Day: October 13, 2026

Deadpool Data Dump: #LakePowell’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad water year; Plus — Ruminating on the oil and gas infrastructure that clutters the landscape and sometimes explodes — Jonathan P. Thompson #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Land Desk graphic using data from the Bureau of Reclamation.

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

October 9, 2026

💀 DEADPOOL DATA DUMP 🌊

Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reservoir, serves as a sort of barometer of the Colorado River watershed’s overall health. The reservoir and river have been struggling since the great aridification’s grim onset in 2002. While the river continues to flow, barely, the 2026 Water Year, characterized by one of the worst snow droughts on record, nearly finished off the reservoir. But in the end, it was saved from dropping to “de facto deadpool” by heavy rain at the beginning and end of the water year, and by larger-than-normal releases from upstream reservoirs. 

  • 4.46 million acre-feet: Total Lake Powell inflow from the Colorado, Dirty Devil, Escalante, and San Juan rivers in water year 2026. That’s the third lowest on record, behind 2002 and 2021. This is in spite of the fact that the 2026 snowpack was far lower than those two years, and melting mountain snowpack provides about 80% of the river’s water.
  • The Colorado River Basin experienced its warmest water year on record (in 131 years) in WY2026.

  • 3.72 million acre-feet. Total Lake Powell unregulated inflow in water year 2026. This is the estimate of how much water would have flowed into the reservoir without any supplementary releases from upstream reservoirs. Which is to say, the feds robbed Flaming Gorge, Navajo, and Blue Mesa of about 750,000 acre-feet to save Powell from shrinking even more. That was bad for those upstream reservoirs and the irrigators, anglers, recreational users, and communities that rely on them, and there’s no way it can be repeated if this winter is below average.
  • 6 million acre-feet: Total releases from Glen Canyon Dam in water year 2026. This is the lowest release since the very early days of the dam (in the 1960s). This means less water in the Grand Canyon and less water flowing into Lake Mead. 
  • 181,111 acre-feet: Estimated amount of water that evaporated from Lake Powell in water year 2026. This is equivalent to more than half of Nevada’s total annual allotment from the Colorado River. 
  • 1.72 million acre-feet: Lake Powell’s water deficit — or the difference between outflows (incl. evaporation) and inflows — for water year 2026. 
  • 27 feet: Amount the surface level of the reservoir fell in water year 2026, putting it within seven feet of the level the federal governnment has chosen to “defend,” meaning they’ll pull out all the stops to keep it from dropping below that (for reasons the Land Desk has gone over many times before). The late September storms brought the level back up a couple of feet.

Feds release two-year Colorado River plan, Nevada sues — Jonathan P. Thompson

Anyone who lived through the 2002 water year probably thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse. Then along came 2026 and, voila! It was really, really bad — at least as far as the snow goes. And snow is really important, because it provides about 80% of the Colorado River’s flow.
But what’s this? The accumulated precipitation in 2026 was actually … not bad? Notice the big jumps at the very beginning of the water year (far left on the graph) and the very end.

A Colorado River glossary and primer — Jonathan P. Thompson

🛢️ FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES 📈

THE NEWS: Not one, but two natural gas pipelines ruptured and erupted in flames at nearly the same time on opposite sides of New Mexico. One was in the Permian Basin in Lea County, where a gas line ruptured and caught fire, killing two people. Details of the incident have not been released, nor have the names of the victims. The other was near La Boca, New Mexico, just south of the Colorado line (and can be seen in the video above). It shot flames high into the sky and ignited a wildfire.

THE CONTEXT: Several years ago, as the oil boom in the Greater Chaco Region in northwestern New Mexico was nearing its peak, I sat down in the sleek, modern headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management’s Farmington field office with two BLM officials to talk about the oil boom. Before we got down to business, one of them asked: “Should we show him the scare map?” 

The answer, I guess, was yes, because her colleague handed me the paper showing every well ever drilled in the San Juan Basin, with little red dots for gas, black ones for oil.

It was scary. The northern and central sections of the Basin were almost solid red; in the south and west, dense swarms of black dots strung out along the oil-bearing formations. Dark pinpricks surrounded Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Huerfano Mountain, or Dzil Na’oodilii, where First Woman and First Man and then Changing Woman lived — a sort of Garden of Eden in Navajo cosmology — was embroidered with red and black. The BLM office we sat in, on a fine piece of real estate in the upper-class part of town, has three wells within a quarter mile, and a pumpjack grinds away right next to a golf course green down the road.

To find a stretch of land anywhere in the core of the Basin that hasn’t been drilled or isn’t covered by roads, tanks, pipes or some other hydrocarbon-related infrastructure is nearly impossible — the infrastructure is the landscape. “We’ve got so much pipeline in the ground, it’s like rebar,” said the official, with a tinge of glee. “If you had an earthquake, the ground wouldn’t even shake.”

The official seemed less disturbed than simply fascinated by this fact, and also didn’t seem bothered that he and his colleagues were facilitating even more infrastructure by handing out drilling permits by the dozen and clearing the way for thousands of new wells and all the roads, gathering systems, and pipelines that go with it. 

The San Juan structural basin is primarily in New Mexico. By US Geological Survey – Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the San Juan Basin Province of New Mexico and Colorado, 2002, USGS Fact Sheet FS-147-02, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5749904

I happen to be writing this at a campsite in the heart of the San Juan Basin gas field. While I can gaze out across the landscape and see nothing but beauty, including the evening’s last light on Dzil Na’oodilii, I am constantly reminded of the ubiquity of the hydrocarbon infrastructure all around me. From just over a little rise comes a slightly squeaky and clanky sound of inadequately lubed bearings, and the low hum and whir of dozens of near and distant pumps and compressors and fans serenades me as I watch the stars unfurl across the big bowl of the sky. 

There’s another map of this area that’s even scarier than the one those folks showed me. It includes oil and gas-related “incidents,” which is to say ruptures and spills and explosions and fires and major leaks. Those, too, are all over the map, and happen with disturbing frequency. Usually they’re not as dramatic as the two explosions, but they can be harmful: hundreds of gallons of crude oil sloshed onto the ground and into waterways or aquifers, thousands of cubic feet of methane wafting into the air and adding the potent greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.

When I watch the debate over permitting reform, or read the thoughts of the Abundance crowd, a part of me agrees with the credo of building more. The idea of a new New Deal appeals to me, if done right. Line the highways and interstates with high-voltage transmission lines to carry clean energy across the region, build utility-scale solar on reclaimed coal mines and next to old coal plants and on marginal farmland, build factories to manufacture solar panels and batteries. It would create jobs, revitalize economies, and put more clean energy onto the grid. 

Then I hear news about these explosions, look at the oil and gas incident map, and come out here and find that I can’t take a picture of spectacular and sacred landscapes without a tank or well or road or drill pad showing up in it, somewhere. The Abundance folks and the proponents of the permitting reform legislation, or the Bipartisan Affordability and Jobs Act, want to cover the landscape and our communities with even more of this stuff. While many of them support the bill because it would expedite clean energy development, they don’t mind the fact that it would do the same for natural gas and oil and petroleum pipelines. And, in the social media wars raging over this bill, they discount the concerns of environmental groups worry about the cost we pay when blindly adhering to the credo of Build More Stuff. 

It makes me want to bring these folks out here to the San Juan Basin and take a little walk across this landscape, which is so suffused with beauty, but also cluttered with the detritus of society’s urge for more, always more.

📸 PARTING SHOT 🎞️

Angel Peak in the San Juan Basin at sunrise. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Aspen to remain in Stage 3 Water Shortage — The #Aspen Times

The diversion dam on Maroon Creek operated by the City of Aspen, which gets its water supply mainly from Castle Creek, but also from Maroon Creek. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
City of Aspen Utilities Director Tyler Christoff and Operations Manager Justin Forman check for anchor ice formation at the city’s Maroon Creek diversion. Photo credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (Grace West). Here’s an excerpt:

October 3, 2026

The city of Aspen has decided to remain under Stage 3 Water Shortage heading into winter, in a move that officials are highlighting as unprecedented.  Aspen enacted Stage 3 for the first time ever this past May, Utilities Director Erin Loughlin confirmed, and the extension of the restrictions means the critical need to conserve water isn’t over yet. 

“Since Stage Three declaration was enacted in May 2026, drought conditions have persisted throughout the Roaring Fork watershed,” said Loughlin. “The overarching concern remains persistently low river flows throughout the Roaring Fork watershed.”

Aspen’s municipal water system depends on the surface water diversions from Maroon and Castle creeks, according to her. The stream flows of both creeks rely on consistent release of water from snowmelt throughout the year — this year, however, the stream flows were compromised by the record-low snowpack during the 2025/26 winter.

“Given meteorological forecasts, the Water Department cannot be certain that forecasted precipitation will improve the snowpack upon which the water system relied upon at this time,” she said. “Staff continues to monitor conditions and will bring any recommended change to council for their review and consideration when appropriate.”

Colorado Drought Monitor map October 6, 2026.

Northwest #Colorado Council of Governments report: A Water Economy #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click here to access the report on the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments website. Here’s an excerpt:

July 2026

Background & Study Purpose

This study is an update to a 2012 Report that explores the relationship between water and economic activity in a portion of western Colorado where the interaction of precipitation, elevation, and location produces water for the Headwaters Region, much of Colorado, and the Western United States.

The Headwaters Region encompasses the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. The Headwaters Counties consist of Eagle, Grand, Gunnison, Pitkin, Routt, and Summit County, depicted in Figure 1-1, on the next page. The water in the Headwaters Counties plays a special, dual role in meeting the needs of residents, businesses, and visitors while at the same time, meeting legal obligations for providing water to 40 million people in Colorado and the western U.S.

The study rests in the fact that water resources emanating from the Headwaters Counties are neither consistent nor unlimited, subject to considerable future uncertainty. Besides year-to-year weather variations, longer term climate changes are evident, and climate scientists expect these trends in climate change to continue. Regardless, economic activity in the Headwaters Counties is not standing still; leaders there seek prosperity, looking to further develop economic activity in their counties, the same as all counties around the State. At the same time, water providers on the Front Range in Colorado are seeking increased water supplies, identifying transmountain diversions (TMDs) from the Headwaters Counties as a potential source.

Couple this with the uncertainty related to interstate Colorado River allocations under the Colorado River Compact, and it is clear the Headwaters Counties should be worried about water scarcity. In short, all these forces bear down upon the increasingly less predictable but indispensable water supplies originating in the Headwaters Counties.

Representing the Headwaters Counties, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) through its Water Quality/Quantity Committee (QQ) sought a current understanding of the relationship of the local economies to the evolving availability of surface waters. NWCCOG retained Harvey Economics (HE) to prepare this study.