As the Upper Division States negotiate ways to equitably and sustainably manage the Colorado Riverโs future supplies, their water users face the harsh reality of living within the riverโs 21st-century limits.
This year, in New Mexico, the San Juan Chama project received 31% of their normal Colorado River water supply, a 69% reduction, which is used by Albuquerque and Santa Fe, as well as for agricultural purposes.
โThe San Juan-Chama Project contractors are absorbing unavoidable natural hydrologic shortages and have had to learn how to operate under constrained supplies, higher costs, and mounting climate pressures,โ said Diane Agnew, the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authorityโs Water Rights Program Manager. โThis ongoing uncertainty in water availability is placing significant strain on water users, challenging infrastructure investments, and disrupting water management strategies that are critical to our communities and economy.โ
In Colorado, the Dolores Water Conservancy Districtโs water users faced cuts of up to 44%. Thousands of acres remain fallowed both on the Ute Farm & Ranch and north towards Dove Creek.
โOur farmers are left with year-by-year gambles with last-second planning going late into May and limiting farmersโ abilities to make long-term, successful crop rotation planning,โ said Ken Curtis, GM of the Dolores Water Conservancy District. โThe Dolores snowpack is disappearing, and the historic runoff has dropped by even greater magnitudes. Water is no longer reliably available.โ
2025 marks the fifth year out of the last eight years with shortages impacting the Conservancy District. Many acres have remained fallow since 2021, when available project water supplies dropped to zero. Local farmers did not have the time and resources to bring fields back into production prior to this current shortage โ all of their shortages are uncompensated and involuntary.
The District supplies water to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribeโs Farm and Ranch Enterprise. The Tribe was forced to turn off irrigation spigots to 60% of their land and lay off farm workers. The crop plan for 2025 only included the existing, high-value alfalfa needed to sustain the Farm & Ranch Enterprise [FRE].
โWe [FRE] are merely surviving, not adapting,โ said FRE irrigation manager Michael Vicente when responding to his view of the historic drought. Severe water shortages in Utahโs Uintah Basin, driven by Colorado River cuts, are forcing ranchers to reduce cattle herds, raising production costs and straining the local economy.
โSpring runo๏ฌ was dismal at best. Early 1900s era water rights only received a week or two of natural flow delivery. Shortages were so severe that in some basins, they even a๏ฌected senior 1861 water rights.
These shortages are directly impacting cattle production,โ said Dan Larsen, Board Member at the Colorado River Authority of Utah. โRanchers are being forced to cut back their herds, which not only raises costs for producers but also ripples through our entire local economy.โ
Hydrologic shortage is also impacting Utahโs Demand Management Pilot Program, which is exploring voluntary, compensated water conservation in the Colorado River system in Utah. For example, the Central Utah Water Conservancy District enrolled 4,500 acre-feet of water in the program; however, the water rights held by the District were cut in priority on June 8, much earlier than the typical mid-summer cut, resulting in only around 900 acre-feet being delivered to the Program.
Agricultural producers are weighing potential impacts from hydrologic shortage on their operations as they consider participating in conservation-related pilot programs Nick Sampinos, a farmer along the Price River, said โPersistent drought conditions are a constant challenge, however, the Utah Demand Management Pilot Program has provided us with much needed assistance and set the stage for economic sustainability of our farming operation well into the future.โ
In Wyoming, historic drought and Colorado River shortages have driven the Blackโs Fork River down to a 1891 priority date, forcing the state to regulate o๏ฌ water rights to more than 52,000 irrigated acres in 2025 in that drainage alone.
โThis year, more than 163,000 acres of irrigation were shut o๏ฌ in Wyomingโs portion of the Green River Basin,โ said Kevin Payne, Division IV Superintendent of the Wyoming State Engineerโs O๏ฌce. โThis is an extraordinary reduction with serious impacts on producers and rural communities across southwest Wyoming.โ
The Upper Basin has consistently used less than its legal entitlement through strict water administration. The four states of the Upper Basin remain committed to continued work in implementing and expanding water management initiatives, including accounting for conservation-related activities in 2026.
The Upper Basinโs sacrifices arenโt abstract; they carry real human and economic consequences. As Colorado River negotiations continue, Upper Basin leaders are clear: river operations must adapt to the actual supply and prioritize rebuilding storage to restore resiliency.
About the Upper Colorado River Commission (UCRC):
The UCRC is an interstate administrative agency made up of duly appointed representatives from the four Upper Division States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Army Corps, for fourth consecutive year, authorizes anย underwater damย to keep salt water from moving up the Mississippi River in Louisiana.
A cold-water flow experiment atย Glen Canyon Damย to disrupt non-native fish downstream will end within a week.
Senate passes aย defense spending authorization billย with water-related provisions.
And lastly, EPA sits on a โforever chemicalโ toxicity assessment, ProPublica finds.
โDo not make American families pay the price for Trumpโs war on affordable American energy.โ โ Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) speaking on the Senate floor to rally votes to end President Trumpโs national energy emergency. Heinrich and his Democratic colleagues faulted the White House for increasing electricity prices by cancelling wind and solar projects and fully supporting data center developments, which consume large quantities of electricity. Yet, the Democratsโ effort to repeal the emergency declaration failed.
River Mile 53.1: Approximate location of the front of the saltwater โwedgeโ that is pushing up the Mississippi River, in southern Louisiana, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. If the wedge moves far enough upriver it will endanger drinking water supplies for communities that draw from the river. Chloride concentrations are higher in the trailing sections of the wedge. The Corps estimates that the point at which they exceed EPA drinking water standards is 15 to 25 miles behind the wedge front.
News Briefs
Saltwater Barrier The Army Corps of Engineers, for the fourth consecutive year, has authorized the construction of an underwater dam across the bottom Mississippi River as a way of keeping salt water from the Gulf of Mexico from moving upriver and spoiling municipal water supplies.
A contractor is building the dam at river mile 64. As of October 10, the front of the saltwater wedge was estimated at river mile 53.1.
Salt water intrudes when river flows are too feeble to push it out. These low-flow conditions have happened in the late summer or early fall every year since 2022.
Because salt water is heavier than fresh, the intrusion happens along the bottom of the river, which is why the temporary earthen dam is placed across the river bed.
If salt water moves too far upstream, it will contaminate the water supply for communities whose intake pipes extend into the river. In 2023, the Army Corps barged 153 million gallons of fresh water to communities in southern Louisiana that were affected by the saltwater intrusion.
Senate Passes Defense Spending Bill The Senate passed a bill that authorizes defense spending for fiscal year 2026. The bill also has a number of water-related provisions.
It requires the Defense Department to conduct a pilot wastewater surveillance study at four or more military installations. The goal is to test wastewater for substances that would identify drug use among service members or the presence of infectious disease. (Wastewater surveillance grew in prominence as a testing tool during the Covid pandemic.)
It establishes a working group on โadvanced nuclearโ technologies that could power desalination facilities.
It requires a report on energy and water use for any data center built or expanded on military property.
It repeals a moratorium on the burning of PFAS substances, including firefighting foam.
The bill includes an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) that requires NASA to pay for new drinking water wells for the Eastern Shore town of Chincoteague. The townโs existing wells were contaminated with PFAS when the land was owned by the Navy. That land has since been transferred to NASA.
Studies and Reports
EPA Sits on โForever Chemicalโ Report An EPA report on the toxicity of PFNA โ one of the thousands of PFAS in circulation โ was ready to be published in mid-April, ProPublica reports. But the agency has not yet released it.
PFNA is one of six PFAS that the Biden administration decided to regulate in drinking water. The Trump administration announced in May that it would attempt to reverse that decision for four of the chemicals โ including PFNA.
On the Radar
Glen Canyon Dam Flow Experiment The Bureau of Reclamation began releasing cool water from the depths of Lake Powell in mid-August.
The cold water is meant to disrupt smallmouth bass spawning downstream of Glen Canyon Dam. Smallmouth bass are a non-native species that federal agencies and their partners are attempting to rein in to protect threatened native species like the humpback chub.
The cold-water flow experiment is set to end by October 20.
Because the cold-water flows bypass Glen Canyon Damโs turbines, the dam has been producing less power. That means more power purchased on the market. According to the Western Area Power Administration, which markets federal hydropower, purchased power expenses are โsignificant.โ WAPA opposed the cold-water release plan, arguing the end date should be October 1, which would reduce purchased power costs.
Sales of hydropower fund the operation and maintenance of Glen Canyon Dam.
Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
I was wrong, and woefully so. I want to apologize for that and let you know how remorseful I am: I dearly, dearly wish that I was right. But alas โฆ
See, back in November I wrote a dispatch about what to expect from the incoming Trump administration, particularly concerning public lands and the environment. It actually turned out to be fairly accurate on the public lands stuff, but there was this one offending paragraph that, I fear, may have lulled some of my readers into complacency (when they should have been preparing to resist). Here it is:
Oh, boy. Trump has been in office for less than nine months, and already heโs checked off all of the boxes that naive little me figured (and hoped) he would never dare even attempt. He and Goebbels-clone Stephen Miller and friends are going full-on fascist and trampling on the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution in general, they are prosecuting political opponents, they are using the โDepartment of Warโ to target the โenemy within,โ they are suing and bullying the media for reporting the truth and making fun of him, and they have engaged in a brutal โ and performative โ intimidation and terror campaign against immigrants and anyone who โlooksโ like they might be an immigrant. Making it even worse, the President of the United States treats it all like some sort of joke, acting like a pre-pubescent middle school bully while posting stupid videos portraying he and Russell Vought (a primary architect of Project 2025, which Trump disavowed during the campaign) as the grim reaper out to destroy Americaโs democracy (and the economy).
So, yeah, I was way off. Apologies for my naivety.
But I was right about one thing. I predicted Trump would practice governance by spite. He has, and done it to the extreme. Not only are his words malicious, but so are his policies, fueled by a lust for vengeance. His tariffs are aimed at punishing other countries (even though they ultimately only punish American consumers and businesses โ even his beloved oil and gas industry).
His quest for โEnergy Dominanceโ is anything but that. Sure, heโs trying to help out his fossil fuel tycoon buddies, but I think heโs even more interested in retribution against the โlibsโ and the environmentalists that takes the form of an all-out assault on the environment, the climate, public lands โ and everyone who cherishes or depends on these things. If he wanted to bolster energy, he would have at least stood aside and let the burgeoning solar and wind do their thing alongside fossil fuels by taking an โall of the aboveโ approach. Instead, he has done everything possible to stifle these energy sources, simply because they are cleaner than coal and gas. He shut down the Solar for All program, thus denying thousands of low- and middle-income families access to rooftop solar and a smidgeon of their own energy independence and lower utility bills. Whereโs the dominance in that?
And now the Trump administration has canceled some $8 billion in federal funding for clean energy, efficiency, and grid reliability projects across the nation, many of them in the West. And while one might think that this is just another assault on clean energy (which it is), or maybe a way to slash expenses to pay for tax cuts for billionaires (that, too), itโs primarily motivated by, yet again, revenge: The cuts were limited to states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Yes, you read that correctly. While funding was zeroed out for blue states, identical projects in neighboring red states were left untouched. He is doing this to punish Democrat-leaning states, but the victims end up being small and large businesses that banked on those funds, the folks who work for those firms, the environment, and ultimately folks like you and me who will see our utility bills increase (because someone has to pay for those grid upgrades). And guess what? You wonโt be saved just because youโre in a red congressional district.
This is not normal, nor is it politics as usual.
In fact, the funding that the Trump administration is taking away from individuals, organizations, and businesses, was allocated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which Congress passed during the Biden administration. The vast majority of the funding from those bills went to Republican states and districts that voted for Trump in 2024. The funded projects created thousands of new jobs across the country and added up to billions in investment in communities in the Phoenix area, along Coloradoโs Front Range, in Nevada, and elsewhere.
Iโm not saying all of these projects were wonderful, or that theyโd all succeed. Some were full on boondoggles, others would inflict more harm than good. But the funding was approved by Congress, and the organizations that received them were banking on them, had invested a great deal of their own money into the funded projects, and had built up workforces. For the administration to then take back the money, some of which had already been spent, for purely political, vindictive reasons, is both wrong and cruel.
And if you think that this is just for a bunch of solar panels, think again. Hereโs a list of some of the biggest projects that were defunded (which includes some funds that Trump had previously cancelled).
$2.2 billion: Amount rescinded for hydrogen fuel production and distribution hubs in California and the Pacific Northwest.
$70 million: Amount rescinded from Xcel Energy toย installย 1,000 megawatt-hour iron-air battery energy storage systems in Colorado and Minnesota.
$50 million: Amount rescinded from the Tribal Energy Consortiumโs Ignacio, Colorado-based program aimed at reducing methane emissions from tribal owned and operated oil and gas wells and facilities located on tribal lands.
$326 million: Amount rescinded from Colorado State University for aย projectdesigned to develop methods for reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells.
$15 million: Amount rescinded from Kit Carson Electric Cooperative in northern New Mexico for a grid resilience project.
$6.6 million: Amount rescinded from Navajo Transitional Energy Company for studying and developing a carbon capture retrofit project for the Four Corners coal-burning power plant in New Mexico.
Hundreds of millions of dollars more are being clawed back from Portland General Electric, Southern California Edison, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the Imperial Irrigation District, and the Electric Power Research Institute โ the list goes on and on. But it never extends to similar projects in red states.
Even as Energy Secretary Chris Wright was announcing the funding cuts, for example, his department went forward with a $2.23 billion loan for Lithium Americas and its contentious Thacker Pass mine in Nevada (which voted Republican in the last presidential election). In exchange, the administration took a 5% equity stake in both the company and in the firm. Never mind that the project is opposed by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, the Burns Paiute Tribe, and the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, as well as by numerous environmental groups, and that the price of lithium is lower than itโs been since 2021. Go figure.
๐ต Public Lands ๐ฒ
As expected (and as I correctly predicted would happen), the Trump administration is busy unraveling environmental protections and resource and travel management plans for public lands around the West. The most recent targets include:
The Bureau of Land Managementโs Rock Springsย resource management planwhich covers about 3.6 million acres of public lands in southwestern Wyoming, including the Red Desert. A solid, common-sense plan was first released about two years ago that aimed to push energy and other development away from the most sensitive areas. It was years in the making, and was a compromise. And yet, Wyomingโs right-wing was up in arms, saying it was too restrictive. That prompted the BLM to go back to the drawing board and incorporate more public input. They came back with a far less restrictive plan, a compromised compromise, I guess you could call it. Thatโs not enough for the current administration and their industry donors, however: The BLM is going to revise it again, this time to bring it in line with Trumpโs โUnleashing American Energyโ agenda.ย More details and commenting instructions here.ย
The BLM is โreassessingโ the off-road route designations in its Labyrinth/Gemini Bridges travel plan that includes about 300,000 acres of slickrock-covered public lands near Moab. The new plan was issued late in 2023, and left a whopping 800 miles of roads and trails opened to motorized travel. The off-road-vehicle lobbyย sued to overturn the plan, but were shot down in court. You have until Oct. 24 toย comment on this one.
During water year 2025, drought moved into and intensified throughout most of the Interior West. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor.
๐ฅต Aridification Watch ๐ซ
The 2025 water year has come to an end (on Sept. 30), and while we know it was a fairly lousy one for most of the Western U.S., the data is now beginning to come in letting us know just how lousy it was. Some of the stats arenโt updated yet, and may not be for a while, thanks to the government shutdown and the Trump administrationโs fear of the word โclimate.โ
For the most part, the water year started out quite nicely, precipitation wise, with above โnormalโ amounts of rain and snow falling in October and November. But that was followed by a severe lack of snow, a dry, warm spring, and a late-to-arrive monsoon. The snowpack deteriorated, spring runoff was weak, and drought intensified under the hot, dry sun of summer, with only a bit of relief finally arriving in September.
Resulting low streamflows led to a 33-foot drop in Lake Powellโs surface level during the water year. Here are the charts and the numbers:
8.08 million acre-feet: Total Lake Powell inflows, water year 2024 (Unregulated inflows = 7.98 MAF)
3,578 feet: Lake Powellโs surface elevation on Oct. 1, 2024
5.14 million acre-feet: Total flows into Lake Powell during the 2025 water year. (Unregulated inflows = 4.69 MAF)
3,545 feet: Lake Powellโs surface elevation on Oct. 1, 2025
11.96 MAF: Inflows during water year 2023
21.65 MAF: Inflows during water year 1984 (the highest since Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1963).ย
9.85%: Percent of the Western U.S. that was experiencing severe to exceptional drought at the beginning of the 2025 water year.
44.12%: Percent of the Western U.S. that was experiencing severe to exceptional drought at the end of the 2025 water year.
๐คฏ Annals of Inanity ๐คก
You just canโt make this stuff up. MAGA-world is rife with conspiracies about the Charlie Kirk killing last month, which is hardly surprising. I guess itโs tough for some folks to believe that some 22-year-old Mormon kid from a Republican, gun-loving family could assassinate a right-wing entertainer and provocateur on his own. He must have had help from that ever-elusive Antifa (which is not an organization, but simply a shortening of the term anti-fascist). Or maybe it was Mossad โ a favorite theory among a certain sect of the right wing.
But then thereโs Candace Owens, MAGA podcaster and Crazytown mayoral candidate. Sheโs raising the possibility that Phil Lyman was involved in the plot to assassinate Kirk. Yes, that Phil Lyman: the former San Juan County Commissioner who gained notoriety after leading an ATV ride โ with Ryan Bundy and his โmilitiaโ buddies making a cameo โ down Recapture Canyon just days after the Bunkerville standoff. Lyman has since swerved further and further into MAGA-land, served as a Utah state representative, received a pardon from Trump, and hurled some conspiracy-laden accusations of his own after losing the gubernatorial election to Gov. Spencer Cox.
I tried to listen to Owensโ argument and alleged evidence (including the link, with a suggestion not to click on it) regarding Lyman and couldnโt make any sense of it. But I guess Owensโs following is big enough for folks to take it kind of seriously. Even Cox, whom Lyman has assailed with accusations of his own, took to social media to defend his right-wing rival. Meanwhile, Iโll be making some popcorn while I wait to see how this one plays out.
On a day in late May [2022] when wildfire smoke obscured the throat of an ancient volcano called Shiprock in the distance, I visited the Ute Mountain Ute farming and ranching operation in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Farmers, ranchers and other water users in four Western states, including Colorado, are cutting back on water use because of low flows through the Colorado River Basin.
Less than half the normal amount of water flowed into Lake Powell from the Upper Basin states โ Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming โ this summer. Farmers in the four-state region fallowed fields and changed their crop plans to adapt to a smaller water supply. The dry summer conditions coincided with high-stakes negotiations over how the water supply for 40 million people will be managed starting in August 2026.
In the Upper Basin, officials are trying to emphasize the existing shortages that happen each year as natural water supplies are strained by a changing climate.
โThe Upper Basinโs sacrifices arenโt abstract; they carry real human and economic consequences,โ the Upper Colorado River Commission said in a news release Wednesday.
About 2.6 million acre-feet of water flowed into Lake Powell from the Upper Colorado River in April through July. Thatโs 41% of the average from 1991-2020, according to the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to three households. Itโs enough to cover a 1-acre field in 1 foot of water.
For the entire water year โ from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30 โ about 4.69 million acre-feet ran into Lake Powell from the Upper Colorado River. Thatโs 49% of the 30-year average, according to the center. It was the seventh driest year since 1963, when the center started making forecasts.
Wyoming shut off water to more than 163,000 acres of irrigated land in the stateโs portion of the Green River Basin, according to the river commission news release.
โThis is an extraordinary reduction with serious impacts on producers and rural communities across southwest Wyoming,โ said Kevin Payne, Division IV superintendent of the Wyoming State Engineerโs Office.
Severe water shortages in Utahโs Uintah Basin, driven by Colorado River cuts, forced ranchers to reduce the size of cattle herds, raised production costs, and strained the local economy.
The San Juan Chama project in New Mexico, which provides water for Albuquerque, Santa Fe and agriculture, received 31% of its normal Colorado River supply, a 69% reduction.
In southwestern Colorado, farmers that use Dolores Water Conservancy Districtโs water have dealt with shortages in five out of the last eight years. In early June, water users were set to receive 30% of their usual water supply. That increased to 56% in part because of a better-than-expected June runoff, Ken Curtis, general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District, said.
Because of the shortages, farmers in Dolores County, Montezuma County and the Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch have stopped growing crops on thousands of acres of land and struggled to bring fallowed land back into production as dry conditions continue.
โOur farmers are left with year-by-year gambles with last-second planning going late into May and limiting farmersโ abilities to make long-term, successful crop rotation planning,โ Curtis said in the news release. โThe Dolores snowpack is disappearing, and the historic runoff has dropped by even greater magnitudes. Water is no longer reliably available.โ
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribeโs Farm and Ranch Enterprise, one of Coloradoโs largest farming operations, stopped irrigating 60% of their land and laid off farm workers. The crop plan for 2025 only included the existing, high-value alfalfa needed to sustain the farm and ranch.
โWe are merely surviving, not adapting,โ Michael Vicente, the enterpriseโs irrigation manager, said about the historic drought.
These shortages are uncompensated and involuntary, the Upper Colorado River Commission pointed out. Thatโs a sticking point for the Upper Basin states in the interstate discussions over how to manage the river.
The Lower Basin states proposed a plan that includes mandatory water cuts in every basin state in the riverโs driest years.
Upper Basin officials say they should not have to make mandatory cuts. Each year, farmers and ranchers receive less than their legal allocation of water because of natural fluctuations in precipitation, temperature and other environmental factors.
For decades, Upper Basin water users have handled these fluctuating water supplies without getting paid for the losses, officials say.
โAs Colorado River negotiations continue, Upper Basin leaders are clear,โ the Upper Colorado River Commission news release said. โRiver operations must adapt to the actual supply and prioritize rebuilding storage to restore resiliency.โ
A seventh climate monitoring station in the Yampa Basin Atmosphere and Soil Moisture Integrated Network was dedicated on Oct. 6, 2025, near the Colorado Mountain College campus in Steamboat Springs. Colorado Mountain College/Courtesy photo
Land above the Colorado Mountain College campus buildings in Steamboat Springs is now home to the latest climate monitoring station in the Yampa Valley.
The new station site, valued at $115,000 including all equipment and installation costs, was dedicated during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday. The new site represents a growing network of hydro-meteorological stations in the Yampa River basin that are beneficial for the study of and tracking climate resiliency factors.
The station is the seventh installation in the YBASIN network, or the Yampa Basin Atmosphere and Soil Moisture Integrated Network. The goal of organizers is to eventually complete 30 stations spanning the Yampa River watershed from the headwaters of the Bear River in the Flattop Mountains to Fortification Creek west of Craig. Site investigations for two additional stations targeted for 2026 are underway.
YBASIN is a project of nonprofit Yampa Valley Sustainability Council and the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, or CW3E, which is part of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego. The center is a key partner in managing the network and analyzing the data collected.
โWe are working hard to steadily grow YBASIN in order to monitor changing conditions in our region connected to our changing climate,โ said Jayla Poppleton, YVSC resilient water and watersheds director. โItโs critically important that we understand how aridification and dry soils are impacting runoff and water availability for our communities, agricultural producers and ecosystems.โ
The new station is the first in the network to be placed within Steamboat city limits. The new location fills a data gap for a portion of the watershed that lacked existing measurement and provides hands-on learning opportunities for CMC students.
โThe goal of YBASIN is to establish long-term soil moisture data to better understand how dry soil conditions impact snowmelt runoff across the watershed,โ CW3E Director Marty Ralph said. โAs extremes continue to impact precipitation โ and correspondingly spring runoff and water availability โ a continuous record will support more accurate water supply forecasting and help inform critical management decisions.โ
The first station was installed near Stagecoach Reservoir in 2022. During 2023 and 2024, the network grew by five additional stations including in the Trout Creek basin, lower Elk River watershed, along the Yampa River at Carpenter Ranch near Hayden and the Elkhead Creek drainage. A sixth station, known as Red Creek, was installed south of Steamboat Lake in August.
Funding for the network was provided by the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, Colorado River District and Colorado Water Conservation Board.
โThe YBASIN network is a critical investment in the effective management of local water resources,โ said Andy Rossi, general manager of the conservancy district. โBy enabling direct data collection in the Yampa Valley, it will enhance forecasting capabilities for water managers. These improved forecasts will benefit agricultural producers, municipalities and the ecosystems that rely on dependable water supplies.โ
Itโs the beginning of a new water year, and to mark the occasion, Great Basin Water Network and its partners, including the Glen Canyon Institute and Living Rivers, released a list of recommendations for how to โlimit the Colorado River Conflict.โ
The primary โconflictโ in this case is the growing rift between supply and demand: The Colorado Riverโs collective users are pulling more water out of the system than the system can supply. That leads to other conflicts, most notably between the Upper and Lower Basins and between the states within each basin, over who should bear the brunt of the necessary cuts in consumption of at least 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year. The states have until mid-November to come up with a post-2026 plan, though itโs not clear what will happen if they miss the deadline.
It may seem like a straightforward mathematical problem with a simple solution: Divide the necessary cuts up proportionally between all seven states. For example, if all seven states cut their 2022 consumptive use by 15%, it would add up to about 1.57 million acre-feet and seems equitable. But the history of consumption and diversion, along with the so-called Law of the River, made up of the 1922 Colorado River Compact and other subsequent compacts, agreements, and legal decisions, thoroughly muddy the water, so to speak.
Letโs go through the proposed solutions and Iโll elaborate a bit more there:
Recommendation 1: Forgo New Dams and Diversions
This is a no-brainer. Reality and nature are forcing the Colorado Riverโs users to pull less water out of the river, not more, and every dam and diversion built upstream of Lake Powell will result in less water reaching the reservoir, which is currently less than one-third full.1
And yet, there are myriad proposals for new dams and diversions in the Upper Basin, from the Lake Powell Pipeline to the Green River Pipeline. (Check out GBWNโs interactive map here). While some of these projects are, pardon the pun, mere pipe dreams, others are serious proposals.
The projectโs proponents justify them by pointing out that the Colorado River Compact allocated the Upper Basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water from the river each year (or half of the presumed 15 MAF in the river2), yet together those states use only about 4.5 MAF annually, meaning, in theory, they have another 3 MAF at their disposal. Furthermore, the Upper Basin has complied with another Compact provision requiring them to โnot cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.โ3
Thing is, thereโs not 15 MAF of water in the river, nor was there even back when the Compact was signed, so the 7.5 MAF figure is essentially meaningless. Furthermore, the Upper Basin has met its downstream delivery obligations only by significantly draining Lake Powell, so it isnโt by any stretch of the imagination sustainable.
Rec. 2: All States Need Curtailment Plans
The Lower Basin has a curtailment schedule, or a plan for when cutbacks need to be made, by how much, and who needs to make them, all based on the Law of the River and water right priority dates. For example, when Lake Meadโs surface level falls below 1,050 feet, releases from the dam are reduced, and the Lower Basin goes to Tier 2a cutbacks, which includes Arizona giving up 400,000 acre-feet, Nevada forgoing 17,000 acre-feet, and so on. Californiaโs cuts donโt kick in at this level because it has the most senior rights.
The Upper Basin doesnโt have this sort of curtailment schedule. Again, they can justify this by saying they arenโt using their legal allocation, and they are meeting downstream delivery obligations, so why bother with curtailment? In fact, current Upper Basin plans call for more consumption, not less. But again, consumption is exceeding supply, period, so everyone is going to need to cut back. Best to do it in an orderly fashion.
Rec. 3: The โNatural Flowโ Plan Wonโt Work Until There Are Better Data
Federal and state officials need to bolster data collection on the Colorado River and more precisely monitor consumption. Without that, thereโs no way that the โSupply Drivenโ or โNatural Flowโ plan will work.
What that proposal does, by the way, is divide the river up according to whatโs actually in the river. The Upper Basin would release from Glen Canyon Dam a percentage of the rolling three-year average of the โnatural flowโ โ an estimate of what flows would be without any upstream diversions โ at Lee Ferry. While this plan has been deemed โrevolutionaryโ and a major โbreakthrough,โ there are still a lot of sticking points, like what percentage would each basin receive, and whether there would be a minimum delivery obligation and what that might be.
But none of that matters without an accurate estimate of the natural flow.
One of the biggest data gaps concerns evaporation. While evaporation from Lake Powell and a handful of other reservoirs is estimated and factored into the Upper Basinโs consumptive use, the same is not true for the Lower Basin โ or for many other sources of evaporation.
The report says:
Rec. 4: Alter Glen Canyon Dam to Protect the Water Supply of 25 Million People
Virtually all of the water released from Glen Canyon Dam currently goes through the penstocks and the hydroelectric turbines, thereby generating power for the Southwestโs grid. That becomes no longer possible when the reservoirโs surface level drops below 3,490 feet, or minimum power pool. In that event, water could only exit through the lower river outlets, which are not designed for long-term use, and could fail catastrophically.
The groups call on the feds to alter the dam to remedy the situation, and specifically suggest drilling bypass tunnels around the dam to release water, which effectively would turn the dam into a โrun-of-the-riverโ facility, meaning reservoir outflows would equal inflows and there would be no storage capacity.
Other possibilities include operating the dam as a โrun-of-the-riverโ facility when its surface drops to 3,500 in elevation (thus allowing the turbines to continue operating), or re-engineering the river outlets for long-term use and possibly to feed into the turbines.
Rec 5: Curtailing Junior Users to Serve Tribes
This is not a radical concept by any means. It simply is saying that the 30 some tribal nations in the Colorado River Basin should get the water to which they are entitled, just like any other senior water rights holders.
Rec. 6: Tackle Municipal Waste and Invest in Reuse Basinwide
Another pretty obvious one. The report recommends following Southern Nevada Water Authorityโs lead on this, which makes sense, given that theyโve managed to cut overall consumptive use even as the Las Vegas-area population has boomed.
Native fish populations, including the humpback chub, Colorado River pikeminnow, and razorback sucker, have declined significantly in the age of large-scale dams and diversions and mass non-native fish stocking. Theyโve avoided extinction, in part thanks to federal programs (funded in part by revenues from Glen Canyon Dam hydropower sales), thus far, but remain imperiled. The humpback chub, in particular, is threatened by smallmouth bass escaping from Lake Powell due to lower water levels; the non-natives prey on the native fish below the dam and in the Grand Canyon.
The report calls on federal agencies to consider abandoning storage in Lake Powell, drilling diversion tunnels, and going to a run-of-the-river scenario. Short of that, they urge management changes, including fish screens and sediment augmentation.
Rec. 8: Make Farms Resilient to New Realities
It might surprise some observers that this report never once mentions hay, alfalfa, livestock, or even golf courses, and does not suggest banning any specific crops. Rather, it calls for agricultural adaptation, economic diversification (including installing solar on some fields), and building more resilience and demand flexibility into operations.
The report recognizes the important role farms play in the Colorado River Basin. They are the largest consumers of water with some of the most senior water rights, meaning they will be โvital for stabilizing water supplies in times of drought and feeding the nation in the winter months for decades to come.โ But also, wildlife and ecosystems such as the Salton Sea have come to depend on agricultural runoff and even leaky ditches. Shutting off irrigation altogether will have potentially dire environmental consequences.
Farmersโ adaptation must be supported by federal, state, and local governments, and, โthese farmers must be able to choose how to adapt for the future themselves. They know their land and business models the best.โ
This is a big one, but also a very difficult issue, because as Colorado River consumption is reduced, farmers and cities and other users tend to turn to groundwater pumping. And, since groundwater and surface water are intimately connected, this can lead to further declines in the Colorado River system (along with other impacts such as the earth actually sinking as aquifers are depleted). A study from earlier this year found that groundwater supplies in the Colorado River Basin are declining by about 1.3 million acre-feet per year.
The report urges state and federal governments to put a tighter leash on groundwater pumping โ in parts of Arizona it goes unregulated and virtually unmonitored โ and begin managing it โwith the understanding that it is all one conjunctive source.โ
I asked Glen Canyon Institute Executive Director Eric Balkan whether adopting these suggestions would require tossing the Colorado River Compact into the rubbish bin of history. โI donโt think this means throwing out the compact,โ he replied. โBut it does mean adapting to the river we have, not the one assumed in the compact.โ
And that means changing or throwing out many of the terms of the compact. The 7.5 MAF division becomes obsolete, as does the 75 MAF-every-ten-years downstream delivery obligation. In fact, itโs hard to see how a fixed downstream delivery obligation is possible under the new reality; rather it would be a percentage of the natural flow. And without that sort of delivery obligation, Glen Canyon Dam loses one of its primary purposes.
โGlen Canyon Dam was built in the era of excess water to meet a specific accounting obligation,โ Balkan said. โToday, there is no more excess water and the accounting obligation is going away. So letโs start the conversation about the post Lake Powell future.โ
Screenshot from Carbon Mapperโs carbon dioxide and methane plume visualizer. This shows the north side of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and the methane plumes (blue) and carbon dioxide plumes (red) emanating from the Blanco Hub Complex, a major natural gas processing, refining, pipeline, and storage network.
๐บ๏ธ Messing with Maps ๐งญ
Todayโs featured cartography is a fascinating and alarming interactive mapvisualizing methane and carbon dioxide emissions from oil and gas wells, coal power plants, coal mines, cattle feedlots, landfills, and, sometimes, from the bare ground.This one is unique because it shows the actual plumes, not just symbols representing emissions, which somehow makes it more real and scary.
Itโs a bit frightening not only because it reveals so many sources of greenhouse gases, but also because we know that if a leaky oil and gas well is oozing methane, itโs also probably emitting volatile organic compounds and other nasty pollutants that can harm human health. The map includes the date(s) the images were made along with the rate of emissions.
Cattle feedlots and methane plumes in Californiaโs Central Valley. Source: Carbon Mapper.
โ๏ธ Wacky Weather Watchโก๏ธ
Last month, the skies opened up over Globe and Miami, Arizona, dumping nearly four inches of rain and triggering calamitous flash-flooding that killed three people, wrecked homes, and carried away cars and multiple propane tanks from an LP gas distribution facility.
Miami and Globe are dyed-in-the-wool mining towns. Miamiโs little downtown seems on the brink of being swallowed up by Freeport-McMoranโs massive Miami copper mine, while Globe, with its stately brick and stone buildings, was clearly the more prosperous of the two sister communities. Theyโre both pretty gritty in an appealing (to me) way in that they defy the manicured suburban sprawl ubiquitous on the other side of the Superstitions. They sit down in drainages that are almost always dry, except when a lot of rain falls on the arroyo-etched, sparsely vegetated hills. In this case, the flooding was made worse by a nearby wildfire burn scar.
Pinal Creek, which runs through Globe, ballooned from a dusty trickle to a 5,670 cfs torrent on Sept. 27. The San Carlos River east of Globe did much the same thing after nearly a year of complete dryness. The big water wreaked havoc, destruction, and death. Adding to the tragedy: Many residents reportedly didnโt have flood insurance.
1 One might argue that dams merely store excess water from wet years so that it can be used in dry years and so they donโt really count as a diversion or an increase in consumption. The problem on the Colorado River, however, is not a lack of storage, itโs a lack of water. Even huge water years like 2023 failed to even get close to filling up the systemโs two largest reservoirs: Lakes Powell and Mead. If you build more upstream dams, then even less water will reach those reservoirs.
2 The Colorado River Compact actually assumes that there is an average of 18 million acre-feet per year, and allocates 7.5 MAF to the Upper Basin and 7.5 MAF to the Lower Basin, but also adds the option of increasing the Lower Basinโs allocation to 8.5 MAF. This still leaves room, theoretically, up to 2 MAF for Mexico. Even back in 1922, however, the river didnโt actually deliver that much water.ย
3 During the 10-year period from 2015 to 2024, the Upper Basin delivered about 84 MAF to the Lower Basin, meaning theyโve lived up to their obligation and then some.
Click the link to read the article on the KUTV website (Samantha Hoffman & Liv Kelleher). Here’s an excerpt:
October 2, 2025
After a dismal snowpack, sustained drought conditions, and a relatively weak monsoon season, southern Utah is preparing for the possibility of a water shortage. A newly proposed conservation plan outlines what the county will require municipalities to do should reservoirs run low. Washington County is experiencing its second driest year in over 130 years, according to the Washington County Water Conservancy District. 2025 was just .2 inches of rainfall above the driest year on record in 1956.
Zachary Renstrom, the general manager of WCWCD, said they put this plan together proactively in case drought or other emergencies threaten reservoir levels. The water shortage contingency plan, released Wednesday, would require each city to decrease its water use by a set percentage. Local leaders would individually decide how to accomplish this reduction. If municipalities fail to reach that reduction rate, they could face punitive pricing, ranging from a 300% to 500% increase from the standard.
โWe are just preparing for a hotter, drier environment to make sure that we always have safe drinking water,โ Renstrom said.
The plan is currently being reviewed by leaders within the countyโs eight municipalities for approval. It would be implemented only in the case of a severe water shortage in the county…The Washington County Water Conservancy District will present the contingency plan in a public meeting on Oct. 28.
As five staff members clad in Colorado Parks and Wildlife gear departed from the swim beach area [October 4, 2025], it didnโt take long for the answer to be revealed. Once the first buoy was pulled from the water, two adult mussels were found. They were sent to the lab to confirm whether they are zebra or quagga mussels. It was a bummer of a day for CPW staff.
โWe did expect to see some mussels but pulling that very first buoy out and seeing the big mussel on the bottom was really disheartening,โ Highline Lake State Park Manager Ashlee Wallace said. โEspecially, after working so hard over the past two years.โ
[…]
The discovery of the two mussels came after more than two years of various attempts to eradicate the invasive species from the lake, which had become the first and only body of water in the state to be infested with mussels in October 2022. That started a series of moves that included chemical treatments to the lake, lowering the water level 27 feet to do more chemical treatments, then during those routine end-of-season tasks, more mussels were found in October 2023. Thatโs when CPW made the decision to completely drain the lake in hopes of eradicating the mussels for good. With Saturdayโs discovery, itโs clear that all the previous moves were for naught.
Adult Zebra mussel. Photo credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife
Water sits low behind Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona, on November 2, 2022. A new report calls for urgent changes to Colorado River management, including modifications inside the dam. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):
October 1, 2025
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
A new report from a coalition of environmental nonprofits is calling for changes to Colorado River management and urging policymakers to act more quickly in their response to shrinking water supplies.
The reportโs authors stress a need for urgent action to manage a river system that they say is โon the cusp of failure.โ
โWe are looking at serious, chronic shortages,โ said Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. “And we don’t just mean one day in a couple of decades. We could see a crash on the Colorado River as soon as two years from now, or less.โ
A crash, they said, could mean water levels so low in the nationโs largest reservoirs that major dams areย rendered inoperable, leaving some cities and farms withย less water than they are legally owed. To stave off that crash,ย the reportย includes nine recommendations, including calls for major cutbacks to water demand.
Its authors focused largely on three things: reducing water use, modifying the plumbing inside Glen Canyon Dam, and changing the process by which new rules for sharing water are decided.
State leaders throughout the Colorado River basin seem to agree that significant cutbacks are needed, but conversations about who exactly should make those cutbacks often devolve into finger pointing. The nonprofits behind this new report say each state needs to be more specific and come up with a โcurtailment planโ about how it could use less water within its borders. They acknowledge that drawing up those cuts will likely be a complicated and painful process, but a necessary one.
โYes, it’s bad, but there’s a path through it,โ said Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. โThe solution to this problem is actually simple. It’s not going to be easy, but it is simple. Don’t pull more water from the river.โ
Their suggested approach also means hitting the brakes on new dams and diversions. The report tallied 30 proposals for new water development in the riverโs Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. Now, its authors say, is not the time to stretch an already-strained river system even further.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
The reportโs second major proposal is to re-engineer Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Lake Powell. The nationโs second-largest reservoir has dropped to record lows in recent years, and itโs currently about a quarter full. If water levels drop much further, they could fall below the intake for hydropower generators inside the dam. Further, they could drop below any pipes that allow water to pass through the dam. That could jeopardize the ability to send water to major cities downstream, like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
In years when reservoir levels threaten to drop that low, federal water managers have shuffled water into Lake Powell from other upstream reservoirs. The new report says more permanent fixes, like the construction of new pipes inside the dam, are needed.
โThose reservoir levels are not a conspiracy,โ Frankel said. โThere’s not really any debate about whether there’s water in those reservoirs. A solution of, โHey, let’s just keep the reservoirs higher and avoid having to deal with this epic plumbing challengeโ is absurd.”
The Colorado River flows through Grand County, Colorado on Oct. 23, 2023. A new report calls for states to plan for curtailments to water use as the river shrinks. Alex Hager/KUNC
The reportโs authors did not mince words in their critiques of the current system for agreeing on new water management rules.
โWe’re so far away from meeting the moment right now,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network. โThe moment might as well be on another planet.โ
Negotiations about sharing the river are stuck. The current rules for managing Colorado River water expire in 2026, and the seven states that use it are on the hook to come up with new ones. Negotiators from those states have been meeting for years now, and donโt appear to be close to a deal despite mounting calls for new policies, a steadily shrinking river and a fast-approaching deadline.
โWe’re so clearly not addressing the depth of challenge we’re facing,โ Frankel said of the negotiators. โAnd what we’re asking is, is it because of the process?โ
Under the current structure, the reportโs authors say, those negotiations lack transparency. Environmental groups, farmers, city leaders, Native American tribes and others who will have to deal with the consequences of negotiatorsโ decisions have mostly been left on the outside looking in.
โWhat we want is honest debate and discussion,โ Roerink said. โThere’s not even a meaningful regulatory process going on where we can debate, scrutinize, vet, and provide meaningful ideas about how we’re going to manage the nation’s two largest reservoirs.โ
The coalition of nonprofits that co-signed the report includes Glen Canyon Institute, Great Basin Water Network, Living Rivers, Utah Rivers Council and Save the Colorado.
Their work joins a number of similar calls for action that have been released in recent months. A September letter from former officials and academics said urgent changes are needed to protect Glen Canyon Dam. That same group released a memo in May calling for states to embrace some โshared painโ and agree on cutbacks.
Other outside groups โ including a coalition of Native American tribes and a large collection of environmental nonprofits โ have made their own suggestions for the next phase of river management. It is yet to be determined how or if their ideas will influence those closed-door negotiations.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The Colorado River District (CRD) hosted its annual Water Seminar on Friday [October 3, 2025], bringing together water leaders, politicians and city officials for a variety of discussions and activities. The seminar, titled โAcross Dividesโ, was held at Colorado Mesa University, focusing on candid conversations and solution-focused dialogue to address water issues. The audience included agricultural producers, water providers, local and state government leaders, non-profit representatives, community members and CMU students.
โOver the course of today, weโve leaned into the conference theme of โAcross Divides.โ Weโve explored spaces where perspectives donโt always align, where there are divides in language, where there are divides in theory, where there are divides in practice,โ said CRD Chief of Strategy Amy Moyer during her closing remarks…
The keynote address was given by CRD General Manager Andy Mueller, who discussed the challenges facing the Western Slope and Colorado River Basin as well as the work being done by the district and its local partners and the Shoshone water rights situation. He also discussed the impact of shrinking supplies and interstate pressures on Colorado…The โLost in Translation: Interstate Divideโ panel represented agriculture, drinking water, tribal nations and environmental interests from the Upper and Lower Basins, examining how the new supply-driven model proposal could shape the future of the Colorado River…
Moyer encouraged attendees to implement three actions in their lives to make sure the seminar leads to positive results.
โFirst, follow up with the contacts that you made with the people at your table, with the presenters here today…. Find somebody you havenโt had the chance to talk to,โ she said. โThe second thing is to apply one new idea that you learned from today, whether itโs in your personal life or your professional life…. Lastly, stay engaged with us at the Colorado River District. Look for the events and conversations that we hold throughout the year.โ
A child amid the splish-splashes of water at Denverโs Union Station on June 21, 2025. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
October 2, 2025
New report says the story is not near as complicated as some would have you believe. It identifies nine areas of focus for using less water.
A few hours before I read a new Colorado River Basin report this week, I was at a neighborhood meeting in the metropolitan Denver municipality where I live. A sustainability plan is being worked up. The water component will encourage conservation.
I said that the messaging on this, unlike some other components of sustainability, should be relatively easy. After all, 75% of this municipalityโs water arrives from the headwaters of the Colorado River through the Moffat Tunnel.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2024. Credit: Brad Udall
And most everybody at this point understands that the Colorado River is in trouble. For more than 20 years we have seen the photos of the bathtub rings of the reservoirs and the water levels far below. So many years have yielded below-average runoffs, a 20% reduction altogether in the 21st century. The number of broken hottest-ever temperature records have vastly dwarfed the coldest-ever records.
Understanding the intricate efforts to better align the political governance of the river with the physical reality is a far more difficult story to tell, but it has not been for absence of effort in Big Pivots and hundreds of other outlets. Scores of stories have been written in just the last month or more about the seeming inability of negotiators from the seven basin states to come to agreements in advance of a November deadline set by the federal government.
Now comes a new report, โThereโs No Water Available,โ from Great Basin Water Network and partners. It offers nine recommendations under the subtitle of โCommonsense Recommendations to Limit Colorado River Conflict.โ
If longer-term drought is one component of the declined flows, the science is now firm that the warming climate is a reality that will remain and with it more erratic precipitation, surprising shifts in temperature, dry soils and many other factors. โIt is clear that the future will be about adapting to hydrologic extremes. It is also clear that the water laws and hydraulic engineering developed in the 20th century did not foresee the realities we face today,โ says the report.
Then there is this arresting statement:
โThe supply-focused approaches during the last 120 years โ i.e. encouraging use โ has landed us in crisis. Itโs time for a fresh, modernized approach. Nevertheless, we believe that the necessary change isnโt as complicated as people in power want us to believe.โ
Simply put, say the authors from the Glen Canyon Institute, Sierra Club and other organizations, we must use less water. โWe can do so in an equitable way that does not involve foot-dragging and finger-pointing.โ
Who needs to budge? Well, almost everybody โ the historically shorted Native Americans being the exception. โAll parties currently using water must commit to using less water than they have in the past,โ says the report.
The area around Yuma, Ariz., and Californiaโs Imperial Valley provide roughly 95% of the vegetables available at grocery stores in the United States during winter months, February 2017, The report calls for more resilience built into agriculture. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Upper basin states โ Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming โ come in for special mention. Perhaps itโs a negotiating tactic, but they have continued to maintain detailed estimates of how much more water they want to use. โRather than planning on using more, we need states to plan on cutting,โ says the report.
They call for all states to have curtailment plans. โHaving a clear-cut understanding of what entities have to cut during shortages is something thatโs already in place in the lower Basin. The upper basin must develop a similar system of cuts predicated on water availability and delivery obligations that consider downstream use and upper basin water availability.โ
Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, the lead water agency for much of Coloradoโs Western Slope, made that call at the districtโs annual meeting in 2024. Some agreed. See: โHeading for the Colorado River cliff.โ Big Pivots, Oct. 20, 2024. However, Jim Lochhead, a former Western Slope resident and then Denver Water CEO, said he believed that the process of preparing for a compact curtailment was too difficult, too messy, until the clear need arrives. See: โBone-dry winter in the San Juans,โ Big Pivots, Jan. 28, 2025.
The upper basin states have argued that they never used the water allocated under the Colorado River Compact of 1922, while the lower-basin states did โ and then some. Only lately have the lower-basin state tightened their belt. The upper basin states donโt want to be restricted โ not, at least, to the same degree.
This position was explained in a forum during May by Becky Mitchell, Coloradoโs representative in the negotiations. She talked about how the upper-basin had developed more slowly and still has not used its full allocation. See: โSharing risk on the Colorado River,โ Big Pivots, May 29, 2025.
โThe main thing that we got from the compact was the principle of equity and the ability to develop at our own pace,โ said Mitchell. โWe shouldnโt be punished because we didnโt develop to a certain number.โ The conversation, she added, is โwhat does equity look like right now?โ
Upper-basin states want a willingness in this settlement for agreement that focuses on the water supply, not the demand, she said. โCommon sense would tell you, maybe Mother Nature should drive how we operate the system.โ That, she said, is the bedrock principle of the proposal from the upper division.
The Colorado River at Silt looked healthy in early June, and indeed runoff from the riverโs headwaters in northern Colorado was near normal. The overall runoff, though, was far, far below average โ what is becoming a new norm. Photo/ Allen Best
This new report rejects this โnatural flowโ plan. โAgencies do not yet have the means to quickly and accurately measure natural flow data, a measurement metric that tracks water as if there were no human usage and infrastructure. Thatโs because the basin at-large is missing key data points.โ
The report also argues that any new dams and diversions need to be off the shelf, cities can do a better job of conservation, and Glen Canyon Dam needs work to allow it to be functional at lower water levels. The report also recommends making farms resilient to new realities.
Some elements of the Colorado River conversations have shifted dramatically. One of them is the new insistence of the last 10 years that the water rights of tribes be honored. Representatives of tribal nations now are almost always on the agenda at water conferences in Colorado. Twenty years ago? No, they were not. Lorelei Cloud, the chair of the Colorado Water Conservation Board since May, is a member of the Southern Ute Reservation.
Of the basinโs 30 tribes, 22 have recognized rights to 3.2 million acre-feet of Colorado River system water annually. Thatโs approximately 25% of the basinโs average annual water supply. Twelve tribes have still-unresolved claims. It is estimated that 65% of tribal water is unused by tribal communities (but in many cases consigned to other users). Junior users would be curtailed in order to honor those tribal rights, says the report.
The connection between declines in groundwater and surface flows is also part of a broader shift in the conversation. A May 2025 study that groundwater supplies in the Colorado River Basin are shrinking by nearly 1.3 million acre-feet per year. Excessive groundwater depletion had surfaced as a surrogate water supply to satisfy surface water deficits.
In the upper basin, half the water we see at the surface comes from groundwater, according to research from the U.S. Geological Survey. โThis seminal USGS analysis underscores that as temperatures rise and evapotranspiration rates increase, there will be less groundwater entering surface water systems.โ
There are obvious limitations to a short report, and I found the agriculture and municipal sections too shallow. The bibliography of sources, though, was quite valuable.
Will we see other reports of a similar nature in coming weeks and months? Quite likely. This conversation is far from over. In some ways, itโs just beginning.
Seven U.S. states and Mexico depend on the Colorado River, shown here in the Grand Canyon. But over the past century, the riverโs flow has decreased by roughly 20 percent. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Click the link to read the article on the E&E News website (Jennifer Yachnin). Here’s an excerpt:
October 3, 2025
Scott Cameron will take over as acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, shifting titles at the Interior Department while he maintains his role asย the Trump administrationโs lead officialย in negotiations over the future of the Colorado River. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tapped Cameron for the role on Oct. 1, announcing the decision in aย secretarial orderย that also updated otherย leadership roles recently confirmedย by the Senate. The decision comes in the wake ofย President Donald Trumpโs decisionย on Sept. 30 to withdraw his nomination of Ted Cooke, a former top official at the Central Arizona Project, to be Reclamation commissioner.
Colorado Governor Clarence J. Morley signing Colorado River compact and South Platte River compact bills, Delph Carpenter standing center. Unidentified photographer. Date 1925. Print from Denver Post. From the CSU Water Archives
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (Eric Kuhn, Anne Castle, John Fleck, Kathryn Sorensen, Jack Schmidt, and Katherine Tara):
October 6, 2025
As negotiators for the seven Colorado River Basin states rapidly approach Reclamationโs November deadline for providing a framework for a seven-state agreement for the Post-2026 Operating Guidelines for Lakes Powell and Mead, a larger threat looms. Reclamationโs recently released September 24-Month study minimum probable projection is consistent with our mass balance analysis of storage in the next year, solidifying the likelihood of critical conditions if the coming winter is dry. Reclamationโs latest analysis predicts that storage at Lake Powell would fall below the 3500-ft elevation as early August 2026 and might continue to be below this critical elevation until March 2028. As we noted in our recent white paper, Reclamation has committed to protecting Lake Powell from going below 3500 ft.
This projection of future conditions in the event of persistent dry conditions poses a conundrumโReclamation could reduce releases from Powell to protect the 3500-ft reservoir elevation, but in doing so, low releases would most likely trigger the dreaded 1922 Colorado River Compact tripwireโthe amount of water delivered from Lake Powell to Lake Mead during a 10-year period that is less than the threshold. The Lower Division states are likely to litigate if the 10-yr average wire is tripped. Under one prevailing interpretation of the Compact, Upper Basin states must not cause the 10-yr flow at Lee Ferry to be depleted to less than 82.5 MAF to deliver water to the Lower Basin and Mexico. As explained in a new white paper, there is a very real chance that the 10-yr running average will be 82.78 MAF, just a hair above the tripwire, one year from now. In alternate scenarios, the 10-yr running average would hit the tripwire in 2027 or 2028. If Reclamation exercises its authority to reduce Lake Powell deliveries to as low as 6 MAF, the tripwire is triggered even earlier. In the face of this imminent possibility, Basin States and the Federal Government must commit to an enforceable agreement to reduce their total consumptive Colorado River uses with an equitable sharing of the burden sufficient to justify a waiver of claims under the Compact for the duration of the agreement. The alternative is a deeply uncertain future for the Basin.
The Colorado National Monument and the Colorado River from the Colorado Riverfront trail October 3, 2025.
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
October 6, 2025
Three months after officials introduced a concept to revive stalled negotiations over the Colorado River, that concept has run into the same pitfalls that sank previous ideas, leaving the river on a course for federal intervention as reservoir levels plunge. Speakers at the Colorado River Water Conservation Districtโs annual water seminar in Grand Junction on Friday [October 3, 2025] said the new concept still falters because it would require Colorado and other upper basin states โ New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming โ to commit to some restrictions on their water use during dry years.
โ(Lower Basin leaders) are insisting that the Upper Basin is the problem in getting to an agreement because weโre refusing to take mandatory cuts,โ said Andy Mueller, general manager of the river district…Upper Basin states argue that their geography and infrastructure already require them to cut their use when the rivers run dry, while downstream states can rely on water stored in large reservoirs to keep themselves wet during droughts. The new conceptโs failure to gain traction means negotiators are still wrangling as the riverโs levels drop further…Becky Mitchell, Coloradoโs negotiator on the river, said the states are still meeting once every other week, but she and other state officials remain mired in many of the same issues that have stalled negotiations for two years.
โWeโre meeting. It is not enjoyable. I want to be perfectly honest,โ Mitchell said.
The Upper Basin argues it should not have to take cuts because it relies on the natural flow of the river, not stored water in large reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell. That means the Upper Basin canโt use more than what is naturally available in the river and cuts back its use during dry times already. It also means the Upper Basin already feels โpainโ during dry years…
โEvery year, someone in western Colorado โฆ has not had adequate water,โ Mueller said…
…Mitchell said she was โhopefulโ for the negotiations. She said the Upper Basin agrees with the general idea of a supply-driven concept, like the one the Lower Basin has proposed, even if the basins are struggling to work out central issues like cuts in the Upper Basin.
โWe canโt give up โฆ A supply-based proposal is the only way to move forward. We all have to be responding to supply,โ Mitchell said.
As of Sept. 5, crews had raised the dam by 60 feet. The project is designed to increase the water storage capacity of Gross Reservoir, which supplies water to 1.5 million people in the Denver metro area.
โOver the past two years, weโve been working on the original dam to prepare it for the enlarged height and width,โ said Casey Dick, Denver Waterโs deputy program manager for the project.
โAt the end of June, the concrete work reached the original crest, so now all the concrete placements are above the existing structure.โ
A dump truck fills up with concrete at the top of Gross Dam. The trucks drive across the top of the dam and place the concrete in layers to raise the dam higher. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Once completed, Gross Dam will be 471 feet tall and around 2,000 feet wide.
As the dam has gone up, it has become easier to see some of the differences between the original dam, which was completed in the 1950s, and the newly renovated structure.
For instance, the original surface of the downstream side of the dam was smooth. Now, the downstream side of the dam is a series of stair steps. The steps were an integral part of the construction process and supported the trucks that deposited layers of concrete onto the original structure of the dam.
This picture was taken from roughly the crest of the original dam. The dam has been raised 60 feet as of Sept. 5. The new face of the dam features a stepped design, which was needed for the construction process. Photo credit: Denver Water.
The renovated dam will also take on a new shape.
โThe original structure was built as a โcurved gravityโ dam,โ Dick said. โNow, weโre taking advantage of that curved geometry in the middle portion of the dam to create whatโs called a โthick archโ dam in the center of the canyon.โ
The middle section of the dam is arched to give the dam strength as water pushes up against the structure. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Arches are used in dam construction because the force of the water in the reservoir pushes up against the arch and into the canyon walls. This gives an arched dam more strength compared to a flat structure.
โWeโve also built what are called โthrust blocksโ on the sides of the original dam,โ Dick said. โThese give the dam additional support by essentially extending the canyon walls upward to support the arch.โ
The โthrust blocks,โ highlighted in red, extend out from the canyon wall. The blocks provide additional strength where the arch of the dam meets the rock. Photo credit: Denver Water.
As work has risen above the original crest of the dam, workers have built formwork, or temporary molds, on both the upstream and downstream sides of the dam. The temporary structures hold the freshly placed concrete in the proper shape until it hardens and cures.
Workers build formwork, or temporary molds, on the top of the dam. The forms hold new concrete in place until it cures. Photo credit: Denver Water.
With the new added concrete added during the project, Gross Dam is now much steeper than the original structure. At the base, the dam is 300 feet thick, but it gets skinnier as it goes up. At the top, the dam will be just 25 feet thick. Crews have had to adjust to the smaller work area to maneuver their equipment as the project progressed.
Work to raise the dam will continue as late as possible into 2025, until weather conditions make it too cold to place concrete.
โWeโd like to thank all the men and women out here from Kiewit-Barnard and the other contractors out here,โ Dick said. โThey are working around the clock and as fast as they can to complete this project.”
Roller-compacted concrete will be placed on top of the existing dam to raise it to a new height of 471 feet. A total of 118 new steps will make up the new dam. Image credit: Denver Water.
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam to 525 cubic feet per second (cfs) for Saturday, October 4, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.gov or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
What happens on the Colorado River doesnโt stay on the Colorado River.
Indeed, the river system is not like a night on the Las Vegas Strip. When problems arise on the beleaguered system, the ancillary impacts ripple throughout the western U.S.
As water supplies shrink, the supply and demand imbalance on the river system poses questions about the long-term sustainability of communities across the west. The impacts span beyond cities in town in the Colorado River Watershed. Denver, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and many others rely on the Colorado River even though they donโt live within the watershed. We are not yet ready for the consequences of prolonged inaction and ambivalence. Weโve lost 20 percent of flows since the turn of the 21st Century and poised to lose even more in the decades to come. Fixing the current imbalance has come at a high price to ratepayers and taxpayers, the environment, and the public trust. Further inaction will come at an even higher price.
We are working with a group of NGO partners to answer an important question
How do we prevent more conflict?
That is why we released a new report outlining nine recommendations for the river system.
1. No New Dams and Diversions
2. All States Need Curtailment Plans
3. We Need Better Accounting and Data
4. We Need to Fix Glen Canyonโs Antique Plumbing
5. Curtail Junior Users to Serve Tribes
6. Invest in Reuse and Limit Municipal Waste
7. Protect Endangered Species
8. Make Farms Resilient
9. Recognize Groundwater-Surface Water Connectivity
Please share far and wide and reach out with any suggestions. Perhaps no group better understands the far-reaching impacts on Colorado River scarcity than ours. The SNWA maintains a robust agricultural operation hundreds of miles away from the Colorado River in the high desert in the heart of the Great Basin. What will happen if Lake Mead keeps shrinking? They donโt own farms because they like beef and lamb, leather and wool.
The actions we take today will leave lasting marks on our watersheds for generations to come. Right now, the leaderships on the Colorado River System is lagging. We exist to equip communities with the knowledge to take action moving forward. As we await public participation opportunities for new Colorado River management guidelines, letโs prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Due to the megadrought, the boat ramp at Lake Powellโs Hite Marina lies far from the Colorado River in this October 2022 aerial view. Photo by Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk.
The American Southwest has been gripped by an epic drought that has lasted decades and strained the fast-growing regionโs naturally limited water resources.
The megadroughtโthought to be the worst in at least 1,200 yearsโhas caused reservoir levels to plummet on the Colorado River and shriveled the Rio Grande. The dry times have also stressed imperiled ecosystems, heightened wildfire risks and curtailed outdoor recreation.
While the droughtโs consequences are easy to see, its causes and prognosis are trickier to disentangle, requiring scientists to look deeply into precipitation deficits, rising temperatures and changing patterns in the atmosphere and ocean.
Long before humans began altering the climate with greenhouse gases and other air pollutants, the Southwest was subject to feast-or-famine weather featuring extreme dry spells, raising the possibility that this current drought is just part of that natural variability.
What scientists are exploring now is how the human touch is imprinted on the drought due to our ongoing transformation of the climate, atmosphere and oceans.
Three recent scientific studies identify human emissions as a key driver in the precipitation declines that have helped cause the Southwestโs current drought, which has been made much worse by rising temperatures due to climate change.
The papers, published in the July 9 issue of Nature Geoscience and the August 13 issue of Nature, focus on whatโs been happening in and above the Pacific Ocean to help explain recent precipitation deficits in the Southwest. As carbon emissions continue to rise, all three papers conclude that human-caused warming is likely to make drought a more persistent feature in the decades ahead.
The three recent studies examine why changes in and above the ocean have shifted storm tracks and made the Southwestโs weather drier, but thatโs not the whole story about the drought. The picture is even bleaker when we account for whatโs happening to the regionโs warming landscape and an increasingly thirsty atmosphere.
Another line of research has found that higher temperatures alone are causing the Southwest to โaridifyโ by drying out soils, boosting evaporation rates and shrinking the snowpack. Known as a โhot drought,โ this aridification due to warming would be troubling enough for the Southwestโs water resources and society. But the three recent studies, which focus on precipitation shortfalls, add another level of worry: relief falling from the skies as raindrops and snowflakes appears increasingly unlikely.
US Drought Monitor map September 23, 2025. The Southwest continues to experience drought conditions, according to this September 23 map from theย U.S. Drought Monitor.
The PDO is a natural rhythm in sea-surface temperatures in the North Pacific Ocean that has warm and cool phases. The cycle, which is similar to the El Niรฑo/La Niรฑa pattern in the tropical Pacific, was thought to last about 20 to 30 years, but in recent decades it has predominantly been in the cool or โnegativeโ phase, which tends to make the Southwest drier.
โThe PDO has been locked in a consistent downward trend for more than three decades, remanding nearby regions to a steady set of climate impacts,โ according to the study. โThe ongoing, stubbornly persistent, cold phase of the PDO is associated with striking long-term trends in climate, including the rate of global warming and drought in the western United States.โ
The conventional scientific understanding of the PDO holds that the pattern waxes and wanes largely due to natural โinternalโ variability. But this recent study, which relies on 572 climate simulations processed on supercomputers, argues that the PDO is, in fact, very much influenced by human activities and our air pollution. These external forces account for 53% of the variation in the PDO.
โOverall, we find that human activity is a key contributor to multi-decadal trends in the PDO since the 1950s,โ according to the paper.
It wasnโt always this way. Between 1870 and 1950, the PDOโs changes were internally generated, with external forces explaining less than 1% of the variability.
โIt seems like as long as emissions continue, weโre going to be stuck in this current phase of drought,โ said lead author Jeremy Klavans, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. โIf emissions were to abate, we think that the PDO would be able to vary freely again, and drought would be, again, a thing of chance. There would be the chance to end the drought.โ
The researchers say they used an โextraordinarily large ensembleโ of climate simulations to isolate the signal of human-caused climate change from the noise of natural variability.
โIt takes a really large ensemble to find this signal, and thatโs because we think that the signal-to-noise ratio in climate models is too low,โ Klavans said.
Thatโs distressing news for the regionโs water managers, who are already grappling with limited supplies. โWe expect there to be reduced water supply in the form of precipitation, including snowfall, in the next 20, 30 years, so as theyโre making planning decisions for how to allocate water resources or what infrastructure to build, they should expect less precipitation,โ Klavans said.
โIt certainly seems that in the near term, given the choices that weโve made, the PDO will continue to be stuck in drought,โ Klavans said.
Study 2: Deep drought long ago offers insights for today
This isnโt the first time the Southwest has faced a megadrought.
During the mid-Holocene, there was a different external force at play: an increase in the amount of solar radiation hitting the Northern Hemisphere during the summer, which also altered vegetation patterns on the land.
In a process known as the Milankovitch Cycles, the Earthโs orbit and movement change regularly over the span of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. Like a spinning top, the planet wobbles. The tilt of its axis also oscillates back and forth. And Earthโs orbit around the sun alters from a near-perfect circle to a slightly more elliptical path.
The Milankovitch Cycles caused more sunlight to hit the Northern Hemisphere in summer during the mid-Holocene warming. One of the effects was a more vigorous West African monsoon and the greening up of the Sahel and Sahara deserts, which caused those areas to absorb more heat as the land surface darkened. Similar processes happened elsewhere. The paper concludes that this external forcing had a major impact on the Pacific Ocean and the PDO, similar to how human-caused warming is playing out today and into the future.
โPeople used to think that droughts in the Southwest were just occurring kind of like as a random roll of the dice, and now we can see that actually itโs like a pair of loaded dice,โ said lead author Victoria Todd, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas studying paleoclimatology. โThis drought is occurring in wintertime, which is really important for snowpack in the Rockies and its role in Colorado River flow and Western U.S. water resources in general.โ
The authors write that โour results suggest that these precipitation deficits will be maintained by a shift to a more permanent negative PDO-like state as long as hemispheric warming persists.โ
โSuch sustained drying and intense reductions in winter precipitation would have catastrophic impacts across the Southwest United States, particularly in the Colorado River Basin,โ according to the paper.
Todd and co-authors investigated what happened during the mid-Holocene by using an analysis of leaf waxes extracted from the cores of lake sediments in the Rocky Mountains. Plants create waxy coatings on their leaves to minimize water loss and protect themselves. These hardy waxes can persist for ages when theyโre deposited into sediments, allowing them to reveal critical clues about what the Earth was like when the plant was alive. By analyzing the leaf waxโs isotopesโspecial forms of chemical elementsโresearchers can paint a picture of precipitation patterns long ago.
The findings about the mid-Holocene and their analysis of modern climate projections led the researchers to conclude that current models underestimate the size of the precipitation deficits caused by warming. Both in the past and the present, the warming impacts the PDO and steers storms away from the Southwest.
If the Southwestโs drought were just due to natural variabilityโa fair roll of the diceโweโd expect the PDO to get unstuck eventually and for the dry spell to break. But the research concludes that pure chance is no longer governing the system. Humans are tilting the odds.
โIf global temperatures keep rising, our models suggest the Southwest could remain in a drought-dominated regime through at least 2100,โ co-author Timothy Shanahan, associate professor at the University of Texasโ Jackson School of Geosciences, said in a press release.
โMany people still expect the Colorado River to bounce back,โ Shanahan said. โBut our findings suggest it may not. Water managers need to start planning for the possibility that this drought isnโt just a rough patchโit could be the new reality.โ
Lake Meadโs elevation has fallen as the region endures a megadrought. Photo by Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk.
Study 3: The effects of aerosols and tropical ocean warming
The study identifies two human-caused drivers for the shortfall in winter-spring precipitation in the region: the effects of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere and global warmingโs impact on ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific. These forces have weakened the Aleutian Low, the semi-permanent low-pressure system in the North Pacific that directs storms toward the Southwest when itโs stronger.
The study concluded that the post-1980 period in the Southwest has seen record-fast drying of soil moisture due to the precipitation declines and human-caused warming. Natural variability still plays a significant role in the Southwestโs precipitation, according to the researchers, but humanity is making its mark.
โWe are not saying 100% itโs because of climate change or because of human emissions, but thereโs a role from human emissions,โ said lead author Yan-Ning Kuo, a Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric science at Cornell.
Aerosols may conjure deodorant sprays, but in this context, they refer to a broad class of airborne particles that are emitted by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, and natural causes, such as dust from deserts or sea salt from the ocean.
Some aerosols, such as the sulfates emitted when coal and oil are burned, reflect incoming sunlight and can have a cooling effect. Others, such as sooty black carbon, absorb solar radiation and have a warming effect. Aerosols can also affect cloud formation.
In this study, the authors argue that aerosols can have a significant effect on the atmosphere as they drift eastward from Asia, where booming economies and lax regulations in some areas have caused air pollution to soar in recent decades.
โWe actually feel like thereโs a hope for good news on the precipitation side because as we clean up aerosols, precipitation might rebound a little bit,โ said co-author Flavio Lehner, assistant professor in Cornellโs Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department.
But while reduced aerosol pollution might help the Southwestโs drought, the emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, keep rising, and warming temperatures continue to aridify the Southwestโs landscape.
โโโFrom a precipitation perspective, we might see a recovery in the next decade or two, but together with the continued warming, that might not help much with the drought,โ Lehner said. โIn none of these scenarios, I think everybody would agree, does it look like the Southwest is not going to be in trouble.โ
October 1 marks the start of Water Year 2026. Hydrologists and water experts use October as the start of the water year, especially in the Western United States, when the majority of precipitation shifts from rain to mountain snow, and snowpack begins accumulating…
West Drought Monitor map September 23, 2025.
Much of the Upper Colorado River Basin will be entering Water Year 2026 in some state of drought. On October 1, 2024, only 7% of the Upper Colorado River Basin was experiencing drought conditions. As of Monday, September 29, 2025,ย all of the basinwas in a state of drought, with over 80% of the region in severe to extreme drought. Arens said it can be difficult to determine if the Upper Colorado River Basin will have a wet or dry water year, because seasonal forecasts arenโt always accurate. But Arens said at the moment, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting what he calls โa classic La Niรฑa setup.โ That means a higher probability of above-average precipitation in northern states like Washington, Oregon, and Montana, and below average precipitation in Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Utah and Colorado.
Figure 2. La Niรฑa causes the jet stream to move northward and to weaken over the eastern Pacific. During La Niรฑa winters, the Southwest tends to see warmer and drier conditions than usual. Since La Niรฑa conditions are more common during the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a negative PDO is likewise associated with warmer, drier conditions across the Southwest. (Image credit: NOAA)
โAt least for the very first part of winter, the probability is trending towards below average precipitation for probably the southern two thirds of the Upper Colorado River Basin,โ he said…
There are other factors, Arens said, that can help forecasters understand what might be on the horizon for the upcoming water year. One factor theyโre observing now is how dry soils are throughout the region.
โWhen you have dry soils, that is indicative that there’s almost certainly going to be an inefficient runoff,โ he said. โSo that means if the soils are really dry, the first part of that melt period, all the water is going to go into just rewetting those soils.โ
Arens said October precipitation can have a big impact on soil moisture, and could improve the outlook…Arens and his colleagues will also closely monitor Lake Powell and Lake Mead, along with other major reservoirs in the upper basin, like Flaming Gorge on the Utah-Wyoming border and Blue Mesa near Gunnison…
โLake Mead is 31% full and Lake Powell is 29% full,โ Arens said.
In terms of storage capacity, he said those numbers arenโt quite as bad as they were after a very dry 2022 water year.
The 9-mile pipeline that delivers the city of Durangoโs drinking water is in โcritical need of replacement,โ according to Public Works. The project has become more expensive than first thought because of easements and rights-of-way complications requiring the replacement pipeline to be built significantly farther from the original pipeline that was first laid in the early 1900s. Shelly Bellm, interim Public Works administrative manager, the original pipeline was originally intended to be repaired by slip lining, but engineers determined it needed to be replaced. Design for the replacement is slated to cost nearly $3.4 million. City Council approved a budget amendment of $2.8 million last week to pay for the design…Itโs more feasible to build the new pipe along the same route as the original pipe while keeping the original pipe active, [Shelly Bellm] said. Otherwise, the water supply to the cityโs reservoir would be cut while sections of the pipeline are shut down for weeks at a time.
Scientists secure jute netting over mulch on a newly planted section of the Ophir Pass fen in Coloradoโs San Juan Mountains. Anna Marija Helt/High Country News
The resinous scentof Engelmann spruce wafted over a shallow, mossy pool surrounded by lush sedges near the 11,800-foot summit of Ophir Pass, in southwestern Coloradoโs rugged San Juan Mountains. This type of wetland, known as a fen, forms when perennial water saturates the ground, limiting plant decomposition and allowing organic matter to accumulate as peat.
Just downhill, however, on that hot, sunny July day, another part of the fen was visible: a degraded area, bare soil exposed on a steep slope.
Peatlands โ fens and bogs โ are key climate regulators. (Bogs are maintained by precipitation, but fens, which, in North America, occur in the Northeast, Midwest and Mountain West, depend on groundwater.) Their peat retains plant carbon that would otherwise decompose and be released as carbon dioxide. Despite covering only about 4% of Earthโs land area, peatlands store a third of the worldโs soil carbon โ twice the amount trapped in forest biomass. โFens are old-growth wetlands,โ said Delia Malone, a recently retired field ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. Some of Coloradoโs fens are over 10,000 years old.
In relatively dry southern Colorado, they also provide a secondary round of water storage. The first round is Coloradoโs snowpack, which, as it melts, feeds groundwater that fensโ spongy peat captures and later releases to dwindling waterways and drying landscapes after the snow is gone.
But the steep and degraded bare patch at Ophir Pass no longer functions. Where sedges, mosses, bog birch and other wetland species should be thriving, white PVC groundwater testing wells dot the ground, and heavy straw tubes called wattles reduce water and sediment runoff into the creek below.
โThis is the steepest peatland weโve ever tried to restore, as far as I know,โ said wetland ecologist Rod Chimner, a professor at Michigan Tech. In the Rockies, fens lie at high elevations, which complicates restoration. Approximately 2,000 fens have been mapped so far in the San Juans, and about 200 need work. Chimnerโs Ph.D. advisor, David Cooper, began restoring the areaโs fens decades ago, and together theyโve literally written the book on mountain peatland restoration. Now, Chimner and staff from Mountain Studies Institute (MSI) โ a local nonprofit research and education center โ are restoring an ecosystem born from the last ice age but damaged by bulldozing in the 1970s.
Dams, road-building and other human activities harm Coloradoโs fens, which can take 1,000 years to build just 8 inches of peat soil. The Ophir Pass fen is a rare iron fen, fed by groundwater rendered acidic by iron pyrite. The resulting chemistry supports unique plant communities โ and leaves iron and other minerals incorporated in the peat or deposited in hardened layers. This fen was likely damaged by bog iron mining, which has degraded several iron fens in the San Juans.
Wattles on a steep degraded section of the fen. Anna Maria Helt/High Country News
Lenka Doskocil examines roots in peat that could be centuries old. Anna Maria Helt/High Country News
A restored pool flanked by sedges. Anna Maria Helt/High Country News
CLOUDS STARTED TO BUILD as workers used hand saws to extract plugs of sedge and soil from a healthy, already restored part of the fen. Like Goldilocksโ bed, the plugs have to be just right: Too large or too many, and digging them up disturbs the soil surface; too small, and they wonโt survive transplantation. โAs long as it has at least one rhizome, it will plant and spread,โ said Lenka Doskocil, a research associate with MSIโs Water Program and Chimnerโs graduate student. She split a plug, revealing rhizomes embedded in the rusty-brown peat, then nestled it into a bucket of plugs. Sometimes, workers plant nursery plugs or greenhouse starts from seeds collected in the area.
Chimner and Doskocil hauled the first bucket of plugs up to the bare patch, began digging small, regularly spaced holes, then gently inserted one sedge plug per opening. A stiff breeze provided relief as several other people joined in. โTake your time and do it right,โ Chimner said encouragingly as he stepped back to observe. Otherwise, the plugs wouldnโt take.
Doskocil spotted an older plug protruding from the soil. But it wasnโt from rushed planting: Frost heave, a freeze-thaw cycle that thrusts soil upwards, had kicked it out of the ground, she said, tucking it back in. Frost heave complicates planting and breaks rhizomes, preventing nearby plants from colonizing bare soil. But Chimnerโs past research has yielded a solution: Team members insulated the surface around each newly transplanted sedge with Excelsior, a shredded aspen mulch tough enough to withstand several winters. โWeโre giving them little down jackets,โ Chimner said.
A rhythm of extract-portage-dig-plant-mulch ensued as the iron-painted ridge of Lookout Peak towered to the north. A passenger yelled โthank youโ from a truck descending the pass. Doskocil broke open a handful of peat, revealing roots that were hundreds of years old, if not older.
Planting the steepest quarter acre here has been difficult, and a 2021 fire didnโt help. โWeโre kind of starting all over againโ in that section, Chimner explained. Theyโre experimenting with direct seeding, which is common in wetland restoration, but challenging at the high-elevation site. โIโve seeded here three times,โ said Haley Perez, a community science program assistant with MSI.
Conservation biologist Anthony Culpepper, associate director of MSIโs Forest Program, gestured uphill toward what used to be a bare โMars slope.โ He listed the challenges: timing, winds that blow seeds away, variable winter and monsoonal precipitation, a short growing season, a sunbaked slope and animals that eat the seeds. Still, over many seasons and with multiple collaborators โ several federal agencies, San Juan National Forest, Purgatory Village Land, the National Forest Foundation, San Juan Citizens Alliance and others โ theyโve made great progress. That former Mars slope is now covered with mat-forming, soil-stabilizing wetland plants, including rare species.
The fen is wetter from strategic placement of wattles and check dams, wooden slats that slow surface water flow so that it soaks into the ground instead of running straight downhill. In turn, more groundwater has enabled transplantation and spread of thousands of plants. Much of the fen is now green, with mosses and other vegetation colonizing on their own. โThis is the first time Iโve seen arnica at the site,โ said Culpepper, who also noted the lack of invasives, a promising sign.
MSI takes an adaptive approach to restoration: Research guides planning and execution, and outcomes are carefully monitored to guide future work. Thatโs important in a region and state where rising temperatures and declining snowpack are predicted to lower water tables, which could disrupt new peat formation and even promote peat decomposition, potentially shifting some fens from carbon storage to carbon release. โHow do we get our systems to a spot where theyโre resilient enough to withstand the challenges that are going to continue to come?โ asked Doskocil. MSI and its collaborators are working on it โ at Ophir Pass; at Burrows Fen, a new project north of Silverton; and elsewhere throughout the San Juans.
Fat raindrops landed as the group debated whether to secure the mulch with a layer of jute netting. A wind gust decided it; they added the netting and then, just as the sun returned, trooped uphill to their vehicles to head home. Someone asked Chimner if he was satisfied with the day. โWhen I can look down and see all green, Iโll be satisfied,โ he replied.
Colorado River headwaters-marker. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
September 28, 2025
Everyone knows about the Colorado River troubles. Even in the 1990s, the last time the river had enough water to reach the sea, problems were looming. Then came the 21st century with its mixture of severe drought, rising temperatures, and plunging reservoir levels.
Youโve likely read a few of the hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of stories that have been written about these diminishing flows and difficulty of the seven states and 30 tribes who share the river (along with Mexico) in reaching agreement about reduced uses. With a deadline of Nov. 11 looming to reach some basic agreement, the parties have not publicly retreated from their rigid talking points.
An ad hoc group of six Colorado River experts began assembling reports in 2025. They have been dubbed the Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River Basin. Although several have previously served in various government roles, they report to no specific constituencies now. All save one are affiliated with academic institutions. They have freedom to speak the truth as they see it. They have no direct authority but they do have credibility.
In these white papers, they have consistently argued for the need to recalibrate expectations, to align demands with the water delivered by the shrinking Colorado River. They have not necessarily defined exactly how that is to be done. They argue for a shared burden.
Their position conflicts, to an extent, with the position of the four upper-basin states, who have never fully developed the 7.5 million acre-feet allocated to them in the Colorado River Compact of 1922 and insist that this allocation must be honored. Similarly, lower-basin interests have also continued to assert their rights to river entitlements.
Is this group of six having impact? That is hard to gauge, but observers and participants in Colorado River matters point to at least some small evidence that their thoughts and observations are showing up in take-away messages from meetings.
Big Pivots convened a conversation with several of the report authors on Sept. 18, a week after their latest report had been issued. In that report, (โAnalysis of Colorado River Basin Suggests Need for Immediate Action,โ Sept. 11, 2025) they took stock of the 24-month report from the Bureau of Reclamation that was issued in late August. That report delivered the numbers that collectively showed dramatically increased risk during the upcoming two years of the dams on the Colorado River becoming dysfunctional.
For reasons of expedience, the conversation was limited to three of the six individuals:
Eric Kuhn, who in 2018 retired from the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District after 22 years as general manager.
Eric Kuhn, who in 2018 retired from the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District after 22 years as general manager.
Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School, who was the assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of Interior from 2009 to 2014 and the U.S. commissioner and chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission from 2022 to 2025. She had practiced water law for many years with Denver-based Holland & Hart.
John Fleck, the writer in residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center in Albuquerque since 2002 and before that directed the University of New Mexicoโs Water Resource Program for five years. He was a journalist in his younger life.
Also contributing to the reports have been:
Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, and former chief of the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center of the U.S. Geological Survey;
Katherine Sorensen, of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University and former director of Phoenix Water Services; and
Katherine Tara, staff attorney for Utton Transboundary Resources Center at the University of New Mexico.
The conversation reported below has been tightened considerably and modified slightly to enhance clarity.
The three of you were among six authors of a report issued on September 11 that asked, โHow close to the cliffโs edge we are in the Colorado River Basin?โ How do you get six people in agreement to an answer for that question? What process do you use to produce these reports?
Eric Kuhn: When you focus on the data, coming to a similar conclusion about the future is actually quite easy. The (Bureau of Reclamationโs) 24-month study from August was out. It suggests that weโre closing in on the cliff. Jack Schmidt was very much involved in the numbers, the technical aspects. The message was easy. Getting agreement on the exact wording requires a little more patience.
John Fleck:ย Something that makes a process like this work with this group of people is that we all begin with a deeply shared understanding of how the system works and what those numbers mean. We donโt need to spend time learning about reservoir levels and the relationship between Powell and Mead. This is a group of people who already have a shared knowledge. [ed. emphasis mine]
In late May 2022, Lake Powell was declining after another year of low snow and high temperatures. By August, it was 26% full, the lowest it had been since waters had begun backing up behind Glen Canyon Dam in 1967. Photo/Allen Best
Anne Castle: I think we also share an overall goal of seeing a sustainable river system. We think that changes need to be made in an equitable way to match supply and demand, and thatโs not happening. We all bring slightly different skills to the table and different experiences, which has improved the end product (the reports).
Fleck: One of the challenges in Colorado River governance is that you have many people who have a great deal of expertise who operate as employees of and advocates for a particular geography, for a particular community, especially those representing community or state water supplies.
Our group acts as citizens of the basin as a whole. Other people also see their role that way, especially folks in the federal government. But we have some freedoms that other people might not have in terms of being able to speak out publicly.
This is a third report since April by the same set of six authors. How did you come together?
Kuhn: Jack (Schmidt) is with the Center for Colorado River Studies. Jack and I co-authored white papers four and six among Jackโs series. That was now five years ago. Those papers are still very, very good. Because the supply-and-demand issue hasnโt been addressed, theyโre still relevant. Jack and Anne go back a long way to when Jack was the head of the Grand Canyon research effort out of Flagstaff and Anne was assistant secretary of Interior. Weโve known each other for a long time. The new one is Katherine Tara, who just graduated a couple years ago from New Mexico law school and is now helping out John. So it was actually a pretty easy get together.
Fleck: Weโve all worked together in sort of twos and threes on books and papers.
Castle: John, Eric, Jack and I were having periodic meetings just to sort of talk through what was going on with the river and what the issues were. We were each doing our independent writing things. Jack and Eric and John had all worked with Katherine (Sorensen, of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University), and we wanted that lower basin expertise that Katherine has in spades.
We started to talk as a six-person group. In the spring, we decided the time was right for us to write something about the next set of guidelines. And that was the instigation for the report that we put out in April. See โEssential Pillars for the Post-2026 Colorado River Guidelines,โ April 25, 2025.
All but one of the six of authors of these recent reports live in the upper basin states. I know you say that you do not have affiliations that tie you to a particular point of view. Still, does this tilt toward the upper basin dull some of your effectiveness?
Castle: I think, on the contrary, that the upper basin state principals would say that we tilt toward the lower basin because we havenโt adopted the positions that the upper basin principals have been taking.
Fleck: I have long been criticized here in New Mexico and by folks in the upper basin in general for always taking the side of the lower basin. I was born in California. One of my books was really lower basin focused. So I have a lot of connections and interest in the lower basin. Itโs certainly the critique that weโve received.
Kuhn: I agree. I think John and I wanted to take a basin perspective when we started writing our book (โScience Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado Riverโ), but I acknowledge that after working for the Colorado River District for almost 38 years, that I do have an upper basin perspective on many things. In the recent papers, not much. My focus has been the entire basin.
Your reports have been very action oriented, and that is particularly true of this last one, where you call for drastic and immediate action. Are you seeing evidence that your work is having impact?
Castle: Itโs getting attention. I donโt know if itโs resulting in action.
Fleck: One of our goals is to move conversations into the public arena that should be held in the public arena rather than in the sort of cloistered spaces in which a lot of Colorado River decision making is conducted. Katherine Tara, the newest member or youngest member of our group, talks about the need for a Colorado River C-SPAN, the need for broader public forums. And I think our work has contributed to forcing some issues and discussions into public.
I want to go back to something that Eric said at the outset. You said that you are of like mind, because youโve all studied the data, and the data take you to the same conclusions. If that is the case with you having studied the data, what does that say about the broader basin discussion? If everybody has studied the data, should that not take everybody to the same conclusion?
Kuhn: The problem is that all the principals work for a governor or a board or constituents. The six of us all have focused on the data, and I think many, many of the journalists and many of the experts in the basin acknowledge the data. Thereโs still a culture among the major agencies and the states that supports a system that is unsustainable. We must reduce our uses to match the supply. But they all have constituencies and probably lawyers that tell them this is why itโs everybody elseโs responsibility, not mine or not ours. We have yet to crack that culture that the basin must reduce water use โ but not me.
Fleck: One of the things important about the book Eric and I wrote is in the title, ignoring inconvenient science, because we have a history in this basin of doing things for political expediency. Looking away from the most unpleasant scientific conclusions about the available water supply makes it easier for political actors to deal with their local and state constituencies. Because itโs hard to go to a community and say, โIโm sorry, there really is less water.โ So, the political incentives are not aligned with responding to the science the way we think they should be, which is why we have to say these things that are really hard for a governor or governorโs representative to say.
Castle: Because weโre independent and do not answer to political constituencies, we have the ability and, frankly, the luxury of pointing to wherever the data takes us. The political incentives are almost diametrically opposed to doing the hard things that need to be done to balance what nature is supplying with what weโre using. One of the goals weโre pursuing is to educate a broader community about what the data shows and what conclusions that leads us to. That enables people to advocate to their own representatives for sensible solutions.
Do you have a bigger game plan in mind? Are you being reactive to events or do you have a strategy that goes beyond into like what we do in 2026, for example.
Fleck: Speaking for myself, I believe it is possible for us to continue to have communities that not only survive but thrive with less water if we find reasonable and equitable ways of sharing the burden of the impact of climate change across the entire West. My personal concern is that sort of parochial advocacy creates a winner- loser situation. Some community might win and not have to cut at all; another community could have disastrous cuts. That violates my basic notions of the moral framework that I have for thinking about what I want the future to look like.
Kuhn: My goal in this goes back to what John said about our book, which is paying more attention to the data and the science. We no longer have the luxury of ignoring the data and the science. Doing so will lead to an outcome that our constituents wonโt like. We have to get over that hurdle. That has been my goal all along. More reliance on good data-based decision making.
The Rio Grande in New Mexico between Taos and Espanola. Photo/Allen Best
Are there lessons for the seven states in the Colorado River Basin from the recent Rio Grande settlement?
Kuhn: I think so. Going out on a limb, I think the lesson here is that even if thereโs litigation in the Colorado River Basin, the negotiations are going to continue. The mediation is going to continue.
My view of this Rio Grande agreement from 30,000 feet and from a long way away was that the court-appointed special master pretty much forced them to reach an agreement. He kept pushing them to reach an agreement. They failed initially (and) at last succeeded.
So I think the lesson is, even if thereโs litigation, thereโs going to be continued discussions and negotiations. I question whether, without the litigation, New Mexico would have been willing to enter into the agreement that they have entered into. I think that the additional risk of the court case brought New Mexico to the table on several issues, but thatโs just my view of it from a long way away.
Castle: A legal lesson learned from the Rio Grande experience is donโt ignore the objections of the feds.
Fleck: A related lesson I have taken is that we have a history of litigation in the Colorado River Basin that was very, very much conflict-based for more than a decade. But the Rio Grande experience shows that, while extremely unpleasant and extremely expensive, it was possible to manage this river. Itโs my river, right? Iโm in Albuquerque. On the Rio Grande, weโre able to manage this river during the time of litigation. It did force the parties into collaboration and compromise, however ugly and unpleasant the process may have been.
It makes me think litigation on the Colorado River would be a terrible idea. A collaborative solution is much preferred. But I also think that litigation might very well push us toward the collaborative solution anyway. My argument is letโs just do it now (without the expense and the heartache) because ultimately we will end up with the same thing. That is the lesson we might draw from the litigation on the Rio Grande.
A hay meadow along the Colorado River in Middle Park, near Kremmling.ย Photo/Allen Best
What is the most hopeful thing that youโve heard or seen in the last year or two in the Colorado River Basin?
Fleck: I have been really impressed with the continued push toward permanent, relatively deep reductions in the Lower Colorado River Basin. Theyโre consistently coming in well below their 7.5 million acre-feet. Theyโve been learning important lessons about how to approach that since the early 2000s when California was using more than 5 (million acre-feet) and had to cut back to 4.4. Thereโs a lot of built-up experience about how to go about reducing your water use.
And the communities are still thriving. Las Vegasโs water use reductions are stunning. Youโre seeing significant reductions in the water flowing down the Central Arizona Project canal and really successful adaptations in the Imperial Valley. Over and over again we are seeing that when people have less water, they use less water, and communities can still thrive.
One thing that bothers me โ which I wrote about in my book (โWater is for Fighting Over: And Other Myths about Water in the Westโ) over a decade ago โ is this sort of limbic fear that we get, that a reduction in our water supply means the death of our community. We can, in fact, get by with less water
The significant reductions youโve seen in the lower basin are clearly not enough. The reservoirs are still dropping. But it shows what is possible.
Castle: The action that I found most surprising and hopeful or constructive was the lower basinโs willingness to own the structural deficit. The lower basin stepped up and said, โweโre not negotiating this. This is what weโre going to do.โ I think that was huge and I think it shows that there can be movement that kind of goes against the political expediency.
Kuhn: Another example is that California basically accepted a portion of the shortages. This happened a while ago. This happened back in 2018 or 2019. Under the 1968 law (that authorized the Central Arizona Project), Arizona was to absorb the shortages and not California. They basically realized that that agreement that was made in the โ60s was tying up the lower basin from being able to move forward. California compromised on that, at least for the moment. And I think that this willingness of California to go along with what else has happened in the lower basin shows progress. Where we havenโt made any progress is what I would call the crossing of the Lee Ferry divide. Thatโs going to take more effort.
Editorโs note: The Colorado River Compact distinguished between the upper basin and the lower basin, creating an artificial dividing line at โLee Ferry,โ a point just below Glen Canyon Dam. George Sibley, a water writer from Gunnison, along with others. have maintained that this artifice creates unnecessary problems. See: โWhy not create the Colorado River Compact they wanted in 1922?โSept. 1, 2025.
Fleck: Weโve just contradicted ourselves here, or at least Iโve contradicted myself. We talked about the political incentives that make it difficult to accept the reality of what the numbers are showing us, but we have just described a situation where, in fact, the political leadership, especially in Arizona, but also in California, and for a long time in Nevada, has been willing to accept this reality.
Partly, itโs just through a lot of long, hard learning, the realization by these communities that we took these steps to use less water. And weโre still okay, you know, we still have water in the fountain at the Bellagio (hotel in Las Vegas). We still have hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of irrigated ag land in the Imperial Valley. Thereโs less than there used to be, but thereโs still a lot. Thereโs still a robust agricultural economy there. So, in fact, this runs counter to the notion that political incentives always lead you to ignoring convenient science, because thereโs clearly evidence to the contrary.
Denver Water gains supplies from tributaries to the Colorado River in Grand County for diversion to metropolitan Denver. Photo/Allen Best
In your papers, you have consistently said that the water rights of the tribal nations must be honored. Can their claims on the river actually be resolved at this juncture? Or is there an irreconcilable conflict?
Castle: There are several reasons weโve called attention to the Tribal rights. One is historically, Tribal rights and interests havenโt been front and center. The tribes have historically been left out of these kinds of high-level negotiations. But the fundamental reason, in my mind is the tribal water rights are part of the bargain that our federal government made with individual tribes in exchange for the relinquishment of some of their ancestral lands. They were promised a livable homeland. Part of a livable homeland is the amount of water necessary to fulfill the purposes of that land, and thatโs a promise of the federal government.
Many tribes have quantified their water rights, so we know exactly how much that promise meant in terms of the amount of water that goes along with their reservation land. And itโs a different animal than all the other kinds of Western water rights. Itโs important that we keep that in mind, that it is a different kind of promise. Itโs a different kind of property right. And we canโt solve this supply and demand imbalance on the backs of the tribes.
Fleck: Anne talked about a promise made by the federal government. But thatโs us. This is our promise. We are the people of this country, the people of the federal government, right? The federal government is a creature of us. This is our promise to those people. Itโs not something that we as individuals in this particular state should get in a fight with the federal government over. We made this promise to those people and thatโs important. I describe it as a legal and a moral obligation. Respecting the legal obligation is critical to making the books balance. Itโs also this moral obligation.
Eric, I have a question for you. I know you have followed climate science very closely over the years. Weโve talked about it from time to time, the current state of the science. How would you describe that? I mean, thereโs a lot of uncertainty. What we really donโt know, we canโt know until it happens. Nonetheless, if you were to summarize, what should that tell us about the Colorado River going forward?
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2024. Credit: Brad Udall
Kuhn: There is a lot of uncertainty, but with time, weโre seeing a narrowing of that uncertainty. Weโre in some would say the 25 years of a drought, others would say it started in the late 80s. Weโre seeing a very distinct stepwise reduction in flows, natural flows at Lee Ferry, and weโre seeing temperatures increase. We have documented both.
I still think thereโs going to be a lot of uncertainty when it comes to what happens in those rare, odd years where we have a real wet winter and you have atmospheric rivers that run into the San Juans or the central Rockies. We could end up with a big year, and thatโs all a part of climate science.
But I think the message is pretty clear that itโs unlikely that river flows will return to what we thought there was historically, which was around 14 to 14.5 million acre-feet per year. Thatโs unlikely. And I know no one in the basin, including the current administration, based on comments from Mr. Cameron (Scott Cameron, acting assistant secretary for water and science, Department of the Interior), who thinks that itโs likely. Weโre dealing with the river that we have today, and that means that the uncertainty around the climate science has narrowed, and we sort of understand the future of this river. As long as temperatures keep going up, weโre going to see aridification of the basin.
A final question, if you will abide it, and itโs kind of a big, sweeping question. It strikes me that itโs a really interesting journey that all three of you have been on during this shift in attitudes in the Colorado River Basin. I remember going to the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas maybe 15 years ago, and there were people from Los Angeles or wherever who were kind of dubious. This was drought. This wasnโt climate change. We donโt have to have fundamental change. That (attitude) has clearly dissipated. My question has to do with what has not changed. How have attitudes NOT changed?
Kuhn: People are still going to be very reluctant to give up what they believe was their entitlement. Theyโll compromise; theyโll reach agreements. But Colorado, which is among the leaders when it comes to the publicโs acknowledgement of the issues related with climate change, has yet to say weโre going to sacrifice any portion of our theoretical entitlement. But we all have to give up some of those theoretical claims. So the culture is still โprotect our entitlement,โ even though that entitlement was based on data and science that are no longer valid. Just the word entitlement is indicative of the problem.
Castle: A component of that problem is the failure to recognize that while I have a perfectly good legal argument about why I have this entitlement, there are other perfectly good legal arguments about why I donโt, and we havenโt made huge steps toward acknowledging that. There are lots of legal arguments and lots of good ones, but they canโt all carry the day. Like John says, thereโs not enough water for all the lawyers to be right.
What remains of the Colorado River as it enters Mexico is diverted to the farm fields near Mexicali. Farther south, near San Luis Rio Colorado, this is what the riverbed looked like in February 2017. Photo/Allen Best
Music video by The Traveling Wilburys performing Handle With Care. (C) 2007 T. Wilbury Limited. Exclusively Licensed to Concord Music Group, Inc. http://vevo.ly/LGLafI
Seven U.S. states and Mexico depend on the Colorado River, shown here in the Grand Canyon. But over the past century, the riverโs flow has decreased by roughly 20 percent. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Western Water in-depth: After a thwarted quest to better predict the effects of drought and climate change, federal water managers are taking a radically different approach
After four years of contentious negotiations, the seven states that rely on water from the Colorado River are racing against the clock to reach agreement on a new long-term operating strategy for the riverโs dams and reservoirs. They face a Nov. 11 deadline from U.S. Interior Department officials to signal whether they think a deal among them is likely.
This is a high-stakes moment on the Colorado: Some 40 million people, 5.5 million acres of farmland and a $1.4 trillion economy depend on water from the river. But the double whammy of climate change and a now-quarter-century-long drought has strained relationships between the seven states that share the dwindling river.
Over the past two decades, scientists, engineers and water managers have invested tremendous effort in trying to deduce what the future might bring. They have used reconstructions of climate patterns stretching more than 1,200 years into the past to understand natural variability, and turned to global models to better grasp the potential impacts of climate change.
A key player in the effort has been the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which is primarily responsible for operating the massive dam-and-reservoir system on the Colorado River. Its in-house research and computer modeling team has played a crucial role in bringing new science about climate variability and change to Colorado River water managers.
Even with that, though, water managers have been repeatedly blindsided after conditions on the river proved even worse than predicted. Two earlier rounds of negotiations, dating back to 2005, yielded a pair of โinterimโ operating agreements to help the states weather the drought. But the riverโs flow has continued to deteriorate so rapidly that water managers have found themselves stuck in a perpetual scramble to buy themselves time before the river enters an all-out crisis.
โThe policies werenโt robust enough, and we were in this Band-Aid mode,โ says Carly Jerla, who heads Reclamationโs long-term planning process and was previously a leader on the research and modeling team. Everyone, she says, realized that โwe need something else.โ
As a result, Reclamation has quietly abandoned the effort to rely on best guesses about the riverโs future via traditional modeling methods. Now, itโs bringing a radically different style of thinking to the negotiating table: Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, or DMDU.
The approach focuses on testing out operating strategies, with the help of artificial intelligence, that perform well against a far wider range of possible hydrologic scenarios than has ever been considered before โ some of which no one on the river may anticipate or even be able to imagine. DMDU gives water managers a way to see how well their ideas fare, and to better understand how, and why, they might fail.
Scrambling to Stay Ahead of the Curve
Reclamationโs research and modeling team is based in Boulder, Colo., and works out of a nondescript University of Colorado building tucked between a city bus depot and an Audi dealership a mile from campus. The Reclamation team shares an office with the universityโs Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES), which developed the software system used to model the Colorado.
The downstream face of Glen Canyon Dam, which forms Lake Powell, Americaโs second-largest water reservoir. Water is released from the reservoir through a hydropower generation system at the base of the dam. Photo by Brian Richter
Reclamationโs collaboration with CADSWES began in the mid-1990s, and was initially led by Terry Fulp, who would go on to serve as the agencyโs regional director for the Lower Colorado River Basin. CADSWES provided modeling know-how, but it also served as a pipeline of talented grad students that its director, Professor Edie Zagona, would send Fulpโs way. Many of the most promising candidates wound up working for Fulpโs team, which operated with relative autonomy within Reclamationโs larger hierarchy.
โWe kind of flew under the radar,โ says Fulp, who retired in 2020. โWe had a little bit of a notion that we were special. But we also didnโt want to be too special.โ
As the team took shape, trouble was brewing on the river. The 1922 Colorado River Compact, which initially allocated the riverโs water between the states, was based on an assumption that average annual flows on the river were 16.4 million acre-feet per year. Over the past century, however, that number has decreased by approximately 20 percent.
A dramatic wakeup call came in 2002, two years after the drought first took hold. Inflows to Lake Powell, one of the two main reservoirs on the river, were only about 25 percent of average, and water managers had the unnerving realization that the world might be changing in ways they couldnโt predict.
โWe were walking into a complete unknown,โ says Pat Mulroy, who at the time was the head of the Las Vegas-based Southern Nevada Water Authority. โYou have to assume that a 2002 runoff is not an anomaly, but that itโs going to happen again, and itโs going to happen with greater frequency.โ
In 2005, governorsโ representatives from the seven states began to negotiate an operating strategy they hoped would give them a way to ride out the deepening drought. But they were treading into delicate territory.
Legal Minefields and Flawed Crystal Balls
The Colorado River is governed by a complex series of rules laid out not just by the Colorado River Compact, but by an amalgamation of subsequent laws, treaties, agreements and court decisions that are collectively known as the โlaw of the river.โ That has set up fundamental tensions over how the riverโs water is divided not just between individual states, but also โ because of the Compactโs legal structure โ between the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico and the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada, as well as the U.S. and Mexico, which has its own share of the riverโs water.
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)
Numerous legal minefields lurk within the law of the river, ambiguous provisions about which various states deeply disagree. Among the thorniest are: What is the Upper Basinโs precise obligation to provide water to the Lower Basin downstream? What are the relative responsibilities of the Upper and Lower basins in ensuring that Mexico receives its legal entitlement to water? How does water that the Lower Basin uses from local tributaries factor into its Compact entitlement?
The negotiating effort that began in 2005 was an attempt to find creative ways to survive the drought while staying within the boundaries of the Compact. By avoiding those legal minefields, the states could capitalize on areas of mutual flexibility to meet everyoneโs needs โ or at least get as close as possible.
To figure out how to make it work, the statesโ representatives and their technical support staff began relying on Reclamationโs research and modeling team in Boulder to calculate the probabilities of success or failure for various options they were considering. In 2007, the negotiating effort yielded a set of โinterim guidelinesโ for Colorado River operations that would remain in effect until 2026.
During that process, Fulp and his colleagues had started using tree-ring based reconstructions of past climate history, together with computer projections of the possible impacts of climate change, to get a clearer sense of the future. But as the effort went on, the teamโs members realized they had a problem: The results from the global climate models werenโt squaring with what they saw playing out in real time.
โThe climate change projections in the Colorado didnโt map up with what weโve been experiencing the last 10, 15, 20 years,โ says Alan Butler, a research and modeling group chief on Reclamationโs Boulder team. โThere was a disconnect.โ
That disconnect only seemed to be getting worse. One set of climate projections, for instance, suggested that future flows on the Colorado could range from less than five million acre-feet a year to more than 45 million โ twice as much water as came down the river in 1983 in a massive flood that nearly tore apart Glen Canyon Dam.
โThatโs just a massive range,โ says Nolie Templeton, a senior policy analyst for Central Arizona Project, which supplies water to cities like Phoenix and Tucson, as well as tribes. โIf you get a five-million-acre-foot river, youโre going to be planning and adapting significantly differently than if the dam gets blown out because itโs 45.โ
Jim Prairie, the other research and modeling group chief on Reclamationโs Boulder team, recalls a warning he got from a respected climate modeler in 2009: Global climate models are research, not decision-making tools. They were never intended to provide the kind of probability-based projections that water managers so desperately needed.
The team began to back off from its pursuit of long-term probabilities and search for a better approach.
Learning to Navigate Uncertainty
Humans are practically hardwired to look to past experience to anticipate what the future might hold. Yet the world is changing in ways that our lived experience is ill-suited to help us comprehend. Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty is a broad conceptual approach to addressing that problem.
Robert Lempert is a principal researcher at theย RAND Corporation, the Santa Monica-based think tank that made its name devising Cold War nuclear deterrence strategy for the military. Heโs also one of the intellectual pioneers of DMDU, a concept thatโs being increasingly applied to long-term policy and planning challenges where future conditions are tough to predict. DMDU has been used in fields ranging from infrastructure, energy and transportation planning to public health and global security, and has helped cut airlinesโ fuel costs and carbon emissions, formulate pandemic responses and analyze the effectiveness of the federal governmentโs terrorism risk insurance program.
It is particularly suited to situations where decision makers cannot reach consensus about future conditions or when traditional forecasting methods prove inadequate โ exactly the problem that Reclamationโs team found itself facing with the climate models.
โWhat the climate models really give us,โ Lempert says, โis overwhelming scientific evidence that the stable planning environment we built the system on has disintegrated.โ
Rather than trying to make a best guess about whatโs probable, DMDU is laser focused on whatโs possible. A DMDU analysis typically starts by generating a wide range of possible future scenarios โ or, in the case of a river, future flows. Policy makers can then test potential operating strategies to see which perform reasonably well, or are most robust, against that range. Based on those results, the operating strategies can then be refined to make them even stronger.
Carly Jerla heads Reclamationโs long-term planning process for the Colorado River. (Water Education Foundation)
The process can also be used to identify vulnerabilities in the system and flag them with โsignposts.โ If system conditions begin approaching those danger zones, the people who depend on them can take up the challenge of devising contingency plans, or damage-control efforts, to stave off a descent into a full-blown water-supply crisis. Navigating those hazardous areas requires difficult choices, but flagging them up front โ even if decision makers defer action on them to only when they absolutely have to be dealt with โ allows for crucial wiggle room: They can still take some action in the face of uncertainty, even as they punt the really difficult questions to the future.
Lempert and other RAND researchers led much of DMDUโs conceptual development, and they occasionally crossed paths โ and exchanged business cards โ with members of Reclamationโs Boulder team. Then in 2009, when the teamโs members began work on the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study, a comprehensive look at the riverโs next 50 years, they realized they needed help.
โWe found ourselves buried in data,โ says Jerla, who has headed the team since 2010. โAnd we were like, โAnyone got those RAND guysโ numbers to come dig us out of this mess?โโ
A Brave New World
Even after the seven states reached agreement on the 2007 interim guidelines, the rapidly changing realities of the river forced them into a near-constant series of ongoing negotiations. In 2012, the Reclamation team brought RAND representatives to the meetings to familiarize the statesโ technical staff with DMDU.
University of Colorado professors Edie Zagona and Joseph Kasprzyk have played a crucial role in Reclamationโs effort to bring advanced modeling and decision-making techniques to the Colorado River. (Water Education Foundation)
That effort โ at least initially โ wasnโt exactly a smashing success. The statesโ water managers were flummoxed by RAND researchers expounding on abstract concepts from the world of decision science. And, Jerla says with a laugh, โI donโt know that any of usreally even understood what was happening.โ
The partnership between Reclamation and RAND wound down after the Water Supply and Demand Study concluded. But the Reclamation team continued working to incorporate DMDU techniques into its research and modeling.
At Reclamationโs behest, Zagona, University of Colorado professor Joseph Kasprzyk and others on the CADSWES team took the Colorado River model and married it with an AI tool called a โmulti-objective evolutionary algorithmโ developed at Penn State. The algorithm โ somewhat ominously named Borg โ is a sort of computational supercharger that can create many potential operating strategies, test them out in the river model, and sort through them to find the ones that perform best.
Glen Canyon Dam has four bypass tubes, also referred to as river outlet works (ROWs) that can draw water from Lake Powell around elevation 3,370 feet, bypassing the powerplant and sending the water downstream.
In 2016, the Reclamation team began exploratory work with the Borg-enhanced software to see what it could do. The following year, Kasprzyk, Zagona and a graduate student named Elliot Alexander โ who would quickly be hired on with the Reclamation team โ used the augmented modeling package to find an operating strategy for Lake Mead, the other main reservoir on the Colorado, that outperformed the one the states had painstakingly negotiated for the 2007 interim guidelines.
But the operation of Lake Mead is just one, albeit very important, variable in the complex Colorado River system. The potential beauty of Borg was that it can combine many policy variables to identify strategies that perform well across multiple objectives in a wide range of hydrologic scenarios.
Thereโs a catch, however: Multi-objective strategies, practically by definition, demand constant compromise. Keeping the water level in Lake Powell as high as possible, for example, improves the odds of being able to continue generating hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. But it simultaneously limits water deliveries to the downstream states of California, Arizona and Nevada, among other tradeoffs.
Still, Borg offered a little more. The โevolutionaryโ part of the algorithm gave it the ability to essentially breed well-performing operating strategies with each other โ and even artificially induce mutations โ to create new approaches that might perform even better.
Yet Borg sometimes showed a naughty streak.
โIt would find a lot of mathematical solutions that maybe were optimal for a certain metric,โ says Butler. โBut then youโd look at them and youโd think: โThatโs just absurd.โโ
Rebecca Smith is Reclamationโs Lower Colorado Basin research and modeling team lead. (Photo courtesy of Rebecca Smith)
In one test, the team set Borg loose on a mission to minimize the frequency of water shortages over a 30-year model run. The algorithm diligently avoided implementing water-delivery cuts for as many years as possible, until Lake Mead dropped so low that water could not be released from the reservoir, resulting in a sudden, six-million-acre-foot cut to California, Arizona and Nevada โ an amount roughly equal to those three statesโ entire annual Colorado River water use.
Ultimately, both Reclamation and the state and local water managers would end up using Borg not to generate specific strategies for consideration, but to test strategies of their own devising. But the exploratory work with Borg helped create a virtual anvil on which they could hammer out their own strategies and see how they compared with the bigger world of possibilities โ even though some of those might be absurd.
โBorg created this dartboard where, if weโre throwing darts, at least we know where they land,โ says Rebecca Smith, Reclamationโs Lower Colorado Basin research and modeling team lead. โWithout having that, weโre just saying: โI guess this is goodโ โ but we donโt know how much better we could do.โ
Translating Science into Action
Meanwhile, the clock was ticking on the Colorado River. After six grueling years of negotiations, the states reached agreement in 2019 on a Drought Contingency Plan that added to the interim guidelines. But the entire package of agreements was set to expire in just another six years. And so, in 2021, the state negotiating teams started meeting informally again to develop what, after a decade and a half of workarounds, they hoped would be a longer-term operating strategy.
Nathan Bonham of Reclamationโs research and modeling team has played a key part in helping the agency refine its analyses of robustness and vulnerability on the Colorado River. (Water Education Foundation)
While that was happening, the Reclamation team tasked Nathan Bonham, a newly arrived University of Colorado doctoral student who would also eventually be hired by Reclamation, with refining the methods used to assess system vulnerabilities and the robustness of potential operating strategies. That work led to a public web tool, designed in collaboration with CADSWES and consulting firm Virga Labs, that would put the DMDU-inspired upgraded software package into the hands of the negotiating teams as well as water agencies and anyone else, like tribes and environmental groups, with an interest in the riverโs future.
The effort to develop the web tool reached a blistering pace over six months in 2023. Smith and H.B. Zeff, another Reclamation engineer at the time, would upload massive numbers of simulations to Microsoftโs cloud of high-performance Azure computers and remotely babysit the models as they ran, only to discover that the computers were rebooting themselves to install updates in the middle of the night.
Despite such glitches, the upgraded software package went online in November 2023, just as the negotiating effort to develop a post-2026 operating strategy was kicking into high gear. Now, water users had a way to test the strategies they were considering against 8,400 possible hydrologic scenarios.
One of the biggest challenges is presenting such complex data in a way that allows negotiators to compare the tradeoffs between various operating strategies.
โI can crunch the numbers all day long,โ says Bonham, โbut thereโs a whole other element of how do you present it visually?โ
In theย web tool, each strategy under consideration can be displayed on an interactive parallel-axis chart. To a first-time user, the charts look like twisted skeins of yarn on a loom gone haywire. But with familiarity over time, they become a window into possibility.
A web tool allows users to see tradeoffs between the โperformance objectivesโ of various operational strategies, such as keeping water levels higher in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, minimizing water shortages to the Lower Basin states and maintaining conditions that will prevent invasive small mouth bass from entering the Grand Canyon. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Users of the web tool can adjust the relative importance of various โperformance objectivesโ: water levels at lakes Mead and Powell; water releases from the Upper Basin downstream to the Lower Basin; potential water cuts to Lower Basin states; favorable conditions for native fish in the Grand Canyon. Then, at least theoretically, they can find strategies that help them meet the goals they most care about without adversely affecting the objectives of other users, whose buy-in they need for a real-world agreement.
The web toolโs vulnerability analyses also help identify the danger zones โ like low river flows below which problems start to occur at particular points in the system โ that would necessitate more extensive damage-control efforts.
โThat puts some numerical context around it,โ Prairie says, โto track not just a feeling, but actually a level of flow that the analysis shows is a point where you start to see failure.โ
DMDUโs ability to accurately flag those hazards could also potentially help water managers better respond when conditions start getting really bad.
โIf we can understand where (an operating strategy) falls short, and have also seen what is more effective if things get worse,โ says Smith, โthen we are more prepared to adapt.โ
Crunch Time for a Deal
The governorsโ representatives are now racing to meet the Nov. 11 deadline to notify the Interior Department whether theyโre likely to reach agreement on a post-2026 operating strategy. Reclamationโs Boulder team has been busy helping them with on-the-spot modeling work.
The Central Arizona Project canal cuts through Phoenix. Photo credit: Ted Wood/The Water Desk
For water managers, DMDU is proving to be a mixed blessing โ or a double-edged sword. It is helping illuminate and more quantitively delineate the hazardous areas in the riverโs future. But itโs also pushing hard questions to the fore.
โItโs a totally different way to think about risk,โ says Central Arizonaโs Projectโs Templeton. โJust by exploring all these potentials, weโre understanding that there are critical thresholds in our future that should prompt some decision-making. That definitely has resonated within our agency.โ
The catch, she says, is that DMDU doesnโt provide an unequivocal path through those decisions; it only illuminates the tradeoffs.
โThe DMDU approach doesnโt say โyesโ or โnoโ to any of those,โ she says. โItโs always: โIt depends.โโ
The algorithm is not going to find a super-strategy for the future โ at least not one that all seven states can agree to.
โI think many people like the idea of being able to have a magic strategy. But on the ground, itโs not that simple,โ says Laura Lamdin, a senior engineer with theย Metropolitan Water District, which supplies urban Southern California. โHaving the ability to quickly test a bunch of ideas as you try and incorporate some out-of-the-box thinking is valuable to creating those more handcrafted strategies.โ
In the end, DMDUโs real utility may not lie in delivering miracle fixes, but simply in helping water managers better understand the ramifications of their decisions.
The negotiators for the states may be able to reach agreement on a less-than-perfect plan that still gives them the flexibility to deal with tougher questions as they arise. In fact, it seems likely that any operating strategy the states can agree on will follow the incremental approach theyโve taken so far. If that turns out to be true, DMDU could help bring a better-informed style of incrementalism to the effort to work through the problems on the river.
In that mode of problem-solving, the danger zones are critical. In one sense, they are the perilous realms where water gets really tight. Yet they also mark the legal minefields that the states have so carefully steered clear of throughout the negotiations since 2005.
โOne of the big problems is thereโs a lot of the Compact questions that have been put off for many, many, many years,โ says J.B. Hamby, the California governorโs representative in the negotiations. โWeโve continued to dance around them โ and (now) here we are dealing with them, but with really bad hydrology, which then puts these core questions to the test.โ
Paradoxically, as punishing as the entire two-decade-long negotiating process has been, it has spurred an era of innovation on the river, opening the door to more flexible reservoir operations and what has grown to be a massive water banking and transfer program.
Viewed more optimistically, then, DMDUโs ability to mark the danger zones in a post-2026 operating strategy might also reveal places where there could be new opportunities for the states to cut even more of the incremental deals theyโve managed to make between themselves so far.
Tough Choices Lie Ahead
Still, nearly everyone at the negotiating table acknowledges that a hard reality lies behind all of this. Annual water use throughout the Colorado River Basin currently exceeds inflows by at least 3.6 million acre-feet. The only way to make the numbers work over the long term โ to truly make the Colorado River system robust against a future in which the only certainty is that there will be far less water โ is to reduce the total amount of water used throughout the entire basin.
The white โbathtub ringโ behind Hoover Dam shows the decline in Lake Mead levels since the beginning of the Millennium Drought. (Bureau of Reclamation)
Depending on how big they are, water cuts could have enormous economic impacts. In fact, the biggest point of contention in the negotiation of the post-2026 operating guidelines is which states would take cuts, and how big theyโd be. In 2024, California, Arizona and Nevada committed to collectively reducing their use by 1.25 million acre-feet a year โ 20 percent of what they used that year โ and proposed splitting additional cuts with the Upper Basin and Mexico up to a total of 3.9 million acre-feet.
For their part, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico have, at least publicly, been adamant about not taking any cuts. They argue that, without any large upstream reservoirs backstopping their water supplies, theyโve already been disproportionately affected by drought and climate change โ and, because theyโve grown slower than their downstream counterparts, theyโre still entitled to water under the Compact that they havenโt yet put to use.
Breaking through that stalemate is the key challenge negotiators now face, and by most accounts their prospects for doing so are dim. But regardless of whether they can resolve that impasse by November, the really hard questions may be coming sooner rather than later.
The research and modeling teamโs analyses suggest that when the Colorado Riverโs 10-year average annual flow dips into the 12- to 13-million acre-foot range, a lot of things start going wrong. As it happens, the riverโs flows over the past five years have fallen squarely within that range. And in September, an independent group of Colorado River experts released an analysisshowing that, without immediate reductions in water use, the amount of โrealistically accessible storageโ in Lake Powell and Lake Mead could essentially be exhausted by early 2027.
The 21st century Colorado River is a world of inescapable tradeoffs, and DMDU is, at root, a search for the least-bad strategy to which everyone can agree. But, Smith says, that kind of compromise comes with a big question: โAre we prepared to deal with the realities of whatever gets chosen?โ
โThatโs the thing about DMDU,โ she adds. โIt shifts when you have to make the call โ but you do still have to make a call.โ
Last week, Jeff Brigger, an executive with NV Energy, Nevadaโs largest utility โ and a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary โ told a gathering in Las Vegas that tech firms are asking the utility to supply up to 22,000 megawatts of electricity to support planned data centers.
That is an insanely enormous amount of generation capacity. Itโs about two-and-a-half times NV Energyโs current peak demand of 9,000 MW, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal story. Itโs enough to power about 11 million homes. And itโs equivalent to the generating capacity of five Palo Verde generating stations, the nationโs largest nuclear power plant.
Brigger noted, correctly, that these are โunprecedented timesโ before going on to say that the utility is โexcited to serve this load.โ I bet they are. Not only does it mean selling a hell of a lot more of their product, but it will also require investing in new infrastructure in a massive way, for which they can then recover the costs, with a profit, from all of their ratepayers. Warren Buffetโs about to get even richer โ so long as power line-sparked wildfires donโt drain his utilities of all their cash.
To its credit, NV Energy has largely moved away from coal generation, shutting down its heavily polluting Reid Gardner plant near Moapa and replacing it with battery storage and solar. It is in the process of shutting down its North Valmy coal plant, too, but instead of tearing it down, the utility will convert it to run on natural gas, adding to its already substantial fleet of the fossil fuel-burning facilities. Itโs likely that a portion of that requested 22,000 MW will come from new methane-fired plants.
But a great deal of the new capacity will also come from solar power. NV Energy is currently constructing the $4.2-billion Greenlink West transmission line between Las Vegas and Reno. And it is seeking Bureau of Land Management approval for its Greenlink North line that will run along Highway 50, also known as the Loneliest Road in America. These lines will open up hundreds of square miles of public land to utility-scale solar development, with most or all of the power going to data centers in the Reno and Las Vegas areas.
Proposed path of the Greenlink North transmission project. Credit: BLM
Look, Iโd much rather see a solar or wind facility than a coal or natural gas plant. No matter how you figure it, the environmental and human health toll from burning fossil fuels is far greater than solar or wind power. A solar plant doesnโt spew sulfur dioxide and mercury and arsenic into the air (and bodies of those nearby); nor will it explode catastrophically, as a natural gas pipeline did this week in southern Wyoming, damaging a freight train and sending up flames visible from Colorado. Coal mining and natural gas extraction often occurs on public lands, damaging the ecosystem, fragmenting wildlife habitat, and polluting the water.
So itโs one thing when a new giant solar installation leads to a fossil fuel generator being retired. Yet the Big Data Center Buildupโs energy needs are so high that utilities end up deferring coal and gas plant retirements, building more gas plants, and carpeting public lands with solar. As the Center for Biological Diversityโs Patrick Donnelly put it in an email: โTurns out the destruction of the desert for renewable energy isn’t about displacing fossil fuels, it’s about feeding the big tech machine.โ
Of course, at this point itโs anyoneโs guess whether those solar and wind installations are ultimately built. While some are already under development in Nevada along the Greenlink West line, the Greenlink North line has yet to garner BLM approval. And since it is intended to carry primarily solar-generated electrons, it could face added scrutiny from the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trumpโs โBig Beautiful Billโ wiped out federal tax credits for solar and wind, making new developments less feasible.
Itโs somewhat surprising that data centers continue to flock to the Las Vegas area given the water constraints. Nevada has butted up against the limits of its 300,000 acre-feet (down to 279,000 under current restrictions) Colorado River allotment for years. That has forced the Southern Nevada Water Authority to crack down on water consumption by banning new lawns, limiting pool sizes, and putting a moratorium on commercial and industrial evaporative cooling systems like those used by many data centers in arid regions.
As long as the moratorium stays in place โ a Nevada lawmaker unsuccessfully tried to ban the ban this year โ it will force new data centers in the Vegas-area to use less water-intensive, but more energy-intensive, cooling methods1. Still, the Las Vegas data centers that began operating prior to the 2023 ban use a lot of water: more than 716 million gallons, or about 2,200 acre-feet2, in 2024, according to Las Vegas Valley Water data obtained and reported by the Review-Journal.
Itโs a bit overwhelming, especially since it all came on so fast. I looked back through the news and noticed that just five years ago talk about data centersโ energy and water use was confined to a few cryptocurrency miners setting up shop in rural Washington to take advantage of cheap hydropower. While the impact was big locally, it wasnโt yet throwing utilitiesโ long-term plans into disarray. But here we are.
In other data center news, the Doรฑa Ana County commissioners voted 4-1 to approve tax incentives for Project Jupiter, a proposed $165 billion data center campus in Santa Teresa in the southeastern corner of New Mexico. Once again itโs a situation in which the community and region need the economic benefits and diversity the campus offered, but which is also short on water. As such, it sparked both opposition and support.
You may wonder why a place would try to lure, welcome, or even allow data centers into their communities, given their hefty resource consumption.
Sometimes they donโt: Tucsonโs city council recently rejected a proposed data center after local residents raised concerns about water and power use and a lack of transparency. (The developers re-upped their proposal for a site outside the city, but opponents arenโt backing down).
The answer, as is often the case, is for the economic shot in the arm they offer. These sprawling facilities each create hundreds of construction jobs, which offer relatively high wages (even if they are short lived). Then they need employees to operate the centers (although not nearly as many). And they pay property taxes.
Right now, Las Vegas and Nevada as a whole seem to need a little help, given that they are one of the nationโs biggest victims of Trumponomics. Visitor volume to Las Vegas was down 11% in June and 12% in July compared to the same months in 2024, with hotel occupancy rates also taking a big hit. The state has lost 600 federal government jobs since Trump took office. And it has shed a whopping 7,300 construction jobs since January. Ouch.
On a similar note, Wyomingโs mining and logging sector shed about 1,000 jobs since January, a 6% drop. Thatโs surprising, given that this includes coal and uranium miners and oil and gas workers, who are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of Trumpโs โenergy dominanceโ agenda. Go figure.
๐บ๏ธ Messing with Maps ๐งญ
Hereโs one more from the USGSโsย Guidebook of the western United States: Part E – The Denver & Rio Grande Western route, published in 1922.ย This map shows a segment of the Wasatch Front in Utah. Iโve also included a Google Earth image of the same area now. Itโs remarkable to me because back then Salt Lake City was a small city that stood on its own; now itโs surrounded by a sea of sprawl. Salt Lake was a bit bigger then (or rather, the lake level was higher than it was when the Google Earth image was made; when the map was made in 1909 it was 4,203 feet, now itโs about 13 feet lower). And Bingham Canyon still was a canyon, with little towns in it, rather than the gaping hole known as the Bingham Canyon copper mine.
For the most part, President Donald Trump has done everything we feared the candidate would do and then some: following Project 2025 to a T, gutting environmental and public health protections, shredding the First Amendment (to the point of even losing Tucker Carlson), threatening political opponents, and generally embracing authoritarianism.
But when it comes to public lands, there is actually one act we expected the administration to do shortly after the inauguration, but that it hasnโt yet attempted: Shrinking or eliminating national monuments, especially those designated during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations. Even after Trumpโs Justice Department opined (wrongly, Iโd say) that the Antiquities Act authorizes a president to shrink or revoke national monuments, the administration didnโt actually do it.
I suspect this is because they realize how deeply unpopular that would be. Sure, Trumpโs first-term shrinkage of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments may have garnered some support from a handful of Utah right-wingers, but theyโd be behind him regardless. Meanwhile, it pissed off a lot of Americans who value public lands but might otherwise support Trumpโs policies.
Thatโs not to say the national monuments are safe. Itโs just that the administration seems to be intent, for now, to outsource their destruction to their friends in Congress. The House Republicansโ proposed budget, for example, would zero out funding for GSENMโs new management plan โ a de facto shrinkage.
And now, Rep. Paul Gosar, a MAGA Republican from Arizona, has introduced bills that would nullify Baaj Nwaavjo Iโtah Kukveni โ Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and the Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of Tucson. The former blocks new mining claims in an area that has been targeted for uranium extraction. And the latter, established by Bill Clinton in 2000, covers a 189,713-acre swath of ecologically rich Sonoran Desert near the gaping wound known as the Asarco Silver Bell copper mine. The national monument designation blocked new mining claims.
Interestingly enough, neither of the national monuments are in Gosarโs district, which covers the heavily Republican western edge of the state, so he wonโt suffer from voter blowback if the legislation succeeds.
โ๏ธ Mining Monitor โ๏ธ
Congressional Republicans, with some Democratic support, are again trying to pass legislation that would allow mining companies to dump their waste on public lands.
The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2025, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, made it through the House Natural Resources Committee this week on a 25-17 vote. It would tweak the 1872 Mining Law to ensure that mining companies can store tailings and other mining-related waste on public land mining claims that arenโt valid, meaning the claimant has not proven that the parcels contain valuable minerals. This was actually the norm for decades until 2022, when a federal judge ruled that the proposed Rosemont copper mine in Arizona could not store its tailings and waste rock on public land. That ruling was followed by a similar one in 2023, leading mining state politicians from both parties to try to restore the pre-Rosemont Decision rules.
The bill would supplement Trumpโs executive order from March invoking the Defense Production Act to expedite mining on public lands, and his โemergencyโ order that fast-tracks mining and energy permitting on public lands.
***
Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
IsoEnergy, the company that owns the controversial Daneros Mine just outside Bears Ears National Monument and the Tony M Mine,plans to begin exploratory drilling at its Flatiron claims in Utahโs Henry Mountain uranium district. Last year, the Canada-based company staked a whopping 370 lode claims on federal land. Along with two Utah state leases, this adds up to about 8,800 acres south-southwest of Mt. Hillers.
๐ข๏ธ Hydrocarbon Hoedown
A peer-reviewed study out of UCLA recently found that pregnant women living near the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Los Angeles during the sustained blowout of 2015 experienced more adverse birth outcomes than expected. Specifically, the prevalence of low birthweight was 45% to 100% higher than those living outside the affected area. This should concern not only folks living near Aliso Canyon (which is still operational), but also anyone who lives near an oil and gas well or other facility.
Aliso Canyon is a depleted oil field in the hills of the Santa Susana Mountains in northern LA. Southern California Gas pipes in natural gas, pumps it into the oil field, and stores up to 84 billion cubic feet of the fuel there. In October 2015, one of the wells blew out and for the next 112 days spewed a total of about 109,000 metric tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and the main ingredient of natural gas.
Thatโs bad. But also mixed into the toxic soup that erupted from the field were other compounds such as mercaptans including tetrahydrothiophene and t-butyl mercaptan, sulfides, n-hexane, styrene, toluene, and benzene. All really nasty stuff that you donโt want in your air, and that is often emitted by oil and gas wells. The authors write:
โThe emissions of BTEX and other HAP compounds are of particular concern as even at levels below health benchmarks they have been linked to health effects, including neurological, respiratory, and developmental effects.โ
That appears to have been the case with the Aliso Canyon blowout, where โlow birth weight and term low birth weight was higher than expected among women living in the affected area whose late pregnancy overlapped with the disaster.โ
Itโs simply more confirmation that fossil fuel development and consumption can take a big toll on the environment, the climate, and the people who live in or near the oil and gas patch or associated infrastructure. And that limits on methane emissions are important, even if you donโt care about climate change.
***
Long-time Land Desk readers might remember my story about the Horseshoe Gallup oil and gas field and sacrifice zone in northwestern New Mexico. I wrote about how the area had been ravaged by years of drilling and largely unfettered development, how the wells had been sold or handed off to increasingly irresponsible and slipshod companies as they were depleted, and how that had left dozens of abandoned facilities, oozing and seeping nasty stuff, but were not cleaned up because state and federal regulators still considered them to be โactive.โ
The field is still there, along with most of the abandoned wells. But Capital & Mainโs Jerry Redfern reports that some of the worst sites, including the NE Hogback 53, are being cleaned up. Well, sort of. The extensive reclamation of the well and the tank battery was started, only to be halted in May at the end of the stateโs fiscal year. It resumed in July, and is expected to cost about $650,000.
This highlights the need for stronger enforcement and, most importantly, adequate reclamation bond requirements. At prices like that, cleaning up just the Horseshoe Gallup could cost tens of millions of dollars, and the taxpayer will be left to shoulder most of the bill.
๐ฅต Aridification Watch ๐ซ
Clarification: In Tuesdayโs dispatch on the Colorado River and Lake Powell, I wrote that another dry winter would put โโฆ the elevation of Lake Powell at 3,500 feet by this time next year. And, due to the infrastructureโs limitations, Glen Canyon Dam would have to be operated as a โrun of the riverโ facility.โ That probably needs a bit more explanation.
One smart reader pointed out that even after the surface level of Lake Powell drops below minimum power pool, or 3,490 feet in elevation, the dam can still release up to 15,000 cfs from its river outlets. Technically, managers would not be forced to go to run of the river until the surface level dropped below 3,370 feet, which is known as โdead pool.โ
However, the Bureau of Reclamation is very wary of relying on the river outlets, because they werenโt designed for long-term use and could fail under those circumstances. So, BoR is intent on keeping the water levels above minimum power pool so that all releases can go through the penstocks and the hydroelectric turbines. โIn effect,โ the authors of the paper wrote, โat least for the short term, the engineering and safety issues associated with the ability to release water through Glen Canyon Dam mean that the amount of water actually available for release from Lake Powell is only that which exists above elevation 3500 feet.โ
So, as long as this is the case, the BoR will need to go to run of the river as soon as the elevation drops to 3,500 feet. I hope that helps clear things up!
๐บ๏ธ Messing with Maps ๐งญ
Todayโs map is less about the map than it is about the publication it comes from, the USGSโs Guidebook of the Western United States Part E. the Denver & Rio Grande Western Route, published in 1922. This thing is super cool, and super detailed (itโs 384 pages long). Itโs got some great photos and maps, like this one (click on the image to see it in larger size on the website).
Besides having a cool, hand drawn style, this map struck me because it was made prior to the reservoirs on the Gunnison River. And it shows how the railroad tracks used to go into the Black Canyon at Cimarron and continue along the river all the way to Gunnison (most of that section is now under water). I suppose I should have known that was where the tracks went, but it never really occurred to me before. Credit: USGS
Related to that map were these two photos illustrating the miracle of irrigation.
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Times website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:
September 23, 2025
La Nina prepares to make a brief appearance in Colorado this fall before winter forecasts turn even more unpredictable than usual
Following an extremely warm, dry summer on the Western Slope, recent rainfall is beginning to chip away at the worst of Coloradoโs drought conditions.ย In mid-August, โexceptionalโ drought conditions โ the most severe among the national drought monitor rankings โย developed across nearly 7% of the state in northwest Colorado for the first time since May 2023. The exceptional rating hit portions of Moffat, Routt, Rio Blanco, Garfield, Eagle, Pitkin, Gunnison, Delta, and Mesa counties following one of the hottest, driest summers on record for the region.ย
โFortunately, the exceptional drought that we had in early to mid-August is over in western Colorado with the persistent rains of the last few weeks,โ said Russ Schumacher, Coloradoโs state climatologist, at Septemberโs Colorado Water Conditions Monitoring Committee meeting on Tuesday.
Comparing the Aug. 20ย Colorado Drought Monitorย to the most recent Sept. 16 map, Schumacher said, โyou can see big improvements in a lot of places, but still long-term drought โ severe to extreme drought โ across much of western Colorado.โ During the last month, only portions of North Park, Grand County and the Denver metro area saw worsening drought conditions as they missed out on recent storms, Schumacher noted…โItโs not that all the drought concerns are over in that part of the state, but itโs not these extreme conditions that we had a month ago, where wildfires were starting and growing every day and things like that,โ Schumacher said. โFortunately, that period is over for now. But then the flip side of that, weโve seen flash flooding and debris flows, especially on the burn scars.โย
A flume and ditch is covered with silt, mud, rocks and debris along the White River following run-off damage from rains after the Lee Fire in Rio Blanco County.
Colorado Division of Water Resources/Courtesy photo
Projects in Utahโs Uinta Basin could significantly increase hazardous oil shipments through Colorado
Colorado, along with 15 other states, is poised to sue the federal government for ignoring endangered species regulations in a wide range of infrastructure projects on public lands. One of those projects, a controversial proposal to expand an oil shipping facility in Utah, would significantly increase hazardous rail shipments through Colorado.
Phil Weiser, Coloradoโs attorney general, and the attorneys general of the other states provided in a July 18 letter to Trump administration officials a 60-day notice of their intent to sue. The notice expired last week.
The letter cites violations of the Endangered Species Act it says have occurred in pursuit of an executive order, called โDeclaring a National Energy Emergency,โ which President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office in January.
โThe ESA and implementing regulations do not allow agencies to routinely avoid and delay implementation of the ESAโs protections of endangered species and their critical habitats in the manner you have directed and which your agencies are carrying out,โ the letter says.
The letter was addressed to Trump, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the directors of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The letter lists pipeline, cable and mining projects in states from Washington to Illinois โ including the Wildcat Loadout Facility Right-of-Way Amendment on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land near Price, Utah โ that it says pose risks to listed endangered species or critical habitat for fish and aquatic mammals from rainbow trout to salmon to sturgeon to whales.
โThe notice of intent to sue to enforce the ESA could be a basis for joining the lawsuit challenging the White House energy emergency executive order,โ Weiser spokesman Lawrence Pacheco wrote in an email this month. โThe attorney general, however, has not made a decision on joining the EO lawsuit.โ
Pacheco did not provide additional information on when the endangered species litigation will be filed or how it will be announced.
โWe announce all lawsuits that we join or file ourselves,โ Pacheco said. โI donโt have any idea on timing.โ
Sued by environmental groups
The Wildcat Loadout expansion, as first reported by Newsline in 2023, has been plagued by air quality violations and other matters related to Native American antiquities. It would allow crude oil producers in the Uinta Basin to vastly expand drilling and transportation, including by rail through Colorado. Another proposed project in the basin, the bitterly opposed Uinta Basin Railway, would allow for even greater oil shipments. When the U.S. Supreme Court in late May cleared the way for the 88-mile rail link project, proponents said their next step was โcompletion of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) process.โ
The BLM in early July invoked Trumpโs emergency declaration to complete an accelerated environmental review of the permit for the Wildcat facility, which could increase oil capacity on the main rail line through Colorado by up to 80,000 barrels a day. Combined with the expansion of other nearby facilities, it will allow for the trucking and transfer to rail of up to 75% of the oil proposed for the Uinta Basin Railway project.
The railway project, estimated to cost at least $2.4 billion to build, would allow for up to 350,000 barrels of oil per day โ more than doubling U.S. oil-by-rail transport โ to move in heated oil tankers for 100 miles along the headwaters of the Colorado River, under the Continental Divide at Winter Park and through Denver on their way to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Backers of the project are seeking low-interest U.S. Department of Transportation private activity bonds.
Eagle County and five environmental groups sued to overturn U.S. Surface Transportation Board approval of the railway in 2022. They were initially successfully, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a favorable 2023 federal appellate court decision. Eagle County has long sought more direct state involvement in litigation opposing the project.
In a press release following the Supreme Court ruling, Keith Heaton, director of Utahโs Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, which has been using taxpayer dollars to pursue the railway project, said, โIt represents a turning point for rural Utah โ bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability. We look forward to continuing our work with all stakeholders to deliver this transformative project.โ
The coalition is not a sponsor of the Wildcat Loadout project.
Asked for project updates and comment on the pending endangered species litigation, Melissa Cano, director of communications for the Uinta Basin Railway and the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, replied in an email: โAt this time, the coalition does not have additional information or updates to provide beyond what has already been made publicly available. What I do wish to stress is that the Uinta Basin Railway Project is moving forward.โ
View of Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant construction in Glenwood Canyon (Garfield County) Colorado; shows the Colorado River, the dam, sheds, a footbridge, and the workmen’s camp. Creator: McClure, Louis Charles, 1867-1957. Credit: Denver Public Library Digital Collections
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Times website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:
September 20, 2025
The battle over one of the Colorado Riverโs oldest, non-consumptive water rights continued this week during a 14-hour Colorado Water Conservation Board hearing over whether the rights could be used for the environment. The Colorado River District isย seeking to acquire the Shoshone water rightsย โ tied to a hydropower plant on the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon โ from Xcel Energy for $99 million. The River District, a governmental entity representing 15 Western Slope counties, is proposing to add an instream flow agreement to the acquisition, which would allow a certain amount of water to remain in the river for environmental benefits. While the stateโs water board โ theย only entity that can hold an instream flow water rightย in Colorado โ was set to decide on the proposal this week, this was pushed to November after the parties agreed to take more time to reach a consensus on the proposal.
โThe exercise of the Shoshone water rights impacts almost every Coloradan,โsaid Davis Wert, an attorney speaking on behalf of Northern Water.
Northern Water is contesting the instream flow agreement alongside Denver Water, Aurora Water, and Colorado Springsย Utilities. These providers rely on transmountain diversions from the Colorado River basin to supply water to their customers…While the hearing did include some back and forth, the entities west and east of the Continental Divide agreed on a few things during the hearing. First, adding an instream flow agreement to the Shoshone right will preserve and improve the natural environment. Second, they want to maintain the status quo on the Colorado River…Michael Gustafson, in-house counsel for Colorado Springs Utilities, said the provider did not oppose the change of the senior Shoshone water right for instream flow purposes โto provide for permanency of the historic Shoshone call and maintenance of the historical Colorado River flow regime…
With that, however, there were a few sticking points during the hearing: who should manage the instream flow agreement โ and have the authority to make decisions on Shoshone callsย โย and how much water has historically been granted as part of the right.ย The historic flow regime has been highly contested between the parties but will ultimately be determined in the Colorado Water Court proceedings that will conclude the River Districtโs acquisition. Wert acknowledged this as the Front Range entities presented a historic use analysis that contrasted the preliminary analysis obtained by the River District…The Colorado River Districtโs proposed instream flow agreement includes a โco-management strategy,โ while the contesting Front Range providers want the sole management authority to reside with the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
The San Juan River near Navajo Dam, New Mexico, Aug. 23, 2015. Photo credit: Phil Slattery Wikimedia Commons
From email from Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam to 650 cubic feet per second (cfs) from the current release of 500 cfs for Tuesday September 23, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.govย or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website athttps://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
The deadline is rapidly approaching for the Colorado River Basin states to come up with a plan for divvying up the riverโs waters and operating its reservoirs and other plumbing infrastructure after 2026.ย But aย team of experts1ย warns that even if the states do make the November deadline โ and itโs looking more and more likelyย they wonโtย โ it wonโt be soon enough to avert a crisis in the coming 12 months if the region experiences another dry winter.
Their analysis found that a repeat of the 2025 water year, which ends at the end of this month, will result in consumptive water use in the basin exceeding the Colorado Riverโs natural flow by at least 3.6 million acre-feet. That would potentially use up the remainder of the โrealistically accessible storageโ in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, constraining reservoir operations as early as next summer.
โGiven the existing limitations of the riverโs infrastructure,โ they write, โavoiding this possible outcome requires immediate and substantial reductions in consumptive use across the Basin.โ
The authors of the paper acknowledge that, despite a plethora of available data, it can be โdifficult to see the water forest amid all the data trees.โ Interpreting the data is rife with complexity, and translating snow water equivalents at hundreds of SNOTEL sites into streamflow forecasts is an uncertain science. However, it is abundantly clear that for the last quarter century, the collective users of the Colorado River have consumed more than the river offered, leading to a deep drawdown of the basinโs โsaving accounts,โ i.e. Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and a dozen smaller federal reservoirs.
As of Sept. 14, Lake Powell contained about 6.85 million acre-feet of water2, which is less than one-third of what was in the reservoir on the same date in 1999 (23.23 MAF). Lake Mead held about 8 MAF, or 32% of capacity. Equally striking is that in just the last year, Lake Powell has lost about 2.4 MAF of its water โ or about 30 feet of surface elevation โ to downstream releases and evaporation. The savings account is rapidly draining.
The authors assume that next yearโs natural flow on the Colorado River will be the same as in 2025, or 9.3 MAF3, which they describe as a โrealistic and conservative, but not overly alarmist, projectionโ based on the Bureau of Reclamationโs own forecasts. And, also based on Reclamation reports, they assume total Colorado River consumptive use in the U.S. and Mexico will be 12.9 MAF.
That makes for a deficit of 3.6 MAF that will have to come from the reservoirsโ dwindling storage, potentially putting the elevation of Lake Powell at 3,500 feet by this time next year. And, due to the infrastructureโs limitations and the Bureau of Reclamationโs desire to keep the reservoir from dropping below minimum power pool, Glen Canyon Dam would have to be operated as a โrun of the riverโ (ROR) facility. That means it couldnโt release more water than is coming into the reservoir at any given time, severely reducing downstream flows in the Grand Canyon and causing an even more rapid drawdown of Lake Mead.
Crystal Rapid via HPS.com
Lava Falls: “This, I was told, is the biggest drop on the river in the GC. It’s 35 feet from top to bottom of the falls,” John Fowler. The photo was taken from the Toroweap overlook, 7 June 2010, via Wikimedia.
Lake Powell inflows this August totaled about 268,000 acre-feet, while releases were 761,000 acre-feet, meaning under the ROR scenario the monthly release volume would be cut by nearly 500,000 acre-feet. Even more alarming is that instead of sending between 9,000 and 12,000 cubic feet of water per second into the Grand Canyon, late summer streamflows below the dam could fall as low as 2,000 cfs, affecting aquatic life and making river running significantly less predictable (and more like the pre-dam days4, save for the amount of sediment in the water). Iโd be curious to see Crystal rapid or Lava Falls at 2,000 cfs. Any insight on that one would be appreciated.
While this scenario could be delayed by essentially draining upstream reservoirs such as Flaming Gorge in Utah and Wyoming or Blue Mesa in Colorado, it would only offer a temporary reprieve. Two consecutive dry years would certainly render Glen Canyon Dam essentially useless, and leave Lower Basin users high and dry. Which leaves the folks relying on the river with a couple of choices: They can pray for a lot of snow and hope someoneโs listening, or they can slash consumption significantly and rapidly.
Not just one, but two tornadoes hit San Juan County, Utah, over the weekend, and when I say tornadoes, I mean honest-to-god twisters of the kind you normally see in the Midwest, not in the Four Corners region. In fact, one of them wrecked three houses and damaged others in the Montezuma Creek area, according to a Navajo Timesreport, while another touched down south of Blanding and destroyed or damaged homes, trailers, and a hay barn. While there were no reports of human injuries, but an unknown number of pets and livestock went missing during the event.
The tornadoes were part of a series of late-season monsoonal storms that hit the region, bringing downpours, increasing streamflow, and leaving some mountain peaks white with a dusting of snow. The stormsโ effects varied across the region. Flows in the San Juan River in Pagosa, for example, shot up from around 100 cfs to over 1,000 cfs in a matter of hours before falling back down again almost as rapidly, whereas the Animas River in Durango jumped up to almost 600 cfs and plateaued for a few days. Itโs the latter, more sustained increase that could give Lake Powell a much-needed bump, although it wonโt mean much without a lot of snow this coming winter.
It looks like AI generated this. It did not. Thatโs real life, as surreal as it may appear. Source: San Juan County Sheriff Facebook page.
***
Well this is a bummer: Thereโsย no fruitย in the Fruita Historic District orchards in Capitol Reef National Park this year.
The Gifford Homestead in Capitol Reef National Park. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The orchards sit in the lush valley of the Fremont River under the watch of desert varnished Wingate sandstone cliffs, and typically the trees produce cherries, plums, peaches, almonds, pears, apples, quince, walnuts, mulberries, nectarines, and apricotsthat are free for the picking. The folks at the Gifford Homestead store even make and sell outrageously good pies using said fruit (I think I may have eaten more than one pie last time I was there).
But this spring โan unusual warm spell began the bloom at the earliest time in 20 years,โ according to Capitol Reef National Parkโs climate webpage. โThe warmth was interrupted twice by nights that plummeted below freezing. This temperature whiplash froze even the hardier blossoms, causing a loss of over 80% of the yearโs fruit harvest. Climate change threatens this bountiful, interactive, and historical treasure.โ
That sucks, but I have to say Iโm pleasantly surprised that the National Park Service still has this sort of climate-related information on its website, and that it is even allowed to use the word โclimateโ these days.
๐ Good News Corner ๐
Yes, there are some bright spots in these dark times. One of them is shining out of Californiaโs Central Valley, where the Turlock Irrigation Districtโs solar-over-canal installation is now online. The project is exactly what it sounds like: An array of photovoltaic panels spanning an irrigation canal. One portion is 20 feet wide, the other 110 feet, and the system has a capacity of 1.6 megawatts, which isnโt huge, but itโs enough to power pumps and other equipment.
A map of the Aqueduct route from the Colorado River to the Coastal Plain of Southern California and the thirteen cities via the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The California installation follows a similar installation built by the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona last year. Both are scene as test cases that could open the door to much larger, utility-scale arrays.
The arrays not only generate power, but also shade the canals, reducing evaporation. Best of all, the canals are a low-conflict site for solar, and donโt require scraping any deserts of vegetation or messing up neighborsโ views, though it could restrict fishing โ if looking to land a catfish or something from a cement-lined waterway is your sort of thing.
Thereโs really no reason all of the canals in California and Arizona couldnโt be covered with solar. Yes, there are transmission constraints, and some areas would have to remain uncovered for access and maintenance, but still. And while weโre at it, why not put the panels over parking lots and on top of big box stores and reclaimed coal mines and, well, you get the picture.
***
Also in the cool news department: Navajo entrepreneur Celesta Littlemanโs Sunbeam Tours and Railway is working to convert the old electric railway that hauled coal from Black Mesa to the Navajo Generating Station into a track for zero-emissions electric rail vehicles for tourists, sightseers, and anyone else that wants to travel the scenic route.
1Analysis of Colorado River Basin Storage Suggests Need For Immediate Action, by:ย Jack Schmidt, Director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University; Anne Castle of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at CU Boulder and former U.S. Commissioner of the Upper Colorado River Commission; John Fleck, Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center at the University of New Mexico; Eric Kuhn, Retired General Manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District; Kathryn Sorenson, of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University and former Director of the Phoenix Water Services; and Katherine Tara of the Utton Transboundary Resources Center.
2 This is the total amount of water backed up behind Glen Canyon Dam. But this is not all available for use due to the damโs infrastructure and the need to keep the water level above minimum power pool so that water can continue to be released via the penstocks and hydroelectric turbines. Thereโs actually only about 2.7 million acre-feet of โrealistically accessible storageโ in Lake Powell and 3.6 MAF in Lake Mead (as of 9/1/2025).
3 This includes 8.5 MAF natural flow at Lees Ferry, plus about .8 MAF from springs and tributaries running into the river between Lees Ferry and Hoover Dam.
4 For months after the dam was first completed, managers released a relative trickle at times, with daily flows at Lees Ferry dropping as low as 700 cfs in 1963 and lower than 1,000 cfs on many occasions in the sixties. And prior to the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992, when minimum daily releases were implemented, managers sometimes released as little as 1,300 cfs from the dam at times to try to maintain reservoir levels.
From left, Hollie Velasquez Horvath, regional vice president for state affairs and community relations for Xcel, Kathy Chandler-Henry, president of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and Eagle County commissioner and Andy Mueller, general manager of the River District, at the kickoff event Tuesday [December 19, 2023] for the Shoshone Water Right Preservation Campaign in Glenwood Springs. The River District has inked a nearly-$100-million deal to acquire the water rights tied to the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Over two days of hearings, Colorado water managers laid out their arguments related to one of the most powerful water rights on the Colorado River and who should have the authority to control it.
The Colorado River Water Conservation District plans to buy the water rights associated with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon from Xcel Energy and use the water for environmental purposes. To do so, it must secure the support of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The CWCB is the only entity allowed to own instream-flow water rights, which are designed to keep a minimum amount of water in rivers to benefit the environment.
The CWCB heard more than 14 hours of testimony Wednesday and Thursday from the River District and its supporters, as well as the four big Front Range water providers โ Northern Water, Denver Water, Aurora Water and Colorado Springs Utilities. All the parties agree that the water rights would benefit the environment.
But the Front Range parties object to certain aspects of the River Districtโs proposal that they say could harm their interests. They said this is not a water grab for more; their goal is to protect what they already have.
โColorado Springs Utilities is not looking to gain additional water by the conversion of the Shoshone water rights for use as an instream flow,โ said Tyler Benton, a senior water resource engineer with CSU. โQuite simply, Colorado Springs Utilities cannot afford to lose existing water supplies as our city continues to grow.โ
The CWCB was supposed to have voted Thursday on whether to accept the senior water rights, which are for 1,408 cubic feet per second and date to 1902, for instream-flow purposes, but the River District on Tuesday granted a last-minute 60-day extension. The board is now scheduled to decide at its regular meeting in November.
Adding this instream-flow right would ensure that water keeps flowing west even when the 116-year-old plant โ which is often down for repairs and is vulnerable to wildfire and mudslides in the steep canyon โ is not operating, an occurrence that has become more frequent in recent years.
Critically, because the plantโs water rights are senior to many other water users, Shoshone has the ability to command the flows of the Colorado River and its tributaries upstream all the way to the headwaters. This means it can โcall outโ junior Front Range water providers with younger water rights who take water across the Continental Divide via transmountain diversions and force them to cut back. And because the water is returned to the river after it runs through the plantโs turbines, downstream cities, irrigators, recreators and the environment on the Western Slope all benefit.
Over two days of debate in a meeting room on the campus of Fort Lewis College, the parties went deep into the weeds of complicated technical aspects of the River Districtโs proposal, including the historic use of the water rights, the interplay of upstream reservoirs, detailed external agreements among the parties, state Senate documents and hydrologic modeling.
But these were all proxy arguments for the underlying implicit questions posed to the state water board: Who is most deserving of the stateโs dwindling water supply and who should control it: the Western Slope or the Front Range?
The River District is pushing for co-management of the water rights with the CWCB. It would be a departure from the norm, as the CWCB has never shared management of an instream-flow water right this large or this important with another entity.
โChoosing not to accept these rights now or choosing to impose a condition that involves the lack of co-management of these rights with us means that you have chosen the opposers over the West Slope,โ River District General Manager Andy Mueller told board members Wednesday. โIt actually is a decision to side with one side of the divide.โ
That Front Range water providers take about 500,000 acre-feet annually from the headwaters of the Colorado River is a sore spot for many on the Western Slope, who feel the growth of Front Range cities has come at their expense. These transmountain diversions can leave Western Slope streams depleted.
The board heard from a wide coalition of Western Slope supporters, including irrigators, water providers, elected officials, environmental advocates and recreation groups about how the Shoshone flows are critical to their rural communities, economies and culture. They also heard from Front Range water providers who reminded the board that their cities are an economic engine and home to some of the stateโs best hospitals, institutions of higher education, biggest employers and important industries.
The Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon has one of the biggest and oldest nonconsumptive water rights on the Colorado River. The River District plans to buy it from Xcel Energy and add an instream flow water right, but it needs the cooperation of the state water board. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Call authority
One of the most contentious issues that remains unresolved between the Western Slope and Front Range is who gets to control the Shoshone call and when the call is โrelaxed.โ Under existing but rarely used agreements, the Shoshone call can be reduced during times of severe drought, allowing the Front Range to continue taking water. According to the River Districtโs proposed draft instream flow agreement, the CWCB and River District would have to jointly agree in writing to reduce the call.
The River District and members of the coalition drew a line in the sand on this issue: The Western Slope must have some authority over the exercise of the Shoshone water rights. If control rests solely with the CWCB โ meaning the Denver-based staff could control the call without input from the Western Slope which would be purchasing the rights at great expense โ it would be a deal-breaker.
โThat is the one sword that the West Slope is prepared to fall on,โ Mueller said. โIt would be a clearly undesirable outcome, from our perspective, not to have that partnership with the CWCB. I think we would be forced to walk away from the instream-flow process.โ
Mueller added that if the deal falls apart, the River District would find another way to secure the Shoshone water rights for the Western Slope.
โDo I have other ideas? Do we have other mechanisms that we would then pursue to guarantee the perpetual Shoshone rights?โ he said. โYes, we do. None of them are as collaborative. None of them are as beneficial to the state as a whole.โ
The parties also disagree on another major point: precisely how much water is associated with the water rights. But the issue is outside the purview of the CWCB and will be hashed out in a later water court process if the state agrees to move forward with the proposal.
The Front Range parties believe the River Districtโs preliminary estimate of the hydro plantโs historic water use is inflated and would be an expansion of the water right. Past use of the water right is important because it helps set a limit for future use. The amount pulled from and returned to the river must stay the same as it historically has been because that is what downstream water users have come to rely on.
Kyle Whitaker, water rights manager for Northern Water, said that if the River District insists on co-management of the call, it could make for an ugly water court process that has a chilling effect on cooperation among the parties.
โThe most important issue for Northern Water is for the CWCB to retain the full discretion of the exercise of the Shoshone water rights for instream-flow purposes,โ Whitaker said. โI can assure you that if any level of discretion on the exercise of the rights is not retained by the CWCB, it will force all the entities involved to drive towards a significantly lower historic-use quantification. We have to protect our systems.โ
Board members implored the River District and Front Range parties to use the 60-day extension to come to an agreement over the call authority issue. CWCB Chair Lorelei Cloud asked Mueller if he could bring everybody from both sides together for a win-win agreement that protects the entire state.
โWe canโt have another divide within the state of Colorado,โ Cloud said. โAnd so Iโm asking: Are you capable and willing to do that by November?โ
Mueller promised the River District and Western Slope coalition would do everything in their power to reach an agreement. The River District granted the two-month extension, in part, so that the parties could attempt to negotiate a resolution. But ultimately, Mueller said, itโs not up to him.
โWe have been engaged in very good faith efforts, and we have been putting offers on the table and listening to the needs of the Front Range and trying to create solutions for them,โ he said. โBut can I guarantee you that we will be responsible for getting all of those parties to agree? I canโt say that because I have no actual control or ability over the Front Range to make that happen.โ
Dave Fosdeck climbs a hill of dirt surrounding an excavation at the site of a Chuza tank battery outside Farmington, New Mexico, in June. The orange staining in the hole is the result of years of leaking oil waste from the tanks and equipment that once sat here.ย Jerry Redfern
This story was originally published by Capital & Main and is republished here by permission.
Dave Fosdeck crested a dirt berm on the Hogback, a ridge of hills west of Farmington, New Mexico, when the scent hit him. โWhoa! It stinks!โ he yelped. It was June, and he was there with two others to look at the cleanup operations around a battery of massive oil tanks that sat abandoned for years in this rolling, high-desert corner of New Mexico.
The berm surrounds a hole where a semi-buried tank the size of a backyard swimming pool once sat, collecting and leaking waste sludge from surrounding oil wells. Nearby is an even bigger but much newer hole where a cleanup crew had removed contaminated soil. The void wasnโt fully excavated but already was big enough to drop a small house in. The pitโs sides were stained orange and an even stronger petroleum smell rose from it.
For years, a separator, a semi-trailer-sized machine that split valuable oil from wastewater and other contaminants, sat here. And for years, that separator leaked those toxic compounds onto the ground, where they soaked in, leading to the orange, contaminated soil and foul air.
The two holes, the stink and a few massive piles of dirt were about all that remained of a facility โ known as a tank battery โ that treated oil from 30 nearby wells for decades. In addition to the separator and sludge pit, the site was home to seven cylindrical green tanks the size of small grain silos, a decades-old tanker truck with flat tires, several plastic barrels and dozens of ruptured, unlabeled, cube-shaped tanks leaking mystery chemicals. Thatโs mostly gone now, except for the white and yellow chemical staining on the ground where those cubical tanks leaked.
โI canโt believe they didnโt dig that all out,โ Fosdeck said.
For a few years, all of this belonged to Chuza Oil, whichย went bust in 2018, leaving the wells, tank battery and other equipment to bake in the high desert sun. In 2022, Fosdeck, Mike Eisenfeld of the San Juan Citizens Alliance and local rancher Don Schreiber identified the remote site covered in abandoned wells and leaking equipment and began nagging federal and state officials to do something about it.
A view of the Chuza tank battery in 2023. It had been abandoned for years at this point and several unmarked plastic containers were clearly leaking. Jerry Redfern
This spot in the Hogback exemplifies a worrying, expensive trend in New Mexicoโs changing oilfield remediation landscape, where well operators declare bankruptcy and abandon highly contaminated and dilapidated facilities for state and federal agencies to clean up. Itโs a national trend that sweeps from the countryโs first oilfields inย Pennsylvaniaย to theย Californiaย coast.
Currently, New Mexico pays contractors as much as $165,000 to plug an old oil well, according to the Oil Conservation Division, the stateโs primary oil and gas regulator. Thatโs $65,000 more than the Division reported paying just three years ago. A recent report by the stateโs Legislative Finance Committee warns that New Mexico could be on the hook for up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs in coming years from bankrupt oil and gas companies and rising plugging costs. (The report also gave the Oil Conservation Division a tongue lashing over โinconsistent cost controlโ in its oilfield remediation contracts.)
And while the report does talk about cleaning up tank batteries โ and describes three very expensive examples โ it doesnโt mention how many more may be lurking in the stateโs oilfields, or what they could cost the state in the future.
Well plugging involves pulling old equipment out of the ground and scraping and flushing the wellbore before sealing it. So when a contractor arrives on site, often, โNobody knows what theyโre dealing with because itโs subsurface,โ said Jason Sandel, the president of Aztec Well Servicing. Pipes rust. Pipes break. Wells might be shallower or deeper than recorded. After the pipe comes out, the contractor injects a series of cement plugs underground to keep oil, gas and other contaminants from migrating to water-bearing formations.
A tank battery has none of that, so at first glance cleaning one up looks like the easier task. But thatโs not necessarily the case. The Chuza Oil tank battery site covers only about half an acre, and according to the Oil Conservation Division, the cleanup operation is on track to cost more than $650,000, much of that incurred because it was necessary to dig out and truck away the contaminated soil where the separator leaked at the remote location.
In mid-June, the cleanup clearly wasnโt finished. Orange barrier netting flapped in the wind around the pits, and the orange staining and gassy reek indicated more contaminated soil awaited removal. (Sidney Hill, public information officer for the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said that work stopped in May due to the end of the stateโs 2025 fiscal year and resumed in July with the new fiscal year.)
Fosdeck, Eisenfeld and Schreiber have spent years tracking and highlighting problems in the oilfields around Farmington. Fosdeck, on his own, follows the paper trails of abandoned wells and other fossil fuel ventures. Schreiber and Eisenfeld rattle the cages of state and federal government officials to get oil, gas and coal sites cleaned up.
โThis whole part of the equation โ the cleanup part โ has been neglected,โ Eisenfeld said. Thatโs one of many reasons why he thinks digging for oil, gas and coal shouldnโt be done in the first place.
Randy Pacheco retired recently from a company that plugs and cleans up old well sites like Chuzaโs, and before that he was dean of the School of Energy at San Juan College in Farmington, the stateโs oilfield trade school. He visited the Hogback field with Fosdeck, Eisenfeld and Schreiber before the cleanup began. It wasnโt the worst thing he had ever seen, but, still, it was a mess.
โI think thereโs people who have big aspirations to make a lot of money in the oil and gas industry and they end up purchasing these assets and then they donโt know what to do,โ he said.
Even so, the site confounded him. โHow would you get yourself in this kind of a mess?โ he wondered about the abandoned equipment and dilapidated tank battery he saw. โWhoโs selling them those dreams?โ
Mike Eisenfeld, the energy and climate program manager at the San Juan Citizens Alliance, checks out a piece of abandoned equipment in the remains of the Chuza oilfield in June. Jerry Redfern
SOMETIMES THE DREAM sells itself.
Bobby Goldstein is best known for producing Cheaters, a COPS-style reality TV show of hidden cameras, secret lovers, slapped faces and shattered dreams.
โIโve got a thousand episodes that run wild all over the world, every day, all day,โ Goldstein said. Those episodes made him wealthy. In July, over a long, free-wheeling phone call, Goldstein explained in his smooth Texas patter how he, a Dallas lawyer and TV impresario, followed a dream to become an oil man and how that venture completely collapsed.
โIโll never forget all this shit,โ he said.
In 2010, Goldstein persuaded a couple of acquaintances to go into the oil business with him. They formed Chuza Oil โ the name behind the Hogback mess โ and, for a little less than $3 million, they bought Parowan Oil, a small company with some old wells and a tank battery near Farmington.
โ[I] grew up around a bunch of rich brats whose families were big oil people,โ he said. โThey made the earth shake and I always thought, โMan, I wish I had some sense to do that.โ That opportunity came about, and I went on it.โ
He continued, โI never was an oil man. I was a speculator, and for a minute there I looked real smart. โฆ You see, I bought the land cheap, [and] oil rose and rose and rose.โ
Goldstein said Chuza spent about $2 million redeveloping the oilfield infrastructure. โWe made a vast improvement to the field so that it would be more efficient and more likely to be operational. So, over time, most all of those wells were working โฆ I even moved to Santa Fe where I could be closer,โ he said. โShit, I bought a jet so I could fly out there direct in an hour and a half and be on that field. I was out there a lot.โ
What happened next set the stage for the collapse of Chuza Oil and what became of the Hogback Field.
Goldstein said the company spent millions drilling two fracked wells, which involved ramming huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals into long, horizontal branches of a main wellbore to fracture the surrounding rock and loosen oil and gas trapped within.
Those wells produced for two months, but the oil was laden with paraffin. The naturally occurring, waxy hydrocarbon can slowly clog wells, in much the same way that cholesterol blocks arteries. In addition, the fracking loosened paraffin in Chuzaโs other wells, fouling them as well, Goldstein said.
Then, a financial catastrophe: โThe son of a bitch [partner] that was supposed to pay for the wells left us a $3 million unpaid bill with various creditors,โ Goldstein said. โSo not only did we have a fiscal issue going on, but we also had production issues and the company wound up into a Chapter 11,โ he said.
โIf everybody had listened to me on that field, weโd probably already sold it for $200 or $300 million. But people that have a little money think they know something, especially when they inherited it and never worked for it,โ Goldstein said. โThose are the worst kind of idiots to have to deal with.โ
After spending around $15 million to buy and expand the operation, Goldstein said Chuza Oil collapsed into years of bankruptcy litigation, foreclosure, 30 abandoned, paraffin-clogged wells and one messy tank battery.
โIt was my Tom Sawyer experience,โ Goldstein said. โI did something that I never had any background in, training for, education. And it was just a Wild West venture capital gamble.โ
And if he made a show about the experience? โI would call it โPricks and Jackasses Gone Wild,โโ he said.
As for his former oilfield in New Mexico, Goldstein said, โI donโt really know whatโs going on.โ He was unaware that the wells had been plugged and the tank battery removed. In part, thatโs because heโs no longer responsible.
One reason to set up a corporation is to protect its principals from fiscal fallout should the company fail. And in that, Chuza Oil succeeded: Bankruptcy protected Goldstein and the other partners from paying for the cleanup.
Chuzaโs assets were on Navajoย tribal trust land, managed by the U.S. government for the benefit of the tribe. The Bureau of Land Management managed those operations, making it responsible for the overall cleanup that began late last year.
Fosdeck, left, and Schreiber talk while standing next to an abandoned Chuza oil well west of Farmington, New Mexico, in 2023. The site is on tribal trust land and the warning sign is written in Navajo. Jerry Redfern
Federal regulations give the Bureau the ability to go after earlier but still extant owners to clean up well sites abandoned by recent owners. In this case, Chuza Oil was the last in a string of owners stretching back to the 1940s for some of the oldest wells. In the end, a Bureau spokesperson said Marathon Petroleum, BP America, Woodside Energy/BHP and Enerdyne plugged 23 Chuza wells they sold years ago. BLM asked the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division to plug five wells and deal with the tank battery โ none of which had extant previous owners. The Bureau plugged the remaining two wells. The cost of the cleanup bypassed Goldstein and the bankrupt Chuza Oil entirely.
Goldstein wasnโt too wistful about his wells getting torn out and smoothed over. โIโm sure the Navajo are glad that all that shitโs gone. I donโt think they ever liked all that going on there and itโs a beautiful piece of land. It was really nice to be out there,โ he said.
โSpecial experience for me,โ he concluded.
THE CLEANUP OF Chuza Oilโs wells and tanks represents a nominal victory after years of work by Fosdeck, Eisenfeld, Schreiber and others to expunge the legacy of neglect from the northwest corner of the state. But the victory is small.
According to Oil Conservation Division numbers from the beginning of September, New Mexico has 70,000 oil and gas wells and 6,717 registered tank batteries. About 100 new wells are drilled each month. Eventually, all of those will have to be plugged, and the land returned to something resembling its natural state.
The Legislative Finance Committee report notes that over the past 20 years, operators themselves plugged 95% of nonproducing wells in New Mexico, as the law requires. The remaining 5% were declared orphaned wells and plugged by the Oil Conservation Division.
The report says there are around 700 orphan wells awaiting state plugging with another 3,400 inactive or low-producing wells that could be added to the list in the near future. Extrapolating forward, the report suggests New Mexico could be on the hook for up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs over the coming years as more small companies declare bankruptcy before fulfilling their obligations to plug their wells and remove equipment.
New Mexicoโs Oil and Gas Reclamation Fund โ filled by a fraction of a tax paid by oil and gas producers โ covers the costs of implementing the Oil and Gas Act, which defines how the industry can operate in the state. The fund also pays for plugging and reclamation costs of abandoned wells and facilities. Earlier this year, the fund had $66 million, its highest balance ever. The state has kept that much in the fund by paying for plugging operations with $55.5 million in recent federal grants, as well as forfeited financial assurances that well owners are required to carry but rarely cover the actual costs of cleanup. The Finance Committee report says that the state is eligible for another $111 million from the feds.
All told, itโs a long way from $1.6 billion.
โThat is why the Reclamation Fund is not a substitute for adequate bonding and financial assurance from operators,โ state Rep. Matthew McQueen (D โ Galisteo) said. He thinks that the reportโs $1.6 billion estimate is โscary enough,โ but could be low. He said the report seems to expect a stable future for an industry with a notorious boom-and-bust cycle. โIn a significant downturn, the Stateโs liability could skyrocket rapidlyโ as weak companies fold and abandon wells, he said.
Smaller companies are often the first to feel economic shocks, and the state has a lot of smaller oil and gas producers. In 2024, 326 companies reported producing 740 million barrels of oil to New Mexicoโs Oil Conservation Division. Just 25 companies produced 92% of that total. The numbers are similar for natural gas production.
Fosdeck holds a methane detector as it lights up from a leak at an abandoned Chuza oil well in 2023. Schreiber shields the detector from the wind with his hat. Jerry Redfern
In the last legislative session, McQueen proposed a bill that would have kept well owners on the hook for remediation costs into the future if they sell wells to owners that go bankrupt โ similar to what the federal government does. โIt would cause the industry to self-police and make sure that any future operators had the wherewithal to properly remediate well sites,โ he said. It didnโt pass.
McQueen also proposed legislation to weed out potential buyers without the money or know-how to run an oil production business, as well as so-called bad actors with histories of negligence or bankruptcy. That, too, didnโt pass.
The Finance Committee report recommends several procedural and definition changes, as well as creating a law allowing the Oil Conservation Division to disallow well sales if โthe purchaser is unlikely to be able to fulfill its asset retirement obligationsโ โ much like McQueen proposed. It also called for increasing the required financial assurances paid by oilfield operators for cleanup costs on low-producing wells, which are more likely to be orphaned.
However, the Chuza Oil assets wouldnโt have been subject to these proposed laws, because the wells and tank battery were on federal land not subject to state jurisdiction, despite the fact that the state ended up paying for the cleanup.
Ben Shelton, deputy cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department โ the mothership to the Oil Conservation Division โ said, โThe report got a lot right, including identifying a need for [the Division] to be able to scrutinize transfers more closely in order to reduce the likely incidences of orphaned wells.โ
Shelton said that the Division didnโt have an estimate for either the number of orphaned tank batteries or their average cleanup costs, but the oilfield cleanups of a trio of tank batteries were some of the most expensive the state paid for in the last couple of years, at $623,000, $5.1 million and $7.6 million. The estimated $650,000 Chuza Oil tank battery cleanup will eventually join the list.
As of publication, that months-long process wasnโt finished. And in the end, the cleanup around the Chuza Oil tank battery, while expensive and time-consuming, isnโt necessarily uncommon, according to Sandel at Aztec Well Servicing, which is cleaning up the site.
โThere were many more yards of contaminated soil than expected. โฆ But I donโt think thatโs abnormal,โ Sandel said. โI wouldnโt characterize it as outside the bounds at all.โ
This historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photo
State water officials debated a controversial proposal to use two powerful Colorado River water rights to help the environment, weighing competing interests from Front Range and Western Slope water managers.
Almost 100 water professionals gathered in Durango this week for a 14-hour hearing focused on the water rights tied to the Shoshone Power Plant, owned by an Xcel Energy subsidiary. Members of the Colorado Water Conservation Board were originally set to make their final decision on the proposal this week, but an eleventh-hour extension pushed their deadline to November.
Board members peppered presenters with questions during the hearing, weighing thorny issues like who has final authority to manage the environmental water right and how much water is involved.
Their decision could make a historic contribution to the stateโs environmental water rights program and impact how Colorado River water will flow around the state long into the future.
โItโs pretty hard to anticipate all of the ways that โin perpetuityโ may play out,โ said Greg Felt, who represents the Arkansas River on the board. โBuilding in representation for flexibility โฆ is not a bad idea for an acquisition like this.โ
The Shoshone Power Plant, next to Interstate 70 east of Glenwood Springs, has used Colorado River water to generate electricity for over a century.
Graphic credit: Laurine Lassalle/Aspen Journalism
In May, the Colorado River District, representing 15 counties on the Western Slope, shared a proposal to add another use to the water rights: keeping water in the Colorado River channel to help the aquatic environment.
The change requires approval from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which runs the stateโs environmental water rights program, and other entities like water court and the stateโs Public Utilities Commission.
The Colorado River District wants to add the environmental use as part of a larger plan to maintain the โstatus quoโ flow of water past the power plant, regardless of how long the power plant remains in operation.
Western Slope communities, farms, ranches, endangered species programs and recreational industries have become dependent on those flows over the decades.
โWhat weโre presenting here today is an offer of a historic partnership,โ Andy Mueller, Colorado River District general manager, said. โWe believe that this sets the state up for a truly collaborative future on the Colorado River.โ
But any change to Shoshoneโs water rights could have ripple effects that would affect over 10,000 upstream water rights, including those held by Front Range water groups, like Denver Water, Northern Water, Colorado Springs Utilities and Aurora Water.
These water managers and providers are responsible for delivering reliable water to millions of people, businesses, farms and ranches across the Front Range.
They raised concerns in the hearings about how their water supply could be impacted by the Western Slopeโs proposal.
For board member John McClow, who represents the Gunnison-Uncompahgre River, one key question came down to authority.
โI just want to make sure we have adequate legal justification for doing what you suggest we should do,โ McClow told CWCB staff during the hearing.
When the Colorado River is too low to meet Shoshoneโs needs, its owner, Public Service of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, can call on upstream water users with lower priority water rights to cut back on using their water so that Shoshone has enough.
Whoever manages this โcallโ impacts thousands of upstream users, including Front Range providers.
Under the proposal, the Colorado River District will own the water rights. The district has an agreement with Xcel to buy the rights for about $99 million.
Generally, the Colorado Water Conservation Board is supposed to be the sole manager of environmental water rights under state law.
The Colorado River District says it should have a say, giving examples of other agreements with similar arrangements between the water board and water rights owners.
Northern Water said the state should have exclusive authority. This is the most important issue for the conservation district, Kyle Whitaker, water rights manager for Northern Water, said Thursday.
If the state agency hands over any amount of control, then the district would push for the water court to approve a smaller amount of water available to Shoshone. That would send less water to Western Slope communities.
If the River District controlled the environmental right, they could conceivably max out the amount of water passing by the power plant year-round, which would impact upstream water rights.
โWe have to protect our systems under all future potentialities,โ Whitaker said. โThis will have a chilling effect on collaboration and cooperation amongst all involved and is likely to result in an outcome that is not only less desirable but also less beneficial to the Colorado River.โ
The River District has said it plans to maintain these flows without changing how other water users are impacted.
For board members, this question of authority is just one of many sticky legal and management issues they have to weigh as they make a decision about the Shoshone water rights while tasked with representing the interests of the entire state.
โAs far as Iโve been able to understand it, I agree with you about what the statute and the rules say we may do,โ Felt told CWCB staff. โI believe weโre here to determine what we should do.โ
Water from the Colorado River flows into the Central Arizona Project on August 5, 2025. Ted Cooke spent much of his career at the agency, and some water leaders worried that he would bring bias from that job into a new federal role. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC.org website (Alex Hager):
September 18, 2025
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
The Trump Administrationโs nominee to run the Bureau of Reclamation is withdrawing from the process. Ted Cooke, a longtime water manager in Arizona, said he was asked to step back by the White House.
Cooke had been nominated to serve as commissioner of the federal agency that oversees the Colorado River. He faced pushback from some politicians and water officials who worried that he might bring bias into the position.
โI was a political casualty,โ Cooke told KUNC on Wednesday.
The seven states that use the Colorado River are stuck in tense talks about how to share its water in the future. They are split into two camps: the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.
Negotiations ahead of a 2026 deadline appear to be making little progress, and federal water officials can help push states towards agreement. If they canโt reach a deal in time, the federal government can step in and make those decisions itself. After Cookeโs nomination in June, some policymakers in the Upper Basin quietly expressed concern that he might favor the Lower Basin during that process.
Top water officials in the Upper Basin were tight-lipped in their opposition, but multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told KUNC that Cooke would face a difficult path to confirmation.
In a June meeting, Utahโs top Colorado River negotiator, Gene Shawcroft, briefly touched on the Trump Administrationโs pick to run Reclamation.
โI hesitate to use the word disturbing, but it is a little disturbing,โ Shawcroft said. โThat is concerning to us for a variety of reasons, and Iโll probably leave it at that.โ
Water levels sit low in Lake Powell near Bullfrog, Utah on September 15, 2025. Negotiations to manage the shrinking reservoir and the rest of the Colorado River system may be more difficult without federal leadership. Alex Hager/KUNC
Cooke spent more than two decades working for the Central Arizona Project, which brings Colorado River water to the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Any new plan for managing the Colorado River is likely to include cuts to demand, and Cookeโs former employer is generally among the first entities to lose water under any plan for cutbacks.
Water experts around the region said he was a qualified expert, and Cooke himself denied that he would bring a bias to his new position.
A panel of officials from the lower basin states at the Colorado River Water Users Association in Las Vegas, on Dec. 13, 2018. From left, Thomas Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources; Ted Cooke, General Manager, Central Arizona Project; Peter Nelson, chairman, Colorado River Board of California; and John Entsminger, General Manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority.
โI donโt really appreciate being pre-judged by folks saying, ‘oh heโs just going to be a Lower Basin or an Arizona partisan,’โ Cooke told KUNC in June, shortly after his nomination. โI call that projection. If this is what someone else would do in my shoes, then I feel sorry for them. But itโs not necessarily where Iโd be coming from.โ
Cooke said he was recently contacted by a White House staffer who asked him to withdraw from the nomination process for a certain reason, but Cooke declined to share that reason.
โI’ve since learned from other folks that I know, and I know lots of people, that that reason was pretty much a BS reason to basically get me out of the running,โ Cooke said. โBecause there were certain objections that had been raised from some of the states with which I would be dealing.โ
Cookeโs withdrawal means that the top federal Colorado River agency will remain without a permanent leader. The seat has already been vacant for eight months. That may make seven-state negotiations more challenging. State water leaders have saidthat the threat of federal action can make it easier to find agreement.
While the top Reclamation role goes unfilled, other federal water officials appear to be filling the gap. Scott Cameron, a longtime federal official who currently serves as the Department of the Interiorโs acting Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, told a room of water experts in June that he was intimately involved with those seven-state talks.
As for Cooke, he said he plans to stay in the Colorado River space.
โIf this door is shut, there’s lots of other open doors,” he said. “It’s disappointing, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going to sulk or be mad or develop a resentment about it. Whatever happened, happened.โ
San Luis Valley center pivot August 14, 2022. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
September 12, 2025
Woes of the Colorado River have justifiably commanded broad attention. The slipping water levels in Lake Powell and other reservoirs provide a compelling argument for changes. How close to the cliffโs edge are we? Very close, says a new report by the Center for Colorado River Studies.
But another cogent โ and somewhat related โ story lies underfoot in northeastern Colorado. Thatโs the story of groundwater depletion. There, groundwater in the Republican River Basin has been mined at a furious pace for the last 50 to 60 years.
Much of this water in the Ogallala aquifer that was deposited during several million years will be gone within several generations. In some places it already is. Farmers once supplied by water from underground must now rely upon what falls from the sky.
In the San Luis Valley, unlike the Republican River Basin, aquifers can be replenished somewhat by water that originates from mountain snow via canals from the Rio Grande. The river has been delivering less water, though. It has problems paralleling those of the Colorado River. Changes in the valleyโs farming practices have been made, but more will be needed.
In a story commissioned by Headwaters magazine (and republished in serial form at Big Pivots), I also probed mining of Denver Basin aquifers by Parker, Castle Rock and other south-suburban communities.
Those Denver Basin aquifers, like the Ogallala, get little replenishment from mountain snows. Instead of growing corn or potatoes, the water goes to urban needs in one of Americaโs wealthier areas.
Parker and Castle Rock believe they can tap groundwater far into the future, but to diversify their sources, they have joined hands with farmers in the Sterling area with plans to pump water from the South Platte River before it flows into Nebraska. This pumping will require 2,000 feet of vertical lift across 125 miles, an extraordinary statement of need in its own way.
Like greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere, these underground depletions occur out of sight. Gauges at wellheads tell the local stories, just like the carbon dioxide detector atop Hawaiiโs Mauna Loa has told the global story since 1958.
Coloradoโs declining groundwater can be seen within a global context. Researchers from institutions in Arizona, California, and elsewhere recently used data from satellites collected during the last two decades. The satellites track water held in glaciers, lakes, and aquifers across the globe. In their study published recently in Science Advances, they report that water originating from groundwater mining now causes more sea level rise than the melting of ice.
โIn many places where groundwater is being depleted, it will not be replenished on human timescales,โ they wrote. โIt is an intergenerational resource that is being poorly managed, if managed at all, by recent generations, at tremendous and exceptionally undervalued cost to future generations. Protecting the worldโs groundwater supply is paramount in a warming world and on continents that we now know are drying.โ
This global perspective cited several areas of the United States, most prominently Californiaโs Central Valley but also the Ogallala of the Great Plains.
In Colorado, the Ogallala underlies the stateโs southeastern corner, but the main component lies in the Republican River Basin. The river was named by French fur trappers in the 1700s, long before the Republican Party was organized. The area within Colorado, if unknown to most of Coloradoโs mountain-gawking residents, is only slightly smaller than New Jersey.
A 1943 compact with Nebraska and Kansas has driven Coloradoโs recent efforts to slow groundwater mining. The aquifer feeds the Republican River and its tributaries. As such, the depletions reduce flows into down-river states.
Farmers are being paid to remove land from irrigation with a goal of 25,000 acres by 2030 to keep Colorado in compliance. So far, itโs all carrots, no sticks. Colorado is also deliberately mining water north of Wray to send to Nebraska during winter months. This helps keep Colorado in compact compliance. So far, these efforts have cost more than $100 million. The money comes from self-assessments and also state and federal grants and programs.
In some recent years, more than 700,000 acre-feet of water have been drafted from the Ogallala in the Republican River Basin. To put that into perspective, Denver Water distributes an average annual 232,000 acre-feet to a population of 1.5 million.
Hard conversations are underway in the Republican River Basin and in the San Luis Valley, too. They will get harder yet. Sixteen percent of all of Coloradoโs water comes from underground.
The Colorado River has big troubles. Itโs not alone.
Part II: South Metro cities starting to diversify water sources: Castle Rock and Parker 25 years ago were almost entirely dependent upon groundwater. They are diversifying, and one plan is to import water from far down the South Platte River Valley.
The Republican River basin. The North Fork, South Fork and Arikaree all flow through Yuma County before crossing state lines. Credit: USBR/DOIRio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868Water stored in Coloradoโs Denver Basin aquifers, which extend from Greeley to Colorado Springs, and from Golden to the Eastern Plains near Limon, does not naturally recharge from rain and snow and is therefore carefully regulated. Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.The South Platte River Basin is shaded in yellow. Source: Tom Cech, One World One Water Center, Metropolitan State University of Denver.Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Ted Cooke and Tom Buschatzke: Photo credit: Arizona Department of Water Resources
Click the link to read the article on the EENews.net website (Jennifer Yachnin). Here’s an excerpt:
September 17, 2025
The White House plans to pull back its nomination of a former a veteran Arizona water official to lead the Bureau of Reclamation, leaving the agency without permanent leadership nine months into President Donald Trumpโs second term. Ted Cooke, a former top official at the Central Arizona Project, told POLITICOโs E&E News on Wednesday that he has been informed his nomination will be rescinded.
โThis is not the outcome I sought, and Iโll leave it at that,โ said Cooke in a message.
[President] Trumpย tapped Cookeย to lead the agency in June, and the selection drew praise from both environmental advocates and some state officials who pointed to Cookeโs knowledge of the Colorado River Basin. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources had not yet considered Cookeโs nomination. Interior and Reclamation have been involved in negotiations for a new long-term operating plan among the seven states that share the Colorado River…Although it is not unusual for Reclamation to be without permanent leadershipย until late in the first yearย of a new president term, the Colorado River negotiations put more pressure on the White House to fill the post.ย
Cooke spent more than two decades at the Central Arizona Project before stepping down as its general manager in early 2023, which distributes Colorado River water to Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties.
A new report finds that Lakes Mead and Powell, the nationโs largest reservoirs, could store just 9 percent of their combined capacity by the end of next summer.
Consumption of Colorado River water is outpacing natureโs ability to replenish it, with the basinโs reservoirs on the verge of being depleted to the point of exhaustion without urgent federal action to cut use, according to a new analysis from leading experts of the river.
Theย analysis, published Thursday [September 11, 2025], found that if the riverโs water continues to be used at the same rate and the Southwest sees another winter as dry as the last one, Lakes Mead and Powellโthe nationโs two largest reservoirsโwould collectively hold 9 percent of the water they can store by the end of next summer. After enduring decades of overconsumption of the riverโs water, the lakes would have just under 4 million acre feet of water in storage for emergencies and drier years when demand canโt be met. Every year, roughly 13 million acre feet is taken from the river for drinking water and human development across the region, with conservative forecasts estimating roughly 9.3 million acre feet of inflow next year.ย
The report is stark in its assessment of the situation: Current Colorado River levels require โimmediate and substantial reductions in consumptive use across the Basinโ or Lake Powell by 2027 would have no storage left and โwould have to be operated as a โrun of riverโ facilityโ in which only the inflow from the river could be released downstream.ย
โThe River recognizes no human laws or governance structures and follows only physical ones,โ the reportโs authors wrote. โThere is a declining amount of water available in the Colorado River system, primarily caused by the effects of a warming climateโlonger growing seasons, drier soils, and less efficient conversion of the winter snowpack into stream flow. Although American society has developed infrastructure to store the spring snowmelt and make that water available in other seasons to more completely utilize the variable runoff, the Colorado River watershed produces only a finite volume of water, regardless of how many dams exist.โ
The lifeblood of the American Southwest, the Colorado Riverโs water flows from Wyoming to Mexico, enabling the regionโs population and economies to develop. The damming of the river has diverted water to booming metropolises like Los Angeles and Phoenix while also supporting the U.S.โs most productive agricultural areas and powering some of the its largest hydroelectric dams. In total, the river supplies seven states, 30 tribes and 40 million people with water.
The compact that divvied up the riverโs water a century ago overestimated how much actually flowed through it, and climate change has diminished the supply even further. The melting snowpack that runs off mountains in the spring to feed the river has declined, shrinking the river and its storage reservoirs during decades of drought. The seven states that take Colorado River water are divided into two factions engaged in tense conversations about its future and how cutbacks should be distributed. Current guidelines for managing the river in times of drought are set to expire at the end of next year, and new ones are legally required to take their place, but negotiations between states, tribes and other stakeholders over the sharing of the necessary cuts in water usage are at an impasse.
But if current conditions persist, further cutbacks on the river wonโt be able to wait until those negotiations are finished, the reportโs authors find, and they urged the Department of the Interior โto take immediate action.โ
โLetโs hope that we are all wrong and that it snows like hell all winter and runoff is wonderful and we buy ourselves some time and additional buffer,โ said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research for Arizona State Universityโs Kyl Center for Water Policy and one of the reportโs co-authors. โBut of course, it never makes sense to plan as if itโs going to snow, and we have to deal with what is a realistic but not worst-case scenario and take responsible actions.โ
Adding to the issue is the status of the infrastructure that enables the river to be diverted and stored for use. For example, the researchers write, it was thought that anything above whatโs known as โdead poolโโa water level below the reservoirsโ lowest outlets that can pass water through the damsโwas โactive storage.โ But testing last year from the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency overseeing the river and its dams, found that those outlets can only be safely used at water levels higher than previously thought and cannot be used for long durations.
Margaret Garcia, an associate professor at ASUโs School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, who was not a part of the study, said the analyses makes clear the โreality of dead pool is within sightโ for the basinโs reservoirs, even without considering the possibility of having an extremely dry year.
She likened the reservoirs to having a savings account with a bank. โWhen you have a savings account, you have some time to scramble and figure things out,โ Garcia said. โBut if youโve already drawn down your savings account and then [youโre laid off] and you never filled it back up at least a little bit, youโre in for a really tough situation.โ
And just like a savings account, Garcia said, a reservoir isnโt much good if it canโt generate hydropower or store water.
Sorensen said the secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, has broad authority to act to protect critical infrastructure in both of the riverโs basins. The question is what those actions should be.
โThe solutions are there,โ she said. โThe solutions are known. Theyโre just extraordinarily painful to implement. โ
State negotiators have worked this year to determine how to manage the river after 2026, Sorensen said, but the buffer of water stored in reservoirs โthat weโre relying on to kind of get us through the negotiations and these difficult times is potentially much smaller than maybe was commonly understood.โ
โNo one comes out of this unscathed,โ she said.
From left, Western States Ranches Agricultural Operations Manager Mike Higuera, Conscience Bay Research Program Officer Dan Waldvogle and Colorado State University researcher Perry Cabot. The three held a field day and ranch tour in August for other local ranchers to learn about water conservation and deficit irrigation. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
As reservoir levels continue to plummet at the end of another dismal water year, some agricultural water users are asking Colorado lawmakers to consider a bill next session that would make it easier for them to get credit for conserving water.
It would be the next step in creating a conservation pool in Lake Powell that the Upper Basin states could use to protect against water scarcity.
Over the past decade, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have dabbled in programs that pay willing participants to use less water on a temporary basis. But so far, that saved water has flowed downstream unaccounted for. Changes to state laws would be needed to allow state officials to shepherd conserved water into a Lake Powell pool.
โOur message is simple: Protect Colorado agriculture by enabling voluntary, compensated water conservation without causing injury to other water users,โ Dan Waldvogle told state legislators at an August meeting of the Water and Natural Resources Committee in Steamboat Springs. โGive us credit for the water we save and guarantee that conserved consumptive use is fairly and fully compensated โฆ . The 2026 legislative session is our last best chance to take action and control our future.โ
Waldvogle was speaking on behalf of the Colorado Farm Bureau and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. He also works for Conscience Bay Co., a Boulder-based real estate investment firm that owns a cattle-ranching operation in Delta County known as Western States Ranches.
But allowing the state to shepherd conserved water resurrects old concerns for some on the Western Slope. They say it could open the state to speculators and interstate water markets, with Colorado water users selling their water to the highest bidder in the Lower Basin, which includes California, Arizona and Nevada.
โWeโre saying you should not pass a standalone shepherding law or conserved consumptive use law that would allow and enable the state engineer to do that without having a thorough discussion with all stakeholders and encoding in legislation important sideboards and protections for our agricultural industry and our community,โ Colorado River Water Conservation District General Manager Andy Mueller told lawmakers at the August meeting.
State Engineer Jason Ullmann said in an email that he does โnot have authority to require water conserved through voluntary programs to bypass other Colorado water usersโ headgates unless it is necessary to meet Coloradoโs compact obligations.โ The bypassing of other usersโ headgate to deliver water to a point downstream is more commonly known as shepherding.
The General Assembly would need to pass legislation in order to give him that authority, many stakeholders believe.
Western States Ranches near Eckert enrolled some of its fields in the 2024 System Conservation Pilot Program. The ranch was paid about $278,000 to save about 550 acre-feet of water. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
The conservation conversation comes at a pivotal time for water users on the Colorado River, which remains wracked by drought and climate change. The most recent projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show water levels at Lake Powell potentially falling below the threshold needed to make hydropower by November 2026. The reservoir is currently about 28% full.
State Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat who represents several Western Slope counties including Eagle, Garfield, Grand, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt and Summit and is the chair of the Water and Natural Resources Committee, told Aspen Journalism that as of now, no bill to address shepherding or future conservation programs is in the works in Colorado. But that may be because the seven states that share the Colorado River are still hashing out how reservoirs will be operated and how cuts will be shared when the current guidelines expire next year.
The potential path forward.
At the beginning of this summer, negotiators from the seven basin states agreed to a concept that would share water based on flows in the river and not on demands, but talks have since stalled. Federal officials have given the states a Nov. 11 deadline to come up with the outline of a deal.
โI remain fully committed to reaching consensus, but I want to be candid, especially with you all,โ Becky Mitchell, Coloradoโs lead negotiator, told lawmakers. โThe discussions with my counterparts have been and continue to be challenging. I understand why this discussion is so challenging for our Lower Basin counterparts. They have developed a reliance on water that is above their apportionment that is simply not there.โ
Colorado and the other Upper Basin states have been tiptoeing into voluntary conservation pilot programs since 2015, and the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan allowed for a 500,000-acre-foot conservation pool in Lake Powell. Late last year, Upper Basin officials offered up a 200,000-acre-foot pool in Powell as part of negotiations, and some type of future voluntary conservation program for the Upper Basin appears increasingly likely.
The System Conservation Pilot Program, which first ran from 2015 to 2018, was rebooted in 2023 and paid water users in the Upper Basin to cut back in 2023 and 2024. Over two years, the program doled out about $45 million to conserve just over 100,000 acre-feet of water across the four states.
A main criticism of the SCPP was that the conserved water was not tracked to Lake Powell, even though one of the programโs stated intents was to boost levels in the nationโs second-largest reservoir. In some cases, the water was probably picked up by a downstream water user, with no net gain to Lake Powell. This is the issue that new state legislation could remedy. Until now, the experimental conservation programs were allowed with temporary approvals from state officials.
โWe want action,โ Waldvogle said. โAnd I think the way I define action is for [lawmakers] to move forward in developing a program in order to really catalyze our communities into these discussions. To really develop all the sideboards necessary to have a program is going to take a longer time frame.โ
Western States Ranches
Conscience Bay owns about 3,800 acres on parcels scattered throughout Delta County, 3,000 of which the company says are irrigated. About 3,200 of these total acres are clustered in Harts Basin near Eckert, making up the headquarters of the companyโs reaching operation known as Western States Ranches. The ranch participated in the SCPP in 2024, with water to some fields shut off June 1 and others July 1. The ranch saved about 550 acre-feet, or 7% of its water, according to ranch managers.
Ranch representatives see participation in these early voluntary conservation programs as a way to have some control over their operations should water cuts become mandatory in the future. They say they are interested in innovative ways to adapt to water scarcity, and they partnered with Colorado State University scientists to study the effects on forage crops of taking irrigation off their fields that were enrolled in SCPP in 2024.
โWe wanted to figure out how this is going to affect us, and if we are required to do this in the future, we want to have the knowledge to make good decisions,โ said Mike Higuera, agricultural operations manager of Western States Ranches. โWe assume that we are going to have to conserve water in this game.โ
Western States Ranches in Delta County participated in the 2024 System Conservation Pilot Program. The ranch is working with Colorado State University researchers to learn what happens when water is removed from fields. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Western States Ranches hosted an August field day in Eckert with the Western Landowners Alliance for other local farmers and ranchers to learn about drought-resilient ranching and share the findings from CSU researchers.
The ranchโs participation in SCPP has resurrected fears that the owners, who began purchasing the Delta County properties in 2017, are speculating โ buying up land for its senior water rights and hoarding them for a future profit. With a water-conservation program in the Upper Basin all but guaranteed, some worry that Western States Ranches could be looking to profit off sending their water downstream.
The question came up at the August field day when a Paonia-area rancher said he had heard the ranch owners were speculators. Conscience Bay representatives have always denied that accusation.
โI can tell you there are a lot better ways to make money,โ Higuera replied.
According to SCPP documents, the ranch was paid $278,372 for their water in 2024. Higuera said that amounted to about 10% of their revenue last year, with cattle sales making up the other 90%.
Colorado in recent years has tried to tackle the thorny issues of how to fairly roll out a conservation program while prohibiting speculation. Defining what speculation is and who is a speculator is slippery and hinges on determining the water rights purchaserโs intent โ a nearly impossible thing to know or police with 100% certainty. The bottom line of the stateโs existing anti-speculation policy is that water-rights owners must put that water to beneficial use.
Ultimately, a 2021 workgroup failed to find consensus about ways to strengthen protections against speculation and a drought task force failed to provide recommendations about conserved consumptive programs for lawmakers, underscoring the difficulty of protecting the stateโs water without infringing on private property rights. Some agricultural producers balked at laws that could restrict their ability to make money by selling their land and associated water rights.
At the heart of speculation concerns is the fear of large-scale, permanent dry-up of agricultural lands. Mueller has long cautioned that conservation programs, if not done carefully, could disproportionately impact rural agricultural communities. Although SCPP was open to all water-use sectors, all of Coloradoโs participants in SCPP in 2023 and 2024 were from Western Slope agriculture.
โAny program that we have must be designed for our stateโs best ability to support the longevity of agriculture and the vitality of our communities, and weโve got to be thoughtful and precise,โ Mueller said.
This equipment in a field on Western States Ranches helps figure out how much water crops use. The ranch partnered with Colorado State University researchers to track what happens to a forage crop when water is removed mid-way through the irrigation season. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Paying for programs
Another big question about Upper Basin conservation remains: How will it be paid for?
SCPP in 2023 and 2024 was funded with money from the federal Inflation Reduction Act. The bill that could have authorized SCPP again in 2025 is still stalled in the House. Over 2023 and 2024, the program doled out about $45 million to water users in the Upper Basin and saved about 101,000 acre-feet.
Without overhauling the Westโs system of water rights, voluntary, temporary and compensated conservation programs are one of the only carrots to entice agricultural water users โ who account for the majority of water use in the Colorado River Basin โ to cut back. But they are expensive, and itโs unclear how future long-term conservation programs would be funded.
Coloradoโs entire congressional delegation in early August sent a bipartisan letter to federal water managers, in an effort to shake loose $140 million in funding that was promised for projects addressing drought on the Western Slope in the final days of the Biden administration and then frozen by the Trump administration.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., addressed the question at a Colorado Water Congress meeting in Steamboat Springs in August.
โWeโre now not going to have a great federal partner for a while, Iโm afraid, and weโre going to have to figure out how to rely on each other and do it in more imaginative ways than maybe we have in the past,โ Bennet said.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. โ Through ongoing increased sampling efforts on the Colorado River and nearby bodies of water, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Aquatic Nuisance Species (ANS) staff have detected adult zebra mussels in the Colorado River and a nearby lake in Grand Junction.
โWhile this is news we never wanted to hear, we knew this was a possibility since we began finding veligers in the river,โ said CPW Director Jeff Davis. โI canโt reiterate this enough. It was because we have a group of individuals dedicated to protecting Coloradoโs water resources that these detections were made. It is because of these same dedicated individuals and our partners that we will continue our efforts to understand the extent of zebra mussels in western Colorado. โ
On Thursday, Aug. 28, the Aquatic Animal Health Lab (AAHL) notified Robert Walters, CPW Invasive Species Program Manager, that suspect veligers (the microscopic larval stage of zebra mussels) collected from West and East Lake, west of 31 Road within the Wildlife Area section of James M. Robb-Colorado River State Park, had tested positive for zebra mussel DNA. During a follow-up survey on Tuesday, Sept. 2, staff discovered suspected adult zebra mussels in the lake.
Surveys were also conducted in the side channel, where water from the lake is released before flowing into the Colorado River. During these subsequent surveys, additional suspect adult zebra mussels were found in the side channel and in the Colorado River where the side channel meets the mainstem of the river.
Visual identification of the samples from the lake, channel, and river was performed by ANS staff. Samples were then sent to the AAHL for DNA confirmation. On Monday, Sept. 8, the AAHL confirmed the samples collected are adult zebra mussels.
With this discovery, the Colorado River is now considered an โinfestedโ body of water from the 32 Road bridge downstream to the Colorado-Utah border. This is the first time adult zebra mussels have been detected in the Colorado River.
A body of water is considered โinfestedโ when a water body has an established (recruiting or reproducing) population of invasive species; in this instance, multiple zebra mussel life stages have been found in that body of water.
The following bodies of water have the designation of an โinfestedโ body of water:
Highline Lake at Highline Lake State Park (2022)
Mack Mesa Lake at Highline Lake State Park (2025)
West and East Lake at the Wildlife Area Section of James M. Robb – Colorado River State Park (2025)
Colorado River from 32 Road bridge downstream to the Colorado-Utah border (2025)
Private body of water in Eagle County (2025)
The Colorado River remains โpositiveโ for zebra mussels from the confluence of the Roaring Fork River to the 32 Road bridge.
No detections of zebra mussels have occurred between the headwaters of the Colorado River and the confluence of the Roaring Fork River.
CPW, in collaboration with our partners at the local, state and federal levels, will continue our increased sampling and monitoring efforts from the headwaters of the Colorado River in Grand County to the Colorado-Utah border.
โWe wonโt give up,โ said CPW Invasive Species Program Manager Robert Walters. โOur priority remains utilizing containment, population management and education to protect the uninfested waters of the state.โ
CPW will continue to evaluate options for the future containment and mitigation of Highline Lake, Mack Mesa Lake, and West and East Lake. CPW does not intend to treat the mainstem of the Colorado River due to multiple factors, including risk to native fish populations and critical habitat, length of the potential treatment area, and complexity of canals and ditches that are fed by the Colorado River.
Since sampling efforts began in mid-April, CPW has collected 427 water samples from various locations in the Colorado River. Of those samples, CPW has confirmed six samples to contain zebra mussel veligers. ANS staff has also collected 41 samples from the Eagle River and 42 samples from the Roaring Fork River. There have been no detections of zebra mussel veligers in the samples from the Eagle and Roaring Fork rivers.
Private Body of Water in Eagle County treatment During the week of August 25, CPW ANS staff treated a privately owned body of water in western Eagle County using EarthTec QZ, an EPA-registered copper-based molluscicide. In follow-up surveys conducted during the weeks of Sept. 1 and Sept. 8, staff observed positive initial results, having found dead adult zebra mussels in multiple areas around the body of water. CPW staff will continue to routinely monitor the water to evaluate its effectiveness.
Oh, Shell No! The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Aquatic Nuisance Species team is asking for your help. If you own a pond or lake that utilizes water from the Colorado River or Grand Junction area canal systems, CPW would like to inspect your body of water. You can request sampling of your body of water by CPW staff at Invasive.Species@state.co.us.
โDespite these additional detections, it remains critical for the continued protection of Coloradoโs aquatic resources and infrastructure to fully understand the distribution of zebra mussels in western Colorado,โ said Walters. โWe can only achieve this with the assistance and participation of the public.โ
In addition to privately owned ponds and lakes, CPW also encourages those who use water pulled from the Colorado River and find any evidence of mussels or clams to send photos to the above email for identification. It is extremely important to accurately report the location in these reports for follow-up surveying.
Prevent the spread: Be a Pain in the ANS With the additional discoveries of adult zebra mussels, it is even more important for everyone to play their part in protecting Coloradoโs bodies of water and preventing the spread of invasive species. Simple actions like cleaning, draining and drying your motorized and hand-launched vessels โ including paddleboards and kayaks โ and angling gear after you leave the water can make a big difference to protect Colorado’s waters.
Learn more about how you can prevent the spread ofย aquatic nuisance speciesย and tips to properlyย clean, drain and dryย your boating and fishing gear by visiting our website. Tips for anglers and a map of CPWโs new gear and watercraft cleaning stations areย available here.
EPA intends to retract a Biden-era regulation for fourย PFASย in drinking water.
Report on childrenโs health highlights MAHA concern withย fluorideย in drinking water.
GAO finds that the outcomes from Biden-eraย environmental justiceย focus are unknown.
Defense spending and harmful algal bloom bills move throughย Congress.
And lastly, Reclamation will do more analysis on anย ag-to-urban Colorado River water transferย in Arizona.
โFollowing the completion of studies on fluoride, CDC and USDA will educate Americans on the appropriate levels of fluoride, clarify the role of EPA in drinking water standards for fluoride under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and increase awareness of the ability to obtain fluoride topically through toothpaste.โ โ Excerpt from the MAHA Commissionย strategyย for improving childrenโs health.
By the Numbers
$1 Billion: Federal aid to livestock producers who were affected by wildfire and flooding in 2023 and 2024. The funds, announced by USDA, are intended to offset higher feed costs.
News Briefs
PFAS RegulationโฆAnd Others The EPA says it will attempt to retract its regulation of four PFAS in drinking water, a rule that was established during the Biden administration.
The agency will keep federal drinking water limits on two forever chemicals: PFOA and PFOS. But it wants to drop federal regulation of four others: PFHxS, PFNA, PFBS, and Gen X.
The EPA is also not defending the rule in court, asking judges to invalidate it, Bloomberg Law reports.
Utilities are challenging the rule on procedural grounds as well as objecting to its cost for small systems. Public health groups point out that federal law has โanti-backslidingโ provisions to prevent existing drinking water limits from being weakened.
The agency signaled its intention to scrap limits on the four PFAS in the Unified Agenda, a semiannual listing of the federal governmentโs regulatory plans.
Other water-related regulatory actions mentioned in the agenda: perchlorate in drinking water, a definition of the โwaters of the United Statesโ that are subject to Clean Water Act permitting, and expanding the area in which oil and gas wastewater (a.k.a โproduced waterโ) can be reused.
It instructs the department to provide clean drinking water from an alternative source to any household on a private well that is contaminated with PFAS due to military activities.
The bill also directs the military secretaries to assess water-supply risk at their bases. Each secretary will identify the three most at-risk bases under their command and develop a strategy to reduce water-supply risk.
The Senate, meanwhile, passed a bill that reauthorizes a federal program for harmful algal bloom research and monitoring.
Arizona Injection Well Management The EPA granted Arizonaโs application to oversee permitting for wells that inject fluids and waste underground in the state.
Studies and Reports
Water and Childrenโs Health The Make America Healthy Again Commission released its strategy for improving childrenโs health.
The 20-page document refers to drinking water as a pathway for contaminants. But it provides vague direction on solutions. Federal agencies โwill assess ongoing evaluations of water contaminants and update guidance and prioritizations of certain contaminants appropriately,โ it states.
Several contaminants are called out. Fluoride, a favored enemy for the MAHA movement, is one. Others are pharmaceuticals and PFAS. Farm chemicals are indirectly cited, in a sentence that asks the USDA to research water quality and farm conservation practices. At the same time, EPA is directed to reduce permitting requirements to โstrengthen regional meat infrastructure.โ
The report is undermined by actions other federal agencies are taking โ approving new chemicals for commercial use, cutting research and enforcement budgets, not defending PFAS regulations.
Evaluating Environmental Justice Push To help poor and disadvantaged communities overcome histories of pollution, racism, and poverty, the Biden administration ordered that they receive 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal spending. Donald Trump ended this Justice40 initiative in his first month in office.
What did the program achieve?
Thatโs hard to say, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.
Looking at three agencies that were key players in the program โ EPA, Interior, and USDA โ the audit concluded that, though they modified grant programs, provided assistance, and began to track outcomes, โoverall results of agency actions are unknown.โ
On the Radar
Arizona Water Transfer Following a court order for a more-thorough analysis, the Bureau of Reclamation will conduct an environmental impact assessment of an ag-to-urban transfer of Colorado River water that it already approved.
Queen Creek, a fast-growing Phoenix exurb, purchased water from GSC Farm, in La Paz County, on the opposite side of the state. The assessment will also consider the effects of moving the water to Queen Creek via the Central Arizona Project canal.
Cities and counties in western Arizona sued to block the water transfer.
Two virtual public meetings will be held on October 1 to gather comments. Log-in details are found here.
Senate Hearing On September 17, the Environmental and Public Works Committee will hold an oversight hearing on the Army Corps of Engineers.
House Hearings On September 16, an Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee will hold a hearing on weather modification. The subcommittee is led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who incorrectly blamed Hurricane Helene on a โtheyโ who control the weather. She introduced a bill in July to ban geoengineering, cloud seeding, aerosol injection, and other methods of altering the weather. Carbon emissions, however, are not explicitly mentioned.
Also on September 16, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on appliance efficiency standards, which Republicans and the president have criticized as limiting customer choice, even though they reduce water and energy consumption.
Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
The San Juan Riverโs Navajo Dam and reservoir. Photo credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
From email from Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam to 500 cubic feet per second (cfs) from the current release of 650 cfs for Tuesday September 16, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.gov or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website athttps://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
This November, voters in the Town of Pagosa Springs will decide if they want to raise the sales tax within town limits to fund critical sewer repairs and a wastewater treatment plant. On Aug. 19, the Pagosa Springs Town Council approved the second reading of an ordinance calling for the coordinated election and setting the language appearing on the ballot…
The townโs Public Works Department, in conjunction with an assessment by Roaring Fork engineering, has concluded that the overall system is rated as โpoorโ to โfair,โ with the challenges including an aging pipe system (50 years of age on average) with one-third of the total system rated as needing โcritical repairs or failing.โ Most of the challenges stem from the 500-foot elevation gain the sewage must travel before it arrives for treatment at PAWSDโs Vista plant, the website indicates. The town has estimated that it will cost between $80 million and $100 million to make the system healthy and efficient, with $15 million needed โimmediatelyโ to repair the aging pipes just to keep the current system operational. After considering other options to fund the needed repairs and upgrades, such as raising rates on wastewater customers or raising property taxes, both town staff and the council determined that the sales tax option was โthe most efficientโ way to obtain the funding needed. Town Manager David Harris has stated that a 1 percent sales tax increase within the town would generate an estimated $3.6 million in the first year and take an estimated 25 years to generate all the funds necessary to complete the project, if the town decides to build its own treatment plant.
The Colorado River District is working to buy the water rights to the Shoshone hydroelectric power plant for $99 million from Xcel Energy to ensure they exist in perpetuity, due to their importance in helping assure a sizable amount of Colorado River water continues flowing downstream at times of low water levels rather than being diverted. It is pursuing an instream flow right to protect the flows associated with the rights at times when the plant isnโt operating, and so the flows will continue should the plant ever close.Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Front Range utility giant Denver Water has thrown its support behind the effort by Coloradoโs entire congressional delegation to get the Bureau of Reclamation to release previously announced drought-mitigation funding for 15 Colorado water projects, including $40 million to help acquire the Shoshone hydroelectric plant water rights on the Colorado River. In a Sept. 5 letter to the bureauโs acting commissioner, David Palumbo, and Scott Cameron, acting assistant Interior secretary for water and science, Denver Water CEO/Manager Alan Salazar voiced the utilityโs support for the funding for 15 Colorado projects selected for the bureauโs Upper Colorado River Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation funding opportunity. The money is part of a category of funding also known as โBucket 2โ or โB2E.โ
[…]
In the waning days of the Biden administration, the Bureau of Reclamation announced the Shoshone funding and tens of millions of dollars of funding for other water projects in the state. Among the other projects are about $25.6 million for drought mitigation in southwest Colorado, about $24.3 million for the Grand Mesa and Upper Gunnison watershed resiliency and aquatic connectivity project, $4.6 million for the Mesa Conservation District and Colorado West Land Trust to work on drought resiliency on local conserved lands, and $2.8 million for the Fruita Reservoir Dam removal project on Piรฑon Mesa. Most of that funding has been frozen under the Trump administration, although it did eventually agree to release nearly $12 million to the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District for water projects that were among the projects previously announced for funding…
Of particular interest particularly for West Slope water interests is the Shoshone funding. The Colorado River District is trying to close a $99 million deal with Xcel Energy to buy what are large and senior water rights associated with the plant in Glenwood Canyon. Those rights, due to their seniority, have helped protect flows into the canyon and downstream, and the river district wants to protect those water rights and their associated flows in cases when the plant isnโt operating, and should it eventually shut down. The federal funding is key to the fundraising effort to buy the water rights. The river district has proposed dedicating the Shoshone water rights to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for instream flow use, Salazar noted in his letter.
Lincoln Creek, just above its confluence with the Roaring Fork River, on June 14, 2017. Passersby had left rock piles in the clear, warm, and shallow stream.
About 200 fish were found dead on Aug. 18 on the banks of Grizzly Reservoir, a popular fishing and camping site near Aspen. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials determined that naturally occurring metals had become toxic for rainbow trout the agency had stocked in the reservoir. Kendall Bakich, an aquatic biologist with CPW, is part of a team measuring the concentration of metals in the reservoir. She said this new metal toxicity is part of a growing trend.
โI would probably say across the world, but certainly across North America, there’s rivers that are becoming more impacted by heavy metals from natural sources, due to climate change,โ Bakich said.
Human-caused climate change has led to warming temperatures and drought, increasing the concentration of naturally occurring metals in bodies of water and creating deadly conditions for fish. Bakich said the main culprit in this case was copper, to which fish are especially sensitive. That copper comes from a body of heavy metals at the top of Lincoln Creek, which feeds into Grizzly Reservoir and eventually into the Roaring Fork River.
From email from the Center for Colorado River Studies:
September 11, 2025
While Colorado River Basin attention is focused on negotiating post-2026 operating rules, a near term crisis is unfolding before our eyes. If no immediate action is taken to reduce water use, our already-thin buffer of storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead could drop to just 9 percent of the levels with which we started the 21st century.
Water consumption in the Basin continues to outpace the natural supply, further drawing down reservoir levels. While Basin State representatives pursue the elusive goal of a workable and mutually acceptable set of post-2026 operating rules, our review of the latest Bureau of Reclamation data shows that the gap between ongoing water use and the reality of how much water actually flows in the Colorado River poses a serious near term threat. Another year like the one we just had on the Colorado River would nearly exhaust our dwindling reserves.
In a report issued today, we look at total mass balance in the system โ reservoir storage, inflow, and water use โ to help clarify how much water the Basin actually has to work with if next yearโs snowmelt runoff is similar to 2025, and the risks if we do not take near term action to reduce our use. The findings are stark.
Jack Schmidt,ย Director, Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University, former Chief, Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center
Anne Castle,ย Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School, former US Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission, former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, US Dept. of the Interior
John Fleck,ย Writer in Residence, Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico
Eric Kuhn, Retired General Manager, Colorado River Water Conservation District
Kathryn Sorensen,ย Kyl Center for Water Policy, Arizona State University, former Director, Phoenix Water Services
Katherine Tara,ย Staff Attorney, Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico
A flume and ditch is covered with silt, mud, rocks and debris along the White River following run-off damage from rains after the Lee Fire in Rio Blanco County.
Colorado Division of Water Resources/Courtesy photo
Irrigation ditch structures can be seen buried under mud in rural Rio Blanco County. Some livestock ponds are contaminated with ash and are unusable for animals. Residents posted post-rain videos last week of black, mucky water crossing roads, surging through culverts, rushing down bar ditches and running onto fields.ย Colorado Parks and Wildlife reports some fish have died in the White River on the northwest edge of the Lee Fire burn scar after heavy rains that pushed silt and ash into the river…With every rainstorm, there is another chance for flash flooding and debris flows, said Rio Blanco County Commissioner Callie Scritchfield.
An irrigation ditch is filled in with sediment and debris on Piceance Creek in Rio Blanco County due to run-off damage after the Lee Fire.
Colorado Division of Water Resources/Courtesy photo
[Suzan] Pelloni, a Realtor in Meeker, said ranchers and landowners are helping each other as best they can right now, such as sharing heavy equipment.
โThey are pooling resources. They are working together to try and help the immediate needs of the neighbor,โ Pelloni said.
Pelloni highlighted some example immediate concerns for the rural landowners ranging from water tanks where electricity service repair is delayed to a ranch where both summer and winter grazing lands were burned. Looking at the big picture, Pelloni said ranchers may have to sell cattle early or sell more cattle than anticipated, and ranchers who supplement their income with guided hunting likely will lose income this fall too…In the meantime, theย White River & Douglas Creek Conservation Districts ย soil conservation agency, along with the Bureau of Land Management and Rio Blanco County, are hosting weekly question-and-answer sessions on Thursday afternoons continuing on Sept. 11 and 18. The meetings provide resources to assist with questions for residents in need of recovery recommendations and financial and technical recovery resources.
Amid tense negotiations over the Colorado Riverโs future, Nevada leaders came together Thursday to focus on the stateโs strategy to meet the climate and drought crisis threatening Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.
Democratic Rep. Susie Lee, whose district falls within the boundaries of Lake Mead and half of the Hoover Dam, brought together regional water and hydropower leaders to highlight mounting needs the state faces during her third annual Southern Nevada Water Summit at the Springs Preserve.
Before water was piped from the Colorado River to Las Vegas, the burgeoning community relied entirely on groundwater from the Las Vegas Springs located on the site where the Springs Preserve now sits.
That water soon dried up after demand from the growing city depleted the aquifer. Now water managers are working to ensure Lake Mead โ which provides nearly 90% of the cityโs water โ does not meet the same fate.
The summit comes at a critical time as states run against a mid-November deadline to reach a consensus on how the river and its reservoirs should be managed after current guidelines expire at the end of 2026. If states canโt reach a deal ahead of the deadline, the federal government will likely step in and make those decisions for them.
โThe reality is itโs a really tough set of negotiations right now, so weโre meeting pretty regularly,โ said Southern Nevada Water Authority Deputy General Manager Colby Pellegrino.
โThereโs a lot of work that still needs to be done. We are nowhere close to agreement,โ Pellegrino said.
Still, itโs an improvement from December when representatives from Lower Basin states โ Nevada, Arizona, and California โ and Upper Basin states โ Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming โ left a major water summit in Las Vegas without even speaking to each other.
Upper and Lower Basin states have largely quarreled over which portion of the basin should decrease its water use, and by how much.
States did come closer to a consensus after a breakthrough proposal in July to share the waterway based on the actual flow of the river, as opposed to projected flows and historical agreements. The proposal is still in play, said Pellegrino.
โI personally think itโs really good public policy for us to pursue something like that. Itโs very responsive to current conditions. It does a decent job of creating some equity between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin,โ Pellegrino said.
โBut weโve got a long way to go to see if we can agree on the details,โ she continued.
Water flows in the Colorado River are shrinking due to climate change, and the reality of what that means for states reliant on the river is becoming more stark.
Earlier this month, federal officials announced they would continue water allocation cuts on the Colorado River for the fifth consecutive year following a persistent drought thatโs drained Lake Mead.
Lake Meadโs elevation is currently at about 1,054 feet above sea level โ 175 feet below whatโs considered full. Based on water storage, the reservoir is at 31% of capacity.
Nevada is ahead of the game when it comes to preparing for those reductions, said Pellegrino.
Nevada receives less than 2% of Colorado River water each year, the smallest share of any state in the basin. Those limitations have forced Nevada to become a conservation pioneer.
Southern Nevada hasnโt used its full allocation of Colorado River water for years. Conservation efforts have helped Southern Nevada use 36% less water from Lake Mead than it did two decades ago, according to the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA).
Even under the most severe water shortage, the Southern Nevada Water Authority would be able to access its share of the river thanks to major infrastructure projects, including Intake 3 โ the โthird strawโ โ and the Low Lake Level Pumping Station.
โOur intake and our infrastructure allows us to deliver water to this valley even when water cannot be released from Hoover Dam,โ Pellegrino said.
Other water infrastructure projects in Nevada have been funded by the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which allocated 10% of revenue derived from land sales to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
To date, SNPLMA has generated more than $368 million to fund Nevadaโs water priorities and infrastructure needs. Pellegrino said SNWA will continue leveraging that funding to support water conservation, infrastructure upgrades, long-term drought planning, and environmental restoration.
Additional sources of federal funding have also been a major contributor to water conservation on the Colorado River, said Lee.
The congresswoman highlighted the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $4 billion in investments for drought mitigation along the Colorado River Basin. She also highlighted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which provided $141 million for water conservation projects in Southern Nevada, including funding for the Las Vegas Wash, which carries millions of gallons of treated wastewater to Lake Mead.
That funding allowed California, Arizona and Nevada to collectively reduce water use by at least 3 million acre-feet through the end of 2026, stabilizing Lake Mead for several years.
Another major issue created by lower water levels at Lake Mead is the loss of hydropower productivity. Hoover Dam generates half the power that it did in 2000 due to consistently lower water levels in Lake Mead.
If Lake Mead falls another 20 feet, Hoover Damโs capacity to generate electricity would be slashed by 70% from its current level.
The break point for hydropower is 1,035 feet. At that level, 12 older turbines at Hoover that are not designed for low reservoir levels would be shut down. Only five newer turbines installed a decade ago would continue to generate power.
There is a way to fix the problem, said the Colorado River Commission of Nevadaโs director of hydropower Gail Bates.
Replacing the 12 older turbines would maintain power generation even at low levels, however it would require significant investment.
โWeโre really getting to the point where theyโre urgently needed. Bad news is the cost. They cost about $8 million each to install. So itโs a very heavy investment,โ Bates said.
During the summit, Lee and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said they are working together to advance the Help Hoover Dam Act, a bill that would unlock some $50 million in stranded funding for the dam from an orphaned federal account.
The funds had been set aside for pension benefits for federal employees, but advocates for the bill say Congress funds pension benefits through other means and that the funds could be spent on dam upgrades if the Bureau of Reclamation was given the authority to do so.
โThe dam is turning 100 years old in 2035 and the Bureau of Reclamation is estimating that it will require about $200 million in upgrades. This is money thatโs just sitting there stranded. It would be so good to free that up so we can make those investments,โ Cortez Masto said.
Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Itโs common for summer to be Utahโs dry season. But 2025 took things to another level. The main culprit was the missing monsoon โ or as assistant state climatologist Jon Meyer designated it, a โnon-soonโ…Salt Lake City received just 0.35 inches of rain from June 1 to Aug. 24 โ putting it on pace for the cityโs fourth driest summer on record. That included 48 straight days with zero precipitation at the airport during the peak of summer heat from early July to mid-August. Thatโs the cityโs longest such streak since 1963, and its sixth longest on record. Other Utah communities fared even worse. By Aug. 24, Bountiful, Provo and Logan were all on track for their driest summers on record. Meteorological summer runs from June through August…
Some monsoon moisture finally broke through in the last week of August. Communities from Salt Lake City to St. George to Logan got more rain in that one week than theyโd received the entire summer up to that point. Still, it wasnโt nearly enough to claw Utah out of its summer deficit…Salt Lake City ended up with 1.1 inches of rainfall from June to August. Thatโs around half of its historical average from 1991-2020 and low enough to make it the cityโs 29th driest summer in records that date back to 1874. Elsewhere, the late monsoon offered even less of a boost. Provo ended the season with less than a half-inch of rain, its third driest summer on record. Alta Ski Area in Little Cottonwood Canyon also ended up having its third driest summer, with just 1.29 inches of rain. And despite more than quadrupling its summer rainfall total in the final days of the month, Bountiful still ended the season with just under an inch of rain, making 2025 the cityโs sixth driest summer on record. Ultimately, the late rains merely moved Utah from extremely dry to very dry, said National Weather Service senior meteorologist Monica Traphagan…Even in southern Utah, where the monsoon was a bit stronger, St. George ended up with only 0.66 inches of rain for the season โ far below its historical average of 1.73 inches. And more than half of the summer rain St. George received came in the final days of August…
The seasonal forecast for fall doesnโt offer much optimism, either. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationโs outlook calls for above-average temperatures and below-average precipitation across the state through November.
From left, Bryan Daugherty with Pitkin County Environmental Health, Matthew Anderson and Chad Rudow, both with the Roaring Fork Conservancy. The three spent Wednesday, Aug. 13 taking water quality samples at 14 sites from Lincoln Creek, the Ruby Mine outflow and the mineralized tributary. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
High above Aspen at 11,400 feet, past the ghost town of Ruby, at the end of a rough dirt road surrounded by willows and ramshackle cabins, Lincoln Creek runs clean and clear.
The mountain stream is barely more than a trickle at its headwaters, but it still supports fish that dart and hide in the cool shadows. But just a few hundred yards downstream, the creek begins to turn foul.
First by what appears to be a small tributary or groundwater that flows into the creek and leaves a white residue on the rocks, an indication of aluminum. Then comes the runoff from the abandoned Ruby Mine, which leaves a hardened orange crust on the ground where it joins the creek. Just downstream of the mine is the site where experts say the majority of the aluminum, copper, zinc and iron contamination is entering Lincoln Creek: the โmineralized tributary.โ
Although itโs hard to pinpoint the exact source โ the entire mountainside above the creek on the east side is stained orange, suggesting the widespread presence of metals โ a group of scientists, government officials and local nonprofits are ramping up efforts to better understand the workings of the Lincoln Creek watershed and what can be done to improve its water quality.
On Wednesday [August 13, 2025], a team from the Roaring Fork Conservancy and Pitkin County spent the day collecting water quality samples from Lincoln Creek, the Ruby Mine discharge, the mineralized tributary and points downstream. It was the third time this summer scientists have collected water samples from the creek, and it is part of an overall effort with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and University of Colorado Boulder to test and monitor the area.ย
โI think one of our big goals is really to continue to fill in the data,โ said Chad Rudow, water quality program manager with the Roaring Fork Conservancy. โAs I like to tell people, science takes time. To even apply statistical analysis to it, you need to have a fair bit of data.โ
Matthew Anderson, left, a water quality technician with the Roaring Fork Conservancy, and Bryan Daugherty with Pitkin County Environmental Health take samples from Lincoln Creek on Aug. 13, 2025. The creek has such high concentrations of some metals that it is toxic to aquatic life. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Local residents, government agencies and environmental groups have long been concerned about Lincoln Creek, which, according to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency, is toxic to aquatic life. The tributary of the Roaring Fork River has been under increased scrutiny in recent years as fish kills and discoloration of the water downstream of Grizzly Reservoir have become more frequent.
โWeโre worried about the aquatic health of the river,โ said Bryan Daugherty, environmental health specialist with Pitkin County. โThere certainly could be human impacts if it got really bad, but at this point itโs really the aquatic life that weโre concerned with.โ
Since early 2024, the ad hoc Lincoln Creek Workgroup has been meeting to figure out what to do about the contaminated creek. Bolstered by a state grant of $100,000, the group is increasing water quality testing. The team of scientists has grown the number of testing sites this year from seven to 14 and are focusing current efforts on whatโs happening above Grizzly Reservoir.
Pitkin County Healthy Rivers, whose mission is to maintain and improve water quality and quantity in the Roaring Fork River basin, is playing a crucial role by securing grant money and working with consultant LRE Water on phase II of the data collection and modeling project, which will cost $207,000. Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff have also set up conductivity loggers, which measure how well water conducts electricity, and trail cameras to take photos of Lincoln Creek.
โItโs definitely a team effort with a lot of different groups playing an important role in adding different pieces to the overall puzzle,โ Rudow said.
The uppermost reaches of Lincoln Creek run clean and clear, and support aquatic life. Just a few hundred yards downstream, metals contamination begins to enter the creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
The outflow from the Ruby Mine produces an orange crust on the ground. The mine drainage flows into Lincoln Creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Highly acidic concentrations
The process of metals leaching into streams can be both naturally occurring and caused by mining activities. In both cases, sulfide minerals in rock come into contact with oxygen and water, producing sulfuric acid. The acid can then leach the metals out of the rock and into a stream, a process known as acid rock drainage, which is happening in other mountainous regions of Colorado and around the West.
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
The metals concentrations from acid rock drainage seems to be increasing in recent years and may be exacerbated by climate change as temperatures rise. But because the vast majority โ 98.5% of the copper, according to the EPA report โ of the contamination is from natural sources and not related to the Ruby Mine, the EPA is not authorized to clean it up. That leaves local and state agencies, and nonprofit organizations to fill the gap.
Wednesdayโs testing revealed a pH of 7.29 on the upper reaches of Lincoln Creek (7 is considered neutral); 6.4 below the Ruby Mine and 3.2 below the confluence of the mineralized tributary. The pH scale is logarithmic, meaning a decrease of one whole number equals a 10-fold increase in acidity.
โThe highly acidic concentrations that weโre seeing up here is part of the process thatโs speeding up mobilizing the metals from the rock into the stream system,โ Rudow said.
Scientists also collected data about dissolved oxygen, water temperature and salinity. The water samples are then shipped to a lab in Fort Collins, which tests for metals concentrations.
Rudow and others also used Wednesdayโs trip to the high alpine as a chance to scout spots for an upcoming synoptic survey. At the request of LRE, scientists will pick a day this fall to take water quality samples and flow measurements at points along the entire length of the creek to better understand the sources of contamination. But only year-round tributaries โ not seasonal snow-fed seeps โ will be included.
โWeโre pushing that into September because what we really want to focus on for that project is those year-round streams that are coming into Lincoln Creek,โ Rudow said. โ(LRE) is going to take all of this data and ultimately build a model to show whatโs going on in the creek and how these different inputs are influencing the creek.โ
Water quality sampling in 2024 focused on Grizzly Reservoir and points downstream to better understand the impacts of a dam repair project. Last summer the reservoir was drained for work on the dam, and a slug of sediment-laden, orange-colored water was released downstream, alarming Aspen residents.
Matthew Anderson, a water quality technician with the Roaring Fork Conservancy, takes a sample of water from the mineralized tributary on Aug. 13, 2025. Experts have determined this is a major source of the metals contamination on Lincoln Creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
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. The reservoir was drained during the summer of 2024 so the dam could get a new face. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Both sides of the divide
The water quality issues on Lincoln Creek bind together water users on both sides of the Continental Divide. Lincoln Creek feeds into the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Companyโs transmountain diversion system, in which Grizzly Reservoir is used as a collection pond before sending water through the Twin Lakes Tunnel to the Front Range, where it is used primarily in cities, including for drinking water. Colorado Springs Utilities owns about 55% of the water in the Twin Lakes system, while about 35% goes to the Pueblo area.
A map of the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System, as submitted to Div. 5 Water Court by Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.
Twin Lakes President Alan Ward, who also works as a water resources manager for Pueblo Water, is a member of the Lincoln Creek workgroup. Each organization contributed $5,000 toward the LRE Phase II work.
Ward said next summer Grizzly Reservoir will be drained again so Twin Lakes can work on the damaged outlet works that release water downstream to Lincoln Creek. To avoid another sediment release, the company will create a small basin with cofferdams where the last 10-12 acre-feet at the bottom of the reservoir can settle out before sending it downstream or through the Twin Lakes Tunnel.
Ward said impacts to drinking water arenโt much of a concern for the east side of the divide because the water from Lincoln Creek is diluted by the 141,000-acre-foot Twin Lakes Reservoir, which stores water from multiple sources.
โI think for us the concerns are more on Lincoln Creek itself because Grizzly Reservoir is right in the middle of it,โ Ward said. โWe just want to stay really engaged on this to figure out the water quality issues and how they impact Grizzly Reservoir itself and if there are ways to mitigate the problem.โ
Lake Pleasant (pictured), located north of Phoenix, serves as the Central Arizona Projectโs water storage reservoir, as well as being a popular recreational amenity. Water shortages are impacting Colorado River basin reservoirs such as Lake Mead in Nevada and Lake Powell, which stretches across northern Arizona and southern Utah. Environmental changes throughout the Southwest are presenting challenges to maintaining flows. Photo courtesy of Central Arizona Project
Arizona cities are joining together under one banner to advocate for Arizona in ongoing Colorado River talks…At a discussion on Wednesday, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego emphasized the need to get these negotiations right for the sake of Arizonaโs future.
โFor political reasons as well as drought, it [the river] is under threat, and we have to come together and tell the story of the really important work that we as the cities in the Central Arizona Project service territory are doing to protect our water,โ Gallego said.
She is one ofย 23 Arizona mayors in the bipartisan coalitionย so far…The goal of the new Arizona coalition is to unite Colorado River water users and showcase the stateโs ongoing water conservation efforts. Brenda Burman is the executive director of the CAP.
โI think when people have looked into our state from the outside, they havenโt seen us standing together. Theyโve seen us making our own announcements, and thatโs not how we feel, so we wanted to have a chance to be able to show it,โ Burman said.
Burman said the coalition is only in its first phase and will expand to include other Arizona water users, like farms.
Extensive farmland receives irrigation water and 80 percent of the Arizona population receives municipal water through the Central Arizona Project, a massive distribution system in the state that Brad Udallโs father and uncle worked to establish. Accelerating evaporation in diversion systems such as this is a top concern resulting from climate change. Credit: Colorado State University
