#ClimateChange made the West’s snow drought far more likely—but it’s still not the new normal — Mitch Tobin (WaterDesk.org)

Last winter’s meager snowpack near Silverton, Colorado, on March 14, 2026. Researchers analyzed Western snowpack data from the next day, March 15, to assess the influence of climate change on the historic snow drought and to project how future warming could affect the likelihood of similar events. Photo: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

Click the link to read the article on The Water Desk website (Mitch Tobin):

August 3, 2026

The American West’s historic snow drought in 2026 depressed skiers, heightened wildfire risks and constrained already scarce water supplies.

Was this extreme event just a stroke of bad luck in a region where snowfall naturally varies from year to year?

Or did the record-low snowpack bear the fingerprints of climate change?

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that global warming more than quadrupled the odds of the West’s snow drought when compared to the preindustrial climate, before human greenhouse gas emissions began heating the planet.

In the Upper Colorado River Basin, where snowmelt supplies most of the water in a river that serves tens of millions of people and irrigates millions of acres of farmland, climate change’s estimated influence was even greater. Researchers concluded the snow drought was about 14 times more likely, although that estimate is more uncertain because the event was so exceptionally rare, even in today’s warmer world.

Looking ahead, scientists project that snow deficits as extreme as the West’s 2026 drought could become the norm by the end of the century if emissions continue to climb.

In the 2020s, a Westwide snow drought as bad as last season’s has about a 1-in-10 chance of occurring each year, so it’s still not the new normal. But the odds rise dramatically under the “moderately high” emissions scenario used in the study: the annual probability more than triples to about 1-in-3 by the 2050s and soars to nearly 9-in-10 in the 2090s.

Hydrologist Adrienne Marshall. Source: Colorado School of Mines.

I spoke with the study’s lead author, Adrienne Marshall, a hydrologist and assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines. Excerpts from our July 23 conversation are below, edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

“Where we are is serious,” Marshall said. But she emphasized that a West where profound snow droughts are routine is not a fait accompli, because future greenhouse gas emissions are not set in stone.

“These are not predictions of what will happen in the future,” Marshall said. “I think this type of work is most useful if it is motivational and not discouraging.”

How would you summarize the most important findings of the study?

I think our most important findings here are that we were able to look at the extent to which this last year’s unusually low snow conditions were attributable to human-caused climate change.

We found that across the Western U.S., the low snow conditions we saw were about four and a half times more likely because of climate change that we’ve experienced to date. That is equivalent to a water volume that’s about the size of Lake Mead. If we think about a rare event in a world without human-caused climate change and a rare event in the world we’re living in, the amount of snow we’re missing is about the size of Lake Mead.

In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the snow drought was more extreme, so we find a higher “risk ratio,” meaning an increased probability due to human-caused climate change.

Did these findings surprise you?

The thing that surprised me was the magnitude. I wasn’t surprised to see that these events seemed to be attributable to human-caused climate change. I was a little bit surprised to see numbers that were quite as big as they were.

The study says that climate change made the snow drought about 4.4 times more likely. Could you explain that further? What exactly does that mean?

To dig into what that “more likely” means, people might have heard before of things like a 100-year rainfall event or a 100-year flood event, where we can say we would expect an event like this one to have maybe a 1% chance of happening each year. That would be a 100-year event.

So we took that approach with unusually low snow conditions. We used some models that were run for the 1850 to 1900 period, so that’s our period without human-caused climate change. And we saw that, in that period, the snow conditions we had this year would’ve been about a 1-in-30-year event. Then when we use those same models for about a 20-year period encompassing the world we’re living in now, we see it’s about a 1-in-7 event. And then we divide those two numbers, so 30 divided by about seven, to get that approximately four and a half times more likely value.

Skiers at Purgatory Resort in southwest Colorado on February 8, 2026. Photo: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

Why is climate change making snow droughts like this much more likely?

In the most basic sense, there are two things that can cause snow drought. One is warm temperatures, and then the other one is just not getting any precipitation at all. So when we have warm temperatures, we get precip that falls as rain rather than snow.

When we think about the impacts of climate change, we have a lot of certainty about increasing temperatures. We have very good evidence that temperatures have increased, and models agree really well that they expect temperatures to continue to increase. That also aligns with our basic physical understanding of the Earth system.

Precipitation is a lot more uncertain, so it’s harder to see clear trends in winter precipitation so far, and models tend to disagree more about how we think precipitation will change—at least in the Western U.S. So when we think about the impacts on snow, those warming temperatures giving us less snow are kind of a really clear climate signal while the uncertainty in the precipitation can muddy the waters, relatively speaking.

With this snow drought, it sounds like it was really primarily driven by temperature.

We haven’t quantified what was the contribution of temperature versus precip. But if we look at what was happening across the West this year, temperatures were really unusually high over much of the winter, with sort of an extraordinary heat wave in March. Precipitation was low, but not extraordinary across most of the Southwest. And then as we look up into the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, we tend to see precipitation that was a little bit above average up there. Temperature: kind of extraordinary. Precipitation: more within a range of variability that we’re used to seeing.

Source: National Integrated Drought Information System.

The date you used was March 15. We often hear about people using April 1 as the key milestone for snow water equivalent (a measure of the snowpack’s water content). Why did you use March 15?

We used March 15, in large part, because this year it looks like that was approximately peak snow water equivalent—when we sum up how much snow was sitting there across the West. We thought that was a useful indicator of how much snow does a water manager have to work with, even if it was earlier than usual. I think doing the same analysis with April 1 would be interesting, too. The statistics get a little bit more challenging for more rare events. Because of that March heat wave, I think that we would see that April 1 snow would likely have been even more extreme, which could make the statistics a little bit more challenging—increase uncertainty, essentially.

The study also looks specifically at the Upper Colorado River Basin. Could you explain what the findings were for that portion of the West?

In the Upper Colorado River Basin, this event was especially extreme. Snow was really particularly low. Our best estimate here is that, in the world we’re living in now, the snow conditions this year were about a 1-in-140-year event in the Upper Colorado River Basin, so quite rare. In the world without anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, we think that it would’ve been maybe a 1-in-2,300-year event. Once we start estimating events quite that rare, we get big uncertainty ranges. Then when we divide those two, we see that in the Upper Colorado River Basin, we think that this event was about 14 times more likely because of human-caused climate change. But there our uncertainty is really large.

The Gold Mountain Fire burns near Ridgway, Colorado, on July 1, 2026. Photo: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

The study also looks ahead to the future and the climate continuing to warm. What should we expect going forward?

These results were quite sobering. We look at what we would expect to happen in a moderately high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. What we see is for the Western U.S., we estimate that an event this bad had about a 10% chance of occurring each year in the 2020s. By the time we get to the 2050s, that slightly more than triples. So every year we would have about a 30% chance of having snow at least this low. And then by the 2090s, that becomes 87% of years, so we would expect that most of the time the snow would be at least this low Western U.S.-wide. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, we also see increases, but because this event was so extreme, we never see it becoming the norm in the 21st century.

The really important caveat here is that these are not predictions of what will happen in the future. These are our estimates of what we would expect in a particular greenhouse gas emissions scenario. And there are other greenhouse gas emission scenarios that are better. We could emit fewer greenhouse gases than this and do better than what these projections suggest.

It seems like pretty clear evidence for the benefit of reducing emissions for the snowpack.

The analysis I’d like to do is to look at the other scenarios and say, “OK, how much better would it be?” We don’t quite have the data to make exactly that apples-to-apples comparison at the moment, but there’s ways to pursue that . . . Based on our understanding of this system, I would strongly expect that if we look at a lower-emissions scenario, we would not see those probabilities climb quite so high.

We often hear the question, “Is this the new norm or is this the new normal?” These data suggest that it’s not right now. Western U.S.-wide, it could be by end of century. So I do look at that and think, “Let’s try to avoid that.” [ed. emphasis mine]

Low water at Blue Mesa Reservoir, along Colorado’s Gunnison River, on July 1, 2026. Photo: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

What do you hope the public and decision-makers take away from this study and the projections?

There’s three big takeaways I have in mind. One is that I hope it’s clarifying in terms of where we’re at right now in terms of the impacts of climate change. It’s relatively new that we can look at a specific snow year and say, “Here’s how much this was caused by anthropogenic climate change.”

The second impact is I hope it’s useful for adaptation so that individuals and utilities and water managers can look at this snow year and think seriously about what we might like to do to adapt to more snow years like this.

And then the third thing is to help motivate us to see if we can push emissions trajectories downwards and do what we can to avoid having more snow years like this to the extent possible.

To learn more about the opposite of snow droughts—known as snow deluges—see my 2024 Q&Awith Marshall about her research on California’s epic snowpack during the 2022-2023 winter.

This story was produced and distributed by The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

Upper Colorado River basins. (The border of Wyoming and Colorado is mislabeled.) (U.S. BOR)

#Aurora using smart meters to crack down on lawn watering violators — Michael Booth (Fresh Water News) #SouthPlatteBasin

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Michael Booth):

August 5, 2026

Aurora Water doesn’t much care which two days in a week you water your lawn, amid this historic drought.

But if your irrigation system starts up on a third day in the same week, the water world equivalent of a Flock camera is watching. The “smart” meters on every Aurora property automatically sense a spike in water use, and alert Aurora Water to confirm the violation and send out a warning or fine.

With updates at 15-minute intervals, the meters also detect irrigation watering during hot daytime hours when that’s against the rules.

The water surveillance, which Aurora Water officials acknowledge many of their customers might not realize exists, is one key to Colorado’s third-largest city so far achieving its water-saving goals in a year with record-low snowpack and abysmal streamflows into mountain reservoirs. Aurora says its 400,000 residents are using 27% less lawn water than in 2025, and managed a 9% cut from combined indoor and outdoor use.

Maintaining or even improving those savings is crucial as Aurora Water’s reservoir system sits at 49% full at a time when it should be above 80%.

Denver Water, meanwhile, has seen only about a 5% cut of water use compared with its previous five-year average among 1.5 million city and suburban customers. When Denver Water enacted twice-a-week watering restrictions in the spring, it set a target of a 20% cut from five-year average use.

Denver’s customers are doing better when using Aurora’s comparison with 2025 only, Denver officials said.

“Versus 2025, total water use is currently down about 7% and outdoor use is down about 16%,” said Travis Thompson, Denver Water communications manager.

The state’s largest water agency says it is encouraged by other statistics showing customers are using 21% less lawn water than they would have expected in the run of 95- to 100-degree days the Front Range experienced in July. In a summer that sits in the top 1% hottest and driest on record, the agency says, that’s a laudable savings mark.

One difference: Aurora Water spent millions of dollars in capital getting smart meters on every customer tap, while Denver Water chose to spend more of its capital speeding up replacement of aging, dangerous lead water delivery lines. Denver’s enforcement of drought restrictions to date has relied on thousands of neighbor complaints about properties watering more than twice a week, during restricted daytime hours or other violations.

“We have a far bigger tool than they have for being able to detect when people are using water irrigation water when they’re not supposed to,” said Shonnie Cline, Aurora Water’s deputy director of water internal and external relations.

Watchdog groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union in the past have raised questions about privacy invasions from smart home devices, including electric and water meters monitored by utilities. Especially by combining information from multiple meters, hackers or other bad actors could watch patterns and learn when people are home or away, are cooking, taking showers or other personal habits.

Cline said a better analogy than a controversial Flock camera is to see a smart water meter as a personal fitness tracker. “It gives you data and you are able to identify patterns that can improve your overall health if you make changes,” Cline said.

Aurora points out the smart meters for every customer work both ways, as a protection from leaks and potential property damage. Customers are able to log on and track their own use at the same time the city sees it, and could recognize a home leak while away on vacation, for example. During droughts, the meters will be one key to helping maintain reservoir storage for the benefit of the whole community, Cline said.

“There is a definite footprint that goes along with the data that indicates irrigation is taking place,” Cline said. “We have that pretty locked in where we can see when somebody’s irrigating, and so that’s why it’s interesting, because even when we send a warning, people are like, ‘But I didn’t!’ And then we’ll show them the data, and they’re like, ‘OK, I can’t argue with you, right?’ “

Denver Water, while enjoying higher water storage rates at its mountain reservoirs that have seen better snowpack, is not satisfied with customer savings rates and is now shifting somewhat from “education” to “enforcement” mode.

Denver had sent out nearly 3,600 warning letters but only five fines by the beginning of August. Fines will ramp up now that customers know what the rules are and Denver Water knows more about where the problem customers are, officials said.

Aurora Water, by contrast, has issued 234 fines after sending out more than 2,500 warning letters, including 10 of the highest $2,000 fines to businesses and large irrigation consumers. Only three customers were issued a second fine at the $250 residential level, Aurora Water said, and none had been issued a third fine. Aurora’s fines total more than $70,000.

Now that Denver Water has weeks of data on actual water use during drought restrictions, the agency can focus its communications on suburban areas with bigger lawns that haven’t cut back, said Greg Fisher, the utility’s manager of demand planning. Some of those suburban customers have no idea it’s Denver Water that collects their mountain runoff and delivers it to their local water utilities.

With only 5,000 advanced meters installed for 250,000 taps, Fisher said, word of mouth enforcement confirmed by onsite visits from Denver Water employees will continue to be the standard for warnings and fines.

“We continue to rely on, and I think it’s a pretty inventive idea, of letting our customers report water waste violations,” he said. “Even with the water people out on the street, we can’t be everywhere. So giving our customers the ability to report has been pretty powerful and I think effective for us.”

Denver Water officials do not anticipate asking their board this season to approve the next drought stage that would take lawn watering down to one day a week and add other restrictions. Denver Water would have to change its rate structure again to charge more for lawn watering that does occur to make up for loss of revenue from restrictions.

Plus, the utility thinks it’s a longer-term challenge to convince customers to change habits and stay “on board” with drought restrictions in the middle of what could be a multiyear crisis, Fisher said.

“We have a long game,” Fisher said. “This thing’s going to last a minimum of 12 more months, in my opinion, save for some sort of record-breaking snowfall this winter. So we’re in it for the long haul. I think we need to continue to up the message as we see conditions change. But at the same time, we really need to support our customers and have them stick with us for that extended period.”

People are capable of change, Denver Water officials said. The last drought this severe for Front Range customers was 2002.

“Our customers are using 100 million gallons less per day this year than they did in 2002, which is just stunning,” Fisher said. “And that translates to being actually 14% higher in our reservoir storage now than we were in 2002, because of our customers’ efficiency efforts over the last quarter century. We’re feeling really good about that. And that’s with significantly more population … 200 to 250,000 more people.”

More by Michael Booth

Romancing the River: Let us gather by the river…. — George Sibley (SibleysRivers.com) #GunnisonRiver

Sunrise at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. Photo credit: Connie Rudd

Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):

July 28, 2026

Every so often it just seems like a good idea to drop out of the wrangling over the future of water in the arid west and – just go down to the river itself. A good friend abetted this by taking me along on a float down the lower Gorge of the Gunnison River. My friend was fishing; I was just along for the ride, and reflecting on my 60^th anniversary of first moving to the Gunnison River valleys and the Colorado River Basin in 1966.

The Gunnison Gorge is a Bureau of Land Management Wilderness Area just downstream from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River National Park. In 1966 I was – typically for a posturban American – unaware of where in the world I was, and didn’t know that the Gunnison River is one of the larger tributaries of the Colorado River, meeting the river in Grand Junction, Colorado, with a median contribution there of around 1.5 million acre-feet of water, with around another million acre-feet consumed by users in the Gunnison Basin, mostly for agriculture. This year, the river carries a fraction of that, less than a fourth of what passed for ‘normal’ through the 20^thcentury.

Like most upper Colorado River tributaries, the Gunnison River alternates for most of its course between settled green mountain floodplain valleys, and canyons through which highways or railways might connect the valleys but otherwise humankind remains a visitor. The Gunnison’s Black Canyon is one of the steepest, deepest and narrowest canyons in the world, through which no highways or railways pass, and only a handful of adventurers float and swim through just to prove they can.

But the terrain levels out a little in the 14 miles of the Gunnison Gorge, creating long stretches of relatively broad slow-flowing stream, interrupted by rapids where side streams plunge in or rock falls have happened, creating a haven for fish and a gold-medal mecca for fishermen. Much of the Gorge is as narrow as the upstream canyon; dark rock walls on both sides rise steeply several hundred feet through most of it, with sand bars here and there for overnight camps and lunch stops. And everywhere in and along the river there are random rocks, ranging in size from a medicine ball to a small house; looking up the walls, one sees that more are awaiting some signal nudge to break off and fall, making one wonder what kind of mini-tsunami effect would happen if a raft were going by when a big one fell….

This is all what we call beautiful (recording it on our phones), but there is something else in these Gunnison canyons that goes beyond the pastoral scenic. You can get some of it in Connie Rudd’s sunrise image of the Black Canyon above. (Connie Rudd was superintendent of the Black Canyon National Park for a number of years.) The rock in the Black Canyon is not really black, but much of it is shadowed most of the time – not black so much as noir. The image shows the feature known as ‘The Painted Wall,’ due to its multicolored nature, but none of that is painted on; the river has exposed a cross-section of metamorphic rock that has been roiled, rolled, twisted, tilted, split and overturned, always under great pressure from earth layered on above and great heat from earth’s core hell. Rock that has had a hard life, not a comforting thought looking up at the walls from river level.

How did such a canyon system come to be? Gunnison Country geologist Tom Prather suggested that the Gunnison River, snowmelt from the already old Southern Rockies, had set its course looking as water does for the easiest routes through several hundred feet of fused volcanic ash from San Juan volcanoes to the south – on top of fused volcanic mud from the West Elk volcano to the north. And with its course already set in that stone, the forming river encountered the southern edge of a big blorp of metamorphic rock that was – well, just there. So rather than continuing to develop the open wide-V valley that most rivers are known for, the Gunnison River was captured by the hard rock with nothing to do but to cut an ever-deeper canyon that stayed steep and narrow with great hardrock walls in the Gunnison River’s Black Canyon and Gorge.

I am personally fascinated, in Rudd’s image, by how it shows the relative thickness of life as a layer contrasted with the geological layers. Look at the scrubby pinion-juniper and oak on the top of the Painted Wall. To call that layer of life on that mass of rock ‘skin-deep’ is almost an exaggeration. Our fossil-fueled efforts have expanded the layer of life to the seven miles or so above earth’s surface where we regularly fly, and the mile or so beneath the surface where we go to mine things we think we need, with nothing but microbial/incipient life above or below that. So life on earth occupies a layer 1/1,000th the diameter of the planet. If we remove fossil energy from the equation, the layer of earth and atmosphere occupied by life is probably measurable in thousands of feet rather than miles, less in total than a rounding error in the scale of the planet.

We’ve all heard the saying, ‘beauty is only skin-deep.’ But life is only skin-deep on the planet – ‘beauty’ is a term that works well in evaluations within that thin skin (as Connie Rudd’s image of the Painted Wall at sunrise is beautiful in its execution). But to be down in it, floating past rocks the size of small autos that came off those walls towering above – what’s there is some unarticulated and dynamic mystery beyond beauty. Maybe ‘awesome’ worked descriptively before that became a standard response to questions like ‘want to go for a beer?’ Maybe ‘Magnificent.’ ‘Stupendous.’ Or maybe just ‘brutal,’ if you’re floating along beneath it all; we don’t really get into its mystery until we’ve put it in terms in which we can feel something of the pain or ecstacy of what’s happened there.

Down in places like the Gorge that are beyond mere beauty and other ‘surface’ evaluations, I find my mind being stretched to the elastic limit over a concept like ‘nature.’ Or ‘god.’ The majority of us seem to be beyond a thoroughly churched ‘god’ (or panel of gods) as the creative force in the planet and its layer of life, but many of us seem to have just transferred to ‘nature’ that belief in some creative/destructive force larger than ourselves.

But it is not possible – for me, at any rate – to look up at these crumbling walls of tortured rock, some with trees struggling to grow in cracks in the rock until the roots split off the rock and tree and rock go in the river below with a wave that would smash a passing raft and its vacartioning passengers against the far wall – I can’t look at all of this and think of a loving ‘mother nature,’ a wisdom font of the sort we seem to want ‘nature’ to be, ultimately in charge of everything – that’s as hard as it is/was to look at ‘creation’ and imagine a ‘father god.’

Can we have creation without a designated creator – ‘god(s)’ or ‘nature’? All the ‘natural’ evidence I see points that way. In nature, life just happens, unfolds, evolves as it will or can: things just keep happening in what we call ‘nature,’ and when something happens, everything it happens to responds in some way – engages with it, absorbs or incorporates it, attacks it, tries to ignore it, sometimes succumbs to it, sometimes evicts it, and the whole incredible mishmash of life changing to adapt to things happening goes on. Sometimes what happens is something not happening, like a winter’s worth of snow not arriving, but it’s the same process: everything that this happens to responds in some way (some by also not happening)…. Life happens, and the living respond, and what happened (or didn’t) becomes part of life, in which things keep happening, on and on….

And to the extent to which old things happen in new places, to new groupings of living things with new responses and new outcomes, the process is creative, creation – sometimes creative destruction, but creation is not judgmental; creation just happens – as any mendicant poet or painter knows, trying to ‘look strange-eyed at the mindless world’ for the ‘dry sticks to turn to gold’ (thank you, Grendel).

That seems like the ‘nature of nature’ to me, and the nature of creation – and it has nothing to do with some set way that things are supposed to be. There’s no Garden of Eden/prelapsarian wilderness which we have destroyed or been ejected from; we still have all the indifferent wildness we can handle with the undomesticated Trumps, corporations and other weeds that grow out of the cracks of civilization’s pavement. American predatory capitalism is happening to the whole planet now, and everything on the planet, including its enshrouding atmosphere, is beginning to respond to that, seldom with appreciation.

Or so it seemed anyway, floating down the Gorge, in a protected wilderness park with nothing much to do but go with the flow and think about the life happening around me. One thing a water nerd like myself would of course think about, in thinking about the life happening around us, was the flow of the river that floated our raft. I knew the river was flowing at 300-350 cubic feet per second (cfs) through the Black Canyon and the Gorge; that flow was decreed as a year-round water right back in 2009 with priority to 1933 – along with an annual ‘spring flood’ flow for a short period usually in May, the volume depending on the depth of the mountain snowpack. Despite wilderness status for the Gorge and the ’natural’ appearance of everything there, the quantity of water flowing through is tightly controlled via releases from three dams upstream.

A week or two after our float, the Bureau of Reclamation began cutting the flow to 200 cfs in response to the ‘creative destruction’ of the winter of 2026 that was happening. This reduction is happening mostly to protect the viability of the reservoirs from whence the water issues, but the river’s response to it will be to make some of the rapids in the Gorge more interesting (less water, more rock), and it may shut down the fishing (and some of the fish) as the remaining water warms to the point of endangering aquatic life.

We do have to face the fact that many, maybe most of our vaunted achievements as a civilization have not made life in the long run – even the medium run – better for ourselves and a lot of the rest of the planet’s life in a very basic way. And it seems to me we would probably do better at it if we could get away from the idea that some ‘god as a parent’ or ‘mother nature’ is going to show us The Way. The Way is still evolving, happening day by day, happening by happening. It’s truly dieu et la nature parmi nous, ‘god and nature among us’; someday maybe we’ll evolve enough to see that realizing either god or nature (making them real) is up to us, if we can come to collaborative execution as effective as our imagination. And we may do better there if we stopped looking and listening for god or nature as an already written book, and did more stopping, looking and listening for our own likely impacts before bulling ahead the way we usually do in the name of god or nature. Like it or not, we are probably writing the book, with a lot of the Old Testament chaos of false starts and backslides.

A line from a movie whose name I’ve forgotten came to my mind down in the Gunnison Gorge, a movie that ends (as I recall) in a lifeboat with the boat captain encouraging his rowers, ‘Pull for the horizon, boys; it’s better than nothing.’ A message of hope, as I remember, which should never be confused with optimism.

Okay – next post I’ll get back to the larger river and its challenges. Meanwhile, I hope all of you get some time to just irresponsibly drift this summer, like me in the Gunnison Gorge, and think about how life happens, and maybe some better responses we might all try to learn, better together.

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

#Arizona cities will likely get less #ColoradoRiver water. Here’s why they won’t go dry — KJZZ #COriver #aridification

Valley cities have spent years preparing for Colorado River shortages and say they are prepared to keep water flowing even under major federal cutbacks. Photo credit: Ted Wood/The Water Desk

Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Alex Hager):

August 4, 2026

Colorado River shortages are no surprise. Climate change and drought have been steadily cutting into water supplies for about 26 years. Various plans to rein in demand have emerged throughout that time, and new cutbacks have been in the works for more than a year. The amount of water that each Valley city gets from the Colorado River varies significantly from city to city, but the majority receive at least some. Some cities are more prepared than others to weather today’s drier conditions, but most have at least some plan to deal with new Colorado River reductions. The Interior Department set the table for new cuts on Friday [July 31, 2026], laying out the framework of a plan that would allow the federal government to cut the Colorado River supply for Arizona, California and Nevada by up to 40%…A second announcement, which may come in the next few days, will deliver specifics about the size of cuts to the Phoenix area in 2027 and 2028.

Regardless of their scale, city leaders say they will be able to keep taps running.Like any good investor, most utility managers have focused on diversifying their portfolios. Essentially, the more different sources of water that flow to a city, the more it can tolerate cuts to one of those sources. In the Valley, that primarily means getting water from underground aquifers and the Salt River. Underground stores of water, pulled up by a system of wells, are carefully managed under state law and can give cities a backup in times of shortage on the surface. In some cases, water agencies have been taking excess water from the Colorado River for years and adding it to the underground stash, with the idea that it could be retrieved in times like these…In July, the Arizona Water Banking Authority announced that it will use its stored waterto make utilities whole in the event of cutbacks to their supplies from the Colorado River…Older, larger cities also tend to have more money for the kind of expensive engineering that can help diversify a water portfolio. For example, Phoenix is building a massive, high-tech water treatment plant that can safely recycle sewage back into purified drinking water. Major cities around the West are betting big on the technology to help withstand drought and climate change in the long term. Phoenix aims to send water from the $350 million facility into city pipes in early 2029. Cities that use water from the Salt River system are contributing to a multibillion-dollar expansion of Bartlett Dam, which holds back Bartlett Lake. In recent years, after particularly snowy winters, the river has provided more water than the reservoir can hold. A larger dam, cities say, would help them capture, store and use more water from the Salt River system in the future. For cities that lack diverse water portfolios and the kind of money needed for massive engineering projects, there’s a way for them to benefit from the cities that do. In April, as Colorado River cuts were becoming imminent, the city of Phoenix announced a new water transfer program called the “Secure Water Arizona Program”, or SWAP. Details are still emerging about how it would work, but it promises to connect cities that have water to cities that need water…Other water transfers, both in Arizona and across state lines, may be a big part of the long-term plan for cities and towns in the Valley. For example, farms may find it lucrative to sell some of their supplies to fast-growing cities in the metro that are willing to pay top dollar. Native American tribes, which often hold large, powerful legal rights to access the Colorado River, may also be willing to sell. A $5 billion settlement deal is currently in the works to give three Arizona tribes more access to their Colorado River water. If it passes, they could also gain the ability to lease their water to cities far from their reservations. Desalination, a high-tech process that can turn salty ocean water into pure, drinkable fresh water, has long been a tempting proposition for water-short cities. High costs and major logistical challenges mean that Arizona is unlikely to build its own desalination plant anytime soon, but a transfer program could allow it to benefit from an already-operational desalination facility. The Central Arizona Project and a handful of other water agencies around the region are exploring a deal to exchange water rights with a desalination facility in Carlsbad, California.

New federal plan sets short-term rules for #ColoradoRiver management — #Colorado Politics #COriver #aridification

Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: Western Resource Advocates

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Politics website (Marianne Goodland). Here’s an excerpt:

July 31, 2026

Calling it a balanced approach that offers flexibility and predictability, the plan released by the U.S. Department of the Interior cuts the allocation of Arizona, California and Nevada, while sparing Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming for now…Under the plan, the Lower Basin states could face collective cuts up to 3 million acre-feet through 2036, “subject to hydrology,” according to a news release by the Department of the Interior. That’s enough water to serve more than 25 million people a year. The plan would also allow annual releases between 5 and 12 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, the basin’s second-largest reservoir. Under the 10-year federal framework, water management decisions will be made every two years…

Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek said in a statement Friday that the plan, known as a final environmental impact statement, “strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability for the Colorado River system that is vital to the 40 million people who rely on it, given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users.”

Between 2020 and 2024, the average consumptive use in the Colorado River Basin was 13.1 million acre-feet. That is broken down by:

Upper Basin: 3.8 million acre-feet (29%)

Lower Basin: 6.5 million acre-feet (49%)

Mexico use: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%)

Evaporation: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%)

At the time the 1922 compact was signed, the seven states had a combined population of about six million — roughly the size of Colorado’s population today…

She said last month that she “has no idea what that process would look like, constantly negotiating every two years.”

“That would be incredibly difficult,” she said.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released its final environmental impact statement for the post-2026 operating guidelines for #LakePowell and #LakeMead — The #GlenwoodSprings Post-Independent #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

August 3, 2026

The plan charts a course for the basin’s next 10 years that could lead to significant water cuts in the Lower Basin and opens up the door for more frequent negotiations…

“The basin is experiencing increased aridity due to climate variability, and long-term drought and low-runoff conditions are expected in the future,” wrote the Bureau of Reclamation in the summary. “These conditions will exacerbate the now widely recognized imbalance between water supply and demand in the basin. Robust and flexible guidelines are needed to manage the Colorado River system and its resources under a broad range of potential future hydrologic conditions.”

[…]

The two reservoirs are currently governed by guidelines established in 2007 that are set to expire this year, and many agree the plan has failed to protect the Colorado River system…The final proposal does not provide specifics for how water will be distributed across the basin, with the Bureau of Reclamation describing it as a “framework” that identifies key triggers and ranges for developing future operating guidelines at Lake Powell and Lake Mead. It sets up a plan to negotiate 2-year operating plans for the reservoirs through 2036…The final statement provides a range of alternatives, including the Bureau of Reclamation’s “preferred” option. Each alternative sets guidelines for how it will reduce or increase annual consumptive water use allocations from Lake Mead to the Lower Basin states; store and deliver water saved through conservation efforts; manage and deliver surplus water; manage activities and make cuts above Lake Powell; and more.

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

Stage 2 fire restrictions rescinded, monsoonal moisture arrives, but #drought remains — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver #monsoon

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

July 29, 2026

Beginning July 22, area jurisdictions began rescinding Stage 2 fire restrictions, with Stage 1 restrictions remaining in effect in much of the area…On July 22, it was announced that improved fire weather conditions and near containment on the Ferris Fire had prompted Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials to ease fire restrictions and reopen public lands within the Tres Rios Field Office. Effective July 22, Stage 2 fire restrictions were lifted on BLM-administered public lands managed by the Tres Rios Field Office, including Canyons of the Ancients National Monument…On Thursday, July 23, the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) announced it had, in collaboration with the Pagosa Fire Protection District, rescinded Stage 2 fire restrictions effective immediately…The following day, Friday, July 24, the Town of Pagosa Springs announced it had rescinded Stage 2 fire restrictions effective that day…On Wednesday, July 29, the San Juan National Forest announced it would be rescinding Stage 2 fire restrictions effective 12:01 a.m. Thursday, July 30, on all National Forest System lands…

Colorado Drought Monitor map July 28, 2026.

According to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), areas in Archuleta County received from .91 inches to 3.15 inches of rain between July 15 and July 29. Despite the recent rains, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) remains in stage two drought restrictions, and the area remains in severe drought. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 100 percent of Archuleta County remained in severe drought as of July 21, with 1.90 percent of the county — the northeast corner — falling under extreme drought. The week prior, 36.15 percent of the county fell under extreme drought…

According to the U.S. Geological Survey water monitoring gauge at the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs and the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, although the San Juan has remained at a very low but generally steady level, it did appear to hit record low levels several times over the last week. According to the River Forecast Center, on July 24, the river hit about 19 cubic feet per second (cfs), below the 2002 low of 21. The following day, it hit about 17 cfs, below the 2002 low of 19 cfs. On July 28 at 11:15 a.m., the river was recorded running at 15 cubic feet per second (cfs), 0.5 cfs above the previous record low set in 2002.

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

#Utah won’t face mandatory cuts in feds’ new #ColoradoRiver proposal, but Lower Basin states could — Annie Knox (UtahNewsDispatch.com)

The Colorado River is pictured near Moab on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

by Annie Knox, Utah News Dispatch
July 31, 2026

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 at greatsaltlakenews.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)

Feds to impose new cuts on lower #ColoradoRiver states amid climate-fueled #megadrought — Chase Woodruff (ColoradoNewsline.com) #COriver #aridification

Glen Canyon Dam holds back the waters of Lake Powell near Page, Arizona on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. Photo credit: Spenser Heaps/Utah News Dispatch

by Chase Woodruff, Colorado Newsline
July 31, 2026

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.

The Desert Research Institute and OpenET Are Partnering With the Upper Colorado River Commission and the Bureau of Reclamation To Expand Evaporation Monitoring on the #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Map of the Upper Colorado River Basin showing project reservoirs where new monitoring equipment is deployed. Note: Reservoir extents have been exaggerated for visualization. Credit: The Desert Research Institute

Click the link to read the article on the Desert Research Institute website:

July 22, 2026

DRI and OpenET are partnering with the Upper Colorado River Commission and the Bureau of Reclamation to expand evaporation monitoring on the Upper Colorado River Basin’s largest reservoirs. This summer, new monitoring stations are being established on Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa, and Navajo Reservoirs. The initiative follows the success of the Lake Powell evaporation monitoring project – one of the longest-running reservoir evaporation monitoring efforts in the Western U.S., which has provided data since 2019. Establishing state of the art weather and evaporation monitoring stations at these reservoirs will directly inform improvements for evaporation models and our understanding of water availability in the Colorado River.

DRI’s evaporation monitoring uses advanced micrometeorological stations that collect continuous observations of weather, water temperature, and calculated evaporation rates. The Reservoir Evaporation Research Team, led by DRI’s Justin Huntington and Chris Pearson, has led numerous open water evaporation data collection and modeling efforts in the Western U.S., including the Bureau of Reclamation’s Open Water Evaporation Network Initiative and a statewide effort to track daily reservoir evaporation rates throughout Texas.

“High-quality, over-water data provide critical benchmarks for validating and refining both satellite-based and gridded weather models, supporting more reliable large-scale evaporation estimates.”

By installing the weather stations on floating platforms directly on the water, DRI’s instrumentation obtains more accurate data than traditional methods that occur on land adjacent to reservoirs. The weather stations transmit measurements in near real-time to DRI portals that allow for the data to be visualized and monitored by researchers and water managers. Specialized equipment known as an eddy covariance station is used to calculate evaporation using high-frequency measurements of water vapor, wind speed and direction in all three spatial dimensions.

For more information about DRI’s research related to the Colorado River, view our Storymap: DRI Science on the Colorado River.

Photo credit: The Desert Research Institute

The Land Desk ch-ch-changes … Plus: More wacky weather! And visualizing water inequality from space — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

A satellite image of the Phoenix metro area with the moisture index layer turned on (blue = more moisture; red = drier). Scroll down to see more images and explanations. Source: Copernicus Browser.

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

July 31, 2026

The Land Desk is evolving! During the five and a half years that I’ve been doing this, several readers and would-be-donors have urged me to make this little enterprise a non-profit. I often would respond with something like, Yeah, I’m already there. To which they’d say: No, become a 501(c)3 so that our donations can be tax deductible, dummy!

And so, finally, my wife Wendy and I bit the bullet, hired an accountant, and went through the red tape to get it done. And so, the IRS made it official earlier this month: The Land Desk Media is officially a 501(c)3. Don’t worry, we’re not going to be begging you for money every few months, or holding fund-drives, or whatever. The model will stay pretty much the same; this simply allows folks who have been so generously supporting the Land Desk as Founding/Sustaining Members, Buy Me Coffee donors, or tip Jar tippers to write off those donations.

We’ll still have free subscriptions and paid subscriptions, with the same benefits for both (the $60/year and $6/month subscription fees do not count as tax deductible donations, but if you sign up as a Sustaining Member for $200/year, for example, $140 of it would be deductible). We may occasionally look to raise money for specific initiatives: to hire a freelancer, to offset travel costs for a reporting trip, to buy a new camera lens or whatnot, to expand the scope of the Land Desk’s coverage, or to publish a book or two under our imprint, Lost Souls Press.

We’re still lining up our ducks with some of the details, but if you’d like to donate, you can do it here: Make a tax deductible donation

The Land Desk News Feed

As long as we’re talking shop, the Land Desk is about to go through a different sort of evolution, this time by adding an appendage, if you will: a human-curated rundown of the week’s biggest news from the Land Desk realm, which would include public lands, energy development, wildlife, economics, water, climate, water, and more. It would be a list of a dozen or so summaries of the news items, along with a link to the original story or stories.

This will be a once-a-week dispatch (in addition to the two each week that I send out now). The idea is to allow readers to stay in the loop without some big commitment to read a bunch of context, and for me to update folks on developments in ongoing stories in a concise way while also amplifying other voices and journalism from around the region.

I do this sort of thing three times a week for Canary Media in which I gather and summarize Western energy stories. Here’s an outtake from a recent edition:

But the Canary gig is coming to an end, which is giving me the push I needed to implement this sort of thing (although with a much broader subject range) here at the Land Desk.

I think a lot of readers will value this service, but at the same time, I don’t want to overwhelm your email boxes with too many dispatches every week. So I’m hoping y’all can let me know whether I should add this as a third weekly email for all paid and free subscribers? Or should I make it a separate newsletter altogether that would require signing up separately? (Click through to the article to participate in Jonathan’s poll.)

⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️

When I was a kid, my family occasionally took trips to Phoenix, usually to visit my grandparents who wintered in a single-wide in Apache Junction due to my grandfather’s emphysema. I loved everything about these journeys: peering out the car window as we floated through the Navajo Nation, dropping from one season into another as we descended the Mogollan Rim, competing with my brother to spot the first saguaro, and ending up in a place where palm trees lined streets and citrus orchards surrounded the city.

In my teens and twenties my fondness for the Sonoran Desert migrated southward to Tucson. I was drawn by the vibrance of both the city and surrounding desert, as well as the climate; in the springtime I could begin a hike up Mt. Wrightson in t-shirt and shorts, strolling below the lush canopy amid birdsong, and end up huddling under a rock in a blizzard at the top. Then I could reward myself with some killer tacos in South Tucson on the way back. I always figured I’d live down there someday.

I’m still fond of Tucson and, yes, even Phoenix. But the idea of living in the place, especially the latter, gets less and less palatable with every passing year as temperatures rise. Check out this weekend’s forecast, which, believe it or not, is actually milder than the high temps from last weekend:

The 115° F daytime high is brutal — especially for those with homes that don’t have AC or decent insulation or who don’t have houses, at all. That’s the kind of heat that kills, as the statistics make all too clear. But it’s the 93° F nighttime low that really frightens me: The city is still an oven during the coolest, darkest hours of pre-dawn. Even if you do have a climate-controlled home and good AC in your car, you’re virtually trapped inside. A 5 a.m. run in those temperatures would be unhealthy, maybe even deadly.

But don’t think you can escape by heading to Colorado or Utah. Grand Junction and Hotchkiss are sweltering through triple digit highs as well; Moab’s mercury may hit 110° F this weekend, with 112° F forecasted for St. George. The timing’s especially bad for farmers in the North Fork Valley, where one of the major irrigation canals is shutting down today (July 31) due to lack of water in the reservoir (at least one of the other big ditches in the area shut down on July 20).

The current heatwave comes on the heels of an extreme heat spell that shattered all-time maximum heat records at 88 weather stations across the West, e.g.: 114° F in Brandenberg, Mont.; 104° F in Swan Valley, Idaho; 104° F at Pineview Dam, Utah; 109° F in Thermopolis, Wyo.; and 113° F in Burlington, Colo.

Those extraordinarily warm temperatures joined up with lightning to spark fires across the region, especially in the Northwest, which continues to burn. Oregon’s Lowe Creek Complex has ballooned to 300,000+ acres, and several other fires in the region exceed 50,000 acres in size. The smoke is traveling across the country and is even dimming air quality on the East Coast. More fire weather (dry, hot, windy) is forecasted for this weekend.

And if the heat doesn’t get you, the flash floods could. The intense yet isolated thunderstorms continue to wreak mayhem. Two massive debris flows hit Hwy 550 between Ouray and Silverton on Wednesday, trapping motorists and shutting down the artery — it remained closed Thursday night. Flooding also occurred on the Gold Mountain Fire scar north of Ouray. On Wednesday, the normally tame Cutler Creek became a raging, chocolate-colored, fire-debris-filled torrent that escaped its banks and blasted into homes, causing one family to fear for their lives.

In the winter, Colorado staffs mountain highways with avalanche forecasters to monitor conditions and recommend shutting down the roads during high danger. With all of the landslide/debris flow action affecting highways and backroads, perhaps it’s time to make the program year round?

Thankfully, the rains have helped stifle the erratic behavior of the big blazes in Colorado and Utah, though a new fire, the Rio Blanco blaze, is burning south of Pagosa Springs, and had reached 730 acres as of Thursday night.

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭 🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

The satellite images below, using the Moisture Index layer on the Copernicus Browser, contrasts dry areas (yellow, orange, and red) with more moist areas (green, blue, and dark blue). Each of the maps accentuates the importance of irrigation to the West’s agriculture and, really, to its communities, by showing a stark line between irrigated areas and non-irrigated ones.

Comparing the maps to one another shows how much drier the region is this year than it was three years ago, following one of the wetter winters of recent history. It also provides a visual illustration of the way the prior appropriation doctrine — which rules Western water law — plays out on the ground during dry years between the haves (those with senior water rights) and the have nots (those with junior water rights).

In this case it also shows how unjust and unfair the doctrine can be. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has 1868 rights to water from the Dolores River, making them the most senior rights holders of all (as one would expect). However, their water is delivered to them via the Dolores Project, whose water rights are tied to the date of congressional approval, or 1968.

Southwestern Colorado, with Ute Mountain in the center, on July 28, 2023. That was a relatively good water year, when McPhee Reservoir filled up in the spring, allowing full allocations to water rights holders. Ute Mountain Ute Farm & Ranch Enterprises was able to irrigate most of its fields (the lines of center-pivot sprinkler circles in the lower left corner). McElmo and Yellowjacket Canyons also had enough irrigation runoff to yield a fairly high moisture index (blue).

The same view on July 29, 2026. The Ute Mountain Utes received a fraction of their normal water allotment from McPhee Reservoir, forcing them to fallow most of their farm fields. But the Montezuma Valley irrigators — who hold senior rights due to the weirdness of Western water law — mostly have been able to continue irrigating their farms. As a result, there has been adequate runoff to keep McElmo Canyon relatively green (or, in the case of this map, blue).

This shows the Great Sage Plain of western Colorado on July 28, 2023, with Dove Creek just left of center near the top, and the Dolores River Canyon (the dark blue, squiggly line) just right of center. The Dove Creek area was mostly dryland farming until McPhee Reservoir and its associated canals came online beginning in 1983. During wet years, such as 2023, there’s enough water for a handful of farmers to irrigate their fields as can be seen by the dark blue squares and circles near Cahone, Pleasant View, and Dove Creek. That year there was even enough water to release some into the Lower Dolores River, which is why the blue line there is so pronounced.

Here’s the same place showing the vastly different and drier conditions from three years later, on July 29, 2026. Only a few fields are receiving irrigation water in the area, while others sit fallow and dry. The Ferris Fire burn scar shows up as a blood-red swath to the right of Dove Creek and Cahone. The Dolores River through there no longer shows up.

Video and analysis: Lake Powell’s dying days; Alfalfa isn’t (always) the enemy — and other Colorado River lessons from ‘Life After Dead Pool’ author Zak Podmore — Sammy Roth (ClimateColoredGoggles.com) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to go to the Climate Colored Goggles Substack page, and to view the interview video (Sammy Roth):

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.

Click the link to access the final EIS released on July 30, 2026 by Reclamation.

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

Reclamation Publishes Final Environmental Impact Statement for Future Colorado River Operations: Preferred alternative provides framework for post-2026 river operations with flexibility to adapt to changing needs #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and the Colorado River. Photo credit: Amy Washuta (NPS_2024 1)

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

July 31, 2026

The Bureau of Reclamation has released the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which designates a preferred course of action for future management of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The preferred alternative establishes an adaptive decision framework to be used to develop operating guidelines designed to ensure reliable operations in the Colorado River Basin while maintaining the flexibility to respond to changing conditions over a 10-year period through 2036. The framework also preserves the opportunity for the Basin to continue working towards consensus agreements, and if successful, be incorporated into future operations.

The framework will be used to develop operating guidelines for operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead that can be adjusted for shorter and longer term periods.

“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,” 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.”

The framework establishes the operational principles, sideboards—key thresholds and ranges for operational elements—and a process that will govern development and issuance of operating guidelines through 2036. Operational sideboards were chosen to ensure that the Department would have flexibility and environmental compliance to operate the system in a way that is responsive to actual hydrologic conditions and allows for the incorporation of Basin-wide innovative water management solutions. The sideboards, which are analyzed in the Final EIS, provide for annual releases from Lake Powell between 5.0 maf and 12.0 maf, Lower Basin shortages of up to 3.0 maf, the ability to store up to 8.0 maf and 3.0 maf of conserved water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead for future use, respectively, and the opportunity for voluntary Upper Basin conservation up to 200 kaf, subject to hydrology.

The Department would issue operating guidelines, within these sideboards, at anticipated 2-year periods, unless consensus-based agreements provide for a longer duration. It also establishes a structure under which operating guidelines will be developed, reviewed and periodically updated. This approach provides certainty regarding a decision process over the next 10 years while preserving the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions.

“This plan strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability for the Colorado River system that is vital to the 40 million people who rely on it given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users,” said Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek. “It also allows a new flexibility to respond to changing conditions and potential consensus.”

The Colorado River provides water for more than 40 million people and fuels hydropower resources in seven states. It serves as a vital resource for 30 tribes and two Mexican states, sustaining 5.5 million acres of farmland and agricultural communities throughout the West, while also supporting critical ecosystems and protecting endangered species.

Drought conditions over the past 25 years, combined with expectations of continued dry conditions, have made development of future operating guidelines for the Colorado River particularly challenging. The combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead have not been this low since before Glen Canyon Dam began filling in 1963, and since 2000 water use has exceeded total system inflow in most years. The Colorado River Compact apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet to both the Upper and Lower Basins based on the estimated pre-compact average inflow (1906-1921) of approximately 18 million acre-feet. However, inflows from 2000 to 2024 have only averaged 12.9 million acre-feet and the unregulated inflow into Lake Powell this year as of July is estimated to be only 3.5 maf.

Between 2020 and 2024, the average consumptive use in the Colorado River Basin was 13.1 million acre-feet. That is broken down by:

Upper Basin Use: 3.8 million acre-feet (29%).

Lower Basin Use: 6.5 million acre-feet (49%).

Mexico Use: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%).

Evaporation: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%).

This Final EIS is the culmination of a NEPA process that was initiated in June 2023. Over this three-year period Reclamation engaged extensively with Basin stakeholders and that input is reflected in the alternatives analyzed in the Final EIS and the Preferred Alternative.

Reclamation received more than 18,000 comments, including 785 unique submissions from the public, tribes, states, federal agencies and others after releasing the draft EIS in January 2026. Reclamation evaluated substantive comments and updated the final EIS, with public input helping to shape the preferred alternative.

The Final EIS is available on Reclamation’s website.

The final EIS addresses only domestic river operations. A separate binational process addressing water deliveries to Mexico is nearing completion and the Department is committed to continued collaboration with Mexico. The Department will conduct all necessary and appropriate discussions regarding post-2026 operations and implementation of the 1944 Water Treaty with Mexico through the International Boundary and Water Commission in consultation with the Department of State.

Final Environmental Impact Statement Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for #LakePowell and #LakeMead — Reclamation #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

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.

Why the #GunnisonRiver runs low while #RidgwayReservoir sits nearly full — KVNF #UncompahgreRiver

Black Canyon July 2020. Photo credit: Cari Bischoff

Click the link to read the article on the KVNF website (Brody Wilson). Here’s an excerpt:

July 29, 2026

Between the reservoir and the endangered fish in the lower Gunnison sits the Gunnison Tunnel, which diverts water just below Crystal Reservoir at the head of the Black Canyon and carries it to about 80,000 acres in the Uncompahgre Valley. It belongs to the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association (UVWUA), which, as Colorado River District engineer Caleb Foy puts it, “holds a very senior water right” In Colorado, the oldest rights have priority over more junior rights. UVWUA is not untouched. It opened the season at 50% allocation — “just seeing the writing on the wall in regard to the poor hydrologic conditions,” Foy said. This means all UVWUA users receive half as much water as they would in a normal year. UVWUA’s other supply, Ridgway Reservoir, is ~85% full, but by design: the association told shareholders this spring that its “goal is to maintain storage in Ridgway Reservoir until mid-July to help support peak season demands.” And the natural flows in the Uncompahgre and Cow Creek that normally supplements UVWUA through the Spring and summer, delivered nothing — the association “received zero water in regard to direct flow water from the Uncompahgre system this year to date,” Foy said. Blue Mesa, he said, holds “multiple colors of water” — some stored under Aspinall Unit rights, some belonging to the association under a Taylor Park first-fill right. If the reservoir ever fell far enough that only the UVWUA’s water remained, that “would effectively dry up the Black Canyon.” Avoiding that is why the flows in the lower Gunnison are so low. It leaves the basin, in Foy’s words, in “a less risky neighborhood than we would have otherwise been in.”

#FryingpanRiver to see high flows as #RuediReservoir releases increase: Water being released to lessen downstream #drought impacts

Ruedi Reservoir was 65% full as of Wednesday. Increased releases out of Ruedi could bump up flows in the Fryingpan River to as high as 700 cfs. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

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

July 29, 2026

Residents and anglers can expect to see high flows in the Fryingpan River in the month of August as water managers increase releases out of Ruedi Reservoir in an attempt to relieve the worst drought conditions downstream.

The Colorado Water Trust plans to begin releasing from a 4,700-acre-foot pool it leases in Ruedi on Monday. The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District also plans to begin releases from its 10,500-acre-foot Ruedi pool next week. Flows in the Fryingpan River are expected to typically be between 300 and 500 cfs while the releases are happening, though they could climb higher. It’s unclear how long the increased releases will last; it will depend on weather and precipitation over the coming weeks.

Water managers say flooding on the Fryingpan begins to be a concern around 800 cfs; River District officials say water managers will aim to keep the river below 700 cfs.

“We do not want to cause any flooding; we are very aware of that,” said Brendon Langenhuizen, director of technical advocacy for the River District.

Langenhuizen laid out details of the planned releases at a remote Zoom meeting of local leaders and water managers on Wednesday.

Although flooding may not happen until 800 cfs, impacts to the Fryingpan’s famous Gold Medal trout fishery happen long before that. Anglers generally like flows to remain below 300 cfs, the level at which wading becomes difficult and potentially dangerous.

Aspen Mayor Rachel Richards noted the dire conditions downstream, but asked if flows could be kept in the 300 to 350 cfs range when possible.

“Additionally, it’s more about the warning to fishermen if the water releases are changing rapidly,” Richards said. “I think the notification on the Fryingpan is what’s really critical here.”

Rick Lofaro, executive director of the Basalt-based Roaring Fork Conservancy, said his organization has already started getting the word out.

“There is an organization called the Roaring Fork Fishing Guide Alliance, and we are in lockstep with them,” Lofaro said. “We have already started to alert people to these increased flows, and the fishing community will be notified by the Roaring Fork Conservancy, along with the greater community.”

Bill Nein, of Salida, prepares to release a brown trout he caught back into the Fryingpan River. Anglers generally like flows to stay below 300 cfs for easy wading. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

As of Wednesday, Ruedi was about 65% full. Tim Miller, a hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, noted that this year’s reservoir operations are pacing about 10 days ahead of 2002, which was another year where drought conditions increased releases and lowered water levels at the reservoir. When asked by a U.S. Forest Service representative about when the water level would become too low for the boat ramp to operate, Miller said exactly when is unclear but that it would happen in the next month.

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map May 31, 2026.

The Ruedi releases are aimed at alleviating the impacts of the worst snow-drought on record in the upper Colorado River basin, which are being felt on local waterways, as well as farther downstream. Pitkin County has issued a mandatory closure of the Roaring Fork River through the North Star Nature Preserve – a popular stretch for paddleboards and kayaks – because of unprecedented low flows. And Colorado Parks and Wildlife has issued voluntary fishing closures on portions of the Roaring Fork, Crystal and Colorado rivers due to low flows and high water temperatures.

The effects of drought are also being felt in the Grand Valley, one of the big agricultural hubs on the Western Slope with some of the most senior water rights on the Colorado River. The water from Ruedi will flow down to be used by irrigators in this area, who are currently about 500 cfs short of the water they need, according to Langenhuizen.

“This has been a tough year for a lot of people from the bottom of the basin all the way to the top, and a lot of people have been pitching in to help us get through and share resources,” he said. “Everybody’s kind of taking a hit this year.”

The River District’s Ruedi releases are part of its 2026 drought response plan. They are meant to cushion the blow of shortages in a pool of water in Green Mountain Reservoir known as the Historic Users Pool. HUP water is released mainly to satisfy farmers and ranchers in the Grand Valley, whose group of senior water rights — known as the Cameo call — are the commanding force on the river.

When Cameo places a call for its water, it can force junior users all the way up to the headwaters to shut off. The HUP also protects other water users, known as HUP beneficiaries, because without the releases from Green Mountain, Cameo would place more frequent calls, forcing these users to cut back.

However, this year, the HUP did not fill, causing repercussions up and down the river.

“This is really driven because we don’t have HUP coverage, which has an impact on a lot of users in the Colorado River basin, both municipal and irrigators,” Langenhuizen told Aspen Journalism in a separate interview. “We really tried to look at this as wholesale, like how can we help as many people in the Colorado River basin as possible?”

Depending on water demands, the 4,700 acre-feet from the Water Trust could be used by irrigators in the Grand Valley, or it could be used for hydropower generation in the Grand Valley and then flow into the 15-mile reach, a chronically water-short stretch of the Colorado River that is critical habitat for endangered fish.

Bicycling the Colorado National Monument, Grand Valley in the distance via Colorado.com

Officials to nearly double water release from #RuediReservoir for downvalley #drought — The #Aspen Daily News

Ruedi Reservoir, near the headwaters of the Fryingpan River, was still frozen in early April 2021. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Daily News website (Drew Shaw). Here’s an excerpt:

July 30, 2026

To bolster the Colorado River’s flow downvalley through historic drought, water authorities will be increasing the flow out of the Ruedi Reservoir through August. That water will flow into the Fryingpan River…Water will then flow into the Roaring Fork River, then down the Western Slope, where populations in Grand Valley are in “dire need,” he said…

Green Mountain Reservoir (back in the day) is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and located in Summit County north of Silverthorne along the Blue River. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Traditionally, the Western Slope relies heavily on the Green Mountain Reservoir — about 17 miles south of Kremmling — to sustain a steady Colorado River flow. But due to the state’s dry, warm winter, that reservoir struggled to fill over the spring. The administrators of Green Mountain Reservoir found that low water levels and fast releases were exacerbating a slow-moving landslide on its banks, so they limited how much water could be released out of the reservoir to half a foot a day…

Tim Miller, a hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that manages the levels at Ruedi Reservoir, said the reservoir played a similar supplemental role in 2002, when Colorado saw another historic drought. This year’s use of the reservoir is about 10 days ahead of then, he said.

Map of the Roaring Fork River drainage basin in western Colorado, USA. Made using USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69290878

The Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Project: Reflections from Beaver Creek — Anneka Lambert, Emilia Endara and Mallory Tope (Getches-Wilkinson Center) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Kawuneeche Valley. Photo credit: Getches-Wilikinson Center

Click the link to read the article on the Getches-Wilkinson Center website (Anneka Lambert, Emilia Endara and Mallory Tope):

July 28, 2026

On July 8, the Getches-Wilkinson Center visited the Kawuneeche Valley restoration site at Beaver Creek in Rocky Mountain National Park. Upon arriving at Beaver Creek, the team met with Isabel de Silva Shewell, the lead ecologist on the project with a background in riparian restoration, who gave us a tour of the restoration site.

The 30-acre area is located at the headwaters of the Colorado River, and is surrounded by an exclosure fence tall enough to prevent moose and elk from jumping over. While we were fortunate enough to meet with Isabel and receive a guided tour, members of the public are welcome to enter through the gates and see the restoration efforts firsthand.

The Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Project/Beaver Creek Site Description

The Kawuneeche Valley restoration project is an effort to restore the ecosystem impaired by human activity and the climate-driven stressors such as an unpredictable snowpack and overbrowsing by moose.

Nestled at the base of the Never Summer Mountains, Beaver Creek is one of four tributaries to the mainstem of the Colorado River included in the project’s restoration efforts. Since the 1950s, there has been a loss of 94% of surface waters associated with beaver ponds, and a 77% loss of tall willow acreage since 1999. As a result, the Kawuneeche Valley has transitioned from its historical beaver-willow wetland ecosystem with a high water table, that supported hydrophilic vegetation and was dominated by tall willow.

These changes have been driven by human diversion of water, the effects of climate change, and the loss of tall willow due to the influx of large populations of moose. The once-booming beaver population in the area declined with the loss of suitable habitat. Without beaver dams, the water saturation in the soil became insufficient to support a stable riparian buffer. Beaver Creek became loaded with sediment, and water quality declined. The site has been identified as a major contributor of sediment to the mainstem of the Colorado River.

The Impacts of Moose and Elk at Beaver Creek and Potential Solutions

In 1978-1979, moose were re-introduced into Rocky Mountain National Park on the west side. https://www.nps.gov/articles/moose-research-in-rocky-mountain-national-park.htm. Initially, only 24 moose were released and largely remained on the west side of the park. Id. Moose are typically solitary animals; however, warmer, shorter winters allowed moose to congregate and populations to boom. Id. Easier passage facilitated the movement of moose across the continental divide to the east side of the park. Id.

As of 2025, there were 240 moose estimated to be in the park. Id. Willows are a primary food source for moose. However, willows, whose stems only grow about six inches per year, do not regenerate quickly enough to support such a large moose population. Today, the site is marked by what Isabel referred to as “zombie willows,” or willows that have been chewed down by moose, leaving only the woody stems of the plants.

Evidence of the former beaver-willow ecosystem is found throughout the site. Depressions indicate where beaver dam surface waters had existed in previous decades; willows that had been chewed down to woody stubs have new growth, and wetland vegetation such as sedges dominate the area.

In addition to constructing beaver dam analogs, the park service is attempting to address moose populations. Exclosure fences have been successful in keeping moose and elk from entering the restoration site. However, this is only one component of long-term population management measures. Discussions of potential solutions include measures put in place in 2008 by the Elk and Vegetation Management Plan (EVMP). In addition to exclosure fences, these efforts also include the culling of individual moose. Hunting is not permitted in the park, and moose have no natural predators in the area to keep populations in check. Therefore, such measures may be necessary to restore balance to the ecosystem.

“Beaver Dam Analogues” or “Temporary Wood Grade Structures,” or TWGS, (pronounced like twigs), are designed to help back up water and create a lively wetland habitat that encourages healthy biodiversity not just for the cutthroat, but the entire ecosystem. They are being employed in what’s called “Process-Based Restoration.” These man-made structures are relatively easy and straightforward to make. They are built with natural resources such as wooden posts, willow branches, aspen branches, and rocks. Though they are simple to create, Remshardt said “we’re not as good at building them” as the beavers. Photo courtesy Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project

Beaver Dam Analogs

The main tool utilized to restore the site to a functioning beaver-willow wetland ecosystem are beaver analogs. Beaver analogs are wooden structures that span the creek in a manner that mimics beaver dams. They raise the water table upstream, increase channel complexity, promote resilience to high runoff in the snowpack, trap fine sediment, and store water across the floodplain. The analogs were built using lodgepoles from the surrounding area to mimic the natural ecosystem sourced from fuel-mitigation events in the park.

Restoration efforts are already yielding encouraging results. Groundwater quantity is continuously monitored at the site. Since the installation of the analogs in 2024; levels have slowly and steadily risen. Water quality at the site has improved, and benthic microorganisms highly sensitive to water quality have reappeared in the creek.

With the diminishment of willows over the years, invasive plant species such as the Canada Thistle flourished. Since the start of the project, Isbabel said there has been an evident decrease in Canada Thistle, leaving more room for willows to grow.

Takeaways and Further Information

Overall, the GWC would like to thank Isabel and all those at RMNP and the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Project for this fantastic opportunity. The team greatly enjoyed seeing the site first-hand, looking at the impact of overbrowsing, and how the ecosystem has begun to heal. Being on the headwaters of the Colorado River was a reminder of all the components that go into maintaining a healthy, thriving river that can support the surrounding habitat and those downstream.

If you are interested in more information about the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Project, please visit their website at: https://www.nps.gov/romo/the-kawuneeche-valley-restoration-collaborative.htm

If would like to help out, please consider volunteering at a future event. Previous volunteer opportunities have included revegetation efforts such as willow staking. There is potential for volunteers to help build and maintain materials for dam infrastructure at events in the future. More information can be found here: https://www.nps.gov/romo/getinvolved/volunteer.htm

For updates on the Kawuneeche Valley, you can sign up for their newsletter at: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/WKvPewd

Colorado River Kawuneeche Valley May 19, 2023.

In 2002, we had #ColoradoRiver water cushions. Now they’re gone — Allen Best (BigPivots.com) #COriver #aridification

L to R: Allen Best, Alan Salazar, Siri Roman, Pat Mulroy during the panel discussion “Liquid Courage” at the Museum of Nature & Science, July 21, 2026. Photo credit: Big Pivots

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

July 27, 2026

“We know climate change is real. We know we’re living it, but no one expected it to move this quickly.”

As moderator at last week’s water forum held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, I posed the question to our three panelists about this hot and dry summer after last winter’s exceptional warmth and dearth of snow.

“From where you sit now, is this any different from what we’ve been through before?”

Pat Mulroy, a senior fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Boyd School of Law and the former longtime general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, is an advocate for extensively rethinking how the Colorado River is managed. (Image: University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Boyd School of Law)

Pat Mulroy was quick to answer. She calls herself a “recovering CEO.” For 23 years she oversaw the Southern Nevada Water Authority‘s operations in Las Vegas and its suburbs. Early in her watch, the population of Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, exceeded the population of Manhattan. It now has a population of 2.5 million people.

The metro area there gets 90% of its water from the Colorado River via tunnels into three levels of Lake Mead. The newest — one she championed, despite a cost of $1 billion — comes up from underneath the reservoir. Even when Hoover Dam backs up too little water to be released downstream, Las Vegas will have access to water.

“I always love coming to Denver, now that I no longer come to Denver as the protagonist from the evil lower basin,” she said.

Footnote here: Many who had never heard Mulroy speak before were astonished at her liveliness.

“This summer is different only because the cumulative effect of all the summers that went before has come home to roost,” she continued.

“All the cushion we have (had) is gone. I mean, it’s one thing to have 2002 when you had a bad winter and Lake Powell started going down rapidly, but Lake Mead still had (water to an elevation of) over 1,200 feet. We’re now seeing the very real possibility that Lake Mead is going to go to 900 feet by next year. That would be 10 feet above deadpool.”

Deadpool is the water level that is so low that water can no longer be released from a dam. The level at which electricity can no longer be produced is higher.

Mulroy went on to say that while the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is taking steps to “replenish” Mead — by taking less water than allotted — the problem continues to worsen. That indicates the depth of this problem.

“It’s never ending, and the rate of change is so much faster than any of us expected,” added Mulroy. ” We know climate change is real. We know we’re living it, but no one expected it to move this quickly.”

Siri Roman was next. She manages the Vail-based Eagle River Water and Sanitation District. “I think that 2002 changed water in Colorado, and 2026 is going to change it completely again. A lot of our planning and assumptions are being challenged this year,” she said.

“I mean, it was 80 degrees for two weeks in March. Watching our very little snowpack — the lowest snowpack we had on record — nearly melt out in March was quite alarming to us.”

Eagle River Water and Sanitation District has several small reservoirs. Among them is the reservoir at Vail Pass, another near Camp Hale, and a third near Minturn.

“They weren’t able to fill because the stream flows were so low. There are a lot of things we rely on that we’re not going to be able to rely on moving forward. How do we get creative, looking at demand and other solutions about how to prepare for a drier year?” Roman continued.

“Statistically, they always say you won’t get two years like this in a row. I don’t think we can say that anymore. We can’t rely on the statistics because we’re seeing such abnormal patterns.” [ed. emphasis mine]

Denver Board of Water Commissioners/Courtesy photo.

Alan Salazar, the third panelist, is CEO of Denver Water. The water agency delivers water to about 25% of the 6 million Coloradans. “We use just 2% of the state’s water, and that has been pretty steady going back through the 1970s. That didn’t happen by accident, because we took measures. My predecessor and Denver water employees in the last 20 years use water more efficiently and with conservation in mind.”

Salazar had high-level positions as policy advisor to several elected officials, mostly in Colorado. One of them was the former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, an advocate of protecting natural resources and an early advocate of public awareness around climate change. He recalled what his boss had told him: “Alan, no matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many regulations we implement, Mother Nature bats last. And boy, is she batting.”

As compared to 2002, he said, this year is more extreme. “We had a heat dome that made the spring more difficult, and it’s partly why the response from our customers has lagged, because even though there are water restrictions, the extremes in temperatures have put greater pressure on water use. So, it’s quite a bit different.”

These remarks were delivered early in the 90-minute sessions devoted to water and urban uses in Colorado and somewhat beyond.

The museum’s Institute for Science and Policy will hold another session on Aug. 27 in its two-part Liquid Courage series. This next session will have four panelists:

Robert Sakata, a farmer from Brighton and now a senior adviser at the Colorado Department of Agriculture;

Anne Castle, a former Interior Department undersecretary for water in the Obama administration now affiliated with the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School;

Nathan Coombs, a San Luis Valley farmer and a member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board; and

Sarah Jones, co-founder of Rye Resurgence and co-owner of Jones Farm Organics near Hooper, in the San Luis Valley.

You can register here. The session last week sold out.

Denver City Park sunrise from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Blue Mesa reservoir water levels falling fast this summer: Bureau of Reclamation reducing downstream releases — The #CrestedButte News #GunnisonRiver

Click the link to read the article on the Crested Butte News website (Katherine Nettles). Here’s an excerpt:

July 22, 2026

Given the severe drought throughout the past water year, Blue Mesa Reservoir and the dams below it that serve downstream users are all at precariously low levels this summer. This is impacting recreation, power generation and aquatic life. As reservoir levels fall dangerously close to “power pool” level at which point hydroelectric power becomes impossible, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) last week made some adjustments to try and prevent that. The hope is that the new flows will hold up Blue Mesa power production, and protect various other uses and aquatic biology through the end of the year…According to Andrew Limbach with BOR’s Western area office, the release schedule from the Crystal Dam below Blue Mesa changed over a period of three days from 1,465 cubic feet per second (cfs) on July 15 to 1,265 cfs by July 17. Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge were scheduled to decrease from 360 cfs to 250 cfs over the course of those same three days. “In response to the extreme drought conditions, the BOR has collaborated with US Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service to reduce the target flows to 500 cfs at Whitewater and 200 cfs through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison until further notice…

Jennifer Erickson, public affairs officer with the Department of the Interior, shared the latest information available regarding Blue Mesa elevation. “As of our last projections, Blue Mesa Reservoir is expected to fall to elevation 7,412 ft by the end of September. That number is from last month’s 24-Month study projections.” When full, the elevation is at 7,519 feet…

“To maintain safe and operational marina facilities, the NPS has moved the Elk Creek marina infrastructure to deeper water. Approximately half of the Lake Fork Marina has also been moved to deep water. Trailered watercraft can no longer use the Lake Fork boat ramp and will not be able to use the Elk Creek boat ramp when reservoir elevations reach 7435’. Hand-launching of non-trailered watercraft will remain available at both ramps.”

The NPS also advised that on Sunday, July 26remaining Lake Fork marina operations will no longer be operational at 4 p.m., and on Monday, July 27 all boats must be out of Lake Fork Marina slips by noon.

On Friday, July 31, the NPS projected that the Elk Creek boat ramp will no longer be safe for launching or retrieving trailered watercraft. “All trailered watercraft on Blue Mesa reservoir should be retrieved before this elevation is reached. The ramp will remain open for hand-launching,” according to the release.

So while Blue Mesa shouldn’t go to “deadpool” mud or canyon levels, it will be as low as it’s been in decades.

With fields already fallow, Uncompahgre Valley growers adapt to a drier future: New mapping tool prepares district for state conservation program — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org) #UncompahgreRiver

Farmer Randy Friend grows corn in the Olathe area. He left the debris from last year’s crop on the ground as a form of mulch to try to retain moisture in this exceptionally dry year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

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

July 23, 2026

Fourth-generation Olathe farmer Randy Friend stopped his pickup truck next to a row of corn whose green leaves were limp and curling, with a gray tinge. Friend’s corn was stressed as the valley endured a July heat wave with temperatures nudging close to 100 degrees.

“I hate to see it looking like that with our water situation,” Friend said.

Next was a field of onions, a thirsty crop with a long growing season. The furrows between the dark-green sprouts were still damp, an indication the field was just irrigated that morning.

“Onions are our most expensive crop to grow and the most reward on a good year,” Friend said. “But they can also bankrupt you because they take so much more water.”

Friend farms corn, onions and forage crops for livestock as part of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, a vast expanse of farmland that extends from just south of Montrose to Delta, on Colorado’s Western Slope. Water from the Gunnison and Uncompahgre rivers, along with miles of tunnels, canals and ditches, transforms about 76,000 acres of high desert into lush green fields of corn, pinto beans, onions and alfalfa.

But this year, Uncompahgre Valley farmers are making tough decisions and developing new tools as they try to adapt to one of the hottest, driest years on record in the Upper Colorado River basin. Many are leaving fields dry, culling their cattle herds, switching to crops that use less water and relying on crop insurance payouts as the association faces a 50% cut to its irrigation water supply.

“I’ve been farming 30 years now, and this is by far the most extreme, biggest cut of water that I’ve ever had to deal with,” Friend said.

Some producers in the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users association have left some fields unplanted due to drought. The association has only about half its normal water supply this year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

The Uncompahgre water users get about half of their water supply from Taylor Park Reservoir, at the headwaters of the Gunnison River, via the Gunnison Tunnel, a six-mile-long aqueduct that can bring up to about 1,175 cubic feet per second to the valley. The other half comes from the Uncompahgre River, a much smaller river basin that saw an abysmal end-of-season snowpack with just 14% of median April 1. That means the association has only about half its normal water supply for irrigation season.

“We’re limping along right now, but it’s going to be a challenging year,” said association manager Steve Pope. “We got to get our producers through Labor Day; we’re going to need the water then. It’s just a physical supply issue; the water just wasn’t there.”

With its water cut by half, many producers in the Uncompahgre Valley have chosen to irrigate only some of their fields, leaving others unplanted for the season. The district’s northwest area, which is where much of the valley’s row crops are grown, has been the hardest hit. Pope estimates those farmers are fallowing between 30% and 60% of their ground. Driving around the district revealed many fields that were brown and dry.

“There’s just a tremendous amount of land out there that’s just barren, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.

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

Friend, an association board member, said he is fallowing about one-fourth of the land he farms and using about 30% to 40% of his acres to grow forage crops that use less water, such as sorghum-Sudangrass. But switching to drought-resistant plants is a strategy that doesn’t work for every grower. Friend also owns a feedlot so he can mix these drought-tolerant crops with higher-quality feed to make it work. Although some growers on the Western Slope are experimenting with alternative forage crops, such crops have yet to be grown on a large scale. Water-intensive alfalfa, with its high protein content, remains dominant.

Daris Jutten, a fifth-generation rancher in Ouray and Montrose counties, said the lack of water has prompted him to cut his herd back to the fewest cows he has ever had on his ranch. He has also left some of his alfalfa fields fallow.

“I’ve seen it bad before, but I’ve never seen it this bad,” Jutten said. “2002 was bad. 2018, 2012 were all bad. But they don’t even come close to what this thing is.”

The Uncompahgre River in Olathe was nearly dried up in July due to agricultural diversions and drought. The Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association is the biggest agricultural water user in the Upper Colorado River Basin. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Colorado’s new conservation program adds pressure to cut water use

This year’s lack of water and a management crisis have brought the Colorado River system to the brink of collapse.

As the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, plummet to new lows, water managers are taking emergency steps to keep Lake Powell levels high enough to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. At the same time, federal officials are crafting a plan for how the seven states that share the Colorado River will share shortages and how the reservoirs will be operated for the next two years.

Colorado’s new conservation program adds pressure to cut water use

This year’s lack of water and a management crisis have brought the Colorado River system to the brink of collapse.

As the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, plummet to new lows, water managers are taking emergency steps to keep Lake Powell levels high enough to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. At the same time, federal officials are crafting a plan for how the seven states that share the Colorado River will share shortages and how the reservoirs will be operated for the next two years.

Upper Basin water managers have focused on the fact that their farmers and ranchers are affected first by a warming climate and are already experiencing shortages because the water simply isn’t there. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) suffer because there aren’t major reservoirs from which they can draw in dry years the way that the Lower Basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) do. Both basins are increasingly expected to reduce consumption because supplies are shrinking and the Colorado River system as a whole must be managed within these new limits.

Onions are one of the water-intensive row crops grown in the Uncompahgre Valley. Farmers in the region are adapting to drought by fallowing fields and planting crops that use less water. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

On July 15, state officials announced the creation of a “near-term contribution program” that 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. The Upper Basin states have a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of September 2028, which marks the end of water year 2028. The saved water will need to have a home in Upper Basin storage buckets — Lake Powell, Navajo, Blue Mesa or Flaming Gorge reservoirs — but precisely how it will be used and how it will fit into broader Colorado River management are still unknown.

The program has been a long time coming, and the concept is not new to Colorado. Officials said they are incorporating the lessons learned from previous demand-management studies beginning in 2019, stakeholder input and recent pilot programs.

As the biggest agricultural user in the Upper Basin, the Uncompahgre Valley — drought-stricken as it is — is ideally located for these types of programs and is considered one of the lowest-hanging fruits when it comes to finding places to save water.

When Colorado’s contribution program is implemented next year, the association will be ready. Knowing that a program was inevitable, Western Slope water managers have been proactive, developing a data-mapping tool that can help the association adapt to drought.

UVWUA Manager Steve Pope stands at the spot where water from the South Canal dumps water from the Gunnison River into the Uncompahgre River. It’s then diverted to the west side of the valley where it irrigates fields and row crops. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Mapping tool helps plan conservation

With 550 miles of interconnected canals and laterals snaking through the valley, downstream irrigators often depend on reusing the water that runs off an upstream neighbor’s fields, and leaving a field dry could have unintended downstream consequences.

Developed by the Colorado River Water Conservation District and The Freshwater Trust, the tool can pinpoint where the greatest opportunities for water savings are, as well as how to avoid the worst consequences of fallowing ground. It can show what happens when efficiency improvements are made to the association’s century-old infrastructure and can show which ditches should be lined to provide the most bang for the buck to reduce seepage loss.

“From our perspective, it’s a great management tool because it allows us to track water through our system,” Pope said. “Let’s say there’s [a conservation] program, well, what would be the best farms to go to a deficit irrigation or fallow that would create the most (water savings), and you can target that.”

The tool is aimed at helping producers adapt to drought and can show which projects would result in the most water savings. Although the River District does not endorse a large-scale conservation program, it has long recognized that one was inevitable and has sought to mitigate the worst impacts to rural agricultural communities.

The intent of the tool is to help create a program that can maximize economic and environmental benefits as well as water conservation, said Raquel Flinker, director of interstate and regional water resources with the River District.

“It was always to provide data and analytics that would make whatever entity [is] creating a program design it in a way that seemed the most sensible,” Flinker said.

Some Uncompahgre Valley producers have participated in experimental programs that pay them to cut their water use, including the federally funded System Conservation Pilot Program, which took place in 2023 and 2024. Friend and a few others in the association enrolled in 2024 and were paid to reduce their water use. The association’s board has allowed their members to participate in conservation programs, but they remain somewhat controversial. An irrigation district in the Western Slope’s other big agricultural area, the Grand Valley, does not allow its members to participate.

Pope said instead of programs that pay farmers not to irrigate, he would rather see federal money pay for more efficiency upgrades to water-delivery systems such as lining ditches and improving headgates. The recently announced state program is meant to include a broad range of water-saving actions, but pilot conservation programs in the Upper Basin have always defaulted to paying irrigators to temporarily stop using water.

“The problem I see with it is if somebody enrolls and they sign off the year before, and then we don’t get any water and they are 50% fallowed anyway, did the program really generate any water?” Pope said. “It’s very difficult to measure the benefits of these types of programs when you have such an unreliable supply to begin with.”

Pope brings up an inherent contradiction about Upper Basin conservation: How can agricultural water users cut back when they already don’t have enough in drought years like this?

Despite the 100,000-acre-foot goal for the Upper Basin, Colorado leaders have long said they can’t commit to saving a specific amount of water. They said that figure can be reached only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow. And for now, the program remains short-term, while the effects of a warmer and drier climate appear likely to continue for the long-term.

“If this is the new normal, it’s going to get way more difficult,” Friend said. “If we have another winter like this last one, a lot of people are pretty worried about it.”

Landmark Agreement: Three Lakes CLEAR Initiative — Northern Water #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Three-Lakes: Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain Reservoir, and Lake Granby. Photo credit: Northern Water

Click the link to read the release on the Northern Water website:

July 24, 2026

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (Northern Water), the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Grand County, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG), the Colorado River Water Conservation District (Colorado River District) and the Town of Grand Lake today announced a landmark agreement establishing the Three Lakes CLEAR Initiative, a long-term effort to improve water clarity, watershed health and resilience across Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Granby Reservoir (the Three Lakes).

The Three Lakes System is part of the federal Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) Project, which collects and stores water in Grand County and then diverts it for use by C-BT beneficiaries on the Front Range through a series of reservoirs, ditches and tunnels. The CLEAR Initiative continues the ongoing Grand Lake Adaptive Management framework for managing C-BT Project operations and incorporates additional collaborative initiatives to enhance clarity and provide watershed health benefits within and upstream of the Three Lakes System.

CLEAR stands for Clarity, Legacy, Ecosystem, Adaptation and Resilience, reflecting the shared commitment by partners to protect and improve this important resource.

The agreement marks a major milestone following two decades of coordinated work to improve clarity in Grand Lake and water quality in Shadow Mountain Reservoir and reflects a renewed commitment to sustained action and investment. It also provides a long-term framework to continue and expand this work as the Grand Lake Clarity Stakeholders’ Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), established in 2016, expires in December 2026. Today’s action renews and expands upon that MOU, protecting the Three Lakes and tributary watersheds for the next 30 years.

As part of the agreement, Northern Water, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District Municipal Subdistrict, and the Windy Gap Firming Project Water Activity Enterprise will provide $30 million over 30 years to address both C-BT Project operations and the broader environmental conditions influencing water quality by supporting implementation of projects and initiatives that address watershed and lake conditions. Of that amount, $20 million will be directed toward project funding to accelerate near-term, priority on-the-ground improvements initiatives, while $10 million will build a long-term reserve fund intended to provide sustained, legacy funding and the flexibility to address future needs as conditions evolve beyond the 30-year agreement.

Grand Lake and Mount Craig. CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=814879

The initiative continues and strengthens the collaborative adaptive management of C-BT Project operations in the Three Lakes that began with the original MOU, using real-time adjustments to improve clarity in Grand Lake while balancing water supply, power generation and environmental needs. At the same time, the initiative establishes a dedicated fund directed by the parties, to invest in watershed and system health projects that improve water quality and ecological conditions across the Three Lakes system and tributary watersheds.

Projects will focus broadly on watershed and forest health, reducing sediment and nutrient inputs, improving lake and reservoir conditions, and strengthening monitoring and adaptive management tools across the interconnected system.

“The foundation for this landmark agreement to improve Grand Lake clarity and create the Three Lakes CLEAR Fund was laid over decades of effort by many, representing all parties, to improve and use our knowledge of the Three Lakes System for actionable projects that can move the needle for better Grand Lake clarity. The parties have differing interests for sure, but we strive to find common ground because we have a spirit of mutual trust and respect,” said Jeff Metzger, Town of Grand Lake.

Northern Water emphasized the enduring framework the agreement creates to support the long-term health and resilience of the Three Lakes System while benefiting communities on both sides of the Continental Divide.

“The Three Lakes CLEAR Initiative demonstrates how shared stewardship of Grand Lake clarity and the health of the broader Three Lakes System and its watersheds can strengthen the long-term resilience of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project for the benefit of Front Range water users while supporting the natural resources and thriving West Slope communities that depend on them. By creating a lasting legacy of collaboration and investment, this agreement helps ensure these shared resources will continue to be protected for generations to come,” said Esther Vincent, Environmental Services Director for Northern Water.

Grand County Board of County Commissioners Chair Edward Raegner highlighted the importance of the agreement for Grand County and the local communities that have stewarded the Three Lakes watershed for generations.

“This 30-year MOU reflects an unprecedented commitment to Grand Lake’s health and the long-term future of the Three Lakes System. Grand County is proud to work alongside our partners to help preserve Grand Lake’s water clarity for generations to come.”

The Colorado River District emphasized the value of continuing the collaborative approach that has guided clarity improvements in the Three Lakes System for the past decade.

“This MOU continues the collaborative approach that has guided clarity work in Grand Lake and water quality throughout the Three Lakes system since 2016. Over the past decade, we’ve gained valuable knowledge about how to effectively use adaptive management in the system, and this agreement will provide a strong foundation to continue that work for the long term. As a signatory to this MOU, the Colorado River District will continue to be a voice for the Western Slope and advocate for solutions that protect our water resources and the communities which depend on them,” said Rebecca Briesmoore, Senior Water Resources Engineer with the Colorado River District.

Former NWCCOG Executive Director Jon Stavney also welcomed the long-term commitment.

“Since the 1970s, our organization has been engaged in multiple efforts to protect and enhance the water quality of Grand Lake. This MOU represents a new beginning backed by a long-term commitment of substantial resources to the clarity of Grand Lake.”

Colorado-Big Thompson Project map. Courtesy of Northern Water.

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

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

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

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

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

Scenic Grand Lake wins $30M to improve long-standing clarity issues — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

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

July 23, 2026

Northern Water will pay $30 million over the next 30 years to solve long-standing clarity and water quality problems at one of Colorado’s most treasured natural wonders, Grand Lake.

Under the terms of the agreement, the giant water provider will spend $1 million annually to test and implement new solutions to the problem, including weed control, aeration and sediment removal. The deal is the first time a dedicated source of money has been set aside to help the lake, Northern Water spokesperson Jeff Stahla said.

Grand Lake, located near the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, is Colorado’s deepest natural lake and has been a major tourist destination since the late 1800s. A coalition of federal and state agencies, and local advocacy groups have been working and arguing over how to restore it since at least 2008.

“It has been a long and arduous process to get here,” Stahla said. “We’re hopeful that this is a turning point for being able to work together for the common good.”

Grand Lake is a key element of Northern Water’s Colorado-Big Thompson delivery system, which provides water to more than 1 million people on the northern Front Range and thousands of acres of irrigated farmlands.

Owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and operated by Northern Water, The C-BT gathers water from the Upper Colorado River, and stores it in two holding pools built by the federal government: Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Reservoir. From there it is eventually moved into Grand Lake and delivered via the Adams Tunnel under the Continental Divide to Carter Lake, west of Berthoud, and Horsetooth Reservoir, west of Fort Collins.

During that process, algae and sediment are carried into Grand Lake, clouding its formerly clear waters and causing algae blooms and weed growth, and harming recreation.

In 2008, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission moved to set a clarity standard, but it has since been replaced with a clarity goal and the aim of achieving “the highest level of clarity attainable.” Since then, Northern Water and others have implemented different management techniques, including changing pumping patterns, to find ways to improve water quality in all three water bodies.

In 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took the first steps required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to do the scientific and engineering studies needed to fix the system and hold public hearings. But Reclamation stopped the process in 2020, saying that it could not definitively establish any structural alternatives that would work, nor could it find a way forward on funding such a major infrastructure redesign.

Frustration among Grand Lake advocates continued to build, however, and in 2024, Colorado lawmakers passed a resolution calling for more work on the issue.

In 1941, before the Colorado-Big Thompson Project began operating, clarity was measured at 9.2 meters in depth, about 32 feet, according to Northern Water. Since 2016, the goal has been to achieve clarity of 3.2 meters, just over 9 feet. “We’ve been hitting the goals much more steadily than we have before, thanks to changes in the way the water is pumped through the system,” Stahla said.

Still the lake is plagued by infusions of warm, murky water during the summer and algae blooms that harm its recreational value, locals say.

Mike Cassio, president of the Three Lakes Watershed Association and a long-time Grand Lake advocate, said the new agreement was the only way the local interests could see to move forward, given what they say is an imbalance of power between the federal government and Northern Water, and the people of Grand County.

“The Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that replumbing and fixing Grand Lake is a $1 billion project and it would take a congressional mandate to fund it,” Cassio said. “Is this agreement the best that we have? Probably. Is anybody up for a fight with Northern and the Bureau? Probably not. So the best thing to do is to work together.”

In addition to the $30 million, the new agreement also expands the governing body overseeing the work to include the town of Grand Lake, which will for the first time have an official role in how the three-lake system is managed, Stahla said.

The Colorado River District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties, signed off on the deal this week, saying via email that the new agreement would provide a strong foundation for future work on the lake.

Other signers to the agreement include Grand County, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, Northern Water, and the town of Grand Lake. It must still be signed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

More by Jerd Smith

First water through the Adams Tunnel. Photo credit Northern Water.

Crunch time for #conservation: Customers are conserving amid drought, but a record-hot year keeps the pressure on — Todd Hartman (DenverWater.org) #SouthPlatteRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Orr Manufacturing Vertical Impact Sprinkler circa 1928 via the Irrigation Museum

Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website (Todd Hartman):

July 14, 2026

As we enter the thick of watering season in mid-July, it’s a good time to assess how Denver Water customers are doing in cutting water use amid a drought.

The early verdict: Good but needs to be even better.

Denver’s Board of Water Commissioners, in its drought declaration of March 25, called for a 20% reduction in water use over the coming year.

By one important measure, the 1.5 million people Denver Water serves are meeting that goal. Customers are using about 20% less than projected — when the record-setting hot and dry weather we’ve experienced in 2026 is factored in.

By another measure, against the five-year average, customers are conserving water — but have a ways to go to hit the goal. Using the five-year average sets a tough bar, however, as those years were not generally as hot and dry as what the Denver region has seen so far this year.

Get tips for helping your lawn survive the summer on mandatory drought restrictions that allow residential water only on two assigned days per week. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Overall, when you consider the conditions, the high temperatures and lack of precipitation, we think customers are doing well,” said Greg Fisher, manager of demand planning for Denver Water. “They are showing restraint even as the spring and early summer continued the record-breaking drought numbers we saw last fall and winter, combined with extremely high temperatures.”

In fact, tracking at Denver Water’s three weather stations, spaced out west to east across the metro area, shows January through June of 2026 experienced the highest daily average temperature ever, at 67 degrees, compared to an average of 62 degrees.

9News meteorologist Chris Bianchi’s July 9 post on Twitter noted that Colorado has just experienced the hottest opening half of the year on record, “and it wasn’t even close.” Image credit: Chris Bianchi via Twitter.

Colorado as a whole is seeing the same trend, with 9News meteorologist Chris Bianchi reporting that it was the hottest opening half of the year on record, “and it wasn’t even close,” he noted on Twitter July 9.

The average temperature of 46.2 degrees beat the previous mark by a full degree. “The impact of a warming climate is clear,” Bianchi noted.

The weather has taken a toll, putting water supplies and landscapes in a major water deficit, Fisher said.
Even so, customers have heard the call for conservation.

Overall, they adhered to Denver Water’s call to hold off on activating sprinkler systems until mid-to-late May or even June.

But as spring rains retreated and temperatures rose, watering season hit its stride and the hot weather predictably drove up use to levels similar to the five-year average recorded from 2021-2025.

Now, as we enter the heat of July and August, Denver Water should get a better sense of how well customers continue to keep water use in check and hold to mandatory two-day-a-week watering schedules.

Suggested watering times that comply with Denver Water’s mandatory drought restrictions that limit outdoor watering to two days per week. Image credit: Denver Water.

Mother Nature may help, with some climate models suggesting the potential for a rainier summer that could reduce the need to turn on sprinklers, cut demand and keep water in Denver Water reservoirs.

“It’s so important for customers to pay attention to the weather, and keep irrigation systems off around rain events,” Fisher said. “A good rainstorm should allow you to take your watering day off and, in some cases a rainy week means you can skip watering on both designated days.”

Preserving water supplies in Denver Water’s reservoirs is key.

Overall reservoir levels, as of July 13, are currently around 78% percent full (compared to percentage levels usually in the high-90s at this time of year), but levels are dropping as summer watering hits full stride.

The more Denver Water customers can stretch those supplies, the quicker the storage levels can begin to recover after a year — or more likely years — of better winter snowpack.

Too much drawing down of precious water supplies stored in reservoirs could be consequential for water users.

Antero Reservoir in 2026, after its water was moved to Cheesman Reservoir to reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Should supplies drop too low this summer, water planners would potentially consider reducing outdoor watering to one day a week to further ease pressure on supplies and avoid an even larger storage deficit next spring.
So now is the time to pay close attention to water use outdoors — and indoors.

Every bit you save, whether it’s while you shave, shower or water the lawn improves the chances we can avoid even tougher restrictions and look with hope for a stronger winter to come and begin recovering storage supplies.

“We need people to be thinking bigger than this week or this year when they think about water,” Fisher said.

“Even with watering restrictions in place now, we’ll enter next year with a water deficit due to the record snow-drought last winter. Recovering from that requires not only some good snow years, but thoughtful conservation from our customers.”

Denver Water’s entire collection system. Image credit: Denver Water.

Ruedi Hydroelectric Facility anticipated to lose power by August: The anticipated outage will result in a significant reduction in locally generated renewable energy — The #Aspen Times #FryinpanRiver #RoaringForkRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

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.”

As #ColoradoRiver and tributaries shrink, a public power system frays: #GunnisonRiver #hydropower under stress as data center development creates increasing demand for electricity generation — Hank Lacey (ColoradoNewsline.com) #COriver #aridification

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)

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Newsline website (Hank Lacey):

July 15, 2026

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.

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.

Blue Mesa Reservoir in crisis amid historic drought, causing downstream impacts — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel #GunnisonRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Blue Mesa Dam and reservoir, back in the day. Photo credit: Reclamation

Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Nathan Deal). Here’s an excerpt:

July 15, 2026

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…

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.

Gunnison River Basin. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69257550

#Colorado water officials announce creation of state-run #conservation program: Contribution program will be paid for with $100 million in federal funds — Heather Sackett (AspenJournnlism.org)

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

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

July 16, 2026

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.

Strategic Reservoir Releases Begin to Protect #YampaRiver Water Users and River Flows — Amy Moyer (Colorado River District) #GreenRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado River District website (Amy Moyer):

July 16, 2026

On July 13th, the Colorado River District, in partnership with the Colorado Water Trust and the Yampa River Fund, began releasing water from Elkhead Reservoir to mitigate the impacts of extreme drought and critically low streamflows in the Yampa River Valley. Beginning with a release of 10 cubic feet per second, the releases are part of the Yampa River Reservoir Release Program, a 2,000-acre-foot pool first established in 2021 with funding from the Colorado River District’s Community Funding Partnership. The program is designed to reduce drought-related pressure on agricultural producers while supporting river health and aquatic habitat.

“While we’re experiencing exceptionally difficult drought conditions, the story of 2026 is neighbors and water users working together. No single reservoir, organization or water user can solve this alone,” said Hunter Causey, Chief Engineer for the Colorado River District. “By coordinating releases, operations and water use across the basin, we can stretch a limited supply further and provide meaningful benefits for agricultural producers, local communities and the river.”

Below-average snowfall and persistent summer drought have reduced streamflows and increased water temperatures throughout the Yampa River Basin. Releases through the Yampa River Reservoir Release Program are intended to support agricultural water users, help delay or prevent a call on the river during periods of critically low flow, and benefit designated critical habitat for four endangered fish species. Releases are expected to increase in the coming weeks and continue through July.

“The Colorado Water Trust is an environmental nonprofit, and our work is keeping water in rivers,” said Blake Mamich, Programs Director for the Colorado Water Trust. “In a drought this deep, that same mission means showing up for agriculture. Coordinating closely with the River District and the Division of Water Resources, we can time these releases so a single pool of water helps irrigators extend a tough season and keeps water in Yampa for habitat and fish.”

“This is a difficult year for producers throughout the Yampa Valley, and we wanted to be part of a practical solution that helps the broader community,” said Yampa Basin rancher Matt Boeddeker of Lily Park Land & Cattle. “Water users across Colorado are making hard choices and working together to stretch limited supplies, and like them, we hope to help our neighbors complete critical irrigation and reduce the immediate impacts of drought.”

The Yampa River is primarily supplied by snowmelt from the Flat Tops and Gore Range and flows through agricultural areas of northwest Colorado before joining the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. During dry years, coordinated releases from Stagecoach and Elkhead reservoirs supplement streamflows for agricultural water users, river habitat and endangered fish. The Colorado River District and its partners will continue to monitor streamflow, water temperature, irrigation demand, and habitat needs, and will adjust releases as conditions warrant.

Colorado still has some summer river flows fit for rafting — even in severe drought. Here’s why: While some rivers run at historic lows, major #ColoradoRiver water rights are keeping flows higher — The #Denver Post #COriver #aridification

Recreational vehicle. 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.

“It’s sort of an operational byproduct of how water is managed in Colorado,” said Matt Aboussie, spokesman for the Colorado River District, which is in the process of buying the power plant’s water rights.

The water is a lifeline for rafting companies, said David Costlow, the executive director of the Colorado River Outfitters Association.

Colorado River Basin in Colorado via the Colorado Geological Survey

Making the best of less: Watering efficiently in a Pagosa Country — The #PagosaSprings Sun #drought #SanJuanRiver

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

July 15, 2026

This week, rain returned to Pagosa Country, bringing some relief from the dry heat that dominated June and early July and heralding the start of the summer monsoon season. Weather modeling by the National Integrated Drought Information Center (NIDIS) suggests that the summer monsoon season is likely to bring average or above average precipitation to the region — a bounty compared to the approximately 25 to 50 percent of average precipitation Archuleta County received in last month. The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecasts that drought conditions in the area will improve by Sept. 30, although it suggests that current severe and extreme drought levels calculated by the U.S. Drought Monitor will persist through July.

The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District is currently in drought stage two, which includes a number of restrictions on outdoor irrigation, as well as additional fees for high water use. In stage two, irrigation is allowed only between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. every other weekday, with even-numbered addresses able to irrigate on even-numbered days and odd-numbered addresses on odd-numbered days. Weekend irrigation is prohibited. However, drip irrigation and hand watering edible or ornamental gardens is allowed at all times. Residential water use above 4,000 gallons per month is subject to a two times rate multiplier. PAWSD District Manager Andrew Connor explained that, while the rains associated with the monsoons might eventually impact the district’s drought restrictions, changes would require a large amount of rain and would not be immediate. In the summer, the drought stage is primarily driven by the water level in Hatcher Reservoir, flows in the San Juan River and the date…

PAWSD District Engineer Justin Ramsey explained that the district’s drought management plan focuses on irrigation since it composes a large portion of the district’s water use in the summer and because losing green lawn grass or other plants has a smaller impact on people’s lives than restrictions on showering, dish washing or other indoor water uses…The drought stages in the district’s drought management plan align with this goal, imposing progressively tightening restrictions on when irrigation can occur while placing no restrictions on indoor water use except increasing fees for high water consumption. However, for all but the most severe drought stage, these restrictions only cover irrigation done with sprinklers and other automated devices, with the use of drip irrigation devices and hand watering allowed at all times…Manual and drip irrigation encourage people to be more conscious about how they use water by involving them more deeply in the process and requiring more hands-on time, he added. Another way to increase the water available for gardens and landscaping without paying more fees is to reduce water waste in your home, Connor and Ramsey highlighted.

Colorado Drought Monitor map July 14, 2026.

Should new rules for the #ColoradoRiver save some water for the river itself? — KJZZ.org #COriver #aridification

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.”

Aspinall Unit operations update: Bumping down in Black Canyon #GunnisonRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Black Canyon National Park July 2020. Photo credit: Claire Codling/The Department of Interior

From email from Reclamation (Andrew Limbach):

July 14, 2026

Aspinall Unit Operations Update – Release scheduled change to 1,390 cfs on Wednesday, July 15th.

On Wednesday, July 15th, the adjusted scheduled releases from Crystal Dam will decrease to 1,390 cfs from 1,465 cfs.

Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge will decrease to 360 cfs.

On Thursday, July 16th, the adjusted scheduled releases from Crystal Dam will decrease to 1,315 cfs from 1,390 cfs.

Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge will decrease to 290 cfs.

Reclamation will continue to monitor flows in the Gunnison River, and on Friday, July 17th, the scheduled releases from Crystal Dam may decrease to 1,265 cfs from 1,315 cfs.

Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge would decrease to 250 cfs. An additional notification will be sent out confirming any change after Wednesday.

In response to the extreme drought conditions, the BOR has collaborated with US Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service to reduce the target flows to 500 cfs at Whitewater and 200 cfs through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison until further notice. These releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Aspinall Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the Gunnison while preserving critical storage in Blue Mesa Reservoir.

Contact Andrew Limbach (alimbach@usbr.gov or 970-248-0644) for more information regarding Aspinall operations or the Operation Group meeting.

Forest Service seeks comments on Draft EIS for managing the Sweetwater Lake area: Range of alternatives analyzed

Sweetwater Lake. Photo by Todd Winslow Pierce via The Conservation Fund, https://www.conservationfund.org

Click the link to read the release on the USFS website:

June 26, 2026

Today the White River National Forest released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Sweetwater Lake Recreation Management and Development Project for public review.

The project will determine the recreation management approach for 844 acres at Sweetwater Lake in Garfield County — 433 acres acquired in 2021 through the Land and Water Conservation Fund and 413 acres of previously existing National Forest System lands. The acquisition greatly increased public access, leading the Forest Service to begin developing a proactive management plan to address the potential increase in recreation while maintaining the area’s sensitive resources.

The Draft EIS analyzes four potential alternatives covering a wide range of potential management options for the Sweetwater Lake area. While the draft identifies a proposed alternative, the entire range of alternatives is being considered, and the final plan may be a blend of alternatives.

“Public involvement is an important part of determining the future of the Sweetwater Lake,” said Eagle-Holy Cross District Ranger Leanne Veldhuis. “We developed these alternatives with significant input from the public and other stakeholders.”

The Proposed Alternative would authorize a 20-year special use permit to Colorado Parks and Wildlife to manage the Sweetwater area.

“We have proposed partnering with Colorado Parks and Wildlife because they have the expertise to effectively manage this long-cherished area,” Veldhuis said. “We could achieve more working together.”

The Forest is hosting public meetings to provide additional information and answer questions July 22 at the Glenwood Springs Library, Glenwood Classroom, 815 Cooper Ave; and July 23 at the Gypsum Town Council Chambers, 50 Lundgren Blvd. Both meetings are open house formats, and the public can stop by any time between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.

More information, including the proposal and how to comment, is available at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/whiteriver/projects/284162. Comments need to be received by Sept. 23, 2026…

###

Forest Service FACT SHEET

Sweetwater Lake Recreation Management and Development Project

The draft environmental impact statement for the Sweetwater Lake Recreation Management and Development Project provides a detailed analysis of four potential management alternatives that were developed with public involvement.

The final plan could be a combination of components from any alternative, based in part on public and stakeholder comments.

The White River National Forest developed these alternatives working closely with the public and the project’s Cooperating Agencies: Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Garfield County, Eagle County, and the Town of Gypsum.

Alternative 1 is the No Action Alternative, meaning there would be no change to the current Forest Service management direction or level of management intensity for the Sweetwater Lake area.

Alternative 2 is the Proposed Action, which emphasizes maintaining and improving the existing recreational opportunities at Sweetwater while protecting sensitive resources. The Proposed Action would create eight recreational zones to help spread out recreational use and minimize user conflicts. Colorado Parks and Wildlife would manage the area under a Special Use Permit.

Alternative 3 was developed to consider managing the Sweetwater area with fewer recreation improvements and facilities compared to the Proposed Action. Rather than a state-managed developed recreation site, the objective of Alternative 3 would be to provide a primitive recreation experience with limited facilities and limited staffing. A long-term partnership with Colorado Parks and Wildlife would not be included.

Alternative 4 was developed to manage site capacity to the full potential visitor market availability without limiting visitation. This alternative would contain more facilities and infrastructure to accommodate a greater number of day and overnight visitors than the Proposed Action. Colorado Parks and Wildlife would manage the area under a Special Use Permit.

More information, including the Draft Environmental Statement and how to comment, is available at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r02/whiteriver/projects/284162. Comments need to be received by Sept. 23, 2026.

When oil and gas trump other uses: Sportsmen, conservation groups cry foul as drilling leases are proposed once again on the Roan Plateau — Elizabeth Stewart-Severy (AspenJournalism.org)

A view of the proposed leasing sites on the Roan Plateau from an EcoFlight airplane. CREDIT: COURTESY OF ECOFLIGHT

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Elizabeth Stewart-Severy):

July 10, 2026

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.”

Lake Powell’s bad math persists; USFS greenlights #Arizona mine; Arizona river runs dry: Plus: Faraday’s Copper Creek project has deep-pocketed backers — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

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.

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

July 10, 2026

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

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 a post recapping the Getches-Wilkinson Colorado River Conference from early June I wrote:

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.

Underground mining stope layout [Atlas copco, 2022]. Credit: ResearchGate

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

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 acquire the 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 Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District issues #drought restrictions clarification, #SanJuanRiver data undergoing calibration — The #PagosaSprings Sun

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

July 8, 2026

On July 6, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) District Engineer Justin Ramsey issued a clarification to the district’s stage two drought restrictions, indicating that outdoor irrigation is allowed between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. In his clarification, he explains that the district’s drought management plan had sections that indicated that irrigation was restricted to between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. and sections that indicated the limitation was between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. He adds that the district has now settled on the latter interpretation, which is different from some previous sources of information about the drought restrictions. The other restrictions for drought stage two remain the same. Irrigation is allowed every other day at the designated times on weekdays, with odd-numbered addresses watering on odd-numbered days and even-numbered addresses watering on even-numbered days. Weekend watering is prohibited. Edible and ornamental gardens can still be hand watered or drip irrigated. Residential water use above 4,000 gallons a month is subject to a two times rate multiplier under drought stage two. Restaurants are required to serve water only on request, and hotels are encouraged to only replace towels and bed linens for new guests and at the request of current guests. The goal of drought stage two is to reduce water usage by 20 to 30 percent, according to the PAWSD drought management plan…

The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS’s) water flow monitoring data is the primary window into local river flows, which factor into PAWSD’s drought stage calculations. The primary monitoring station for the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs is located underneath the bridge where U.S. 160 crosses the river near 1st Street. The reported flows have undergone significant recalibrations this month, with flows in the San Juan River appearing at times in later June to drop below the historic low flows in 2002 before being revised upward. These revisions are partially driven by last year’s flooding events, explained Kyle Raimer, who works as a hydrologic technician for the USGS Colorado Water Science Center’s Western Colorado Office in Durango. Raimer stated that the monitoring system sends out a radar pulse every 15 minutes, which contacts the water below the monitor and returns to the sensor, allowing it to measure how high the water level is. The flooding event and other construction work near the site have changed the shape of the channel and altered this relationship between water level and river discharge, Raimer indicated. USGS staff are working to rebuild accurate estimates by taking manual river flow measurements of the river at different water levels, Raimer stated, which can then be used to establish the correct correlations between water level and discharge.

Colorado River Conference recordings and photos are available. Find a picture of your favorite panelist, audience reaction or candid while mingling — Getches-Wilkinson Center #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridifcation

🚨 🎬 Colorado River Conference recordings and photos are available. Find a picture of your favorite panelist, audience reaction or candid while mingling. https://t.co/T97wuaVMIY #gwccololaw #gwcwti2026 #ColoradoRiver #ColoradoRiverBasin #waterlaw #waterpolicy pic.twitter.com/PJa7bmQtJg
— Getches-Wilkinson Center @ColoLaw (@CUBoulderGWC) July 8, 2026

Northern Water Board Approves Changes to #Colorado-Big Thompson Project Tracking Rule Procedures #ColoradoRiver #SouthPlatteRiver

Boulder Creek Supply Canal. Photo credit: Northern Water

Click the link to read the release on the Northern Water website:

June 23, 2026

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

Forget Western Water War: Local Managers Choose Partnership; Collaboration keeps water flowing — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The Arizona Canal cuts through Phoenix. Photo Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton):

July 7, 2026

The Colorado River, from one viewpoint, is a mess.

The iconic waterway, fundamental to the region’s modern existence – its desert metropolises, its high-tech industries, its agriculture, and its recreation economy – is on the verge of crashing. A two-decade drying trend, aided by carbon pollution in the atmosphere and water use that exceeds supply have nearly drained the basin’s liquid savings accounts.

Nature is now threatening to overwhelm human interventions. Lake Powell is 28 percent of its capacity. Lake Mead, just 24 percent. Climate pressures abound in these hot, dry times. A March heat dome obliterated temperature records. Snowpack was the worst on record. At least five fires larger than 25,000 acres are currently burning in the parched basin.

The basin’s seven states, unable to find consensus on how to live with a shrinking supply, are deadlocked after four years of attempting to negotiate the river’s management rules. State and federal authorities are deciding how much less Colorado River water will be available, anticipating that the reductions will hurt. Knowing that water enables economic growth, they don’t want to be viewed as selling out their constituents.

Look closer, however, and the narrative of warring factions fades a bit. At the local level, water managers are collaborating to ensure residents and businesses have adequate water supplies. They are signing multiparty deals and pursuing joint projects to share resources and keep water flowing to homes and businesses. Such dealmaking is not a remedy to all that ails the basin. But it is viewed as essential in a time of deep climate uncertainty and anxiety.

In June, six water suppliers in Arizona, California, and Nevada signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency, to facilitate interstate exchanges of desalinated and recycled water for Colorado River water. The exchanges, taking advantage of spare treatment capacity on the California coast, would introduce new water into a depleting basin.

Earlier this spring, Phoenix, Tucson, and other Arizona water users announced a venture to create an emergency reserve of water for cities facing shortages and to simplify voluntary water transfers in the state – “an easy button” to move water to where it is needed, said Max Wilson, Phoenix’s water resources management adviser.

The Grand River Diversion Dam, also known as the “Roller Dam”, was built in 1913 to divert water from the Colorado River to the Government Highline Canal, which farmers use to irrigate their lands in the Grand Valley. Photo credit: Bethany Blitz/Aspen Journalism

On Colorado’s Western Slope, home to the river’s headwaters, irrigation districts are taking less water this summer than they are permitted in order to share with towns that would have faced supply cuts.

And in New Mexico, Santa Fe’s water utility is in early talks with neighboring pueblos about joint infrastructure for storing water underground, recycling water, and sharing water between systems in case wildfire pollutes a water source and renders it unusable.

“Cities have the ultimate responsibility to make sure there’s tap water,” said Kathryn Sorensen of Arizona State University and the former director of the Phoenix water utility. “And that means they have to be constantly vigilant and constantly innovate and constantly find new arrangements and new supplies.”

These arrangements, while not a new development, have taken on greater significance as the American West struggles through record heat and aridity this year that is an indicator of worsening water supply challenges in the drying region. Based on a decades-long track record, these arrangements also illustrate that neighbors helping neighbors can be a cost-effective form of climate adaptation.

“It makes sense to me that this happens at the local level because that’s where the risk is,” Sorensen said. She cited the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, as another example. CAP delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson and other customers in the state’s populous midsection.

“The risk to the CAP of there not being water in the canal is that the CAP doesn’t deliver water to its contractors and subcontractors,” she said. In other words, a contractual failure.

But for the cities who hold those contracts? A failure to deliver water would hasten a public health and economic crisis. “The risk to a city is there’s no tap water,” Sorensen said. “And that’s just a totally different level of risk. So you see these types of innovations happen at the level where the risk exists.”

Collective Action

Partnerships do not happen spontaneously. They are the product of months and years of discussion, negotiation, and relationship building.

“The biggest challenge is communication, understanding the needs of your partners and clearly their sensitivities,” said Bill Schneider, the Santa Fe water resources manager.

Schneider is part of discussions with four pueblos in the Santa Fe area on joint water infrastructure projects, including water recycling and underground storage.

One clear possibility is that Santa Fe could connect its water system to the Pojoaque Regional Water System, which will serve Pojoaque, Nambé, San Ildefonso, and Tesuque pueblos with Rio Grande water.

Connecting neighboring systems is a form of insurance, Schneider explained. Wildfires are a perpetual risk in the watersheds of northern New Mexico. If a severe wildfire sends ash and debris into the Rio Grande, the polluted water could force water systems to shut off their river intakes. It has happened before on the Rio Grande. The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority had to close its intake for two months in 2011 after the Las Conchas fire. With an interconnected system, water could be delivered to the pueblos from Santa Fe’s other sources, which include the Santa Fe River and groundwater.

Due to the high cost of building infrastructure, system interties and similar partnerships make financial sense, Schneider said. “It means you don’t have to go out and build an entirely new system.”

Wildfires are an annual risk to water supplies in northern New Mexico. Photo © Pablo Unzueta for Circle of Blue

These infrastructure arrangements already exist in many places, but especially in Arizona. Nevada, for instance, has banked part of its Colorado River allocation underground in Arizona for more than two decades.

A decade ago, when Sorensen was the director of Phoenix Water Services, Phoenix and Tucson signed a trailblazing water deal. It allowed Phoenix to bank some of its Colorado River water underground in Tucson. When the water is needed, Tucson will be able to pump the groundwater and, in exchange, Phoenix will take some of Tucson’s share of Colorado River water. The deal, which has not yet had to be exercised, makes the most efficient use of the water treatment capabilities and infrastructure in the two cities.

That agreement, Sorensen said, paved the way for other exchange partnerships in central Arizona. Mesa, in a project completed this year, provides treated wastewater to the Gila River Indian Community in exchange for 8,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water. (An acre-foot – 326,000 gallons – can supply about 3.5 households in urban Arizona for a year.)

In Sorensen’s view, dealmaking is fundamental for utility leaders.

“They’re good horse traders, right?” she said. “That’s part of the job. ‘How can we make a win-win exchange or trade here that makes everyone happy and maximizes the resource?’ The water managers are really good at that.”

The latest iteration is the Secure Water Arizona Program, or SWAP, that Phoenix and Tucson are developing with other central Arizona cities.

Details are still being finalized, but the program will have three components. One is an emergency reserve of water that cities can tap as a last resort. A second piece is facilitating water exchanges between willing sellers and willing buyers. The third element is what Wilson calls “the sandbox” – a forum for collaboration on the next generation of central Arizona water projects.

The idea, said Max Wilson, the Phoenix water adviser, is a form of mutual aid. “At its core, the assumption of the SWAP is that water users shouldn’t be letting other water users go dry.”

Even with the benefits, Wilson acknowledged that collaboration needs to be carefully calibrated.

“People don’t want to see water being forcibly reallocated, for sure,” he said. “People don’t want to see their water going to uses that they necessarily wouldn’t see as beneficial. But when people have legitimate needs, I’ve been really impressed by how the water user community has come together and been willing to say, ‘Let’s talk and let’s figure out what a potentially mutually beneficial solution to those needs could be.’”

Pitkin County commissioners voice initial approval for another water buy: River advisory board recommends against spending $442,500 — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org)

The Roaring Fork River in Aspen on July 8. Pitkin County Commissioners gave initial approval to buying more shares of Twin Lakes water to boost low flows on the Fork. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

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

July 8, 2026

Against the recommendation of an advisory board, Pitkin County commissioners on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to buy more water to boost flows in the often-depleted Roaring Fork River.

Commissioners approved on first reading a resolution and ordinance to spend $442,500 to buy 4.68 shares from the Twin Lakes Reservoir & Canal Co., which is about 3.5 acre-feet of water, according to a staff memo. The deal is in addition to the $6.5 million Pitkin County already agreed to spend earlier this year for about 71 acre-feet from Twin Lakes and another ditch company.

The water is currently taken across the Continental Divide to the Arkansas River basin to be used by entities on the Front Range. The deal would allow the water to be released out of Grizzly Reservoir to Lincoln Creek and could help boost the Roaring Fork through Aspen and upstream, which suffers from low flows in dry years.

“I think it’s really critical that we purchase water rights when we can, and this is an opportunity that we can, and we should,” District 1 Commissioner Patti Clapper said.

Pitkin County has long had a goal of increasing the amount of water in the Roaring Fork, a river that has about 40% of its headwaters diverted to the eastern side of the state through the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System to be used by Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Aurora. These diversions can often contribute to the depletion of the Roaring Fork through Aspen, and purchasing Twin Lakes water represents a rare opportunity to return water to the Western Slope.

Commissioner Greg Poschman said he supports acquiring the water shares.

“I think it’s great that we are doing this,” he said. “I know it’s expensive; there are some raised eyebrows about that, but I think this is something we have to do.”

Poschman added that he was concerned that the Healthy Rivers board members recommended against buying more water and said he would like to fully understand their reasons. County staff said they were trying to schedule a joint meeting with the Board of County Commissioners and the Healthy Rivers board in August.

Members of the county’s Healthy Rivers board, which advises the BOCC, are concerned that the water will have a small impact on river health but a big impact on the program’s budget. The board held a special meeting June 25 to consider acquiring the shares and approved a motion saying the water yield would potentially be only 1 additional cubic feet per second for two days.

“Additionally, the deleterious effects of the purchase price on the long-term fund balance of the Healthy Rivers Fund will reduce the Healthy Rivers Program’s ability to support programs to address other ballot measure mandates, including water quality, ecological health, recreation opportunities, wildlife and riparian habitat, and promoting water conservation,” the motion reads.

The motion goes on to say that in the future, the county should implement a framework for evaluating the true value of water shares to the Roaring Fork.

At Wednesday’s meeting, County Budget Director Connie Baker told the BOCC that the Healthy Rivers board will have to trim or reallocate about $500,000 from next year’s budget to account for the combined impact of this year’s two water purchases.

Healthy Rivers board member Ned Andrews said he is against the purchase, citing the impact that it will have on the program’s budget.

“None of the analysis or details that would justify such a purchase or a strategy going forward has been done,” Andrews told Aspen Journalism. “I think before you commit essentially a quarter of your budget for the next 15 years, you’d want to have an analysis that shows you what could be accomplished. My gut feeling is that it wouldn’t really accomplish much.”

Andrews also opposed the earlier, larger water share purchase, although the rest of the Healthy Rivers board was supportive.

At their regular June meeting, Healthy Rivers board members went through the budget line by line and considered where they could trim, although those cuts have not yet been finalized.

Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers Program is funded by a .1% countywide sales tax, and its mission is to improve the water quality and quantity of the local watershed. The program has funded projects such as beaver inventories, investigating water quality on Lincoln Creek, upgrades to diversion infrastructure and ditches, and an effort at a Wild and Scenic designation on the Crystal River.

Spending big bucks in an effort to rescue rivers is not new for Pitkin County, which has spent at least $3.5 million on the Roaring Fork River Park in Basalt, including a water court battle to secure the water right for recreation, several redesigns of problematic waves, and improvements to the riverbank and boat launch.

Grizzly Reservoir, a forebay that collects water to send through the Twin Lakes Tunnel to the Front Range, sits in the middle of the Lincoln Creek watershed and connects water users on both sides of the Continental Divide. Pitkin County commissioners gave initial approval to a deal that would allow more water to be released from Grizzly for the benefit of the Roaring Fork. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Bond for original purchase approved

The BOCC at Wednesday’s meeting also approved issuing a bond for the original purchase of Twin Lakes shares. That deal cost the county $6.5 million, although only 45 of those acre-feet represent Western Slope water that is currently diverted to the Front Range. The county plans to sell or trade the other 26 acre-feet, which is owned by the Fountain Mutual Ditch Co. in El Paso County and decreed for use on the east side of the divide.

The 45 acre-feet of water can be released down the Roaring Fork during the irrigation season when flows are low, and it must be used by a downstream water user on the Colorado River before the town of DeBeque. Instream flow for the benefit of the environment is not a decreed use of the water.

This year, according to Colorado Water Resources Division 5 Engineer Tyler Benton, at least some of Pitkin County’s Twin Lakes water was released as part of the Colorado River Water Conservation District’s emergency substitute water supply plan, which the district enacted in response to this year’s historic drought. Benton said he expects the River District to provide a full accounting of how much Pitkin County water has been released Friday.

Grizzly Reservoir is currently drained for dam maintenance, which may have affected how much water could be released under the River District’s plan.

At a time when drought impacts are being acutely felt across the state and climate change continues to rob rivers of their flows, for some, the unique opportunity to put water back into a depleted stream is worth the cost.

“This is expensive water, but it’s the only water you can get up at the headwaters of the Roaring Fork,” said Pitkin County Deputy Attorney Anne Marie McPhee. “So that scarcity makes it more valuable.”

The issue is scheduled for a public hearing and second reading July 22.

Native American Tribes Came Together to Secure Their Rights to #ColoradoRiver Water. Four States Are Stalling the Deal — Mark Olalde and Alex Hager (ProPublica.org) #COriver #aridification

A man fills his water tank at a well a few miles from the Hopi village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation.

Click the link to read the article on the Pro-Publica website (Mark Olalde and Alex Hager):

June 29, 2026

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with KJZZ News-Phoenix.

Reporting Highlights

Certainty on the River: Tribes have negotiated a settlement to resolve the largest outstanding claim to the Colorado River, while providing billions of dollars for water infrastructure.

Upper Hand: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — the Upper Basin states — are resisting the deal because it allows the Navajo and Hopi to lease water outside their reservations.

Unfulfilled Promise: It has been 118 years since the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government owes tribes water, but many are still fighting to resolve their rights.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.

The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history — the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe — was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being codified by Congress.

“We have significant unresolved concerns with the legislation that may affect each of our states’ rights to and interests in Colorado River water,” negotiators for Utah and Wyoming wrote in March to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in a previously unreported letter. New Mexico and Colorado sent similar letters.

Those four states, known collectively as the Upper Basin, are at a stalemate with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada over new rules governing how they share the Colorado River, a key water source for nearly 40 million people. Congress and the White House, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, have declined to approve the settlement until all parties reach an agreement.

For 83-year-old Marilyn Tewa, the stalemate means her family will continue to go without running water. Tewa serves on the Hopi Tribal Council, where her duties include working on the water rights agreement, but her village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation, lacks indoor plumbing.

Every other day, she loads 5-gallon buckets into her pickup and drives 5 miles to a windmill originally built for livestock that draws untreated water from underground.

“That’s what keeps us alive,” Tewa said, tapping the spigot on a May afternoon.

Back home, Tewa bustled about her kitchen while her daughter kneaded dough for dinner. There’s no faucet in the kitchen, which is decorated with a framed American flag and a painting of a katsina, a figure with spiritual significance in Hopi culture. Instead, the family stores water in large plastic containers. Because of the lack of indoor plumbing, the Tewa family and its neighbors use portable toilets that stand among the houses.

If passed into law, the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Actwould resolve the largest outstanding claim on the Colorado River while providing about $5 billion in federal funding to build infrastructure to transport the water across the reservations. The legislation would also go beyond water rights, creating a reservation for the San Juan Southern Paiute. The tribe’s effort to secure a permanent homeland was added to the settlement due to their difficulty getting it through Congress independently.

“That’s my prayer,” Tewa said, “that we get this settlement through for all three tribes.”

Marilyn Tewamain sits in her chair inside her home Saturday afternoon. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

The tribes need pipes, pumps and treatment plants to use the water secured through the settlement. To defray the cost beyond the federal government’s expected contribution, the Navajo and Hopi plan to lease some of their water rights, almost certainly to growing towns around Phoenix. The towns would pay to use the tribes’ water for a set number of years.

While the Lower Basin states support the settlement, the Upper Basin states have latched onto this provision in particular as they stand in the way of the settlement.

The Colorado River’s upper and lower basins don’t precisely follow state borders. Some states have portions in both sections, and the line dividing the two basins cuts across northeastern Arizona and directly through the Navajo reservation. If water moves across that line, they argue, the rules governing the river give them veto power over the settlement. (It’s an open legal question whether approval from all seven states is necessary.)

The Upper Basin states fear that, in the future, water they currently control might be leased on an open market. They view any monetary transaction that moves water downstream as setting a precedent that could allow the highest bidder — possibly thirsty cities with money such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas — to buy vast quantities of their water.

In an effort to assuage that concern and close the deal, the Navajo and Hopi made major concessions over the volume of water and length of time they could lease. The tribes also offered to leave some of their water in one of the river’s drought-depleted reservoirs to help keep water levels high enough that it could continue flowing downstream. But the Upper Basin has not wavered in its opposition.

Tewa’s family travels 5 miles each way to haul water in 5-gallon plastic buckets from a well initially drilled for livestock. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix reached out to the governor, senators and lead negotiator from every Upper Basin state for comment. Utah’s and Wyoming’s lead negotiators deferred to the letter they co-signed. A spokesperson for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that the tribes addressed most of the state’s concerns but that questions remain as to whether the water that the tribes would lease to Arizona cities could be counted as part of what the Upper Basin states are legally required to send to the Lower Basin. “New Mexico remains committed to finding a workable solution,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also said the state is “committed to finding a path forward” and pointed to the letter that Becky Mitchell, the state’s lead river negotiator, submitted to Congress. Mitchell wrote that the settlement’s leasing provisions violate laws governing the river and that the state was concerned about what the sale of water across the basin would mean for “the security and certainty” of Colorado’s share of the river.

Heather Tanana is an assistant professor at the University of Denver’s law school, where she focuses on federal Indian law. She is also a citizen of the Navajo Nation and said the Upper Basin is “trying to hide behind” how the river has traditionally been managed rather than find a way to give the tribes access to a resource that is rightfully theirs and one that they need to survive.

“It’s a fundamental human rights issue,” she said.

While negotiations drag on, the three tribes continue waiting for water they say will help them to build more housing, grow sustainable economies, better protect public health and preserve cultural practices.

The Hopi believe their ancestors return as clouds to bring the rain that nourishes their corn, but drought is wracking the region. An overreliance on groundwater has dried up springs that have been used for ceremonies and agriculture for centuries. When the settlement brings more water to the reservation, Tewa said, aquifers will have a chance to recharge, restoring the springs.

“I’m speaking on behalf of my children, my grandchildren and their children that haven’t come yet,” she said. “I hope, in the future, that they will have water.”

The village of Mishongnovi, which Tewa represents on the Hopi Tribal Council, sits atop a rocky mesa. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

Tewa washes her hands with untreated water she hauled from a well. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

Fighting for Water Since Elvis Was on TV

That the settlement even reached Congress seemed like a small miracle to those involved.

The 30 federally recognized tribes with land in the Colorado River Basin are estimated to have a right to at least a quarter of the river’s flow. But there’s little incentive to hand tribes the water to which they are entitled. Their rights are the most senior on the river, meaning in times of shortage everyone else would see their water cut before the tribes. But because the tribes currently use a fraction of their water, farmers, cities and businesses are able to use the rest for free.

If the tribes were to use every drop to which they are entitled, the system of sharing the river that supports more than $1 trillion in annual economic output would collapse.

“Everybody’s getting free Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute water right now. The seven basin states are all benefiting in the absence of a settlement,” said Ethel Branch, a former Navajo attorney general who was involved in the negotiations, adding that the water had been “stolen for over a century.”

In 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that, if the federal government confined tribes to reservations, then it owed them enough water to sustain an agrarian economy on that land. But securing that promised water, referred to as “Winters rights,”has proven arduous.

Tribes were excluded from the compacts that apportioned the river. The Navajo in particular were barred from joining a seminal case quantifying other users’ rights, and members of the tribe themselves rejected a proposed settlement in 2012 when they viewed the deal as unfair. So the tribe went back to the Supreme Court, asking that the justices force the federal government to quickly settle the claims. The Navajo once again lost, with the court’s majority deciding that their treaty with the U.S. didn’t require the government to take any “affirmative steps” to deliver the water it owed the tribe.

“At each turn, they have received the same answer: ‘Try again,’” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote of the Navajo in his dissent. “When this routine first began in earnest, Elvis was still making his rounds on The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Arizona politicians and tribal leaders have since concluded that they needed to combine all three tribes’ claims to finally settle their rights.

That was no simple feat. The Navajo and Hopi have long had a contentious relationship. Underlining their thorny partnership, leaders of various tribes around the region have accused Navajo, the largest tribal nation in the U.S., of flexing their political strength to the detriment of other tribes.

About a third of homes on the Navajo Nation lack the pipes and other infrastructure necessary to deliver running water, including near Page, Arizona, close to a large reservoir on the Colorado River. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

Arizona also historically clashed with local tribes over water. The state often inserted unrelated provisions into proposed settlements, which some tribes viewed as poison pills and had the effect of stalling the agreements.

But Navajo and Hopi struck a deal, and Arizona moved off its bargaining position. Now in lockstep, the settlement’s supporters turned to Congress, only to hit more roadblocks: The House of Representatives balked at the spiraling price tag to fund the deals; presidential administrations were unwilling to expend political capital on such settlements; and more than a dozen settlements are in the works, clogging the system. (No settlement has been enacted since 2022.)

“Partisanship has gone to a new low in this country, and Indian water settlements have gotten swept up into that,” said Pam Williams, who spent about two decades as director of the Secretary’s Indian Water Rights Office in the Department of the Interior before she retired last year.

In November 2024, as President Donald Trump prepared for his return to the White House, the tribes believed they had an opening to get their settlement through Congress while President Joe Biden was still in office.

Navajo leadership had supported the Democratic presidential ticket and feared the incoming administration would be vindictive toward them.

Every basin state’s lead negotiator, tribes’ staff and a federal representative descended upon the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ offices in Phoenix for what several attendees described as a “Hail Mary.” At the meeting, the Navajo offered a major compromise: limiting how much water they could lease and for how long they could lease it.

But the Upper Basin states showed up with a list of grievances, multiple attendees told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix, and weren’t interested in negotiating over the Navajo leasing concessions.

“It’s difficult for the Upper Basin to wrap their heads around this settlement,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s Colorado River lead.

Navajo President Buu Nygren says the fact that his tribe’s reservation straddles the upper and lower divisions of the Colorado River Basin should not be held against the tribe as it negotiates for water. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

In March 2026, leaders from the tribes traveled to Washington for a Senate hearing where they made an impassioned plea for Congress to pass a version of the bill that now included the concessions they had offered in the Hail Mary meeting. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who ran the hearing, expressed support for the settlement but worried its $5 billion price tag was too high, a concern echoed by an Interior Department official who testified. (The tribes and department are currently negotiating to shrink that cost.)

All four Upper Basin states submitted comments opposing the settlement. Their main concerns were about the ability to lease across the basin and whether the water for the settlement would be counted against the upper or lower division of the river.

Leasing would last only as long as it’s needed to pay for infrastructure to distribute their newly acquired water, said Navajo President Buu Nygren. It would not set a precedent, he said, because no other tribe straddles both basins.

“We shouldn’t be punished for being in two basins,” Nygren said, “because other tribal nations, other settlements have been able to lease water.”

A construction crew installs pipes at the new LeChee Water Treatment Plant near Lake Powell, along the Arizona-Utah border. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

The former Navajo Generating Station’s intakes, which drew water from Lake Powell to cool the coal power plant, sit unused, awaiting funding from the stalled settlement. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

“How Precious Water Is to Us”

During the decades that the tribes fought to access their water, they helped quench the thirst of growing cities in the Colorado River Basin.

A water intake plant on Navajo land drew from Lake Powell to cool the nearby Navajo Generating Station. The coal plant powered pumps for the Central Arizona Project, the 336-mile series of canals that sends Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson.

The power station shut down in 2019, and the intake plant was handed over to the Navajo for the iiná bá-paa tuwaqat’si pipeline, which means “for life” in Diné and “water is life” in Hopi, to deliver water to the three tribes. But for now, the massive pumps remain mothballed, the building sitting musty and dark like a tomb, and the pipeline remains an engineering schematic, waiting for funding from the stalled settlement.

The irony is not lost on tribal leaders, they told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix: After helping deliver water beyond their lands, they are now blocked from using that same water and infrastructure to sustain their communities. The insult is compounded, they said, by the fact that water use is drastically lower on reservations.

“It’s not about green-grass lawns or golf courses or swimming pools,” said Crystalyne Curley, speaker of the Navajo Nation Council. “It’s just basically turning on the faucet and getting water to boil eggs for your children or turning on a faucet to wipe and clean the table or washing your hands after butchering a sheep.”

San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr. is fighting for the settlement because it would finally ratify a treaty with the Navajo that would create a reservation for his tribe. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly

For the San Juan Southern Paiute, the settlement is also about having a permanent homeland. They have no reservation but struck a deal with Navajo in 2000 to transfer some of its land. Since the tribes already reached an agreement, it’s an uncontroversial proposition. But, without political clout to get Congress to take it up, the land transfer was pulled into the water settlement.

“During the COVID era, it took a lot of the tribal elders, and there are only a handful that saw the treaty signed and are really wanting to see this before their time is up,” said San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr., whose father signed the 2000 agreement. Finally securing a reservation, he said, means the ability to build housing and develop an economy for a tribe that currently rents its government building.

Nearby, on the Hopi reservation, Councilmember Marilyn Fredericks grabbed a pair of hiking poles, donned a hat with a roadrunner pin on it and set out from her village on a recent spring afternoon. To stay fit as she grows older, she walks up and down the hand-carved steps of a terraced garden that used to produce food for her community.

Seven natural springs once fed the garden, but only two still flow. Ponds that stored their excess sit dry, stains on the rock now just a memory of the water. It’s been six years since there was enough to plant.

The settlement would fund a pipeline that would be “our umbilical cord,” Fredericks said. Future generations of Hopi have a right to clean, reliable water, she said. “This is evidence of how precious water is to us.”

Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR

This year’s ‘peak:’ record-low runoff leaves reservoirs far below normal; Dillon, Williams Fork and Antero reservoirs hit hard — Jay Adams (DenverWater.org) #SouthPlatteRiver #ColoradoRiver

Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website (Jay Adams):

June 24, 2026

The full impact of this past winter’s record-low snowpack is rearing its ugly head in the form of:

Record-low spring stream flows.

Low reservoir storage levels.

An empty reservoir.

And one incredibly rare statistic.

On June 17, Denver Water’s reservoir system hit its peak storage level following a diminished spring runoff.

Water levels in the utility’s reservoirs collectively hit 81% of the system’s storage capacity — the second-lowest peak storage level on records dating back to 1983, considered the beginning of the modern Denver Water collection system.

“Peak storage” is the moment, or day, when the utility’s collection system holds the most water it will hold for the next year. It’s akin to topping off a swimming pool once a year in June to carry the pool through the next year of use.

Typically, the “peak storage” moment happens in mid-June, after the spring runoff.

But in 2026, due to the record-low winter snowpack and low spring runoff, Denver Water’s collection system held more water on Jan. 1 — 83% of capacity — than on June 17, as the runoff dwindled and storage levels inched to 81% of capacity.

There’s only one other year since 1983, when the Strontia Springs Dam was completed, that Denver Water’s storage was higher in the dead of winter than the dawn of summer — the drought year of 2002.

“Having our highest amount of water happen in January is incredibly rare. It speaks to how little snow we saw this winter and the impact of the record-setting warm weather,” said Nathan Elder, Denver Water’s manager of water supply.

“We’ve seen many records fall this year, and unfortunately, they were not good ones.”

Dillon Reservoir reached 80% capacity on June 17, the highest elevation it is expected to see in 2026. Dillon is the largest reservoir in Denver Water’s collection system, storing roughly 38% of the utility’s water supply. Photo credit: Denver Water.

During the spring peak, the amount of water stored in Denver Water’s reservoirs typically hits an average of 97.5% of capacity.

And since 1983, the utility’s peak storage levels have hit at least 95% of capacity (considered sufficient for normal operating conditions) in all but six years.

“Ideally, we like to top off our mountain reservoirs during the spring runoff, but this year our storage levels came up well short,” Elder said.

Record low ‘paycheck’

Why do water managers focus on peak storage numbers?

The peak reservoir storage figure is critical to determining how much water is available until next year’s spring runoff. It’s comparable to a family determining how much money they have to pay the bills until the next paycheck comes through.

“The spring runoff is our annual paycheck from Mother Nature,” Elder said. “The water filling our reservoirs is the cash that fills our bank account. But in our case, that paycheck only comes once a year — and this year we didn’t get anywhere close to the normal amount.”

Tenmile Creek in Frisco, as it enters Dillon Reservoir on June 12. Denver Water saw record low flows into the reservoir in 2026. Photo credit: Denver Water.

This year’s meager paycheck was reflected in the record-low peak flows on the rivers and streams that feed Denver Water’s reservoirs.

Mountain snowmelt accounts for 90% of Denver Water’s supply, which provides water to 1.5 million people in metro Denver.

In Summit County, Denver Water recorded this year’s peak stream runoff into Dillon Reservoir at just 404 cubic feet per second, or cfs, on May 29. That’s a record-low “peak inflow” and less than a quarter of the normal peak inflow into the reservoir of 1,750 cfs, which typically happens on June 7.

In Park County, the South Fork of the South Platte River experienced a double-whammy, with record-low flows that occurred abnormally early in the season.

Flows on the South Fork peaked on March 25 at a record-low flow of just 18 cfs. That’s 15% of the normal peak flow of 120 cfs, which usually happens on June 10.

The South Fork of the South Platte River south of Fairplay on May 22. The river peaked at a record low flow of just 18 cfs in 2026. Photo credit: Denver Water.

“In a typical year, the rivers and streams start rising in late-April as the snow starts to melt, then they peak in early June, and then they start to ease back to normal flows throughout the summer,” Elder said.

“This year the runoff started about six weeks early in March, and the normal spring surge of water we usually see was basically nonexistent.”

Reservoir impact

The results of the record-low spring flows are having a significant impact on three of Denver Water’s most popular reservoirs.

Dillon Reservoir in Summit County topped off on June 17 at 80% of capacity, with water levels about 18 feet below normal for this time of year. Water levels are expected to drop over the next year until the 2027 spring runoff — hopefully more boisterous than this year’s meager flow — begins.

Dillon Reservoir in Summit County reached 80% capacity on June 17. This picture shows the low levels at the Snake Inlet on the southeast corner of the reservoir on June 12. Photo credit: Denver Water.

In Grand County, Williams Fork Reservoir topped off June 21 at merely 53% of capacity, about 35 feet below normal for this time of year and forcing the closure of the reservoir’s boat ramp.

At the Williams Fork Reservoir in Grand County, the boat ramp will be closed all summer due to low snowpack and record-low runoff. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Because of the low snowpack, Denver Water also dipped into its emergency water supply at Antero Reservoir in Park County.

Using water from Antero Reservoir is only done in extremely dry years. It’s comparable to someone having to dip into their 401(k) savings to pay bills until their next paycheck.

Denver Water moved water out of Antero this spring and sent it downstream to Cheesman Reservoir to avoid losing water in shallow Antero due to evaporation.

Denver Water moved water from Antero to Cheesman reservoir in 2026 to reduce losses from evaporation. The water in Antero Reservoir, pictured above, is only used in extreme dry years. Photo credit: Denver Water.

Early forecasts for the abysmal spring runoff and low peak storage were two factors that led Denver Water to issue a Stage 1 drought declaration in March.

The declaration, which calls on customers to reduce water use by 20% and includes mandatory watering restrictions of two assigned days per week, seeks to stretch existing water supplies until next spring’s paycheck is deposited in the reservoirs.

“While the reservoirs are low this year, they are doing what they were built for, which is to help us get us through a dry year,” Elder said.

“We hope customers notice the low reservoir levels and take steps to conserve water at home so we can stretch our water supplies over the coming months.”

How sports betting became #Colorado’s ticket to funding $140 million in water #conservation projects: Colorado’s gamblers are paying for new irrigation systems, reservoirs and water research studies — The #Denver Post

Maybell Irrigation District’s headgate on the Yampa River, September 2022. Photo credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism

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

June 18, 2026

For the 18 ranchers who rely on the Maybell Irrigation District’s canal to funnel water to their fields, the 127-year-old headgate that diverted flow from the Yampa River meant a two-hour round trip through a rocky canyon whenever they needed water. The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal. Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways. The district received a $750,000 grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said Diana Lane, sustainable food and water program director for The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said. In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control. The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.

“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,’” Lane said of that initial state grant.

Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.

In revitalizing the #ColoradoRiver Delta, a little goes a long way — Daniel Stolte (University of #Arizona) #COriver #aridification

Cottonwood habitat in the El Chaussé restoration site. Trees are nine year old in this image from 2026. Photo credit: Martha Gomez-Sapiens

Click the link to read the article on the University of Arizona website (Daniel Stolte):

June 18, 2026

Today’s Colorado River Delta is a far cry from the lush waterway that thrived before the river was forced behind dams that diverted much of its flow for half a century. Now, with just small amounts of water and funding, stretches of the parched riverbed have been transformed into healthy riparian habitats.

Click the graphic to download a copy of the report.

A new report from a University of Arizona-led team of researchers has evaluated the effects of the 2014-2025 controlled water releases along the lower Colorado River in Mexico to restore natural habitat. The report also lays out a roadmap for continuing the current binational restoration efforts. The report was published today by the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.

“It’s hard to find some good news about the Colorado River, but we believe we have some to share,” said first author Karl Flessa, professor emeritus in the U of A Department of Geosciences. “The lessons learned from more than a decade of work show that a small amount of water can do big things.”

The controlled water deliveries to the Colorado River streambed from 2014-2025 were mandated by two addenda of the U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty of 1944, which governs the allocation of Colorado River water between the two countries. The current addendum expires at the end of 2026.

To ensure the restoration sites continue to thrive, Flessa said sustaining this binational success will require a renewed commitment of water and funding by the United States, Mexico and non-governmental organizations.

The report reveals that bird numbers and diversity have increased since restoration began in 2014. The delta is an important rest stop for birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. Beavers and other wildlife have also increased.

The restoration of the Colorado River Delta began in 2014, in the form of a so-called pulse flow, a one-time water release from Morelos Dam that lasted 57 days. Before that, the riverbed below Morelos Dam was dry. The pulse flow was conducted to allow researchers to assess the effects on the ecosystem once water returned.

The pulse flow of 2014 kickstarted a concerted, binational effort to systematically restore riparian habitat along certain stretches of the formerly dry river delta. Environmental NGOs, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, developed three designated restoration sites by terrain-shaping and planting of native riparian vegetation, including cottonwood trees, mesquite trees and willows – species that once dominated the landscape when the Colorado flowed through a healthy delta.

In 2019, AZPM produced a story on revitalizing the Colorado River delta five years after the 2014 pulse flow.

“These NGOs actually have nurseries on site, in which they germinate an array of Sonoran Desert riparian plants. Those seedlings are then planted and carefully irrigated according to the habitat needs,” said Martha Gomez-Sapiens, a U of A research scientist and co-author on the study. “In some cases you will see irrigation drip lines that go to each individual tree – a system designed to maximize water efficiency in this desert environment.”

Subsequent creation, irrigation and maintenance of 1,381 acres of riparian vegetation attracted birds and other wildlife. Deliveries to the river channel raised water tables, supported existing vegetation and increased the length of the flowing river.

In addition, local communities have benefited from recreational, educational and job opportunities. All three restoration sites have visitor programs that cater to local communities and schools, and one – the Laguna Grande complex, managed by the Tucson-based Sonoran Institute – even boasts a visitor center. All offer recreational opportunities in a region dominated by water scarcity.

While the pulse flow of 2014 demonstrated the feasibility of revitalizing former habitats with controlled and planned water releases, the authors conclude that releasing large amounts of water during a limited timeframe has limited benefits for a long-term revitalization of the delta.

“Most of the pulse flow water infiltrated into the groundwater before it could be used by new vegetation,” Flessa said. “Since then, we have learned how to use the water more efficiently for restoration of riparian habitat.”

Importantly, the report points out that restoration sites are not self-sustaining. Revitalizing degraded river habitat will require continuing maintenance, occasional water allocations and monitoring.

According to the authors, just 6,890 acre-feet per year, which represents approximately 0.05% of the Colorado’s total annual average flow, would suffice to preserve the existing restoration sites. With a little more water and a little more funding, the number or size of the sites could be increased even more, according to the report.

“Effective and sustainable habitat restoration can be done with a little bit of water, a small amount of funding and a lot of hard work.” Flessa said.

Other co-authors on the report are Eduardo González-Sargas in the Department of Biology at Colorado State University and Roberto Real Rangel, of The Nature Conservancy in Mexicali, Mexico.

Fig. 1. The Colorado River Basin covers parts of seven U.S. states as well as part of Mexico. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey

Archuleta County adopts septic system requirements — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver

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

July 1, 2026

The Archuleta County Board of Health (BoH) held a special meeting on June 15 to consider approval of Regulation 43, pertaining to on-site wastewater treatment system (OWTS), also known as septic systems…

According to the regulation attached to the meeting agenda, “The purpose of these Regulations is to establish the minimum standards for the location, design, construction, performance, installation, alteration, and use of OWTS with a design capacity equal to or less than 2,000 gallons per day within the Jurisdiction.”

[…]

It also states that the regulations apply to all OWTS in the unincorporated areas of the county and over all municipal corporations within the territorial limits of Archuleta County.

Furthermore, it explains that an “OWTS permit must not be issued to any person when the subject property is located within a municipality or special district that provides public sewer service, except where such sewer service to the property is not feasible according to the determination of the municipality or special district, or the permit is otherwise authorized by the municipality or special district.”

The document explains that Archuleta County Water Quality Department “may enter upon a private property at reasonable times and upon reasonable notice for the purpose of determining whether or not an operating OWTS is functioning in compliance with the OWTS Act and applicable regulations adopted pursuant thereto and the terms and conditions of any permit issued and to inspect and conduct tests in evaluating any permit application.”

Some good #ColoradoRiver news, some bad news, and a request for help — John Fleck (InkStain.net) #COriver #aridification

Confluence of the Little Colorado River and the Colorado River. Climate change is affecting western streams by diminishing snowpack and accelerating evaporation. The Colorado River’s flows and reservoirs are being impacted by climate change, and environmental groups are concerned about the status of the native fish in the river. Photo credit: DMY at Hebrew Wikipedia [Public domain]

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

June 18, 2026

A grab bag from my friends and colleagues working on Colorado River issues….

The good news

From friend of Inkstain Karl Flessa (the guy who helped get me started thinking about the Colorado River Delta), a new analysis concluding that despite the terrible hydrology and political difficulties, environmental restoration work in the delta is working:

The bad news

From my Wilbury’s colleagues, based on Jack Schmidt’s indefatiguable work on Colorado River reservoir storage:

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. Credit: Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River

A request for help

And from friends of Inkstain Jason Robison, Matt McKinney, and Doug Kenney, a request for your input on a survey of folks attitudes toward the Colorado River Post-2026 management process.

USDA chief: Give me more cattle in the national forests!; Plus a Messing with Maps look back at the summer of 1776 — Jonathan P. Thompson

An AUM — i.e. a cow and a calf — in the Lisbon Valley in southeastern Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

July 3, 2026

🐮 Grazing Gazette 🥩

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.”

#Climate, conflagrations, and calamities: Plus: A little meditation on the water-energy-ag nexus — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Satellite imagery of some of the major fires burning on the afternoon of June 29, 2026. Source: NOAA Wildland Fire Data Portal.

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

June 30, 2026

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

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.

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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.

Instagram video here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DaKFedwOcXQ

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.

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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.

Climate change’s coal-smudged fingerprints — Jonathan P. Thompson

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.

Explainer: Warming planet, failing grid — Jonathan P. Thompson

Oregon wildfire knocks out power line — Jonathan P. Thompson

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Colorado River Collaborative

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The Land Desk News Feed

⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭 🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

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1. We’re not doomed. Earth is resilient

2. Those who don’t learn from history…

3. The Upper Basin states aren’t doing enough

4. Alfalfa isn’t (always) the enemy

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Colorado’s new conservation program adds pressure to cut water use

Colorado’s new conservation program adds pressure to cut water use

Mapping tool helps plan conservation

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A dangerous threshold

A test of the cost gap

Rise in demand

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Conservation concept is not new

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