of gold at La Paz in 1862 (before Arizona was a state), and in 1896 on the Klondike River.

Steamboats came to the rescue

The Cocopah – the River’s Largest Steamboat

Steamship Operations Brought to a Sudden End by the Railroad

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August Highlights:

Temperature

Seasonal

Year-to-date

Sea Ice

Tropical Cyclones

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See also:

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The Lifeline of the Wasatch: Pioneer Irrigation in the Great Basin

Gravity-Fed Engineering and Infrastructure

Communal Management and Legal Evolution

The Radical Cooperative Theology of Mormon Water Sharing

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This Week’s Drought Summary

Looking Ahead

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How wetlands work

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How can scientists track small birds?

New tech answers an old question

Why take such a circuitous route?

Barometric geolocation provides new data

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What Is the Record of Decision?

A Decision-Making Framework

Is the Latest Plan Enough?

What’s Next?

Implementing Solutions or Handing the Reins to the Supreme Court

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The ingredients

The future

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🌵 Public Lands 🌲

🤖 Data Center Watch 👾

⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️

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