After Utah and six other states along the Colorado River failed to reach a deal on how to share its dwindling water supply, the federal government on Friday released its own 10-year outline.
Colorado River Collaborative
This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River atgreatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver
Under the proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada would share in cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet per year. The framework doesn’t mandate cuts for Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Instead, it identifies a conservation goal for the Upper Basin — 200,000 acre-feet per year — about as much as Utah’s Deer Creek and East Canyon reservoirs together can hold. The plan would also allow for smaller annual releases from Lake Powell of down to 5 million acre-feet, compared to the current 6 million acre-feet, with new operating guidelines every two years.
Utah’s chief Colorado River negotiator, Gene Shawcroft, praised the proposal on Friday, telling reporters it recognizes the reality of the water available, not just the demand. But he emphasized it provides a broad framework, with the details to follow in coming days.
“I would just simply say, this is a bridge, not a destination,” Shawcroft said in a virtual news conference. “It certainly could be a bridge over troubled waters, but perhaps a bridge over no waters. We just aren’t quite sure.”
He and Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, were still reading through the 2,600 pages contained in the bureau’s environmental impact statement released Friday.
Haas said the state will know more about what it’s contending with when it gets a copy of a two-year operations plan for 2027 and 2028 in coming days, though the exact timeline wasn’t clear.
The Colorado River is pictured where if flows near Hite, just beyond the upper reaches of Lake Powell, on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Mexico, contributing 27% of Utah’s water supply. It’s shrinking because of drought, overuse and hotter temperatures linked to climate change.
This year’s record-high temperatures and lowest snowpack on record aren’t helping. Normally, Colorado River runoff is about 13 million acre-feet, Shawcroft said. Now it’s 3.5 million acre-feet.
He told reporters: “We’re in a dire situation.”
On Friday, Arizona’s Department of Water Resources called the proposal’s cuts for the Lower Basin “unacceptable,” saying such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”
The agency described negotiations over many months as “an exercise in lowering expectations, particularly for a long-term, seven-state agreement on operating this vital river system.”
The disagreement could find its way into a courtroom soon. Arizona and Utah have both taken steps this year to build up litigation funds.
“For Utah, litigation is never our plan A,” Haas told reporters Friday. “Whether it’s a plan B, depending on the context of this document, that remains to be seen. But litigation is not going to get us anywhere on this river. It’s not going to get us more water.”
At issue in the negotiations is who absorbs necessary cuts. Upper Basin states argue they use less water than Lower Basin states, don’t have huge reservoirs to store water in dry years, and lack legal authority to place significant restrictions on water users.
Lake Powell and the Wahweap Marina are pictured near Page, Arizona on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The proposal out Friday is adaptable and allows the states to keep negotiating, said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” Burgum said in a statement.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, in a joint statement with his counterparts in the other upstream states, said they’re encouraged that incoming operating guidelines “will better reflect existing water supply, which must underpin any practicable plan going forward.”
They went on to say that both the upper and lower divisions of the basin “are feeling the pain of severe drought. This is a reality that all states, and the federal government, will need to address practically, which is why a seven-state agreement will provide the best outcome for all water users in the Colorado River Basin.”
Water use is outpacing the river’s flows, and that overconsumption adds up. The combined amount of water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is at its lowest point since before Glen Canyon Dam began to fill up in 1963, the bureau said in its Friday news release.
If water levels dip to critical lows, as forecasts suggest they could by late this year, the nation’s two largest reservoirs could fail to produce power. If their depths continue to slide, they’ll fail to send water downstream.
Conservation and recreation groups have called for an end to the gridlock, saying it’s dragging on in the background while hotter and drier conditions are driving up wildfire risks, air quality concerns and restrictions on the water supply.
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
The federal government on Friday formalized a set of guidelines for managing water use in the Colorado River Basin over the next decade, if Colorado and six other Western states can’t come to an agreement on how to deal with declining flows caused in large part by climate change.
“The Department has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a press release. “This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions.”
Under the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s “preferred alternative” for the management of the river’s reservoir system, outlined in a extensive environmental impact statement, the burden of the most severe cuts would continue to fall on the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, which could face mandatory cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet of water. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming would face only voluntary conservation targets totaling 200,000 acre-feet.
All seven states were parties to the Colorado River Compact, a 1922 agreement governing the use of water from the vital Western watershed. Today, the Colorado River provides water to an area inhabited by 40 million people across the Southwest, though agricultural uses account for the vast majority of consumption.
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
Since 2000, a megadrought caused largely by global warming — the region’s worst dry spell in at least 1,200 years — has stressed water supplies across the basin and pushed the Colorado River Compact to a breaking point. The last set of federal guidelines to address shortages, issued nearly 20 years ago, will expire Jan. 1, and the seven Colorado River Compact states failed to reach a new agreement before a federally imposed deadline in February.
The combined amount of water stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the Colorado River system’s two key reservoirs, fell this month to its lowest level since May 1957 — before Lake Powell, created by the Glen Canyon Dam, had even begun to fill.
Without a major turnaround in hydrologic conditions in the near future, water levels in Lake Powell are expected to fall by next spring to below “minimum power pool,” at which point the Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric turbines would be unable to operate.
Negotiations over a comprehensive new agreement have led to an increasingly bitter dispute between the Upper Basin states — led by Colorado, the river’s headwaters state and by far the Upper Basin’s largest water user — and the Lower Basin states, especially Arizona, which has borne the brunt of the cuts imposed in recent years. Arizona is widely expected to launch a high-stakes legal challenge as soon as this summer, alleging Colorado and other Upper Basin states are failing to meet an obligation under the original Colorado River Compact to allow enough water to flow downstream.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a joint statement Friday with the governors of the other three Upper Basin states, saying that “both the Upper and Lower divisions of the basin are feeling the pain of severe drought,” and that they were “committed to continued good-faith discussions with our counterparts.”
“Many hours of meetings and negotiations took place between the Colorado River Basin states and these discussions will continue,” the statement said. “Today’s framework does not represent a final solution, but enables the River to be managed in the short-term while the seven states and (the Interior Department) continue to negotiate a consensus solution.”
In the absence of a new agreement among the states, the Bureau of Reclamation says it will continue to update its new guidelines every two years until 2036.
Andrea Travnicek, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said the plan “strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability … given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users.”
In a statement, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said he was “disappointed” by the failure to reach a new long-term agreement among the seven Colorado River Compact states.
“While a two-year operating plan is the bare minimum needed to operate the river, a long-term, consensus agreement that recognizes real hydrologic conditions is the only durable solution to bring certainty to the Colorado River,” Bennet said.
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Below is the Precipitation Accumulation in South Platte graph from the NRCS for August 3, 2026. This morning precipitation is at 75% of the median (down 1% one week), and 66% of the water year median (up 1% one week). There are 58 days left in the water year.
There is a chance for showers today, a chance for Thunderstorms Tuesday, then a chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday in the central mountains. There is a chance for thunderstorms today and Tuesday, with a slight chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday in the northern mountains. There is a slight chance for thunderstorms today and Tuesday, down here, about 227 miles from the Battle of Milk Creek Park near Meeker. The location is the site of the Battle of Milk Creek where Ute Indians ambushed U.S. troops led by MajorThomas T. Thornburgh, 18 miles (29 km) north of present day Meeker, Colorado. From Wikipedia:
Major Thomas T. Thornburgh led a command of 153 soldiers, and twenty-five militiamen, to the White River Indian Agency from Fort Steele on September 21, 1879, in response to a request for assistance by the Nathan C. Meeker, U.S. Government Indian Agent…On September 29, 1879, Ute warriors simultaneously ambushed Thornburgh’s forces and, at the Indian Agency, killed Meeker and Meeker’s employees. Ute warriors, led by Chief Colorow, attacked Thornburgh’s forces at Milk Creek on the northern edge of the reservation, about 18 miles from the White River Indian Agency. Within a few minutes, Major Thornburgh and 13 men were killed, including all his officers above the rank of captain. Another 28 men were wounded. Three-quarters of the horses and mules were killed at leisure by the surrounding Utes…Surviving troops dug in behind the wagon trains and animals’ bodies for defense. One man rode hard to get out a request for reinforcements. The US forces held out for several days…The troops were reinforced by 35 African-American cavalrymen known as Buffalo Soldiers from the 9th Cavalry at Fort Lewis in southern Colorado…Larger U.S. Army relief columns were sent from two forts, Fort Steele and Fort D.A. Russell…ColonelWesley Merritt commanded five columns of troops from the 5th Cavalry Regiment, or about 350 troops, who traveled by train and marched to reach the surviving forces on Milk Creek on October 5. By the time Colonel Merritt arrived, the Utes had already dispersed.
Here’s a look at the 7-Day Colorado precipitation map through July 31, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center (latest map available from HPRCC this morning). Precipitation in the South Platte Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 0.30” to 1.80”.
Here’s the 7-Day percent of normal precipitation map through July 30, 2026 from the High Plains Regional Climate Center (latest map available from HPRCC this morning). Precipitation in the South Platte River Basin along the Continental Divide of the Americas ranged from 130% to 300% of normal.
Below is the 7-day Quantitative Precipitation Forecast for the week of August 3, 2026. Precipitation is anticipated for the mountains of the South Platte River Basin and may total up to 0.10″.
Below are the 8-14 day outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, issued August 2, 2026, for temperature and precipitation, for the week starting August 10, 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 June 28, 2026. There was a small one class improvement in Elbert County. Drought and abnormal dryness covers 97.50% 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 July 28, 2026.
Here’s the US Drought Monitor Map from last week along with the one week U.S. change map.
Finally, here’s a map showing the effect on temperature from fossil fuel combustion and methane venting for the 9-month period from October 2026 through June 2026.
Most of the West has just experienced the warmest nine-month period during the last 131 years, putting the region on pace to have its hottest water year on record.
You know the Colorado River crisis is serious when the Trump administration is willing to use hundreds of millions of dollars from President Biden’s climate law to help to solve it.
As of Wednesday night, federal officials had yet to release their plan for mandatory water cutbacks along the Colorado — a crucial water source for tens of millions of people and millions of acres of farmland across the American West. But with a plan expected later this week, details were starting to trickle out.
The L.A. Times’ Ian James reported that Trump’s Interior Department would accept a proposal submitted by California, Arizona and Nevada — the Lower Basin states — to slash their water use by 12%, 31% and 28%, respectively, through 2028. They’ll receive $350 million from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to support water conservation.
The Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — will get $100 million in conservation funding. But unlike their downstream neighbors, they won’t face mandatory water cuts. However much water they end up saving, that will be good enough.
It’s always possible the plan will change. I’m eager to see the final details.
While we wait, let’s hear from one of the West’s most thoughtful and well-informed Colorado River chroniclers.
That would be Zak Podmore, author of “Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River.” Earlier this week, he and I talked for an hour and took audience questions on Zoom; it was a great time. Thank you to everyone who joined us. Paid subscribers to Climate-Colored Goggles can scroll up to watch the full video.
Here are five lessons that stood out to me from our conversation — all of which are relevant to the high-stakes conflict playing out among the states.
1. We’re not doomed. Earth is resilient
My favorite thing about “Life After Dead Pool” is its hopeful message.
Most headlines about the Colorado River these days are gloomy. For instance, the last time Lake Mead and Lake Powell held as little water as they do right now was 1956 — before Lake Powell existed, meaning all the water was in Mead. Powell is currently 23% full; Mead is 27% full. These are the largest reservoirs in the United States.
A river returns. Almost 50 miles of the San Juan, once inundated by Powell Reservoir, are flowing free. Photo credit: Morgan Sjogren
But Podmore’s book flips the script, offering a firsthand look the amazing ecological recovery taking place as Lake Powell shrinks.
In and around the reservoir, which was flooded by Glen Canyon Dam more than 60 years ago, native vegetation is returning much faster than scientists thought possible — especially in narrow side canyons inundated by Powell. Exploring these remote, newly accessible places inspired Podmore to write his book.
“Instead of hearing the story that I grew up hearing — which was that Glen Canyon Dam had all these negative environmental consequences, it drowned this beautiful place — I was hearing these conversations from these researchers who were talking about the landscape that was coming back, and how excited they were about the way the ecology was recovering, and the way the endangered fish were expanding their habitat,” Podmore said.
“Instead of a story about being too late, it was a story about realizing that I was right on time, as we all are, to see the rebirth of Glen Canyon,” he added.
The Colorado River flows through Glen Canyon in 1958, before the dam was built. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
2. Those who don’t learn from history…
Podmore starts the book by imagining what Indigenous life might have been like in and around Glen Canyon nearly 1,000 years ago — when the region had a far larger population than it does today.
He wanted to show that the Colorado River Basin’s human history began long before white settlement — and that even environmentalists have often ignored the watershed’s Indigenous past.
“I was definitely indoctrinated into the mainstream environmental school of thought as I was growing up,” he said. “I had a copy of the really famous book about Glen Canyon called, ‘The Place No One Knew,’ which was published by the Sierra Club in the ’60s and talked about how nobody cared enough about Glen Canyon to protect it. And then I realized later on that [the] title was very offensive, and [in fact] there were people who knew Glen Canyon very well and lived there for thousands of years, and who were displaced as the waters of Lake Powell started to fill, in the case of many Navajo families.”
Podmore’s opening scene describes a 10,000-gallon stone water tank built by Ancestral Pueblo farmers, the ruins of which were eventually buried by Lake Powell. The tank’s key feature: a drain at the bottom, so that irrigation could continue no matter how low water levels got.
Diagram showing critical reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Land Desk diagram with data from the Bureau of Reclamation.
Lake Powell doesn’t have a drain at the bottom. It could certainly use one.
3. The Upper Basin states aren’t doing enough
If Powell’s water levels sink much lower, water won’t be able to pass through the dam’s hydropower turbines, which generate cheap electricity for communities across the West. That wouldn’t be a “dead pool” situation; water could still flow downstream to the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead through bypass tubes lower in the dam. But the bypass tubes are surprisingly frail and could break with sustained use.
Translation: We are frighteningly close to “de facto dead pool.” That’s why the Trump administration is ordering everyone to use less water.
Well, not everyone. California, Arizona and Nevada are willing to cut back dramatically, and federal officials seem happy to make them do it. The Upper Basin states — the ones upstream of Lake Powell — say they shouldn’t have to commit to mandatory reductions, in part because they already consume a lot less.
[ed. It is not possible to measure or marshall water to Lake Powell (lack of infrastructure, gaining and losing reaches, priority, no way to color water in the river). Inflows are calculated values, or the height of the column at the dam. The Upper Basin consumes a lot less than their allocation under the compact, so yes, much less than the Lower Basin. Here’s an AI recap of inflows to Lake Powell.]
In a New York Times opinion piece earlier this year, I argued that the Upper Basin states need to do more. Podmore agreed.
“It’s a tricky situation, because the Lower Basin has always used more water, and that’s a convenient argument for the Upper Basin,” he said. “But also, there’s more people in the Lower Basin. And the most productive agricultural land that’s irrigated with Colorado River water is located in the Lower Basin.”
“Even with the cuts that the Lower Basin has offered, we still have a long way to go to balance the water budget,” he added. “Everyone needs to pitch in.”
Farmland in California’s Imperial Valley, irrigated with Colorado River water. (Photo by Sammy Roth)
4. Alfalfa isn’t (always) the enemy
Farmers are often vilified for sucking up copious amounts of water — and with good reason. Irrigated agriculture consumes more than half the water in the Colorado River Basin, with alfalfa and other cattle feed accounting for a stunning 32% of overall water use. (This is one of several good reasons to eat fewer hamburgers.)
The Colorado River’s largest water user, by far, is California’s Imperial Valley, where farmers grow vegetables, alfalfa and other crops. There’s no sustainable future for the American West that doesn’t involve Imperial using less water.
But easy as it is to hate on Imperial, Podmore pointed out that when the Lower Basin uses water, that water stays in the river for a long time, supporting healthy ecosystems along the way. And because Imperial is very far downstream, water flowing to alfalfa farmers there carries huge environmental benefits.
“The way that water gets from the Rocky Mountains to the Imperial Valley — or to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Phoenix — is through the Grand Canyon. It’s through Glen Canyon. It’s through Canyonlands National Park,” Podmore said. “It’s through all these important and beautiful places.”
“If the Lower Basin agrees to a bunch of cuts — if L.A. builds tons of desalination plants — that would in theory be good, because you have to divert less water from the river,” he added. But at the same time, “that means less water in the river.”
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to access the EIS on the Reclamation website. Here’s the abstract:
July 31, 2026
The Secretary of the Department of the Interior, acting through the Bureau of Reclamation, proposes the adoption of new guidelines and coordinated management strategies to address Lake Powell and Lake Mead through their full operating range to take effect when the current agreements expire in 2026. Management strategies will primarily focus on the operation of Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, but may include actions upstream and downstream of these facilities to protect critical reservoir elevations.
This Final EIS has been prepared to inform the Secretary’s timely adoption of a new set of guidelines that would be sufficiently robust and provide improved predictability to all water users and managers in the Colorado River Basin. This Final EIS has been prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act to address the formulation and evaluation of specific interim criteria and to identify the potential environmental impacts of implementing such criteria.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
A pronghorn hangs out among Wyoming wind turbines. Better integration of the Western grid would allow California and Arizona to draw on Wyoming wind to back up solar when the sun goes down. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Countries around the globe are proving that cutting greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t have to come at the expense of vulnerable communities, workers, Indigenous peoples or ecosystems. A new United Nations Environment Programme report released Tuesday highlights a range of international laws and policies that are putting the once-aspirational idea of a “just transition” into practice.
In climate and energy policy, a just transition aims to shift economies away from fossil fuels while ensuring that the costs and benefits are shared fairly. That means creating alternative livelihoods for workers and communities dependent on fossil fuels, involving affected people in decision-making and creating new economic opportunities.
Although the term “just transition” often is swept into ideological debates about climate and energy policy, the underlying concept is simple. It’s like planning to replace an unsafe community bridge. Everyone agrees a new bridge is needed, but if people can’t afford the toll, or if the construction cuts off neighborhoods, the project may solve one logistical problem while creating several others. A just transition means designing the changes so the benefits outweigh the burdens, especially for the people most affected, by involving them in the process.
The report marks a shift from 10 years ago, when “just transition” was a broad principle embedded in the Paris Agreement. Drawing on legal and policy developments from around the world, the UNEP report emphasizes that integrating principles such as participation and transparency is key to accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy and making it more sustainable.
Fairness is not an optional add-on; it’s crucial for the long-term success of transition policies, said Patricia Kameri-Mbote, director of UNEP’s law division, who reviewed the report for the international agency.
“The design and implementation of transition processes will determine whether there is a transition at all,” Kameri-Mbote said. “Just transition is a test of governance, legitimacy, and the rule of law.”
After studying just transition approaches in different countries, the authors wrote: “There is no one-size-fits-all model for just transition. It must be context-specific and grounded in national realities.”
In Poland, where coal has long been central to the economy, the government negotiated a long-term agreement with mining unions before closing mines. The plan included a gradual phaseout with retraining, economic assistance for towns and support for families to give communities years, not months, to adjust to the changes.
Colombia is granting Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities a stake in renewable energy projects and the revenue they generate. Indonesia is helping former coal towns rebuild economies around tourism and local businesses. And Canada has backed financing that allows Indigenous communities to own stakes in clean-energy and infrastructure projects, rather than simply hosting them.
“Making just transition work in practice is complex, nuanced and context-specific,” Kameri-Mbote wrote via email. But the case studies analyzed in the report helped identify key elements of a resilient and just transition, including strong human rights and environmental laws, effective access to courts and “adequate and accountable financing,” she added.
A Fairer World
Ultimately, a just transition is about making the world fairer, said Rachel Cleetus, senior climate and energy policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report shows that what matters most is people’s everyday lives, affordable access to energy and protecting vulnerable populations from the devastating impacts of intensifying climate extremes.
Cleetus said the report doesn’t directly address the fossil fuel industry’s near-stranglehold over climate and energy policy. Policies to promote just transitions must, at some point, also break that power, she said. [ed. emphasis mine]
Nikki Reisch, climate and energy program director at the Center for International Environmental Law, said via email that the report’s focus on rule of law, rights and inclusion is critical, but added that “it’s also critical to name what we are transitioning away from – fossil fuels – and what justice looks like after centuries of harm.”
Last year’s International Court of Justice climate advisory opinion made clear that “States have a legal duty to prevent and remedy climate harm and protect human rights,” she said. “That’s not possible without leaving fossil fuels behind and holding polluters to account.”
Grounded in Law
The report traces the roots of the just transition concept to the U.S. labor movement in the 1970s as an emerging response to perceived threats of environmental regulation to jobs in certain industries. Unions began adopting transition resolutions, and in 1997, an international coalition of unions and environmental advocates founded the global Just Transition Alliance.
The idea entered climate discussions in the late 1990s, “when international trade union federations started using the term to describe potential job losses associated with a rapid move away from fossil fuels, while acknowledging the labor risks posed by climate change itself,” according to the report.
As the United Nations climate talks eyed binding emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s, climate change was controversial in the international labor movement. British, German and Spanish unions supported binding greenhouse gas cuts, while many North American unions, including the United Mineworkers of America, lobbied against them.
At the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in 2025, the 198 countries in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to shift from planning to implementation.
They confirmed that transition pathways are nationally determined, must align with the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming and should be implemented through each country’s climate plan.
The new report “rightly argues that justice must be built into both the process and the outcomes of the transition,” said Chukwumerije Okereke, professor of global governance and public policy at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
“People are talking about a ‘just transition’ because experience has shown that climate policies succeed only when they are perceived as fair,” he said. “If workers lose jobs, communities bear disproportionate costs, or developing countries are expected to decarbonize without the resources to do so, political resistance grows.”
For many developing countries, justice also means “preserving the policy space to pursue economic development while tackling climate change,” he said. The next phase of global debates about just transitions will extend beyond protecting workers to making sure countries maintain economic independence so they can design transition plans best suited to their own circumstances, he said.
The new report tries to formulate a definition of just transition that goes beyond the traditional labor-centric or sectoral approach “by leveraging an environmental rule of law framework,” Kameri-Mbote said.
The growing urgency of the energy transition bolsters the need for strong environmental laws and institutions because governments can be tempted to focus on cutting emissions while overlooking who bears the costs, who benefits and who gets a say, she said. The report shows that environmental rule of law provides guardrails that can help ensure a rapid transition is fair and sustainable.
Directly writing just transition principles into law is a key step, including rights-based approaches aimed at preventing violations. And, the report says, affected people must have real influence early in the planning process. They also need a reliable legal system to challenge bad decisions or when governments or companies don’t follow the rules.
Environmental rule of law is the machinery that turns just transition from a good intention into something enforceable and implementable, Kameri-Mbote said.
A utility-scale solar facility on BLM land outside Boulder City, Nevada. The proposed Townsite Solar 2 data center would be located near here. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
First they came for your electricity, then they came for your water, then they came for your brains, and now the AI data centers are coming for your public lands.
Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but it is true, at least in one case. This summer, the Bureau of Land Management quietly approved a Texas natural gas and power market-focused hedge fund’s proposal to build a large data center on public land outside Boulder City, Nevada. The agency did not seek public input on the decision, nor did it subject the project to an environmental review, drawing pushback and criticism from Boulder City residents and officials as well as state and federal lawmakers.
This is the only known incidence of the BLM approving a data center on public land. But it may not be for long. Cities, towns, and counties are growing increasingly wary of the facilities, imposing stricter regulations and even outright bans that could push developers to seek cheaper, friendlier places to build. Under the Trump administration, which is looking to win the AI “war,” federal lands may be the cheapest and most regulation-free place to put a server farm. Both the Biden and Trump administrations invited data center developers to look to Department of Energy lands, but there hasn’t been an open call to do the same with BLM lands.
The Boulder City saga started years ago, when Skylar Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Skylar Capital Management, proposed the 19-megawatt Townsite Solar 2 facility on 76 acres of BLM land four miles southwest of Boulder City, the town created in the 1920s to house Hoover Dam construction workers. The project would have been adjacent to the existing Townsite solar facility, which was developed by Skylar but is now owned by Arevon Energy. In 2023 the BLM approved the project, though construction has yet to begin.
Late last year, Skylar — operating as Townsite Solar 2 (TS2) — proposed a 170 MW, “high-density,” AI data center campus on 88.5 acres of land owned by Boulder City that is also near the existing solar facilities. TS2 had previously planned to build a solar-plus-battery-storage installation on this parcel. That proposal was met with strong opposition from Boulder City residents, who worried about the facility’s outsized energy use and its potential water consumption. Following the backlash, developers said they would use a hybrid closed-loop “ultra-low or zero liquid discharge” cooling system, which would use treated effluent rather than potable water (also increasing energy consumption). The lease would generate approximately $1.47 million annually for the city, plus property taxes and permit fees.
At the same time that it applied to the city, however, Skylar also went to the BLM, requesting an amendment to its solar facility right-of-way so that it could build a data center on the public land, instead. In June the BLM granted its approval, sans environmental review or public input, and withdrew its application for the city-owned property.
I’ve written here frequently about the Big Data Center Buildup, as tech firms build bigger and bigger — and more and more water- and energy-intensive — server farms in Phoenix, Tucson, southeastern New Mexico, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, outside Cheyenne, and even in Page, Arizona, and Alaska. Perhaps inevitably, the Big Buildup is now confronting an even bigger backlash.
People from across the political and demographic spectrum are rising up and opposing these facilities for a variety of reasons. All data centers use a lot of energy, with the newer “hyperscale” facilities gobbling up even more power. Some are purchasing solar, wind, or geothermal energy to power the facilities, but even many of the greenest-leaning ones rely on dirty natural gas generators for backup. Meanwhile, the natural gas and coal industries are licking their chops at the prospect of rising demand for fossil fuel-generated power, since renewables alone can’t keep up with the skyrocketing rise in demand. Also, data centers can exacerbate urban heat islands, which sucks if you happen to live next door to one.
Data centers also use quite a bit of water, but the amount varies depending on what type of cooling system is used. Closed-loop systems need to be filled up only occasionally, and are less water-intensive, while evaporative systems use far more water. The catch is that using less water for cooling often means using more energy for the same; if the energy comes from a thermal plant fired by gas or coal, power-generation can also use a lot of water. Still, the volumes pale compared to some other uses, most notably agriculture.
When a region suffers through a hot and dry winter a quarter century into the worst megadrought to hit the area in 1,200 years, many of us will intuitively link it to climate change and global warming. But intuition is not science, and there may be other plausible explanations.
Most of the West has just experienced the warmest nine-month period during the last 131 years, putting the region on pace to have its hottest water year on record.
But now the science has spoken — in the form of a peer-reviewed paper* out of the Colorado School of Mines — and it has determined that this year’s snow drought was almost certainly the result of human-caused climate change.
The authors used a probabilistic approach to assessing climate change’s role in the West’s 2026 snow drought. And they found that across the West as a whole, the 2026 snow drought was about four times more likely to occur in the current climate than during the 1850-1900 comparison period. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, where the drought was most severe, this year’s dire conditions were about 14 times more likely in our current climate than in pre-industrial times, “with the uncertainty range reaching into conditions so extreme that probabilities are difficult to estimate with confidence.”
This isn’t just confirmation of what may seem obvious to long-time observers. More critically, it indicates that this year’s lack of snow is no longer just a once in a century event, and that if the climate continues to heat up, these dry spells may become more common.
*A.M. Marshall,M. Cowherd,S. Rahimi, & Y. Ye, The 2026 western US snow drought was about four times more likely due to climate change, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (30) e2612961123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2612961123 (2026).
🛢️ Hydrocarbon Hoedown 📈
The Navajo Methane Coalition has released an animated video explaining how methane emissions from oil and gas facilities can harm Diné communities, and detailing ways to tackle the problem. It’s an especially important issue now, as the Trump administration rolls back methane waste prevention rules. Check it out:
⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️
The monsoon is here and it is causing some serious mayhem in some places, especially in western New Mexico and in Arizona.
The Gallup area received at least two inches of rain in one day, causing the Rio Puerco to go from dry to raging river in a matter of hours. And it wasn’t just the Puerco. Several Gallup streets, including Route 66, turned into virtual rivers that were more than tire-deep in some places, causing hazards for motorists. Zuni Pueblo was also was inundated with water.
The Rio Puerco does not seem to have a working streamflow gage, so I checked out the Little Colorado River near Winslow, downstream from its confluence with the Puerco, and it got really, really big.
📸 Parting Shots 🎞️
The beauty of the monsoon sky. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The beauty of the monsoon sky. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
July 26, 2026
Eads, a small town on Colorado’s windy eastern plains, has been shedding population for many decades. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth isn’t helping any.
Federal law requires the developer of wind projects with turbines higher than 200 feet to submit plans to the Federal Aviation Administration for review. The FAA, in turn, refers those projects to the Department of Defense to assess whether they could affect military operations, radar systems, flight paths, or national security.
In August 2025, Hegseth’s department slowed those reviews. In April came reports that the laggard pace of reviews had stalled entirely.
In Colorado, this stall has impacted at least one project, the 500-megawatt Towner Wind Energy II (or West) Project. A twin project, the similar-sized Towner Wind Energy I (or East) project had already received clearance and is now under construction.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in July joined 17 other states and the District of Columbia in seeking to intervene in a lawsuit that contests what they call a freeze on reviews. They say the unresponsiveness of the Department of Defense is politically motivated and violates federal law.
“Since President Trump took office in 2025, his Administration has attempted to halt wind projects through presidential memoranda, secretarial orders, agency instruction, permit denials, sudden reversals of established policies and practices, unlawful settlements, and a host of other actions,” says the motion to intervene.
At least $2.687 billion in private investment and 7,124 jobs are at risk in Colorado, according to the court filing. Big Pivots was unable to identify other wind projects in Colorado that may be in limbo because of the federal freeze. Nationwide, according to American Clean Power Association, 150 wind projects have been affected.
With little irrigated land and virtually no oil and gas installations, Kiowa County has the lowest assessed valuation of Colorado’s 64 counties.
In Eads, at the Kiowa County courthouse, County Administrator Tina Adamson has been looking forward to when the two Towner wind projects go on the property tax rolls. The county has an assessed valuation of $39.4 million, lowest among all of Colorado’s 64 counties. Several mountain counties in Colorado also have relatively small assessed valuations. Mineral County (Creede) has $55.7 million, Hinsdale (Lake City) $58.1 million, and Jackson (Walden) $101.9 million.
Kiowa County, which is much larger in area, gets far less federal assistance called Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, compared to the mountain counties. The property tax is correspondingly far, far higher: a mill levy of 46.5 compared to 15 to 22 mills for the small mountain counties.
In short, Kiowa County needs tax base. The two big wind farms will help. Because of the federal freeze, according to Weiser’s court filing, only one is moving forward.
The county has a population of 1,446 as of 2020, almost exactly half of its population in 1950. It is bisected by Highway 287, which produces a steady stream of trucks at all hours of day and night. In Eads, the Love’s station produces a healthy — for a very small town — stream of revenue in sales taxes. Less frequently, travelers stop for a meal while visiting Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, 23 miles east of Eads.
Neighboring counties along the Kansas border benefit from the higher property taxes levied against oil and gas operations and lands with irrigated agriculture. Kiowa County has little or none of either. Most land is used for livestock grazing or growing wheat, milo or other crops that need little moisture.
“We have such a small population and a pretty large area, all ag,” Adamson said. “We have very, very little oil and gas.”
With such a small treasury, keeping employees is hard. Neighboring jurisdictions pay higher salaries. As for upgrades of any sort, they’re out of the question unless Adamson can secure a grant — and sometimes two or more — to help pay for the project.
Work on Towner East is already underway, the Kiowa County Independent reported in February. Adamson said pouring of concrete for footers began in July and installation of towers has now begun. That project is to have 115 turbines east of Eads. The original permit identified Vestas towers that are just above 600 feet. That compares with the 714 feet of the Republic Plaza, Denver’s tallest building.
Invenergy, the project developer. on its Towner Energy Center website projects that Towner East will yield more than $120 million in state and local tax revenues over the life of the project. After construction is completed, it is expected to yield roughly 15 full-time jobs. The project is now owned by Xcel Energy.
At the Kiowa County courthouse, Adamson said she expects far less annual revenue than the $1.25 to $1.5 million annual boost predicted by the developers. Based on evidence from other counties in eastern Colorado, she expects no more than $500,000 in new annual revenue. Even so, that amounts to a substantial boost for the county budget.
Towner West, the second project, is to have 148 towers. Weiser’s court filing says it has been frozen by the federal inaction. Invenergy, the developer, did not confirm that, saying only that “planning on Towner West continues” and that the company is “optimistic about its future.” Kiowa County expects that wind farm, if it is completed, to yield another $500,000 in property tax revenues.
Both wind projects are located along Xcel Energy’s 345-kV Colorado Power Pathway, a 550-mile transmission line intended to deliver renewable electricity to metropolitan Denver.
Xcel Energy’s 550-mile Colorado Power Pathway loops around eastern Colorado. The two Towner wind projects are north of the May Valley substation.
An irony of the federal freeze is that Kiowa County has been a strong supporter of Trump. In the 2024 election, for example, he got 744 votes compared to 101 for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. The margins were similar in the 2020 and 2016 elections.
The New York Times, in a story published in May, pointed out Trump’s dislike of wind turbines. He has called them ugly and expensive. “My goal,” he said in January, “is to not let any windmill be built.”
On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order halting all leasing of federal lands or waters for wind turbines.
Congress in 2011 had adopted a law that said before large wind farms begin construction, developers must apply for clearances from the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the national airspace. The FAA in turn refers the application to the Pentagon, which checks to see whether a project might interfere with military radar or nearby air bases.
The Times said that many wind projects in the past quickly received “no hazard” determinations, allowing them to move forward. Some projects do create issues, and they typically need to reach a mitigation agreement with the Pentagon. That might involve the company paying to upgrade nearby radar systems or modifying the layout of its turbines.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, in a June 8 letter to Dale Marks, the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, said the clearinghouse method ordered by Congress in 2011 had worked out well. “Unfortunately, in Colorado and other states across the country, (Defense) is not advancing mitigation discussions, issuing draft agreements following completed negotiations or executing agreements already negotiated and signed by developers,” the letter said.
Taken together, he said, the defense department’s actions represent a “de facto nationwide moratorium on all land-based wind energy development — blocking projects critical to maintaining electric reliability, meeting rising energy demand, and lowering energy prices for consumers.”
Asked for comment, the Colorado Energy Office offered this: “The DOD freeze on wind projects hurts building clean energy generation that will drive up energy costs, increase customer energy bills, and impact reliability. Delaying wind projects risks missing out on federal clean energy tax credits and will directly increase costs to homeowners for electricity.”
In June, a coalition of renewable energy groups filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to order the Pentagon to quit doddering. Colorado, and the other states in July have asked to be part of that lawsuit.
In his filing, Weiser said that national security and production of electricity from wind can be successfully balanced. He called the freeze “simply another attempt to unlawfully interfere with the deployment of renewable energy.”
Some wind projects that have already completed mitigation negotiations awaited only final federal approval.
Weiser’s filing also asserts the federal inaction harms Colorado’s pursuit of energy goals. The state has a statutory requirement of reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by producing electricity by 80% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
In the first three months of 2026, this year, wind was responsible for 35% of Colorado’s electricity. In 2025, according to the Energy Information Administration, it had been responsible for 30%.
Kiowa County may add property taxes from other renewable projects in coming years. Three solar projects have been proposed, one for 500 megawatts, a second for 580 megawatts, and the third for 1,025 megawatts.
Wind turbines, Weld County, 2015. Photo credit: Allen Best/The Mountain Town News
Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir Expansion Project reached a milestone in June as workers completed major construction on raising the dam.
On June 3, 2026, workers placed the final load of roller-compacted concrete on the top of the dam, bringing Gross Dam to a height of 470 feet. Roller-compacted concrete is the type of concrete put in place to raise, thicken and lengthen the dam over the past three years.
The project is designed to nearly triple the capacity of Gross Reservoir, increase Denver Water’s reservoir storage capacity by 11%, and provide balance, resiliency and flexibility to the utility’s water collection system.
Additional work to complete the dam will take place over the next year, including adding one more foot of conventional, protective concrete to the top of the dam, which will bring it to its final height of 471 feet above the valley floor below.
At this point, dam is taller and also has a new shape.
“We have fundamentally changed how this dam works. The old Gross Dam was a gravity dam that held back the water by its sheer weight. We’ve now transformed this into an arch dam which holds the water back by its weight and also transfers the loads laterally like a Roman arch. This is the first time that we know that this dam transformation has ever been done in the world.”
Gross Dam on June 2, 2026, on the final day of roller-compacted concrete placement work. Photo credit: Denver Water.
In the video above, you can see new images of the dam and hear from Jeff Martin, Denver Water’s program manager for the project.
“We’re excited and proud of this accomplishment,” Martin said.
“Hundreds of people helped us reach this milestone, which will provide a secure water future to Denver and the surrounding communities.”
Roller-compacted concrete will be placed on top of the existing dam to raise it to a new height of 471 feet. A total of 118 new steps will make up the new dam. Image credit: Denver Water.
While this may not resemble the monumental structures in Chaco Canyon at first glance, a closer look reveals the outlines of ancient walls, shrines, and a Chacoan great house known as Pierre’s. The pueblo is in the San Juan Basin north of Chaco Culture National Historical Park and is just inside the 10-mile buffer zone. While the site is protected by additional federal laws, its surroundings — which can include corn fields, “roads,” and other cultural sites — would be vulnerable to oil and gas drilling if the administration rescinds the leasing moratorium. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
THE NEWS: The Trump administration is moving forward with its bid to revoke a 20-year moratorium on federal oil and gas leasing around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico. The Bureau of Land Management is giving the public just two weeks to comment.
THE CONTEXT: The GOP’s assault on public lands, cultural resources, and tribal nations is reaching a fevered pitch this week. The latest attack is on the 10-mile “buffer zone” around the park, where the Biden administration banned new drilling in an effort to protect a small part of the greater Chacoan cultural landscape.
When President Theodore Roosevelt wielded the brand new Antiquities Act in 1907 to create Chaco Canyon National Monument, he drew the boundaries around what is now known as “downtown Chaco,” a handful of structures including the 800-room Pueblo Bonito, constructed between the 9th and 12th centuries by ancestors of today’s Pueblo people.
That was merely the center of the Chacoan world, however, which extended over 100 miles outward into the Four Corners region, which may have been a political empire, a religious or cultural society, a school of architecture, or all of the above. Dozens of Chacoan outliers or “great houses,” along with thousands of smaller sites, shrines, and architectural features with unknown function, did not exist in isolation. They were part of a cultural tapestry woven into the natural landscape. The national monument, in other words, was vastly incomplete, which is especially concerning given that it lies in what would become one of the nation’s most heavily drilled oil and gas fields.
It was with this greater context in mind that in 2023, after years of consideration, public meetings, and analysis, President Joe Biden signed Public Lands Order 7923, which withdrew about 336,000 acres of public land from oil and gas leasing for 20 years. Tribal nations with ties to the cultural landscape, environmental advocates, and archaeologists had sought the withdrawal to provide a buffer zone around the national historical park and to add a layer of protection to the associated sites within 10 miles of the park’s boundaries.
But Project 2025 called for these kinds of withdrawals to be rescinded, and the Trump administration has begun the process of complying. Keep in mind that this does not directly affect the park or the cultural resources therein. Chaco is a national park, and oil and gas leasing and drilling and other development is prohibited; only Congress can change that. Drilling rigs won’t be going up next to Pueblo Bonito, but drilling just outside the park could affect the park’s viewsheds and soundsheds.
The BLM is now inviting public input, for a very limited time, on three alternatives: 1. keeping the ban in place; 2. shrinking the 10-mile buffer zone to just five miles; 3. eliminating the ban altogether. To comment, click on this link and then click on the “Participate Now” button at the top of the page.
The maps illustrate the carnage of the Trump administration’s evisceration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments better than mere numbers, and show exactly from where the 2.93 million acres of protections were rescinded. They also lay bare just how much Trump removed from the shrunken national monuments that remained after Trump I’s 2017 reduction.
I’ve turned to the maps for another reason these past few days: To try to discern some sort of pattern or logic in where the lines were drawn this time, and why they are so radically different than in 2017. I’ve found that looking at the lines on the maps is more like taking a Rorschach inkblot test: You can come up with some decent sounding explanations, but there’s not much to back them up with.
When the Trump administration rolls back limits on smokestack pollution from coal plants, lowers royalty and reclamation bonding rates for oil and gas facilities, or lower water quality standards, it’s clearly doing so to help their corporate buddies rake in even more profits. When they slash millions of acres from two national monuments, the intent is more ambiguous, perhaps even for the ones making the decisions.
Certainly shrinkage generally is motivated by Trump’s spite towards his more popular predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the ones who originally established Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, respectively. But beyond that Trump himself is in the dark: He actually believes that people are unable to hike, hunt, camp, or fish in these national monuments, which simply is not true. Not only are all of those things allowed, but so are motorized travel on hundreds of miles of designated roads, vegetation management, livestock grazing, and commercial activities.
The main activities these national monuments restricted were new mining claims and new oil and gas, coal, and other energy-related leases (existing active valid leases and claims are not affected by the designation). So, clearly, at least part of the motivation here is to reopen certain lands to the extractive industries. Trump’s proclamations affirm this: They say the land needs to be opened up to miners and drillers to extract “several resources that are vital to energy and resource independence” such as “silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc.” And, of course, we all know by now that Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda includes leasing out as much land as possible — whether it contains oil and gas or not — to the petroleum companies.
The administration is also hoping to trigger a lawsuit that could make its way to the Supreme Court, where it would become a test of the Antiquities Act, itself. Plus it’s looking to open the door to allowing Utah or county governments have more control over federal land. That might be a gift to Sen. Mike Lee to show appreciation for his groveling sycophancy towards Trump, which has become more valuable with the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In other words, the motivations are pretty similar to when Trump shrunk the monuments in 2017. It was clearly done in part to open up known reserves of oil and gas, uranium, coal, and potash. This is made obvious not only by communications between industry and the administration prior to the shrinkage, but also by the fact that Trump I’s shrinkage lines followed known resource reserves, not the boundaries proposed by local and state officials.
For example, the 2017 redraw cut out the Circle Cliffs historic uranium and copper mining district on the far northeast side of GSENM, probably to allow access to those reserves. And while it left part of the vast Kaiparowits coal field in the national monument, it made cutouts for the former Smoky Hollow coal lease, where Andalex had planned on building a gargantuan mine prior to the 1996 designation. At Bears Ears, the 2017 shrinkage cut out the White Canyon uranium mining district, where there’s also tar sand development potential.
This brings up a lot of questions. First off, why did Trump II go to the trouble of redrawing completely new boundaries this time around rather than just re-upping the 2017 lines? After all, they achieved all of the same goals as the bigger, current shrinkage, while also keeping a few more valued landmarks under monument status. The Six Shooter peaks and Bridger Jack Mesa were kept in the Indian Creek Unit of Bears Ears under the 2017 shrinkage, for example, but left out this time. Why?
The most dramatic change, even from Trump’s 2017 boundaries, is to what is now known as the Kaiparowits Horizons Unit of GSENM, where the national monument was eliminated save for a seemingly arbitrarily placed square on Long Flat and a rectangular strip on the East Clark Bench. The latter strip was kept intact because it is where anthropologists found the bones of Sarabosaurus dahli,a new taxon of sea-going dinosaur Turonian mosasaurid. But removed from monument status were hundreds of significant landmarks, from the Cockscomb to Grosvenor Arch to the entire Kaiparowits Plateau.
The 2026 shrinkage does open up the entire Kaiparowits coal field. But it also nixed the whole Grand Staircase Unit, where there are no known mineral reserves.
Perhaps trying to find logic somewhere in the collective brains of the Trump administration is a fool’s errand. I’m certainly not seeing it in these maps. But maybe you can? Check them out and let me know! As is always the case with this sort of detailed image, the best experience is had on the Land Desk website. So if you’re reading this in your email browser, you’d be best off clicking on the headline above, and it will take you straight to the site, where clicking on the images will give you a larger view.
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance did a nice map of the cuts in Bears Ears. The cuts to the original boundaries were drastic, to put it mildly, excluding the entirety of Cedar Mesa, Mancos Mesa, White Canyon and its tributaries, Dark Canyon, most of Butler and Cottonwood washes, Grand Gulch, and the Valley of the Gods. The changes from the 2017 shrinkage were relatively small in the Shash Jaa Unit, but the Indian Creek Unit was reduced substantially this time around, leaving out the Six Shooter peaks and Jack Bridger Mesa.
The Utah Geological Survey’s Resource Overview Map (showing the original 2016 and Trump-shrunken 2017 BENM boundaries) shows that the 2026 boundaries appear to have been drawn to exclude potash and uranium resources that were left within the national monument after the 2017 shrinkage.
SUWA’s map shows the near total elimination of the central, southern, and western portions of GSENM, leaving only two little portions that are now called the Kaiparowits Horizon Unit. The southern strip is where researchers found the bones of the Sarabosaurus dahli. Source: SUWA.
The UGS Resource Overview Map indicates that Trump I slashed the Circle Cliffs area from GSENM due to its uranium, vanadium, and copper potential. The 2017 shrinkage also made cutouts for places with high coal recovery potential. But it kept the southwestern part of the national monument — where there is little known resource potential — relatively intact. The 2026 shrinkage eliminated all of that.
Here’s another map by the Utah Geological Survey showing historic coal and oil and gas leases. Again, if you compare this to the maps above, you’ll see that the 2017 shrinkage made cutouts for these places. While the 2026 shrinkage also cut these places out of the national monument, it didn’t open up significantly more leases than the 2017 shrinkage did.
Here I overlaid the Resource Overview maps onto a BLM map showing the original boundaries of GSENM (in black), the 2017 boundaries (in brown) and the 2026 shrinkage boundaries (in red). This suggests that the 2026 shrinkage was looking to free up all of the Kaiparowits coalfield. It also freed up a lithium deposit along the Hole in the Rock road. Source: BLM, USG, Land Desk map.
🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑
Well, here’s some relatively affordable housing. Or something like that. I could see turning this thing into a giant art studio, event-space, and housing. And it’s in a lovely part of the world, too! The ad gives a Dolores, Colorado, address. But it’s actually in Arriola, which is about halfway between Cortez and Lewis.
Ruedi Reservoir on the Fryingpan River is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Releases for the Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program have boosted late summer and fall river flows in recent years. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (River Stingray). Here’s an excerpt:
July 13, 2026
The city of Aspen’s Ruedi Hydroelectric Facility is anticipated to lose hydroelectric power in early August due to current U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reservoir forecasts and operating conditions. The updated reservoir data indicate that the timing has shifted later than previously anticipated, which the city’s Utilities Resource & Portfolio Manager Joshua Mattson confirmed to The Aspen Times. According to him, earlier planning projections that were provided by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation indicated the reservoir could drop below the hydroelectric power pool threshold in mid- to late July.
“Updated reservoir elevations, inflow and outflow conditions, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operational forecasts now indicate the threshold is more likely to be reached in early to mid-August,” Mattson wrote in an email. “The shift reflects actual reservoir conditions improving relative to earlier projections and ongoing changes in reservoir operations and water demand. This remains a forecast and will continue to be evaluated as conditions evolve.”
The hydroelectric power pool represents the minimum reservoir elevation that is required in order to safely operate the hydroelectric turbine and associated equipment, according to an information update provided to Aspen City Council on Monday. When reservoir levels fall below this threshold, city staff will consequently take the Ruedi Hydroelectric Facility offline in order to protect equipment.
“This outage is not related to dam safety; rather, it is the result of hydrologic limitations associated with drought conditions,” the information update states. “The facility is expected to remain offline until reservoir levels recover above the minimum power pool elevation, which is anticipated to occur in spring 2027 as seasonal inflows increase.”
In the 1950s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built the Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal dams west of Gunnison as part of the massive regional Colorado River Storage Project. The Bureau of Reclamation is currently in the process of replacing all four original valves at Blue Mesa Dam for the first time. (Photos/National Park Service)
The Wayne N. Aspinall Unit, Colorado’s only stake in a federal hydropower system that sells power across the West, is on pace to generate nearly 30% less electricity than its historical average dating to 1978, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. The shortfall is the latest sign of a decades-long decline eroding a system that accounts for about 3% of Colorado’s energy supply.
Aspinall Unit dams
The unit’s three dams on the Gunnison River — including Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal — make up Colorado’s only piece of the Colorado River Storage Project, a Depression-era network of federal dams selling power to municipalities, cooperatives, tribes and irrigation districts across the West. Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water entirely within Colorado, is expected to end the year at just 17% of its live storage capacity.
As the river shrinks under the stresses of climate change, so does the unit’s output. And the electricity that the waterway does not help to generate has to come from somewhere else, usually at a higher price.
Nationwide, residential electricity users have already seen an annual price increase of more than 7% in the year ending in March. Judging by Xcel Energy’s recent effort in Colorado to obtain rate increases that might exceed 50% by the end of the decade, additional hits to consumers’ budgets could become the most obvious consequence of the building crisis in the Colorado River Storage Project’s capacity to generate power.
That economic scenario is unfolding as the West braces for a surge in electricity demand from data centers built to power artificial intelligence. On June 18, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission boosted the effort to hook up those large users when it ordered the nation’s six grid operators to speed transmission connections for AI data centers.
“We are setting the stage for a resilient, reliable, and forward-thinking grid that empowers communities and safeguards consumers by transforming the way large energy users access the grid,” agency chair Laura Swett said.
It’s a lopsided moment, since federal regulators are accelerating new demand onto a grid whose supply side, at least in Colorado, is apparently decaying.
A dangerous threshold
The mechanics of Colorado’s hydroelectricity system are straightforward, even if mostly invisible to consumers. Reclamation operates the dams. The Western Area Power Administration markets the power to “preference customers” at cost-based rates. The Aspinall Unit’s output is pooled with Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge, and other project dams under the Salt Lake City Integrated Projects Area arrangement, so Colorado utilities hold a share of that pool, not an Aspinall-specific allocation.
Less water also means less pressure, or “hydraulic head,” through the turbines: At full pool, one megawatt-hour at Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River takes about 1.9 acre-feet of water and, at today’s lower elevations, roughly 2.9 acre feet, said Jen Pelz of the Flagstaff, Arizona-based Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental organization that advocates for conservation of Colorado Plateau natural resources.
The same mechanism plays out at Blue Mesa. At its current elevation of about 7,446 feet, the reservoir’s generating capacity is approximately 18% below the amount for which it was designed, said Nick Williams, Reclamation’s power manager for the Upper Colorado Basin. Electricity generation stops entirely at 7,393 feet, Blue Mesa’s minimum power pool.
A high desert thunderstorm lights up the sky behind Glen Canyon Dam — Photo USBR
Reclamation moved aggressively this spring to avoid a more dangerous threshold. In April, it projectedinflow at Lake Powell, behind the Glen Canyon Dam, at just 29% of average and warned that without action, the reservoir could fall below its minimum power-pool elevation of 3,490 feet by August. That is the point at which Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines stop generating.
View below Flaming Gorge Dam from the Green River, eastern Utah. Photo credit: USGS
While the agency issued a more optimistic prediction in May, it nevertheless ordered additional emergency releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir through April 2027 and cut Powell’s release to Lake Mead for the year by roughly 1.5 million acre-feet. That protects Glen Canyon’s generators, partly by drawing down Mead, which has in turn already cut Hoover Dam’s generating capacity by an estimated 5% to 8.5%. The Hoover Dam power production decline is already reflected in the agency’s June forecasts, according to Len Schilling, the Reclamation official overseeing dam operations in the Lower Colorado Basin. None of the agency’s moves solve the shortage. Instead, Reclamation decides, reservoir by reservoir, where the pain lands first.
A test of the cost gap
The clearest documented example of that pain in dollars comes from the Western Area Power Administration’s own numbers. From fiscal 2023 through 2025, the agency paid more per megawatt-hour for replacement power than it charges customers every year and roughly tripled its rate in 2023, narrowing to about 35% above it by 2025, according to a Colorado Newsline analysis of WAPA and federal energy data. WAPA also spent $18.9 million in 2024 and $6.5 million in 2025 on replacement power tied to “Cool Mix,” a protocol that bypasses Glen Canyon’s turbines to protect native fish downstream, according to a Colorado River Research Group report drawing on an Argonne National Laboratory analysis and figures from WAPA.
Platte River Power Authority, which supplies Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont and Estes Park and holds a direct WAPA allocation, could be the clearest Front Range-based test of that cost gap. A spokesperson for the utility said it could not respond to questions before publication. A recent organization budget cited reduced federal deliveries and rising WAPA rates as adverse financial factors, but current estimated financial consequences for the power authority, and what it will mean for the utility’s customers, remain unclear. WAPA did not respond to requests for comment.
A smaller utility in the state offers a contrasting situation. La Plata Electric Association, the rural cooperative serving Colorado’s southwest corner, relies mostly on the Southwest Power Pool for its electricity supply after joining that regional transmission organization earlier this year. But the association’s chief executive officer, Chris Hansen, said the cooperative still relies on WAPA for a hydropower allocation tied to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. That WAPA dependence amounts to about 3% of the association’s supply. Hansen said market access and a diversified portfolio buffer the small utility against hydrologic risk.
“Even if that 3% were to double in cost, which is possible, it would have a relatively small impact on our total cost of power purchases,” he said. “So we have low exposure. Other co-ops do not. For us it would be (a) relatively small change.”
Whether joining the Southwest Power Pool can give utilities facing more financial pressure much hedge against rising power costs is not yet clear. Sydney Welter, an energy markets policy advisor at Western Resource Advocates, explained that “with just three months of market operations and without having seen data from Colorado preference customers, I’m not certain what the long-term costs and benefits will be.” While the Brattle Group, an industry watcher, predicted that utilities would save tens of millions of dollars per year by joining power pools, it is not clear whether that is happening.
Rise in demand
Colorado lawmakers considered a bill this year that would have imposed accountability requirements on data centers. Senate Bill 26-102 was killed before the General Assembly adjourned in May, though the issue isn’t likely to fade. Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, expects large industrial customers, mostly data centers, to drive roughly two-thirds of its new demand. Nationally, data centers consumed an estimated 4.7% of U.S. electricity, a figure that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projects could reach nearly 12% by 2030. Increasing data center electricity use in Colorado would add pressure to a system that is already experiencing supply reductions caused by the loss of flows at the Aspinall Unit.
That framework also shapes the deeper risk involving a “compact call” to the Lower Basin states demanding delivery of more water from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. That has never happened in the Colorado River Compact’s history, but it could increase pressure on Western Slope water and power as Front Range cities lease senior water rights across the Continental Divide, according to University of Wyoming law professor Jason Robison.
Dories at rest on a glorious Grand Canyon eve. Photo by Brian Richter
No one is predicting a call soon. But Pelz argues the standoff between electricity costs and environmental protection is a false choice: The Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992 already requires dam operations consistent with the river ecosystem’s long-term sustainability, and Congress could have eased the cost pressure through diversified supply or a dedicated fund, but has not done so in the 30 years since that law was enacted. Reclamation is now studying a broader infrastructure fix at Glen Canyon Dam, with initial findings due in 2027.
That may be too late for the pressures already showing up this year at reservoirs like Blue Mesa.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
As of July 12, Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison sat only 32% full at 266,000 acre feet of storage water — about 35,000 acre feet less than the historic minimum for that date, down 35%…Severe drought conditions at the reservoir have resulted in critically low storage levels, a limitation on water allocation to the Uncompahgre Valley and its agricultural water users, limited flows for releasing endangered fish species, decreased recreational opportunities on the water that go hand-in-hand with a downturn in the regional recreational economy, and uncertainty over power generation and water usage in the near future. Colorado River District spokeswoman Lindsay DeFrates called it a “crisis”, as the reservoir and the Wayne N. Aspinall Unit — which stores water and generates hydroelectric power through the reservoir as well as the Morrow Point and Crystal Reservoir dams — is one of the upper units that feeds the crucial Lake Powell downstream.
“Everyone’s looking downstream at Lake Powell while we have this happening in our backyard right now,” DeFrates said…
Black Canyon July 2020. Photo credit: Cari Bischoff
When he was the Division 4 assistant engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources (DWR), Jason Ullmann would have never entertained the notion that the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park’s portion of the river could ever dry up. Now, as the DWR director and Colorado state engineer, he said it’s unlikely to happen this year or next — but it’s “not an impossibility.”
“The actual inflow from April to July this year was the lowest on record. Barring a change in the climate conditions that produce this monsoon everybody’s waiting for, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to have a significant increase in inflow. We’re going to have one of the lowest inflow seasons — if not the lowest — on record at Blue Mesa,” Ullmann said. “Blue Mesa started the year approximately 20 feet below the normal level it would start the year on. The water levels are very low and will continue to drop.”
Colorado River District Senior Water Resources Engineer Caleb Foy compared 2026 to some of the region’s driest years — 1977, 2002, 2012 and 2018 — and said 2026 “takes the gold medal in terms of poor hydrological conditions”, impacting water storage at Blue Mesa Reservoir which, in turn, has multiple impacts downstream…
Foy noted that the reservoir’s storage could drop below the power pool level, which is the minimum amount of water needed to produce hydropower from the dam. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s June 2026 24-month study, this drop could happen as soon as February 2027. According to other forecasts, this drop could happen as soon as the end of this summer if the region sees no monsoon conditions and current operations aren’t modified to preserve storage at the reservoir…A reduction in downstream flow would negatively affect downstream diversions, Colorado River flow, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and endangered fish species in both the Gunnison and Colorado rivers. The BOR has worked with Fish and Wildlife to temporarily reduce flow targets while trying to minimize negative impacts to endangered fish species. Ullmann said the minimal target flow for the Endangered Fish Recovery Rights is, in a typical year, no lower than 750 cubic feet per second. This year, the target is at 750 cfs — and last week, the flow was as low as 700 cfs. This has been alarming enough to spark conversations between the state and the BOR.
This field in the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association district has been fallowed this season (2026) 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
In the culmination of a process that has been years in the making, Colorado officials Wednesday announced the creation of a state-run water conservation program.
In what officials are calling a “near-term contribution program,” the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) will pay water users to voluntarily cut back in 2027 and 2028, using $100 million in promised funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Colorado will now join Utah and Wyoming in setting up a conservation program within their respective states.
The noteworthy, long-expected announcement came at the regular July meeting of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, where board members considered the criteria for the program. A draft list says the program must, among other criteria, avoid negative community impacts; encourage contributions from across the state and water-use sectors; incentivize environmental benefits; encourage tribal participation; and build local drought resiliency. The board is scheduled to finalize the program criteria at its September meeting.
These types of conservation programs have traditionally targeted agricultural water users, often seen as the low-hanging fruit for water savings because they use the majority of Colorado River water. But officials are hoping this program will have participation across all water-use sectors, including municipal and industrial.
“I love that it is called a contribution program because that kind of imagines broader participation and engagement,” said board member Taylor Hawes. “So I think that is good. I think the more flexibility we can have, the better in a program like this.”
But details were scant on exactly how much water Colorado will contribute to the program and how the saved water would be used. And although some experts have begun calling for permanent reductions in water use, it remains — for now — a temporary, short-term program.
“We cannot guarantee a certain amount of water will be conserved in a given year because we don’t know how much water our water users are going to get,” said Amy Ostdiek, interstate section chief at the CWCB. “We have been clear that we just can’t do that.”
In a May letter to federal officials, the Upper Colorado River Commission said it has a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of September 2028, which marks the end of water year 2028, but only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow. Colorado’s share of the Upper Basin’s allocation is 51.75%, meaning Colorado could be on the hook for 51,750 acre-feet over the next two years.
But Ostdiek said they are not at this time discussing a specific target that Colorado or the Upper Basin would have to contribute in exchange for the $100 million from the Bureau of Reclamation.
“We have felt confident that we can generate up to 100,000 acre-feet by 2028,” Ostdiek said in a Q&A session with the media after her presentation to the CWCB. “But really, what we’re going to be focused on is getting robust participation.”
It’s also unclear exactly how the saved water will be used. Officials said it’s not meant for use by the Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada); it will be for the benefit of the Upper Basin. The water will need to have a home in Upper Basin storage buckets — Lake Powell, Navajo, Blue Mesa or Flaming Gorge reservoirs — but how it will fit into broader reservoir operations is unknown. [ed. emphasis mine]
“I think that is going to be the subject of ongoing discussion, exactly how this water is used and characterized,” Ostdiek said. “I think what we know is that it needs to be credited to or subject to the discretion of the Upper Division states in some way.”
Missouri Heights resident Cassie Cerise pets her dog Dinah on her ranch outside of Carbondale in summer 2023. Cerise enrolled the field behind her in the Upper Colorado River Commission’s System Conservation Program, getting paid to not irrigate it. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Conservation concept is not new
These types of programs that pay water users to cut back are not new to Colorado, and officials said they are incorporating the lessons learned from previous demand-management studies beginning in 2019, stakeholder input and pilot programs. The state participated in the 2023 and 2024 System Conservation Pilot Program, as well as an earlier version that ran from 2015 to 2018.
But conservation programs remain controversial. The Grand Valley Water Users Association, one of the largest irrigation districts on the mainstem of the Colorado River, did not allow its members to participate in SCPP for fear of negative impacts to other water users in the district.
All of the projects enrolled in SCPP involved agricultural water users on the Western Slope, a potentially risky situation, according to the Colorado River Water Conservation District. The Glenwood Springs-based agency, which represents 15 counties across the Western Slope, had tried to influence the creation of criteria for participation in SCPP to avoid negative impacts to rural agricultural communities.
Ultimately, only the Upper Colorado River Commission determined who got to participate in SCPP. Now, it seems state officials are taking to heart the River District’s recommendations. River District General Counsel Peter Fleming thanked Ostdiek for including some of the criteria that the district had set forth in its principles about how to create a conservation program.
Fleming encouraged the board members to adopt variable pricing to account for the difference in the value of relatively cheap water on the Western Slope versus more-expensive water on the Front Range. Pueblo Water had wanted to participate in SCPP, but the $509 per acre-foot offered in 2024 to Colorado participants was too far below market value.
“You can see the variable economic values of the water assigned there and the need to have variable pricing in order to encourage widespread participation,” Fleming said.
The River District’s position is that the entire burden of a conservation program shouldn’t be borne by the Western Slope, but must also be shouldered by Front Range water providers, who collectively deplete the Colorado River basin by about 500,000 acre-feet a year.
He added that a program should also have a strong element of local control.
“The River District obviously would like to stay involved in this process,” he said.
The creation of a conservation program for Colorado comes at a critical time for the basin, which remains locked in the grip of a historic drought, with combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead at an all-time low since the reservoirs began filling. Although the Upper Basin has argued that it has never used its entire allocation granted by the 1922 Colorado River Compact (and therefore shouldn’t have to cut back), in the face of dwindling flows and calls for conservation from its downstream neighbors, the four states can no longer avoid reducing their water demand.
The Colorado River basin is also in the midst of a management crisis, with the seven states that share the river still unable to find agreement on a new framework after more than two years of failed negotiations. The current guidelines for how shortages are shared and how reservoirs are operated expire this year, and the feds are poised to step in with their own management plan, expected later this month.
The Upper Basin would need separate parallel agreements with Reclamation alongside the federal management plan to account for and get credit for water saved through the contribution program.
In her presentation, Ostdiek gave a preview of Reclamation’s expected plan, which could allow for a pool in Lake Powell to store up to 3 million acre-feet conserved by Upper Basin states. But board chair Barbara Vasquez worried about overestimating the amount of water that could be contributed given the recent historically dry conditions. Farmers and ranchers across Colorado are now experiencing the fallout from the worst snowpack on record in the form of shortages and fallowed fields.
“So prior programs, we spent a lot of money for very little water conserved. I worry that next year may be even worse than this year, and it’s not willingness, but ability,” Vasquez said. Given the water that’s available, she said, “that might disappoint expectations on the part of the negotiators at the table for the Colorado River.”
Aspen Journalism is a nonprofit, investigative news organization covering water, environment, social justice and more. Visit aspenjournalism.org.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
July 15, 2026
Even in the driest of years — like this one — powerful Western Slope water rights on the mainstem of the Colorado River draw water downstream, making boating on the state’s major water artery possible.
“For mainstem floating, we should still have pretty darn good flows for the rest of the season for as long as people want to be boating,” said Sam Calahan, a water resources specialist for the Colorado River District. The taxpayer-funded agency is based in Glenwood Springs and works to protect Western Slope water…
On Wednesday, Browns Canyon — a popular section of the Arkansas River near Buena Vista — was flowing at the lowest level in 55 years of data and at 16% of its median flow for that date. Clear Creek near Idaho Springs was flowing at 61 cubic feet per second on Wednesday, also a record low for the date in 72 years of data. The median flow for the date is 347 cfs, or more than five times as much water…But flows on much of the Colorado River were high enough for rafts and kayaks this week. Flows on a popular section near Kremmling were near normal, as were water levels farther downstream in Glenwood Canyon. Two major factors keep water flowing down the Colorado River during drought: large senior water rights owned by farmers in Mesa County’s Grand Valley and the water rights connected to the Shoshone Power Plant, a hydroelectric facility in Glenwood Canyon owned by Xcel Energy. Irrigators and power plant operators can call water to their facilities from upstream reservoirs, like Green Mountain Reservoir, which is on the Blue River — a tributary of the Colorado River — north of Silverthorne. This year, the irrigators began calling down water on July 1, boosting flows in the Colorado River.
Looking down at the Colorado River, Lees Ferry, and the Paria River. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
July 16, 2026
Sara Porterfield, Colorado River program director with the conservation nonprofit Trout Unlimited, stood on a narrow, rocky river beach, about as close to Glen Canyon Dam as a boat can go.
“This is not a zero sum game,” she said. “Investing in watershed health is not an either-or. We need the system to be healthy from an ecological perspective in order for the rest of it to function.”
The river, Porterfield said, cannot deliver big volumes of clean water if it does not, at least partially, function like a normal, healthy river. For example, if the river’s upper reaches are dried out, they’ll be susceptible to wildfires and wetland degradation, which make it harder for them to hold on to water and release it slowly into the streams where humans have been able to reliably divert and collect it for generations.
“It’s not just plumbing, but it’s also not just water in a river,” Porterfield said as the dam’s hydroelectric generators emitted a whining hum in the background. “We’re not separate from the natural world, we’re part of it. When we recognize that, and we take help to take care of it, we get a lot further than when we’re just thinking about a plumbing system.”
Glen Canyon downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Porterfield, who has a Ph.D. in Colorado River history, said calling the river a “plumbing system” is a useful way to think about one of its jobs, but not the whole picture. Environmental advocates say the river can be protected while still flowing through the dams and canals that keep the West wet for humans. Those protections can even be part of the wonky and rigid legal policies that dictate where water goes. John Berggren, a water policy manager at the conservation nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, had some recommendations for the next set of river-sharing rules. An important one, he said, is to get the river out of “crisis mode.”
[…]
“You can be much more proactive and thoughtful and careful and intentional about how you manage the river and include river health,” he said.
Another way to help protect the river’s ecosystems, creatures and flows, Berggren said, is by carefully timing the release of water from reservoirs. For example, policymakers can write flexible rules about where and when water is stored, so water that is flowing downstream to cities and farms can also help make life better for native fish. The water can be used to help the environment without being taken away from humans downstream.
“They’re going to move the water anyway,” he said. “Let’s do it in a way that actually benefits ecological conditions.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Rumors of data centers have local government agencies in the San Luis Valley preparing for the inevitable – an application for a data center.
Costilla County and the town of South Fork are the latest local governments to place moratoriums on artificial intelligence data centers. Though no applications or projects are being proposed, local governments want to give themselves time to create land use codes to address data centers.
A packed room and a packed Zoom at the Costilla County Planning Commission meeting Wednesday morning saw tensions high as the public continues to express opposition to data centers. The commission approved a year-long moratorium. The moratorium will now go to county commissioners for approval.
The town of South Fork’s planning and zoning board is poised to do the same thing during a public hearing Wednesday night’s planning and zoning commission meeting as the town does not have specific zoning regulations that address data centers. The board will use the public hearing for feedback as members begin their work over the next year to devise specific codes.
At Wednesday morning’s Costilla County meeting, planning commissioner Joseph Quintana dispelled rumors and reassured the public that a data center application has not been submitted to the county and that “nobody’s approved anything.”
He said that when the planning commission was first formed the commission came up with a mission plan with a set of goals that were aimed at protecting the environment and the way of life.
“A data center is the antithesis, the complete opposite of what we would want in this community,” he said.
He went on to say, “Our job here is to follow that mission that was established 30 years ago with public comment. So I just want to make sure everybody understands, nobody’s approved a data center that I’m aware of. Nobody’s even applied for a data center here. There’s nobody that’s asked to build one or tried to get a permit or anything like that.”
In June, the Costilla County Commissioners asked the planning commission to address data centers “and get ahead before a problem develops,” Quintana said.
Commissioner Frank Vigil said they wanted the year to create a “thoughtful” ordinance that “reflects the feelings of the general public.”
“Our code doesn’t even have the two words ‘data center’ in it anywhere at all,” said county attorney Carle Turnetzer-Decker. “We were just concerned, I think, the board of county commissioners and the commission here, that if someone did approach us we have absolutely no way to handle it, restrict it, regulate it, do any of that.”
South Fork made a public statement on Tuesday that said, “To dispel rumors that are circulating within the community. The Town instituted a moratorium on Data Centers within the Town of South Fork last month which will last one year. The Town has not had any companies approach the town about data centers. We are simply trying to get ahead of any that may approach the Town. Obviously, there are concerns with them and rest assured your Board of Trustees share your concerns. Please come share your thoughts so we know how best to represent the community in making policy on this.”
Saguache County was the first local government in the Valley to place a moratorium on data centers while it figures out how its land use codes would address any data center application.
Earlier in June, the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable heard from Lindsay Rogers of Western Resources Advocates, who noted how rural markets are becoming targets for data center applications because of the assumption of “less red tape.”
Western Resources Advocates, Rogers said, has a particular interest working in the San Luis Valley as part of a grant process for local policy decision-making around large water users.
“One concern that we have which we’ve seen playing out in other states in our region, is that developers may target rural communities where they feel there may be less red tape to developing these data centers. Our communities may not have the time or resources needed to ensure the proposal fits within their own goals and their own resource availability. So we think it’s really important to think about these policy options proactively before developers come to town instead of responding to them once they’ve arrived.”
Solar panels San Luis Valley. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Richard Hubler, planning director for Alamosa County, said at the roundtable, “There’s a very real possibility, as we move forward, that because of our fiber networks here and our broadband capacity, our cheap land and what may end up being a glut of solar production that we could be a target in the Valley for somebody who says, ‘Hey, there’s more power than the Valley could use there.
“I could take a circle next to that 600 megawatt project and use the other 400 megawatts they may have.’ And we don’t know how to handle that now as a county or as a Valley. I think that this is timely because we really do want to get ahead of it before we have to deal with an application.”
In May, SLV Rural Electric Cooperative CEO Eric Eriksen said the Valley has underutilized energy capacity and that “rural data centers” are the “most relevant for us.” Rural data centers are described as smaller, more efficient facilities that are often housed within buildings no larger than small commercial buildings and operate anywhere from 50 kilowatts up to 50 megawatts.
These centers commonly use air-cooling or closed-loop refrigeration instead of consuming water.
In May, SLV Rural Electric Cooperative CEO Eric Eriksen said the Valley has underutilized energy capacity and that “rural data centers” are the “most relevant for us.” Rural data centers are described as smaller, more efficient facilities that are often housed within buildings no larger than small commercial buildings and operate anywhere from 50 kilowatts up to 50 megawatts.
These centers commonly use air-cooling or closed-loop refrigeration instead of consuming water.
In SLVREC’s position, the agriculture’s energy demand is declining and that company sees “the underutilized capacity” as an opportunity “to serve five, 10, 20, 50 megawatts or more of rural data centers.”
According to SLVREC, there are seven long-haul fiber routes into and out of the Valley, “with terabytes of unused capacity that is ideal for data centers.”
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
Colorado’s Roan Plateau, a favorite backcountry zone for hunters, anglers and hikers because of its high-quality wildlife habitat, is once being proposed for oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management, in accordance with direction from the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to hold lease sales in Colorado every quarter, has listed four leases on top of the plateau in its proposed December sale, with two additional leases nearby.
The wildlands of the Roan Plateau and animals that rely on them draw hikers, hunters and anglers to the area. The potential for oil and natural gas below the surface draws attention from industry, too, and sets the stage for a confrontation over how to fulfill the multiple-use mandate that governs federal lands.
Hunters, anglers and conservationists are also raising the alarm that implementation of federal law and proposed changes to BLM rules are stripping the public of its voice in public lands management.
The BLM has identified 114 parcels across Colorado available for oil and gas leasing in its December sale. Four of those parcels, totaling 4,645 acres, are on top of the Roan Plateau near Rifle, on the site of two undeveloped leases that were not canceled as part of a 2014 settlement between leaseholders and 10 conservation, trade and wildlife organizations.
*NCAs include a landscape area that encompasses Potential Conservation Areas (PCAs) that share similar species or natural communities and ecological processes; or a mostly intact, lightly fragmented landscape that supports wide- ranging species and large scale disturbances. Sources: BLM, CPW, Colorado Natural Heritage Program, CDPHE. Credit: Laurine Lassalle – Aspen Journalism. Click to enlarge.
In that settlement, the BLM canceled 17 of 19 leases that had been issued in 2008 on top of the Roan Plateau and refunded leaseholders; the agency updated its resource management plan, which guides land use, and closed about 34,000 acres, roughly 54 square miles, to future leasing.
But two leases, whose holders did not agree to cancellation as part of the settlement, remained open for future development, although the leaseholders were meant to contribute to a conservation fund that would be used for restoration and conservation efforts. Although the fund was established, no money was invested. The leases changed hands and were eventually relinquished, but their existence during the land-use planning process meant that that area remained available for future development, and conservation groups have foreseen this moment.
“We had unleased, unprotected land on top of the plateau, and that was very concerning to us,” said Juli Slivka, senior director of policy and programs at Carbondale-based nonprofit Wilderness Workshop, which was one of 10 plaintiffs in the lawsuit that lead to the 2014 settlement. “We immediately began urging BLM Colorado to close that area to new leasing.”
Slivka and other conservationists have argued that the BLM could have removed the potential for new leases because Colorado Parks and Wildlife has found that the area is home to high-priority habitat for a range of species, including an endemic species of Colorado cutthroat trout, elk, deer and greater sage grouse.
Brittany Parker grew up in Rifle, hiking and camping on the plateau. As an adult, she hunts there nearly every year, she said. Parker works for the trade group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers — which advocates for protections for the Roan — as the field operations coordinator for seven states, including Colorado. She said she’s passionate about protecting the Roan Plateau after watching it “change drastically” under development pressures in her lifetime.
The area has seen significant oil and gas development on private lands atop the plateau.
“It’s already pretty developed with oil and gas, so to imagine even more up in that region, it just seems like there would be nothing left,” Parker said. “It would so significantly fragment the habitat that the sense of refuge would be seriously diminished for our wildlife.”
There is heavy natural gas production at the base of the Roan Plateau. The BLM has proposed new leases on public lands at the top plateau in a December sale. CREDIT: COURTESY OF ECOFLIGHT
A recent flight over the Roan Plateau by Aspen-based conservation organization EcoFlight showed the extent of the development from above; there’s a sharp contrast between the development below the top of the plateau and on private lands compared with the untouched public lands. The flight path followed Parachute Creek, to the west of which is highly developed private land.
“You forget how heavily drilled it is up there. It’s just nonstop, roads and wellpads” on the private lands, said Jane Pargiter, executive director of EcoFlight, who has been working to protect the Roan since 2008. (Pargiter is an Aspen Journalism board member.)
The view changes quickly to the east side of the creek.
“It instantly transitions into this pristine landscape, which is where they have proposed these lease parcels for the December lease sale,” Pargiter said. “It’s just beautiful, pristine, and it’s green still.”
Parker and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers are quick to point out that they are not against energy development on public lands but are, rather, focused on ensuring that leasing happens in appropriate places.
“We’re advocating for protections on specific landscapes that have exceptional habitat and watershed values that are worth protecting,” Parker said.
The state wildlife agency, conservation groups and recreationalists have argued for nearly two decades that the Roan Plateau is not the right place for oil and gas development, which has been shown to lead to declines in wildlife populations. The Roan has prime habitat for elk calving, which is a particularly sensitive time, and is a migration corridor for elk and mule deer. It also provides habitat and breeding grounds, known as lek sites, for the greater sage grouse, which are particularly sensitive to industrial disturbance.
Dean Riggs retired in 2020 as the deputy regional manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and spent years working with the BLM and leaseholders to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts to wildlife when there is industrial development, including on the Roan Plateau. He says he has hunted, including elk and grouse on the Roan Plateau, since he was big enough to pick up a rifle.
In his time at CPW, Riggs advocated for science-based, species-specific protections, which in some cases means avoiding development in certain areas altogether, such as breeding sites for grouse.
“If a company wants to pluck a five-acre site right down on top of a lek, you’re going to lose the lek,” Riggs said. “With that being a really sensitive species, every lek counts. Every lek keeps us from the endangered species list.”
Diagram showing critical reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Land Desk diagram with data from the Bureau of Reclamation. Click to enlarge.
The Colorado River watershed’s spring runoff — if you can call the measly increase in streamflows “runoff” — peaked in mid-May and was pretty much over by mid-June.
The variations in streamflow showed up as a little bump in Lake Powell’s total inflows, which were augmented by extra releases from Flaming Gorge reservoir on the Wyoming-Utah border, many miles upstream. That buoyed Lake Powell’s surface level to a high point of 3,528 feet in early June, before it began its long decline that’s likely to continue until next year’s runoff.
The reservoir’s surface level is currently at about 3,525 feet, the lowest it has been since 2023 and the lowest it has been on this date since it was filled. It’s also the level that would trigger a reduction in releases from Glen Canyon Dam to 7.48 million acre-feet per year. This year that’s not going to happen, because releases are already on track to be closer to 6 MAF.
The data show why, even with reduced releases, the surface level is falling at about two inches per day as of the beginning of July.
3,527.97; 3,524.99 feet above sea level: Surface elevation of Lake Powell on June 1 and July 6, respectively.
2.1 million acre-feet: Median total inflows into Lake Powell (1991-2020).
399,304 acre-feet: Total inflows into Lake Powell during the month of June 2026, or about 19% of “normal.” The “unregulated inflow,” which is what the inflow would be without augmentation from upstream reservoirs, was just 305,000 af.
507,747 acre-feet: Total releases from Glen Canyon Dam in June 2026. At this level, all releases go through the hydroelectric turbines and generate power.
20,475 acre-feet: Estimated amount of water lost to evaporation from Lake Powell in June 2026.
8,951 acre-feet: Inflow into Lake Powell on July 7, 2026.
15,546 acre-feet: Release from Glen Canyon Dam on July 7, 2026.
788 acre-feet: Estimated evaporation from Lake Powell on July 7, 2026.
(7,383 acre-feet): Lake Powell’s daily water deficit on July 7, 2026.
In other words, as of early July the reservoir was losing nearly 7,400 acre-feet of water each day, or about 220,000 acre-feet per month. If this rate of decline continues or speeds up, then we can expect the reservoir to reach de facto deadpool — or 3,500 feet — before the end of the year.
If the level drops below 3,500 feet, dam operators will no longer be able to release water through the penstocks and hydroelectric turbines, meaning they must rely entirely on the river outlets lower on the dam for all releases. This would not only zero out the dam’s hydropower output, but could also damage the outlet tubes, since they aren’t engineered for long-term, sustained use.
One possible scenario: Dam operators switch to the river outlets for releases, the reservoir’s surface level is drawn down to, say, 3,475 feet, then the river outlet tubes begin deteriorating due to cavitation, forcing them to be shut down. This would then make it impossible to release any water from the dam until the outlets were repaired or the lake level rose back up to 3,500 feet, meaning the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon would effectively dry up completely.
That’s why the Bureau of Rec is so intent on “defending” that 3,500-foot level, presumably even if it means going to a run-of-the-river operation, in which water is released from the dam at the approximate rate that it is flowing into the reservoir, minus evaporation. On July 7, this would have amounted to about 2,800 cubic feet per second, or about one-third of current releases, diminishing hydropower output, and affecting downstream recreation and aquatic life.
If — or more likely, when — this occurs, it will render Lake Powell useless as a water savings account, and reduce it to a marginal power generator, silt collector, and evaporation pool. Boating will still be possible, but most existing boat ramps will no longer be usable. This will lend strength to calls to drain the reservoir, either by decommissioning the dam altogether, or by building bypass tunnels that can be shut down if climatic conditions change and aridification is reversed.
In the video above Katrina Grants from Reclamation explained how her agency is planning operations of Glen Canyon Dam for the next few years and emphasized that they can operate safely with just the outlet tubes, with increased maintenance activity. The planning shows the river hydrology is the primary driver of releases rather than limitations from the tube design. “We can release the water if it is there,” she said.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
The U.S. Forest Service granted final approval to South32’s proposal to re-open and expand the Hermosa Mine in southern Arizona to extract battery materials such as manganese and zinc, along with silver and lead.
The mine is on patented claims (private land), but would be expanded onto unpatented claims in the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona’s Patagonia Mountains, an area long inhabited by the Sobaipuri O’odham and Hohokam people. The mountains occupy the nexus of several different biological provinces and are home to hundreds of species of birds, bees, bats, and butterflies, as well as the unique Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands.
The approved plan of operations includes:
Disturbance of about 400 acres of Forest Service land, including 225 acres for tailings and waste storage.
Mining will be done by the long-hole open stope method at a projected rate of about 4.7 million tons of ore per year.
The Australian company has approval to discharge up to 4,500 gallons per minute of treated water into Harshaw Creek, Mowry Wash South, and Goldbaum Canyon.
During operations the plan anticipates 169 heavy truck round trips per day and 76 light vehicle or bus round trips per day on the main access road, which will be constructed for the project.
The Biden administration expedited the environmental review for the proposed plan back in 2023 because the materials extracted are considered “critical.” Manganese is used in large capacity batteries; zinc is used to galvanize steel.
Area residents and advocates worry this sort of industrialization will harm the delicate and unique ecosystem and the diverse array of wildlife that depends on it. As is often the case with underground hardrock mining, a primary concern is for its effects on water quality and quantity. Groundwater pumping is expected to deplete area aquifers, which could affect springs and wells. Acid mine drainage is expected to occur in the sulfide ore body, which, if not treated properly, could contaminate groundwater or streams in the arid region.
The West these days is teeming with so many fly-by-night mining companies and speculators staking claims on public lands and launching exploratory drilling projects that it’s hard to tell which ones to take seriously. Most of these bids will likely fizzle out as soon as commodity prices fall.
Faraday Copper’s Copper Creek Project, however, seems to be worth paying attention to, if only because they have some serious financial backing.
The Canada company just finalized its agreement to acquirethe shuttered San Manuel copper mine in southern Arizona from BHP Group Limited. BHP, a global corporation and a co-proponent of the proposed Resolute copper mine at Oak Flat, will take a 30% equity interest in Faraday when the deal is completed later this year.
The San Manuel mine, just outside Mammoth, Arizona, was once the nation’s largest underground copper mine and a significant producer up to its closure in 1999. “The definitive agreement provides a pathway for the development by Faraday of a new copper hub in Arizona,” said a BHP press release, “combining existing infrastructure and mineral inventory at San Manuel with Faraday’s adjacent Copper Creek project.”
Faraday’s Copper Creek Project properties near Mammoth, Arizona.
The proposed Copper Creek mine covers about 78 square kilometers in the Galiuro Mountains about nine miles east of Mammoth. Its open pit would likely be in the middle of Copper Creek, a tributary to the Lower San Pedro River. 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 firm reports that the drilling identified oxide mineralization that “supports potential open-pit resource expansion.”
Faraday’s preliminary mining plan for the Copper Creek Project. Source: Faraday Copper.
For now, at least, Faraday is not really a mining company. It holds mining claims at the Copper Creek project in Arizona and another “pre-feasibility” project in Nevada, but it has yet to do any actual mining. It’s an exploratory company that last year posted a net loss of nearly $28 million.
Still, it’s getting some help from some very deep-pocketed interests. First off there’s BHP, assuming the San Manuel deal goes through. And then there’s the backing of the Lundin Group, which owns metal and diamond mining, petroleum, and renewable energy companies around the world. Lundin, which was founded in Sweden, is also known for human rights violations. Two executives of Lundin Oil (now Orrön Energy and owned by another company) allegedly aided and abetted war crimes in what is now South Sudan in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their trial in Stockholm ended in late May and a verdict is expected later this year.
The development has sparked pushback from residents, advocates, and tribal nations, who worry about the drilling’s potential impacts to water quantity and quality in the Lower San Pedro River, which flows nearby, not to mention the prospect of a giant open pit mine in the biodiverse mountain range. The proposed mine site is also near the Aravaipa Wilderness Area, a stunning canyon and desert riparian zone.
For now, at least, Faraday is not really a mining company. It holds mining claims at the Copper Creek project in Arizona and another “pre-feasibility” project in Nevada, but it has yet to do any actual mining. It’s an exploratory company that last year posted a net loss of nearly $28 million.
Still, it’s getting some help from some very deep-pocketed interests. First off there’s BHP, assuming the San Manuel deal goes through. And then there’s the backing of the Lundin Group, which owns metal and diamond mining, petroleum, and renewable energy companies around the world. Lundin, which was founded in Sweden, is also known for human rights violations. Two executives of Lundin Oil (now Orrön Energy and owned by another company) allegedly aided and abetted war crimes in what is now South Sudan in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their trial in Stockholm ended in late May and a verdict is expected later this year.
Copper Creek Canyon. Photo credit: Russ McSpadden/Center for Biological Diversity
The development has sparked pushback from residents, advocates, and tribal nations, who worry about the drilling’s potential impacts to water quantity and quality in the Lower San Pedro River, which flows nearby, not to mention the prospect of a giant open pit mine in the biodiverse mountain range. The proposed mine site is also near the Aravaipa Wilderness Area, a stunning canyon and desert riparian zone.
There’s also an ironic twist to this situation. In order for Resolution Copper — a BHP/Rio Tinto partnership — to move forward on its Oak Flat mine near Superior, Arizona, about 40 miles northwest of the Copper Creek project, the company had to do a land exchange. It would take ownership of Oak Flat — USFS land that had been withdrawn from mineral entry in 1955 — in exchange for various private parcels in the region with environmental or recreational significance. One of those gained by the federal government is a 3,050-acre parcel along the Lower San Pedro just east of Mammoth; putting it in federal hands should have protected the stretch from development. But it also covers the Copper Creek-Lower San Pedro confluence, and lies between Faraday’s Copper Creek Project and BHP’s San Manuel Mine. In other words, it would potentially be affected, directly or indirectly, by Faraday’s project.
Actual mining isn’t going to happen anytime soon; Faraday has paused its drilling program for the summer and doesn’t plan to resume until the fall. But the deal with BHP and the funding from Lundin are reason enough to keep an eye on this one.
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Speaking of the San Pedro River, one of southern Arizona’s iconic streams and biodiversity zones, it reportedly has gone dry for only the second time in the last century at its Charleston gage. To be clear, the San Pedro is not a huge river, and it has been reduced to a mere trickle at times. But for it to completely vanish at this particular gage — the last time it happened was in 2005 — is a sign that aridification and groundwater overpumping are coming together to destroy one of the last un-dammed desert rivers in the Southwest.
USGS hydrograph for the San Pedro River at Charleston for the last year. While it normally plummets to below 3 cfs in late June, it also normally starts rebounding in early July when the monsoon arrives. Source: USGS.
Of course, the San Pedro is not alone. Nearly every stream in the Interior West is running at below normal flows currently. The Dolores River below McPhee Dam is so depleted that a helicopter searching the stream for water to dump on the Ferris Fire came up empty. The San Miguel River at Uravan, Colorado, is flowing at just 6 cubic feet per second, which is about 2% of the median flow for this date. And the Animas River below Aztec, New Mexico, is running at a measly 16 cfs, which is far too low for Farmington’s surf wave.
And of course, we can’t forget about the beleaguered Rio Grande. Laura Paskus reports that 87 miles of the Middle Rio Grande have gone dry. She has a heartbreaking account of walking a stretch of the dry zone near Albuquerque at her Substack newsletter.
Unfortunately, conditions are likely only to get worse this weekend, as a heat wave moves in and scorches the West, especially parts of the central and northern Rocky Mountains. Temperatures are forecasted to reach the triple digits in places like Hotchkiss and Grand Junction, Colorado. And check out this weekend forecast (7/11-7/14) for Thermopolis, Wyoming.
107° F in Thermopolis, Wyoming?!? Ouch. I think I’d avoid the hot springs this weekend [July 11, 2026] and stick to the river. Source: NWS.
🤯 Oh, the Humans! 😱
The San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office is a bit irritated, if their social media posts are any indication. This week they received a Garmin SOS signal from someone who had apparently fallen 150 to 200 feet in the Columbine Basin above Telluride, broken his leg, and needed search and rescue’s help.
Following an extensive rescue team deployment, which included a CARE Flight helicopter flying into the scene at 13,000 feet in elevation, the SAR team found the victim walking around. He told them he was BASE jumping on his own, his chute didn’t open, and he was injured in the fall. But the broken leg thing? Nope: He not only refused a helicopter flight, but any assistance at all. Adding to the annoyance: The purported victim had previously triggered a massive SAR operation while BASE jumping in the Swiss Alps that included a $175,000 air evacuation.
“Our SAR team consists of skilled professionals who risk their own lives to help others in need,” said Sheriff Dan Covault in a statement. “This individual chose to participate in an extremely dangerous activity alone, and particularly given his prior rescue history, his actions demonstrated a disregard for the risks involved and the resources required to rescue him. His decisions unnecessarily diverted emergency resources, including a Care Flight helicopter, that may have been needed for other emergencies. The fact that he was able to hike back down shows a profound lack of respect for the tremendous effort and resources devoted to this rescue.”
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
Images from badlands in northwestern New Mexico that Georgia O’Keefe painted and called the “Black Place.”
The Northern Water Board of Directors has unanimously approved a change to Colorado-Big Thompson Project accounting procedures concerning C-BT water tracking.
During a rule-making hearing at the June 11 Board meeting, Directors heard about the changes to the rules surrounding the tracking of water from the Project. The new accounting procedures will require accounting of tracking data to be provided in a manner to allow for the administration of C-BT Project water return flows, which will help Northern Water protect them as described in the District’s Repayment Contract with the Bureau of Reclamation, the Water Conservancy Act and contracts with allottees.
The modifications affect only domestic and municipal users, and Northern Water staff met or contacted 26 municipalities, water districts and treatment plants in the months before the rule change was approved.
Map of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project via Northern Water
The fire situation in the Four Corners area is not improving. The weather remains hot, dry, and windy, and this week’s forecast calls for more of the same. Next week may even be hotter, if longer-range models hold. Meanwhile, air quality has deteriorated in some places that previously seemed to avoid the worst of the smoke. The good news is that the Fourth of July weekend came and went without any new major fire starts in the region.
So far this year some 37,209 fires have burned through about 3.3 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s the second highest acreage for the first half of the year in the last decade.
Here’s a rundown of some of the Four Corners area fires. By no means is this a complete list.
The Babylon Fire, burning in the higher elevation parts of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, had grown to over 96,000 acres by Monday night, making it the nation’s largest active blaze (the Cottonwood Fire in the western part of the state has gone through about the same amount of acreage, according to Watch Duty). The two are also tied for the fourth largest fires in the state’s recorded history. The Babylon Fire is at 0% containment, with the most active area moving up the west slope of the Abajo Mountains, between Shay Mountain and Mount Linnaeus. Air tankers are pulling water from Lake Powell, and officials are asking boaters to avoid the area between Dangling Rope and Rainbow Bridge.
Closed public lands include: The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Manti-La Sal National Forest lands within the Monticello Ranger District, and BLM lands in the Indian Creek Corridor, Beef Basin, Dark Canyon, and the Sweet Alice Wilderness Study Area. Still Open: Natural Bridges National Monument, Cedar Mesa, Grand Gulch, and other lower elevation areas in the southern reaches of Bears Ears National Monument.
The Ferris Fire along the Dolores-Montezuma County line in southwestern Colorado initially burned in a northeasterly direction toward the Disappointment Valley. Then the winds shifted and the most active front of the fire curved back to the northwest, crossing the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River, and is within about 12 miles of the town of Dove Creek. As of Monday night the fire was at 51,622 acres and 22% containment.
The Gold Mountain Fire north of Ouray, Colorado, has burned across almost 29,300 acres of San Juan Mountain high country and was 2% contained as of Monday night. Firefighters on Monday conducted strategic backfiring operationseast of Ridgway to provide more protection for structures in that area. There is a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, which could bring dry lightning along with gusty and erratic winds, with high temperatures reaching the high 80s and low 90s.
The Pocket Fire north of Sedona, Arizona, has reached 26,442 acres and was at 48% containment as of Monday night. Forecasters are predicting more hot and dry weather today, with the mercury topping out around 100° F and sub-20% relative humidity.
On July 6, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality approved Energy Fuels’ request to amend its aquifer quality permit for a groundwater monitoring well at its Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon. The change raises the allowable concentration of arsenic from .050 milligrams per liter to .055 milligrams per liter and the associated alert level from .040 to .050 mg/l.
The Havasupai Tribe strongly condemned the change in a written statement, calling the approval a “profound attack on the Tribe’s inherent responsibility to guard and protect the waters of the Grand Canyon.”
Energy Fuels asked for the revision — and ADEQ granted it — after finding that construction of the mine’s shaft had created a hydraulic sink that allowed naturally occurring arsenic — a known toxic substance — to move toward the facility’s perimeter wells, putting them in violation of their permit.
So, regulators simply altered the permit’s limits and, according to the tribal nation’s statement, “chosen to weaken environmental protections instead of strengthening them.”
Dr. Bradley K. Esser, a retired Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientist, submitted technical comments on the proposed revision last year. He cast doubt on Energy Fuels’ hydraulic sink explanation, and demonstrated that the arsenic concentrations detected in the monitoring wells are far higher than regional natural background levels. He posited that it was far more likely the elevated arsenic concentrations came from sump water from the mine’s workings contaminating the groundwater.
Uranium, arsenic, and lead concentrations shot up in the Pinyon Plain Mine’s “sump water,” or groundwater that had flowed into the mine shaft, after active mining began in 2023. While an independent scientist acknowledges that it’s possible elevated arsenic levels in perimeter monitoring wells are the result of a mining-related hydraulic sink pulling naturally occurring arsenic to the wells, he posited that it’s more likely that sump water made its way into the groundwater in the wells. Source: Grand Canyon Trust.
Esser also writes:
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Monsoon season officially kicked off in the Southwest in the middle of last month, but it has yet to bring significant amounts of moisture. Earlier forecasts predicting higher than average precipitation beginning later this month are still in place for some parts of the West, but they likely will be accompanied by above-normal temperatures just about everywhere.
Next week isn’t looking so hot for fire-dousing moisture in the Southwest, but after that the chances of above-normal precipitation start climbing.
Smoky skies and three-digit heat? Ick.
The drought situation has grown worse over the last year in most of the Interior West, though there has been improvement in the deep Southwest. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor.
‘As you might expect, the hot, dry weather is taking a toll on streams around the region. The Animas River through Durango is running at 190 cubic feet per-second; the median flow for this date is over 1,000 cfs.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
Red rocks and crazy clouds in Utah before fire season had arrived and sullied up the skies. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Last month, U.S. Agriculture Department Undersecretary Michael Boren issued a memo, with a preamble by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, to Forest Service employees directing them on “advancing grazing on Forest Service” lands. It’s a curious, sometimes alarming memo. And, as is customary for the Trump administration, its authors are a bit confused about history.
While most public lands grazing occurs on Bureau of Land Management land, the memo reminds us that national forests also host more than 2 million cattle, sheep, and horses and burros. The current administration desperately wants more livestock on America’s forests, although it’s not clear why.
The memo directs the agency’s staff to streamline the permitting process, to treat public lands1 ranchers with deference and respect, and to bring more “flexibility” to prairie dog “management,” which I assume means they want more efficient ways to kill the animals. It also guides line officers to offer up unallocated forage “to the maximum extent possible” and work to “solicit interest/applications from the eligible ranching community” to occupy vacant and closed grazing allotments. The goal? To add 500,000 head months2 of cattle and other livestock to national forest lands over the next two years, purportedly in part to “maintain the fabric of rural America.”
The fabric of rural America very well may be frayed, but throwing a bunch of half-ton methane dispensers onto drought-addled national forests to gobble up what grass and wildflowers remain in high-country meadows, trample stream banks, sully trout habitat, and make a mess out of trails, isn’t going to repair it.
Boren acknowledges that grazing on national forests has declined over the last 60 years in part due to “changing rangeland conditions” and “catastrophic wildfire and variable moisture levels.” But he seems oblivious to the fact that in most of the West, moisture levels remain at an all time low, and putting livestock on that land would not only lead to some pretty skinny cows, but also would further decimate the drought-stressed soils and vegetation.
Ranchers nationwide are actually thinning their herds due to drought and rising overhead costs, and cattle numbers are at record lows this year despite high beef prices. That reduces the chances that Boren will actually have many takers for the vacant allotments.
Still, it’s concerning. With the top brass pressuring the entire agency to pull out all of the stops to get more livestock on the forests, it’s not hard to imagine a district ranger succumbing and permitting a vacant allotment — even one that a conservation organization bought out from a willing rancher to help wildlife or reduce conflicts.
Rollins, meanwhile, seems confused about the origins of the agency she oversees. She writes:
But she doesn’t seem to consider what Congress was trying to “protect” the forests from, because in the next paragraph she writes: “From those early beginnings, grazing has been an integral part of our nation’s national forests …” Yeah, not quite. Let’s step back a bit, shall we?
During the early and mid-1800s, the United States stole, conquered, purchased, or acquired by treaty hundreds of millions of acres of land in the West and declared it the “public domain.” The government then went about “disposing” of the land, giving it away or selling it for virtually nothing via the Homestead Act, the General Mining Act, the Pacific Railway Act, the Desert Land Act, and so forth. By the end of the 1880s, huge tracts of public land had been handed over to the railroads, to mining interests, to states, and to homesteaders, yet across the West hundreds of millions of acres still remained in the public domain, and nearly all of those lands were open to unrestricted grazing, timber-cutting, and the devastation that came with them.
Gifford Pinchot would later describe the period like this:
Albert Potter, the USFS’s first chief of grazing, called the 1880s the era of “spoilation,” writing:
Unfettered livestock grazing wasn’t just diminishing the forage, but also wrecking watersheds. In southeastern Utah, the big livestock companies, notably the New Mexico and Kansas Land and Cattle Company, ran thousands of cattle and sheep across the once abundant grasslands on the slopes of the Abajo and La Sal Mountains, reducing them to denuded, dusty, gullied, flash-flood-prone wastelands. At one point, allegedly out of spite, the Carlisle livestock concern turned out thousands of sheep on the upper branches of Montezuma Creek, Monticello’s source for drinking water. Bacteria from the sheep feces contaminated the water, leading to a typhoid outbreak in Monticello that killed eleven people.
In hopes of mitigating the wreckage, in 1891 Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, giving the president the authority to withdraw areas from the public domain3 as forest reserves, to be overseen by the Interior Department. Six years later Congress passed the Forest Management or Organic Administrative Act, which gave the previous law some teeth by providing a framework for managing the reserves. In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt transferred management of the reserves to the Department of Agriculture and named the agency the Forest Service, appointing Gifford Pinchot as his chief forester.
Together, Pinchot and Roosevelt represented a major shift in the way the government managed and society perceived and treated the public lands. Roosevelt set aside some of the nation’s most cherished landmarks as national monuments. Pinchot believed that humans should utilize the forests and grasslands but that they should do so in a more sustainable manner so as to save some of the timber and forage for future generations. This conservationist ethos came to be known as Pinchotism, a term spit derogatorily by western politicians who were beholden to the extractive industries, such as Republican senator Weldon Heyburn from Idaho. Employing the same rhetoric that would later be used by the Sagebrush Rebels, Heyburn derided the forest reserve laws, suggesting that they amounted to theft of the “people’s forests.”
The question of livestock grazing on the forest lands was a contentious one for years. Under the Forest Reserve Act, grazing was effectively banned on the new reserves. After the Organic Act passed, the General Land Office began permitting grazing by cattle and horses, but not sheep — which were generally seen as far more destructive4— on the condition that it didn’t harm the forests. Eventually, Pinchot succumbed to the sheep industry lobby and grudgingly allowed grazing on some forests, causing a schism between him and John Muir, who was strongly opposed to sheep in forests.
Over the ensuing years, the Forest Service developed a grazing policy, permitting system, and set fees — very low ones — based on the number of animals, much to livestock operators’ dismay. This was in stark contrast to the lands in the public domain, where grazing remained a free-for-all until Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934.
These minimal restraints, however, were not enough to stop the destruction. In the years following World War I, Forest Service officials found that grazing was still wreaking havoc on vegetation and spawning more erosion. Yet every time they tried to reduce the number of livestock on the land, they were hit with legal challenges, lobbying campaigns, and political pressure.
Ultimately the backlash to Pinchotism elevated Warren G. Harding, a friend to the industries that wanted free rein over the public lands, to the presidency. Harding chose Albert Bacon Fall to be his interior secretary, who immediately went about rolling back regulations and doing his best to erase the legacy left by Pinchot and Roosevelt, including opening up the public domain and Indian land to coal mining and oil and gas drilling. While Trump and his minions like to compare themselves to Teddy Roosevelt, in reality they much more closely resemble Harding and Fall.
A number of ferocious wildfires continue to rage across the Interior West. One of the largest is the Babylon Fire in Bears Ears National Monument, which had grown to over 81,000 acres as of Thursday night. It’s also on Forest Service land and is burning through some large, active grazing allotments, including the Babylon, Gooseberry, Twin Springs, and Cottonwood, and looks like it’s making its way onto some BLM allotments as well.
The Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray, Colorado, had grown to about 21,000 acres, with the Ferris Fire near Dove Creek reaching nearly 29,000 acres. Fire weather is expected to continue through the weekend.
🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭
Note: On the occasion of America’s 250th birthday, I’m rerunning this piece from a couple of years ago on the July 1776 Escalante-Dominguez expedition that occurred even as the American Revolution was unfolding far to the east.
Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco’s map, drawn following the 1776 Escalante-Dominguez expedition via The Land Desk
I’ve been fascinated by maps of all sorts for as long as I remember. Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco’s map, drawn following the 1776 Escalante-Dominguez expedition, has intrigued me for nearly as long. And the more I look at old maps of the region, the more interesting this one becomes, in part because it’s far more accurate, especially in its depictions of the Four Corners Country, than maps made a century later by U.S. surveyors.
In July of 1776, Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a couple of Franciscan priests, headed out with a motley crew from Santa Fe in search of a route to California. Instead, they ended up going up what is now Colorado’s Western Slope and through the heart of Ute territory, across to the Great Salt Lake, dropping down through western Utah, and finally looping — somewhat erratically — back to Santa Fe. But if they didn’t find California, they did leave behind relatively detailed journals and maps that give us insight into what the region looked like prior to the Euro-American invasion, and into early European colonists’ perception of the region.
The party set out from the Pueblo of Santa Rosa de Abiquiu, on the first day of August, effectively leaving the Spanish Empire. The country beyond was the domain of the Weenuchiu, Tabeguache, Caputa, and Mouache bands of Ute. Not wanting to provoke the Ute people any more than necessary — they had made that mistake before — the Spanish Crown forbade settlers from wandering into the territory of or trading with the Utes.
Still, the path they followed was well-established. Juan Rivera had travelled it a decade earlier, and he had followed well-established routes through a land that had been inhabited for millennia, and that had been intimately mapped in the collective consciousness of oral histories. Rivera probably wasn’t even the first Spaniard to tread these paths; mavericks defied the travel and trade ban to acquire deerskins or to try their luck in the mineralized slopes of the high San Juan Mountains. The Spanish mavericks, in turn, were merely following paths already well trodden by Ute, Diné, Paiute, and Pueblo travelers long before.
So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that current day routes more or less follow Escalante’s and Dominguez’s path. From Abiquiu the party traveled northwest, roughly following Hwy. 84 about to Los Ojos/Tierra Amarilla, which they described as:
This sort of assessment of a site’s suitability for a settlement is common in Escalante’s journals. Most places he deemed good for a village now have a village on them, from Arboles to Ignacio to Dolores to Hotchkiss, though none would be established for another century or more after Escalante’s journey.
They then cut westward, meeting up with the Navajo River near Dulce, which originates in what they called the Sierra de la Grulla, or the Mountains of the Cranes — now known as the South San Juans. Later they note that the headwaters of the Rio de Los Pinos are in the Sierra de la Plata, indicating that the entirety of what we now think of as the Western San Juans were then called the La Plata Mountains. When they reach the confluence with the San Juan River near Carracas, they write:
They called their camp “Nuestra Señora de las Nieves,” or Our Lady of the Snows, because they could see snow-capped peaks from there. This seems odd given that it was early August and they would have been looking at the south faces of the San Juans, where the snow should have melted months earlier. Maybe 1776 was a cold year, because later, they describe the passage between Durango and Hesperus like this: “the terrain is very moist, since it rains very frequently because of its proximity to the Sierra; as a result, both in the mountain forest — which consist of very tall and straight pines, scrub oak, and several kinds of wild fruits — and in its narrow valleys there are the prettiest of pastures. The climate here is excessively cold even in the months of July and August.”
On this version of the map, Miera did not include the route of the expedition. But the little circles with crosses indicate places they stopped, camped, or named. Via The Land Desk
They make it to the Big Bend of the Dolores River and then do some bending of their own, deviating from their westward course by 90 degrees for reasons I can’t figure out. Were their guides trying to avoid the rugged Canyon Country of southern Utah? Were they blindly following the path of their predecessor, Rivera? For whatever reason, they ended up heading north, encountering the Dolores River a second time near Cahone and a third time near Slick Rock.
The party tried to follow the Dolores River downstream (north), but was stymied by the narrow, twisty gorge, writing: “The canyon we named El Laberinto de Miera because of the varied and pleasing scenery of rock cliffs which it has on either side and which, for being so lofty and craggy at the turns, makes the exit seem all the more difficult the farther one advances.” They turned eastward into the Big Gypsum valley, then toward Naturita and Nucla, before crossing the Uncompahgre Plateau where they found “deer and roe and other animals breed, and certain chicken fowl the size and shape of the common domestic ones, from which they differ in not having combs. Their flesh is very tasty.”
They dropped down to what they call the El Rio de San Francisco north of Montrose and that the “Yutas” call Ancapagri — i.e. Uncompahgre — or “Red Lake”, “because they say that near its source there is a spring of red-colored water, hot and ill-tasting.”
It seems that part of the reason Miera’s maps somewhat accurately depict areas the party never journeyed to is because they spoke with the Indigenous people who intimately knew the country. This is in sharp contrast to U.S. maps drawn a century later, which depict much of southeastern Utah as a big blank spot, with the San Juan River vanishing into the desert after passing the Four Corners. Miera y Pacheco’s map, meanwhile, accurately shows the stream meeting up with the Colorado in Glen Canyon.
That said, Miera y Pacheco does make some errors. He has the Gunnison River (San Xavier) running into the Dolores River near the present site of Gateway (passing through the Unaweap Gorge, perhaps?), and his maps appear to have the Green River (Rio San Buenaventura) flowing through the Wasatch Range and into Utah Lake.
Miera’s depiction of the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. Via The Land Desk
At Montrose the party again took an odd route, going up the Gunnison River, in a northeasterly direction, rather than following it downstream to the northwest, up and over Sierra del Venado Alazan (Mountain of the Sorrel-Colored Deer), or Grand Mesa, before getting back on course (sort of) and making their way to the Great Salt Lake. It wasn’t until that point, when winter was starting to set in, that they realized maybe they should have taken a different route, and that Monterey, their final destination, was still a long ways off.
From the Great Salt Lake, the expedition went southward, roughly following I-15, before cutting east at St. George and encountering the Colorado River where it passes through the Marble Gorge. As you might imagine, crossing the river and the canyon wasn’t easy. Via The Land Desk
So they went south, all the way down to St. George, before turning back to the east, Santa Fe-bound. This is where it gets interesting, because their guides were not familiar with the country (what we would now call the Arizona strip) they were headed for. And yet, even though their route-finding was sometimes determined by drawing lots, they somehow managed to encounter the Colorado River at one of the few places they could get down to it, just downstream from the Paria River. Crossing the river, itself, wasn’t so easy.
So they built a raft of logs, and “Father Fray Silvestre, accompanied by the servants, tried to cross the river; but although the poles they used to propel it were about five yards long, they did not touch bottom even a short distance from the bank.”
It was late October by then and, “Not knowing when we would be able to leave this place, and having already eaten up the meat of the first horse, the pine kernels and the other provisions we had bought, we ordered another horse killed.” Desperate, they hiked up the Paria until they were able to climb up to the plateau, then dropped back down to the Colorado River in Glen Canyon in a place they called San Diego. Finally they found a place where the canyon and river widened — now inundated by Lake Powell — and they were able to cross. After climbing out of the canyon: “We found today many Indian tracks, but saw no one. So many wild sheep flourish here that their tracks look like great herds of domestic sheep. They are smaller than the domestic variety, of the same shape but much swifter.”
The party finally reached Santa Fe and in the ensuing years Miera y Pacheco created at least two maps of the country they had traveled through.
1 When I use the term “public lands” I’m referring not only to BLM lands, but also to national forests, national parks and monuments, and national wildlife refuges.
2 Head Month is the U.S. Forest Service term for a cow-calf pair eating public forage for one month. It’s similar to an Animal Unit Month on BLM land.
3 When land is “withdrawn” from the public domain, it simply means that it is no longer available for “disposal.” That is, it can’t be privatized via homesteads or mining claims.
4 During a meeting with Colorado stockmen in 1905 to discuss grazing fees, Teddy Roosevelt reportedly pounded the arm of his chair with his fist and declared: “Gentlemen, sheep are destructive.”
Three federal firefighters were killed and two seriously injured when the Knowles and Gore fires overtook them southwest of Grand Junction near the Utah-Colorado line. The fires joined with others to become the Snyder Fire, which had grown to 30,000 acres as of Monday.
The fatalities were the tragic result of what has become a downright terrifying wildfire situation in the Interior West, with more than a dozen 1,000-acre-plus blazes tearing through forests in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico during the last days of June. Without substantial and soaking rainfall soon, it’s likely to get even worse.
The fury of these conflagrations is evident in their rapid rate of growth.
The Babylon Fire within Bears Ears National Monument, for example, was first reported on the afternoon of June 26 on Elk Ridge north of the Bears Ears Buttes. By the evening of June 29 it was mapped at over 48,000 acres and was spreading northward. The National Park Service closed the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park as a result and the Manti-La Sal National Forest shut down the entire Elk Ridge area.
Further east, in Colorado, the Ferris Fire was first reported late on June 27 just north of the Dolores River along the Dolores and Montezuma county line. It quickly tore through piñon and juniper, then scrub oak and ponderosa forest toward the Disappointment Valley, and had reached about 20,600 acres as of Monday night.
The Gold Mountain Fire, apparently ignited when a tree fell on a powerline, was first reported Saturday afternoon near the Bachelor Syracuse Mine Tour north of Ouray. By Monday night it was over 8,300 acres and had forced evacuations and the closure of Highway 550.
On the eastern side of the Divide the Aspen Acres Fire grew to 23,000 acres in less than 24 hours, driven through a parched landscape by 100-mile-per-hour winds, and was threatening the towns of Beulah and Rye. The Willow Fire in Lake County is at a relatively small 1,900 acres, but is perilously close to Leadville.
Many factors contribute to the intensity, size, and frequency of the fires, from decades of fire suppression, to human encroachment in forests, to flammable noxious weed infestations. But the biggest driver of this regional calamity is clearly the hot, dry weather, which has been exacerbated by human-caused climate change.
Winter was an utter dud as far as the snowpack was concerned, in large part because of the unusually high temperatures. The hot, dry weather continued into the spring — with July-like temps at the end of March — sucking moisture from the soil and vegetation, and pushing huge swaths of the Interior West into severe to extreme drought conditions. Throw in gusty wind and a June heat wave — nearly 1,000 daily high temperature records were tied or broken in the West this month — and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
There have been hot and dry years in the past, along with catastrophic wildfires: In 1879 the Lime Creek Burn charred 26,000 high-country acres south of Silverton, burning through what later became known as the “asbestos forest” due to its apparent blaze-resistance.
Back then, however, 1879-like dry and warm years were anomalous, as were mega fires. The Lime Creek Burn stood as the state’s largest blaze until 2002; now it’s not even in the top 20 for acreage burned. This year, while relatively extreme, is no outlier. The West’s temperatures have been trending upward since reliable record-keeping began some 130 years ago, and the Southwest is suffering through year 26 of an ongoing megadrought, the most severe in at least 1,200 years.
Nor is the phenomenon isolated to the arid West. A heat dome is on its way to the Midwest and East Coast. And a record-breaking heat wave has gripped much of western Europe. France has recorded over 1,000 heat-related fatalities in recent days, and was forced to shut down nuclear reactors because the rivers from which they pull their cooling waters are too warm (and the discharged water is even warmer, threatening river ecosystems).
So it’s utterly surreal to, on the one hand, breathe in the blanket of smoke that’s settling into the West’s valleys, to observe new flame icons popping up on the Watch Duty map, and see satellite imagery smoke plumes stretch across the region, and on the other to hear U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright downplay the deaths in Europe. Unlike his boss, President Trump, Wright acknowledges that human-related greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet, but he says it’s not a crisis and that its effects are “manageable.”
Wright’s disrespect for the victims, including the injured and killed firefighters in Colorado, is dumbfounding. And his willful ignorance of the science and reality on the ground in order to perpetuate Trump’s drill-baby-drill agenda and bolster oil company profits is simply sickening. The same goes for Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. His department now oversees the nation’s wildland firefighting force. And yet he is also leading the charge to deregulate the oil and gas industry and allow them to spew more planet-warming methane in order to spur more oil and gas drilling on public lands — ultimately leading to more fossil fuel burning, carbon emissions, warmer global temperatures, and more severe fires.
It reminds me a little bit of the story of the California firefighter who admitted setting dozens of fires as a job-creation scheme, allowing him and his colleagues to earn overtime pay. The difference here is that Burgum is not only playing his dangerous game with the lives of the firefighters under his command, but also with the planet as a whole.
Sprinklers on the Great Sage Plain in southwestern Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
One of the many things I’m interested in is the water-energy nexus: The way a coal plant requires vast amounts of water to make steam to turn turbines to generate electricity to run the pumps on the Central Arizona Project canals, for example. Now, with dry times in full-swing and electricity prices on the rise almost everywhere, the spotlight is on the water-energy-agriculture/food nexus.
In the arid West, most agriculture is of the irrigated kind. In many cases, this means relying on pumps to move the water across the land, to bring groundwater up from a well, and to pressurize sprinkler systems. And pumps require energy, in the form of electricity from the grid, from distributed solar or wind systems, or from diesel or gasoline motors or generators.
During a dry year like this one, farmers need to start irrigating earlier in the season, meaning their pumps run more often and consume more energy, which costs more money. That’s the situation Wyoming farmers and ranchers Tim Teichert and Jason Thornock are up against this year, according to a June 11 WyoFile report by Dustin Bleizeffer. These guys fork out up to $150,000 annually for electricity, the drought is pushing that bill higher, and now Rocky Mountain Power — a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway — is looking for a 37.7% rate increase on irrigators. Ouch.
Here’s where the nexus comes in: If the rate hike goes through, it will make it prohibitively expensive for other farmers to switch from flood irrigation to more efficient sprinkler systems. While this would seem to be the perfect opportunity for farmers to go solar, that’s not so easy in Wyoming, either. State law caps the size of solar arrays eligible for net metering, or the system by which the utility credits a customer for exporting excess power into the grid, at 25 kilowatts, which is far smaller than most farmers would need to power their pumps.
Down in Arizona the stakes are even higher, according to a study by Andrew Berry and Mikhail V. Chester published in 2017 in Environmental Research Letters. They highlighted the fact that in Arizona, most irrigation is powered by electricity.
The Central Arizona Project’s 15 pumping stations guzzle 2.8 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually to move water more than 300 miles from the Colorado River to the middle of the state, with a total vertical climb of about 3,000 feet. Then the farmers have to pump it from the canal to their fields and rely on pumps to power sprinkler systems. Arizona farmers that don’t rely on the canals use groundwater, which also requires pumping.
When temperatures go up or precipitation decreases, the farmers need more water, which means they also use more energy, putting more strain on the electrical grid. And even without all of those irrigation pumps churning away, heat stresses the grid in other ways, primarily because power demand surges in the afternoons, when everyone cranks up their air conditioners. Also, hot power lines are less efficient, wildfires can take out transmission lines and other electricity infrastructure, smoke diminishes solar output, and low streamflows can deplete hydropower generation.
All of this has the potential to take down the power grid, which would cause the irrigation and water-movement systems to shut down, which would affect crops and food supplies.
Over the last century and a half, especially in the years following World War II, the federal and state governments, utilities, and private interests have created huge networks for generating and moving power and for diverting, storing, and delivering water. Research and stories like the ones mentioned here just go to show how inextricably intertwined the two systems have become, how important they both are to Western communities, and how fragile they can be. Climate change — along with increasing demand — is raising the risk of a catastrophic, cascading failure in these systems, which would be calamitous for the entire region.
Last month, leaders from across Colorado’s Western Slope celebrated the release of $40 million in federal funding for the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project. At a time when Colorado is celebrating its 150th anniversary and our nation approaches its 250th birthday, this investment represents more than a funding milestone; it marks one of the most significant water preservation achievements our state has seen in generations. It also would not have happened without the determination of our congressional representative, Jeff Hurd, who made this project a priority and worked tirelessly to deliver results for the communities he serves. What Rep. Hurd understands is the same thing that has united more than 100 local, state, and federal elected officials and leaders in support of preserving these critical senior water rights: the future of the Western Slope is inseparable from the future of the Shoshone water rights. Protecting these rights protects the flows of the Colorado River, sustains our agricultural heritage, strengthens our recreation- and tourism-based economies, and helps preserve the rural communities that make this part of Colorado unique…
I believe that 150 years from now, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will look back on the Shoshone Water Rights project as a turning point. They will see a generation of leaders who understood what was at stake and chose to act. They will see communities that put aside differences, came together, and made a long-term investment in the future of the Colorado River. History will remember the Shoshone project as a major milestone in the stewardship of our most precious resources. From Western Slope ditch companies and water conservancy districts to local governments, state leaders, and members of Congress, countless individuals are still working together to turn this vision into reality. The lesson is an important one. On the Western Slope, progress happens when we pull in the same direction. It takes communities working in harness together to move mountains and sometimes to move water. And it takes elected leaders like Jeff Hurd who are willing to put their shoulders into that work. The Shoshone project demonstrates what is possible when rural Colorado speaks with one voice about protecting its water, its economy, and its future.
The main boat ramp at Wahweap Marina was unusable due to low water levels in Lake Powell in December 2021. Water levels are projected to soon fall even lower than this at the nation’s second-largest reservoir. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Western Slope lawmakers had harsh words for water managers at a state committee hearing last week, questioning whether Colorado has done enough to avoid a lawsuit with its downstream neighbors.
Colorado Sen. Dylan Roberts, a District 8 Democrat who represents several Western Slope counties, including Eagle, Grand, Garfield, Routt and Summit, asked Colorado’s lead negotiator, Becky Mitchell, whether the people of Colorado should have confidence that negotiations among the seven states that share the Colorado River have put the state in the best possible position. The states have been at an impasse for more than two years without a deal for future management as reservoirs continue to decline to record-low levels.
“My constituents just see fighting and intransigence,” Roberts said. “And it’s concerning to me, especially as a Western Slope lawmaker … that the strategy is just ‘Let’s hire more lawyers; we’re going to court no matter what.’ That doesn’t give me confidence, because I don’t think Colorado fares well when we go to court against Arizona and California and Nevada, throwing our fate to the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The remarks came at Thursday’s meeting of the state Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee in Denver. Along with Mitchell, in the hot seat were state engineer Jason Ullmann and Amy Ostdiek, interstate section chief at the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The three are employees of the state Department of Natural Resources and have the backing of the Attorney General’s office in negotiations.
Roberts’ line of questioning seemed prompted by recent projections that show river flows dipping below a threshold that could trigger litigation. The Lower Basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) believe that the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) are bound by the 1922 Colorado River Compact to deliver 82.5 million acre-feet of water over a 10-year rolling average. According to the Upper Colorado River Commission, the 10-year average will dip later this year to about 81.3 million acre-feet because of persistent drought.
Some experts believe that this amounts to a “tripwire” that could trigger a lawsuit from the Lower Basin states (Arizona, in particular, has been openly preparing for litigation) that could result in mandatory cuts in water use for the Upper Basin. Upper Basin water managers don’t subscribe to this interpretation, saying their states are only required not to deplete the river’s flows by more than 75 million acre-feet over 10 years.
Mitchell was reluctant to share details of Colorado’s legal strategy in a public forum, but she answered “absolutely” that her team’s work was putting Colorado in the best position. She said cutting back prematurely just to satisfy the Lower Basin’s interpretation of the century-old agreement would be bad for the state.
“If we initiate curtailment now, that is worse for Coloradans,” Mitchell said. “I think that is an important thing to remember.”
Wracked by drought, climate change and a management crisis, the situation on the river has never been more dire. The current management guidelines expire this year, and in the absence of a seven-state deal to share shortages and operate the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the feds are poised to step in. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to release a more detailed, short-term plan to manage the river for the next two years by mid-to-late summer.
State Rep. Julie McCluskie, a District 13 Democrat, said communities in her district have been living with the incredible angst, anxiety and pain of no snow and low reservoirs.
“The frustration I hear in my community is that we have missed multiple deadlines; they are becoming a funny joke,” McCluskie said. “There is such a fear about the lengthy litigation process, the fear of an outcome that is far worse for Colorado than a compromise that we have some control over.”
Lake Powell is formed by Glen Canyon Dam. In a concept pitched by a conservation organization, a flexible pool of water could be moved between Upper Basin reservoirs to wherever it’s needed most. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Conservation conversation is the ‘bare minimum’
Lawmakers also had strong words for state officials regarding conservation, saying legislators must be involved in the creation of any program.
Colorado has dabbled with pilot conservation programs in the past, but traditional programs that pay farmers and ranchers to temporarily cut back on water use remain controversial. This is especially true on the Western Slope, which has long been the target for these types of programs, and where some worry that they could harm rural communities if not done carefully. After two years of exploring how the state could set up a temporary, voluntary and compensated conservation program, officials shelved the idea in favor of focusing on drought-resilience initiatives.
“Other states out of the seven have very clear and actionable roles for their general assemblies, their legislatures,” McCluskie said. “We have less so, and yet the stakes are so high. So I beg of you, decision-makers, that it is essential that we be a part of those next steps.”
Julie McCluskie. Photo credit: Colorado General Assembly
Ostdiek said that any program would need to start slow and make sure it incorporates input from people throughout the state.
“I think that we can continue to assess as we go what we might need from you all, and what a program like that might look like,” Ostdiek said. “I think what we can certainly commit to is continuing this dialogue and continuing the discussion about what we might need to make this a success.”
In 2023, Colorado lawmakers tried to force stakeholders to come up with recommendations on conservation programs by creating a statewide task force, which met 10 times over six months. But the group failed to find a consensus, with some saying it was “premature” to create a conservation program.
As part of a post-2026 framework, the Upper Basin states plan to create a “contribution” pool in Lake Powell, which could be used to help stabilize the system, keeping water levels above critical thresholds to protect hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam and acting as an insurance pool against forced cutbacks. In a May 22 letter to federal officials, the Upper Basin states said they have a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of water year 2028, but only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow.
Three Upper Basin states have different methods for contributing to this pool: Utah has its own demand management program; Wyoming lawmakers passed a law this year allowing for a conservation program; and New Mexico plans to release water from Navajo Reservoir.
But precisely how — and how much — Colorado would contribute to this pool is unclear. The state’s share of the Upper Basin’s allocation is 51.75%, meaning Colorado could be on the hook for 51,750 acre-feet.
And ensuring that saved water actually gets into a pool in Lake Powell remains part of the problem. Currently, conserved water that stays in the river can just be picked up by a downstream user, with no net gain to Lake Powell. Colorado officials say they do not have the authority to “shepherd” water past other water users to the state line unless it is specifically for compact compliance. [ed. emphasis mine]
Last year, some Delta County ranchers asked lawmakers to take up the issue and pass a law that would address this issue, allowing water users to conserve and get credit for contributing water to a Lake Powell pool. But legislators did not take up a bill in the 2026 session.
Colorado officials told lawmakers they were continuing to explore what a program might look like and whether legislation would be needed.
Roberts said conversations with the legislature should be the bare minimum if Colorado is going to have a conservation program.
“If the department or any agency of the state were to pursue a conserved consumptive use program or demand management program that used state tax dollars to pay for it and did not go through the legislature in a formal process, I imagine that all of us on this panel and many of our colleagues would raise holy hell about the unilateral decision-making coming from Denver about programs impacting all parts of the state,” Roberts said. “So, please, let’s just cut that off at my recommendation. Let’s work together on this.”
Officials opened the hearing by highlighting the impacts of this year’s severe drought on Colorado’s farmers and ranchers, noting how even some of the most senior water users will experience shortages as streamflows dwindle. Orchards in the North Fork Valley and row crops in the Uncompahgre River Valley already have unprecedented shortages.
In response to Roberts’ concerns about the failure to find a compromise among the seven states, Mitchell posed a high-stakes rhetorical question: “I would ask, ‘What else do you think we can give?’”
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and is divided into Upper and Lower Basins. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
While the Trump administration 2.0 has so far rexfrained from trying to shrink or eliminate national monuments, its non-executive-branch proxies just keep on trying.This week the 10th Circuit federal appeals court issued a decision keeping alive Utah’s lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s 2021 re-establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments following Trump 1.0’s shrinkage of the same.
The state and Garfield and Kane counties filed one lawsuit in 2022, with the Blue Ribbon Coalition and other parties filing their own suit. In 2023, a federal court dismissed both lawsuits; that ruling was appealed.
This week’s decision confirmed the dismissal of the Blue Ribbon suit. But it also determined that presidential national monument designations under the Antiquities Act are subject to federal judicial review, and sent Utah’s case back to the district court.
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Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with three travel management plans in Utah that will determine which roads, trails, and areas of the respective field offices’ jurisdiction are open to motorized vehicles. Given that the stated aim is to bring the plans in line with Trump’s recent executive order rescinding restrictions on motorized vehicles on public lands, we can assume that the idea here is to expand motorized access to some remote areas. The plans include:
The Moab Field Office has released preliminary alternatives for the Dolores River Travel Management Plan on about 127,000 acres in Grand County, Utah, east of Moab and abutting the Colorado border. This would include roads along the Utah section of the Lower Dolores River, and on mesas and in canyons on either side of it. Maps of the alternatives can be found here. This one is not yet open to public comment.
The Kanab Field Office has released a draft environmental assessment for its Trail Canyon Travel Management Plan on nearly 330,000 acres in Kane County. It is open to public input.
And the Vernal Field Office has also released a draft review for the Dinosaur North Travel Management Plan. The public comment period is open.
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I typically stay away from electoral politics, especially the horse-race part of it and polls and such. But sometimes a particular contest or candidate can provide a lens on bigger trends or phenomena, and so are worth looking into.
The latest race that has caught my interest is the one to replace Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who is retiring at the end of this term. Since it’s Wyoming in 2026, it’s safe to assume the winner will be a Republican (though this wasn’t always the case), meaning the primary is the contest that matters. The front-runner, I suppose, is Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump sycophant and MAGA extremist who unseated Liz Cheney back in 2022 after Cheney failed to show adequate fealty to Trump.
But it’s one of her challengers that I’m interested in: Sam Mead. Mead is a fifth-generation Wyoming rancher, comes from a long line of Republican Wyoming politicians, and is the nephew of former governor Matt Mead. Mead is young (36), charismatic, has strong conservative credentials on fiscal issues and gun-rights, and a background in engineering and business, having run a whiskey distillery in Kirby. But what really distinguishes him from his opponents is his willingness to speak out against some of Trump’s policies, and his priority on protecting public lands and keeping them in the public’s hands.
Mead, in other words, appears to be an old-school, pre-MAGA Western Republican. He reminds me a bit of Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, back before extreme polarization pulled him more and more rightward and into MAGA land. Wyoming’s primary is on Aug. 18.
Meanwhile, Utah just held its primaries, with some surprising results. Utah State Senate President Stuart Adams, a Republican, was defeated by challenger Stephanie Hollist. Adams was a strong supporter of the controversial proposed Stratos Project data center complex on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake. Also, incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy trounced challenger Phil Lyman in the GOP primary for the 3rd Congressional District, with about 70% of the vote.
While Maloy was endorsed by Trump, and has plenty of extreme views, Lyman is the more MAGA of the two. And Trump pardoned Lyman after his conviction for leading an OHV rally down Recapture Canyon in the southeastern part of the state. Political consultant Taylor Morgan told the Utah News Dispatch that Lyman’s resounding defeat showed that his “very angry, very conspiracy-based, populist, toxic form of Republicanism (is) frankly wearing very thin, especially here in Utah.” Let’s hope he’s right!
Pumpjack in the Aneth oil field. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
I wrote Tuesday about how the Trump administration is eviscerating Biden-era oil and gas rules aimed at reducing methane emissions and ensuring companies clean up their own messes rather than foisting them onto the taxpayers. Now the changes are open for public comment.
Here are a few of the changes Trump and co. are proposing:
Bring back pre-Biden reclamation bond rates, which amount to just over $2,000 per well, which is insane, since the cost to reclaim and plug a single well easily can exceed $100,000. These numbers incentivized petroleum companies to walk away, forsake the bond, and abandon the well, leaving the tab for the taxpayers.
Reduce the current $10 minimum per-acre bid for leasing public land to $2, restore noncompetitive leasing, and slash royalties and filing fees for oil and gas companies.
Implement a new fee for protesting leases. And they plan to cut the 90-day public input period to just 10 days. In other words, they’re trying to cut out the public from decisions regarding public lands.
Gut the waste prevention rule (they wanted to roll it back altogether, but chose to revise it instead because it wasn’t clear which rule would replace it) by removing limits on royalty-free flaring and killing requirements that companies develop leak detection and repair plans.
Trump’s changes to the waste prevention rule will turn back the regulatory clock to the days when oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land vented and flared an average of 44.2 billion cubic feet annually of methane, which is usually accompanied by nasty volatile organic compounds and other dangerous compounds. That’s as bad for the climate as burning around 9 million tons of coal. But it also amounts to lighting money — your money — on fire and throwing it away. That vented methane is basically the same stuff you pay for to run your furnace, or to generate much of the electricity running through the grid. And since operators don’t pay royalties on gas they throw away, that cost American taxpayers some $166 million in lost revenue over a decade.
The result of all of this (and more) will be to rob taxpayers and sacrifice public lands and the climate to subsidize the same energy corporations that are raking in obscene profits thanks to Trump’s disastrous war on Iran. The administration argues that their proposed changes will save petroleum corporations operating on federal lands $17 million annually in compliance costs.
That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that high oil prices have driven corporation’s profits to absurd highs. During the first quarter of 2026 alone, ExxonMobil raked in $8.8 billion in underlying, adjusted profits. Somehow, I don’t think several million in compliance costs is going to deter them from drilling.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
Many of the West’s streams have entered their summer low-flow phase, a period that falls between the end of snowmelt and the beginning of the monsoon, while irrigation diversions are in full-swing. One of the most dramatic cases of this is, perhaps, the Colorado River itself as it flows through Grand Junction. This morning, the river was running at just 366 cubic feet per second near Palisade, which as reader Dave Grossman pointed out is low enough to allow someone to walk across the sprawling river bed.
Some other notably low flows:
Animas River in Farmington, NM: 104 cfs.
Dolores River at Bedrock, CO: .76 cfs (effectively dry)
White River near Watson, UT: 76.4 cfs
Green River above Flaming Gorge: 551 cfs
Green River below Flaming Gorge: 1,590 cfs
San Juan River near Caracas, CO (above Navajo Reservoir): 85 cfs
Colorado River near Hite, UT: 4,300 cfs
This has reduced daily average inflows into Lake Powell to about 4,800 cfs and dropping. It would be much lower than that, except that flows are being bolstered by upstream reservoir releases. Either way, inflows are far less than Glen Canyon Dam releases, which are averaging about 8,500 cfs daily (approx. 6,500 cfs at night and 10,600 cfs during the day). This disparity, exacerbated by reservoir evaporation, is lowering Lake Powell’s surface level, which currently sits at about 3,526.75 feet. Without substantial upstream rain, it will likely drop to 3,520 feet by early August.
📖 Reading (and watching) Room 🧐
Matt Jenkins wrote an excellent overview for the Water Education Foundation of the potential “Grand Bargain” on the Colorado River, which would require both the Upper and Lower basins to give up some of their Colorado River Compact claims not only to keep the system from collapsing, but also to avoid litigation.
The piece lays out the fact that the Compact is not only outdated, but also internally conflicted, in that it apportions the Upper Basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year, while also obligating it to allow the same amount of water to flow to the Lower Basin annually. That’s just not possible these days, given that there’s far less than 15 MAF in the river.
Southeastern Utah is known mostly as a mining hotspot for uranium, copper, with lithium emerging more recently. But it also hosts a potash extraction industry, and at least one company is looking to expand the potash footprint. Sage Potash says it has secured permits from Utah and San Juan County to begin drilling at is Sage Plain Potash project.
While this is only exploratory drilling, it’s notable in that it’s not occurring in the Lisbon Valley or near existing potash sites near Moab. Rather it is on the Great Sage Plain southeast of Monticello, in the archaeologically rich zone north of Hovenweep National Monument.
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Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Yet another reason to worry about spewing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere via fossil fuel burning: It can exacerbate acid mine drainage, the phenomenon that leads to toxic heavy metal loading in streams and other waterways. That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study published in Communications Earth & Environment this April.
Acid mine drainage occurs when a mine excavation exposes once-buried sulfide-bearing rocks such as iron pyrite (FeS2) to oxygen and water. The hydrogen, sulfide, and oxygen come together to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Thus, the water becomes acidic, or its pH drops. The acidity dissolves heavy metals and the water picks them up. As the pH level of the water drops below 4.8, acidophilic bacteria begin feeding off the metals, releasing more acid into the solution and causing metal loading to occur up to 1 million times faster than in water with higher pH. Metal loading is bad for fish and other aquatic life.
The study found that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enhance the acidophilic bacterial activity, which accelerates iron and sulfur oxidation, acid formation, and metal loading. Zinc and cadmium, both of which are harmful to aquatic life, are more sensitive than other metals to rising carbon dioxide levels. Zinc loading is especially problematic in the Upper Animas watershed in southwestern Colorado.
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Okay, I really don’t care that Anfield bought its first underground haul truck for its Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley of southeastern Utah. But I found this press release interesting for another tidbit: The haul truck was built by Young’s Machine Company, located in Monticello, Utah. I never knew Monticello had this sort of manufacturing industry. I gotta say, it’s kind of cool.
The Hoback River joins the Snake River following a landslide upstream on June 18, 2026. Robert Frodeman photo.
🚣🏽 Water Watch 🌊
Water Quality in the Greater Yellowstone
A Guest Post by Robert Frodeman
Four million people visit Teton County, Wyoming, each year. They come to hike, float, and ski, snap pictures under the elk antler arches, and to partake in the myths of the American West. As the sign at the top of Teton Pass says, “Welcome Stranger. Yonder is Jackson Hole, the Last of the Old West.” Visitors expect to find a pristine environment. They don’t expect water quality problems reminiscent of a developing nation.
Teton County has some of the best drinking water in the country. Or most of Teton County does: Hoback, in the southern part of the County, has a nitrate problem. Nitrate is a health risk — most acutely to infants under six months, in whom nitrate is converted to nitrite by gut bacteria, interfering with oxygen transport in the blood and causing methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome). Many of the water systems in Hoback are on their last legs: two weeks ago, I had no running water and then a boil order at my home.
Jackson is the town, Jackson Hole is the valley that runs north of town in front of the Tetons. (‘Hole’ was what mountain men called a valley.) If you drill 20,000 feet into the valley floor you will hit the same sandstone layer that sits on top of the Tetons. This implies that the Tetons have risen some 25,000 feet over the last 10 million years.
Of course, mountains come down as they go up: the Tetons have been shedding sediment across all that time, piling up thousands of feet of gravel on the valley floor. Still more gravel was brought by the glaciers that flowed down from the Yellowstone Plateau. The Snake River meanders in front of the Tetons, but much of the river passes unseen below the surface, forming what is known as the Snake River Aquifer.
In effect, Jackson and Jackson Hole sit on top of a huge bathtub filled with gravel and water. This provides an abundant source of high-quality water for the town. But the bathtub only extends so far. The southern rim of the tub comes up at Munger Mountain five miles south of town. This is where the Yellowstone glacier stopped, and where the Snake River Canyon begins, which runs for 30 miles to Alpine and the Mormon communities of Star Valley.
Hoback lies four miles south of Munger Mountain — beyond the reach of the aquifer. Local residents must drill for their water. Local wells reach 200 feet down to the Bear River Formation. The water isn’t ideal – it’s brackish and can have a distinct sulfur smell (as do some of the local hot springs). The groundwater is also contaminated from horse farms and pig farms and (mainly) septic tanks and leach fields. Septic tanks can leak, and there is not enough biotic activity at this elevation and latitude for leach fields to function well. The result is nitrate levels in our drinking water which sometimes exceed EPA daily maximums.
Hoback is distinctive not only because of its geology. The billionaires live elsewhere in the County. There are two trailer parks nearby. Historically, local politicians have directed their attention to the Town of Jackson, Wilson, and the ski resort of Teton Village. But this has changed in recent years. Carlin Gerard of the Teton Conservation District formed a Hoback Stakeholders Group in 2019 to highlight drinking water problems. Covid disrupted that effort, but then a local non-profit called Protect Our Water Jackson Hole brought its energy and resources to southern Teton County.
In 2023 Hoback residents formed a water and sewer district. The district has now raised $7 million from the County and the State to build a municipal drinking water system. Water will be drawn from the Snake River just above the confluence with the Hoback. Construction should begin this fall and be done in a year or two depending on the weather.
At first it will only serve 125 residents: the district was made small out of fear of opposition. Teton County is solid blue, but past attempts had failed because of Hoback’s history of Red State, don’t-tread-on-me politics. In any case, it turned out that the demographic transition had already occurred: when the election was held the vote was 36-0 in favor. And there are now plans to annex a new affordable housing development that Teton County hopes will help address the local housing shortage.
Of course, the new system will only isolate residents from the nitrate problem. The environment will remain polluted, and people outside the district will still be on wells. The district has begun to price out a wastewater system, which is liable to be quite expensive. But you’d hope for nothing less for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem – and officials would hate to see an article in the New York Times about Teton County’s leaky septic systems.
Map of Greys River in Wyoming, United States. By Feydey – Nasa World Wind 1.3.5 public domain NLT Landsat 7 satellite photo, layered with PD vmap0 vector data. Image:Map_of_USA_highlighting_Wyoming.png was used for the smaller image., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1589723
Becky Mitchell. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
June 25, 2026
In haggling with their down-river states about sharing the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, the headwater states have delivered a consistent message.
We don’t have two big reservoirs named Mead and Powell sitting upstream from us, they say. Mostly we must make do with what the sky delivers.
At the Upper Colorado River Commission meeting in Denver this week, the states reiterated this message, offering ample evidence from places like Emery, Utah, and Kemmerer, Wyo.
Lest anybody miss the message, Chuck Cullom, the director of the upper-basin commission, showed aerial images of farming areas in Colorado and the other upper-basin states. Far less green was evident in the Montrose area and on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation during June than in 2024.
This exceptional year for drought and heat was described by several speakers in Denver as dire. “I want you all to recognize the significance and severity of the things we’re dealing with,” said the Utah representative, Gene Shawcroft. “Totally unprecedented.”
In western Colorado, a Meeker rancher used the same word to describe withered streams. “The situation here has gone from bad to dire.”
Upper-basin states have been in a tug-of-war for the last three years with lower-basin states about how to share this diminished river. As Becky Mitchell (above), Colorado’s representative, says repeatedly, we have a math problem. It’s impossible to continue releasing more water from reservoirs than flow into them. Upper-basin states, she says, “live within the means of the river.”
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 crafting the Colorado River Compact in 1922, delegates assumed annual flows of roughly 17 to 18 million acre-feet annually at Lee Ferry, the legal division point separating the upper and lower basins. The 20th century delivered naturalized flows of 15.2 million on average.
In this century, flows have slackened even more. Since 2019 they have averaged 10.2 million acre-feet. This year less than 1 million acre-feet is expected to flow into Lake Powell other than releases from upstream reservoirs.
The compact pledged 7.5 million acre-feet to each of the two basins. The lower-basin states for many years over-used their allocation. Upper-basin states topped out at about 4.5 million acre-feet, using 3.5 million acre-feet in drier years.
Colorado and other basins states insist upon the right to use more water — if it’s there. Pre-compact rights of all Native American tribes have yet to be realized. All this creates a different math problem.
When the four upper basin states adopted their own compact in 1948, they wisely chose to use a percentage not an absolute number. That would make sense for the Colorado River Basin altogether — if the two basins could agree upon it. Tensions have elevated. Outwardly this marriage looks very rocky.
Might there be another way? Tanya Trujillo, New Mexico’s new representative, offered an intriguing statement at the Denver meeting.
“I think we need to think differently about some things,” she said. “In New Mexico, we’re going to be taking a fresh look at some of the issues that we are facing and really try to look for a collaborative process going forward.”
In time of crisis, she added, it’s important to “project calm, knowledgeable reassurance and try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
For whom was that message intended? It was not clear. However, even in Colorado, some have suggested upper-basin states have overstated their case.
What cannot be contested is Mitchell’s assertion that demands cannot exceed supplies. This year, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Water is being taken from Flaming Gorge and other federal upstream reservoirs to keep water in Powell. Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison may have too little water to release any downstream, a condition called dead pool. The Bureau of Reclamation similarly sees that possibility for Navajo, the reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border.
The Bureau intends to release six million acre-feet from Powell for the lower-basin, leaving Powell 80% empty. The agency’s “most probable” projections see reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam early next year being too low to generate electricity.
In Grand Junction this week, people stood in the rain with sheer delight. It was a feel-good moment. But will El Niño save us from calamity? Maybe, but don’t bet on it. The warming climate seems to be rewriting the rules about how much water from the Pacific Ocean arrives on our mountains.
hat was the takeaway from a recent presentation by Brad Udall, a scientist scholar affiliated with Colorado State University. El Niños in the past have produced big water years. One was in 1983, the year that flood waters nearly broke Glen Canyon Dam. Often, though, an El Niño produces no more moisture than a La Niña.
“The real question” said Shawcroft, the Utah representative, “is what happens if next year looks like this?”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
This field of alfalfa near Carbondale is grown with water from the Crystal River. Some Colorado River experts are advocating for a permanent reduction in the use of water by agriculture. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Some Colorado River experts are floating a concept to address the basin’s water woes that is both radical and mundane: permanently reducing the amount of water used by agriculture.
Many cities have already reduced their water use in recent decades while adding residents, proving that population growth doesn’t have to be tied to an increase in water use. A 2024 study by Colorado River scientists found that agriculture is responsible for about 74% of water used by people in the basin, meaning urban conservation alone cannot solve the crisis.
“I think we need to have permanent reductions in use on the table and agriculture will have to be part of that,” said Anne Castle, a Colorado River expert and a former federal representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission.
Castle was the lead author on a June 1 paper that urgently called on the entire basin to permanently decrease consumptive uses to avoid the worst impacts to reservoirs and water users. Castle and the paper’s other authors are Colorado River experts and academics, and are the brain trust of the basin sometimes referred to as the Traveling Wilburys, a joking reference to the rock music supergroup. But their message is anything but humorous.
The latest paper says another dry winter would deplete remaining storage and result in devastating consequences like run-of-the-river operations where the nation’s two largest reservoirs can only release downstream the same amount of water that flows into them. It’s the last stop before deadpool, when levels are too low to release water. The authors urge water managers to act immediately to reduce use and avoid a system crash.
But permanently cutting the amount of water that goes to agriculture remains a controversial topic, and water managers from both the Upper and Lower basins say drying up land is not a solution for their basin. Most conservation programs up until now either have been temporary or have allowed the saved water to be used elsewhere. Castle said the problem is especially difficult when people’s livelihoods are on the line.
“The folks who are vulnerable to those kinds of permanent reductions are understandably resistant,” Castle said. “But there’s not enough water. The river won’t allow us to use the same amount of water that we’ve been accustomed to using in the past.”
The seven states that share the Colorado River are under increasing pressure to cut water use as one of the worst droughts on record threatens the water supply for millions of people. On the heels of one of the hottest and driest winters since measuring began, spring flows into Lake Powell this year are projected to be the lowest on record.
Much of the $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act earmarked for drought mitigation has gone toward short-term conservation. Water users in the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) were paid to temporarily leave water in Lake Mead. And in the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming), the feds paid irrigators $45 million to leave fields dry during a two-year reboot of a pilot conservation program.
But in the midst of a climate change-fueled megadrought that has already robbed the river of at least 20% of its flows, experts say temporary measures no longer cut it. Water managers are reckoning with the reality that the river will probably never again deliver what was promised a century ago by the Colorado River Compact. The demand for water now far outstrips the dwindling supply.
“Are we going to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and not have a permanent solution?” said author and Colorado River expert Eric Kuhn. “I think, at some point, it just makes economic sense to go ahead and say, ‘Let’s buy out the existing demand.’” [ed. emphasis mine]
These hay bales stand ready to be collected on a ranch outside of Carbondale. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Buying out demand
Against this backdrop, some in the academic community are advocating for the federal government to either set up a voluntary program to buy and retire lands that use a lot of water or pay landowners who agree to permanent restrictions on water use.
A paper released last year and authored by Kathryn Sorensen and Sarah Porter, who are Colorado River experts at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State, lays out how this could be done. Eligible land would have to meet certain characteristics, including being in an area where the economic impacts of not using water are least painful and where impacted crops could be feasibly grown outside of the Colorado River basin, among others.
According to Porter, the federal government should be the entity that buys down demand. The large infrastructure projects funded by the feds in the 20th century are what created booming irrigated agriculture in the West to begin with. And the other entities in the basin that have the ability to buy agricultural water want to use it themselves, not keep it in the system.
“A reset in the Colorado River basin really is needed,” Porter said. “We have a lot of agriculture that’s really a legacy of how the United States was settled… . And now we’re grappling with overallocation and shortage and struggling to figure out a way to manage the Colorado River.”
The proposal is different from the much-derided “buy-and-dry” which usually involves an opportunistic transferring of water from agriculture to cities, not an overall reduction in water use. Still, the potential negative impacts to rural communities have to be considered.
“You have to have a provision for what happens to the land when you remove agriculture and what happens to the local economy when you remove agriculture,” Porter said.
And experts say there is a precedent for the type of federal buyouts that could help the drought-stricken river: the Bankhead-Jones Tenant Farm Act from 1937. This New Deal piece of legislation was a response to the Dust Bowl and allowed the federal government to buy and retire badly eroded or economically unproductive farmland.
The paper says a Colorado River program could start not with those that grow valuable vegetables in winter but, rather, with lands that use a lot of water but have low economic output. The paper says retired agricultural lands could be used for alternative purposes that support local economies such as recreational opportunities or low water-use industries.
Figuring out how to implement conservation programs without harming rural agricultural communities has been a main focus in recent years of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which works to keep water on the Western Slope. River District General Manager Andy Mueller said that agriculture has a role to play in reducing water consumption, but that permanently retiring agricultural land is a misguided approach that will put the country in danger of not being able to feed itself. Programs should remain temporary, and focus on efficiency improvements and growing less-thirsty crops, he said.
“If it’s temporary, if it’s well-designed in a way that respects local communities, traditions and practices, is custom-built for each community in a way that really tries to do as little economic damage as possible — potentially even bringing some benefits to those farming families that participate — there are ways to do it,” Mueller said.
A tractor on a farm in California’s Imperial Irrigation District, the largest user of agricultural water in the Colorado River basin. A California representative says there is no interest in drying up ag land because it’s so extremely productive. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
On the fringe
Although certain academics and experts are talking about permanently drying up agricultural lands as a means of saving water, the concept remains on the fringe of Colorado River politics. It’s both the third rail and the elephant in the room.
“It’s going to pull away from the fringe really quickly when you’ve got to really justify continuing to pay on an annual basis forever,” Kuhn said. “We’re just trying to get the discussion out there, make it acceptable to have the discussion.”
On top of the abysmal hydrologic conditions, the basin is also in the midst of a management crisis. After two years of negotiating, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states have failed to reach a consensus on how they will share future cuts and have blown past deadlines to come up with a plan. The responsibility for river management now falls to the federal government, which is scheduled to release this summer a short-term operating plan for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Part of what makes the problem so tricky is that water managers are still guided by the Colorado River Compact, a century-old agreement that splits the river’s flows evenly between the two basins. Upper Basin water managers still cling to the notion that because their states are already living within the 7.5 million acre-feet of water allotted to them annually, cutbacks are the responsibility of the Lower Basin, which they say uses more than its fair share.
Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s lead negotiator in talks among the seven states, said that permanent dry-up of agriculture in the Upper Basin isn’t necessary because the Upper Basin states already send more than 8 million acre-feet — more than legally required — of water downstream per year. Dry-up may be part of the overall solution, she said, but each state should take its own individual approach to making cuts.
“Those durable reductions are going to be required (for the Lower Basin) to first get in line with their apportionment, but then getting in line with the available supplies is a whole ’nother conversation,” Mitchell said.
California’s representative, JB Hamby, said permanent fallowing doesn’t have a place in reducing the state’s demand either. California is home to the biggest urban and agricultural water districts, as well as the largest allocation of Colorado River water of any of the seven states that share the river.
“In the case of California, there’s no real discussion or interest whatsoever in the retirement of ag lands,” Hamby said. “Land in Southern California that receives Colorado River water is so extremely productive. There is a year-round growing season where every single day of the year there are things being grown.”
Past water savings in Southern California have mostly come from efficiency improvements on farms and in delivery systems, and from deficit irrigation programs in which water is temporarily taken off fields for part of a season. In the absence of a seven-state deal, the Lower Basin states have offered up 700,000 acre-feet of cuts per year through 2028, which is on top of an initial 1.5 million acre-feet in cuts. Most estimates say the basin needs to cut water use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet.
“There’s full agreement that water should be reduced,” he said. “There’s not agreement in how or where it should be reduced. So the Lower Basin is moving forward, doing our thing, making reductions.”
Cowgirls wrangle a calf at a Delta County ranch. Farming and ranching are an important part of the heritage of the American West, which makes permanently reducing water for agriculture a tricky issue. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Ultimately, discussions about permanently reducing the amount of water that goes to farmlands in the basin remain difficult, in part because agricultural water rights are some of the biggest, oldest and most politically powerful in the basin. But there is also an attachment to the American West’s farming and ranching heritage.
“We love agriculture; it’s part of our roots,” Porter said. “We don’t like to think about losing agricultural production. I think we are generally hesitant to have that conversation, and we really haven’t had it as a basin.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The Havasupai Tribe is concerned about a proposed increase in the allowable arsenic level near the Pinyon Plain uranium mine.
State regulators claim the increased arsenic is naturally occurring, not a result of mining pollution.
Tribal leaders and environmental groups worry the change could contaminate Havasu Creek, the tribe’s sole water source.
The Havasupai Tribe has raised new concerns about a proposal to allow higher levels of arsenic in a groundwater monitoring well near the Pinyon Plain uranium mine south of the Grand Canyon, warning that the changes threaten Havasu Creek, the tribe’s sole water source. A proposed amendment to a state Aquifer Protection Program permit would revise the mine’s alert level and aquifer quality limit for arsenic after groundwater monitoring detected changes in arsenic concentrations in the well. According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the changes were not the result of pollutants discharged from the mine into the aquifer, but naturally occurring.
In a June 25 public notice, the agency said that Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., the mine’s operator, and ADEQ have entered into a changed application agreement for an amendment to the Pinyon Plain Mine’s permit.
“The Havasupai Tribe first learned of the proposed amendment, which appears to have been a private deal between ADEQ and Energy Fuels, only after a concerned citizen discovered this new amendment on ADEQ’s website and promptly notified the Tribe,” said Havasupai Tribal Chairwoman Melinda Yaiva.
The Havasupai Tribe was shocked by ADEQ’s decision, she said, citing longstanding concerns that the Pinyon Plain Mine could contaminate Havasu Creek, the tribe’s only water source. Tribal leaders said the creek is vital to the community, its culture and its tourism economy, and reiterated their opposition to the mine.
Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, one of the nation’s largest-capacity reservoirs whose operation has been a point of contention between the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River. (Alexander Heilner, The Water Desk)
Western Water In-depth: A ‘wild idea’ to defuse the colorado river compact’s legal time bomb has been kept alive by seasoned observers who believe it could still save the river
For the past 20 years, the Colorado River has been operated under a set of guidelines negotiated between the seven states that depend on the river. Those guidelines expire this year, and after five years of grinding negotiations over a new agreement, the upstream states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico remain deadlocked against the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
Some 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland depend on the river’s water. But after the states failed to meet two federal deadlines in three months, the river is in a moment of unprecedented crisis. A dire snowpack has left flows just 15 percent of normal, many farms without water and several cities scrambling to secure water supplies as they gird themselves for shortages.
That has set up a showdown over a legal time bomb that’s been ticking away at the heart of the Colorado River Compact since the river’s guiding document was signed more than 100 years ago. The Lower Basin states believe the Compact promised them a minimum delivery of water sent down the river from the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin states believe the Compact promised them a fixed amount of water that they could rely on to meet future growth. As the river’s flows have dwindled, those two supposed guarantees are proving to be irreconcilable.
Experts have seen the showdown coming for a long time, but climate change has accelerated the day of reckoning. In 2000, a drought sunk its teeth into the river and hasn’t let up. Dubbed the Millennium Drought, it is now recognized as one of the worst droughts on the river in more than 1,200 years — and may actually be the beginning of a long-term shift to a drier reality.
Despite near-endless negotiations to find a way to keep the river’s massive reservoir system from crashing — an effort that began over two decades ago — the drought may have finally pushed the Colorado River Compact to its limit. Now, the system is nearly empty and runoff from this winter’s snowpack, the source of any water that might offer even a small hope of relief, will be among the lowest since Glen Canyon Dam was built near the Arizona-Utah border, creating Lake Powell, more than 60 years ago. Flows in the river are perilously close to hitting the primary legal “tripwire” in the Compact. Once that’s crossed, the Lower Basin states would likely try to force the Upper Basin to deliver their water apportionment downstream — a prospect long considered unthinkable.
“All those negotiations helped push the day of reckoning back further, and helped delay the inevitable,” says Doug Kenney, who heads the University of Colorado’s Western Water Policy Program. “But at some point, you just have to acknowledge the fact that the numbers don’t add up and you’re going to have to deal with it. We’re at that point.”
Two obvious paths now lie ahead. One is a courtroom fight, either against the U.S. Secretary of the Interior or a challenge between two states under the terms of the Colorado River Compact, which would go directly before the Supreme Court. A high court case would be a doomsday scenario, a messy and protracted legal battle that, until now, the seven states desperately sought to avoid. The other potential path is a stopgap fix, a short-term interim plan negotiated between the states or imposed by the Interior secretary. That could, at least temporarily, forestall a trip to court, but it wouldn’t resolve the fundamental conflict.
For more than two decades, however, the possibility of a third path has stubbornly persisted in the background: A “grand bargain,” an idea first proposed in 2005 by Colorado’s negotiating team early in the effort to grapple with the worsening drought. The concept was an unorthodox bid to defuse the ticking time bomb — but it would require each basin to trade away its most cherished claim on the river.
‘A WILD IDEA’
Roughly 90 percent of the Colorado River’s flow originates as snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. One of the principal goals of the 1922 Compact, which is essentially a seven-state treaty, was to avoid future legal battles by creating an “equitable division and apportionment” of water between the Upper Basin states in the river’s headwaters and the faster-growing Lower Basin. The Compact apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet a year from the mainstem of the river to each basin. (An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, enough to supply the average annual needs of roughly 3 households, depending on their location and climate.)
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and is divided into Upper and Lower Basins. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
The Compact also contains a requirement that the headwaters states not deplete the flow of the river below 75 million acre-feet, plus another roughly 7.5 million acre-feet (half of the apportionment earmarked for Mexico), on a 10-year running average. Those provisions were intended to provide surety to the downstream Lower Basin states that they would receive their 7.5 million-acre-foot annual apportionment and that the basins would share equally in the Mexican obligation. If the 10-year running average requirement is violated, the Lower Basin states could — at least in theory — initiate a Compact “call” against the Upper Basin in an attempt to force the headwaters states to deliver more water downstream.
For roughly 80 years after the Compact was signed, the prospect of a Compact call was purely theoretical. Then the Millennium Drought set in. By 2005, the two flagship reservoirs on the Colorado River — Lakes Mead and Powell — were half empty.
The drought was pushing the river’s flows closer to a Compact violation trigger, making the risk of a call by the Lower Basin a growing probability. The Lower Basin, particularly Arizona, was insisting on guaranteed releases of water from Lake Powell. And because Colorado has the biggest share of the river within the Upper Basin and uses a greater portion of its apportionment than the other upstream states, it is most at risk. It began searching for a way to slip out of the legal noose of a Compact call.
In September 2005, the seven states’ top negotiators met in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During a lunch break, Colorado’s team made its pitch. The state’s negotiators proposed that the Lower Basin waive its right to force a downstream delivery through a Compact call. In exchange, the Upper Basin states would limit their water use to less than what’s strictly apportioned in the Compact, thereby reducing potential demand in the headwaters of Colorado and Wyoming that supply nearly the entirety of the river’s flow.
The offer was essentially a simplification and reframing of a dizzying array of technical disagreements over various provisions of the Compact — an attempt to throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it would stick.
Jim Lochhead, who had previously been Colorado’s top negotiator and in 2005 was serving as a legal advisor on the state’s team.
“My recollection was that it was a pretty spontaneous proposal,” says Jim Lochhead, who had previously been Colorado’s top negotiator and in 2005 was continuing to serve as a legal advisor on the state’s team. “We weren’t making any progress, and it was pitched as, ‘If you really want to cut through all of this and get to the bottom, here’s a wild idea.’”
The proposal sparked discussion among all the parties at the negotiating table but also raised difficult issues.
“It was a great concept on paper,” says Pat Mulroy, who was the head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority and Nevada’s principal negotiator at the time. “Whether it was politically doable or not is a whole other ball game.”
In large part, that’s because a grand bargain would have forced both basins to give up assurances in the Compact that they consider sacrosanct.
“I’m not sure the Upper Basin would ever have agreed to limiting their ability to fully develop their 7.5. It’s like giving up your birthright — I’m not sure they could have sold that at home,” says Mulroy. Conversely, she says, “giving up that call provision is really the only weapon the Lower Basin has.”
And, indeed, following its spontaneous birth in Albuquerque, the proposal ran into stiff political headwinds back home in Colorado, where it failed to get then-governor Bill Owens’ blessing.
“I wasn’t directly representing the state of Colorado at that time; I was representing Colorado water users,” Lochhead says. “And when I brought the idea back to the state, it pretty quickly got shot down: ‘No, we can’t agree to anything that would not keep the dream alive of 7.5 million acre-feet being developed in the Upper Basin.’”
The prospect of a grand bargain itself faded from discussion. And yet, in ways that aren’t often acknowledged, it continued to shape the broad contours of the negotiations that unfolded over the next two decades.
The quest to escape the noose of a Compact call has remained central to Colorado’s bargaining position.
“The concept of a waiver of a Compact call is alive and well,” says Anne Castle, a former assistant Interior secretary who is now a senior fellow at the University of Colorado. “The quid pro quo for that waiver has taken different forms.”
To a large extent, the details of the various offers the Lower Basin has made in exchange for a possible waiver — which have sometimes been characterized within the negotiations as “mini grand bargains” — have never become public. What is clear is that the two basins have consistently failed to cut a deal.
Instead, the seven states adopted a more incremental approach, negotiating a series of drought-protection agreements based on smaller, more politically palatable deals. While that’s been a safer path for everyone politically, it has brought other kinds of risk.
“It just added layer upon layer of Gorilla Glue and Band-Aids that’s made it much more complicated to try to unwind or develop new agreements,” Lochhead says, “and has obviously proven to be inadequate in protecting the system.”
A SECOND LIFE
While the concept of a grand bargain led a short life at the negotiating table, it has gone on to live a remarkable second life. The idea was picked up and revived by a loose-knit group of seasoned observers of Colorado River issues who, for years, have called for more durable alternatives to the patchwork of ideas [ed. “The Law of the River”] in play among negotiators.
Eric Kuhn was a member of Colorado’s negotiating team when the grand bargain was proposed in 2005. At the time, he was the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District based in Glenwood Springs and he has written thoughtfully and voluminously about the river’s problems. After his retirement in 2018, he partnered with John Fleck, a former journalist who is now author-in-residence at the University of New Mexico’s Utton Center, to write Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.
Kuhn and Fleck concluded the book by observing that “there is not enough water in the Colorado River for all the lawyers to be right,” and suggested the grand bargain as a way to avoid the courtroom.
“The basic idea of a grand bargain is, in lieu of litigation, we’re going to agree to something that both sides want,” says Kuhn.
He and Fleck weren’t the only ones who pushed for more serious consideration of the idea. Doug Kenney at the University of Colorado also has championed the concept. In 2012, he enlisted Kevin Wheeler, a widely respected engineer and fellow at Oxford University, to undertake modeling analysis of the kinds of trade-offs a grand bargain might require.
Persistent drought has lowered Lake Powell’s water level and exposed land that was once submerged at Wahweap Marina, as seen in this 2022 photo. (Bureau of Reclamation)
In 2021, Wheeler — together with a group of collaborators including Kuhn, climate scientist Brad Udall and Jack Schmidt, the director of Utah State’s Center for Colorado River Studies — published a white paper called “Alternative Management Paradigms for the Future of the Colorado and Green Rivers.” It was a comprehensive assessment of more ambitious strategies for weathering the drought and climate change than had emerged from now-perpetual negotiations between the states.
“New approaches that are responsive to significantly drier climate conditions and changing patterns of consumptive uses may require bolder policy initiatives that exceed the incremental approach of modern management,” the group wrote. “It is critical to explore alternative water management strategies that may extend beyond the framework of the Law of the River as presently interpreted.”
The following year, the team published a paper in the journal Science titled “What Will it Take to Stabilize the Colorado River?” And, it turned out, stabilizing the system would take something that looked a lot like a grand bargain.
Assuming the drought persists as it has since 2000, Wheeler and his partners identified two scenarios that would stabilize the river, both of which assumed the Lower Basin had waived its ability to make a Compact call. In one, the Lower Basin would need to decrease its water use by about 2 million acre-feet a year when Lake Mead and Lake Powell reach low levels. That would assure it of about 78 percent of its apportionment — an amount roughly in line with cuts it has already committed to taking. In exchange, the Upper Basin would have to cap its water use at 4 million acre-feet. But that’s only slightly more than half of its 7.5 million-acre-foot Compact apportionment, and roughly 300,000 acre-feet less than what it currently uses.
The second scenario — call it the “near-parity scenario” for simplicity — more equally distributed the Upper and Lower Basins’ relative cuts in apportionment. In it, the Upper Basin would cap its use at 4.5 million acre-feet, leaving it with 60 percent of its Compact apportionment. The Lower Basin would be able to use about 67 percent of its Compact apportionment when reservoirs are low, just slightly more percentage-wise than the Upper Basin. But it would have to cut its uses by 3 million acre-feet below its apportionment.
That would stabilize the system — or at least go a long way toward doing so — while largely meeting existing water demands in both basins. The Upper Basin currently uses about 4.3 million acre-feet per year. The Lower Basin, after ramping up an aggressive water conservation effort since 2007, has driven its annual use down to about 6 million acre-feet per year, and has signaled that it could likely reduce demand further.
But it would leave practically no leeway for future growth, at least without reshaping the socioeconomic landscape across the entire Basin. In particular, any future urban growth could come only by shifting significant amounts of water from farms to cities.
HARD MATH
Today, there is a simple, hard reality on the Colorado River: The available water supply is already maxed out. Water use throughout the basin needs to be reduced by roughly 25 percent just to make the numbers work now — to say nothing of the future, which is likely to be significantly drier.
In Colorado, that has raised hard questions about fairness, the “equitable division and apportionment” provision of the Compact, and the assurance the state thought it had that its water would be there to develop when it’s finally ready.
“Everyone agrees that there should be an equitable division of water, and the word ‘equity’ is one that everyone will rally around,” says Kenney. “But does equitable mean equal? That’s the crux of the issue.”
Over the past several years, Colorado’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, has been building his office’s staff of water lawyers. This January, Weiser, who is currently running for governor, appeared before a joint hearing of the state legislature’s judiciary committees.
“If we can’t get a deal — and I’m committed to not getting a bad deal just to get a deal — we’ll be in litigation. We’re ready for it,” he said. “If and when we can get a reasonable deal based in reality, I’m for it. But if we can’t, then we will be falling back on our rights under (the) 1922 Compact.”
Because of the peculiarities of the water-rights hierarchy in the Lower Basin, Arizona is arguably most at risk there. In March, that state — whose governor, Katie Hobbs, is running for re-election — retained the high-powered law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to represent it in potential Colorado River litigation. At the time, a spokesman for the governor said, “it’s critical that Arizona be prepared to defend ourselves in court if an agreement cannot be reached or the Law of the River is violated.”
Anne Castle, a veteran of Colorado River issues. Former U.S. Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission • Former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, U.S. Department of the Interior. (Source: Water Education Foundation)
“It is very difficult for a political figure — and they’re all political figures, even if they’re not elected — to agree to reduce the water use of their constituents and keep their career alive,” says Anne Castle. “They have to be able to tell their constituents, ‘I’m fighting for your water. I’m doing everything I can to keep your water secure, and it’s the other guy’s fault.’ The political incentives are directly at odds with the kind of compromise that’s needed in this type of hydrologic situation.”
Following the breakdown in negotiations between the Colorado River states, the federal government has announced its intention to step in. In May, the Bureau of Reclamation, on behalf of the Department of the Interior, revealed that it is preparing the first of what could be a series of five two-year interim plans for the river.
The final details are expected to be released this summer. But the federal government has indicated that the Interior secretary could cut water deliveries to the Lower Basin states by up to 3 million acre-feet — 40 percent of their Compact apportionment. During a briefing for Arizona water users in May, Brenda Burman, the head of the Central Arizona Project, presented modeling analysis of the proposed reductions and noted that, given the diminished releases from Lake Powell, the Upper Basin is “in a definite breach of the Compact by Sept. 30 of 2026.”
Owing to some quirks of river history, the secretary debatably has less authority in the Upper Basin, and so Reclamation has proposed no cuts there. But as climate change continues to eat away at snowpack and river flows, the Upper Basin states will likely be forced to cut back their uses anyway. Regardless of what the Compact says the Upper Basin gets, the water simply won’t be there.
And so now the seven states are facing a situation eerily similar to those in the near-parity scenario Wheeler and his colleagues laid out in their Science paper four years ago — but without a bargain.
COMING FULL CIRCLE?
In many ways, the prospects have never been worse for something like a grand bargain. Yet the fundamental problems the grand bargain was intended to solve have only grown sharper in the 20 years since it was first proposed.
“The grand bargain has gotten a bad name,” Kuhn says. “But if these issues aren’t resolved through a grand bargain, they’re going to be resolved through litigation.” In 2007, he says, the river’s reservoirs still had ample water to work with. “With empty reservoirs, you cannot finesse these issues.”
Glen Canyon Dam creates water storage on the Colorado River in Lake Powell. Credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Litigation could come as soon as August, when Reclamation will likely release a record of decision for its proposed new operating plan. Legal action could take one of several paths. The one with the highest stakes would be direct enforcement of the Compact, likely in the form of a Compact call brought by Arizona and the other Lower Basin states against the Upper Basin states. Because the Compact is essentially a treaty between multiple states, that would go directly before the Supreme Court. But such cases are often grindingly long: Arizona’s 1952 lawsuit against California over Colorado River rights took a dozen years to resolve. A case in the Supreme Court could put the river in protracted litigation during a time of profound crisis.
Other, more limited challenges are possible, most likely against the Bureau of Reclamation or the secretary of the Interior for failure to comply with the Compact or violating environmental laws. But they, too, are not without risk.
“I have a hard time believing you could keep litigation contained, once that genie’s out of the bottle,” says Kenney. “I just have to believe that inevitably blows up into a full-fledged interstate litigation and it bumping right up to the Supreme Court.”
As the odds rise of a legal challenge to the Compact that could ultimately wind up before the highest court in the land, the fundamental tension the grand bargain was intended to resolve will likely be front and center before the justices. And, paradoxically, that could force the states themselves to finally make the really tough sacrifices they’ve been trying to avoid.
“I think that a road to a grand bargain runs through litigation,” says Kuhn.
That’s because in past interstate fights over shared rivers, the Supreme Court has typically appointed a water-law expert known as a special master to referee such cases. The most recent example is the dispute between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado over the Rio Grande. In that case, Kuhn notes, “the special master said, ‘You don’t want me or the court to decide this; get in a room and negotiate it.’ The special master kept the pressure on the states to negotiate.”
This May, the Supreme Court approved a settlement between those three states. Still, even that resolution only came a full 13 years after the case was initially filed, and it involves relatively small reductions in overall water use.
On the Colorado River, both water and time are in far shorter supply.
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Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Last post here, I suggested that at least some of the ongoing failure of the seven Colorado River states to reach agreement on a river management plan for even the next several years, let alone new century, stems from some ‘elephants in the river.’ You know – the big things that nobody wants to look at because they are so big. So big that some of the rules and guidelines we operate under were created to avoid having to address them.
The first ‘elephant in the river’ I discussed last time was the single-minded focus on the Colorado’s surface waters, and a failure to begin considering the whole integrated water supply, surface water and groundwater – of which the surface water is a relatively minor part, with users going to the groundwater in a haphazard way when the surface water is insufficient.
I did make an incorrect statement in that analysis, however. I said that Colorado was the first, and thus far only, state to begin integrating groundwater into its appropriation priority system statewide. (Arizona developed – by federal mandate – a Groundwater Management Plan circa 1970 for those specific parts of the state served by the Central Arizona Project.)
This is true about Colorado – but I was mistaken in implying that the all groundwater use was integrated into its appropriation system by 1969 legislation. Only alluvial groundwater is covered by that law – groundwater that is naturally integrated with surface water, either trickling into the surface streams when the groundwater table is high or drawing riparian water from the surface streams when the water table is low.
Not covered by the Colorado law are ‘non-tributary’ aquifers that have no natural interaction with the surface waters – aquifers like the Oglalla Aquifer in eastern Colorado, or the Denver Basin aquifer. Most of their water filters down from the alluvial groundwater, and only modern pumping technology makes that groundwater accessible to surface use. Most of these deep aquifers have accumulated their water slowly over geological periods of time, and even moderate use of their water dips quickly into ‘water-mining.’ Colorado law for such aquifers attempts to limit annual use to a hundredth of a presumed 100-year supply, but no one knows for sure how much water is really down there, or whether it will truly constitute a 100-year supply.
The standard response throughout much of the basin to shortages in surface water is to go to groundwater pumping; if ‘tributary’ (alluvial) groundwater is tapped, the pumping will gradually lower the water table – which in turn will begin to diminish the surface streams, which in turn will increase the pumping – et cetera, a vicious downward cycle. And the pumping of ‘non-tributary’ aquifers is largely unregulated in the basin.
At any rate – apologies for the error, and thanks to John McClow for pointing it out.
And on to another elephant in the room. Is it finally time to determine limits on the presumed universal applicability of the appropriation doctrine? To avoid being shot before I finish the paragraph, I will say immediately I am not suggesting doing away with the appropriation doctrine; it is a good enough last resort down on the ground where the appropriation doctrine started, for working out local problems of water use on a surface stream when neighborliness fails – that is, when old grumps and feuds preclude the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ on sharing out what water is available, rather than shutting down the junior users with a ‘call’ so the seniors can get all their decreed water. After two or three generations, seniority can be acknowledged, but is too abstract to apply against your neighbors, if a plan for sharing blameless misfortune can be worked out.
The abstraction, however, becomes more applicable when it is distant water organizations calling out other water organizations upstream, or an earlier developed watershed placing a call on users in an adjacent more recently developed watershed. And when a stream is declared by the district engineer to be over-appropriated – not enough water to fill everyone’s decrees in a near-average year – it becomes even more abstract, a tool for enforcing a status quo, and nothing anywhere about what represents the best uses of the water.
There are, in other words, some areas in which the appropriation doctrine gets stretched beyond its elastic limits by emerging challenges of water use; any questions about ‘best and highest use’ have been essentially declared unanswerable as a matter of conflicting values, and it just seems easier to let seniority of use be the ultimate determinant of priorities.
A century ago, with California quintupling its population in the first two decades of the 20th century, the other six of the seven states in the Colorado River Basin (Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) began to worry that California might put so much of the river’s water to use that there would not be enough unappropriated water for them to put to use when their time of growth came. They were all committed to versions of the appropriation doctrine within their states, but came to believe that reliance on the appropriation doctrine alone at the interstate level could cause more regional problems than it would resolve.
That concern was affirmed in 1922 when the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a conflict between Colorado and Wyoming over a Laramie River tributary that started in Colorado but was put to use first in Wyoming; the court declared that states who used the appropriation doctrine intrastate would also have to respect each other’s appropriations interstate. This made real the specter of slow-growing upstream states having to let all their Colorado River water go downstream to fill huge Arizona and California decrees.
So they assembled in 1922 to try to do something about that – a fundamental fact about the Colorado River Compact commission that we tend to forget: the original intent of the compact commissioners in 1922 was to develop an alternative to the appropriations doctrine at the interstate level. They came together with the intent of working out a seven-way division of the use of the river, based on possible future development, that would eliminate a horse-race of interstate appropriative competition. Six of the states convened the commission because they feared California, and California reluctantly participated because it knew the feds would never build the big control and storage dam they needed until all seven states were on board with it. That seven-way division trumping interstate appropriation was what the Compact Commissioners assembled to do –and spent a frustrating week early in 1922 trying to do.
They were unable to effect a seven-way split for a couple of reasons: for one thing they had no good measure of how much dependable water was in the river; estimates at the time ranged from 12 to 20 million acre-feet (maf). But for a second thing, the sum total of the water they each felt their state needed, based on rosy early-20th-century estimates, was closer to 24 maf – and nobody wanted to go home having backed down from their carefully imagined numbers.
Members of the Colorado River Commission, in Santa Fe in 1922, after signing the Colorado River Compact. From left, W. S. Norviel (Arizona), Delph E. Carpenter (Colorado), Herbert Hoover (Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of Commission), R. E. Caldwell (Utah), Clarence C. Stetson (Executive Secretary of Commission), Stephen B. Davis, Jr. (New Mexico), Frank C. Emerson (Wyoming), W. F. McClure (California), and James G. Scrugham (Nevada). CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY WATER RESOURCES ARCHIVE via Aspen Journalism
What they did instead – in order to persuade Congress that there was general agreement – was to cobble together the Compact we are burdened with today; they created what Commission Chair Herbert Hoover called a ‘temporary equitable division’ of the seven states into Upper and Lower River Basins, until ‘ those men who may come after us, possessed of a far greater fund of information’ could do the ‘further division’ of the river among the states.
They also decided – as early 20th-century Americans would – to lean toward the more optimistic estimates of river flow, dividing ‘equally’ between the Basins only 15 maf of a river they presumed would continue running 16-20 maf – hence the 7.5 maf for each Basin written into the compact, to be further divided among the states of each Basin in their own good time. That left some water for Mexico, but they did nothing specific for the Indian tribes in the basins because national Indian policy at that time was ‘soft genocide’ – full assimilation (‘kill the Indian, save the man’), leaving tribal water a concern they thought would disappear.
This all made reasonable sense with a river running a quarter-century average of just under 18 maf – but then through the 1930s the river experienced a drought unsurpassed until the past quarter century. By the end of World War II, Colorado river water users had a ‘far greater fund of information’ about the river’s flow, which would have made it a good time to have ‘fixed’ the Compact – but the growing fund of information was all bad news that no one wanted to incorporate into a more realistic policy. So by default the ‘temporary equitable division,’ with its mythic 18 maf river, took on the permanence of something carried off a sacred mountain carved in stone.
And now – we are seeing it reduced to a sad irony. The states of the Lower Basin had their fears too, and wanted a clause in the Compact stating that, should the Upper Basin states have a wild spurt of growth, they should not ‘deplete the flow’ to the Lower Basin below an average of 7.5 maf a year. But now – when it looks like diminished flows throughout the basin might really drop the flow at the division point between basins below that average – the Lower Basin is threatening the Upper Basin with an Article III(d) ‘call,’ saying the upper states will have to cut their own uses enough to meet the lower states’ fantasy 7.5 maf. States that set out a century ago to create a compact that would transcend the appropriation doctrine at the interstate level are now trying to turn that ‘temporary equitable division’ into what amounts to a senior interstate water right.
There has to be a level, or category, of action in which the law of first-come first-served is transcended by other considerations. And can we not say, at this point a century later, that the original intention of the compact commission has been achieved de facto? No state will ever get the use of more water than it had (or believed it had) around the turn of the century because there is even less water now. For better or worse, the use of the river has been distributed among the states (including some of the tribes) and Mexico.
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
Whether this is an equitable division is arguable; the states of the Lower Basin have been using roughly two-thirds of the river’s water, the Upper Basin states around one third, rather than the 50-50 split explicit in the Compact (7.5 maf per Basin). But arguably that does reflect the relative productivity of Lower Basin agricultural use (by far the largest use) and also its millions of urbanites drawing on it for at least part of their municipal water. It was a huge step toward reality when the Lower Basin states finally agreed that they must absorb the Lower Basin’s system losses (mostly evapotranspiration) and their half of Mexico’s allotment out of their own shares of the river, rather than relying on a fictional surplus to cover it – a fiction that combined with drought to draw down both Powell and Mead Reservoirs to the dangerous level where they linger today.
Yampa River Basin via Wikimedia. Note the Little Snake River crossing the Colorado-Wyoming line.
The 1948 Upper Colorado River Compact was the first reality-based document in the ‘Law of River’ portfolio because its negotiators knew by then – that ‘greater fund of knowledge’ – that it was doubtful that there would always be 7.5 maf for their use, and actually accepted that as their reality. So the divided their ‘half’ of the river into percentages for each state of whatever was left for the upper states after the Lower Basin got it Boulder Canyon Project Act waters. After three-quarters of a century, the four states are not too far from those percentages in their development of around 4.5 maf; only Wyoming is significantly under its 13 percent; Utah is a little below its 23 percent; and Colorado is a little over its 51.75 percent. Given the geographic irrelevance of western state boundaries (the Little Snake River crosses the Colorado-Wyoming border half a dozen times), this was pretty good 1948 estimating.
The reality today is that all Colorado River water users in all seven basin states are using a finite and measurable resource that will probably continue to diminish for the foreseeable future as we continue to heat up the planet, and we need to come to an agreement on what that means for all users. [ed. emphasis mine]
It seems to me there are three ways to address that diminishing flow. One way is to continue to accept the divine sanctity of the Colorado River Compact, with the Upper Basin states forced by the Supremes (they ride for power, not for the law) to cut back their own uses to meet the 7.5 maf average delivery to the Lower Basin – basically the interstate nightmare (for the upper states) the Compact was meant to address. Call this the stubborn denial option.
A second way would be to accept the evolved eight-way division (seven states plus Mexico) of the use of the river’s water, which was what the seven states wanted to do in 1922, instead of the ‘temporary equitable’ compact they came up with. Percentages for each basin state could be set according to the amount each state was using at the end of the major river development era, say in Y2K (remember that?), when the 70-year average annual flow was ~14.5 maf (1930-2000). Those state percentages of the river’s consumptive use could be retained – but the actual volume of water for each state would gradually diminish as the combination of ‘dry drought’ and ‘heat drought’ continues to diminish the river. Given that losses attributable to climate warming are both everybody’s and nobody’s fault, the losses to each states would be proportionate to their percentage of the river’s consumptive use, with no falling back on seniority, as though it were just a squabble between users. Each state could then either stay with the appropriation doctrine intrastate with junior users bearing the loss, or equitably share out the loss proportionate to use. Call the latter the shared reality option.
Photo of Crowley County by Jennifer Goodland
A third way lies between stubborn denial and shared reality, and will probably prevail as the default American Way: let money work it out. Municipal and industrial users will continue to work out money-for-water deals with agricultural users, like San Diego and the Metropolitan Water District have done with the Palo Verde and Imperial Valley ag districts, with responsible districts using the money for systemic improvements that minimize the impact of lost water. This is by no means going to ‘dry up’ agriculture. With 75-85 percent of the river’s water being used by agriculture, a doubling of M&I use would only require transfer of 10-15 percent of ag water, although (money being blind to all but profitability) the transfers would probably cause some local tragedies like Crowley County in Colorado where too much water was bought out of a single small irrigation district by Front Range entrepreneurs.
The appropriation doctrine, with its strange ‘property right’ independent of the property for which it was granted, is quite compatible with the money option for resolving water distribution, once over-appropriation is achieved. The idea that water’s seniority in a certain use can be transferred to a totally different use along with the water strikes me as strange – shouldn’t a new use initiate a new right? It is also contradictory to the doctrine’s initial democratic-populist effort to prevent the dominance of big money in water distribution by limiting water rights to what one could put to use. But it does seem to be the American way that everything eventually comes down to money as the base determinant of value.
Enough for today. The elephants in the river. I obviously favor ‘ratifying’ the evolved split of the use of the river, and an equitable proportionate sharing among all states – and within all states – of the consequences of our cultural climate changes. But that will not fly among those who have steadfast faith (senior water right holders) in the appropriation doctrine as the answer to all problems.
The river? It abides, rises and falls with the water table in its surrounding groundwater, and it may occasionally disappear, but it won’t have died, it will just have gone underground until the water table rises again and the ground can’t hold all the water – if we figure out how to let that happen.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
June 21, 2026
The two major reservoirs on the Colorado River face dire outlooks that will likely spur federal officials to restrict the amount of water flowing downstream — and decrease hydropower generation — in the coming months, even after they ordered recent emergency measures. Projections released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show that if dry conditions persist, Lake Powell’s water level could dip below a threshold called “minimum power pool” as soon as February. That’s the level below which water can no longer flow through the reservoir’s hydropower turbines. Without intervention, the projections say, the lake will remain below the critical elevation for the foreseeable future.
Lake Powell key elevations. Credit: Reclamation
The threat of Powell hitting that threshold — 3,490 feet in elevation — has hovered above federal water managers for months as the reservoir has continued to drop to record-low levels. In April, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation leaders announced that they would send up to 1 million acre-feet of water from the upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Powell and reduce the amount of water released from Powell to keep the reservoir’s level at 3,500 feet above sea level — which includes a small buffer Reclamation officials want to maintain to stay above the power pool level. Powell’s water levels continue to drop as Colorado River leaders deal with two crises: one climatological and one political. Long-term drought fueled by climate change has shrunk the Colorado River’s flows as federal officials and water leaders in the seven basin states — including Colorado, home to its headwaters — struggle to agree on longer-term plans for the river’s management. So far, they’ve failed to find agreement on how to divvy up the usage cuts necessary to adapt to lower flows that reduce the water supply for farmers and residents in a region that’s home to 40 million people.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
When Lake Powell’s levels fall below minimum power pool, that means water can no longer flow through the intake tubes for Glen Canyon Dam‘s hydropower facility, which is the primary method for moving water downstream from the reservoir in southern Utah. Instead, water can move only through much smaller bypass tubes that, for years, have been considered unsafe for long-term use — though Reclamation officials now say they can be operated safely with continuous maintenance. The bureau’s most recent projections, released Tuesday, show that the emergency measures taken this spring will only be a stopgap, unless extremely wet weather returns…If Lake Powell falls below minimum power pool, the only way to release water downstream is through four 8-foot-diameter tubes called the river outlet works. For years, Bureau of Reclamation officials have said the tubes were not designed for long-term use at low water levels, and such use could cause structural damage to the dam. But officials now say there’s a way to safely use the river outlet works, if needed…Recent studies of the river outlet works have shown that managers can operate the backup tubes continuously in a safe way, said Katrina Grantz, the deputy regional director for Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Region, at a conference in Boulder earlier this month. But the outlets require frequent inspections and maintenance when used continuously, which means that one of the four conduits will routinely be offline. Over the course of a year, the maintenance rotation will result in an effective capacity of about three and a half outlets operating continuously, bureau spokesman Peter Soeth wrote in an email in response to follow-up questions from The Denver Post.
“The river outlet works were never designed to serve as the primary or long‑term release pathway,” Soeth said. “Relying on them continuously would reduce operational flexibility and, over extended periods, could introduce wear that requires more intensive maintenance.”
What in the holy gentrification hell is this news?! The median price for a single-family in-town home in Durango, Colorado, surpassed $1 million this month. Yes, a million buckaroos.
Sure, Aspen and Jackson and Park City and Telluride surpassed that revolting number long ago. But this is the town where I was born, grew up, ran around in the streets, and played in the river. It’s where we messed around among the old workings of the power plant and climbed on the splintery railroad freight cars on the siding behind Kroegers, where we fished and waded in the shadow of the massive uranium tailings pile at the base of Smelter Mountain, and where we had sword battles and BMX rallies up at the Test Trax. It was a tourist town, sure, and kind of a regional hub for doctors and lawyers, but it was also a ski-bum town and a working-class town and an agricultural town and a college town and one-time mining-service town on the edge of the gas patch.
It was a place where my parents — a freelance writer and a freelance artist without any independent wealth — could afford to buy a historic home in a lovely neighborhood just across the swinging bridge from downtown. They were not an anomaly. Our neighbors were working folks, too, from a chef to a bank teller to a sanitation worker to a day-care operator to a retired coal miner.
The house needed some work, I suppose, but I didn’t notice. I was too busy running around in the big yard, or climbing the old apricot tree that we outfitted with a treehouse, or sitting on the low-angled roof on the addition in the back that needed to be shoveled during big snowstorms. There was room for a garden and even an old garage that was a pretty nice clubhouse, black widows and all. The big maple in the front yard served as a good base for epic block-wide hide-and-seek contests on long, summer evenings, and the side streets were perfect for soccer games or setting up bike jumps.
I realize I’m romanticizing a bit, but Durango, especially that neighborhood, was a great place to be a kid. I’m sure it still is, and may even be better now: Today’s young Durangotangs don’t have to worry about radon-emanating uranium dust blowing across town, they can ride their bikes all the way through town without ever encountering a car — stopping by the beautiful library and the rec center in the process, and the river water has less metal loading than it did back then.
But those amenities come with an ever-increasing price tag. In the mid-eighties, after they split up, my parents sold the house for something like $10,000. About a decade later, it sold for $122,500, and the new owner pretty much gutted, rebuilt, and added on to it. According to Realtor.com, the same house would sell today for about $1 million (it’s not on the market). There are seven single-family houses in that neighborhood listed for sale on Zillow. They range in price from $850,000 to $3.2 million; a townhome six blocks away from our former house is going for $635,000.
Clearly, these kinds of prices are far out of reach of most wage earners. Even if you could come up with a 10% down payment for the townhome, your monthly payment would still be almost $3,500, which is considered affordable for someone making about $200,000 or more per year. There are just three in-town homes on the market for under $300,000: Two single-wide mobiles with $800-$1,100 monthly lot rents, and a small 80s-era condo. Even these would be a tough haul for someone making the local median wage of about $45,000. Paying rent in Durango isn’t much better, with advertised long-term monthly rates ranging from about $1,100 for a studio, to upwards of $4,000 for a big house.
Obviously, Durango’s not alone. The entire nation is grappling with a housing unaffordability crisis. But Durango and the public lands gateway towns/amenity economies in the West are among the worst, because not only are housing prices rising more dramatically (the statewide Colorado median sales price is about $560,000), but wages are not increasing proportionately.
The reason prices are so high is simply because Durango’s a desirable place to live, not because it is a high-paying job hot spot. And this kind of desire is bottomless, limited only by the amount people are willing to pay to own a piece of the place. And, it seems, a certain percentage of the population has virtually unlimited funds for investing in real estate, whether it’s a primary residence, a second home, or a short-term rental income property.
To be clear, this is not a critique of folks buying or selling real estate, or of the people brokering the deals. I don’t blame people for wanting to live in Durango or for paying market rates to do so, nor do I fault anyone for selling out while prices are high. Real estate agents, meanwhile, are just doing one of the few locally based jobs that can support a life in Durango; they don’t set the prices, the market does. And because their income is derived from the community, they are more likely to invest back in that community via philanthropy, volunteering, or running for public office.
People who are attracted to Durango’s unique amenities and spend big bucks to be here are also more likely to support improvements, whether it’s pushing for better sidewalks and services and more trails and recreational infrastructure, spending money on better restaurants, or donating to the arts and charity and nonprofits. Maybe they’ll bring in money from outside to start up new businesses, creating jobs while also adding to the pool of amenities, thereby potentially improving all residents’ quality of life.
I don’t think I’m stretching when I say that this phenomenon is exactly what a lot of forward-thinking locals, including my parents, were going for back in the 1970s and 1980s. The extractive industries that had built the town — and polluted it — were on their way out. Tourism, alone, couldn’t fill the resulting void. So they planned on banking on quality of life, or the not-yet-named amenities economy, to attract new, cleaner industries and the people to run them.
They didn’t seem to anticipate that the resulting feedback loop rotates in both directions. As the place becomes more desirable, it drives up home prices. Higher prices dampen entrepreneurship and innovation and imperil economic class diversity. The working class is pushed out to the only slightly more affordable surrounding communities, increasing traffic and pollution and making the roads even more unsafe. Businesses have a harder and harder time finding employees. And, eventually, quality of life will begin to suffer, and the Durango that folks bought into for a million bucks won’t be so desirable anymore.
Durango’s not near the breaking point, yet. There are still plenty of locals, young and old, who have been around since long before the market went berserk, and who are committed to the community. There are a lot of established businesses and, somehow, a handful of new, innovative ones have managed to get going and even thrive. And the place still attracts enough new, full-time residents, even ones who can’t really afford to live there, to keep it dynamic and vibrant.
There are also inklings of efforts to ease the housing crisis. The local school district has raised teachers’ starting salary to just above $50,000, which is still way less than they deserve, but it’s significantly higher than a decade ago. And it purchased a 35-unit apartment building for workforce housing; Fort Lewis College also owns an apartment building for staff housing. The city has several affordable housing projects in various phases of development, and a number of non-profits and other organizations have their own workforce/affordable housing initiatives in place.
Whether these efforts will be enough to keep Durango whole amid the rapidly escalating prices isn’t clear. I just hope Durango’s kids of the future, regardless of economic class, will be able to derive as much joy from the place as I did a half-century ago.
A pumpjack in the Aneth Oil Field during a rain storm. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
🐓 Regulatory Capture Chronicles 🦊
THE NEWS: The Trump administration moved yesterday to roll back Biden-era oil and gas leasing reforms for public lands, and to do away with the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas waste prevention rule. The two-pronged assault continues the administration’s relentless evisceration of regulations aimed at protecting the land, air, water, climate, and American taxpayers from oil and gas drilling. The administration claims the rollback is to clear the way for its “energy dominance” agenda, which is code for helping petroleum corporations to rake in even more obscene profits (which are already high thanks to Trump’s war on Iran).
THE CONTEXT: The environmental movement gave Joe Biden a lot of grief for failing to shut down oil and gas drilling on federal land, for permitting big projects like Willow in Alaska, and for handing out quite a few drilling permits.
But throughout his term, the administration was doing important work to reform oil and gas leasing and to try to get a handle on pollution from oil and gas wells on federal lands. These new or revised rules included:
The oil and gas waste prevention rule:required oil and gas operators on federal lands to find and repair leaks in their infrastructure and to phase out flaring and venting of methane — a.k.a. natural gas. The rules complement the EPA’s similar regulations.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, having about 86 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the near-term. Oil drillers tend to vent or flare it and other associated gases, since it isn’t as profitable as oil. Between 2010 and 2020, oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land vented and flared an average of 44.2 billion cubic feet of methane annually. That’s as bad for the climate as burning around 9 million tons of coal. And since operators don’t pay royalties on gas they throw away, that cost American taxpayers some $166 million in lost revenue over a decade.
The rules aimed to rein that in by gradually decreasing the maximum amount of methane that can be flared or vented and charging royalties on the gases that are wasted. It was expected to slash greenhouse gas emissions and result in about $50 million annually in added royalty revenue.
The changes also increased minimum bids, ended non-competitive lease sales, and raised the 12.5% royalty rate to 16.67% to give taxpayers a slightly better return on their oil and gas.
Those are not onerous changes, by any means. They really are incremental ones, that don’t go nearly far enough: A statewide reclamation bond of $500,000 is a mere drop in the bucket for a major oil and gas company, yet it will only fund the cleanup of a handful of wells (whereas a company can have dozens to hundreds of wells in a single state).
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has decided that the rules are “being weaponized to penalize energy development,” which can be translated as: They are marginally reducing petroleum corporations’ obscenely high profits.
And so, the administration is:
Reducing the statewide reclamation bond amount to just $25,000, which might cover one-third of the cost of reclaiming a single well, potentially leaving you and me and other U.S. taxpayers to pick up the millions of dollars remaining on a single company’s cleanup tab.
Bringing back non-competitive leasing.
Shortening public comment periods on proposed leases from 90 days to just 10 days, effectively cutting the public out of the process altogether.
Reducing filing fees, and more.
And gutting the waste-prevention rule by eliminating waste minimization plan requirements and otherwise opening the door to more venting and flaring.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” already slashed the royalty rates back to the 100-year-old 12.5% rate.
Oy.
⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️
The May data are in and it’s now official: The first eight months of the 2026 water year were the warmest on record for the Southwest and much of the Northern Rockies. This isn’t all that surprising, given that it was also the warmest meteorological autumn, winter, and spring for the same areas.
This explains why the snowpack was so weak, and streamflows are now so dismal, even though precipitation accumulation has been closer to — but still below — normal so far this water year. June appears to be on pace to set another record average high temperature for the region, and forecasts are calling for a warmer-than-average July and August, as well. El Niño-driven monsoons could cool things off a bit, however, and soothe drought conditions.
That monsoon can’t come too soon. Several large fires are now burning in the Interior West, with the highest concentration in western Utah. Active blazes include:
Colorado must have made a deal with the Devil? It’s surrounded by fires on three sides, yet has avoided any catastrophic blazes — so far. Source: Watch Duty.
The 10,000-acre Cottonwood Fire near Beaver, Utah, which just blew up on June 22. By the time you read this it likely will be far larger.
The 3,800-acre Sawmill Fire, just east of the Nevada-Utah line.
The 24,000-acre Iron Fire four miles from Eureka, Utah.
The 20,000-acre Hastings Fire south of the Great Salt Lake.
The 566-acre Bonneville Fire on the foothills in northeast Salt Lake City. This one is scary because of its proximity to neighborhoods, but it was 43% contained as of Tuesday morning and no evacuations were in place.
Hite Marina and boat ramp on what once was the northern end of Lake Powell. Jonathan P. Thompson photo via The Land Desk.
Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Jake Bittle):
June 23, 2026
Desalination. Pipelines. Cloud seeding. Those are just a few ideas for how the Trump administration should save the desiccated waterway.
The crisis on the Colorado River is simple: The seven Western states that border the essential waterway use more water than it contains. Chronic overuse [ed. allowed and caused by the “Law of the River”] has drained its two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and a two-decade drought cycle has pushed them to the point of collapse.
The dream solution to this crisis is an agreement among all involved to use less water. Such a deal would decide who must reduce consumption, which means asking which cities would ban irrigating lawns and washing cars and which farmers would rip up their fields.
This has proven impossible. The states have been trying to work this out since the last dry spell, in 2022, but talks have ended in frustration and name-calling. The main sticking point is between the Upper Basin states, led by Colorado and Utah (along with Wyoming and New Mexico), and the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Each side believes the other has a legal and a moral responsibility to cut usage during dry years. The stalemate means the Trump administration must design a schedule of restrictions ahead of a crucial deadline in September. So far, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has balked at resolving the quarrel.
Instead, the administration is turning to a far less controversial plan: Throw money at the problem. The Interior Department and Congress are pondering a slew of projects that could increase supply — a reversal of President Trump’s zeal for cutting federal grants. The seven state governors have sent Washington a “wish list” of over $50 billion, and several startups have their hands out as well.
Federal investment makes sense given the scale of the problem and the intractable impasse, said Jennifer Pitt, the Colorado River program director at the National Audubon Society and an expert on the governance of the river.
“It is something easier for people to agree on,” she said. “This is a slow moving crisis, but it is a crisis, and we do see the federal funding come in to address crises in other parts of the country. Just because this is a slow moving one doesn’t make it any less worthy.”
During a Senate committee hearing last week, the Interior Department’s top water official, Andrea Travnicek, said the agency has yet to vet the wish list. She didn’t offer a specific funding request, and urged lawmakers to be “thoughtful” about how they spend taxpayer money. But senators in both parties seemed to encourage new investments. “The basin should not be forced to choose between stabilizing the present and negotiating the future,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico.
The possibility of new funding marks a return to the policy of Joe Biden’s administration. During the last extreme drought in 2022, the Interior Department paid farmers billions to leave their fields fallow, but that money, from the Inflation Reduction Act, has almost run dry.
The difference now is that the roster of proposals is far more ambitious, and some far less certain to bolster the basin’s water supply. They range from desalination plants and desert groundwater pipelines to forest ecosystem restoration.
Here are a few of the major solutions state officials and companies are proposing.
The Claude “Bud” Lewis Desalination Plant in Carlsbad, California. Photo by Robert Marcos
Desalination
As the Colorado River crisis has deepened, some cities in the Southwest have eyed desalination, which extracts salt from sea water. A company called Poseidon Water opened such a plant in San Diego in 2015 and tried for decades to open another in Los Angeles. The wish list to the Interior Department requests as much as $6 billion to build one across the border in the Mexican state of Baja California to supplement Arizona’s vanishing Colorado River supplies.
The Interior Department also signed an agreement in early June with San Diego’s water agency that explains how that plant would help. Rather than sending treated seawater inland, states would pay the city to take less from the Colorado River. Arizona stands to lose the most water during drought years, and it would be the most likely to participate in that exchange.
But desalination is expensive, requires enormous amounts of electricity, and state-of-the-art industrial technology. The Poseidon facility cost $1 billion, but San Diego has diversified its water portfolio so much that it no longer needs all the water it must purchase from the plant. Trading water could help it offset some of that cost.
Taming tech and power
Nevada uses less water than any state on the river and has cut usage in Las Vegas by replacing grass with artificial turf. It is now seeking money to slake some of its last thirsty industries: power plants and data centers. These facilities need a fraction of what agriculture requires, but they dominate usage in the Silver State.
The state’s wish list includes $300 million to retrofit its largest natural gas plant and reduce water consumption by an amount equivalent to more than 3,000 average homes. It also seeks $650 million to install zero-water cooling systems in airports, schools, and industrial facilities. These closed-loop systems, which recirculate the same cooled water or, in the case of data centers, blast hot servers with cold air, have become more popular in Western states amid concerns about the tech boom’s growing thirst.
A cloud seeding generator is located in Grand Mesa. The Colorado Water Conservation Board administers the state’s weather modification program, which permits cloud seeding operations. Colorado Water Conservation Board/Courtesy photo
Squeezing rain from the clouds
Whereas Lower Basin states like Arizona and California can draw from the Colorado River’s big reservoirs on demand, northern states at its headwaters only receive the rain and snow that feed it.
These Upper Basin states have been trying for decades to engineer more precipitation, with support from Washington, D.C. It sounds futuristic, but cloud seeding — spraying salt or silver iodide into clouds, forcing them to release water they might otherwise retain — has proven fairly effective on a small scale. Utah spends a few million dollars each year doing this, and officials say it could boost annual snowpack by as much as 10 percent.
In addition, a few startups are pitching cheaper and more scalable versions of this technology. Rain Enhancement, a Florida-based outfit, says it has brought about 15,000 homes’ worth of rain to a river tributary in Utah this year; another, Rainmaker, says it can produce 1,000 times that much by 2031. That’s enough to close the supply gap on the river. That promise is fanciful, but these companies could secure federal funding from an administration that loves the tech industry.
Mining a hoard of desert groundwater
The West teems with companies that have promised miracles, from building a 300-mile pipeline to tapping a hoard of groundwater in Nevada. But perhaps no project has had a longer and more turbulent history than Cadiz, a proposal, almost 30 years old, to export groundwater from an aquifer in the Mojave Desert.
This has drawn vicious opposition from environmentalists and the late California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who called it a “grave threat” to the desert. Cadiz experienced several setbacks during the Biden administration: It lost a federal permit, California ended its pipeline lease, Arizona declined to support it, and its stock price fell to almost zero. But Susan Kennedy, its CEO, says Cadiz is flowing again with a funding agreement from the Interior Department to study exchanges between Cadiz and the Colorado River.
The company still needs to finish two pipelines, one to the Central Valley and another to the aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to California. It also must build a plant to remove contaminants in the water, but Kennedy believes she can have the tap running by 2028.
“This isn’t a competition; it’s an all-of-the-above situation,” she said of the situation on the river. That may be so, but the seven states did not include Cadiz on the wish list sent the Interior Department.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
“Colorado River Negotiators” in Cataract Canyon. No clue how the gal in the Earth First! shirt slipped in there? Photo credit: Wild Words
Click the link to read the article on the Wild Words website (Morgan Sjogren):
On Monday, June 15, a new cadre of representatives from seven Colorado River Basin states convened below Cataract Canyon for water negotiations. The open-air meeting was held in an eddy flanked by a thick layer of the Dominy Formation.1 Silt tumbled into the banks in low runoff conditions as the Upper Basin (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico) and Lower Basin (California, Arizona, Nevada) prepared statements about how to reduce over-consumption of the shrinking Colorado River.
The impromptu Colorado River standoff theater was not real. It was a beach game intended to explain water overallocation. That it still resulted in imaginary litigation speaks loudly to this moment in history. The ability to take this lunchtime activity a little too literally was also because the participants were members of Glen Canyon Institute and guides for Holiday River Expeditions. These shenanigans took place in the final hours of a five-day river trip in Cataract Canyon to support GCI’s ongoing efforts for the restoration of Glen Canyon.
The group was certainly highly astute to Colorado River current events to throw down such an intricate dialogue on the spot. Instead of making a list of the very real solutions to distribute Colorado River water to forty million people, the group recognized what is literally standing in the way: seven state representatives who are just as responsible for the looming potential for a Colorado River crash as Glen Canyon Dam.
The basin-wide impasse is by far the most frustrating aspect of explaining the current problems and future management of the Colorado River. The potential solutions are abundant, even obvious. Everyone in the basin needs to use less water.
Other critical changes, like giving all thirty Colorado River-connected tribes a seat at the negotiating table and updating the 1922 Colorado River Compact to actually meet river flows where they are at in 2026 (an average of 12.5 million acre-feet down from 15 million acre-feet a century ago), are long overdue. Not to mention, ensuring the Colorado River’s right to flow, in line with the Colorado River Indian Tribe’s legal personhood status for the river under their Tribal law.
Beyond the dam, is the Colorado River’s most glaring problem, both concealed and amplified by the water crisis-–is this what democracy is supposed to look like? And what can a citizen of the Colorado River watershed actually do about it?
Despite this broken system, advocacy, especially in the long-term, can move the needle. Until recently, opposition to Glen Canyon Dam was viewed by some as a fringe environmental cult.
Yet Glen Canyon Institute has maintained a constant presence on the front lines of this issue. Since 1996, GCI “embarked upon a multi-year campaign to protect and restore Glen Canyon and reverse the decline of Grand Canyon’s fragile ecosystem.” The Fill Mead First plan takes a hard look at the long-term realities of keeping two major reservoirs, Powell and Mead, more than half empty. Then, in 2024, the Bureau of Reclamation made an announcement that opened minds (and some hearts) to consider that Glen Canyon Dam is a major part of the current problem.
Through persistent love and devotion of these advocacy efforts, awareness for the recovery of Glen Canyon continues to gain momentum. So does dealing with Glen Canyon Dam’s outdated infrastructure which is becoming more mainstream and realistic everyday. In a recent letter, the Lower Basin states urged the Bureau of Reclamation to make dam modifications.2
While it is electrifying to be on the pulse of a major change that stands to benefit Glen Canyon and the lower Colorado River, the current negotiation process is still a dystopian nightmare circus.3
Holiday named a new raft Dominy to spur conversation among guests. Some of us felt superstitiously avoidant of this boat during the rapids. Photo credit: Wild Words
Did I mention mud? Our put-in situation at Mineral Bottom on the Green River was enhanced by recent emergency releases and fish management pulse flows from Flaming Gorge Dam. Holiday’s guides insist this put-in is more challenging than the old North Wash Boat Ramp, which is now repaired and fodder for a different story. Photo credit: Wild Words
For some folks, like myself, this shit show is so fascinating that we are keen to immerse ourselves in the muck. However, even if you care deeply for the Colorado River, this can be overwhelming, especially amid the persistant horrors of this era. Naturally, our instinct may be to turn away. This came up during a riverside policy talk on the trip led by GCI’s projects and development manager Anna Penner and me. With so much going on and the constant information overload online, it is important to trust your gut instinct and give yourself space away from the news. Just don’t pull your heart from the Colorado River itself. [ed. emphasis mine]
The Colorado River carries hope. The side effects of drought, overallocation, and indecision is the steady return of a free flowing Colorado River and Glen Canyon emerging from a shrinking reservoir. I’ve written before that many of us were too late to experience Glen Canyon before the dam, but we are now right on time to witness its resurrection. Cataract Canyon is an ideal place to experience the changes in motion. From muddy sediment-rich river flows and returning rapids to strongholds of native plants like box elders and seep willows propagating in tributary canyons.
Photo credit: Wild Words
For one guest, Tom, these watershed moments for Glen Canyon are major bookends in his life. As a young lad, his family crossed the old Hite Ferry at Dandy Crossing in their station wagon during a road trip. They then drove up the rock-rutted and sandy North Wash, sans road, before it became Highway 95. He also boated on Lake Powell in 1965, before it filled completely, and vividly recalls seeing the fully exposed Hole-in-the-Rock site. Now age seventy seven, Tom and his lifelong friend Paul make time every year to return to the Colorado River with GCI. He has been a member for twenty-one years
Photo of Dandy Crossing: Photo credit: Cindy Stafford
North Wash travel. Credit: Cindy Stafford
This was Aaron’s first Cataract River trip, and a deserved reward for living with my Colorado River obsession. His perpetual and ever-widening smile affirmed how important quality time with the river is, now and always. Post-trip, he told me his favorite part of the trip was “watching the swirling eddy lines at sunset, while sitting on the beach with the group.”
Right now, we are all in an eddy. The decisions made, or not, in 2026 will ripple beyond our lifetime. But so will our unrelenting love for the river and the water that sustains life in the West. Impossible dreams, like the EarthFirst! symbolic crack in the dam, may come to life in yet unimagined ways, so long as we do not give up.
Glen Canyon Institute 2026 river trip group photo. Photo credit: Wild Words
Charles L. Bernheimer. Credit: “Path of Light” — Morgan Sjogren
To this, I pause and take another swig of whiskey and muddy water. This spring, I had more than one interview with so-called major environmental groups that sounded more like public relations agents for Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.
Lee continued:
Exhausting? Perhaps. But better tired than apathetic. With tin cups filled with muddy water, this moment asks us to stand with all who have defended the Colorado River in the past and will continue on into the future. Protecting what we love is a journey without end.
To support efforts to restore Glen Canyon and ensure continued water deliveries below Glen Canyon Dam, consider becoming a supporter of Glen Canyon Institute.
Wild Words is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
1 The reservoir sediment left behind as Lake Powell drops is not so affectionately named in reference to Floyd Dominy, the former Bureau of Reclamation Director responsible for the creation of Glen Canyon Dam. Some of us have thoughts about this. I am saving these for my next book, Riverside, to be published by Torrey House Press in 2027.)
by Marcus Reichley, Cronkite News June 10, 2026 Cronkite News offers an audio version of this story using an automated voice created by AI. Errors in pronunciation, pacing and intonation may occur. If you notice an error please contact cronkitenews@asu.edu.
WASHINGTON – The chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee warned Arizona and two other states that rely on the Colorado River on Wednesday that they will lose access to hundreds of millions in conservation aid if they pursue litigation over water rights.
Roughly $354 million is still available under a 2022 climate law. But the funds expire at the end of September.
“States that choose to sue their fellow basin states over Colorado River operations should not expect Congress to reward that decision with additional federal funding,” Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah – one of the four Upper Basin states, said at the outset of a hearing on the stalemate among the seven states that share the river. “Federal taxpayers should not be asked to subsidize litigation among the states.”
Glen Canyon Dam holds back Lake Powell on Nov. 2, 2022. States upstream and downstream of the dam have different ideas about how to manage the amount of water released from the reservoir, which has become a key sticking point in ongoing negotiations about the Colorado River’s future. (Photo by Alex Hager/KUNC)
Arizona, California and Nevada have been at odds with Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming over how to divide the dwindling water supply when the most recent 19-year deal expires at the end of 2026.
The funds Lee threatened to block are a key element of the Lower Basin’s most recent proposal from May 1, which relies on the funding to incentivize voluntary water conservation as an alternative to mandatory cuts.
The $354 million comes from the Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022 by President Joe Biden, which set aside $4 billion for drought mitigation and compensation for voluntary conservation. Funds that remain unused when the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30 will revert to the Treasury.
He chastised officials in the Lower Basin states for, among other things, taking out newspaper ads attacking Upper Basin states.
Negotiators appeared to be “preparing actively for litigation,” he said – and in fact, key officials in both camps have told Cronkite News in recent days they are preparing for that possibility.
Congress “will not be a bystander in this process,” Lee said, noting that under the Constitution, Congress holds approval authority over any long-term interstate compact.
He also expressed sympathy with the Upper Basin’s stance, warning that any proposal asking those states to absorb greater operational burdens without regard to the river’s existing legal framework “will face a difficult path forward” in Congress.
The chairman framed the moment as a failure of collective will, cataloguing a string of missed deadlines. “The basin can no longer afford to wait,” he said.
After Lee delivered his rebuke, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, pressed the Trump administration from the opposite direction.
Gallego asked Andrea Travnicek, assistant secretary for water and science at the Department of the Interior, how the department plans to weigh Arizona’s economic stakes as it finalizes its decision.
“The Colorado River is a lifeline for Arizona,” Gallego said, noting the state is home to the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing hub in the Western Hemisphere and that the success of its industries are essential to the nation.
“The technological industries, the domestic food supply, and energy security are all top priorities for the United States, including the president’s agenda,” he said.
Travnicek said the department cannot accept either the May 1 proposal from the Lower Basin nor the latest Upper Basin proposal as they currently stand.
“We have some concerns and areas where we think that there should be adjustments,” she said.
She confirmed that the Interior Department is coordinating with the Energy Department and U.S. Department of Agriculture, among other agencies. She said an interagency water subcabinet meeting will be held Thursday.
The hearing laid bare the tension that has made a seven-state deal so elusive, with senators from both basins on hand.
Travnicek fielded pressure from both directions without committing to either.
The stakes are straightforward and very high.
Decades of drought have pushed water levels to dangerously low levels even as demand and population grow. The river now provides barely half the amount of water each basin has been legally entitled to draw.
“Delay carries its own consequences,” Lee said, “and the basin can no longer afford to wait.”
One of Pagosa Springs’ oldest parks, Town Park straddles the San Juan River in the heart of downtown Pagosa Springs. The site of many events, Town Park is by far one of the most popular parks in Pagosa Springs. Photo credit: Town of Pagosa Springs
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Clayton Chaney). Here’s an excerpt:
June 17, 2026
During a regular meeting held by the Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) in Arboles on June 16, the board unanimously approved Resolution 2026-47, putting a six-month moratorium on data centers in the county. The matter was brought up by Commissioner Veronica Medina earlier that day during a BoCC work session, where she explained that she had talked with other counties across the state about issues with data centers, “and just the draw on power and water that they tend to use,” noting that they don’t seem to be a good fit for Archuleta County. Medina also mentioned technologies do change and that moving forward things may look different with data centers, but that the county’s current infrastructure and water situation would not support a data center.
“Colorado is in a fight for its life for water,” she said, adding, “If we don’t have water, we don’t have life.”
Medina explained that the county can only do a six-month moratorium at a time, suggesting that she would like to take the matter to the voters at some point and engage the community on if it should be a long-term ban. Medina then stated that for most counties that have data centers, they draw the majority of power in the community.
THE NEWS:Sen. Mike Lee, the ultra-MAGA Utah Republican, failed once again to diminish public lands protections when his bid to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s management plan expired before getting a vote.
THE CONTEXT: This spring, Lee and Rep. Celeste Maloy, also a Utah Republican, introduced a joint resolution of disapproval in both houses of Congress aimed at repealing the 2024 management plan. That started the clock ticking on a 60-day time-limit for a simple majority vote to overturn the plan. The deadline passed on June 11 without any action, meaning that any effort to toss the plan now would be subject to the Senate filibuster, so would need 60 votes to pass — a highly unlikely prospect.
Had the resolution passed, the national monument’s management would have reverted back to the weak and inadequate 2020 Trump I-era plan, which allowed more grazing, more damaging “vegetation management,” and more off-road vehicle use. Plus the 2020 plan only covered the 1 million acres left in the national monument after Trump removed about 900,000 acres from its boundaries, meaning almost half of the national monument would in a sort of management limbo.
This would have sown chaos and confusion, yet it wouldn’t have diminished the national monument or the protections that were baked into the establishing proclamation. The monument boundaries would have remained intact, along with the prohibition on new oil and gas drilling, mining claims, and other energy development.
Nevertheless, it clearly was intended as an attack on the national monument and the attendant protections, which have been a sore spot for Utah sagebrush rebel-leaning politicians since Bill Clinton established it under the Antiquities Act 30 years ago this September. What Maloy or Lee hoped to actually achieve with the attack is a little less clear, even if it had hit its target.
Maloy likely was trying to brush up on her anti-federal-land-management credentials before what could be a bruising primary. Her challenger is notorious sagebrush rebel Phil Lyman, who led an illegal OHV-ride down the archaeologically rich Recapture Canyon in 2014 to protest what he called “federal overreach.”
So far, Maloy is winning the fundraising race by a healthy margin. Utah Political Watchreports that the Defend our Values Super PAC run by former Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, just donated $900,000 to Maloy’s campaign. The American Conservation Coalition PAC, which says it “helps elect leaders who champion American energy dominance, environmental conservation, and cutting-edge innovation,” has spent over $150,000 in support of Maloy, as well. Maloy isn’t exactly living up to the conservation part of that, but I’m not sure the PAC folks care too much about it, either.
And then there’s Lee. Sometimes it feels as if he’s taking up the tasks Project 2025 guided the Trump administration to execute, but that the administration has backed off from because of how deeply unpopular they have turned out to be. It’s almost as if the administration is tasking Lee with feeding some red meat to the MAGA base, but also is setting him up to fail.
Rock climber in Unaweep Canyon, Colorado (not a wilderness area). Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
THE NEWS: The U.S. Interior Department is launching a “review” of rock climbing management and wilderness study area policies. On June 15 it opened the 60-day public comment period on its proposals to establish “a consistent approach to recreational rock climbing management across designated wilderness areas,” and to evaluate whether “existing wilderness study areas and lands with wilderness characteristic policies should be updated, clarified, or revised.”
THE CONTEXT: Any time the Trump administration decides to “review” something, it pays to be wary, since more often than not the review leads to the evisceration of some sort of environmental protection. They tend to couch it in euphemisms, however, such as this bit from an Interior press release: “… Interior is focused on expanding outdoor recreation opportunities, removing unnecessary barriers to access, and use, and managing public lands in a way that benefits the American people.”
Wilderness areas are designated by Congress and are governed by a set of specific rules that can’t be altered by the administration. However, the question of whether installing fixed climbing bolts and anchors is permitted or not is vague and has shifted over the years (what is clear is that power drills cannot be used to install them). The administration is looking to clear this up, and to allow fixed anchors in wilderness areas as long as they follow certain guidelines.
Wilderness study areas share many of the same qualities and protections as wilderness areas, but have not been designated as such by Congress. In 1976, Congress tasked the BLM with identifying potential wilderness areas within its domain and make recommendations regarding them. Those that were identified and fit certain criteria but not designated became wilderness study areas, or WSAs. There are currently 491 wilderness study areas covering over 11 million acres. Look at a map of areas that have large swaths of BLM land — particularly in Utah — and you’ll almost certainly find a few.
The Federal Land Policy Management Act directed the BLM to manage the WSAs “in a manner so as not to impair the suitability of such areas for preservation as wilderness”and prevent “unnecessary or undue degradation.” In other words, you couldn’t build a permanent road through a WSA because that would preclude it from being designated as a wilderness area later.
This leaves room for agency interpretation. The current BLM policy, carried out in accordance with a 2012 manual, is to “continue resource uses on land designated as WSAs in a manner that maintains the area’s suitability for preservation as wilderness.” Under that policy, the agency almost certainly would not permit a road through a WSA, because that would preclude it from being designated as a wilderness area later. And, according to the memo, it most likely would not allow motorized or mountain bike use in a WSA.
The current administration is unlikely to get away with allowing permanent roads in WSAs. However, given its language about removing barriers to access, one can expect it to apply a broader and more permissive interpretation of the non-impairment standard to its policies. This might mean allowing motorized vehicle or mountain bike use within WSAs on existing trails, for example, or even some logging or small-scale mining, so long as the agency officials could convince themselves that it would be cleaned up later.
Finally, the BLM also has a policy for managing lands with wilderness characteristics that are not WSAs or designated wilderness areas. The administration is reviewing this policy, as well.
Interior announced all of these policies in one press release, but you need to comment on them individually. Here’s how:
For the fixed anchors and other climbing management changes in wilderness areas, go to the Federal Register page and follow the instructions, or go directly to the regulations.gov page and click on “Comment.”
For changes to wilderness study area management, go to the Federal Register page, and read the instructions, or go directly to the regulations.gov page and click on “Comment.”
For changes to lands with wilderness characteristics management, go to the Federal Register page, and follow the instructions, or go directly to the regulations.gov page and click on “Comment.”
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
Guest Commentary: A Fair Allocation for the Colorado River
by Levi Tenen
This summer is the last chance for seven Western states to allocate the Colorado River voluntarily before the federal government steps in1. Gridlock persists: Lower Basin states (California, Arizona, and Nevada) have offered to reduce their water usage the most, but they believe that Upper Basin States (Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah) ought to reduce their usage as well if the region dries up too much.2 The Upper Basin states reject this proposal, refusing to reduce the amount of water that was allotted to them under previous agreements.3 The federal government has proposed solutions of its own, all of which seem to favor the Upper Basin states.4
The debate raises fundamental questions: how should resources be allocated in times of scarcity, and do past agreements matter today? From my research in ethics, I think there is an answer, and one that has not been noticed by others. Justice demands that Upper Basin states give up some of their allotted, promised water, but Lower Basin states must greatly limit their water usage and—the new idea—Lower Basin states ought to pay for the extra water they receive.5
To see why, consider a thought experiment from philosopher Jeremy Waldron6: Imagine you and I own ranches in an arid region. We drill wells on our respective properties and enjoy plentiful water. Good times come to an end, however, when a drought sets in and my well runs dry. Unable to relocate, I am stuck in a dire circumstance. Due to the geography of the area, however, you continue to have a surplus of water. What, if anything, do you owe me? Without anyone else around to help me, are you obligated to share your water? The answer is yes, to an extent. It would be wrong, for instance, if you prevented me access to your well just to let the water go unused, leaving me to die. It would also be wrong if you kept me from your well so that you could build a nice new pool, or even so that you could increase your wealth by adding many more head of cattle, all while I perish nearby. Put simply, in times of scarcity and desperation, justice limits a person’s property rights. Justice will never require you to endanger yourself, but more modest sacrifices can become obligatory.
What most people miss, however, is that obligations often fall onto the recipients of aid. Return to the above case. First, even though water is scarce, other resources may not be. So, while you are obliged to give me water, if I have money, labor, or something else to give in return, I ought to do so. It would be unfair, after all, for me to hold onto large amounts of disposable wealth and take your water, leaving you altogether worse off and me only better off.
Secondly, even though I receive water from you, I cannot use it however I want. For, I do not have the right to an endless amount of your water. The water you owe me is only for the basic conditions of life, not for wasting away or for self-serving, economic growth. So, I mustn’t add more cattle to my ranch or build a pretty fountain in my courtyard. Indeed, if scarcity persists, I need to reduce my water consumption greatly, scaling back my ranch operations. To do otherwise would be to limit your future opportunity unjustly.
Carried over to the Colorado River, this much then seems clear: Upper Basin states ought to give some of their unused water to Lower Basin states, even though they all previously agreed to allocate that water to the Upper Basin. The scarce and desperate times limit the past agreements, particularly because the scarcity was unforeseen. And make no mistake: the Lower Basin states are facing dire times. Tens of millions of people in those states depend on the river for drinking water.7 Moreover, 70% of the water goes to food production, with the majority going towards crops in Lower Basin states.8 Running out of water is an existential threat to the cities and peoples in the Lower Basin, and it is a threat to food security the nation over.9
However, the Lower Basin states ought to purchase the water from Upper Basin states and they need to minimize their burden on those states, even if that means ceasing new housing developments and industrial projects. Perhaps if the Lower Basin states add these conditions to their offer, negotiations will move forward and the Upper Basin will accept their share of the burden: sending some of their allotted water downstream.
Levi Tenen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Wesleyan University. He grew up in Arizona and conducts research at the intersection of Ethics, Political Philosophy, and Environmental Law.
Click the link to read the article on the Getches-Wilkinson Center website (Jack Schmidt,1 Anne Castle,2 Eric Kuhn, 3 Kathryn Sorensen,4 Katherine Tara5
June 18, 2026
In the next few weeks, we will share a few graphs and charts that we find informative in understanding today’s water supply crisis on the Colorado River. This short paper concerns the present status of reservoir storage.
IN BRIEF
In 2026 and for only the third time in the 21st century, there was no accumulation, and no recovery, of total Basin live storage6 during the snowmelt season. Nor was there any accumulation or recovery of total live storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead during the 2026 snowmelt season. Total Basin live storage (hereafter, total Basin storage) is all the water available in the Colorado River Basin’s reservoir “savings account” and stored in reservoirs within the watershed.7 On June 1, total Basin storage was 22.94 million acre feet (maf), only 1.62 maf above the previous minimum of March 20238 and less than 2 years supply at the current rate at which water is consumptively used or lost in the Basin. Total Basin storage will almost certainly drop to less than the previous record minimum by March 2027.
THE PRESENT CONDITION
On June 1, 2026, total Basin storage in 46 reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin was 22.94 maf, 9 39% of the content of those same reservoirs in late August 1999, the last time those reservoirs were relatively full.10 On June 1, Lake Mead held 33% of the Basin’s active storage, 32% was in 42 reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell, 25% in Lake Powell, and 10% in Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu. The combined live storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell was 28% of the total live storage of those two reservoirs in late summer 1999.11
Why Total Basin Storage?
Most policy analysis of reservoir storage in the Colorado River Basin focuses on Lake Powell and Lake Mead or, alternatively, on all federally managed reservoirs in the Basin. These reservoirs are the focus of ongoing negotiations among the Basin states and will be impacted by impending management decisions by the federal government. On June 1, 89% of total Basin storage was held in 12 federally managed reservoirs.12 Slightly more than 60% of live storage upstream from Lake Powell was held in 8 federally managed reservoirs.
Total Basin storage is the total amount of water stored in reservoirs in the Colorado River watershed. In addition to the 12 federally managed reservoirs, Basin storage includes federal project reservoirs managed by other entities and non-federal reservoirs managed by municipal water providers and water conservation and conservancy districts. Some of the non-federal reservoirs act as forebays that facilitate trans-basin diversions to the Colorado Front Range or Utah’s Wasatch Front. Water stored in these non-federally managed reservoirs is not subject to current or proposed federal operating guidelines. In the Upper Basin, however, water stored in the non-federally managed reservoirs is one determinant of total Upper Basin consumptive use.Therefore, the status of storage in all the Basin’s reservoirs is an indicator of the overall condition of the Colorado River reservoir system and its ability to buffer continued declining inflow. Transfer of water from one reservoir to another, such as the on-going transfer from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Lake Powell, does not affect total Basin storage. Although such management policy is critical to protecting dam infrastructure and maintaining realistically accessible storage in Lake Powell, 13 such policy merely shifts the location of the Basin’s deck chairs. What matters is whether the ship is sinking. [ed, emphasis mine]
Accumulation Period And Depletion Period
In terms of reservoir storage, we have previously distinguished two periods of the year – the period of reservoir rise (i.e., accumulation period) and the period of reservoir decline (i.e., depletion period).14 In terms of total Basin storage, the 2-3 month long accumulation period typically begins in mid-April, although it has begun as early as mid-March (Supplemental Table 1). The accumulation period typically ends in early July but has sometimes ended in early June and as late as early August. In rare cases, as discussed below, there has been no accumulation. The depletion period typically occurs from mid-summer until the following spring and lasts 9-10 months.
BASINWIDE STORAGE SHOWS CONTINUED DOWNWARD TREND DESPITE PERIODIC WET WINTERS
Basin Reservoirs in Spring 2023 Were at an Unprecedented Low.
Figure 1 shows total live storage in 46 reservoirs during the past 3.5 years. The minimum amount of water in those reservoirs was on March 14, 2023, immediately before snowmelt began from the winter 2022/2023 snowpack. At that time, the Basin’s reservoirs only held 21.32 maf. Total Basin storage had not been that low since May 1965 when the newly constructed Colorado River Storage Project reservoirs were beginning to fill.15
Figure 1. Graph showing total storage in 46 reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin since January 1, 2023. The minimum amount during this period occurred in mid-March 2023, when total storage was less than at any time since late May 1965. The amount of increase or decrease in total Basin storage during the accumulation and depletion periods of each year are shown. Updated to June 14, 2026.
Snowmelt in 2023 was unusually large for the 21st century, and reservoir storage significantly recovered. The 8.38 maf increase in reservoir storage during the 2023 accumulation period was the second largest single-year increase of the 21st century and resulted from the second largest unregulated inflow to Lake Powell of the 21st century.16 The Basin’s reservoirs were subsequently drawn down by only 2.15 maf between July 13, 2023, and April 17, 2024, the smallest depletion period since at least 2010. Unregulated inflow to Lake Powell in Water Year (WY) 2024, primarily due to the 2024 snowmelt season, was typical of the 21st century,17 and the Basin’s reservoirs recovered 2.45 maf. Because Basin reservoir recovery exceeded the drawdown during the preceding 2023-2024 depletion period, Basin storage reached its highest recent peak at the beginning of the 2024-2025 depletion period.18
The gains of 2023 and 2024 were subsequently lost between summer 2024 and today, because depletion exceeded accumulation. In spring 2027, total Basin storage is likely to be less than it was in March 2023.
In early July 2024, the multi-year downward turn of reservoir storage began. The Basin’s reservoirs were depleted by 3.60 maf during the 2024-2025 depletion period, more than 1 maf greater than the preceding accumulation. Unregulated inflow to Lake Powell in WY2025 was the fourth driest of the 21st century19, and the Basin’s reservoirs only accumulated 0.55 maf, a small amount. Despite hard-fought, politically contentious, and economically expensive system conservation and assigned water efforts as well as a wet fall in the southern part of the Basin, the Basin’s reservoirs were depleted by 4.00 million af during the 2025-2026 depletion period.20 The most probable unregulated inflow to Lake Powell in WY2026 is forecast to be 3.40 maf, the second lowest inflow of the 21st century.21 There will be no accumulation this year.22
As of June 1, 2026, the Basin’s total storage was only 1.62 maf more than total storage at its record-breaking low in March 2023. It is likely that Basin storage in spring 2027, before the 2027 accumulation season begins, will be lower than at any time since 1965, because depletion during the 2016-2027 period will probably exceed 1.62 maf.23
The depletion of reservoir storage that began in summer 2024 occurred despite a significant effort to reduce Lower Basin water use. Water use in California and Arizona in Calendar Year (CY) 2025 was the lowest and third lowest, respectively, since CY2010, and use in those two states in CY2024 was the fourth lowest since CY2010. Water use in Arizona in CY2026 is forecast to be the lowest since CY2010. Upper Basin use in CY2024 was typical for the period CY2010-CY2024; Upper Basin use data for CY2025 are not yet available.
Despite each spring’s snowmelt inflow, each part of the Basin’s reservoir system that stores water – Lake Mead, Lake Powell, and the reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell – has declined since their recent maximums in summer 2024.
Lake Mead typically peaks between January and March and then declines until August (Fig. 2). This pattern contrasts from that of Lake Powell and of reservoirs further upstream. The winter peaks of Lake Mead in 2024, 2025, and 2026 have been progressively lower each year, and the summer minimums have also been lower each year. In 2026, Lake Mead peaked on February 28 and lost 1.23 maf between March 1 and June 1 and will probably continue to drop during the rest of summer. On June 1, 2026, Lake Mead stored only 0.34 maf more than its recent minimum of January 1, 2023.24
Figure 2. Graph showing live storage in Lake Mead, Lake Powell, in 42 reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell, and in Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu since January 1, 2023. Updated to June 14, 2026.
In the last two years, Lake Powell has dropped more than other reservoirs. Lake Powell lost more than 4 maf of stored water since early July 2024. In 2026, Lake Powell steadily declined from the beginning of the year until May 7 and stabilized following the onset of snowmelt runoff, increased releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and reduction of releases at Glen Canyon Dam.25 On June 1, decline in Lake Powell resumed. The total live storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell on June 1 was 13.38 maf, significantly less than the capacity of either individual reservoir.
Total storage in 42 reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell also declined during the past 3.5 years. Those reservoirs rise every spring and typically recover until sometime in June or July. Presently, many reservoirs in the headwaters of the upper Colorado River are still rising, 26 as are Fontenelle and Big Sandy in the upper Green River Basin. However, total reservoir storage in the Gunnison and Green River watersheds is already at its lowest of the year. Total reservoir storage in the San Juan River watershed has been declining since mid-April but is not yet at its lowest point for the year.
OVERALL TRENDS IN BASIN STORAGE DEMONSTRATE RATCHET EFFECT IN FULL FORCE
In the context of the entire 21st century, Basin storage significantly dropped during two multi-year dry periods, 2000-2004 and 2020-2022 (Fig. 3).27 In other years, the bounty of snowmelt was temporarily stored but completely consumed in subsequent years. The resulting pattern for the 21st century is jagged, but the overall trend in storage has been relentlessly downward, because Basin average uses and losses have consistently exceeded average inflows. We call this pattern the Ratchet Effect, because a rachet is a mechanical device that only allows movement in one direction, in this case towards ever declining Basin storage and deeper into crisis.28 Despite laudable efforts to maintain balance through system conservation and assigned water programs, the ship continues to sink.
Figure 3. Graph showing live storage in the Basin’s reservoirs since January 1, 1999. We call this pattern the Ratchet Effect of declining Colorado River Basin storage in the 21st century. Updated to June 14, 2026.
SUPPLEMENTAL TABLE
Supplemental Table 1. Beginning and end dates of the reservoir storage accumulation period for the entire watershed and for Lake Powell plus Lake Mead. The volume in storage for each date is indicated. The value at the beginning of the accumulation period is the minimum storage at the end of the preceding 9-10 month depletion period. Numbers in bold brackets are the accumulation, in millions of acre feet. Tan shading indicates years that were among the five driest of the 21st century. Blue shading were years that were among the five wettest of the 21st century.
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 Live storage is all water stored in reservoirs that can be vacated by gravity, no matter how difficult or slow would be the process of withdrawing that water. Active storage is all water stored above minimum power pool, and inactive storage is water stored between dead pool and minimum power pool. These definitions differ from those used in previous papers that we have written. In past papers, we used the term active storage to refer to what we now refer to as live storage. This change is made to be consistent with terminology of Bureau of Reclamation.
7 We do not consider reservoirs that store Colorado River water but are located beyond the watershed boundary, such as Horsetooth or Twin Lakes Reservoirs in Colorado.
8 As discussed below, the March 2023 minimum was the lowest total Basin storage since May 1965 when the reservoirs of the Colorado River Storage Project were beginning to fill.
10 The total amount of water in the 46 reservoirs on August 24, 1999, was 59.52 maf. The only previous periods when total Basin storage exceeded that amount were for ~4.5 months between June 9 and October 24, 1983, and during parts of summer 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1998 The largest amount of live storage in these reservoirs was 63.61 maf on July 15, 1983.
11 Total live storage in Lake Mead and Lake Powell peaked at 47.70 maf on September 19, 1999, and was 13.38 maf on June 1, 2026.
12 The contents of these 12 reservoirs are reported in Reclamation’s 24-Month Study reports and include Taylor Park, Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, Crystal, Fontenelle, Flaming Gorge, Vallecito, and Navajo that are upstream from Lake Powell, as well as Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Lake Mohave, and Lake Havasu. The contents of the latter two reservoirs, as well as Morrow Point and Crystal, do not change much during the year.
15 The 12 federal reservoirs had 18.93 maf of active storage on March 14, 2023, and were at their lowest since early May 1965.
16 The largest single-year accumulation of Basin storage was in 2011, when storage increased 8.78 million af. Unregulated inflow in WY2011 was 15.97 maf, and natural flow in WY2011 was the largest of the 21st century (WY2011 = 20.16 million af). Unregulated inflow to Lake Powell in WY2023 was 13.42 million af, and natural flow of the Colorado River in WY2023 was 17.41 million af, the third largest of the 21st century.
17 Unregulated inflow was 7.98 million af, 2% less than the average for the 21st century (2000-2026). Natural flow at Lees Ferry in WY2024 (11.88 million af) was 1.5% less than the 21st century average.
18 Total Basin storage was 29.99 million af on July 6, 2024, the largest peak since mid-January 2021.
19 WY2025 unregulated inflow was 4.69 million af. Natural flow at Lees Ferry was 8.50 million af, the fifth driest of the 21st century.
20 J. C. Schmidt et al. 2026. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are moving in opposite direction – what gives? https://qanr.usu.edu/coloradoriver/news/blog-2026-2-9. Here, we are arbitrarily ending the 2025-2026 depletion period on June 1, 2026, when the 2026-2027 depletion period begins.
21 June 24-Month Study.
22 The only other years in the 21st century when there was no accumulation of total Basin storage were 2002 and 2012.
23 The median drawdown of the Basin’s reservoirs since 2010 during each depletion period has been approximately 3.6 maf, and the smallest previous depletion was 2.15 maf. There have only been six years when Basin-wide reservoir depletion was less than 3.0 million af: 2023-2024 (2.15 million af), 2022-2023 (2.19 million af), 2014-2015 (2.61 million af), 2016-2017 (2.75 million af), 2019-2020 (2.82 million af), and 2011-2012 (2.93 million af).
24 Active storage in Lake Mead on January 1, 2023, was 7.32 million af.
25 Lake Powell only gained 0.12 million af between May 7 and May 31.
26 These reservoirs include Granby, Dillon, Ruedi, Green Mountain, Taylor Park, and Ridgway.
27 J. C. Schmidt et al. 2023. The Colorado River water crisis: its origin and the future. WIREs Water 10.1002/wat2.1672.
Anglers flock to Flaming Gorge Reservoir on Memorial Day weekend. Kokanee salmon and trophy-sized lake trout draw tens of thousands of visitors to the reservoir each year, supporting a recreational economy in southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah. (Hannah Romero/Green River Star)
Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Dustin Bleizeffer and Hannah Romero):
June 4, 2026
As campers with boats flocked to Buckboard Marina at the start of Memorial Day weekend, Tony Valdez was busy issuing refunds and repairing broken boat ramps. One older Green River man, who walked with two canes, left with his money refunded for the season after discovering he could not safely make it down to the boat slip. Due to dropping water levels at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the ramp is now buckled, angling up and down like a pitched roof.
“It’s devastating, not just to me, it’s all the marina owners,” said Valdez, who owns Buckboard Marina, south of Green River. “It’s a big loss, and this is a big loss to the community.”
Along the cliffs and shoreline, darker and lighter lines of rock and sand trace the water’s elevations, showing where the water hits when the marina is full, where it hovered this spring and where it dropped after an initial “flush.” Valdez estimates the reservoir has dropped by 7 feet since April.
But that’s not the worst of it. Valdez anticipates that by the end of this summer, the reservoir will be as low as it’s ever been.
Why the drain?
For all its charm as a beloved recreation spot and its utility as a local economic driver, Flaming Gorge Reservoir owes its existence to a legal compact that essentially regards it as an insurance policy in times of drought.
Its primary purpose, according to federal officials and Colorado River Compact scholars, is to serve as a backup water bank to help maintain the Colorado River system. Specifically, Flaming Gorge and a handful of other reservoirs in the upper Colorado River Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico are key to ensuring a minimum flow of 7.5 million acre-feet of water, on a running 10-year average, at Lees Ferry just downstream of Lake Powell, a massive man-made reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border.
Today, after more than 20 years of drought intensified by human-caused climate change, the Colorado River is in crisis, putting at risk massive agricultural irrigation operations that consume about 80% of its water. This past winter saw historically low snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin — a primary source for the river’s flow.
This annotated 1963 photo of the Glen Canyon Dam shows the minimum level of Lake Powell, below which would render the dam’s power generation components inoperable. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Combined with record heat in March, Lake Powell is at risk of dropping below Glen Canyon Dam’s “minimum power pool,” the point at which it can no longer produce hydroelectric power, according to water officials. If it falls even lower, the dam, which holds back Lake Powell, could be at risk of structural damage or unable to allow water to flow downstream.
The situation triggered a drought response operations agreement that calls for restricting releases from Lake Powell and an order to draw extra water from Flaming Gorge upstream. In total, water managers will release about 1 million additional acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge in April 2026 through April 2027.
“These actions are expected to lower [Flaming Gorge’s] elevation by roughly 35 feet over the next year to approximately 59% of capacity,” the bureau said in April.
“The elevations are real critical,” Valdez said. At Buckboard Marina, high water has hovered between 6,030 and 6,040 feet above sea level over the past 50 years, he said. Dropping 35 feet could expose 400 feet of shoreline in some places, including marinas with boat ramps, he said.
Dropping water levels in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir by 35 feet could expose over 400 feet of shoreline in some places, including marinas with boat ramps, according to Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez. (Hannah Romero/Green River Star)
If the water elevation continues to retreat, it could reach a point where boats can’t be brought in or out.
“By September, this thing is going to be down to 6,000 feet. That’s it,” Valdez said. “Next year, if it goes below that, there’s no more marina here.”
Setting a course
Water managers set a course in April to “stabilize” Flaming Gorge’s outflow to about 1,100 cubic feet per second, representing the rate needed to achieve the 1 million acre-feet of extra water release, according to the bureau. On top of that, there are two previously planned “flushes” from the Gorge. The first, in early May, temporarily increased the outflow to about 8,600 cubic feet per second to enhance the proliferation of razorback sucker larvae, and a second 72-hour flush beginning June 8 will temporarily increase the outflow to about 4,600 cubic feet per second to discourage the proliferation of smallmouth bass.
So far, Flaming Gorge has dropped from about 3 million acre-feet in April (or 82% capacity) to about 2.83 million acre-feet as of May 25. Meanwhile, water managers warn, “This release plan is subject to change depending on evolving river conditions and weather forecasts.”
Click to enlarge: This chart depicts water storage levels at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Those evolving conditions include forecasted versus actual flows from streams feeding the system. For example, those “unregulated” or natural flows are forecasted to be much lower than normal: 70,000 acre-feet of water into Flaming Gorge during May (28% of average), 175,000 acre-feet in June (45% of average) and 84,000 acre-feet (42%), according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Water officials caution that water flowing from the Flaming Gorge Dam could change, and that those recreating on the Green River below should monitor release schedules at this website. The bureau also noted, “Water will be colder than usual and will run high and swift during periods of elevated releases.”
Water floats recreation economy
Buckboard Marina went through a similar drop in water a few years ago. The Bureau of Reclamation began pulling water from the Flaming Gorge in 2021, and by 2022, the marina’s water level was at an all-time low. While the reservoir recovered somewhat in 2023 thanks to a good year for moisture, Valdez said, the reservoir has continued to decline since then.
Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez stands next to a stake that indicates the extent of lowering water levels at Flaming Gorge Reservoir Sept. 26, 2022. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile)
Kokanee salmon and trophy-sized lake trout draw tens of thousands of visitors to Flaming Gorge each year, supporting a recreational economy in southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah. But as the lake is drawn down, water recedes from shallow shorelines and fish are forced into a smaller space, essentially shrinking the fishery toward the dam side of the reservoir.
One of Valdez’s primary concerns is that water levels could drop below the ideal elevation for kokanee to spawn in the reservoir.
“I think people don’t realize the economic value it brings,” he said. “It is a big deal when you lose your kokanees.”
Valdez has already lost money this year just from people being concerned about water levels. He estimated that the marina lost roughly $30,000 in cancellations when discussions about releasing water began as early as February.
Other problems also start to arise as the water drops. The marina will lose access to drinking water at 6,010 feet, below their floating pump that supplies potable water. It’s only 7 feet away from the current level.
“That’s scary to me,” Valdez said.
The marina can truck in water from Rock Springs, but it costs about $1,200 to bring in 8,000 gallons, which lasts about two weeks. For Valdez, it feels “asinine” to lose water at a marina.
“Why would we run out of water on a lake?”
Water levels also impact the location of the fuel dock and fuel lines extending to it. If the reservoir sinks too low, it could cost up to $100,000 to adapt, he said.
Drawing down water levels quickly — as happened in early May — can damage marina structures. After the 2021-22 drawdown, Valdez said he spent about $130,000 in repairs.
Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez shows a boat ramp that now angles up steeply before dropping down after the reservoir’s water levels dropped several feet. (Hannah Romero/Green River Star)
This time, he’d hoped to keep up. He and a group of 10 men worked to keep pace with the dropping water levels, repairing and modifying ramps. It wasn’t enough.
“The drop was dramatic enough to break all of our approaches, our bridges, our stuff, so it broke a lot of the welds, broke a lot of the structured steel, because it just vertically dropped too fast for the weight,” he said.
When structures go from water to land that quickly, the weight is too much for them to hold up, Valdez said.
“I’m re-rigging everything, and this is only a temporary fix ’til September, because that’s when the season ends.”
The marina should remain mostly functional until the summer season ends, he said. But with extra water releases set to continue through the winter, the lake could drop another 10 to 12 feet by the spring.
“We’re getting into numbers that I don’t even want to talk about,” Valdez said. “I mean, there’s no marina.”
What’s next?
“The guy with the boots on the ground that watches this every day,” as Valdez describes himself, can see what water managers can’t, and he questions whether official numbers and estimates match reality.
“It’s hard to watch this when it’s out of your hands.”
Valdez is critical of the 1922 compact, doubting the legal rationale of sending Wyoming water to places like Arizona. He also wonders about the role of local industries — refineries, coal-fired power plants and trona mines — that use large amounts of water, and the idea of adding more industrial facilities that require even more water, like data centers.
“We don’t have the water to give away,” Valdez said.
Aerial photo of the Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona. Photo by Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk, with aerial support by LightHawk.
Bryan Seppie, general manager for the Joint Powers Water Board for Sweetwater County, Rock Springs and Green River, agrees. “The poor hydrology this past winter has affected most all water users in some form or another,” he said.
His board monitors the Colorado River system closely. Just upstream from Flaming Gorge, the Bureau of Reclamation reduced releases from Fontenelle Reservoir due to poor inflow projections. Although the water will still be enough for river users, the low summer flows will have a negative impact.
“Low river flows typically result in higher water temperatures, which generally leads to higher levels of moss/algae and overall lower water quality,” Seppie said in an email.
What about recovery?
Valdez wonders: What’s the plan to allow the reservoir to bounce back?
Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart and his staff have warned for months that although Flaming Gorge can serve as a backup to Lake Powell this year, it drains the Gorge’s ability to play a similar role next year, or the year after. It takes time for Mother Nature to replenish the bank.
“The big thing that nobody is talking about is the recovery,” Valdez said. “Where is the recovery of our water?”
This year’s drain on Flaming Gorge began at a low point. The reservoir hadn’t fully recovered after the last major pull. Rather than starting at a high point of 6,040 feet, the marina was at about 6,024 feet, he said.
“There’s no recovery plan,” he said. “We can’t just let them keep taking. I mean, where’s this end?”
Rings line the shore of Flaming Gorge Reservoir, showing the drop in the water level at the popular recreation spot that spans the Wyoming-Utah border. (Hannah Romero/Green River Star)
If there is no grace period for the reservoir to replenish and officials want to take even more in the near future, starting from such a low elevation point, it will be “devastating,” Valdez said.
“The water going down is not the end of the world, it’s the recovery in a timely manner that really matters,” he said. “I can’t preach recovery enough.”
Watching people come to the marina and seeing how happy they are still motivates Valdez to keep going. Despite the drawdown, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
“We’re not going to run away. We’re not going to give up,” he said. “We’re going to fight.”
Recently, my colleagues at High Country News and I had a bit of a kerfuffle over whether the place on the Colorado River that divides the Upper Basin from the Lower Basin was called Lee Ferry, Lee’s Ferry, or Lees Ferry. Our esteemed copyeditor, Diane Sylvain, was beating herself up for letting a “Lee Ferry” sneak into an article I wrote, when the HCN style guide says it should be “Lees Ferry.”
I pointed out that it was fine, since “Lee Ferry” is an accepted spelling, as is “Lee’s Ferry.” This prompted a sharp rebuke: “Its name is Lees. … Dissenters can use apostrophes on their own time.”
Great. Now I’ve been labelled as a copyedit dissenter. That hurts. But it also sent me down a wormhole on this whole Lee Lees Lee’s Ferry thing, not in an effort to catch any copyeditors out, not as an act of dissent, but just because I’m curious about how we got to where “Lees Ferry” is the accepted spelling, in defiance of apostrophes and, perhaps, history. In the process I learned a lot about one of the coolest spots I know.
Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
Honestly, I wish we could use a different name altogether for this place of convergence in the far reaches of northern Arizona, something grander and more suited to the landscape, to the condors that ply the skies over the Marble Canyon, to the towering Vermillion Cliffs, and the way the light plays off the stone and dances across the ripply waters of the Colorado River, a dim echo of the geological turmoil that occurred here. Lees Ferry is where the Wingate sandstone of Glen Canyon gives way to the Kaibab limestone of Marble Canyon, where the deep gorge of the Paria River meets up with the Colorado, and — more arbitrarily — where the Upper Basin of the Colorado River meets the Lower Basin.
The geologic transition influenced the topography, making this one of the few places in the region that people and their horses and wagons can reach the Colorado River safely without winches and ropes or parachutes.
Hopi people probably forged the first footpaths to the river from the east, making their way down the giant limestone ramp. Much later, the Escalante-Dominguez expedition of 1776, searching for a return route to Santa Fe, stumbled upon this place, naming it San Benito de Salsipuedes1. “The entire terrain from San Fructo up to here is very troublesome,” the friars wrote, “and altogether impassible when it contains a little moisture from snow and rain.” They also said the land was “pleasingly jumbled,” which seems a perfect descriptor. Some of the Spaniard colonists tried to cross the river, but found that the water was too deep and the current too swift — although they managed to survive. They had to exit the canyon and continue upstream for miles before finding a way across.
A section of Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco’s map from the Escalante-Dominguez expedition showing what is now known as Lees Ferry.
Paiute guide Naraguts led explorer Jacob Hamblin to the crossing in the 1860s, putting it, figuratively, on the Euro-American maps. And in 1871, a man named John Doyle Lee and his wife Emma settled near the mouth of the Paria and, with a boat abandoned by John Wesley Powell, established a ferry river crossing just upstream from the confluence of the Paria River, naming the place Lonely Dell.
Lee was the adopted son of Brigham Young and had been a Church of Latter Day Saints leader. However, the church excommunicated him after he helped lead the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southwestern Utah, which resulted in the killing of more than 100 non-Mormon white settlers. Whether he chose to go to the remote Lonely Dell to escape prosecution for mass-murder or was exiled there isn’t really clear. Either way, it didn’t work out: Federal marshals arrested him in 1874. In a jail-house interview with the Philadelphia Times the following year, Lee said he had 18 wives, 63 children, 100 grandchildren, and one great grandchild. He also refused to implicate Brigham Young for his role in the massacre. Lee was tried, convicted of first-degree murder, and executed by firing squad in 1877.
Emma Lee continued operations at the ferry until 1879 (meaning she ran it for longer than her husband). Then Warren Johnson and sons ran the enterprise on behalf of the LDS Church, followed by James Emmet and the Grand Canyon Cattle Co., followed again by Johnson and sons for Coconino County. The ferry was finally shut down in 1928 after an accident killed three people. The Navajo Bridge downstream was under construction at the time and would have displaced the ferry, so it would have been abandoned anyway.
John Lee’s notoriety and his conviction didn’t dissuade folks from using his name to refer to the ferry and the place — although it could be argued that it’s named after Emma, not John.
George F. Cram maps from 1879 and 1900 show “Lee’s Ferry” at the confluence of the Paria and the Colorado rivers, but an 1881 version of Cram’s map calls it “Lees Ferry.” Newspaper articles in 1899, 1905, and 1935 refer to the place as “Lee’s Ferry,” as does an 1884 Rand McNally map. It goes like this up until the 1930s, with mapmakers and others generally using both Lee’s and Lees, depending, perhaps, on the typesetter’s fondness for apostrophes. Another theory (albeit likely false): “Lees” is actually the plural form, not the possessive without the apostrophe, so as to give both Emma and John credit for starting and running the ferry. Whatever the case, by the 1940s “Lees Ferry” had edged out “Lee’s Ferry” as most cartographers’ preferred form.
It seems, then, that we have come to the end of this journey, and that “Lees Ferry” is the most acceptable spelling, whether or not it’s grammatically correct. But then along comes “Lee Ferry” to throw it all out of whack.
In 1916, Eric C. LaRue wrote a paper on “The Colorado River and its Utilization” for the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the arbiter of place names. In it, he refers to the place where the Paria River meets the Colorado River as “Lee Ferry.” Except then, five years later, the USGS installed a Colorado River streamflow gage just upstream of the Paria River confluence and called it “Lees Ferry.”
Does this settle it? Nope. Because in 1922, the Colorado River Compact was hammered out. This is the foundational document of the “Law of the River,” and it partitioned the Colorado River watershed into the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states and parceled out its waters to each. The dividing line between the two? Lee Ferry. No, the authors did not accidentally omit the “s” in “Lees.” In its definition-of-terms section, the Compact says: “The term ‘Lee Ferry’ means a point in the main stream of the Colorado River one mile below the mouth of the Paria River.” Yet, the ferry established by John and Emma Lee — along with the USGS streamflow gage — are located above the mouth of the Paria River (because sediment from the Paria can mess up measurements and, possibly, ferries).
A passage from he U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 1946 report, “The Colorado River: A Natural Menace Becomes a Natural Resource,” in which they use both “Lees Ferry” and “Lee Ferry” and explain the difference between the two. Source: USBR.
While these two points on the map are close enough together to be considered the same place, there is a significant distinction when it comes to accounting for the water in the Colorado River: By putting the dividing point (Lee Ferry) below the mouth of the Paria, it includes the Paria River in the Upper Basin, and includes those flows in the 75 million acre-feet every ten years the Upper Basin is obligated to allow to flow past Lee Ferry. To determine the flow at Lee Ferry, the USGS adds the measurement from the Lees Ferry streamflow gage to the one from the Paria River gage.
It’s about as clear as a sediment-choked Colorado River now, isn’t it? Here it is in a slightly more concise version:
Lees Ferry = Lee’s Ferry ≠ Lee Ferry
Lees Ferry is the most widely accepted term for the geographical location at and around the confluence of the Colorado River and Paria River in northern Arizona. It’s probably derived from “Lee’s Ferry,” as the USGS typically drops apostrophes from possessive place names for reasons unknown. Lees Ferry also refers to the USGS Colorado River streamflow gage located just upstream from the mouth of the Paria River.
Zipline at the USGS Lees Ferry streamflow gage, not to be confused with Lee Ferry, which is the point that divides the Colorado River’s Upper Basin from the Lower Basin. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Lee Ferry is the correct term for the point one mile downstream from the mouth2 of the Paria River that divides the Colorado River’s Upper Basin from the Lower Basin. The Colorado River Compact mandates that the Upper Basin “will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.”
The streamflow at Lee Ferry is determined by adding the measured flow at the Lees Ferry streamflow gage to that at the Paria River gage just upstream from the Paria River’s mouth.
So, if one is writing about the Upper Basin’s non-depletion obligation, they should use “Lee Ferry.” If they are writing about the historical settlement, the general place, or the streamflow gage, they should write “Lees Ferry.”
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
THE NEWS: MAGA Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, is back on his anti-public-lands crusade, this time with an underhanded attempt to repeal the wildly popular 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects some 45 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land from roadbuilding and logging3. And yes, Mike Lee is related to the aforementioned convicted mass murderer John D. Lee, though I’m sure that has nothing to do with this.
THE CONTEXT:Lee had a busy week. First, he went ballistic on social media after the Trump Defense Department removed the Church of Latter Day Saints from its list of Christian religious denominations (it’s still a recognized faith, but lost the “Christian” label). Apparently he was worried Mormons would be left out of Pete Hegseth’s white Christian Nationalist holy wars.
Then, ol’ Jell-O-Social Lee snuck a last-minute amendment into the bipartisan Wildfire Prevention Act that would not only kill the Roadless Rule, but also prevent a similar rule from being implemented later. The Senate’s energy and natural resources committee voted to advance the amended legislation along party lines. Next it will be subject to a full Senate vote.
Lee’s amendment “just blows up” the bipartisan support for the larger Wildfire Prevention Act, said a clearly dismayed Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat. The larger legislation, introduced by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., aims to increase forest thinning and other vegetation treatments as well as prescribed burns on Forest Service and BLM land. It would also guide the agencies to develop strategies for using “livestock grazing as a wildlife risk reduction tool.”
The jury is certainly still out on the efficacy of forest thinning as a wildfire hazard mitigation method. As for livestock grazing? Yeah, probably not, unless all vegetation is eaten down to bare dirt. And once all of the native grasses are gone, it opens the door to cheatgrass, which is especially flammable. Then there’s the question of whether wildfires are really a bad thing — but we’ll leave that debate for later.
Lee claims his motives are pure, and that the Roadless Rule is hampering access for fire prevention and fighting efforts. That’s not true. While the rule generally prohibits roadbuilding and timber harvesting in inventoried roadless areas, it makes exceptions for both if they are deemed necessary for wildfire hazard mitigation or to fight fires. In a public hearing, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, pointed out that 240,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas in his state alone had been treated for wildfire hazard mitigation treatment, proving Lee wrong. And the Trump administration, for better or worse, has lagged on forest thinning: A Center for Western Priorities analysis found the Forest Service treated 35% less acreage in 2025 than it did under Biden in 2024.
In fact, building more roads increases access to remote areas. Since most fires are started by humans, it follows that putting more humans into a forest makes it more likely that forest is going to be ignited by an errant spark, cigarette, campfire, or a hot catalytic converter in some tinder-dry grass. So if you really want to prevent wildfires, consider closing some of the thousands of miles of existing roads across public lands.
It’s not clear what Lee hopes to accomplish with these inane, and often futile moves, but what he has done is given strength and energy to the environmental movement. His bid last year to sell off public lands to real estate developers not only flopped, but enlarged the constituency opposing land transfers of any kind. His latest assault on public lands has riled up the hook and bullet crowd, who don’t want roads and timber operations sullying game habitat and streams. And his amendment may very well kill the wildfire bill’s chances at passing, disrupting the efforts of his right-wing colleagues.
Maybe Lee’s inherent extremism forces him to lash out at bipartisanship and pragmatism, in general. After all, he got into the Senate by unseating the late Sen. Bob Bennett, a conservative Republican who lost favor with the more extreme wing of his state’s party by attempting to broker a compromise on public lands in Utah.
It’s tempting to blame Lee’s zealotry on genetics, given that he is the great-great-grandson of John D. Lee, who was convicted and executed for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, when a group of Mormon militia members killed about 120 gentile emigrants as their wagon train made its way from Arkansas to California. The attack came during a time of heightened tension and conflict between the LDS church and the federal government.
Water and climate scientist Brad Udall speaks at the annual Colorado Law Conference on Natural Resources at the University of Colorado Boulder June, 2014. Udall has been one of the loudest voices calling for audacious leadership on issues of climate and the Colorado River. Photo credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
The problem with that theory is that John D. Lee’s direct descendants — who likely number in the thousands by now — also include Stewart and Morris Udall, influential Western Democratic politicians and public lands champions. Stewart served as Interior Secretary under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and Morris was an Arizona congressman for three decades. Stewart’s son Tom represented New Mexico in the House and Senate, and Mo’s son Mark, a Colorado Democrat, served in the Senate and House as well.
Those Udalls were (and are) Democrats and environmentalists and, according to some takes, “staunch liberals.” But they were also old-school Western politicians who valued pragmatism over ideology and values over party, everything Mike Lee is not. Lee could learn a lot from his kin.
🛢️ Hydrocarbon Hoedown 📈
I’ve written here often about how the Trump administration is handing out drilling permits to petroleum companies like Shriners throwing candy at a parade. Over the last six months, for example, the BLM has issued drilling permits at a rate of 500 per month; you’d have to go back to the George W. Bush administration to see the agency acting at a more rapid pace. But the administration is supplicating itself even more to the fossil fuel industries in a different realm: leasing as much public land to oil and gas companies as they possibly can.
Earlier this month, for example, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned 114,439 acres of public land in Wyoming to the oil and gas industry. Next week, the BLM will put a whopping 160,268 acres in Colorado on the auction block, which could open 174 parcels in Arapahoe, Garfield, Jackson, Mesa, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt, and Weld counties — including prime elk habitat — to drilling. And in December, the agency is looking to auction nearly 79,000 acres on the Arizona Strip, despite the fact that there are no known petroleum reserves there.
The public comment period is long gone for those lands, but another planned December sale in Colorado is still subject to your input. This time the BLM is looking to sell 114 parcels on nearly 127,000 acres. The parcels are scattered around the state, with the biggest chunk east of Trinidad, including a block along the Purgatoire River. More than 2,000 acres in and around the HD Mountains in southwestern Colorado — including one big swath south of Chimney Rock — are also going on the block.
Parcels in Archuleta County, Colorado, the BLM plans to put on the oil and gas lease auction block in December (outlined in black). To comment on the proposal, click on this link.
1I’ve seen different translations for “Salsipuede,” including: “you can get out” and “get out if you can.” It seems that the latter is most accurate, given that a “San Benito” is a cassock worn by errant friars. They also called the place “distressful.”
2This is not at a fixed point, as the mouth of the Paria River has migrated from north to south over the years, thanks to sedimentation and so forth.
3The original rule covered nearly 60 million acres, however, as the rule was battered around the courts and political playing field in the years after its implementation, Colorado and Idaho petitioned to create state-specific rules for inventoried roadless areas in their states. That means that any rescission of the rule, whether it’s administratively by the Trump administration or via Lee’s amendment, would not affect Colorado or Idaho roadless areas.
The new conveyor system moved concrete across the gap where the spillway channel will be to the far side of the dam. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
June 14, 2026
…it remains unclear whether Denver Water will ever be able to fill the reservoir to its new full capacity as a yearslong court battle lumbers on between the utility and environmentalists. Months of mediation between the parties have failed. Denver Water is now asking a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court judge’s 2025 order barring the utility from filling the expanded reservoir and ordering the yearslong federal permitting process to be redone. A panel of three judges for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on July 31 in Santa Fe…
U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello in 2024 found that federal regulators violated environmental protection laws when they failed to properly analyze the environmental impact of the project or consider reasonable alternatives to the dam expansion that would be less harmful. She later issued the order against filling the reservoir. Environmental groups argued in court, and in their filings, that regulators failed to evaluate how siphoning more water from the drought-stricken Colorado River would impact the basin as a whole. And the groups charged that they failed to weigh other project options that wouldn’t require the clear-cutting of a half-million trees or risk damage to wetlands. The case has drawn the attention of other Front Range water providers, lawyers from across the county and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — all of which have filed briefs in the appeals case…
While the dam structure itself is complete, at least a year of work remains to fully finish the project, Martin said. Construction crews must finish the spillway and place the final topper foot of concrete on the completed dam structure. Divers will place a gate between the reservoir’s water and the dam’s intake tubes. But the crews on site will diminish in the coming months, from up to 500 workers a day to closer to 100. On the morning of June 3, crane operators already worked to remove from the dam crest the heavy machinery that was necessary to build the main structure.
Roller-compacted concrete will be placed on top of the existing dam to raise it to a new height of 471 feet. A total of 118 new steps will make up the new dam. Image credit: Denver Water.
A rainstorm over southern Colorado. Photo: Abby Burk
Click the link to read the article on the Audubon website (Abby Burk):
May 7, 2026
Drought in Colorado isn’t abstract—it’s shaping decisions right now, from headwater streams to major reservoirs. And this year, the signals are hard to ignore. At the same time, conversations about water are tightening. There’s more concern and more sensitivity—especially around anything tied to water availability.
Snowpack across the Upper Basin has dropped to record or near-record lows. By early April, snow water equivalent in many areas fell to a fraction of normal, and snow cover reached the lowest levels observed in the satellite record. At the same time, this winter ranked among the warmest on record—reducing snow accumulation, accelerating melt, and increasing evaporative losses. These patterns are consistent with the impacts of climate change across the Colorado River Basin, where rising temperatures are diminishing snowpack reliability and reducing overall runoff efficiency.
June 1, 2026 seasonal water supply forecast summary.
Those conditions are now reflected in forecasts. Runoff across the Upper Basin watersheds is expected to be among the lowest on record, with sharply reduced inflows into Lake Powell. Meanwhile, Lake Powell and Lake Meadcontinue to sit near historic lows—leaving very little buffer in the system.
Even where spring storms have brought some relief, the underlying deficitremains. Dry soils, warm temperatures, and reduced snowpack mean less water ultimately reaches rivers.
This is not just a dry year. It’s a system under compounding stress.
Why This Matters: Ecological Drought
Ecological drought helps explain what those conditions mean on the ground.
That definition matters because it expands how we think about drought.
It’s not just about precipitation. It’s about how drought moves through a system:
From snowpack to soil moisture
From soil moisture to vegetation and habitat
From ecosystems to the services people depend on
Modern droughts are also changing. They are becoming hotter, longer, and more widespread, with impacts amplified by both climate conditions and human water use.
And those impacts don’t stay contained.
Ecological drought is fundamentally about connected systems. When ecosystems cross critical thresholds—losing wetland function, shifting vegetation, or degrading habitat—those changes feed back into water supply, with wide-ranging implications to agriculture, wildfire risk, and community stability.
What it Looks Like Right Now
In Colorado, ecological drought is showing up as a shift in timing, duration, and connectivity.
Even with recent moisture:
Peak river flows are shorter and less effective
River baseflows drop earlier
Floodplains connect less often
Wetlands and side channels dry sooner
These aren’t always dramatic changes—but they compound, especially when they occur in back-to-back years, reducing recovery time.
That’s a critical shift. Drought is no longer just episodic. It’s increasingly persistent, with ecosystems spending less time in recovery and more time under stress.
Birds Are Early Indicators
For birds, these shifts are immediate.
Migratory species depend on wetlands that function like stepping stones across the landscape. When those wetlands shrink or disappear earlier, habitat becomes compressed.
Riparian birds like the Northern Yellow Warbler and Song Sparrow rely on dense, water-supported vegetation during breeding season. Earlier drying reduces both cover and food availability.
And beneath all of this, food webs shift. Aquatic insects emerge differently under drier conditions, creating mismatches with nesting cycles.
Birds are often the first to show us what’s changing—but they’re not the only ones affected.
People Are In This System, Too
Ecological drought makes one thing clear: this is a single, connected system responding together. The same processes that shape habitat also shape outcomes for people. Soil moisture influences forage conditions for agriculture. Water timing and availability affect the reliability of community supplies. River flows support recreation and local economies, while connected floodplains help reduce risk and support recovery after disturbance.
This is what we mean by ecosystem services—the benefits people receive from functioning natural systems. When those systems are strained or begin to break down, those benefits decline as well.
What This Means for the Basin
The science is pointing to something bigger than a single dry year.
The Colorado River Basin is increasingly operating in a warmer, drier regime, where snowpack is less reliable and variability is higher. Recent conditions mirror some of the most consequential low-flow years in recent history—and they are becoming more frequent.
At the same time, current operating guidelines are set to expire, and the decisions made now will shape how the system responds to these conditions going forward.
What’s needed is a shift—from reactive, year-to-year crisis management to more durable and flexible operations; from short-term fixes to sustained investment in long-term resilience; and from fragmented efforts to stronger alignment across states, Tribes, and water users.
There is growing recognition that solutions must include conservation, efficiency, infrastructure, and watershed health—including restoration that improves how water is stored and functions across the landscape. Without that kind of alignment, risks will continue to compound—ecologically, economically, and socially.
A Clearer Lens for What’s Ahead
Ecological drought is not a new agenda. It’s a way to understand how drought actually works in today’s world—how water shortages move through ecosystems, how impacts cascade, and how those impacts ultimately reach people.
It connects snowpack to rivers, rivers to habitat, and habitat to communities. And it underscores something essential: when ecosystems are pushed beyond their limits, the consequences don’t stay ecological—they become systemic.
That’s why this matters now. Because the question in front of us isn’t just how we respond to this year’s drought. It’s whether we’re building a system that can function—ecologically and socially—under the conditions we know are coming (or are here).
Heat-emitting Phoenix-area data centers next to already hot neighborhoods. Good thing a lot of those houses have swimming pools. They’ll need them. Source: Data Center Waste Heat as an Emerging Urban Thermal Hazard: First Field Measurements of Neighborhood-Scale Air Temperature Impacts, by David J. Sailor, Soroush Samareh Abolhassani, Eli P. Martin.
🤖 Data Center Watch 👾
Phoenix is hot, thanks to its location and elevation; it’s getting hotter, due to climate change, all that concrete and steel and glass and the urban heat island effect, and heat output from thousands of overworked air conditioning units; and it’s bound to get even hotter thanks to … data centers.
A team of Arizona State University researchers recently published a report on data center waste heat as an “emerging thermal hazard.” What they found will make folks who live near the facilities sweat, literally.
Data centers do a lot of work crunching information to stream movies, power AI queries, make those Tik Tok videos, and keep you doomscrolling, and work creates heat, meaning that data centers need constant cooling. As the paper’s authors put it, “virtually all electrical energy consumed by information technology equipment is ultimately converted to sensible heat,” and data centers consume huge amounts of electricity. More and more data centers, especially in arid areas, are using air cooling technology, which means taking that heat away from the equipment and putting it elsewhere — i.e. outside the facility, creating thermal plumes.
The researchers determined that these thermal plumes are migrating into adjacent neighborhoods and heating them up, with downwind air temperatures measuring up to .9° C warmer than upwind temperatures. The data centers’ excess heat was detected up to 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet, away from the facility. This is troubling given that many data centers are being constructed in or next to residential neighborhoods. The massive Cyrus One server farm complex in Chandler, Arizona, for example, is about 600 feet from single-family residences.
The authors write:
Keep in mind that this study only looked at the warming effect of on-grid facilities. Many of the new hyperscale data centers in the pipeline are planning to install power generation infrastructure, usually natural gas-fired, on-site, most likely radiating even more heat than the data centers alone. Putting your data center in Wyoming or Alaska rather than Phoenix or Las Vegas is making more and more sense.
⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️
Will it be the Sultry Summer of 2026 for the Four Corners region? The long-range forecasts sure do look that way. The good news is that it’s looking more and more likely that the monsoon will be potent in the Southwest, with the National Weather Service predicting above average precipitation over the next three months. The bad news is they are also calling for higher-than-normal temperatures for the entire West during that time period, which could offset some of the benefits of the rain.
But whether it’s normally hot or abnormally so, the extra moisture will be especially welcome this year. Many an irrigation ditch is likely to go dry in the next month or so, thanks to extra-low streamflows, and regular afternoon downpours could help farmers get their crops to harvest, so long as the storms aren’t too severe and don’t produce softball-sized hail stones or whatever.
Once the monsoon arrives, it should help dampen wildfire hazard a bit (although the lightning that always comes with it will certainly spark many a blaze). In the meantime, however, big swaths of the West are expected to have above normal wildland fire potential for the next month or so.
And blazes are flaring up here and there, including a small conflagration atop Hermosa Mountain north of Durango that is eerily reminiscent of the 416 Fire in 2018: This winter’s snowpack resembled 2018’s, the 416 broke out on June 1, and the starting points are in the same general area.
The current fire is burning in a hard-to-reach area at higher elevation and was definitely not started by sparks from the railroad. It’s also growing relatively slowly, having reached just 18 acres as of the evening of June 4.
***
Emery Peak near Silverton, Colorado, on June 2, 2026. Andy Gleason photo.
I don’t know about y’all, but the crazy winter and spring has screwed up my perception of the water situation. When skiing-obsessed snow-nerd Andy Gleason sent me this photo, I was somewhat surprised to see that there was any snow at all left in the high country, especially enough to carve a few turns on. When I see that the Animas River is running above 800 cfs right now, I think: That’s not so bad! And when I see Lake Powell’s surface level inching upwards rather than downwards a temporary feeling of relief washes over me.
Then I remember: It’s the beginning of June. The north facing high mountains should be coated with several feet of snow, not a few inches. The Animas should be running at 3,000 cfs, at least, and in a good year still would be approaching its peak. And Lake Powell’s inflows should far exceed releases at this time of year, bringing the surface level up by several feet or more, without requiring Flaming Gorge to be drawn down to “devastating” levels.
That bout of summer-like weather at the end of March set my internal season clock a couple of months ahead, so that I expect the conditions to be like they typically would be in late July. So once that split second of disorientation, and accompanying optimism, passes, there’s a sort of letdown.
Because, yes, the conditions are grim. And it was one of the worst winters, in terms of snowpack, on record. But there are reasons not to despair. While the snow was dismal, precipitation accumulation for the water year so far has been far less so, keeping extreme drought at bay. Temperatures cooled after the March heat spell, a series of storms kept the forests from becoming kindling, and desert rains summoned the wildflowers. Patches of globe mallow, sego lily, primrose, and prince’s plume brightened up the burnished sands of Utah, and my friend and I rode our bikes through a purple-hued super bloom near Farmington.
The land may be dry, but it still offers beauty, solace, and refuge from these trying times. [ed. emphasis mine]
Redrock reflection on the Dolores River near Gateway, downstream from the confluence with the San Miguel. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Last month I wrote about the despair I felt as I witnessed the virtually dry Dolores River bed a mile or so above its confluence with the San Miguel River. Neither the dryness nor the despair are new, though they both came early this year.
For decades, the wild Dolores would swell up into a raging torrent during the spring runoff. Then, during the summer, Montezuma Valley irrigators would divert nearly all of the stream’s flow, reducing these lower reaches to little more than a trickle come late July and August.
McPhee Dam started holding back those spring flows in the early 1980s. Like any dam, this one robbed so much life from the river. Yet this one also promised to give some life back to the beleaguered river by mitigating the impacts of all of that irrigation. The idea was to capture enough of the runoff to fill up the reservoir in the spring. During summer, the storage could be drawn down to serve irrigators, while most or all of the river’s natural flow could be sent through the dam to the Lower Dolores. It was like putting the river’s manic-depressive flows on lithium.
It worked, for a while: The massive spring runoffs, known to hit upwards of 11,000 cfs, were tempered, but enough water still flowed downstream to scour beaches and preserve Snaggletooth’s whitewater snarl. And for the first time in a century the lower Dolores didn’t run dry in July. In fact, the year-round flows were enough to build and sustain a cold-water fishery for trout in the first dozen or so miles below the dam and a habitat for native fish below that. Meanwhile, the Dolores River water was able to reach far more irrigators, including the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and former dryland farmers out Dove Creek way.
It appeared to be a win-win situation. Then, beginning in 2000, things went awry as a long-term drought gripped the region. More often than not, the dam’s operators held back almost all of the water running into the reservoir to allow them to continue delivering something to the irrigators. And even then the reservoir still isn’t full enough to deliver all of the water that’s allocated: This year the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and irrigators outside of the Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company will receive just 13% of their allotted amount. The river below the dam, of course, is the biggest loser, receiving virtually nothing.
And yet, not all is lost. The Dolores River Boating Advocates recently put out a postdetailing the grim forecast for this year, but also reporting on a new Colorado Parks and Wildlife effort to help fish in the Lower Dolores: pulse flows. They tested the concept last year by holding water back behind the dam for a few days by reducing release flows to 24 cfs, then bumping up releases to 75 cfs create a slight surge of water to reconnect downstream pools, to induce enough current to keep the water cooler, and allow fish to move around again.
Graph showing the pulse flows last summer as they reached Bedrock. So far this spring flows there have been below a dismal 10 cfs. Source: USGS.
The Boating Advocates write:
Of course streams also need water, and it’s so scarce this year that the base flows will be just 5 cfs, or one-fifth of last year’s base flows. And so the sorrows continue for the poor Dolores River.
And here’s the thing: closed loop water systems are 100% possible. They just require a bit more investment.Similarly, powering data centers off clean energy is also 100% possible. In some cases, it’s even cheaper!This disastrous overconsumption is not a technological failure: it’s a policy one.
Glen Canyon Dam forms Lake Powell on the Colorado River near Page, Ariz. Officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are holding back water and releasing water from an upstream reservoir to prop up levels in Lake Powell. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Federal officials announced on Thursday that they plan on using a shorter-term framework for future Colorado River management so they can be more responsive to changing conditions and reservoir levels.
Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Scott Cameron said at an annual conference on water policy that the agency will be using a 10-year framework, issuing new operational guidelines every two years. In the absence of a seven-state deal for sharing shortages and managing reservoirs, river management now falls to the federal government — an outcome nearly everyone had hoped to avoid.
“We would love to have a 20-year deal or a 30-year deal but, frankly, we haven’t even been able to get the seven states to agree on what a two-year deal would look like,” Cameron said. “Given the highly unusual hydrological situation in the basin … we think it makes sense to take a second look at decision making every couple of years.”
As part of the required process under the National Environmental Policy Act, Cameron said Reclamation will release a final Environmental Impact Statement with its “preferred alternative,” in mid-to-late summer. It will lay out a more detailed 10-year operations plan for the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and will include short-term operational guidelines for 2027 and 2028. He said the plan provides a stable, transparent and adaptable framework for river management.
Scott Cameron is the acting commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. He announced Thursday the federal agency is planning to release a river management plan in mid-to-late summer that includes a 10-year framework, with new operational guidelines every two years. CREDIT: U.S. BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
“We want to pay more attention to what’s actually happening in the river and what’s happening in terms of the elevation of the reservoirs,” Cameron said. “We want to manage conservatively during low inflow periods and hopefully be able to transition to recovery as conditions improve across the basin to keep the system stable and resilient.”
Cameron left the door open for a return to future management by the states and added that if they eventually come to an agreement, it could supplant the federal plan.
Cameron’s update came at the Colorado Law Conference on Natural Resources at the University of Colorado Boulder, hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center and the Water & Tribes Initiative. Water managers from around the basin gathered at the Wolf Law School in the midst of one of the worst droughts on record that threatens the water supply for about 40 million people in the American Southwest. Record hot temperatures and one of the worst snowpacks since measuring began resulted in streamflows that peaked much lower than normal and, in some reaches, a month early. Reclamation’s most recent projections put spring runoff into Lake Powell at just 800,000 acre-feet, which would be 13% percent of normal and the lowest on record.
On top of the abysmal hydrologic conditions, the basin is also in the midst of a management crisis. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and Lower Basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) after two years of negotiating have failed to reach a consensus on how they will share future cuts and have blown past deadlines to come up with a plan. The current guidelines, which have determined shortages and releases since 2007, expire at the end of the year. But for all intents and purposes, water managers need a new plan in place by the start of the new water year on Oct. 1.
Some of the problem still centers around the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allocated half of the river’s flows (7.5 million acre-feet a year) to each basin. But this framework no longer applies under 21st century conditions, which has seen flows decline by 20% due to climate change. Despite indications a year ago that the states were moving to a supply-driven model based on each year’s snowpack and available water — rather than a fixed allocation of water — a new management framework the states can agree on has remained out of reach.
Colorado representative Becky Mitchell and Nevada representative John Entsminger speak at a conference on Colorado River policy in Boulder on Friday, June 5, 2026. The federal government is set to release a plan for future river management in mid-to-late summer. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Beyond the band-aid
The feds’ operating plan for the first two years may be based on a proposal submitted by the Lower Basin states in early May, in which they propose to cut another 700,000 acre-feet of water per year through 2028, on top of the 1.5 million acre-feet they had already promised. California and Arizona will each take another 300,000 acre-feet of cuts and Nevada will take a cut of 100,000 acre-feet. The proposal does not include any mandatory conservation from the Upper Basin.
Federal officials responded in a May 28 letter with adjustments to make the proposal feasible, including the requirement that the Lower Basin states help pay for the 700,000 acre-feet of conservation. In the past, conservation programs have depended heavily on federal funding.
Becky Mitchell, who represents Colorado in the negotiations among the states, said during a Friday panel that the feds’ plan was a starting point but raises some concerns. Constantly renegotiating an operating plan every two years would be hard to fathom, she said.
“How do we fund and finance if we’re constantly renegotiating?” Mitchell said. “And how do we create the certainty that the 40 million people deserve?”
The feds have already stepped in this spring to prevent the worst consequences of the exceptionally dry winter and keep water levels at Lake Powell from falling below the threshold for making hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. They are releasing up to 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to prop up Powell and holding back Powell releases by about 1.5 million acre-feet. Cameron conceded, however, that these are temporary, stop-gap measures meant to address a critical situation.
“I think we succeeded in making everybody unhappy and everybody mad, which maybe means we’re doing the right thing in terms of Lake Powell,” Cameron said.
The Upper Basin states, including Colorado, are exploring ways to contribute water to a pool in Lake Powell as a means of maintaining higher water levels and an insurance policy against drastic cuts. But officials have not budged from their position that the Upper Basin is limited in what it can do and that cutting Lower Basin overuse is the primary solution to the Colorado River crisis.
Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University whose presentation kicked off the conference, asked water managers not to waste this unique opportunity to redo 100 years of law and policy around how to manage a critical resource. And he directed a plea at the Upper Basin, saying that they, too, are part of the problem.
“We need everybody with a shoulder to this wheel,” Udall said. “We understand that the Upper Basin is different. We understand that they don’t have (large upstream) reservoirs and that every year people suffer. But we need you to help. Please help us.”
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
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
June 1, 2026
I’ve been on a “Colorado River sabbatical” of late, but I took a peek last week at Reclamation’s latest 24-month study. Holy moly things have gotten bad since the last time I looked!
Those not on sabbatical already know all of this, but to keep Lake Powell above a surface elevation of 3,500 feet, Reclamation is:
increasing releases out of Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border
dropping releases out of Lake Powell to 6 million acre feet this year
Even with those two “hail Mary” moves, Lake Mead is projected in the “most probable” scenario to drop to elevation 1,020 by summer 2027. Under the “minimum probable” forecast, Mead drops all the way to elevation 1,008 in 2027.
We are on the brink, as a group of my colleagues explains in a new analysis out this morning (Monday June 1, 2026), of a system crash:
Even a wet year, my friends conclude, would only provide a short reprieve from the need to significantly reduce consumptive use.
Building on a similar analysis done last September (I was a co-author on that one), the authors attempt to overcome one of the shortcomings of the traditional Colorado River accounting systems, which is to treat any water above “dead pool” as usable storage. This is not the case, with clear do-not-cross lines in the reservoirs that are maintained for technical reasons well above the bottom, defined by my colleagues as…
One of the reasons for my “sabbatical” is, frankly, an agonized frustration with the abject failure of Colorado River governance at the basin scale, and a desire to turn my attention to the local level, which is where the problem solving responsibility seems to rest right now. Each community needs to be having a serious conversation right now about the specifics of its Colorado River water supply, and how it intends to go about using less. Blaming other people for using too much isn’t particularly useful at this point, we seem to have chosen to hand that set of questions (the rule-based part of “who is entitled to how much”) over to the courts, and who knows what that process holds. We know the answer for everyone is “use less water”, and each community needs to be getting on with that conversation.
A large crowd listens to a presentation at the University of Colorado Boulder law school about securing powerful new water rights on Colorado’s West Slope to benefit the health of the Colorado River. Scott Franz/KUNC
June 5, 2026
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
Water negotiators, river enthusiasts, Native tribes and lots of lawyers convened at the University of Colorado Law School on Thursday to take stock of the future of the dwindling Colorado River.
Here are five things KUNC’s water and environment reporter learned on the first day of the gathering.
There’s a thirst for treating the river as more than something to be consumed, and monetized and stretched out
Dale Sinquah, a tribal council member for Arizona’s Hopi tribe, is among a growing number of people who view the Colorado as a living being that should have the same rights as a person.
“If you look at it at that level and you allow it to, then it starts changing the ways in which you think about it, and maybe your actions,” he said.
Late last year, the Colorado River Indian Tribes of Arizona and California voted to give their namesake waterway the same legal rights as a person, saying the ‘living being’ deserves more protection while it’s being threatened by overuse and drought.
Sinquah said he had mixed reviews of the discussions at the water conference halfway through the first day.
“I’m kind of wondering if we’re stuck in that mode where you know personal interest (is winning) instead of how do we fix this as a whole, as a group,” he said. “It works better when you work together as a group.”
There’s still no finalized federal plan for the river yet, and the White House could have the final say…
Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation overseeing the operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, said the Interior Department is expecting to publish a short term operating plan for the reservoirs by “mid-summer.”
He said the plan would have to be renegotiated every two years and could be replaced at any time with one that the seven states can agree on.
“The good news is that the White House is very interested in what’s going on with the Colorado, so we’ll probably have to brief the White House on the (Secretary of the Interior’s) decision before it’s final,” Cameron said.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, center, speaks during a gathering with governors from six states in the Colorado River basin on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo credit: Lowell Whitman/Department Of Interior
River negotiations are ongoing, but details are scarce…
First governors from all seven states in the river basin were summoned to Washington, DC, ahead of the Feb. 14 deal deadline they missed.
Then, after that didn’t work, came the Microsoft Teams meeting.
Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently talked with the seven governors again on the virtual meeting platform.
“The fact that he is trying to wrangle his gubernatorial colleagues twice, I think, indicates how seriously Secretary Burgum takes what’s happening in the Colorado River,” Cameron said.
However, no deal has yet to materialize as the states remain at an impasse, and some in the upper basin have called for a different mediator to intervene.
June 1, 2026 seasonal water supply forecast summary.
One thing is clear.
Forecasts for the river have gotten worse in recent months. And there was an acknowledgement that the status quo is not sustainable.
Graphic via Holly McClelland/High Country News.
Could the feds get more involved in the management of upper basin reservoirs like Flaming Gorge? The answer is murky…
The audience asked Cameron, the Bureau of Reclamation official, about his thinking on how Interior should manage four large reservoirs in the upper basin that are collectively known as the upper initial units (they include Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border).
Flaming Gorge is currently being partially drained so water can be sent down to Lake Powell so it doesn’t get so low that it stops producing hydropower.
Cameron said the Interior Secretary could exert more control over the reservoirs in the future in the event of an “emergency.”
“And what an emergency is, I think, is probably in the eyes of the beholder,” he said. “Now, you put four or five lawyers in a room. You’ll probably get nine answers on how much discretion the secretary has or doesn’t have in the upper initial units.”
Parts of the lake that have only recently been uncovered are full of old beer cans and other relics of boating escapades, including sunken boats.
But deeper down, Podmore shared photos of Native artifacts that have survived decades of being submerged.
New ecosystems are also taking shape.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Doug Kenney at the Getches-Wilkinson Center 2026 Conference on the Colorado River June 5, 2026. Photo credit: Allen Best
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
June 7, 2026
Doug Kenney, principal organizer of annual gathering in Boulder, talks about how the growing tensions among basin states pose challenges in setting the agenda
The Colorado River has always had a magnetic appeal to the public consciousness. John Wesley Powell and his crew were instant national heroes after they emerged from the Grand Canyon in 1869.
That interest continues to this day. Bathtub rings are an absorbing visual, an easy way to communicate declines in the two biggest reservoirs in the basin, Mead and Powell. The river is being hammered by a warming climate and archaic governance of the shared resource.
This provides much to chew on, and that discussion continued again on June 4-5 at the Colorado River Conference hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School. Organizers reported 373 people were registered to attend in person and another 132 remotely, a record for both. This surpasses a record set last year.
Afterward, Big Pivots sat down with Doug Kenney, the principal organizer of the conference, to take stock of what had just transpired. He directs the Western Water Policy Program and chairs the Colorado River Research Group.
What year did this conference begin? What was the thinking that gave birth to it?
I believe 1983 was the first one. This was mostly a creation of Larry MacDonnell, (the first director of the Natural Resources Law Center, a position he held from 1983 to 1994).
Larry pursued a dual mandate of researching key issues but also of trying to involve the public and other constituencies. A conference was a natural thing to do. We are an educational institution.
I’ve done the last 30 or so of them, but Larry got it started,
It seems like two or three, maybe three years ago, the tribes became a major presence in attendance and on the agenda. How did this come about?
Mostly through our professional networks. We knew people who were associated with the (Colorado River Basin) Water and Tribes Initiative. They wanted to broaden their reach and their influence. At the same time, we’ve here always wanted to involve tribal interests in what we do, going back to the work of David Getches and Charles Wilkinson.
We decided we’d try co-hosting a conference. It’s a partnership, and like all partnerships, it grows over time. But it’s working pretty well, I think.
Am I wrong? Was I missing something? I didn’t notice much of tribal presence in the agenda or participation until just a few years ago.
We’d usually maybe have one tribal speaker sprinkled in the program somewhere, but it was pretty hit and miss, in part I think because you kind of need a critical mass of involvement from the tribal community for other tribes to feel like this is a place that they’d be taken seriously and that they’d be welcomed. It wasn’t a slow linear growth to where we’re at today. There was a pretty dramatic shift four or five years ago.
How new is the Water Tribal Initiative?
They’ve been around I think for about a decade. They’re co-managed by Matt McKinney, who wasn’t here, and Daryl Vigil.
Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR
It’s not a national thing, but the Colorado Basin has 30 different tribes. That’s a pretty big number of tribes to keep track of. It’s a network as much as it is anything, and every so often they try to get together. They consider this conference their big convening. They also get to get together at CRWUA (Colorado River Water Users Association, which holds an annual conference during December in Las Vegas).
They have also produced a few research reports. This week they talked about their report on tribal sovereignty. And they have particular initiatives within the Water and Tribes Initiative, such as universal access to clean water. They are pushing, mostly through federal legislation, to provide assurances that all tribes have access to clean water.
Do they have a strong benefactor?
I don’t think so, but they have a very broad base of funders and supporters. A lot of water agencies, a lot of people, and a lot of organizations that know tribes have been treated poorly and that tribes have legitimate interests in the basin but (know) that many tribes just don’t have the resources to do this without some assistance.
As I’ve attended most years since 2002, I have noticed some ebbs and flows. There were some empty seats this afternoon, but the seats were mostly occupied through the first day and a half, and that’s somewhat different than, say, 10 years ago. What explains the ebb and flow?
I attribute that mostly to two things: one is this partnership with the Water and Tribes Initiative. The other thing is the fact that we’re talking about the Colorado River, which by every measure is in a crisis. It’s easier to get people’s attention when you’re talking about a crisis than when you’re talking about something that’s still not that serious. That’s part of it.
We used to be in another building. This is clearly a better facility for audience and speakers alike. That helps us attract a larger audience. We’ve had good foundation support, good funders. It takes a lot of money to do this, but we’ve had funders that see value in it. That has allowed us to make this a bigger event.
The conference is always the first week of June, so when do you begin rough-drafting the agenda?
Usually January. In some years it’s easier than others. This year was the most difficult. It was the easiest year in terms of attracting an audience. The hardest year in terms of putting the program together.
Everyone’s mad at each other, and everyone is — I can’t tell you all the back stories. Becky Mitchell said something today about how it’s hard to negotiate and prepare for litigation at the same time. She’s right. And I was thinking to myself, it’s hard to bring people together to talk at a conference while acknowledging the fact that they’re all mad at each other, and some of them are about to sue each other, and some can’t be in the same room with each other because they’re that angry, and some will be deeply offended if someone else is there.
It’s one of these years that there’s just so many delicate issues and angry folks — and angry for legitimate reasons; I’m not discounting that. But it’s been a really challenging year.
Your answer anticipates my next question, but I’ll ask it nonetheless. If memory serves me, a few years ago you had representatives of all seven basin states at the same table. This year you had two. I guess it’s fair to say that agenda setting has become more politically sensitive.
Every year for the last four or five years we’ve given all seven principals, all seven states, an opportunity to sit at the same table and have a discussion. In every passing year it becomes more difficult to do that.
Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission Becky Mitchell, center, speaks on a panel with representatives of each of the seven basin states at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas Thursday, December 15, 2022. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
You have seen this at CRWUA as well. Some years they had to divide into two sessions, upper and lower basin sessions. For awhile we were thinking of just having a lower basin session. The lower basin folks were happy to do that, but the upper basin folks weren’t as comfortable. We (also) thought about a different part of the session or a different location.
Ultimately we came to the conclusion that everyone could agree if it would be a conversation, not a posturing or confrontational thing. (Having) one upper basin person and one lower basin person, that was a format that could work. That’s what we did (with Becky Mitchell from Colorado and John Entsminger of Nevada). Anything more elaborate than that I don’t think was viable this year. It’s a really delicate time.
In terms of conferences devoted to the Colorado River do you have rivals for what you’re doing? Are there other places in Arizona or California, for example, that are kind of like must-go sessions?
There are two must-attend Colorado River conferences each year, and this is one of them. CRWUA (in Las Vegas) is the other one.
We specifically try to be different than CRWUA. We’re the opposite end of the calendar, roughly six months away. CRWUA is in many respects much more of a social event. We try to be more academic and about policy, with serious talk about serious issues. CRWUA, just like us, ebbs and flows from year to year in terms of what it looks like. But we try to be a little more hard-hitting and less of a, you know, take-the-family-and-have-a-vacation sort of event. I don’t mean to sound like I’m negative on CRWUA. I think we’re the perfect compliment.
Aside from that, there are some meetings such as CLE, Continuing Legal Education. It always has a Colorado River event. This year was quite good. Many other years, it’s not as strong. For practicing attorneys, that’s something that they want to go to every year, because they can get some credits there.
Still another one in New Mexico that’s held each year kind of commemorates the signing of the compact.
How do you measure success? I’m sure you constantly ask that question of yourself.
You understand the challenge of it all. We can measure success by the size of the crowd and that they mostly seemed to have a good time. In that sense, that’s success.
The other side of that is that we’ve been focused just on the Colorado River issues for the last five or six of these, and things have only gotten worse on the river. Obviously, we don’t think we’re to blame for that. But clearly, there’s no great success story that we can lay credit to either.
So I think we’re successful in that we promote conversation and the exchange of ideas, and we shine a light on new and innovative ideas, and we give a voice to people who sometimes don’t have a voice. This is where the tribes come into play again.
Some elements I think are successful, but in the very big scope of things, the issues that we’ve been addressing in our conference aren’t getting any better. It does force me to think about (and question) whether there is a better way for us to make a difference. I don’t know what that would be, but I do think about that a lot.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Tesla Model Y and electric camper trailer charging in Lake St. Louis June 5, 2026. Sorry, I forgot to ask the dude for the manufacturer information.
I am in St. Louis for my first ever punk rock concert and some baseball!
The owner of the rig in the photo told me that the trailer was fully electric, but he said that the Tesla couldn’t draw charge from the trailer. Nice light low-profile rig.
The Model Y I am driving (rented from Turo) has Grok integrated so you can set and change your navigation interactively. I asked many questions of her (I mean IT!) during the solo drive from Denver so it’s sort of like having your computer available while driving. Of course the discourse was mostly, “What river am I crossing?”
Grok, “That is likely the Missouri River which is located in this general area.” Sure enough, a road sign validated Grok’s message — one correct query!
