Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Utah and six other states along the Colorado River blew past their deadline Tuesday to reach a new deal on managing the dwindling river, but negotiations aren’t over.
“We will continue to engage with our partners across the Basin to develop a framework that protects water users and the system as a whole,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Tuesday afternoon on the social media site X.
The river contributes 27% of Utah’s water supply, and provides water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Mexico. Drought, overuse and hotter temperatures tied to climate change have all combined to shrink its flow.
The federal government had said it would step in and make its own plan if states failed to reach broad consensus by Tuesday, but the states agree they don’t want that to happen, Cox said.
“While the Basin States did not finalize an agreement today on post-2026 Colorado River operations, our commitment to a state-led path remains,” the governor said.
The U.S. Department of the Interior did not respond to questions from Utah News Dispatch Tuesday evening about the timeline and whether it would intervene. The current agreement runs through late 2026.
The federal agency and Utah’s negotiator Gene Shawcroft issued the same prepared statement, saying the talks yielded “collective progress.” They did not give any details on sticking points.
The seven states, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water in the West, all “recognize the serious and ongoing challenges facing the Colorado River,” their statement says. “Prolonged drought and low reservoir conditions have placed extraordinary pressure on this critical water resource that supports 40 million people, tribal nations, agriculture, and industry.”
They said the states and federal agencies share a commitment to ensuring the river’s long-term sustainability.
“While more work needs to be done, collective progress has been made that warrants continued efforts to define and approve details for a finalized agreement,” the statement says.
The four Upper Basin states — Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin states of Nevada, Arizona and California presented competing plans to the federal government last year.
The Upper Basin states have sought to fend off mandatory cuts in dry years, saying they generally use much less than they’re allocated. The Lower Basin states have insisted that all seven absorb cuts in dry years.
In part to prepare for the possibility of mandatory cuts, Utah has been investing in measuring and monitoring water use in recent years.
In 2023, the Legislature set aside $1 million for a Colorado River measurement infrastructure project and $650,000 in ongoing yearly funding, according to the Utah Division of Water Rights.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Metropolitan General Manager Deven Upadhyay issues the following statement regarding the seven Colorado River Basin states continued efforts to reach consensus on post-2026 rules governing operation of the Colorado River:
“The only path to developing a sustainable Colorado River is through collaboration and consensus. We are grateful that the seven states that rely on the river remain at the table, along with the federal Department of Interior, but more work needs to be done, and quickly.
“The work ahead will require every state and water user to look beyond just their own needs and work toward the greater good of the Southwest. If reductions in water use are shared equitably across the Basin, no one state or sector will bear the burden alone.
“Metropolitan remains committed to forging such a consensus, and we look forward to the opportunity to participate in the ongoing discussions in a meaningful way. An agreement that includes tools allowing for smart water management, like flexible storage in Lake Mead and opportunities for shared investments across states, will minimize the pain of living with the new, lower flows of the Colorado River. If we focus on building solutions – rather than legal arguments – we can develop new guidelines that allow water users to have access to the water they need, when they need it most.”
“Metropolitan is preparing to live with less imported water in urban Southern California, building on decades of lower water use. But we cannot solve the problem alone. We cannot lose our access to the Colorado River entirely. Our region – home to half of the people and half of the economic activity in the Basin – relies on the river. And we are committed to its success.”
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Debra Utacia Krol). Here’s an excerpt:
November 10, 2025
The Colorado River Indian Tribes have formally accorded personhood status to the Colorado River, creating a powerful new mechanism to protect the eponymous river that makes life possible in their arid homelands. The resolution was approved by the CRIT Tribal Council on Nov. 6 in Parker. The nearly 4,300-member tribe has long been alarmed at the state of its life-giving waterway, CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores wrote in a statement shared with The Arizona Republic.
“The Colorado River is in jeopardy,” she said. The tribe, which holds the largest quantity of senior water rights in the state, regards the river as a living being, so the resolution codifies that belief and the tribe’s commitment to protecting its needs and ability to provide water for future generations.
sUdall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
The clock is ticking down to a federal deadline Tuesday for California and six other Western states to reach the broad strokes of a deal portioning out supplies from the parched Colorado River.
Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal stewards for the river under the Department of the Interior, have threatened to impose their own plan if the states can’t agree how to manage the river after 2026, when the river’s current rulebook expires.
Dire projections that another dry year could send the basin’s major reservoirs plummeting to alarmingly low levels have ramped up the urgency, and the tensions.
But, after two years of fraught negotiations, the states remain at an impasse. Those in the river’s lower basin — California, Arizona, and Nevada — are clashing with Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico upstream. A key point of contention is how much each basin must scale back their use of the overtapped river as climate change further squeezes supplies.
“We’ve been in a holding pattern, and we need to land this plane by Tuesday,” J.B. Hamby, California’s chief negotiator as chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, told CalMatters.
California’s dependence on the Colorado River raises the stakes. The state takes more than half of the power generated at Lake Mead’s Hoover Dam, and more water from the main stem than any other in the basin. Half a million acres of alfalfa, winter vegetables and other crops in the Imperial Valley all rely on the Colorado River, which also supplies urban Southern California via the Metropolitan Water District.
But California has also been relatively impervious to shortages on the river, with senior water rights long seen as bulletproof. Now, the questions hanging over the last days of negotiations are — how real is the threat of missing the deadline? And what exactly would the consequences be for California?
Blown deadlines on the Colorado River
For decades, federal officials have threatened to intervene if states in the Colorado River basin fail to reach agreement. The threat — and the inevitable lawsuits water suppliers fear would follow — have motivated major deals that now govern the river’s operations.
Actual federal intervention is far rarer — though the U.S. government has stepped in in the past, on a smaller scale.
In the early 2000s, Southern California was forced to stop using surplus Colorado River water when other states began clamoring for their fair share. The Interior Department set a deadline of December 31st, 2002 for California’s water agencies to cut a deal weaning themselves off the surplus water, or face immediate cutbacks.
The Imperial Irrigation District — by far the biggest user of Colorado River water in California — balked. So the Interior Secretary cut California’s supplies, leading to court battles and, ten months later, a deal.
But deadlines and threats seem to have lost their teeth in recent years, when states in the Colorado River basin have blown deadline after deadline, with little federal response.
Last week, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs urged the Trump administration to be more assertive. “As we approach critical deadlines, we need the Trump administration to step in, exert leadership and broker a deal,” she said in remarks prepared for a water conference.
Elizabeth Koebele, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said negotiations may have become too contentious for deadlines to matter. She attributed it to fracturing relationships between the basin states as devastatingly dry conditions on the river ratchet up the stakes.
“We have less water, and it’s caused more rippling problems,” Koebele said. “You’re cutting a smaller pie, for more people.”
A strike against storage
The Veteran’s Day deadline isn’t the final deadline; it’s an interim milestone as federal officials race to lock in a plan before the current rulebook expires.
Scott Cameron, now acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, said at a conference in June that in the absence of a deal, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was prepared to take charge as water master. The position gives him the power to declare the river in shortage and call for cutbacks in the lower basin.
But the Trump administration declined to specify what exactly it might do. “At this stage, all parties should remain focused on the difficult but necessary work required to reach a seven-state agreement,” an unidentified Interior Department spokesperson said, in an emailed statement.
If there is still no plan by late 2026, the rulebook could revert to one from the 1970s, according to an analysis by Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.
That worries Metropolitan Water District’s Bill Hasencamp, because it would upend Metropolitan’s ability to continue banking water in the Colorado River basin’s Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country, for dry spells.
The water giant imports water from Northern California and from the Colorado River to supply 19 million people in six Southern California counties.
Right now, Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources at Metropolitan, says that the district has socked away about 1.5 million acre-feet of water in the reservoir over the last 20 years. It’s enough to supply 4.5 million households for a year.
Metropolitan saves Colorado River water in Lake Mead when water from Northern California reservoirs is abundant, and draws on these stores when state supplies dry up. But, under the 1970s-era rules, suppliers would no longer be able to add water to this savings account. Metropolitan would need to use its banked stores over the next ten years, or risk losing the water.
Hasencamp estimates that banked water could disappear more quickly if California faces greater cuts.
“Under a new regime, the feds — if things get dry enough — could cut us back,” Hasencamp said. “We could access that storage, but we might need it to offset cuts on the river that could come to us. So it’s a very undesirable situation.”
Ultimately, experts agree that the most undesirable situations, and the greatest risks to the basin states, will likely come from nature itself.
The Colorado River is in the grips of a megadrought; Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Institute, called August’s projections for reservoirs Lake Powell and Mead “beyond awful.”
Udall said the latest projections for the reservoirs remain dire. One scenario shows “both Powell and Mead entering uncharted territory by (the) end of Water Year 2026,” Udall said in an email.
“That’s the new reality,” Cameron, the acting head of Reclamation, said at a meeting in Arizona over the summer. “There are real risks to both the lower basin states and the upper basin states if we don’t collectively do something differently than we’ve done in the past.”
People at Lake Powell May 25, 2022. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (James Eklund):
November 11, 2025
If the seven basin states can’t lead, Washington and the courts will. The West deserves better than to surrender its future out of inertia and pride.
The River at a Crossroads
Today, November 11, the seven states that share the Colorado River face a deadline they’re unlikely to meet. The Department of the Interior has asked them to agree on the bones of a post-2026 management plan — the rules that will decide who gets cut, when, and by how much as the river keeps shrinking.
If they fail, Washington will write the rules for them. And if Washington falters, unelected judges will. Either way, the West loses control of its own destiny. That’s not leadership; that’s abdication.
The Lower Basin is braced for federal action. The Upper Basin is bracing for blame. Both are right to be worried — and both are missing the point. The river doesn’t care about politics or priority dates. It only responds to snow, sun, and science.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Hydrology Has Changed; Leadership Hasn’t
We built the Colorado River system for a climate that no longer exists. Reservoirs that once promised endless growth now sit half-empty — Lake Powell at roughly 29%, Lake Mead near 31%. The math is unforgiving: less water is coming in than going out.
Yet our governance still pretends otherwise. The Law of the River — that tangled mix of compacts, decrees, and deals — assumes a river of at least 16.5 million acre-feet. Nature is now giving us perhaps 12, maybe less. We’re overdrawn every year, and the overdraft is accelerating.
This isn’t a failure of hydrology; it’s a failure of adaptation. The West has always been proud of its self-reliance, but we’re behaving like a bureaucracy waiting for someone else to make the hard call. We need leaders, not hall monitors.
And if you want to know what failure of adaptation looks like, glance halfway around the world. Tehran, Iran, a city of more than eight million, is on the brink of evacuation. Its reservoirs are nearly dry, some below 10% capacity. Rainfall has fallen 40% below average. Iran’s president recently warned that if the skies don’t open, the capital may have to be moved. Moved. Imagine Washington, D.C. abandoned because the Potomac went dry. That’s not science fiction — that’s what happens when water governance waits too long to face reality. The Colorado River isn’t there yet, but the trajectory rhymes. Tehran is a mirror we should study before it shows our reflection.
The Blame Game vs. Shared Responsibility
At Arizona State University’s recent Law of the Colorado River: The View from the Lower Basin conference, one thing was clear: the Lower Basin has its legal arguments loaded and ready. So does the Upper Basin. Both are preparing for a fight neither side can win.
Arizona’s governor calls the Upper Basin’s stance extreme; the Upper Basin counters that it can’t conserve water that isn’t there. California points to its billions in saved water and asks why others won’t match it. Colorado replies that it’s already living within its snowpack. Every argument is technically correct — and collectively disastrous.
Finger-pointing won’t refill a reservoir. The real crisis isn’t between the basins; it’s between the past and the future. The river is shrinking faster than our imagination.
The Case for State-Led Solutions
We know how to do this. We’ve done it before. In 2019, when both Lakes Mead and Powell were circling the drain, the Basin States pulled together the Drought Contingency Plan. It wasn’t perfect, but it kept the system alive long enough for the recent recovery years to matter. That’s proof we can still ride together when it counts.
Utah and Wyoming are finally taking first steps toward real demand-management programs — voluntary, compensated conservation that could bank water in Powell. They’re six years too late, but they’re at least facing forward. The Lower Basin, to its credit, has cut deeply — usage there is down to about 5.9 million acre-feet, the lowest since 1983. The economies of Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles didn’t collapse. They adapted. That’s the model.
A state-led deal is the only way to keep Western hands on the reins. Federal control would be blunt; court control, brutal. Every day we delay, we invite both. The West should never outsource its destiny to Washington or to a judge in black robes who’s never stood in an irrigation ditch with a shovel.
The Call of the Saddle
This river built the modern West. It carved our canyons, powered our farms and ranches, lit our cities, and defined our sense of possibility. But it can’t survive our paralysis.
The next agreement — whatever we call it — won’t be about dividing abundance. It will be about managing scarcity with grace and intelligence. That means each state giving up a little sovereignty to save the system that sustains us all. It means governors and commissioners finding the courage to sign something imperfect but real.
Our basin remembers how to ride — hell, we practically invented it. The horse is saddled. The trail is narrow. And the storm is moving in fast.
Either we climb back on together, or we’ll watch someone else take the reins.
L to R, Anne Castle, Don Coram, James Eklund, and Jim Pokrandt
James Eklund is a Colorado water lawyer, rancher, former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and formerly Colorado’s Colorado River principal. He advises public and private clients across the West on water, land, and natural-resources issues at Taft/ Sherman & Howard.
On the far edge of suburban Phoenix, a giant concrete arch spans the Central Arizona Project, dubbed a “Bridge to Nowhere” by developers and neighborhood activists alike. Nobody can use it; even pedestrians are barred by a chain-link fence sporting a huge “Road Closed” sign. To the bridge’s north, the desert sits as raw as ever.
The bridge was built in recent years to connect an existing subdivision to the planned North Star Ranch and its proposed 9,600 homes. North Star was to be the latest of many new master-planned communities in Buckeye, one of the fastest-growing cities in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metro areas.
But now, this development is on hold over concerns that there’s not enough groundwater to supply the community. And it’s not the only project: High Country News found that almost half a million homes, including thousands in North Star, are currently on pause, far more than developers or local elected officials have acknowledged publicly.
Developments like North Star have long represented the future of housing for local developers and prospective homebuyers. Phoenix has sprawled endlessly in every direction since World War II, a beacon of the Sun Belt. The city’s rampant growth has transformed former agricultural fields and open desert into homes and tested the bounds of the water supply in Maricopa County, which usually ranks as one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties. The proposed new developments would stretch past the White Tank Mountains, a low-slung collection of peaks that has long served as Phoenix’s unofficial western boundary, making them the most remote developments yet.
But then, in June 2023, state modeling studies concluded that Phoenix and the surrounding areas had “reached the anticipated limits of growth on groundwater supplies,” and the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) made the stunning decision to stop issuing new water supply certificates to developments served by groundwater in the city’s outer ring of suburbs. Nowhere on Phoenix’s edges did this moratorium hit harder than in Buckeye, where many of the halted projects were slated to be built.
The decision stemmed from a provision in the state’s pioneering 1980 Arizona Groundwater Management Act that required metro areas and developers to prove that new subdivisions have enough water to last 100 years.
A slew of sensational headlines followed. The New York Times said it likely signaled the “beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country,” a prediction echoed by other outlets. The number of homes halted due to unsustainable reliance on groundwater is a striking indication of how widespread the practice has become — and of the state’s determination to rein it in.
The moratorium’s impacts heightened a political crisis that had been building in Phoenix for years as the demand for cheap housing and the limits on its water supply collided. Not only did the moratorium come during the worst drought to hit the Southwest in at least 1,200 years, it also hit in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis that has impacted even the Phoenix area, once a bastion of affordability. Developers and their supporters argue that it has caused real economic harm to homebuyers, because they say growth has stopped where the housing is most affordable. But the moratorium could also encourage denser growth in the city — something urban planners say would be healthy for Phoenix and also preserve desert habitat, conserve water and bolster the sense of community.
In the two years since the moratorium began, the housing and water pressures on the area have only increased. Phoenix has become trapped between a demand for affordable homes that meet people’s expectations for a good middle-class life and what government officials say is the dwindling amount of water available to supply those homes. And decision-makers have splintered along partisan lines, seemingly intractably, divided over the best way forward. Republican legislators have pushed hard for bills that would ease or lift the moratorium, while Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, whose administration introduced it, and most Democratic legislators have continued to stand by it.
Phoenix is at an inflection point, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s water chief, said at a June 2023 press briefing announcing the new restrictions. The question remains: In which direction will Phoenix tip?
Locals call this bridge over the Central Arizona Project canal in Buckeye, Arizona, the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
ONCE A QUIET FARMING COMMUNITY, Buckeye has rapidly mushroomed; town officials say about 125,000 people live here today, making it about 19 times larger than it was in 2000. That’s nothing, though, compared to the future growth already approved by the Buckeye City Council — enough new development to push the city’s population to more than 1 million.
State officials and local governments like Buckeye’s have routinely enabled this kind of growth through zoning and planning policies that treat sprawl as a way of life. Homes built within the urban core typically use less land, consume less water and require less infrastructure. Although they’re more expensive to build due to land costs, their urban location preserves desert habitat. But development on the edges has long been seen as the quickest, simplest way to meet people’s housing needs.
“In Phoenix, land development has always been as natural as breathing,” Andrew Ross observed in his 2011 book Bird on Fire, one of the few works that has ever taken a critical look at the region’s growth practices. “Any corner of the landscape is a parcel, begging for a contract; each building is a renovation opportunity, every open space a ‘vacant lot,’ awaiting its approver, and, with a little backing, it could be you.”
Efforts to rein in sprawl have run into economic — and political — walls. Growth-related industries such as construction and real estate account for a substantially larger share of the area’s economic base than they do in the U.S. as a whole — nearly 19% compared with 14.3% nationally. In 2000, the Sierra Club led a high-profile ballot initiative to compel Arizona cities to form growth management plans and impose urban growth boundaries on all cities with more than 2,500 people. A sizable majority of voters favored it initially, but the effort ultimately crashed at the polls, crushed by the real estate industry’s over $4 million opposition campaign.
Kathleen Ferris, a former state water director who is now a senior researcher studying water supply issues at Arizona State University, takes a particularly cynical view of the local attitude toward development — the “god of growth,” as she calls it.
An architect of the 1980 law that, years later, would halt North Star Ranch and the hundreds of thousands of other new suburban homes, she sees the restrictions as a protection against the worst of Arizona’s past excesses. “We are not going to have growth without water,” she said. “We will have water in hand before growth is allowed.”
Today, Ferris, at 76, is a key player in the ongoing struggle over the city’s water issues — one part water lawyer, one part researcher and one part crusader. She regularly talks with legislators and gives ADWR a piece of her mind about pending bills and regulations. As a water expert and a prominent voice speaking against groundwater-based development, her presence has become almost obligatory in discussions of Arizona’s water troubles.
Kathleen Ferris has spent her career working toward water security in Arizona as the state’s population doubled. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
In 1980, her presence loomed even larger: She was at the center of Arizona’s seemingly intractable groundwater wars. Back then, when lawmakers were drafting the bill that would ultimately spawn the current moratorium, the state’s groundwater levels were already nearing a crisis point: There were essentially no limits on groundwater pumping in any sector of the state’s economy, which was booming with the same intensity as it is today. Cities, farms and mines were at one point pulling at least 1.9 million more acre-feet a year out of the state’s aquifers than rainfall and snowmelt could replenish. In some areas, the aquifers were so depleted that they were collapsing, causing the land to sink and subside.
Around 200 miles of earth fissures caused by this subsidence have been mapped across Arizona. In both rural and suburban areas, earth fissures have undermined and closed roads, power lines, irrigation canals and sewer systems. In 2007, a horse fell into a 10-foot-deep, 15-foot-wide fissure in suburban Phoenix and died before it could be rescued.
Arizona already had a well-earned national reputation as a haven for land fraud. Legendary swindlers like Nathan Waxman, the self-proclaimed godfather of land fraud, were behind the sale of lots without any water supplies, roads or a clear understanding of who even owned the land. In the 1960s and 1970s, Waxman, working secretly with some of Arizona’s most prominent businessmen, “had scammed millions of dollars from Easterners who thought they were buying a retirement home rather than a chunk of barren desert,” reporters for the Arizona Project wrote.
“It just seemed horrible to me,” Ferris recently recalled. “Growth was really starting to happen big-time in Arizona. We were using way too much groundwater.”
In late 1979 and into 1980, then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt and more than a dozen lobbyists and legislators gathered in a downtown Phoenix law office for a closed-door meeting to hammer out details of what would become the state’s Groundwater Management Act. Ferris, one of the state’s preeminent groundwater authorities, and one of her staff members were the only women in the room.
Ferris was a few months shy of 31, but she was already regarded as an authority on groundwater. She had been intimately involved in day-to-day negotiations and politicking over the groundwater law. She spent countless mornings and evenings with Babbitt, the law’s prime architect, sifting through the bill’s fine points and hashing out the details.
As director of the Arizona Groundwater Management Study Commission, she spent nearly two years during the late 1970s traversing the state, seeking public comments on how to cobble together a new law regulating groundwater pumping. The committee’s recommendations would form the basis of the negotiations over the 1980 law.
Congress authorized construction of the $4 billion Central Arizona Project (CAP) in 1968, hoping to ease the groundwater deficit and deliver Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. It was still under construction in the late 1970s, but a report commissioned by then-State Water Engineer Wes Steiner predicted that CAP would only bring in enough river water to fill two-thirds of central Arizona’s total overdraft — even if substantial farmland was retired.
Ferris agreed. She worked with Babbitt to orchestrate a quiet, successful effort to induce then-Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus to threaten to cut off federal funding for finishing CAP’s construction unless Arizona enacted a groundwater law.
But at one spring 1980 meeting, Bill Stephens, an attorney for the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, made it clear that his group had strong objections to the assured water supply rule. And his association, which represented water utilities in Phoenix and its largest suburbs, had plenty of influence. Many of its members were already formalizing contracts to buy very expensive CAP water, and Stephens felt the rule was unfair.
“We were late in the negotiations, and I just remember Babbitt saying something like ‘I guess we’re going to have to put the issue aside. We’re not going to resolve this one,’” Ferris said.
“I just lost it,” Ferris recalled. “Tears were starting to flow down my face. I gathered up my books and my papers, and I walked out of the room. I was demoralized; I was so sad. I just had to get out of the room. I left while all those men were sitting around the table watching me.”
Within days, though, cooler heads prevailed. Ferris’ supporters among the negotiators convinced her to stay. If she walked out, it would permanently sink the bill. Some crafty negotiating got the cities back on board with the assured supply provision.
After the law was passed, Ferris became the first chief counsel of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, which the law created, then the director. These days, she sits on a water policy council that Gov. Katie Hobbs appointed shortly after taking office.
Kathleen Ferris holds a copy of the 1980 Arizona Groundwater Management Act at her office in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
WHEN NEWS BROKE OF THE STATE’S 2023 BAN on new groundwater-based subdivisions, sparking apocalyptic national coverage, local and state officials switched into defense mode.
“It seems in some ways like there’s criticism for us for doing planning and smart development,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego told the Arizona Republic after the ADWR moratorium was announced. “It is a strength, not a weakness. We are planning ahead. We have a very simple principle: Water first, then development.”
While the moratorium is unlikely to stop the area’s runaway growth — 80,000 lots had already been approved — the initial response far downplayed the number of homes on hold, according to a High Country News review of state records.
Developers had filed for confirmation that they had enough water to move ahead on roughly 300,000 home lots when the state decision came down. Another 162,000 home lots on state-owned land from Phoenix west to Buckeye also remain undeveloped due to water shortfalls, ADWR records show. Arizona’s Constitution mandates that such lands be sold or leased to help fund public schools, meaning it’s usually developed with housing. But the application process for the assured water supply certificates started in the 2000s and never came through. The development plans were halted.
Among the biggest developments currently on hold are Teravalis and Belmont. Both have been in the works more than two decades. The aftereffects of the 2008 real estate crash delayed them, but they had recently been revived.
Teravalis, at 100,000 homes on nearly 37,000 acres, heralds itself as “the community of your future” and “the nation’s next premier master planned community.” Its website is packed with photos of sunset-drenched saguaros and chollas, and it promises to reduce water use by promoting native landscaping and to set aside 7,000 acres as natural open space, parks and trails. To its west runs Sun Valley Parkway, a seldom-traveled, 30-mile-long four-lane road, itself long known as the Road to Nowhere. Belmont would be only a little less grandiose, building 80,000 homes on 24,000 acres in unincorporated Maricopa County, along with data centers and autonomous vehicles, according to a 2017 press release.
In 2022, developers began construction on 8,000 homes in Teravalis that already had a guaranteed water source. Some are now listed for sale; model homes are already up and the first homes could be occupied by early 2026. But since none of the other planned homes were certified prior to the ruling, the rest of the project is on hold.
THE MORATORIUM CAME AS A COLLECTIVE SHOCK to the Phoenix-area homebuilding industry. But it shouldn’t have: For more than two decades, Arizona water officials had been sending out warnings, echoed by Ferris’ high-profile criticism. Time after time, they concluded that far less groundwater was available for proposed subdivisions than the developers claimed.
Belmont’s original developers, for example, wanted permission to use 39,000 acre-feet of groundwater per year. But back in 2003, ADWR determined that barely half that amount was physically available. Around the same time, Tartesso’s developer asserted that 26,000 acre-feet was available, while ADWR said it was actually only about 19,000 acre-feet. Similar discrepancies arose around proposed developments across the West Valley.
Then, in 2021 and 2022, ADWR told the developers of several subdivisions, including Festival Ranch and North Star Ranch, that it was finalizing a computer model for the West Valley area that showed the subdivisions’ groundwater demands likely exceeded known supplies.
But then-Gov. Doug Ducey’s Republican administration was said to have prevented the model’s public release. The day after Gov. Hobbs took office in January 2023, Ferris urged the new governor to release the study in an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic. Hobbs did so six days later. Alarm bells began to go off for developers and builders.
The moratorium that ADWR declared five months later “had pretty devastating impacts to housing,” homebuilder lobbyist Spencer Kamps told an ADWR advisory committee meeting a few weeks after its release. “We are the only land use that does meet the 100-year requirements,” since apartment, commercial and industrial development were not covered by the 1980 law.
Emilie Myth and her dog, Piper, at home in September. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
He estimated that developers and homebuilders were sitting on at least $2 billion worth of investments in infrastructure in the Buckeye area, including roads and sewer and water lines, along with the Bridge to Nowhere. His estimate rose to $4 billion as the moratorium continued. Kamps also said it contributed to rising housing costs as well, adding to the existing 45,000-unit housing shortage in the metro area.
The moratorium has also intensified the isolation of suburban areas where new development had been planned. Emilie Myth moved to Tartesso, a subdivision of Buckeye, well over three years ago. She had been living in Torrance, south of Los Angeles, but found herself stressed by the cost and concerned about the safety of her neighborhood. Late one night, for example, she found a woman sleeping in her garage and was barely able to wake her and get her to leave.
So she moved to Tartesso, where the mortgage for a four-bedroom house costs the same as the rent for her one-bedroom apartment back in California: about $1,600 a month.
The downside is being marooned on a service-less island. Tartesso, with its 3,400 homes housing 10,000 residents, is about 10 miles east of the nearest gas station and 20 miles west of the nearest place to buy groceries. A convenience store is expected to open a few miles away at the end of this year. The only food service available comes from the handful of food trucks that spend evenings in one of Tartesso’s many parks. Similarly, North Star Ranch would lie an hour’s drive north of downtown Buckeye. Just south at one of Festival Ranch’s subdivisions, there’s a lone restaurant attached to a golf course, and a single Subway outlet and convenience market at the development’s entrance. The nearest grocery store is a Safeway 20 miles east.
The Festival Ranch housing development in Buckeye, Arizona. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
Yet, in some ways, Myth enjoys the isolation. “I like the quiet,” she said. “The only things you hear are cars going by, people talking and dogs barking, whereas in cities it was traffic, 24-7.
“I never felt at peace.”
But it’s been an adjustment, too. She grew up in South Sacramento, where she could take the bus to the movies or walk to the convenience store to get a candy bar. “What do kids do around here? What do teenagers do around here?” she wondered. “I just feel like as a kid I could be more independent than a child is here.”
The very thing she struggles with now contributes to her new neighborhood’s low cost: Since World War II, homebuilders have hopped over the urban fringe and alfalfa and cotton fields to develop the vast swaths of cheap desert land beyond them. This made the housing more affordable; denser construction would have cost more per unit, as would including commercial services.
Buckeye, for example, is among the handful of areas in the Phoenix area where homeowners can find a new home for under $400,000, a study by longtime Phoenix economic consulting firm Elliott D. Pollack and Co. found. Between June 2019 and June 2025, the median home price in Maricopa County jumped 65% to nearly $474,000, according to one real estate company, putting home ownership out of reach for much of the working class. In a 12-month stretch, though, more than a quarter of the 2,700 homes that sold for less than $400,000 were in Buckeye. According to Pollack, “There are few suitable alternatives for affordable homes in the region if Buckeye cannot continue to develop homes.” Pollack’s study was commissioned by the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.
Other reports, though, suggest that the moratorium may have had less of an impact than developers claim. There are dozens of homes listed in Tartesso, Festival Ranch and Buckeye in general for under $400,000. And a variety of other factors affect housing prices, according to a recent study from ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy: federal interest rates, inflation, supply chain interruptions, migration patterns, remote work, labor markets, inventory and local, state and federal government policies and regulations.
For example, the single-family, low-density zoning that covers most of the metro area can discourage lower-cost housing development and increases the cost of infrastructure such as roads and utilities. Macroeconomic influences account for much of the housing costs and availability, the study found. “In the absence of economic studies, it is difficult to say whether or how the (ADWR) moratorium might impact housing affordability.”
But it does mean that residents like Myth will likely continue to live in suburban isolation. “In a lot of ways, it sucks,” said Myth. “I understand why the governor wants to do that. We don’t want to turn off water for some people and have other people have it. But at the same time, when I moved here, I was told there is going to be more housing soon and eventually there will be a grocery store. That looks like it’s not going to happen for decades now.”
Some Tartesso homeowners told HCN they were leaving, or at least considering it, due to the long bus rides for schoolchildren and the onerous drives to get basic groceries. Not Myth, though. “I’ll probably stay here,” she said, since anywhere else, her mortgage bill could easily double.
Clouds catch the last light of the day behind a sign for the Tartesso development in Buckeye, Arizona. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
WITH TIME, THE FIGHT OVER THE MORATORIUM has hardened along familiar lines. Republican legislators have essentially accused ADWR of waging war against affordable housing, while ADWR and its backers say they’re standing firm on behalf of the state’s 45-year-old tradition of responsible groundwater management. A complicated history and a challenging present, distilled into a simple fight: affordability versus environment.
Duane Schooley Jr. bought two houses in Tartesso to rent out at first back in 2018 and 2019 because “we figured that Arizona was going to be a hot spot.” But Schooley, a local Republican party activist, is now openly disdainful of the state’s decision to stop allowing new homes to be built on groundwater supplies. He even doubts the state’s talk of a water shortage.
“When I moved here, it was all farmland, all of it,” Schooley recalled “Now, you have the Walmarts, the Boeings, the distribution centers. You displaced 1.3 million square feet of farmland for a concrete warehouse. Where did the water rights go? How much water were they using?” ADWR’s model found, however, that even those kinds of reductions in water use — moving away from farming, cutting back water use — hadn’t been enough.
Arizona officials are “playing with fire” and are “kind of short-sighted” by stopping so much development simply because of water, he added. “It seems kind of heavy-handed.”
Homebuilders began looking for a way around the moratorium just weeks after it was implemented. Industry representatives argued that developments that had been in process should be allowed to move forward, but state legislation on that got nowhere. After that and other efforts to overturn the moratorium failed, they pushed for a bill to allow new subdivisions to be built on retired farmland, since homes generally guzzle less water than cotton fields. The Legislature passed it in 2024, but Hobbs vetoed it after ADWR officials claimed it could actually lead to more water use in those areas. Developers have also challenged the accuracy of the forecasts made by ADWR’s groundwater model, saying its forecasts make faulty assumptions about where wells would be placed, overestimate future demands and underestimate supplies. Their consultant prepared an alternative model that projected groundwater supplies would more than suffice for 100 years. ADWR, however, pushed back on its findings.
For now, the department has focused instead on extending the responsibility to restrict groundwater use to some cities as well, by requiring them to cut groundwater use once renewable supplies arrive. While the rule’s backers say this provision is essential for reducing dependence on native groundwater, homebuilders and Republican legislative leaders have claimed it is an illegal “tax.” (ADWR has denied this, saying that it isn’t a tax.)
In early 2025, the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona joined two lawsuits against ADWR. One was filed on their behalf by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. This complaint challenged ADWR’s decision to stop issuing certificates for development, while the other, which was filed along with the Arizona Senate and House of Representatives, went after the requirement that cities importing renewable water cut groundwater use by 25%.
The Goldwater Institute lawsuit alleges that ADWR lacked the authority under state law to impose its moratorium in the first place, arguing that ADWR’s rules have become “insurmountable obstacles” to obtaining state certification of a 100-year supply.
In response, ADWR filed to have that lawsuit dismissed. “What is at stake in this lawsuit is the ability of the state to protect the Arizonans that are here today, by ensuring that their water supplies don’t run out or water levels fall to alarming depths of 1,000 feet due to new groundwater pumping,” Buschatzke, a defendant in the Goldwater lawsuit, wrote in an op-ed. “The Goldwater lawsuit would create a policy directive to rubber-stamp new developments if water was available beneath them, while forcing ADWR to ignore any potential impacts to neighboring homeowners or communities.”
The various factions have found one area of compromise, however: Legislation was passed this summer that could allow several hundred thousand new homes to be built on farmland. New subdivisions can only be built if they use as much as 1.5 acre-feet of groundwater per acre of developed land — enough water to serve three Phoenix-area homes for a year but far less than the farms themselves would have used.
But the new law won’t help the hundreds of thousands of planned homes in Buckeye and other suburbs in the desert. Instead, it focuses on developments that are less likely to move quickly.
Developers of master-planned communities want to build in lush desert mountain landscapes because they are selling atmosphere, said Sarah Porter, director of ASU’s Kyl Center. “They are designed from top to bottom, and everything is beautifully designed for a look, to work well together. It’s very hard to do that in an old farming town.”
A roofer works on a home in a housing development in Buckeye, Arizona, in September. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
WHATEVER THE OUTCOME of the various debates and lawsuits, Phoenix’s future growth ultimately depends on the public’s willingness to pay. “For enough money, people can dig a trench between Phoenix and the ocean to bring water. It might cost a trillion dollars, but it can be done,” said Brett Fleck, a water resources manager for the city of Peoria, northwest of Phoenix. “It’s not about running out. It’s about: Are you willing to pay for what it costs?”
Even relatively straightforward solutions are expensive and quickly run into problems. The city of Buckeye, for instance, agreed in early 2023 to pay $80 million to buy rights to 5,926 acre-feet of groundwater a year — enough to serve more than 17,000 homes annually — from a company that represents farms west of Phoenix. The town of Queen Creek spent $30 million for about 5,000 acre-feet from farms in the same area a year earlier.
In July, ADWR allowed the cities to take the water. But they still need the Central Arizona Project’s permission to put the water into the canal to bring it about 60 miles to the Phoenix area. That won’t be easy, since the water will require costly treatment: Much of it is contaminated with unsafe levels of naturally occurring arsenic and nitrates from crop fertilizers. If it’s put in the canal untreated, it would make water flowing to other houses and farms unusable.
And the CAP canal itself may very well be carrying less water soon. It has delivered renewable Colorado River water supplies to the state’s hot, dry interior since 1985, but with officials of the seven river basin states locked in tense negotiations over how to apportion the water supply from the oversubscribed river, the prospect of cuts looms large. Water officials of five Phoenix-area suburbs that get Colorado River water told HCN that they may have to scale back their future growth plans if the region sustains a significant cut to CAP deliveries.
Another proposal is to raise the Bartlett Dam on the Lower Verde River northeast of Phoenix so it can store an additional 323,000 acre-feet of water for metro-area cities in central Arizona. But one projection estimated it will cost about $1 billion, needs congressional authorization and wouldn’t go online until the late 2030s. The city of Phoenix is considering a facility that would treat upward of 80 million gallons of wastewater per day to make it drinkable — projected to cost $4 billion to build, and that’s a decade away.
Former Gov. Ducey proposed spending more than $1 billion for seawater desalinization plants on the Gulf of California and a pipeline to ship the treated seawater 200 miles north to the CAP canal. Ducey proposed this billion-dollar allocation toward the cost of such a project to the Arizona Legislature in 2022, but major state revenue shortfalls in 2024 led to a more than $400 million cut to the funding, leaving the prospect for water imports uncertain at best.
Myth would like to see some of these options considered more seriously. Why not, she asks, if the question is having enough water for people to drink and to bathe and to live?
“I would say that we are not being as imaginative about water as we could be,” she said. “If we could pipe oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, why can’t we pipe water from the Great Lakes here, or bring water up from the Sea of Cortez and treat it up here?”
Tom Berry at home in the Festival Ranch housing development in Buckeye, Arizona in September. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
But for some residents the moratorium has offered unexpected benefits. They have come to love their subdivisions marooned in the desert and dread the revival of the growth machine. Tom Berry began thinking of moving to Arizona more than a decade ago but dismissed Phoenix’s rural suburbs as an option. “I thought, ‘Who in their right mind would ever live out there?’ It was so remote.” But after years living in a booming neighborhood of northern Peoria west of Phoenix, he grew concerned about all the development he could see coming. “It was really going to impact our lifestyle.” So he drove to Festival Ranch “on a whim,” and bought a new home there in September 2021. Like many Festival Ranch residents, he was delighted that the state had blocked North Star Ranch.
“(The city is) enamored with the high growth rate of Buckeye,” he said. “It is growth at any cost, and too bad if you already live here.”
Just across the Sun Valley Parkway from his neighborhood lies the huge White Tank Mountains Regional Park, he noted. The parkway drive passes through open desert where cattle that graze on neighboring state land occasionally break through fences and stroll onto the road. Authorities have posted signs between Festival Ranch and Surprise warning drivers to “Watch for cattle.”
“So one of my friends said, ‘How about we put signs on the fenceline facing the desert that says ‘Watch for cars?’” Berry said.
A few streets over, Billy Ryan, a 39-year-old paramedic and Phoenix-area native whose four-bedroom house lies a block away from the bridge, was also cautiously celebrating the halt on new homes.
“I don’t want any development up there. It’s more traffic, more people, more everything,” said Ryan. “The whole reason I moved out here was to get away from that.
“You go five miles down the road and you’re in open desert. You see snakes and bugs. There’s nothing to the north of us, to the east or to the west. We’re kind of like an island,” he added. “If you like being outside, in nature, it’s ideal.”
Still, he tempers his relief at the indefinite delay imposed on the North Star Ranch project with the intuitive awareness of someone born in the state that “you can’t stop progress.
“It will happen,” he said. “The developers always get their way. At the same time … if people want to develop here, they need to find a better way to get the water.
“I don’t know where they are going to get the water, it is a finite resource, to be sure. But at the end of the day, developers are the ones with cash. If not this election cycle, not now, four years later, five years later, 15 years later, it will get done.”
Development meets the desert in suburban Phoenix, Arizona. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
Colorado is in its first year of responding to a zebra mussel infestation in a big river, the Colorado River. State staff say they have what they need to handle the high-priority needs — they just need their funding to stay off the chopping block.
The fast-reproducing mussels, or their microscopic stage called veligers, were first detected in Colorado in 2022. Since then, the state’s aquatic nuisance species team and its partners have been working to monitor water, decontaminate boats, and educate the public to keep the mussels from spreading. That effort logged a serious failure this summer when state staff detected adult zebra mussels in the Colorado River, where treatment options are limited.
CPW sampling on the Colorado River found zebra mussel veligers. The river is now considered “positive” for zebra mussels from its confluence with the Roaring Fork River to the Utah state line. CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF COLORADO PARKS & WILDLIFE
“We’re continuing to sample the Colorado from below the Granby Dam all the way out to the [Utah-Colorado] state line,” said Robert Walters, who manages the invasive species program for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Adult zebra mussels, about the size of a thumbnail with a zebra-striped shell, reproduce quickly and can clog up pipes, valves and parts of dams, costing millions of dollars to remove. They also suck up nutrients, out-eating other native aquatic species, and their razor sharp shells cause headaches for beachgoers.
The state’s first adult zebra mussel showed up in Highline Reservoir near Grand Junction in 2022. But even after the lake was drained and treated, the mussels appeared again.
Colorado has been working to keep these invasive species out of its waters since 2007, when a task force was created to coordinate management efforts.
In 2008, Colorado approved a law that makes it illegal to possess, import, export, transport, release or cause an aquatic nuisance species to be released.
Now, the program completes over 450,000 inspections each year, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s website. The teams have intercepted 281 boats with zebra or quagga mussels attached.
But their treatment options are limited on the Colorado River. CPW does not intend to treat the main stem of the Colorado River due to multiple factors, including risk to native fish populations and critical habitat, the length of the potential treatment area and complex canal systems, the agency said in a mid-September news release.
The goal continues to be educating the public — including lawmakers who are scheduled to hear an update on the zebra mussel issue during the Oct. 29 Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee meeting.
“What I think that we really need to help us more effectively tackle this issue is a higher level of public awareness,” Walters said.
The first year of infestations
For invasive species teams, the first year involves a lot of monitoring, according to Heidi McMaster, the invasive species coordinator for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Quagga mussels were discovered in Lake Mead, Lake Mojave and Lake Havasu on the Colorado River in January 2007. The mussels were later confirmed in Lake Powell in 2013, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Hoover Dam with Lake Mead in the background December 3, 2024.
Colorado River water from Colorado’s mountains eventually collects in Lake Powell before flowing through the Grand Canyon to downstream states, Lake Mead and Mexico.
“I would think that the first response is probably panic, especially if people are not prepared for it,” McMaster said. “Once that initial panic wears off, it is tapping into the existing resources, the preparedness plans that state or managers have on how to deal with it.”
During the first year, specialists are looking at existing rapid response plans, vulnerability assessments and communication plans. They take samples and track life cycles to try to understand how the mussels reproduce, how environmental conditions impact breeding and what kinds of treatments might work to stop the spread.
In the Southwest and along the Colorado River, the temperature of the water allows invasive species to breed multiple times a year, McMaster said. Each one can produce a million larvae. Not all survive: There are turbulent waters, areas with fewer nutrients, and other threats, like predators. But if they grow to adulthood they can layer on top of each other on underwater surfaces.
If left unchecked, invasive mussels could clog up pipelines that carry cooling water to turbines used to generate hydroelectric power. Without the cooling effect of the water, the turbine would “burn up” and power generation would shut down, McMaster said.
The goal at the end of the first year is mainly to inform the public. That means repeating the “clean, drain, dry” refrain as often as possible to anyone moving watercraft from one body of water to another, she said.
After that, a successful first-year response will also include setting up inspection and decontamination stations. Then, specialists move onto treatment options, McMaster said.
At Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, on the Nevada-Arizona border, managers took an aggressive treatment approach to avoid damage to the dam, she said. They used UV lights to stun and temporarily paralyze the microscopic veligers so they cannot attach inside the dam.
“Prevention is still the No. 1 goal,” McMaster said.
It’s the cheapest and least risky option, she said. Once an invasive mussel species arrives in an area, however, the costs can ramp up exponentially into the millions of taxpayer dollars. The goal is always to keep them at bay as much as possible, she said.
“They might be in the state of Colorado,” McMaster said, “but if you look at the overall percentage of uninfested areas, that’s still a lot of maintenance that’s not having to happen.”
Pest control on a private lake
On July 3, Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff discovered adult zebra mussels in a privately owned lake in western Eagle County, according to a news release.
CPW also identified additional zebra mussel veligers in the Colorado River near New Castle, Highline Lake and Mack Mesa Lake at Highline Lake State Park, the release said.
There were too many mussels in the Eagle County lake to count, Walters said in late August. Any hard structure in the lake and any underwater rocks were relatively covered in adult mussels, he said.
An invasive species specialist said in July that they believed the lake was an upstream source of the mussels in the Colorado River, and that an outlet from the lake was bringing zebra-mussel-infested water into the Colorado River, according to news reports.
Walters said that has not been confirmed.
“We are just continuing to try to monitor,” Walters said during an interview Aug. 29. “What I can say is that, to the best of our knowledge, there currently is no connection from this privately owned body of water into any of the river systems of the state.”
The state’s team spent about eight hours on Aug. 25 treating the lake with a copper-based molluscicide, a substance used to kill mollusks, he said.
Staff also sampled the private lake’s water Aug. 27 to make sure the treatment’s concentration was at the right level and planned to continue monitoring and treating the water throughout September, Walters said.
No boats or other watercraft were entering or exiting the lake, he said.
“It’ll be a long time before we know if it was truly effective at eradicating the zebra mussels,” he said.
Zebra mussels. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
The state focuses its monitoring efforts on public waters, mainly those with high recreational use. Motorboats and other types of boats are the main way the mussels spread, he said.
However, that doesn’t mean the teams don’t survey private ponds and lakes, Walters said.
After the state discovered zebra mussel veligers in the Colorado River and Grand Junction area, they started asking landowners if they could survey private lakes, ponds, gravel pits and more near the river. They often survey privately owned recreational areas, like water skiing clubs, he said.
“We have been trying to work with those private landowners to allow us access to come out and sample them for invasive species,” Walters said.
We need to keep our existing funding
But with thousands of private and public water bodies in the state, CPW alone is never going to be able to monitor all of them as frequently as the high-risk water bodies, he said.
The staff normally work in teams of two to inspect reservoirs and lakes. They pull fine mesh nets through the water to try to find microscopic veligers. They do shoreline surveys to look for razor sharp shells and other signs of invasive species.
On a small pond, the process can take one to two hours. On a big reservoir like Blue Mesa, Colorado’s largest reservoir, it would take six to eight hours, he said.
“I don’t think that there is ever going to be capacity to monitor every public and private body of water in the state of Colorado. And I don’t think that that’s ever going to be our expectation,” Walters said.
The aquatic nuisance species program has more resources than ever, but there’s always room for more, Walters said.
“At this time, we feel like we do have a good amount of resources to be able to sample the waters that we consider to be the highest priority,” he said.
Formerly, the team was based in Denver. Now, the state has established a traveling team to cover the Western Slope and another focused on the Grand Junction area.
They don’t need more authority to monitor private water bodies, he said.
“What we need is to continue to receive the funding that we are receiving today, and hope that does not get threatened if there’s any sort of budget cuts that are considered,” Walters said.
Aquatic nuisance species stamp sales cover about $2.4 million, or 50%, of the program’s annual funding needs. All motorboats and sailboats must have this stamp before launching in state waters, according to the CPW website.
Colorado state law calls on federal agencies, like the Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Forest Service, to cover the other half of the funding needs since many high-risk waters in Colorado are federally owned or managed.
How are other water providers responding?
Zebra mussels go with the flow. They naturally move downstream with the river’s current, but boats traveling from one lake to another can carry them upstream.
That has upstream water managers, like Northern Water and Denver Water, keeping a close eye on developments along the Colorado River.
The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District works with the federal government to transfer Colorado River water on the Western Slope through a series of reservoirs, pump stations and tunnels — called the Colorado-Big Thompson Project — to farmland and over 1 million residents from Fort Collins across northeastern Colorado.
Horsetooth Reservoir looking west from Soldier Dam. Photo credit: Norther Water.
Zebra mussels are such prolific reproducers they can clog up water delivery pipelines, the main concern for a water manager like Northern Water, spokesman Jeff Stahla said.
The C-BT project is no stranger to invasive species. In 2008, quagga mussels showed up in several reservoirs, including Grand Lake, Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Reservoir. Another reservoir, Green Mountain, was also positive for quagga mussels in 2017.
All of the lakes are mussel-free and delisted, Stahla said. Now they’re tightening up security.
“The biggest task we can right now is to inspect those boats going into the reservoirs to make sure that they’re not going to be causing the problem,” he said.
Dillon Reservoir in Summit County is Denver Water’s largest reservoir. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Denver Water, which serves 1.5 million people in Denver and nearby suburbs, is also focused on inspecting and decontaminating boats.
“It’s a little unnerving. That’s for sure,” Brandon Ransom, recreation manager for Denver Water, said. “It’s certainly not welcome news that anybody in the state wants to see.”
The water provider also transfers Colorado River water through mountain tunnels and ditches to Front Range communities. Not only are the invasive mussels a concern for gates, valves, pipes and tunnels, they also cause problems for recreation. The shells are sharp enough to cut feet and the decaying mussels and old shells “smell to all heck,” Ransom said.
They haven’t launched new prevention efforts in response to zebra mussels reports, but that’s because the provider and its partner agencies already had fairly controlled boat launch and inspection procedures, he said.
A view of part of Eleven Mile State Park in Park County, Colorado. The view shows the Eleven Mile Canyon Dam and part of the Eleven Mile Canyon Reservoir. By Jeffrey Beall – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154086653
They already intercepted adult zebra mussels on boats this year, he said. The latest catch was at Eleven Mile Reservoir in early October.
They’re trying to get the word out to people to make sure their boats and gear are clean, drained and dry. The zebra mussels like to hide in dark cavities, particularly around motors.
The good news is that Denver Water’s reservoirs, pipelines and tunnels on the Western Slope are upstream from the main infested areas, Ransom said.
“It doesn’t help me sleep at night, let’s put it that way,” he said. “We know that it’s closer and closer, and we’re trying to be extra vigilant when it comes to prevention in our waters.”
Click the link to read the article on the KVNF website (List Young). Here’s an excerpt:
October 6, 2025
Black eyed peas could replace water thirsty crops on the Western Slope. That’s the hope of Srinivassa Pinnamaneni, Ph. D, at Colorado State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences in Fruita, Colorado. Pinnamaneni, said the project was initiated in his brain after seeing the decrease in pinto beans in the state. He said in the last three decades the crop has decreased from almost 300,000 acres to currently 25,000 acres in Colorado. He said most farmers have replaced pinto beans with corn, in part due, to more pests and diseases plaguing the bean crops.
“We want to introduce a new crop that saves water at the same time increases on farm returns and also take care of soil health. So the crop that came into my mind is black eyed peas. They have same duration, like 85 to 95 duration like pinto beans. And you farmers need not change any machinery for growing black eyed peas,” said Pinnamaneni.
Prior to the pilot program on the Western Slope, Pinnamaneni reached out to Trinidad Benham in Nebraska for a contract on the black eyed peas raised by Mike Ahlberg of Delta, Colorado.
“I went there to Gering, Nebraska to get the seeds and this spring I gave them to Mike Ahlberg, who planted them on Memorial Day and harvested on 13th of September.”
The researcher said Ahlberg’s pinto beans yielded around 30 hundred weight while the black eyed peas, they gave 25 hundred weight. He also noted that the current price of pinto beans nationally is $28 dollars to anywhere between $24 to $28 dollars per hundredweight. Trinidad Benham Corporation has made a contract with Ahlberg to buy the black eyed peas at $49 nine dollars per hundredweight.
“Luckily, they are trying to send the semi this week to ship these beautiful peas back to their processing plant at Sterling, Colorado,” Pinnamaneni said.
He said next year the Colorado Department of Agriculture will once again fund the project that could improve both soil health and save water.
Colorado River Basin in Colorado via the Colorado Geological Survey
The Colorado River fills Glen Canyon, forming Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir. The reservoir could drop to a new record low in 2026 if conditions remain dry in the Southwestern watershed. (Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk)
This story is produced and distributed by The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Heavy autumn rains brought relief to drought-plagued portions of the Southwest, but across the Colorado River basin ongoing water supply concerns still linger amid tense policy negotiations and near record-low reservoir storage.
Even after accounting for the heavy rain, 57% of the Colorado River watershed remains in severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. More than 11% of the basin is in extreme drought.
A less than average upcoming snow season combined with a dry spring or early summer in 2026 could create conditions for another low runoff year. The Colorado River’s headwaters saw a weak snowpack last winter, which contributed to one of the worst spring runoff seasons on record in 2025. Drought conditions spread and worsened into summer throughout the southern Rocky Mountains.
Peter Goble, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist, explained that the recent rainfall “certainly recharged soils,” in some watersheds.
Streamflow in the Animas River and Rio Grande increased significantly following the October rains and flooding. Rain in southwest Colorado, particularly around Pagosa Springs, brought flooding that damaged homes and downtown businesses. Rain gauges near the San Juan Mountains recorded 7 to 10 inches of precipitation from October 9-15.
“We would love to see this rain come over a more steady incremental period,” Goble said. “But oftentimes it is these flooding events that kind of put the kibosh on a drought more locally.”
The flooding erased drought designations on the Drought Monitor map in those localized areas, but basinwide drought conditions tell a different story. Dry soils, depleted reservoirs and winter weather forecasts continue to cause water managers to worry.
Even with the recent rain, soils in many parts of the Colorado River basin remain dry. Soil absorbs moisture almost like a sponge. When the soil moisture is low, spring runoff soaks into the soil, saturating the ground first. Soils that are more saturated lead to more water filtering into streams and reservoirs when runoff occurs, making the process more efficient.
“We’re still going to need a good snowpack in order to be set up nicely, but this (rain) improves our outlook for the efficiency of that snowpack,” Goble said.
La Niña causes the jet stream to move northward and to weaken over the eastern Pacific. During La Niña winters, the Southwest tends to see warmer and drier conditions than usual. Since La Niña 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)
Federal forecasts show the possibility of a mild La Niña through February. The climate pattern occurs when Pacific Ocean waters cool down and alter global weather conditions. La Niña patterns often impact the amount of snowpack accumulation in the coming year. The southern part of Colorado is often drier in a La Niña year while northern areas, around Steamboat Springs, typically see snowier conditions.
The stakes for an above average runoff next year are high. The two biggest reservoirs in the country, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have steadily declined over the last 25 years. Powell is currently at 29% of its capacity and Lake Mead is at 32%. A lessened runoff could push them dangerously low.
While the rain slightly alleviates local drought, it’s “only a drop in the bucket when it comes to refilling Lake Powell and Lake Mead,” Goble said. “We’re still going to see those regional water shortages persist.”
Glen Canyon Dam holds back the waters of Lake Powell, which has reached critically low levels in the last three years. The reservoir serves downstream water use in Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico. (Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk)
If water levels continue to decline in these larger reservoirs, the dams’ infrastructure is threatened and the hydropower turbines can’t be used. Lake Powell, for example, has different outlets installed so water can be released in low conditions, however they are not designed to be the main outlet source. New federal projections show it’s possible Powell’s levels could drop low enough to cease hydropower production as early as October 2026, if conditions remain dry.
“They could reach levels they have never reached before and potentially reach catastrophic levels,” said John Berggren, regional policy manager for Western Resource Advocates.
In response to extremely low water conditions, it’s possible water from upstream reservoirs in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico could be released to support Powell’s hydropower turbines.
“We are seeing a new normal because of climate change, because of aridification,” Eric Kuhn said, former general manager of the Colorado River District, on the state’s Western Slope. In 2022, the basin saw similar drought conditions.
“We are back where we were just a few years later,” Kuhn said. “The system is slipping away.”
The basin states are also engaged in negotiations for new operating guidelines for the Colorado River, set to be in place by 2027. Given the ongoing drought conditions, water experts say the two reservoirs cannot wait for new guidelines.
“Don’t forget the short term problem while you are focused on a long-term agreement,” Kuhn said. A recent research paper, co-authored by Kuhn, highlights the need for urgent consumptive cuts basinwide. “We have got to figure out what’s going to happen next year if next year happens to be dry.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
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
Click the link to read the article on the Tucson.com website (Tony Davis). Here’s an excerpt:
November 5, 2025
Gov. Katie Hobbs blasted officials of the four Upper Colorado River Basin states for what she called their “extreme negotiating position” in refusing to offer curbs on their water use to help save the depleted river.
“This river is shared by seven states, and it benefits seven states. Therefore there must be water conservation efforts in all seven states within the Colorado River Basin,” Hobbs said Wednesday in Tucson at a gathering of the National Water Resources Association Meeting Leadership Forum.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs. Photo credit: Arizona Office of the Govenor
“Yet as I stand before you today, after years of negotiations and meeting after meeting after meeting, and time running short to cut a deal, we have yet to see any offer or real, verifiable plan to conserve water from the four Upper Basin States who rely upon this shrinking river,” Hobbs said in a talk at Loew’s Ventana Canyon resort on the northeast side…
The seven states this century have been using far more river water for farms, homes and businesses than is provided by Mother Nature, with the overuse now reaching 3.6 million acre-feet a year, or more than one-fourth of the river’s annual average flow. Those annual flows have declined at least 20% since the turn of the century due to drought and human-caused climate change, many scientists have said. The Upper Basin states have so far not retreated from their position that they see no reason to conserve any additional water because they say many of their farmers, in particular, have already suffered many shortages in recent years when flows in the river and its tributaries aren’t enough to satisfy demand. The Upper Basin states also note that they use significantly less water than they have rights to use under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, while the Lower Basin states typically use more than their allocated rights, particularly when evaporation of water in the Lower Basin’s stretch of river and its tributaries is considered…In a brief interview Wednesday, Hobbs noted that Arizona has one of the fastest growing economies in the US and that could be undercut by an unfavorable CAP allotment. Hobbs went on to say the state maintaining a leadership role in the chip manufacturing industry is not only an economic issue, but also one of national security because some of the most advanced computer chips in the U.S. are being manufactured here. In her speech Hobbs said, “We see time and time again, Arizona, California and Nevada coming to the table, offering significant water cutbacks, and seeing nothing from the Upper Basin.
Fig. 1. The Colorado River Basin covers parts of seven U.S. states as well as part of Mexico. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Editor’s note: Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the San Juan Citizens’ Alliance celebration of 50 years of the Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado’s largest wilderness area at nearly 500,000 acres. Congress passed the legislation establishing the Weminuche in 1975, and it now covers some of the most spectacular landscape in the nation. This is an adapted version of the talk I gave (with a lot fewer umms and uhhs in it).
As I’m sure you all are aware, our public lands have been under attack for a while now, but especially in the last nine months, from both the Trump administration and from the Republican-dominated Congress.
This all out assault has given me many reasons to worry about the fate of some of my favorite places. I have worried about Sen. Mike Lee, the MAGA adherent from Utah, selling off Animas Mountain or Jumbo Mountain to the housing developers; I have fretted about Trump shrinking or eliminating Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, or Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon national monuments and opening them to the latest uranium mining rush; and I worry that regulatory rollbacks and the administration’s “energy dominance” agenda will make the San Juan Basin and the Greater Chaco Region more vulnerable to a potential new natural gas boom driven by data center demand for more and more power.
But one place I haven’t worried (as much) about being attacked by the GOP and Trump is the Weminuche Wilderness. That’s not because I think Trump or Lee are above messing with wilderness areas. They aren’t. In fact, just this week they opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge up to oil and gas leasing. Still, the Wilderness Act is one of the few major environmental laws these guys haven’t gone after directly — at least so far.
But more than that, the reason I feel the Weminuche is less vulnerable to MAGA attacks is because I am confident that even the most die-hard anti-environmentalist sorts understand that an attack on the Weminuche would be an attack on this region and its identity. The Weminuche has simply become ingrained in the collective psyche of southwest Colorado and beyond. If the feds were to try to open it to logging or drilling or mining or any other sort of development, there would be a widespread, deep revolt from this entire region, even from many a Trump voter.
In part, that’s because of how special the place is, with or without a wilderness designation. But it also has to do with the way the wilderness was established, and the widespread local support it ultimately garnered.
Not long after the Wilderness Act of 1964 was signed into law, federal and state agencies and residents of southwestern Colorado began talking about establishing a wilderness area in the remote San Juan Mountains. Areas such as the Silverton Caldera had been heavily mined, and no longer qualified for wilderness designation (even if the mining industry and local communities would have allowed it).
But the heart of the San Juans in and around the Needle and Grenadier ranges certainly fit the bill. In 1859, Macomb expedition geologist J.S. Newberry described the San Juans as a “thousand interlocking spurs and narrow valleys, [which] form a labyrinth whose extent and intricacy will at present defy all attempts at detailed topographical analysis. Among these are precipices, ornamented with imitations of columns, arches, and pilasters, which form some of the grandest specimens of nature’s Gothic architecture I have ever beheld. When viewed from some nearer point they must be even awful in their sublimity.”
“Awful” might be a bit harsh, but sublime? Indeed. That this should become a wilderness must have seemed like a no-brainer.
Nevertheless, the process to designate the Weminuche was no slam dunk. It took a half decade of wrangling and debate and boundary adjustments and congressional committee sausage-making. What to me is most remarkable, however, looking back on the process from our current, politically polarized era, is that the debates were not partisan. And even though there were differing opinions on where the boundaries should be drawn or even whether there should be any wilderness at all, the conversation was just that: a conversation, and a civil one at that.
Proposals were forwarded by the Forest Service and the Colorado Game & Fish Department. Meanwhile, the Citizens for the Weminuche Wilderness — made up of local advocates, ranchers, scientists, business people, and academics — came up with its own proposed boundaries.
My father chronicled some of the back and forth in an insert he put together and edited for the Durango Herald in 1969 called “The Wilderness Question.” It includes his editorials and news stories, but also opinion pieces from a variety of residents.
Looking back, it is a truly striking document. First off, there’s the fact that the Forest Service’s original proposal would have excluded Chicago Basin — now considered the heart of the wilderness area and a Mecca for backpackers and peak-baggers (and their attendant impacts) — and the City Reservoir trail and surrounding areas. They were left out, in part, because there were hundreds of mining claims in those areas, and the mining industry remained interested in them, despite their remoteness and difficult access.
The citizens group, however, was having none of that, and demanded that both areas be included in the wilderness area. Carving these areas out would be like cutting the soul from the place. Ranchers weighed in, as well. James Cole, who was described as a “prominent Basin rancher,” wrote this for the Herald supplement: “The La Plata County Cattlemen are in favor of the proposed Weminuche Wilderness Area … We would like to see Weminuche Creek and Chicago Basin, which the forest service would like to exclude, included in the Wilderness Area.”
It may seem odd, today, to see a livestock operators’ group advocating for morewilderness than even the feds wanted, but it makes a lot of sense. Not only are many ranchers conservation-minded, but their operations were unlikely to be affected by wilderness designation, since grazing is allowed in wilderness areas. It’s actually far stranger to see southeastern Utah ranchers become some of the most zealous opponents of Bears Ears National Monument, since its establishment didn’t ban or restrict current grazing allotments.
Fred Kroeger, a lifelong Republican1 and local water buffalo, who for years pushed for the construction of the Animas-La Plata water project, supported wilderness designation because it would protect the region’s water. (My grandparents, who were Animas Valley farmers and Republicans also supported the designation).
John Zink was a rancher, businessman, fisherman, and hunter and member of the citizens’ committee. In the Herald supplement he wrote that the proposed Weminuche Wilderness, “offers outdoor lovers an opportunity to support another sound conservation practice.”
He continued:
“For me it won’t be many years until slowed feet and dimmed eyes make the south 40 the logical place to hunt, and when the time comes, I expect to enjoy it. But a new and younger generation of outdoor lovers will then be climbing the peaks and wading the icy streams. I ask all outdoor enthusiasts to support the proposed Weminuche Wilderness Area, so each new generation may enjoy it much as it was when Chief Weminuche led his braves across this fabled land.”
That’s not to say everyone was in favor of the citizens’ proposal, but opposition was almost always on pragmatic, not political or ideological grounds. Probably the most strident opposing opinion piece in the Herald supplement came from an engineer at the Dixilyn Mine outside of Silverton, who didn’t want his industry shut out of any potentially mineralized areas, including Chicago Basin. Less than two decades later, the mining industry would be all but gone from the San Juans — and it had nothing to do with wilderness areas or other environmental protections.
John Zink’s son, Ed, who would go on to become a prominent businessman, pillar of the community, and the driving force establishing Durango as a cycling hub, asked that some areas, including the trail to City Reservoir, be excluded from the wilderness to accommodate the rights of “riders of machines.” He was talking about motorbikes back then, but would later focus more on mountain bikes. Zink, a staunch Republican, was undoubtedly bummed when the City Reservoir trail was included in the wilderness area, per the citizens’ proposal.
Nevertheless, a few years later, when I was about eight years old, I went on one of my earliest backpacking trips up the trail with Zink (who was my dad’s cousin), along with his sons Tim and Brian, nephew Johnny, and my dad and my brother. We hiked for hours without seeing anyone else — and without hearing the buzz of any motorized vehicles. Ed didn’t seem to miss his motorcycle one bit, nor did he or other motorized groups file lawsuits to try to block or shrink the wilderness, as is common practice today.
Ed would later be instrumental in establishing the Hermosa Creek wilderness area north of Durango, a compromise bill that left Hermosa Creek trail open to mountain bikes and motorbikes. Again, he worked from a pragmatic mindset: He wanted to protect the watershed from which his irrigation and drinking water came, and the forests that sustained game and wildlife, while also retaining recreational access.
When Congress finally passed the bill establishing the Weminuche, it went with the citizens’ group proposal and then some, designating 405,000 acres of federal land as a wilderness area and including Chicago Basin and City Reservoir. The Weminuche Wilderness was expanded in 1980 and again in 1993.
In the years since, public lands protection and conservation have become more and more politicized, along with just about everything else. The pragmatism of the 1970s has been abandoned in favor of ideology; public lands, somehow, have become a pawn in the culture wars. I’m sure both parties share some of the blame, but judging from their actions of late, the MAGA Republicans have become the staunchly anti-public lands conservation party — and bear absolutely no resemblance to the old school Republicans who fought for wilderness designation 50 years ago. Hell, for that matter, some Republican politicians don’t even resemble their selves from just a couple of decades ago.
Trump’s going to go away some day, and the attacks on public lands will probably ease off. But they won’t stop altogether. Humans’ hunger for more stuff and minerals and energy will undoubtedly put pressure on the places we hold dear, maybe even on the Weminuche. But polarization and political partisanship will only hamper our ability to save these places. Our only hope is to, somehow, recover some of the civility, the non-partisanship, and the pragmatism that fueled the designation of the Weminuche in 1975.
I have no idea how we’ll get there, but I do hold out hope. I really have no choice. I’ll leave you with some words written by my father, Ian Thompson, in the “Wilderness Question” insert in 1969:
“The Wilderness effort we are engaged in at the time is, in one respect, a pitifully futile struggle. Earth’s total atmosphere is human-changed beyond redemption, Earth’s waters would not be recognizable to the Pilgrims. Earth’s creatures will never again know what it is to be truly “wild.” The sonic thunder of man’s aircraft will increasingly descend in destructive shock waves upon any “wilderness area” no matter how remote or how large. No, there is no wilderness, and throughout the future of humanity, there will be no wilderness. We are attempting to save the battered remnants of the original work of a Creator. To engage in this effort is the last hope of religious people.
“The child seen here and there in “The Wilderness Question” would have loved Wilderness. There is tragedy in that knowledge. Hopefully we will leave him a reasonable facsimile of Wilderness. In the last, tattered works of Creation this child might find the source of strength necessary to love America and the works of man. If we care enough to act.”
*Nowhere in the several-page insert are political parties mentioned, most likely because people were less inclined to identify themselves according to political party, but also because environmental preservation was not at all partisan at the time. I mention their affiliations here to further demonstrate the way the discussion transcended party politics.
Speaking of the Weminuche: It looks like wolves may have made their way into the wilderness area. Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s most recent Collared Gray Wolf Activity map shows that the wolves have been detected in the San Juan, Rio Grande, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison River watersheds in the southwestern part of the state. Since the minimum mapping unit is the watershed, it’s not clear that the wolves have for sure ventured into the Weminuche. But it is certain that they have been recorded in the San Juan Mountains. It seems only a matter of time before they cross into New Mexico and maybe even Utah.
When Trump was elected for the second time, I figured there was no way he could make public lands grazing any less restrictive. After all, presidential administrations of all political persuasions have famously — or infamously — done very little to restrict grazing or to get it to pay for itself (the BLM’s grazing fee has remained at $1.35 per AUM, the mandated minimum) for decades. But, alas, the U.S. Agriculture Department recently announced its plan to “Fortify the American Beef Industry: Strengthening Ranches, Rebuilding Capacity, and Lowering Costs for Consumers.”
The plan, as you may imagine, looks to expand public lands grazing, among other things. And it was released at about the same time as Trump encouraged folks to eat Argentinian beef, since he seems to have developed a sort of crush on Argentina President Javier Milei.
I’ll get into the details of the USDA plan and offer some thoughts on it in the next dispatch. In the meantime, you can dive into my deep dive on public lands grazing here, though you have to be a paid subscriber (or sign up for a free trial) to get past the paywall.
Lower Basin water use since 1964. 2025 data provisional, based on USBR projections Oct. 29, 2015.
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
October 31, 2025
California’s projected use of Colorado River water this year, 3.76 million acre feet as of Reclamation’s Oct. 29 modeling runs, would be, as near as I can tell, the state’s lowest use since 1949.
Also notable:
Nevada’s 197,280 acre feet would be the lowest since 1992.
The two lowest years in Imperial Irrigation District’s history (my dataset goes back to 1941) were last year and this year.
This will be the third year in a row that Arizona’s main stem use has been below 2 million acre feet. The last time that happened (three consecutive years below 2maf) was in the 1980s.
Total take by the US Lower Basin states is projected to be 5.917 million acre feet, the lowest total US main stem use since 1983.
A few things to note.
First, the tenuous fabric of the Basin States negotiations is predicated right now, in part, on the Lower Basin cutting 1.5 million acre feet of annual use. They’ve already done that.
Second, the current cuts are enabled by significant federal payments to compensate the water agencies for their cuts. As my colleagues and I wrote back in September, counting on that money in the future would be unwise.
Third, the economies of Arizona, southern Nevada, and southern California are chugging along just fine right now. As I have written in the past, having less water does not mean scary doom. We can do this.
A note on the data:
The projection of total 2025 use by Lower Basin water users is based on model runs done by the Bureau of Reclamation every few days. It’s a rich source of data, with detailed accounting of the various conservation programs being run by the Lower Basin agencies. PDF here.
The comparison with prior years is based in part on the Lower Basin accounting reports, prepared each year since 1964. For prior years, I have a dataset I got years ago from the technical staff at the Metropolitan Water District of California, who had pieced together California numbers back to 1941. (Thanks, Met!)
Riparian ecologists David Cooper, left, and David Merritt take stock of the tree root crowns collected from the banks of the Crystal River the last week in October. They will take the trunks back to the lab in Fort Collins to study the tree rings, the first step in understanding how floods impact riparian vegetation. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Over three sunny-but-cool October days, a team of scientists and volunteers dug up and hauled away the root crowns of trees along the Crystal River, a first step toward a potential strategy to protect flows on one of the last free-flowing rivers in Colorado.
David Cooper, a senior researcher on wetland and riparian ecology at Colorado State University, studies how spring floods affect riparian vegetation. His van was full of the tree samples that he would take back to the lab in Fort Collins to study their rings.
“We want to know the year the plant was established because once we know the year the plant was established, then we could relate that to the flow record that’s recorded by gauges,” Cooper said. “Then we can speak to the role of floods, which is important for the public to understand and for river managers to understand.”
The banks of the Crystal just upstream from Redstone are lined with narrowleaf cottonwood and blue spruce. Cottonwoods in particular need the rushing flows of spring runoff for their seeds to germinate and have evolved to disperse their seeds just after the high point of snowmelt each year. The seeds, carried along the wind by a bit of fluff, land in the bare, wet, mineral soil of streambanks where some of them take root.
Peter Brown with Rocky Mountain Tree Ring Research takes a core sample from a tree on the banks of the Crystal River. A type of instream flow water right that protects peak flows could help maintain spring floods, which are essential for growing new cottonwoods. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Cooper’s work, which is estimated to cost $26,300, was commissioned by a subcommittee of the Crystal River Wild and Scenic and Other Alternatives Feasibility Steering Committee, which is looking at different tools that could be used to protect the river. The Crystal, which flows about 40 miles from its headwaters in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness through the towns of Marble, Redstone and Carbondale before its confluence with the Roaring Fork, is one Colorado’s last undammed major rivers.
Environmental and recreation advocates and local municipalities, as well as many residents of the Crystal River Valley, have long sought to protect the river from future dams and diversions — infrastructure projects that have left many other Western Slope rivers depleted.
Those who want to protect the Crystal River have for the past few years been exploring the best ways to do that. Although proponents say a federal Wild and Scenic designation would do the best job of protecting the river, that has been met with resistance from some property owners, leading the steering committee to explore other options, in addition to pursuing Wild and Scenic.
Scientists dug up this root crown next to the Crystal River in order to study the tree rings and how they relate to flood years. The Crystal River Wild and Scenic Instream Flow Subcommittee is looking at how to protect spring peak flows in the river. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Instream-flow subcommittee
After a year’s worth of meetings with a facilitator, the steering committee chose to pursue three potential ways forward: a “peaking” instream-flow water right; an intergovernmental agreement; and a federal Wild and Scenic designation. None of the methods would preclude the others; there could eventually be layers of protections for the Crystal.
The instream-flow subcommittee, which includes representatives from American Whitewater, and local governments and residents, is exploring how to keep water in the river by using the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s instream-flow program.
The CWCB is the only entity allowed to hold water rights that keep water in rivers and are designed to preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree. A “peaking” instream-flow water right would keep in the stream all of the water not claimed by someone else during years with high spring runoff, thereby maintaining these periodic floods, which are essential for growing new cottonwoods.
The idea is that if these peak spring flows are already spoken for by the environment, they can’t be claimed by future reservoir projects, which also tend to capture water at the height of spring runoff and store it for use later in the year.
“If you want to be a little more objective about it, it’s an argument for or against floods and natural river processes,” said David Merritt, a riparian ecologist and former instream flow coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service who has worked on other instream-flow projects around the state. “The dam goes in, it’s going to interrupt that and you’ll end up with a different ecosystem.”
If there is less water available to develop, it could make a particular river less attractive for building a reservoir, said Laura Belanger, a senior policy adviser with Western Resource Advocates. The environmental nonprofit has worked on these types of peak instream-flow projects in the Gunnison River basin.
“Infrastructure is expensive, so you need to get a certain yield out of it,” Belanger said. “That could potentially make a project not be cost effective and not have sufficient yield to be pursued. … Around the state, so much water is already claimed, and so, for a lot of new reservoir projects, the peak is the only thing that’s available.”
So far, this tool for protecting the peak is little used, but there are three recent examples on streams that drain the Uncompahgre Plateau: Cottonwood Creek, Monitor Creek and Potter Creek. In 2024, these three creeks secured an instream-flow water right for their spring peak flows in years with high runoff. All three still allow for some amount of future water development.
“They don’t kick in every year; they’re definitely unique,” Belanger said. “It doesn’t kick in until you hit a certain high flow and then it protects the hydrograph all the way up and then back down to a certain value.”
Wetland and riparian ecologist David Cooper, left, and campaign director at Wilderness Workshop Michael Gorman look for the best place to cross the Crystal River. Scientists and volunteers collected tree root crowns from the riverbanks the last week of October, the first step in understanding how floods impact riparian vegetation. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Subcommittee still looking at Wild and Scenic
The steering committee’s work, including the tree-ring study, is funded by Pitkin County Healthy Rivers, by the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation, and in-kind donations from Western Resource Advocates and American Whitewater. But the majority of the funding – $99,699 according to Hattie Johnson, southern Rockies restoration director with American Whitewater and member of the instream flow and Wild and Scenic subcommittees – is through the state’s Wild and Scenic Rivers Fund.
The CWCB generally advocates for using state mechanisms such as the instream-flow program to protect rivers because it would rather avoid a federal Wild and Scenic designation. With increasing competition for dwindling water supplies, the state has been reluctant to support Wild and Scenic designations, which could lock up water and prevent it from being developed in the future.
The U.S. Forest Service determined in the 1980s that portions of the Crystal River were eligible for designation under the Wild & Scenic River Act, which seeks to preserve, in a free-flowing condition, rivers with outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, and cultural values. Wild and Scenic experts say the “teeth” of the designation comes from an outright prohibition on federal funding or licensing of any new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-permitted dam. A designation would also require review of federally assisted water resource projects.
Any designation would take place upstream from the big agricultural diversions on the lower portion of the river near Carbondale.
The subcommittee that is still looking at a Wild and Scenic designation has hired a facilitator team from the Keystone Policy Center to help the group produce a report of its findings at a cost of about $45,000. And the instream-flow subcommittee has also hired Ecological Resource Consultants to do a sediment-impacts study, which is set to begin before winter and is estimated to cost about $30,000.
Wild and Scenic subcommittee chair Michael Gorman said members have taken a deep dive into policy and legislation, and have learned a lot from stakeholders along the river.
“We’ve got more work to do and we’re excited to have the skilled facilitators at Keystone to help us compile what we’ve learned about how Wild and Scenic legislation ties into our specific priorities on the Crystal River,” Gorman said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to having a report that we can share with our community and inform future discussions.”
Map from Northern Water via the Fort Collins Coloradan.
From email from Northern Water:
Northern Water and Chimney Hollow participants are committed to keeping our customers, stakeholders and end users, as well as the general public, informed as we gather additional information on the discovery of uranium at the Chimney Hollow Reservoir construction site. Collecting data and modeling are crucial steps in the development of mitigation strategies, and we are actively working to learn more by evaluating test results from field investigations and modeling scenarios.
Before making mitigation decisions, we want to make sure we have all the information to evaluate operational and treatment options. We are following a rigorous process, starting with geochemical characterization and scoping studies, to inform mitigation alternatives analyses and ultimately select a final approach. Following these steps allows us to make informed decisions, evaluate trade-offs and determine the best path forward.
Northern Water has been testing how the uranium minerals leach into water and what concentration to expect when the reservoir fills and its operation begins. To allow time for additional data collection and investigations to advance, we have elected not to fill the reservoir as quickly as initially planned. A small amount of water (less than 2 percent of total capacity) will be moved into Chimney Hollow Reservoir in November 2025. During this time, additional water quality data will be collected and used to evaluate the performance of model simulations, and required dam safety monitoring will begin. Even as the reservoir fills, no water will be released as further assessments are underway and mitigation options continue to be evaluated.
Because the mineralized uranium is coming from materials quarried at the site, excess (unused) rock from construction has been buried under a layer of water-sealing clay. The clay cap will effectively minimize uranium leaching from these materials.
We expect uranium leaching from the dam to decrease over time because there is a finite quantity of soluble uranium at the site. The duration of the leaching process is not yet fully understood and will depend on how the reservoir is operated over time. While the discovery of mineralized uranium has caused Northern Water and the Chimney Hollow participants to modify our plans, it is an issue that can be safely managed. The new reservoir remains an important part of securing water supply needs for Northern Colorado and its future. Please visit the Water Quality page on our website for more information and a list of Frequently Asked Questions.
With a newly approved grant of over $30,000 from the Colorado Basin Roundtable, the Blue River Watershed Group will install cameras and measuring devices on the river to report on stream conditions.
A news release stated the group will use a technical consultant to create a webpage with a community-facing geographic information system map to share water quality data, as well as information about how the data affects the Summit County community.
The database will share locations, data types, collection purposes and data quality objectives from each of the Blue River watershed’s collecting entities.
The grant was part of the more than $180,000 of spending the Colorado Basin Roundtable approved in its September meeting. The rest of the money is funding projects around the state.
The Colorado Basin Roundtable has awarded $20,000 to Rivers Edge West and the Desert Rivers Collaborative to support restoration planning and coordination in the Gunnison and Colorado river basins, according to a news release. De Beque received $50,000 for improvements it is making to its 24.4-acre River Park on the Colorado River. Rivers Edge West and the Desert Rivers Collaborative plan to use their money to help identify priority restoration sites, develop a geospatial database and story map, and contribute to regional initiatives including the Grand Valley River Corridor Initiative, supporting health riparian ecosystems in Mesa County, according to the release. De Beque received the $50,000 to support engineering and design work needed for riverbank stabilization. The park is going to include an amphitheater, pavilion, parking areas, boat ramp and arboretum…Other allocations approved by the roundtable are:
$15,000 for the Middle Colorado Watershed Council’s Grand Tunnel Ditch flume replacement project;
$30,600 for the Blue River Watershed Group’s Blue River water quality monitoring dashboard and GIS resources;
$30,000 for the Eagle River Coalition’s Homestake Valley stream crossings project;
$30,000 for the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, for dust-on-snow data collection and cosmic ray evaluation, with this funding being contingent on the project receiving similar support from the state’s eight other basin roundtables.
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Randi Pierce and Clayton Chaney). Here’s an excerpt:
October 30, 2025
Assessments of the damages caused by and the impacts of the historic floods on Oct. 11 and Oct. 14 continue, with estimates of public infrastructure damage now nearing the $26 million mark, up from a preliminary estimate of about $13 million. Pagosa Country experienced two historic floods in four days thanks to moisture from the remnants of a pair of tropical storms, Priscilla and Raymond. The flooding for the San Juan River at Pagosa Springs peaked at 8,270 cubic feet per second (cfs) and 12.66 feet at 6 p.m. on Oct. 11 and again at 8,560 cfs and 12.82 feet at 5:15 a.m. on Oct. 14, putting the two events as the fourth and third highest on record, behind floods in October 1911 and June 1927. Other area river levels were also significantly impacted, including the Piedra and Blanco rivers. During a work session held by the Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, Oct. 28, Commissioner Veronica Medina provided an update on the damage assessments being conducted throughout the county and the potential total cost of damage.
The Colorado River is pictured where if flows near Hite, just beyond the upper reaches of Lake Powell, on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Utah and six other states along the Colorado River are pushing up against a deadline to figure out as a group how to manage the river and its reservoirs.
If they can’t reach an agreement by Nov. 11, the federal government is set to intervene and make its own plan. The existing agreement expires at the end of next year.
“There’s still hope,” Marc Stilson, principal engineer for the Colorado River Authority of Utah, said Thursday. “They’re working hard, and they’re close.”
The upstream Upper Basin states — Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming — and the Lower Basin states of Nevada, Arizona and California pitched competing plans to the federal government last year.
Now, in the home stretch of negotiations, the seven states are working through questions including which reservoirs would be managed under the new agreement, how they’ll measure water use and whether the plan will include mandatory cuts to water allocations, Stilson said.
The Upper Basin states have resisted the idea of mandatory cuts in dry years, saying they typically use much less than their yearly allocation.
Lower Basin states have said all seven should share water cuts during dry years under the new plan, warning if they don’t, downstream states could face cuts that aren’t feasible for them to absorb, the Nevada Current reported.
The river provides water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Mexico, and contributes 27 percent of Utah’s water supply. Hotter temperatures tied to climate change have mixed with drought and overuse to reduce its flow.
Utah isn’t waiting to prepare for potentially significant changes to how it manages water, said Michael Drake, deputy state engineer with the Utah Division of Water rights.
It’s been investing in expanding its use of tools to better measure and monitor water use since 2023, Drake told reporters Thursday.
That year, the Legislature poured $1 million into a Colorado River measurement infrastructure project and approved $650,000 in annual funding to monitor water use, according to the division.
Whether the state ends up facing cuts as part of the new plan or just working toward new targets, Drake said, it sees a need “to be able to manage water better, and you can’t regulate what you can’t measure.”
“As we get close here, I think reality is starting to hit and so we want to put out the messaging, you know, we can do this,” Drake told Utah News Dispatch.
He noted the possibility of forced cuts is troubling to many of the state’s farmers.
“What we’re going to be asking people to do is to see water running in a stream, and to not take it, to leave it there,” Drake said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”
Scott Thayn, who farms alfalfa and the grain sorghum in unincorporated Carbon County, agreed.
“If something happens with this new treaty and they drop it 10, 15, 20%,” Thayn said, “most of the years we’re going to be hurting.”
With new agreements and programs and decades of responsible management, theUpper Basin is preparing for future Colorado River operations
The Upper Colorado River Commission (UCRC) is highlighting the real and measurable actions being taken by the Upper Division States — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to live within the means of the Colorado River and secure a sustainable future. The Upper Basin is adapting to a drier, more variable river system.
The Upper Basin exemplifies responsible, supply-based water management through an innovative provisional accounting agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, coupled with decades of intensive water management and uncompensated mandatory reductions. These actions lay a transparent foundation for post-2026 Colorado River operating rules.
For more than 20 years, the Upper Division States have taken real actions, including fulfilling Drought Contingency Plan commitments, modernizing measurement systems, accounting for and reporting of all consumptive uses, implementing aggressive conservation programs, supporting advancements in irrigation efficiency and enforcing mandatory reductions through strict water rights administration. These actions go beyond the obligations in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, reflecting a shared commitment to the long-term stability of the Colorado River.
The new provisional accounting framework, now underway across the Upper Basin, will enable transparent, real-time documentation of voluntary reductions. Moving forward, this technical backbone will ensure future river operations continue to be grounded in facts.
“The Upper Basin is developing solutions that work not only for the Upper Basin but for the entire Colorado River system,” said Chuck Cullom, UCRC Executive Director. “The Upper Basin states and water users are already taking verifiable, on-the-ground actions to live within the river’s means.”
State Leadership in Action
Colorado: Strategic Reductions and Long-Term Investments
Colorado is leading with deep, uncompensated reductions and forward-looking investments to continue to adapt its water systems to a drier future. Farmers and municipalities adjust operations to match real supply, while the state funds millions in watershed health and data-driven conservation programs. Highlights include:
Investing $22 million in headwaters and watershed restoration.
Launching a diversion measurement installation program, which will provide no-cost structures to increase accuracy and transparency in water use and management on the Western Slope.
Committing $25 million in new CWCB conservation and resiliency grants and $110 million in Water Plan grants.
Implementing strict water rights administration, with the Dolores Project operating at just 30% of normal supply, the Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch Enterprise receiving only half its typical allocation and senior water rights dating to the 1800s being curtailed.
Exploring temporary, voluntary, compensated conservation and strategic upstream releases.
Reducing municipal demands through turf removal, water recycling, rate restructures, public education and aggressive conservation. Denver Water has seen more than a 40% reduction in residential per capita use and a 16% reduction in total deliveries despite growing more than 29% since 2000. Colorado Springs has seen a 41% reduction in residential per capita water use and about a 20% drop in total water deliveries despite growing 39% since 2000.
“Colorado water users are taking deeper cuts than required under the Compact. This is not because they’re being paid to, but because they must,” said Commissioner Becky Mitchell. “These are real impacts happening right now, and we’re coupling them with smart investments to prepare for the future.”
New Mexico: Innovative Partnerships and Data-Driven Leadership
New Mexico has long been at the forefront of adaptive management, integrating advanced measurement networks and modeling tools to support efficient operations and now provisional accounting projects. Highlights include:
Jicarilla Apache Nation’s 20,000-acre-foot lease and strategic Navajo Reservoir releases (2024–2026) to balance flexibility and supply.
Implementing the 2023 Water Security Planning Act for regional scarcity planning and funding prioritization.
Establishing the Strategic Water Reserve statute to balance Compact deliveries and environmental needs.
Installing a river measurement network and implementing Active Water Resource Management initiatives.
Developing the San Juan RiverWare model to enable precise tracking of diversions, return flows and conservation gains.
Municipal partners, including Albuquerque and Santa Fe, are leading the nation’s urban conservation by achieving significant per-capita use reductions under a joint conservation MOU. Albuquerque has cut residential per-capita use by 32% and total deliveries by 17%, despite 40% population growth since 2000.
“New Mexico has built the partnerships and tools that make transparent management possible,” said Commissioner Estevan Lopez. “We’ve been planning for a drier river for decades, and now we’re implementing those tools to lead by example.”
Utah: Operational Adaptation and Demand Reduction
Utah is aligning operations and policy to hydrologic conditions, applying provisional accounting principles to on-the-ground management. Highlights include:
Launching a $5 million, two-year Demand Management Pilot Program in 2025-2026 to compensate agricultural producers for temporarily and voluntarily reducing consumptive use in the Colorado River system in Utah (estimated total conservation of ~20,000-30,000 acre-feet).
Leveraging $1 billion state conservation appropriations to expand statewide turf conversion and municipal conservation programs: More than 7 million sq. ft. already converted, saving 200+ million gallons annually.
Developing an operational accounting and forecasting model of the Colorado River and its subbasins in the state to serve as a planning tool to evaluate impacts of drought mitigation measures, including demand management based on actual supply.
Employing state-of-the-art satellite-based, remote sensed Open ET data to measure consumptive water use from field to basin scale
Pioneering the first Airborne Snow Observatories (ASO) flights in Utah in the Uintah Mountain headwaters to inform reliable water supply forecasting.
Implementing a farm-scale subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) pilot program to compare water consumption of a study alfalfa field using SDI against a sprinkler irrigated field.
Partnering with Utah State University and agricultural producers to develop irrigation management plans that identify suitable water conservation methods and programs for individual producers.
“Even our most senior users are taking deep cuts,” said Commissioner Gene Shawcroft. “We’re integrating provisional accounting into operations and moving toward rules rooted in reality, not history.”
Wyoming: Conservation and Transparency at Scale
Wyoming is demonstrating what large-scale, uncompensated reductions look like in practice while developing the technical foundation for provisional accounting and long-term conservation.
Highlights include:
In 2025, regulating off water rights to 164,000 acres, which were mandatory and uncompensated reductions.
Enforcing necessary reductions even though Wyoming has only developed about 30% of what it was promised under the Compact.
Securing $15 million in state and federal funding for consumptive use research and drought resilience.
Coordinating releases from Fontenelle Reservoir in August 2025 to study transit losses in the Green River and to advance accurate water accounting.
Promoting irrigation efficiency and long-term conservation across the Green River Basin.
Pursuing legislation to implement a voluntary, compensated conservation program.
Developing operational models for tracking and optimization of uses on the Upper Green River and tributaries.
“Wyoming’s regulation of water rights is real, mandatory and necessary when faced with dry hydrology,” said Commissioner Brandon Gebhart. “Wyoming has, and continues to investigate and implement, meaningful tools to help our water users and the entire system to deal with the hydrologic circumstances we are facing.”
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 — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Seven states in the Colorado River Basin are days away from a Nov. 11 deadline to hash out a rough idea of how the water supply for 40 million people will be managed starting in fall 2026. And they’re still at loggerheads over what to do.
The rules that govern how key reservoirs store and release water supplies expire Dec. 31. They’ll guide reservoir operations until fall 2026, and federal and state officials plan to use the winter months to nail down a new set of replacement rules. But negotiating those new rules raises questions about everything from when the new agreement will expire to who has to cut back on water use in the basin’s driest years.
And those questions have stymied the seven state negotiators for months. In March 2024, four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — shared their vision for what future management should look like. Three Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — released a competing vision at the same time. The negotiators have suggested and shot down ideas in the time since, but they have made no firm decisions.
This shows that Colorado’s Western Slope is the biggest supplier of water to the Colorado River. Source: David F. Gold et al, Exploring the Spatially Compounding Multi‐Sectoral Drought Vulnerabilities in Colorado’s West Slope River Basins, Earth’s Future (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024EF004841
As the clock ticks down, onlookers have been increasingly frustrated and critical of the lack of progress in the closed-door negotiations.
“They seem to have been stuck basically on the same stuff for the last two-plus years,” said Jim Lochhead, former CEO/manager for Denver Water, the state’s largest water provider. “Part of why it’s so frustrating is they keep circling around to the same conversations over and over again.”
The Department of the Interior is managing the process to replace the set of rules, established in 2007, that guide how key reservoirs — lakes Mead and Powell — store and release water.
The federal agency plans to release a draft of its plans in December and have a final decision signed by May or June. If the seven states can come to agreement by March, the Department of the Interior can parachute it into its planning process, said Scott Cameron, acting head of the Bureau of Reclamation, during a meeting in Arizona in June.
Colorado River Storage Project map. Credit: Reclmation
If they cannot agree, the feds will decide how the basin’s water is managed. The federal government already has significant authority in the Lower Basin. But federal officials have also said they could leverage their authority over federal water projects in the Upper Basin, like Blue Mesa and the Colorado River Storage Project, to manage water in coming years.
The states could also take the matter to court, which could take decades to resolve and would put water management in the hands of judges instead of Colorado River communities, experts say.
“I think, if the definition of failure is that they don’t come to an agreement, we’ll know on Nov. 11,” said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “My sense is that they’ve all tried really hard.”
So what exactly is holding up progress? [Shannon Mullane] reached out to nine water professionals, from state negotiators to water experts, to break down the sticking points.
Water cuts in the Upper Basin (yes, that includes Colorado)
One of the top sticking points in the negotiations is whether the four Upper Basin states will commit to making firm water cuts or conservation goals during the basin’s driest years, experts said.
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming officials say the states regularly do not use their full legal allocation of Colorado River water, about 7.5 million acre-feet per year. The four states’ usage usually hovers closer to 4.5 million acre-feet per year and can fall to 3 million acre-feet in drier years, according to Upper Basin accounting.
They’re already cutting off junior water users early in dry years, like 2022. Water sharing is based on “first in time, first in right,” which means more recent, or junior, water rights are cut off before older, senior rights.
The officials argue that they’re already cutting back, and using less than their share, so why commit to cutting more? Conserving more water is also dependent on how much water is flowing through rivers and streams in any given year, Commissioner Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s governor-appointed negotiator, said.
Rebecca Mitchell, John Entsminger, Estevan Lopez, Gene Shawcroft, JB Hamby, Tom Buschatzke at the Getches-Wilkinson Center/Water and Tribes Initiative Conference June 6, 2024. Photo credit: Rebecca Mitchell
“We cannot conserve water that is not there,” she said.
In March 2024, the states proposed voluntary, temporary cuts, but that doesn’t work for the Lower Basin officials.
The downstream states proposed in March 2024 that they could take the first cuts — up to 1.5 million of their 7.5 million-acre-foot legal allocation — if reservoir storage is 38% to 69% of its capacity. After that, the Upper Basin and Lower Basin could evenly split additional cuts, according to the Lower Basin proposal.
That was a nonstarter for the Upper Basin officials, who balked when the Lower Basin asked them to cut up to 1.2 million acre-feet, or about a quarter to a third of the typical water use in the upstream states. Some of the Upper Basin states also say they do not currently have the legal authority to impose mandatory water cuts within their states when it comes to interstate water sharing agreements. [ed. emphasis mine]
This is one of two major disagreements in the negotiations, according to California Commissioner JB Hamby. The other is how and when water is released from the Upper Basin at Glen Canyon Dam to the Lower Basin, he said.
“There’s been lots of proposals bandied about back and forth between the basins and the feds,” Hamby said. “We’re not any closer at this point in time because those are the two most critical sticking points.”
Arizona officials declined to comment for the story. Nevada’s representative did not respond to requests for comment.
The political sticking point
Each of the seven negotiators is accountable to their home state. They have to be able to sell a deal to their water users and state lawmakers in a way that feels like a win, Porter of Arizona State University said.
In Arizona, Commissioner Tom Buschatzke must strike a deal that water users and the state legislature can get behind.
“There may be a situation where no deal is better than trying to sell a deal to your water users that you know they will utterly hate,” Porter said.
There are certain nonstarters for Arizona: Everyone expects to see water cuts for communities, like Phoenix, that rely on the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile federal system that supplies Colorado River water to the most populated regions in Arizona. But it’s hard to see a benefit for Arizona in a deal with no water, or not enough water, for the project, Porter said.
And water users can sue if they don’t like the seven-state deal or if senior water users are asked to cut back on water to help junior water users. That would run counter to how the legal priority system has worked for over a century. Such lawsuits would tie up Colorado River water management in court for years, Porter said. [ed. emphasis mine]
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
“We’re really on the precipice of significant new, bigger shortages, and so the likelihood of a water user bringing legal action because of cuts outside of the priority system … is much higher than it was in 2019,” Porter said.
In past meetings, Cameron of the Bureau of Reclamation has called on water users to be more flexible so their state commissioners have room to negotiate.
“I urge you to continue to work with Tom (Buschatzke), embrace his leadership and give him the freedom to maneuver to strike an appropriate deal with his six colleagues in the other states,” Cameron said during an Arizona Reconsultation Committee meeting in June.
In Colorado, Mitchell said she is still working closely with water users within the state.
“We have firmly sat in the negotiating room with the principles we have always had,” she said. “That is something I have promised Coloradans: The principles that we developed are still the principles that I am taking into the room with me. Those are factored in as we are negotiating.”
What experts want to see
Water experts and professionals have been stuck on the outside of the closed-door negotiations, waiting on updates with greater frustration as the deadline draws near.
Now the states have less than two weeks to agree, at a high-level, on how to manage the water supply for millions of people, two countries, 30 Native American tribes, key food supplies and multibillion-dollar industries.
“They have the most thankless task that anyone in the Colorado basin could have,” Porter said.
Lochhead, formerly of Denver Water, said it seems impossible to reach any kind of comprehensive agreement before Nov. 11. They might be able to reach a conceptual outline, he said. They might be able to find a way forward if they were less entrenched in the Upper Basin versus Lower Basin dynamic, he added.
Jennifer Pitt and Brad Udall at the Getches-Wilkinson Center/Water and Tribes Initiative conference June 5, 2025. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Jennifer Pitt, Colorado River Program Director for the National Audubon Society, suggested that states work toward making the most out of water supplies instead of legal questions that are tough to resolve.
“Once the rules of the game become clear, people are going to lean hard into those solutions,” she said. “And there are many of them.”
John Berggren, regional policy manager for Western Resource Advocates, said the basin needs to see compromise as a win, not a loss. Officials need to educate their constituents that compromising empowers people to choose their destiny, instead of having courts or the federal government dictate it for the basin.
“A compromise is not a bad thing,” Berggren said. “Coming to agreement, coming to the table is actually a good thing for us.”
10 sticking points
The Colorado River water experts and negotiators highlighted 10 key sticking points:
The term of the agreement: The negotiators have weighed different options for how long the new agreement should last and whether there should be a short-term period for states to ramp up conservation programs and water use reductions. This is a lower-level sticking point where states might be able to find consensus more easily.
Reservoir management: The states have also debated which reservoirs will be managed under the new agreement. The Lower Basin wants to include upstream reservoirs, including Blue Mesa Reservoir in Colorado. The Upper Basin only wants Lake Mead and Lake Powell involved and worries that including upstream reservoirs will change how water flows through the basin or encourage Lower Basin overuse.
Rebuilding reservoir storage: Commissioner Mitchell of Colorado was adamant that the new plan needs to prioritize rebuilding reservoir storage, since key reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — are falling closer to critical levels. Commissioner Hamby of California said the states can figure out how to handle reservoir storage, and other issues, like water cuts, pose a greater challenge.
Operating Lake Mead and Lake Powell: The current operational rules are mainly based on reservoir levels and river forecasts. When Lake Mead reaches a certain water level, it triggers adjustments in Lake Powell. The state officials agree these rules did not work. Colorado wants to prioritize the health of Lake Powell and base operations on real water levels — not forecasts. The states almost came to an agreement on how to do this earlier in the summer, but the idea was re-shelved.
Cutting back on water: This is a particularly thorny issue. Would the Upper Basin commit to firm water conservation goals or mandatory cuts? Is the Lower Basin doing enough to address the Upper Basin’s concerns about overuse in the three downstream states? Officials in both basins say large cutbacks to their water supply would be an existential threat to their communities now and in the future.
Basic accounting: The states disagree on key numbers. How does each state count its water use, shortages and conservation efforts? How much water is the Upper Basin supposed to send down to Mexico, or is that the Lower Basin’s job? How do downstream states count water use from tributaries, like the Gila River?
100-year-old issues: The states are also bolstering their legal arguments when it comes to unclear language in the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which laid out how the two basins were supposed to share water. Does it say the four upstream states are required to deliver a certain amount of water to the three downstream states? Or does it say the upstream states aren’t supposed to cause the water deliveries to go below a certain level? Some Upper Basin lawyers say they can argue that climate change, not the states’ water use, is the cause.
Distrust: The basin states have thrown plenty of barbs at each other during the negotiations. Each has accused the other of gaming the system in some way. Lower Basin and Upper Basin officials have said other states could time reservoir releases from lakes Mead or Powell to benefit their state. The Lower Basin has questioned whether the Upper Basin has inflated shortage calculations. The Upper Basin has long complained about Arizona’s practice of taking Colorado River water out of Lake Mead and storing it underground.
Group dynamics: The basin has split into Team Lower Basin and Team Upper Basin. Could states make more progress if they operated more independently, threw out ideas, formed coalitions and convinced others to join?
In-state politics: Even if the state officials can work out the details of an agreement, they still have to take it home and convince their states it’s a good idea. That can be complicated. In Colorado alone, there are decades-old conflicts over water between the Western Slope and Front Range, farmers and cities, tribal and non-tribal water users.
The snow season in Colorado’s high country is off to a slow start, but snowmaking at the ski resorts? That’s going gangbusters.
As October draws to a close, ski resorts are cranking out the snow due to a combination of the resorts’ annual race to opening day, this year’s unusually compressed window for the right meteorological conditions, and long-standing water supply agreements with Denver Water.
Snowmaking underway on the slopes at Breckenridge Ski Resort, one of six ski resorts in Denver Water’s watershed with agreements in place to use some of the utility’s water to make snow in the winter. Photo credit: Denver Water.
This year’s race to be the first ski resort to open ended over the weekend, when Keystone opened Saturday for three hours of afternoon skiing, followed by Arapahoe Basin, which opened for a full day of skiing on Sunday.
Denver Water collects water from across 4,000 square miles of mountain watershed, an area that’s also home to six major ski resorts: Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Frisco Adventure Park, Keystone and Winter Park.
And stream gauges operated by Denver Water act as a proxy measure for snowmaking activity.
For example, the gauges monitoring streams affected by snowmaking at Winter Park and Keystone showed big overnight dips in recent days, as the resorts diverted water from the streams to their snowmaking equipment to get a head start on the ski season.
“The snow guns are blasting — and we can really see it reflected in those stream gauges,” said Nathan Elder, manager of water supply for Denver Water. “This appears to be one of the bigger starts to snow-making at the resorts as they gear up for opening day.”
The series of big drops in the amount of water flowing through the Moffat Tunnel last week indicates water being diverted to make snow at Winter Park Resort. Image credit: Colorado Water Conservation Board, Division of Water Resources.
It’s a reference to the impact of evaporative cooling in the dry Colorado air. In essence, the low humidity of the cold and dry air allows resorts to make snow even if the actual air temperature is above freezing.
“These ‘wet bulb’ conditions that are ideal for snowmaking have come later in the year than usual, so the resorts have had less time to make snow and are going strong now,” Elder said.
Water managers can see the activity in places like gauges on the Snake River, where overnight on Oct. 21, the stream that was flowing at 21 cubic feet of water per second plunged down to 6 cubic feet per second for several hours, then jumped back up to 32 cfs when the snowmaking at Keystone stopped the next day.
Importantly, the snowmaking machines couldn’t work their magic without the water the ski resorts are able to divert from high country streams. And the resorts can do that thanks to agreements with Denver Water that get the most use out of every drop of water.
Denver Water has very senior water rights in Grand and Summit counties, dating back to the 1920s and 1940s, before the ski resorts were open or made snow.
Agreements between Denver Water and the six ski resorts — Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, Cooper Mountain, Frisco Adventure Park, Keystone and Winter Park —allow the resorts to capture and use water for snowmaking, helping get the ski season off to an earlier start than they likely would be able to do otherwise.
The resorts use water that would otherwise get collected and stored in Denver Water reservoirs.
But it all evens out in the end. When the machine-made snow melts, it will flow downstream and wind up in the utility’s reservoirs on its way to customer taps next spring and summer.
Providing water for snowmaking is just one way Denver Water helps improve recreation in our collection system.
And those agreements are crucial this year, due to a late start to the snowfall season.
The average amount of snow measured at mountain tracking sites (called SNOTELs) as of Oct. 23 was 0 inches. There have only been seven other years, in the 46 years since SNOTELs began tracking data in 1979, when the average measurement was zero that late in October.
However, says Elder, do not despair.
A slow October roll-out does not automatically translate to a bad snow year overall.
“A slow start does not mean the peak snowpack in April will be low,” he said. “In some of those years the peak was well above average.”
And forecasts indicate that ‘wet-bulb’ temperatures are looking good for the remainder of this week, meaning more snowmaking will be underway.
So, if you haven’t already, get ready to break out those skis.
Denver Water relies on a network of reservoirs to collect and store water. The large collection area provides flexibility for collecting water as some areas receive different amounts of precipitation throughout the year. Image credit: Denver Water.
The intake structure for the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District sits about 20 feet downstream of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area boundary along East Snowmass Creek. The proximity to the wilderness area is beneficial for water quality but complicates wildfire planning efforts. Photo credit: Aspen Journalism
If Snowmass Village ran an ad for its tap water, it might feature snow-covered, pristine high peaks above the town. Winter snowflakes gather on Baldy and Willoughby mountains and trickle through alpine tundra and conifer forests into East Snowmass Creek, where icy clear water tumbles past the U.S. Forest Service Wilderness Area sign. Snow to the river to the village’s faucets. In real life, after the water is diverted from East Snowmass Creek — just about 20 feet downstream from the boundary of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area — it makes a quick detour through the town of Snowmass Village’s filtration systems at the water-treatment facility on Fanny Hill. (The ad might as well include smiling skiers.)
“We get our water basically from a super-pristine source, so we’re literally drinking out of the mountain stream,” said Darrell Smith, water resources manager for Snowmass Water and Sanitation.
There are clear benefits to having a water supply come directly from wilderness, especially in terms of water quality. But it also means that the town is limited in how it can mitigate risks arising in a protected landscape from natural disasters such as wildfire and postfire flooding, debris flows and erosion.
The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative is leading work on a Wildfire Ready Action Plan (WRAP) for the Roaring Fork watershed that can help local communities identify the risks of and prepare for these postfire hazards.
With a goal to make the Roaring Fork Valley more wildfire resilient, the collaborative is also undertaking several large-scale wildfire mitigation projects that aim to reduce the risk of wildfire near communities and critical infrastructure. The nonprofit recently secured a grant for $850,000 from the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to complete wildfire-mitigation work in Snowmass Village.
The town of Snowmass Village and the wildfire collaborative hired Hussam Mahmoud, a wildfire risk expert, to complete advanced modeling work that will identify the homes and areas that are most at risk, how a fire might spread in the village and the most effective mitigation strategies.
The recent grant will enable work to begin on key projects as soon as the modeling work is completed, as soon as this spring, according to Angie Davlin, executive director of the Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative.
Alongside such mitigation work aimed at preventing wildfire from reaching communities, the collaborative is working to ensure that if a fire occurs, there’s a proactive plan for recovery and reducing damage to infrastructure. That’s the focus of WRAP.
During a September tour of key sites in the watershed, engineers with Wright Water Engineers heard from local stakeholders about infrastructure systems and provided updates on data collection and highlighted some key areas — such as in Snowmass Village — that might be susceptible to postfire hazards.
“There are some quite vulnerable systems in the Roaring Fork Valley — Snowmass being at the very top of that list — that really need some advance planning,” said Natalie Collar, senior hydrologist with Wright Water Engineers and who is heading up the report.
Collar and engineer Madison Witterschein presented initial mapping results that illustrate postfire risks and hazards, and the message for Snowmass Water was clear.
“You need a plan prefire,” Witterschein told a group gathered at the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District’s office in Snowmass Village. “Especially with the wilderness area, if there was a fire, there’s not much you can do after. You have to have a plan before it starts.”
Darrell Smith, water resources manager for Snowmass Water and Sanitation, discusses Snowmass Village’s water infrastructure and vulnerabilities as part of the Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative’s work to create a Wildfire Ready Action Plan for the valley. CREDIT: ELIZABETH STEWART-SEVERY/ASPEN JOURNALISM
One-source water supply in Snowmass
Kit Hamby, director of Snowmass Water and Sanitation, said about 96% of Snowmass Village’s water is gravity-fed from the roughly 6-square-mile watershed of East Snowmass Creek, which is nestled in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area.
Such designated wilderness areas receive the highest protection under federal law, the 1964 Wilderness Act, which requires that land is managed for preservation, such that it “generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable.”
The water that comes from East Snowmass Creek is also primarily untouched by contaminants; the 2024 annual water-quality report shows contaminant levels far below limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency across the board.
“There’s not much above us other than elk and marmot, some bear,” Smith told the group assembled to discuss WRAP. “It doesn’t mean you want to drink out of the stream, for obvious reasons, but from an industrial or commercial standpoint, there’s nothing happening upstream from us.”
There is both a bubbling spring and a mountain stream in the East Snowmass Creek valley, and each contributes to turbidity — or suspended material — in the water supply. Much of the turbidity is caused by high oxygen content in the water and can be a challenge for the filtration system.
“In the summertime, during runoff, our filters are needing to be backwashed a lot, just because of entrained air in the water. Those bubbles become barriers to filtration in our water-treatment plant,” Smith said. “We have to take the water, reverse the flow, send it back through the filter, get the filters to kind of burp, essentially, and then it all settles back and we run again.”
A second intake system brings water from Snowmass Creek, which is below the confluence of East Snowmass Creek and the mainstem near the base of the Campground chairlift on Snowmass Ski Area. Because that diversion is downstream of the confluence of the streams, any pollutants from East Snowmass would also be present there, though somewhat diluted by the addition of Snowmass Creek.
That water is pumped up over a hill into Ziegler Reservoir, which holds about 82 million gallons of water and is primarily used for irrigation and snowmaking purposes.
Snowmass Water and Sanitation has three possible sources to provide water to Snowmass Village, but about 96 percent of the water comes from the East Snowmass Creek watershed, marked in blue. Water from Brush Creek, marked in purple, is high in turbidity and rarely used. Water pulled from Snowmass Creek can be pumped to either Ziegler Reservoir or to the water treatment facility on Fanny Hill. CREDIT: COURTESY OF DARRELL SMITH
There is an additional intake on Snowmass Ski Area; Snowmass Water and Sanitation can divert from the west fork of Brush Creek, but it isn’t often used because of poor quality due to the geography of the area. That stream comes down from the Cirque zone on the ski area and has high levels of sediment from the clay soils, according to Hamby.
Hamby, Smith and others at Snowmass Water have long known there are vulnerabilities for the system that relies so heavily on one drainage for its water. A wildfire in the East Snowmass Creek valley could raise myriad issues, some of which are reflected in challenges the utility has seen through other natural disasters and weather events.
Avalanches, including a large one that came down Garrett Peak in 2019, have left downed trees and lots of debris that has the potential to cause issues.
“I was concerned that it would change the water quality, though it didn’t,” Hamby said. “As some of the timber degrades and decomposes, it releases the heavy metals that are contained in the timber.”
This can also happen to downed timber after a wildfire.
Even large rain events can cause turbidity that is difficult for the system’s filtration systems to manage.
“That alone can deliver a slug of turbidity down the water course that means we have to turn off a particular intake and just draw from one of the others,” Smith said.
In these types of instances, Snowmass Water and Sanitation can turn to the storage in Ziegler Reservoir. Smith noted that it is rare that the water authority draws entirely from the reservoir because of taste and odor issues that can arise from algae growth in the hot summer months.
“We’re very fortunate to have Ziegler, and I personally believe it needs to be expanded,” Hamby said. “Ziegler is one of our strengths. Very few communities have 80 million gallons stored above the water treatment plan that could be gravity-fed to supply the town and also used to fight wildfire.”
The aftermath of a significant wildfire in the Snowmass area would present major challenges. The same filters that struggle to manage turbidity from sediment or oxygen bubbles after a heavy rain could be overcome by ash, runoff, pollutants or debris after a fire or rain following the burn.
“We don’t have a lot that we can do to prevent it,” Smith said.
If the utility were unable to use native streams, Smith said, Ziegler Reservoir could provide between three and six weeks of water to the town, a number that could probably be extended with water restrictions.
But still, Smith said, “It’s a short term tool, and a partial tool. I don’t think it’s really designed as an exclusive source. That’s not the goal.”
East Snowmass Creek runs through the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area; the creek provides the vast majority of Snowmass Village’s water supply. CREDIT: COURTESY OF DARRELL SMITH
Postfire debris-flow danger compounded by wilderness area
Although WRAP is still in the data-gathering phase, Wright Water Engineers has completed drafts of maps that show the likelihood of a postfire debris flow and the volume of debris that those might produce.
There are several drainages around the Roaring Fork watershed that show a high likelihood of postwildfire debris flows, given a hard rain that would happen, on average, every two years. That includes the lower basin of East Snowmass Creek, where Snowmass Water’s headgate sits.
“A debris flow from a side drainage could come in and impact your headgate, could destroy it,” Witterschein said. “If there was enough material, it could be completely demolished, or it could be blocked with material.”
Wright Water Engineers, which expects to complete the analysis work by the end of this year, recommends actions for predisaster planning and mitigation this spring. But it’s already clear to Collar that some best-practices to mitigate risk might be off the table for Snowmass Village.
“There is, at least for Snowmass, very little we can prescribe because they are so high up in the watershed,” Collar said, and because so much of the drainage area is wilderness.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board, which provides funding for Wildfire Ready Action Plans, lists several possible measures to help protect water infrastructure in the aftermath of a wildfire, such as setback levees, debris nets and planned overflow channels. Those interventions are typically spread out upstream from critical infrastructure, but in the case of Snowmass Water and Sanitation, everything upstream of the intake structure is in a wilderness area.
Such postfire projects would need to go through the Forest Service’s minimum requirements analysis to ensure that there are no other less-impactful actions that could be taken, according to former White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams. He said temporary actions, like nets that stabilize a hillside for a few years until vegetation regrows, have a better chance of approval than permanent structures.
In planning for postfire impacts, Collar said the community may need to rely on steps to take outside the wilderness area.
“They might be stuck to installing a debris basin right before their intake, versus having more distributed best-management practices,” Collar said.
Past assessments of Snowmass Water’s infrastructure have yielded a recommendation that the utility upgrade its filter system, Hamby said. Such work would be costly, and Hamby estimated Snowmass Water might revisit the issue in five to 10 years.
Because of the location of Snowmass Village — up so high in the watershed, with one primary source — Collar said it’s particularly important to plan ahead.
“It’s not uncommon to have a population that is vulnerable to destruction of the water supply after a wildfire,” Collar said. “But it’s a bit unique to have someone positioned so high up in the watershed where it’s a long straw that you’d have to install to get to another source of water.”
In the event of an emergency, Snowmass Water and Sanitation does have some existing water rights on the Roaring Fork River, but no infrastructure in place to utilize that water, which would need to be pumped about 1,400 vertical feet and about 5 miles up the valley to reach the treatment facility.
Any kind of protective project would take time, from a filtration system to a debris catchment basin or a new water-supply line.
“Truly just from a time perspective,” Collar said, “thinking through these things and installing some of these projects before a wildfire occurs is the best way to get a project that’s designed well, that’s not installed in an emergency rush and that has adequate funding.”
Utah’s high court has backed that state engineer’s decision to reject a proposal to pipe water from the Green River to Colorado’s Front Range. The project’s proponent is viewing the ruling as only a temporary setback.
“Look, the court gave us a C-minus on a couple homework issues. We’ll resolve it and get our thesis straightened up and get on down the road,” Aaron Million, founder, CEO and chair of Water Horse Resources, LLC., said Friday in an interview…
In 2018, Water Horse filed a water export application with the Utah state engineer. Million wants to divert 55,000 acre-feet a year of water from two points on the Green River south of Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Daggett County in northeastern Utah…In 2020, Utah State Engineer Teresa Wilhelmsen rejected Million’s latest proposal, in part citing uncertainty over whether it would count against Colorado’s allocation of Colorado River water or Utah’s under a 1948 compact between Upper Colorado River states. Million says it would count against Colorado’s because that’s where the water would be used. A lower court had upheld Wilhelmsen’s findings. The state’s Supreme Court ruled in part that before the state engineer can grant Water Horse an export appropriation, the company must show the appropriation will be beneficially used in Colorado. Million indicated in comments to the Sentinel on Friday that meeting the beneficial use requirement won’t be a problem. He said the court in its ruling was helpful in showing that the state’s water export statute has a low bar for exports to be allowed. In upholding the Utah state engineer’s determination, both the lower court and Utah Supreme Court noted that Water Horse hasn’t filed any application in Colorado for approval of its water appropriation or project and hasn’t asked the state of Colorado or Upper Colorado River Commission to have the appropriation counted against Colorado’s Upper Colorado River Compact allocation…Water Horse had argued that the Upper Colorado River Compact required the Utah state engineer to approve its application even as the state export statute required it to be rejected, and that the compact pre-empts the state law. But the state Supreme Court disagreed that they were in conflict. Million voiced confidence that Water Horse will be starting construction on the project “in the near term” and the ruling won’t affect that.
What would it take to get New Mexico out of megadrought? The short answer: water. The longer answer: multiple years of heavy winter snows. The Southwestern U.S. — including New Mexico — has faced a steady drought for a quarter century, improving and degrading as seasonal moisture comes and goes. The short-term drought in the state is now relatively mild, thanks to a rainy summer monsoon, but the longer-term conditions paint a different picture — one that’s harder to fix, said Andrew Mangham, a senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.
“A really good, aggressively wet monsoon season — just one — can wipe out drought effects in terms of the short term,” Mangham said. “This can improve fine fuels, by which I mean grasses and shrubs; those can be quite healthy. Surface soils can be fairly wet. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to fill up the reservoirs.”
Drought is measured through multiple sectors: hydrological, referring to reservoir and river levels; agricultural, referring to how drought impacts crops; and ecological, referring to forest health. The U.S. Drought Monitor tracks the short-term drought across the state, categorizing it from “abnormally dry” to “exceptional” in intensity. A swath of northeastern New Mexico is not currently experiencing drought, but the rest of the state is facing at least abnormally dry conditions, according to the monitor’s most recent data; the drought is worst in southwestern New Mexico, as it has been for months…Around the time the reservoir storage levels dropped, the Southwest entered what scientists call a megadrought, now in its 25th year. This is believed to be the worst megadrought of the past 1,200 years, and recent research from the University of Texas at Austin indicates it could continue at least through the end of the century. New Mexico’s long-term drought wholly improving would require heavy wintertime snows in the northern part of the state and in southern Colorado, Mangham said, as that’s the source of much of the water that ends up “recharging” the state’s rivers and reservoirs…Snowpack is more helpful for drought than the spotty, hard-hitting storms of the summer monsoon, Mangham said. This is because snow is typically slower-moving than rain — and too much rain at once leaves only a little soaking into the soil.
New Mexico Lakes, Rivers and Water Resources via Geology.com.
Assessments and discussions have followed the historic floods that took place on Oct. 11 and 14, with several governmental entities continuing to work to determine the extent of the damage caused by the floods and their effects on the area. Pagosa Country experienced two historic floods in four days thanks to moisture from the remnants of a pair of tropical storms, Priscilla and Raymond. The flooding for the San Juan River at Pagosa Springs peaked at 8,270 cubic feet per second (cfs) and 12.66 feet at 6 p.m. on Oct. 11 and again at 8,560 cfs and 12.82 feet at 5:15 a.m. on Oct. 14, putting the two events as the fourth and third highest on record, behind floods in October 1911 and June 1927. Other area river levels were also significantly impacted, including the Piedra and Blanco rivers.
Area river levels have continued to decline since Oct. 14, with the San Juan River at Pagosa Springs running at 537 cfs and 5.52 feet as of noon on Wednesday, Oct. 22. That compares to a median of 88.00 cfs for the same date and a mean of 143.67 cfs. The increased moisture has also led to a significant increase in the level of Navajo Lake Reservoir. On Oct. 9, Navajo was at 6,020.44 feet elevation. By Oct. 21, that had increased by 12.10 feet to 6,032.54, according to the Lake Navajo Water Database. It remains 52.46 feet below full pool, or 6,085 feet elevation. It remains down 8.51 feet from a year prior. The database shows that total inflows for water year 2026, which began on Oct. 1, are at 421.49 percent of the average, and the rivers feeding Navajo are running at 147.04 percent of average.
Colorado Drought Monitor map October 21, 2025.
The storms also helped area drought. As of Oct. 14, the last update available by the U.S. Drought Monitor, 65.53 percent of the county was abnormally dry or above, with 3.71 percent of the county falling into moderate drought. A week, prior, 100 percent of the county was in moderate drought or above, with 30.18 percent being in severe drought or above, with 0.31 percent of that being in extreme drought…
On Oct. 21, Town Manager David Harris updated the Pagosa Springs Town Council on the damages to town infrastructure caused by the recent flooding along the San Juan River, with an early “thumbnail sketch” assessment showing around $9 million worth of damages. The major costs are associated with debris removal, riverbank stabilization, inflow and infiltration of unwanted water into the sewer system, 10th Street culvert replacement, sewer line replacement on the 1st Street bridge after the line was damaged by debris, and damages to a river restoration project that the town invested in some years ago, he explained…[Riley Frazee] noted total damages in the county based off of initial assessments is around $13 million. Of that $13 million, about $8.125 million is from the Town of Pagosa Springs and about $4 million is from damage to public roadways in Archuleta County. Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux noted that there are still about 200 miles of secondary roadways to be assessed. During the Oct. 18 tour with Bennet, Le Roux noted about 30 miles of primary county roads require “total reconstruction” and about 60 miles require significant patching and repair. Frazee also mentioned that the San Juan River Village Metro District sustained sewer system and roadway damage of about $2 million, which also qualify as infrastructure.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust brokered a new 2,348-acre conservation easement with the Snyder family on Fish & Cross Ranch west of Yampa.
CCALT/Courtesy photo
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust has completed a new 2,348-acre conservation easement with the Snyder family on Fish & Cross Ranch, a working cattle ranch located at the base of the Little Flattops west of Yampa.
The ranch is in an area known as “The Gateway to the Flat Tops” where landscape-level conservation investments through the Routt County Purchase of Development Rights program have created a “stronghold of interconnected agricultural lands and habitat corridors,” according to a land trust media release.
This new conservation easement adds to Routt County’s commitment to conserve working landscape and allows the family owners to continue taking care of the agricultural lands and wildlife habitat. In exchange for county funds, the landowner grants a perpetual conservation easement, or deed restriction, on the property, protecting the land from development.
Ownership of the property remains vested with the landowner, who can use and manage the property consistent with the terms of the conservation easement.
“Their commitment to agricultural conservation will carry on to future generations of their family and continue to support the rural economy in South Routt County,” CCALT Conservation Manager Monica Shields said.
“As was evident this summer, agricultural lands not only provide important wildlife habitat and scenic views, but the hay meadows and wetlands act as critical wildfire breaks during times of drought. The Fish and Cross Ranch, nestled up against the Flat Tops Wilderness area, serves all these critical community functions,” added Shields.
Routt County Commissioner Tim Redmond noted the “property links together U.S. Forest Service, BLM and state lands, as well as existing conservation easements, to form a pristine tract that protects views and critical wildlife corridors.”
Lands within the easement include sagebrush rangelands, aspen woodlands and irrigated pastures with senior water rights along Watson Creek tied to those lands through the conservation easement. The property is utilized as part of a larger cattle and hay operation operated by the Snyders as well as natural habitat. Allen Snyder and his family purchased the ranch in 2006, and four generations currently live and work on the ranch.
“We would like to thank everyone who helped make this easement possible, from the PDR board and county commissioners to the CCALT team and Natural Resources Conservation Service,” said Tyler Snyder. “We are very blessed to be able to take a step forward in continuing to pass down the generational legacy of ranching in the Yampa Valley to generations to come.”
Since the initiation of the program in 1997, Routt County has helped fund the purchase of conservation easements on 68,535 acres for approximately $32 million. Funding for the program comes from a 1.5 mill levy in county property tax approved by voters through 2035.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust brokered a new 120-acre conservation easement with landowner Susan Larson on Wild Goose Ranch south of Steamboat Springs. CCALT/Courtesy photo
In addition, earlier in October the land trust and the county program worked with landowner Susan Larson to conserve 120 acres of Wild Goose Ranch south of Steamboat Springs.
The easement secures irrigated hay meadows and riparian habitat and fulfills the conservation vision of Susan and her late husband, Jim Larson. The Wild Goose Ranch is comprised primarily of irrigated hay meadows with 92% of the easement area in active hay production.
“Since our arrival in the Yampa Valley full time, our family has always felt a duty to protect the land and the water, especially here in the South Valley,” Larson said. “We have felt even more strongly about this responsibility with all the growth that has occurred in the last several years all over Colorado and notably here in Routt County.”
This protection safeguards valuable wildlife habitat for elk, mule deer, moose, black bear and species of special concern such as the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse and greater sandhill crane, while also securing scenic views along Colorado Highway 131 and U.S. Highway 40, according to a media release.
Routt County Commissioner Sonja Macys noted, “Nestled in the highly scenic South Valley floor corridor, the ranch is a vital part of the iconic landscape of working agriculture and conserved lands that residents and visitors alike enjoy when descending Rabbit Ears Pass.”
The land trust has conserved more than 820,000 acres of farmland, ranchland, wildlife habitat and open space across Colorado, including more than 83,000 acres in Routt County.
No trespassing signs line a section of the Fryingpan River flowing through private property upstream of Basalt. The Fryingpan is a popular stream for anglers, though public access is limited. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
A group of recreation advocates are hoping Colorado lawmakers will settle the state’s legal gray area surrounding public river access. The Colorado Stream Access Coalition is fighting for the public’s right to use the state’s waterways for recreation, a right they say is guaranteed in the Colorado Constitution.
“Our position is that under the Colorado Constitution, it’s always been understood that there was a public easement,” said Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and an expert on water and natural resources policy. “And if there’s a public easement, even though it’s private property, the public gets to use it. We would like to see legislation that basically guarantees the right to both wade and float through private property.”
Squillace was referring to a clause in the state constitution that declares all unappropriated water in every natural stream to be the property of the public and dedicated to the use of the people of the state.
Kestrel Kunz, southern Rockies protection director at American Whitewater, testified at the Water Resources Committee in August, asking legislators to guarantee public access to rivers for all Coloradans, while respecting landowners’ property rights. Kunz said American Whitewater gets regular reports of conflicts between boaters and property owners.
American Whitewater is seeking legal public protections for boating on Colorado’s rivers, to portage around hazards and to scout when needed.
“Colorado offers no clarity, no protection and no certainty for landowners or the public,” Kunz said. “That lack of clarity is dangerous.”
The issue of stream access highlights a basic tension in Colorado’s laws and values: Are rivers just another category of property that can be privately owned and fenced off? Or are they so central to the state’s culture, identity and outdoor recreation economy that they should be considered public resources open to public use?
“There are a lot of very wealthy landowners in this state that are strongly opposed to the public having any rights in what they consider to be their rivers,” Squillace said. “And we don’t believe they own the rivers. We think those are public resources that should be held in common for all the people to use.”
Paddlers float through North Star Nature Preserve on the Roaring Fork River upstream of Aspen. Some river access advocates want the state to clarify the right of boaters to touch the beds and banks of streams, and the ability to portage and scout for safety. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
The public’s right to use waterways was codified in a 19thcentury U.S. Supreme Court decision that said states own the beds of “navigable” rivers, meaning rivers that were used for commerce at the time of statehood. But Colorado does not consider any of its rivers to be navigable, meaning the streambeds belong not to the state — and therefore the public — but to adjacent property owners. A 1979 Colorado Supreme Court decision in People v. Emmert ruled on the side of property owners, saying that the public could not float through private property.
A subsequent Colorado attorney general opinion said boaters can float through private property, and as long as they don’t touch the streambed or banks, they won’t be charged with criminal trespass. But stream-access supporters say this informal policy needs to be clarified into law and should also make allowances for boater safety.
Kent Vertrees, a board member and staffer for Friends of the Yampa, said any new law should make it OK for people to get out of their boats to scout hazards and rapids, and portage around obstacles without fear of getting in legal trouble or being harassed by landowners.
“If there is a new tree that’s fallen or something that’s blocking such as a fence, I believe I can get out of the river to safely get around,” he said. “All I’m doing is portaging for this safety element. And that’s the gray area that needs to be figured out.”
Vida Dillard, president of the Roaring Fork Kayak Club, agrees. Her organization is part of the coalition supporting clarity around stream-access laws. The club, which has 53 active memberships, focuses on improving access to the sport for everyone, especially beginners. She said situations such as helping a swimmer or scouting could cause tensions with landowners, and that uncertainty disproportionately affects newcomers to kayaking.
“We teach our students to scout hazards and make really conservative choices,” she said. “And if you’re afraid you’re going to be trespassing or have a confrontation, it might make you less likely to hike out or make choices on the river that you need to make to be safe.”
Private property signs line a section of the Fryingpan River upstream of Basalt. Some advocacy groups a pushing for more public river access for anglers. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Wading into murky waters
According to Squillace, stream access is ripe for legislation because of the case of Roger Hill, a fly fisherman on the Arkansas River, which thrust the issue into the national spotlight.
Hill had baseball-size rocks thrown at him by a property owner and later sued the state on the basis that he believed the river was navigable when Colorado became a state in 1876, and therefore the streambed he was standing on while casting his line was public. But the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that Hill had no legal standing in the case.
“I think it reflects the controversial nature of this issue,” Squillace said. “I think maybe the court was trying to duck the hard question of finally declaring that maybe the Arkansas River is navigable, in fact, and so should be open to public access.”
Coalition members will have to address a widening schism in their membership: those who think any new legislation should include the right of anglers, such as Hill, to wade and those who think it should remain more narrowly focused on the right to float. Some see the right to wade as an additional, expanded use and is where some landowners draw the line.
American Whitewater recently left the coalition and together with Colorado Whitewater and the American Canoe Association, is pursuing legislation that would grant just the right to float. Vertrees said the right to float and the right to wade are two separate issues that shouldn’t be lumped together.
“I personally cannot support [the right to wade] because I believe it will tank the whole thing,” he said. “I just personally believe that it’s going to be hard to do them both at once.”
Anglers want to be able to walk up and down a streambed to fish, but only after entering the river through a public access point and not trespassing across private property to get there. This right to wade is particularly relevant to the Fryingpan River, which is a popular Gold Medal trout fishery where only about half of the river below Ruedi Reservoir is public and no trespassing signs line stretches of the waterway.
Bill Nein, of Salida, prepares to release a brown trout he caught back into the Fryingpan River. Some river access proponents want the state to clarify rules regarding public use of streambeds and banks for fishing. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
More education needed
Opponents of a law expanding access say that this is a private property issue and that landowners have the right to exclude others from their property. Garin Vorthmann testified on behalf of the Colorado Farm Bureau at the Water Resources Committee meeting in August. She said she was also working with a broad coalition of landowners, private businesses and real estate agents.
“Depriving a landowner of the right to exclude people from their private property without just compensation is considered a taking,” she told lawmakers. “Legislation that would change the ownership of the bed or bank to be public or owned by the state obligates the government to provide just compensation to the landowner and will embroil the state in expensive litigation.”
Other experts say addressing this issue through legislation might only make it worse. A report released in September by the conservative-leaning Common Sense Institute said that “the path to clarification is fraught with innumerable bad outcomes where both sides and ultimately the state of Colorado will be worse off than they are now” and that “attempts by either side to expand those rights at the expense of the other are likely to create more problems than they solve.”
Greg Walcher, former director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and co-author of the report, said a better approach would be a public education campaign so that boaters know exactly where they are allowed to float: through land that is already owned by the state or federal government and therefore public. The study notes the importance of rivers to Colorado’s outdoor recreation economy, and the millions that the Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) grant program has invested in stream access and conservation projects in recent years.
“The floating industry has become huge in Colorado, so we need to find a solution,” Walcher said. “And part of that is making sure people understand where they can and can’t float.”
Proponents of stream access agree that education is important, and to that end, Steamboat Springs-based advocacy organization and content studio Rig to Flip is releasing a short film by Cody Perry called “Common Waters,” which features the Hill case and outlines the issue as they see it: that Colorado is one of the worst states for providing public access to streams, and in a place that prides itself on an outdoor lifestyle, increased access and clarity on the rules are needed.
With proponents still hashing out differing options on what a policy proposal should call for, any new legislation for the 2026 session won’t be introduced by the Water Resources and Agricultural Review Committee, but there’s still a chance lawmakers could take it up. Coalition members say they are continuing to meet with stakeholders and figuring out the best way forward.
“At American Whitewater, we believe that people are really only going to protect the resource if they have the opportunity to explore that place and understand and experience a river,” Kunz said. “So our hope is that by allowing people to access these rivers in Colorado that we will ensure future generations of river stewards.”
Jace Lankow and Zanna Stutz measure a beaver dam in Glen Canyon on September 16, 2025. Environmental advocates say the return of beavers to the canyon is a sign that nature is thriving in areas that were once submerged by Lake Powell. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):
October 24, 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.
To hike up this narrow canyon, Eric Balken pushed through dense thickets of green. In the shadow of towering red rock walls, his route along a muddy creekbed was lined with bushes and the subtle hum of life. The canyon echoed the buzzing and chirping of bugs and toads. But not long ago, this exact spot was at the bottom of a reservoir.
“We would have needed scuba gear 20 years ago,” Balken said. “We would have been 150 feet underwater.”
As director of the nonprofit Glen Canyon Institute, Balken has tracked the rebirth of these canyons for years. They were once home to Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir. But as the Colorado River is strained by drought and steady demand, Powell has shrunk to record lows. In the wake of that shrinking, a sprawling web of canyons like this one are seeing the light of day for the first time in decades.
They serve as an unsettling visual reminder of the rapidly-diminishing water supply that provides for roughly 40 million people across the Southwest. They also cradle thriving ecosystems – a humming network of oases in the desert.
Employees of Glen Canyon Institute look out onto a section of Glen Canyon filled with vegetation on September 16, 2025. Some portions of the canyon have been above water for more than two decades, allowing native species to return to areas that were once submerged by Lake Powell. Alex Hager /KUNC
On this September afternoon, Balken was joined by a team of environmentalists and scientists looking for one specific species of charismatic rodent.
“Basically,” said Zanna Stutz, Glen Canyon Institute’s program manager, “If the beavers are here, it means good things are happening.”
She explained that beavers are a “keystone species” and serve as an indicator for the health of the whole ecosystem. And in this particular side canyon — a snaking tributary that leads into Lake Powell — they are alive and well.
“There are all these different species of wildlife that are coming back here,” Stutz said. “It is a place that is full of life. It’s full of biodiversity.”
Dams, lodges and footprints
Lake Powell’s water levels have been retreating for the past two decades, revealing vast swaths of once-submerged land. The falling water levels have jeopardized hydropower generation and added anxiety to policy talks about managing the region’s water supply.
At the same time, they have put stunning geologic features and lush riverside habitats back in the open air.
Those habitats come back gradually. In the early stages, shortly after the reservoir has pulled out of an area, there is often little more than a flat plain of muddy sediment, with a few lonely seedlings poking out of the muck.
Further up the canyon, where the reservoir pulled out at least two decades ago, life has had time to come back in force. Plants grow thick and tall, teeming with the animals that call them home.
Jace Lankow holds a northern leopard frog in Glen Canyon on September 15, 2025. Beaver dams create ponds that serve as habitat for a variety of plant and animal species. Alex Hager/KUNC
Beavers are architects that make those animal communities even stronger. The continent’s largest rodents move slowly on land, but they’re built for speedy swimming and can escape from predators better in the water. When they settle into a new area, they dam up streams to create ponds that provide them shelter.
Those ponds are providing for more than just beavers. Stutz said they provide a home for native fish, frogs and insects. They also allow water to seep into the banks and provide for plants for a longer portion of the year.
Recent studies have tracked the emergence of old river features and the return of native plants. This one aims to track the return of healthy ecosystems, using beavers as a marker of progress.
Glen Canyon Institute is paying for the study, and scientists from the Tucson, Arizona-based Watershed Management Group are helping carry it out.
One of those scientists, Nadira Mitchell, stood at the foot of a beaver dam and marveled at its size.
“I don’t really know how long it would take them to build this huge structure,” she said. “But you can definitely tell that they put in a lot of effort.”
The walls of Glen Canyon reflect off of a beaver pond on September 15, 2025. Beaver ponds can spread out the water from a stream, making it easier for plants to grow near their banks. Alex Hager/KUNC
The dam loomed chest high — a messy tangle of branches, leaves, mud and rocks holding back a large pool of standing water. Little trickles emerged from the bottom of the dam, turning back into a babbling stream on the other side. Mitchell said this helps filter the water.
Upstream of the dam, on the other side of the pond, the landscape was littered with signs of beavers. Mitchell pointed to little footprints in the mud, a sign that the “ecosystem engineers” may have been at work mere hours ago. Their wide, paddlelike tails had clearly dragged through the soft sand. All around the stream’s edge, whittled-down branches bore tiny, distinct teeth marks.
Another scientist, Jace Lankow, pointed out a gently chirping toad that also called the pond home.
Lizbeth Perez bends down to look inside a beaver lodge in Glen Canyon on September 16, 2025. The area is rich with signs of beaver activity, from tiny footprints to large dams and lodges. Alex Hager/KUNC
His colleague Lizbeth Perez came across a strikingly large beaver lodge, a resolute-looking mound of sticks and mud with little openings near the bottom. She got down on her hands and knees, practically sticking her head underwater to peer inside.
“The water goes back all the way and it’s all dark,” she said. “It’s a pretty well contained lodge.”
The team fanned out and took note of each sign of beavers, from footprints smaller than a human hand to lodges wider than a human wingspan. The team pulled out a tape measure and noted the length of a stream-wide beaver dam.
“It’ll be really exciting to mark that data point and look back on that for the years to come,” Mitchell said.
Policies to protect
Lake Powell is at a crossroads. Dropping water levels are forcing difficult conversations about its future. They could soon drop too low to generate hydropower inside Glen Canyon Dam. They could even drop too low to allow water to pass from the reservoirinto the Colorado River on the other side. Some environmentalists are calling for a major shakeup to the region’s water storage system — a policy change that would take Lake Powell’s water and store it elsewhere.
The environmental advocates at Glen Canyon Institute say the habitats in these tributary canyons should be protected by those policies.
“Glen Canyon is viewed by many water managers as a storage tank,” he said, “And it’s so much more than that. It’s not a barren landscape, it’s a living, breathing place.”
The wreckage of a motorboat, once submerged beneath Lake Powell, sticks out above the water on September 16, 2025. The nation’s second-largest reservoir has fallen to record lows in recent years. Climate scientists say it is unlikely to rise to previous highs as the region gets drier. Alex Hager/KUNC
But Lake Powell’s decades-long legacy as a key piece of the West’s water storage system will make that difficult. The seven states that use the Colorado River are in the middle of tense negotiations about its future. As they try to balance the needs of major cities and a powerhouse agriculture industry, the needs of the environment can sometimes fall to the back burner. Sinjin Eberle, senior director of communications at the environmental group American Rivers, said that the balancing act may affect decisions about the beaver-laden streams of Glen Canyon.
“Managing [Lake Powell] specifically for those side tributaries,” he said, “I’m not sure that that would be a priority for all of the stakeholders that would be at the table for this.”
Eberle’s group receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also supports KUNC’s Colorado River coverage. Eberle called the emergence of thriving habitats in Glen Canyon “inspiring,” but pointed to larger region-wide tensions that could get in the way of policy decisions designed specifically to protect them.
“It will be a real challenge to encourage leaders from the seven basin states and then the hydropower industry to be willing to keep Lake Powell at a level that is more beneficial for the side Canyon ecologies than the security that a higher Lake Powell gives to each individual state that depends on it,” he said.
Researchers explore a section of Glen Canyon on September 16, 2025. Receding water levels have revealed geologic formations and allowed plants and animals to return. Alex Hager/KUNC
The National Park Service and the Bureau of Reclamation, which manage Lake Powell, did not provide comment for this story in time for publication.
Lake Powell levels sit below 30%, and climate change-fueled drought means the reservoir is unlikely to refill to the high marks set decades ago. Zanna Stutz said those climate trends may force the hand of policymakers. Lake Powell, she said, may never refill enough to drown these side canyons anew.
“The restoration of Glen Canyon is basically an inevitability,” she said. “The sooner we can recognize how what’s happening in Glen Canyon is tied into this larger trend, the sooner we can shift from this being a happy byproduct and have it be taken into consideration and valued accordingly.”
Purpose of the report: This rapid assessment, produced by the Western Water Assessment (WWA), serves as a scientific resource for understanding drivers and impacts of the flooding events that occurred from October 10th -14th, 2025 in southwest Colorado. The report is designed to support local resilience building efforts and hazard planning for communities in the region. It provides the longterm and recent historical context for the flooding, hydrologic characteristics of the flood event, and an assessment of the local probability of an event of this magnitude.
Key Findings:
• The October 10th-14th, 2025 floods were the 3rd largest on record for Pagosa Springs, CO, with river levels reaching a maximum gauge height of 12.82 feet and peak flow rates of 8,570 cubic feet per second
• A total of 12.5 inches of precipitation fell at a high-elevation observation site in the watershed over 5 days, saturating the watershed and driving the river to reach Major Flood stage twice in that period
• Flood frequency analysis based on historical observations of runoff in Pagosa Springs suggests this flood has a return period of 25 to 40 years, meaning that there is a 2.5-4% likelihood of a flood of similar magnitude occurring in any given year.
• Early reports following the flooding suggest that hundreds of residents and households were evacuated in Pagosa Springs and surrounding rural communities and many structures were damaged or destroyed by the floods including homes, bridges, and roadways.
• Nearly two decades of exposure to drought conditions, increasing wildfire activity, and now the recent flooding collectively highlight the geographically unique and increasingly frequent natural hazard risks that rural mountain communities face in southwest Colorado.
Supporting future resilience: Understanding the drivers, characteristics, and likelihood of extreme events like the floods of October 2025 is crucial for effective resilience planning. Scientific analysis that is tailored to local communities, like this assessment for Pagosa Springs and Vallecito, provides specific, actionable information that planners and residents can use to understand their unique exposure to hazards. The Western Water Assessment (WWA) is committed to providing usable science to support hazard planning and response in communities across Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
For further information on how WWA can support your community, please reach out to our team at wwa@colorado.edu.
Denver Water and Save the Colorado must enter mediation at the end of the month to see if a deal is possible on the mid-project challenge to the water utility’s $531 million dam raising underway at Gross Reservoir in Boulder County, according to an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals.
A federal trial judge initially halted construction on the nearly finished dam, saying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permits for Denver Water violated U.S. environmental laws and that the water level at Gross could not be raised. Judge Christine Arguello later lifted the injunction on construction, for safety reasons, while Denver Water appealed the permit issues to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 10th Circuit will take briefs from both sides of the dam dispute in November, and is now ordering a mediation session for Oct. 30. The conference is to “explore any possibilities for settlement” and lawyers for both sides are “expected to have consulted with their clients prior to the conference and have as much authority as feasible” on settlement questions, the court order says.
Construction has continued since the injunction was lifted, with Denver Water pouring thousands of tons of concrete to raise the existing dam structure on South Boulder Creek. Denver Water has argued it needs additional storage on the north end of its sprawling water delivery system for 1 million metro customers, to balance extensive southern storage employing water from the South Platte River basin.
Denver Water’s collection system via the USACE EIS
Save the Colorado and coplaintiffs the Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians and others argue too much water has already been taken from the Colorado River basin on the west side of the Continental Divide, and that the forest-clearing and construction at Gross is further destructive to the environment. Gross Reservoir stores Fraser River rights that Denver Water owns and brings through a tunnel under the divide into South Boulder Creek.
“We look forward to having a constructive conversation with Denver Water to find a mutually agreeable path forward that addresses the significant environmental impacts of the project,” Save the Colorado founder Gary Wockner said.
When securing required project permits from Boulder County, Denver Water had previously agreed to environmental mitigation and enhancements for damages from Gross construction. But Save the Colorado and co-plaintiffs sued to stop the project at the federal level, and Arguello agreed that the Army Corps had failed to account for climate change, drought and other factors in writing the U.S. permits.
Denver Water declined comment Tuesday on the mediation order.
The halt and restart of the Gross Dam raising came in what has turned out to be a tumultuous year for major Colorado water diversion and storage projects.
While the Gross Dam decisions were underway, Wockner was finishing negotiations with Northern Water over $100 million in environmental mitigation funding to allow the $2.7 billion, two-dam Northern Integrated Supply Project to move forward. Once the 15 communities and water agencies subscribed to NISP water shares saw the increasing price tag, some began pulling out.
Northern Water reviewed the scale of NISP with engineers, then said it planned to move forward at the previously announced scale. The consortium’s board has asked all 15 initial members to indicate by Dec. 31 where they stand with the project and its price tag.
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 October rains that changed this water year in the San Luis Valley came at a particularly critical time.
In September the closely-watched unconfined aquifer hit its lowest level ever recorded since monitoring of the troubled aquifer began in January 2002, according to the Davis Engineering report given at Tuesday’s quarterly meeting of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.
Knowing that, now imagine the conversations that would be happening in the Valley’s farming and ranching community had there been diminished or no October rains. The year was shaping up to be among the worst for flows on the Upper Rio Grande and readings on the unconfined aquifer reinforced it.
Then October delivered heavy rains across the southwest, which resulted in historic fall seasonal flows on the San Juan and into the Rio Grande and Conejos River systems. The Rio Grande grew by 80,000 acre-feet and the Conejos River by 20,000 acre-feet as a result of the rains, said Craig Cotten, division engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
Colorado is now estimating a total annual flow of 470,000 acre-feet on the Upper Rio Grande, up from its earlier estimates for the year at 390,000 acre-feet. Still, the irrigation year on the Rio Grande will likely end on Nov. 1 as scheduled, said Cotten.
“That’s a big amount of water in just a short amount of time,” he said in noting the latest accounting for Rio Grande Compact purposes.
2026 budget hearing set
The Rio Grande Water Conservation District set a 2026 budget work session for Nov. 24; then a public hearing to adopt next year’s budget on Dec. 11. The water conservation agency is proposing a year-over-year increase to its mill levy. It is proposing a 1.75 mill levy property tax, up from 1.6 mills in 2025.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
A core element of Denver Water’s mission is ensuring the large, complex system that collects, cleans and delivers drinking water for 1.5 million people is prepared to meet future challenges.
And with more than 100 years of operations under its belt, Colorado’s largest water provider, which serves about 25% of Colorado’s population, is in the biggest period of capital investment in its history. Denver Water expects to invest about $1.7 billion into the system during the next 10 years.
“The work we do provides the critical water supply that the community we serve needs to thrive and grow,” said Denver Water CEO/Manager Alan Salazar.
“Continuing to maintain and invest in the system that supports our water supply will ensure that we — Denver Water as well as our customers — are ready for what lies ahead, from a warming climate to the potential for new regulations, while keeping rates as low as good service will allow,” Salazar said.
Since 2022, Denver Water has replaced an average of 97,000 feet of water mains per year. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Responsibility to maintain and protect the state’s largest water system, along with a desire to encourage water conservation, keep essential indoor water use affordable and ensure the utility is financially stable, were incorporated into the Oct. 22 decision by Denver’s Board of Water Commissioners to approve new water rates for 2026.
Denver Water is protecting and preparing the complex system and its customers for the future in many ways, including:
The Lead Reduction Program, which started in 2020, is protecting customers from the risk of lead in their drinking water and to date has replaced more than 35,000 old, customer-owned lead service lines at no direct cost to customers.
The new Northwater Treatment Plant, which began operations in 2024, can clean up to 75 million gallons of water per day and can be expanded when needed to 150 million gallons per day.
The Gross Reservoir Expansion Project, which began construction in 2022, is designed to nearly triple the reservoir’s storage capacity.
The Landscape Transformation Program, which helps customers remodel landscapes dominated by water-intensive Kentucky bluegrass into water-wise, climate-resilient ColoradoScapes.
And ongoing work to replace aging water mains, upgrade infrastructure on the utility’s southern collection and treatment system, and reach a net-zero carbon emissions goal by 2030.
Overall, Denver Water expects to invest $1.7 billion over the next 10 years in projects that will maintain, repair, protect and upgrade the system, and make it more resilient and flexible in the future.
In addition to rates paid by customers, funding for Denver Water’s infrastructure projects, day-to-day operations and emergency expenses like water main breaks comes from bond sales, cash reserves, hydropower sales, grants, federal funding and fees paid when new homes and buildings are connected to the system.
The utility does not receive tax dollars or make a profit. It reinvests money from customer water bills and fees to maintain and upgrade the water system.
And the utility is committed to delivering a safe, clean and affordable water supply to its customers while managing the impacts of the larger economy, from inflation to supply chain issues.
How the 2026 water rates will affect individual customer bills will vary depending on where the customer lives (either in Denver or in one of the utility’s suburban distributor districts) and how much water they use.
And major credit rating agencies recently confirmed Denver Water’s triple-A credit rating, the highest possible, citing the utility’s track record of strong financial management.
Monthly bills for single-family residential customers are comprised of two factors: a fixed charge, which helps ensure Denver Water has a more stable revenue stream to continue the necessary water system upgrades to ensure reliable water service, and a volume rate for the amount of water used.
Combining both of those factors, a typical single-family residential customer who uses 104,000 gallons of water annually will see their monthly bill increase by an average of $2.45 to $3.30 over the course of the year, depending on where the customer lives (in Denver or in one of the utility’s suburban distributor districts) and the type of service the customer’s suburban distributor district receives from Denver Water.
(See the infographic below for information about Denver Water’s suburban distributor districts, types of service and rates.)
The monthly bill example above includes an increase to the fixed monthly charge, which is tied to the size of the meter. For most single-family residential customers with a 3/4-inch meter, the fixed charge will increase by $1.85 in 2026, to $20.91 per month.
The more you use, the more you pay
After the fixed monthly charge, Denver Water’s rate structure for residential single-family customers has three tiers based on the amount of water used. The tiers are designed to keep essential indoor water use affordable while encouraging water conservation outdoors. (See additional details about the 2026 rates for the three tiers in the infographic below.)
The first tier is charged at the lowest rate and covers essential indoor water use for bathing, cooking and flushing toilets. Each customer has their individual first tier determined by the average of their monthly water use as listed on bills that arrive in January, February and March — when there is very little or no outdoor watering.
The second tier is for water consumption, typically used for outdoor watering, that is above the customer’s first tier and up to 15,000 gallons of water per month. Water use in this tier is considered to be an efficient use of water outdoors.
The third tier is for water use of more than 15,000 gallons per month. It is priced at the highest level to signal potentially excessive water use and encourage conservation efforts by larger-lot customers.
Bills in the summer months can be higher if customers use water to irrigate their outdoor landscapes.
Need help?
Denver Water offers one-time payment assistance to customers who may qualify. The utility’s Customer Care representatives also can help customers navigate payment options and unique circumstances. Customers can reach them via denverwater.org/ContactForm or by calling 303-893-2444.
What customers can do to save water, money
Denver Water encourages all customers to conserve water where they can indoors and out.
Finding and plugging leaks inside the home can be done year-round, and the utility offers rebates for qualified water-saving toilets and sprinkler equipment.
To help customers remodel their lawns to create a more vibrant, diverse ColoradoScape, Denver Water in 2026 will again offer a limited number of customer discounts on Resource Central’s popular turf removal service and its water-wise Garden In A Box plant-by-number kits. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Outside, Denver Water encourages customers to conserve water by remodeling unused areas of water-intensive Kentucky bluegrass into more diverse, water-wise ColoradoScapes that fit naturally into our dry climate and are interesting to look at through all seasons. These drought-resistant and climate-resilient ColoradoScapes include tree canopies and plants that help maintain vibrant urban landscapes and benefit our communities, wildlife and the environment.
Using less water also means more water can be kept in the mountain reservoirs, rivers and streams that fish live in and Coloradans enjoy. It also can lower monthly water bills, saving money.
Note 1: An individual customer’s monthly water bill will vary depending on where they live in Denver Water’s service area (in Denver or in one of the utility’s suburban distributor districts), the types of service the suburban distributor district receives from Denver Water, and how much water the customer uses.
Note 2: The difference in volume rates (in the infographic above) for Denver Water customers who live inside Denver compared to those who live in the suburbs is due to the Denver City Charter (see Operating Rules), which allows permanent leases of water to suburban water districts based on two conditions: 1) there always would be an adequate supply for the citizens of Denver, and 2) suburban customers pay the full cost of service, plus an additional amount.
A detail of a map produced by Water Horse Resources, and published by the state of Utah, showing two pipelines from the Green River, one above Flaming Gorge Reservoir and one below, plus a connecting pipeline between the two. The map is on a Utah state website with a note saying it was “left at hearing” on Nov. 11, 2018.
The Utah Supreme Court ruled on a controversial pipeline project in Eastern Utah last Friday. In January 2018, Water Horse Resources, LLC proposed a pipeline project that would send 55,000 acre-feet of water every year from the Green River to the state of Colorado. However, on Nov. 7, 2020, the Utah State Engineer rejected the application…The proposal sought to pipe water to be used for “beneficial use in Colorado.” However, a district court found Water Horse failed to establish evidence that the water can be put to beneficial use in Colorado. The pipeline would extend through Wyoming before dropping into an undecided location in Colorado.
Proposed pipeline by Water Horse would bring water from Utah to Colorado. (Courtesy//Utah Supreme Court)
Colorado officials declined to sign onto the project citing the lack of clear authority to administer the diversion of water into the state. Water Horse appealed the district court’s decision, leading to a years-long legal battle. On Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, the Utah Supreme Court reaffirmed the initial decision of the state engineer to reject the project…The Supreme Court ruling is not the end for the project. According to the court’s opinion, a renewed application could be submitted and potentially approved by the state engineer.
Until the passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980, miners across the American West extracted gold, silver, and other valuable “hardrock” minerals—and then simply walked away. Today, tens of thousands of these abandoned hardrock mines continue to leak acidic, metal-laden water into pristine streams and wetlands. Federal agencies estimate that over a hundred thousand miles of streams are impaired by mining waste. Nearly half of Western headwater streams are likely contaminated by legacy operations. Despite billions already spent on cleanup at the most hazardous sites, the total cleanup costs remaining may exceed fifty billion dollars.
So how did we end up here? In short, the General Mining Law of 1872 created a lack of accountability for historic mine operators to remediate their operations, but CERCLA and the Clean Water Act (CWA) arguably add an excess of accountability for third parties trying to clean up abandoned mines today.
The Animas River running orange through Durango after the Gold King Mine spill August 2015. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The first legislation to address this problem was introduced in 1999. Many iterations followed and failed, even in the wake of shocking images and costly litigation due to the Gold King Mine spill that dyed the Animas River a vibrant orange in 2015. Finally, in December, 2024, Congress passed the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act of 2024 (GSA).
The GSA is a cautious, bipartisan attempt to empower volunteers to clean up this toxic legacy. The law creates a short pilot program and releases certain “Good Samaritans” from liability under CERCLA and the CWA, which has long deterred cleanup by groups like state agencies and NGOs. EPA has oversight of the program and the authority to issue permits to Good Samaritans for the proposed cleanup work.
Despite the promise of this new legislation, critical questions remain unanswered about the GSA and how it will work. Only time will tell whether EPA designs and implements an effective permitting program that ensures Good Samaritans complete remediation work safely and effectively. EPA now has the opportunity as the agency that oversees this program to unlock the promise of the GSA.
The GSA left some significant gaps unanswered in how the pilot program will be designed and directed EPA to issue either regulations or guidance to fill in those gaps. EPA missed the statutory deadline to start the rulemaking process (July, 2025) and is now working to issue guidance on how the program will move forward. EPA must provide a 30-day public comment period before finalizing the guidance document according to the GSA. With EPA’s hopes of getting multiple projects approved and shovels in the ground in 2026, the forthcoming guidance is expected to be released soon. While we wait, it’s worth both looking back at what led to the GSA and looking ahead to questions remaining about the implementation of the pilot program.
A Century of Mining the West Without Accountability
The story begins with the General Mining Law of 1872, a relic of the American frontier era that still governs hardrock mining on federal public lands. The law allows citizens and even foreign-based corporations to claim mineral rights and extract valuable ores without paying any federal royalty. Unlike coal, oil, or gas—which fund reclamation through production fees—hardrock mining remains royalty-free.
As mining industrialized during the 20th century, large corporations replaced prospectors. Until 1980, mines were often abandoned without consequences or cleanup once they became unprofitable. The result: an estimated half-million abandoned mine features will continually leach pollution into American watersheds for centuries.
CERLCA Liability Holds Back Many Abandoned Mine Cleanups
Congress sought to address toxic sites through CERCLA, also known as the Superfund law, which makes owners and operators strictly liable for hazardous releases. In theory, that ensures accountability. In practice, it creates a paradox: if no polluter can be found at an abandoned site, anyone who tries to clean up the mess may be held responsible for all past, present, and future pollution.
The Clean Water Act’s Double-Edged Sword
Even state agencies, tribes, or nonprofits that treat contaminated water risk being deemed “operators” of a hazardous facility. That fear of liability—combined with enormous costs—has frozen many potential Good Samaritans in place. Federal efforts to ease this fear have offered little more than reassurance letters without real protection.
The Clean Water Act compounds the problem. Anyone who discharges pollution into a surface water via any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance must hold a point source discharge permit. By requiring these permits and providing for direct citizen enforcement in the form of citizen suits, the CWA has led to significant improvements in water quality across the country. That said, courts have ruled that drainage pipes or diversion channels used to manage runoff from abandoned mines may also qualify as point sources. As a result, Good Samaritans who exercise control over historic point sources, like mine tunnels, could face penalties and other liabilities for unpermitted discharges, even when they improve overall conditions.
The 2024 Good Samaritan Act Steps onto the Scene
After decades of failed attempts, the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act was signed into law in December, 2024. The GSA authorizes EPA to create a pilot program, issuing up to fifteen permits for low-risk cleanup projects over seven years. Most importantly, permit holders receive protection from Superfund and Clean Water Act liability for their permitted activities. This legal shield removes one of the greatest barriers to cleanup efforts.
Applicants can seek either a Good Samaritan permit to begin active remediation or an investigative sampling permit to scope out a site for potential conversion to a Good Samaritan permit down the road.
In either case, applicants must show:
they had no role in causing, and have never exercised control over, the pollution in their application,
they possess the necessary expertise and adequate funding for all contingencies within their control, and
they are targeting low-risk sites, which are generally understood to be those that require passive treatment methods like moving piles of mine waste away from streams or snowmelt or diverting water polluted with heavy metals below mine tailings toward wetlands that may settle and naturally improve water quality over time
Under the unique provisions of the GSA, each qualifying permit must go through a modified and streamlined National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process. EPA or another lead agency must analyze the proposed permit pursuant to an Environmental Assessment (EA). If the lead agency cannot issue a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) after preparing an EA, the permit cannot be issued. The GSA therefore precludes issuance of a permit where the permitted activities may have a significant impact on the environment.
The pilot program only allows for up to fifteen low risk projects that must be approved by EPA over the next seven years. Defining which remediations are sufficiently low-risk becomes critical in determining what the pilot program can prove about the Good Samaritan model for abandoned mine cleanup. To some extent, “low risk” is simply equivalent to a FONSI. But the GSA further defines the low-risk remediation under these pilot permits as “any action to remove, treat, or contain historic mine residue to prevent, minimize, or reduce (i) the release or threat of release of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant that would harm human health or the environment; or (ii) a migration or discharge of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant that would harm human health or the environment.”
This excludes “any action that requires plugging, opening, or otherwise altering the portal or adit of the abandoned hardrock mine site…”, such as what led to the Gold King mine disaster. Many active treatment methods are also excluded from the pilot program, therefore, because they often involve opening or plugging adits or other openings to pump out water and treat it in a water treatment plant, either on or off-site. As a result, the Good Sam Act’s low-risk pilot projects focus on passive treatment of the hazardous mine waste or the toxic discharge coming off that waste, such as a diversion of contaminated water into a settlement pond.
The GSA requires that permitted actions partially or completely remediate the historic mine residue at a site. The Administrator of EPA has the discretion to determine whether the permit makes “measurable progress”. Every activity that the Good Samaritan and involved permitted parties take must be designed to “improve or enhance water quality or site-specific soil or sediment quality relevant to the historic mine residue addressed by the remediation plan, including making measurable progress toward achieving applicable water quality standards,” or otherwise protect human health and the environment by preventing the threat of discharge to water, sediment, or soil. The proposed remediation need not achieve the stringent numeric standards required by CERCLA or the CWA.
Furthermore, it can be challenging to determine the discrete difference between the baseline conditions downstream of an acid mine drainage prior to and after a Good Samaritan remediation is completed. Not only do background conditions confuse the picture, but other sources of pollution near the selected project may also make measuring water quality difficult. This may mean that the discretion left to the EPA Administrator to determine “measurable progress” becomes generously applied.
Finally, once EPA grants a permit, the Good Samaritan must follow the terms, conditions, and limitations of the permit. If the Good Samaritan’s work degrades the environment from the baseline conditions, leading to “measurably worse” conditions, EPA must notify and require that the Good Samaritantake “reasonable measures” to correct the surface water quality or other environmental conditions to the baseline. If these efforts do not result in a “measurably adverse impact”, EPA cannot consider this a permit violation or noncompliance. However, if Good Samaritans do not take reasonable measures or if their noncompliance causes a measurable adverse impact, the Good Samaritan must notify all potential impacted parties. If severe enough, EPA has discretion to revoke CERCLA and CWA liability protections.
Recently, EPA shared the following draft flowchart for the permitting process:
Disclaimer: This is being provided as information only and does not impose legally binding requirements on EPA, States, or the public. This cannot be relied upon to create any rights enforceable by any party in litigation with the United States. Any decisions regarding a particular permit will be made based upon the statute and the discretion granted by the statute, including whether or not to grant or deny a permit.
Challenges Facing the Pilot Program Implementation
Despite its promise, the pilot program’s scope is limited. With only fifteen Good Samaritan permits eligible nationwide and no dedicated funding, the law depends on states, tribes, and nonprofits to provide their own resources. The only guidance issued so far by EPA detailed the financial assurance requirements that would-be Good Samaritans must provide to EPA to receive a permit. Definitions provided in this financial assurance guidance raised concerns for mining trade organizations and nonprofits alike with EPA’s proposed interpretations of key terms including “low risk” and “long-term monitoring”. Crucial terms like these, along with terms impacting enforcement when a permitted remediation action goes awry, like “baseline conditions”, “measurably worse”, and “reasonable measures” to restore baseline conditions, are vague in the GSA. How EPA ultimately clarifies terms like these will play a large role in the success of the GSA in its ultimate goal: to prove that Good Samaritans can effectively and safely clean up abandoned hardrock mine sites. The soon-to-be-released guidance document will therefore be a critical moment in the history of this new program.
Funding the Future
Funding remains the greatest barrier to large-scale remediation efforts. Coal mine cleanups are funded through fees on current production under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Current hardrock mining, however, still pays no federal royalty. A modernized system could pair Good Samaritan permitting with industry-funded reclamation fees, ensuring that those profiting from today’s mining help repair the past. Without this reform, the burden will remain on underfunded agencies and nonprofits. However, this General Mining Law reform remains politically unlikely. In the meantime, the GSA creates a Good Samaritan Mine Remediation Fund but does not dedicate any new appropriations to that fund. Grants under Section 319 of the CWA (Nonpoint Source Pollution) and Section 104(k) of CERCLA (Brownfields Revitalization) programs may help, but funding opportunities here are limited.
The GSA includes provisions that allow Good Samaritans to reprocess mine waste while completing Good Samaritan permit cleanup work. These provisions include a key restriction: revenue generated from reprocessing must be dedicated either to the same cleanup project or to the GSA-created fund for future cleanups. A January 20, 2025 executive order to focus on domestic production of critical minerals led to a related Interior secretarial order on July 17, 2025, for federal land management agencies to organize opportunities and data regarding reprocessing mine waste for critical minerals on federal lands. Shortly after these federal policy directives, an August 15, 2025, article in Science suggested that domestic reprocessing of mining by-products like abandoned mine waste has the potential to meet nearly all the domestic demand for critical minerals. Legal and technical hurdles might prevent much reprocessing from occurring within the seven-year pilot program. Reprocessing projections aside, the political appetite for dedicated funding for the future may still grow if the GSA pilot projects successfully prove the Good Samaritan concept using a funding approach reliant on generosity and creativity.
Despite Significant Liability Protections, Good Samaritans Face Uncertainties
While the new law should help to address significant barriers to the cleanup of abandoned mines by Good Samaritans, uncertainties remain. The GSA provides exceptions to certain requirements under the Clean Water Act (including compliance with section 301, 302, 306, 402, and 404). The GSA also provides exceptions to Section 121 of CERCLA, which requires that Superfund cleanups must also meet a comprehensive collection of all relevant and appropriate standards, requirements, criteria, or limitations (ARARs).
In States or in Tribal lands that have been authorized to administer their own point source (section 402) or dredge and fill (section 404) programs under the CWA, the exceptions to obtaining authorizations, licenses, and permits instead applies to those State or Tribal programs. In that case, Good Samaritans are also excepted from applicable State and Tribal requirements, along with all ARARs under Section 121 of CERCLA.
However, Section 121(e)(1) of CERCLA states that remedial actions conducted entirely onsite do not need to obtain any Federal, State, or local permits. Most GSA pilot projects will likely occur entirely onsite, so it is possible that Good Samaritans might still need to comply with local authorizations or licenses, such as land use plans requirements. While it appears that GSA permitted activities are excepted from following relevant and applicable Federal, State, and Tribal environmental and land use processes, it is a bit unclear whether they are also excepted from local decision making.
The liability protections in the GSA are also limited by the terms of the statute. Good Samaritans may still be liable under the CWA and CERCLA if their actions make conditions at the site “measurably worse” as compared to the baseline. In addition, the GSA does not address potential common law liability that might result from unintended accidents. For example, an agricultural water appropriator downstream could sue the Good Samaritan for damages associated with a spike in water acidity due to permitted activities, such as moving a waste rock pile to a safer, permanent location on site.
Finally, the GSA does not clearly address how potential disputes about proposed permits may be reviewed by the federal courts. However, the unique provisions of the GSA, which prohibit issuance of a permit if EPA cannot issue a FONSI, potentially provide an avenue to challenge proposed projects where there is disagreement over the potential benefits and risks of the cleanup activities.
Measuring and Reporting Success of the Pilot Program
The Good Samaritan Act authorizes EPA to issue up to fifteen permits for low-risk abandoned mine cleanups, shielding participants from Superfund and Clean Water Act liability. Applicants must prove prior non-involvement, capability, and target on low-risk sites. Each permit undergoes a streamlined NEPA Environmental Assessment requiring a FONSI. To be successful, EPA and potential Good Samaritans will need to efficiently follow the permit requirements found in the guidance, identify suitable projects, and secure funding. The GSA requires baseline monitoring and post-cleanup reporting for each permitted action but does not require a structured process of learning and adjustment over the course of the pilot program. Without this structured, adaptive approach, it may be difficult for Good Samaritan proponents to collect valuable data and show measurable progress over the next seven years that would justify expanding the Good Samaritan approach to Congress. EPA’s forthcoming guidance offers an opportunity to fix that by publicly adopting a targeted and tiered approach in addition to the obligatory permitting requirements.
The EPA’s David Hockey, who leads the GSA effort from the EPA’s Office of Mountains, Deserts, and Plains based in Denver, has suggested taking just such a flexible, adaptive approach in public meetings discussing the GSA. EPA, working in coordination with partners that led the bill through Congress last year, like Trout Unlimited, intends to approve GSA permits in three tranches. EPA currently estimates that all fifteen projects will be approved and operational by 2028.
The first round will likely approve two or three projects with near-guaranteed success. If all goes according to plan, EPA hopes to have these shovel-ready projects through the GSA permit process, which includes a NEPA review, with the remedial work beginning in 2026. These initial projects will help EPA identify pain points in the process and potentially pivot requirements before issuing a second round of permits. This second tranche will likely occur in different western states and might increase in complexity from the first tranche.
Finally, the third tranche of permits might tackle the more complex projects from a legal and technical standpoint that could still be considered low risk. This may include remediation of sites in Indian Country led by or in cooperation with a Tribal abandoned mine land reclamation program. Other projects suited for the third tranche might include reprocessing of mine waste, tailings, or sludge, which may also require further buy-in to utilize the mining industry’s expertise, facilities, and equipment. These more complex projects will benefit most from building and maintaining local trust and involvement, such as through genuine community dialogue and citizen science partnerships. The third tranche projects should contain such bold choices to fully inform proponents and Congress when they consider expanding the Good Samaritan approach.
EPA appears poised to take a learning-by-doing approach. But the guidance can and should state this by setting public, straightforward, and measurable goals for the pilot program. This is a tremendous opportunity for EPA and everyone who stands to benefit from abandoned mine cleanup. But this is no simple task. Each permit must be flexible enough to address the unique characteristics at each mine site, sparking interest in future legislation so more Good Samaritans can help address the full scale of the abandoned hardrock mine pollution problem. But if EPA abuses its broad discretion under the GSA and moves the goalposts too much during the pilot program, they may reignite criticisms that the Good Samaritan approach undercuts bedrock environmental laws like the Clean Water Act. If projects are not selected carefully, for instance, the EPA could approve a permit that may not be sufficiently “low risk”, or that ultimately makes no “measurable progress” to improve or protect the environment. Either case may invite litigation against the EPA under the Administrative Procedure Act’s arbitrary and capricious standard or bolster other claims against Good Samaritans.
While the GSA itself imposes only a report to Congress at the end of the seven-year pilot period, a five-year interim report to Congress could help ensure accountability. If all goes well or more pilot projects are needed, this interim report could also provide support for an extension before the pilot program expires. The guidance issued by EPA should only be the beginning of the lessons learned and acted on during the GSA pilot program.
Seizing the Window of Opportunity
The GSA represents a breakthrough after decades of gridlock. It addresses the key fears of liability that stymied cleanup. Yet its success will depend on how effectively the EPA implements the pilot program and the courage of Good Samaritans who are stepping into some uncertainty. If it fails, America’s abandoned mines will continue to leak toxins into its headwaters for generations to come. But if the program succeeds, it could become a model for collaborative environmental restoration. For now, the EPA’s forthcoming guidance could mark the first steps toward success through clear permitting requirements and by setting flexible yet strategic goals for the pilot program.
If you are interested in following the implementation of the Good Samaritan Act, EPA recently announced it will host a webinar on December 2, 2025. They will provide a brief background and history of abandoned mine land cleanups, highlight key aspects of the legislation, discuss the permitting process, and explain overall program goals and timelines. Visit EPA’s GSA website for more information.
Map of the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, USA. Made using USGS National Map data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47456307
The flooding that breached the levees of Vallecito and Grimes creeks on Oct. 11 and forced the evacuation of 390 Vallecito homes has been described as “unprecedented.” Record flow rates fueled by record rains left the little valley awash, with recovery efforts expected to continue for months. The event – which owed its debut to Tropical Storm Priscilla and, to a lesser extent, Tropical Storm Raymond – is a striking reminder of the power of Mother Nature. But when compared with another destructive flood that inundated towns, drowned fields of crops and washed out miles of railroad tracks, the Vallecito flood hardly made a splash…
The 1911 Flood occurred 114 years ago on Oct. 5, 1911 on the Animas River. According to the Animas Museum in Durango, “1911 was a wet year for southwest Colorado with heavy snows in the high country and heavy rains through the summer.” A gentle rain began Oct. 5, the museum’s summary said. By morning, 2 inches of rain had fallen and the storm showed no sign of letting up. The Animas Museum described the Animas River’s waters as “unstoppable.”
[…]
The river flowed at an estimated rate of 25,000 cubic feet per second, washing out railroad tracks and shutting the stretch of Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway’s railroad for nine weeks. By comparison, the Animas River reached 4,860 cfs on Tuesday, less than a fifth the amount in 1911. Matt Aleksa, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, said the 1911 Flood was “way worse” than the flood that washed through Vallecito last weekend. The only real comparable details, he said, are both events were caused by tropical storm systems that resulted in consecutive days of heavy rainfall. He said 1911 opened with a strong winter and heavy snowpack. In the summertime, runoff combined with a strong monsoon season, and disaster finally struck in October when a tropical storm rolled through. The soils were already saturated, meaning moisture from rain wasn’t absorbed into the ground and instead flowed over it. In 1911, Durango received almost 3.5 inches of rain over 36 hours. Silverton received 4 inches of rain. Gladstone north of Silverton received 8 inches of rain, Aleksa said. Between 2 and 4 inches of rainfall was measured in the Animas River Basin and 4 to 6 inches was measured at higher, mountain elevations. He said the Durango area probably received half the precipitation last weekend as it did during the 1911 Flood.
Track of the October 1911 hurricane, along with rainfall measurements in the southwestern US. From the National Weather Service report “THE EFFECTS OF EASTERN NORTH PACIFIC TROPICAL CYCLONES
ON THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES”, https://www.weather.gov/media/wrh/online_publications/TMs/TM-197.pdf . h/t Jeff Lukas for pointing out this report.
There is no way around it: The city of Durango must increase water and sewer rates next year and follow up with annual rate increases going forward, according to city officials. For water rates, the city proposes an average monthly increase of $2.80 for residential accounts and $16.76 for commercial accounts. For sewer rates, the city proposes an average monthly increase of $9.18 for residential accounts and $78.14 for commercial accounts. The city, which has a number of significant water infrastructure projects planned for the next decade – including a $35 million to $40 million replacement of the pipeline that delivers Durango’s drinking water – expects its water fund to be $3 million in the red by the end of 2030, officials said. The sewer fund requires a rate increase just to meet operational expenses, which are projected to exceed revenues next year…
The Public Works Department is recommending 10% and 20% increases to water and sewer rates, respectively, to be followed by annual increases yet to be determined. What residents should expect of annual rate increases will be informed by a rate study outlined in pending water and sewer master plans to be completed in 2027, said Bob Lowry, interim Public Works director…Had the city incrementally raised rates annually “since Day 1,” current rates would be significantly higher. If rates aren’t raised soon, larger increases will be necessary later on, and utility customers will feel them all the more in their pocketbooks. Lowry said it’s best practice to review water and sewer rates annually and to adjust them no less frequently than every other year.
Map of the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, USA. Made using USGS National Map data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47456307
Our post from over the weekend highlighted the first round of heavy rainfall and flooding in southwest Colorado. There was a break in the rain on Sunday, October 12, and then a second round of heavy rain on Monday the 13th associated with moisture from remnant Tropical Storm Raymond. That’s right, a one-two punch of tropical moisture from the larger Priscilla and then from Raymond a couple days later. Here are some observations of the total precipitation over the entire event.
Total precipitation (inches) from 9-15 October 2025 with gridded data from the PRISM Climate Group and observations from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network.
With soils already saturated and rivers and creeks running high, the Monday rainfall led to even more flooding in La Plata and Archuleta Counties. The San Juan River at Pagosa Springs actually peaked slightly higher on Tuesday morning than it did on Saturday, once again reaching major flood stage.
The high elevations of the San Juan mountains received another 3-4″ of precipitation on Monday (a bit of it as snow on the higher peaks), with 1-3 additional inches at lower elevations around Pagosa Springs, Bayfield, and Durango. This brought the 7-day total precipitation to a remarkable 10.2 inches at the Upper San Juan SNOTEL station, with over 9″ at several other sites.
7-day precipitation at southwestern Colorado SNOTEL stations from 9-15 October 2025. From the USDA NRCS interactive map
Volunteer observers from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow network (CoCoRaHS) recorded over 7 inches of rainfall in 7 days north of Bayfield and northwest of Pagosa Springs. These are huge rainfall totals for this part of the state!
CoCoRaHS precipitation observations for the period from 10-16 October 2025 in La Plata and Archuleta Counties. From https://maps.cocorahs.org/
Updating the table from the previous post to show seven-day precipitation accumulations at the Upper San Juan SNOTEL station, we see that the 10.2″ from the recent storm is surrounded only by huge winter snowstorm cycles. In the years since that station was established in 1978, there aren’t any fall rainstorms that come anywhere close to rivaling it.
Ranking of the top 7-day precipitation totals at the Upper San Juan SNOTEL station since 1978, with overlapping periods removed. Data from ACIS.
The hurricane and flood of October 1911
Looking back farther in history, however, there is one event that surpassed this one in terms of the level of flooding in the southwestern US (including Colorado): the “Sonora hurricane” of October 1911. This caused the flood of record on many rivers in southern Colorado, including the San Juan at Pagosa Springs (the 17.8 feet shown on the graph at the beginning). Jonathan Thompson of the Land Desk had a great summary a few years ago about that flood along with other historic floods in the region. (h/t John Orr for pointing me to this).
The track of the 1911 hurricane appears to be somewhat similar to what happened with Priscilla this year, with tropical moisture streaming ahead of the decaying circulation. (Animations below are from this year, the map below that is the track of the 1911 hurricane.)
Track of the October 1911 hurricane, along with rainfall measurements in the southwestern US. From the National Weather Service report “THE EFFECTS OF EASTERN NORTH PACIFIC TROPICAL CYCLONES
ON THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES”, https://www.weather.gov/media/wrh/online_publications/TMs/TM-197.pdf . h/t Jeff Lukas for pointing out this report.
There are a lot more rainfall observations available now than there were during the 1911 storm (thank you, CoCoRaHS observers and SNOTEL network, among others!), but from the available data, the rainfall totals over 1-2 days in the 1911 storm were greater than those in the 2025 event, but the fact that there were *two* tropical cyclone remnants in 2025 made the total precipitation over 5-7 days much greater. The break in the rainfall on Sunday in between the two waves of heavy rain was certainly important, or the flooding could have been closer to what happened in 1911.
And it turns out there was a particularly controversial rainfall observation in October 1911 — I was not really aware of this previously, but my predecessor Nolan Doesken was involved in many of the debates surrounding the chart shown here.
Photo of the cooperative observer form from Gladstone, Colorado, October 1911.
This is the observation form from Gladstone, Colorado, north of Silverton, at around 10,500 feet elevation. It shows 8.05″ on October 5, 1911. There’s no question that a lot of rain fell in southwestern Colorado during that storm based on the floods that happened, but if it’s possible for over 8″ of rain to fall in one day at 10,500 feet, that has major implications for the robustness of infrastructure that is needed. A later study of the flooding near Gladstone by Pruess, Wohl, and Jarrett found that it was not consistent with such large rainfall accumulations (or at least not within 24 hours), and the Gladstone observation is now generally deemed to be unreliable.(Thanks to Jeff Lukas for pointing this paper out.) Even so, Silverton recorded 4.05″ on October 5, 1911, and flooding on the Animas and San Juan Rivers reached record levels (at least since measurements have been in place)
The good news: improvements in drought conditions
The flooding in southwestern Colorado led to the destruction of multiple homes and to major disruptions around the region. But the flip side is that all the rain will help to ameliorate the lingering drought in the area. Everyone would prefer that the water arrive more steadily rather than in a huge burst like this, but as noted in this Colorado Sun story, small reservoirs like Vallecito saw big boosts in their storage from the storm. On this week’s US Drought Monitor, there were widespread two-category improvements in southwestern Colorado, going either from D2 (severe drought) to D0 (abnormally dry), or from D1 (moderate drought) to nothing on the map. Two-category improvements in one week are very rare for the Drought Monitor, typically only applied when there are major rain events associated with tropical systems.
Summary of US Drought Monitor changes for the week ending October 14, 2025. Courtesy of Allie Mazurek, Colorado Climate Center.
Both the Animas and Rio Grande Rivers saw huge increases in streamflow, with 7-day average flows near record levels for the fall, and close to the average early-summer peak from snowmelt runoff. On the Rio Grande, only the peak from October 1911 is higher than the current average flow for the period between October and April. [Daily data is missing for the Animas in October 1911, but it surely peaked even much higher than shown on the graph.]
Other than around the San Juan Mountains, this event didn’t end the drought that goes back to last winter (or even longer, depending on how you define it) across western Colorado, but did put a nice dent into the precipitation deficits that had mounted over that period. Now it’s time to look ahead to the snow accumulation season and see what arrives in the usual source of water in western Colorado: the mountain snowpack.
We got pulled in to analyzing this major storm, along with some other activities this week, but we will be finalizing and releasing our recap of Water Year 2025 within the next week or so, so please stay tuned for that! [Subscribe here if you want to get it delivered straight to your inbox. And use the ‘subscribe’ box here on the blog if you like these posts and want to get them in your email — it’s a different mailing list.]
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:
October 8, 2025
The Shoshone water rights acquisition and negotiations on post-2026 Lake Powell and Mead operations dominate conversations at the Colorado River District’s annual water seminar
Western Slope elected officials, water managers, engineers, and conservationists met in Grand Junction on Friday, Oct. 3, all focused on one thing: the uncertain future of the Colorado River.
“Water users, as a lot, tend to crave certainty, and that certainty seems more and more elusive these days,” said Peter Fleming, general counsel for the Colorado River District, at this year’s annual seminar hosted by the River District.
While the seminar broached many of the challenges and opportunities facing those who rely on the Colorado River, most discussions came back to two looming decisions that will dictate how the future looks for the 40 million people, seven states, two counties, and 30 tribal nations that rely on the waterway. This includes the River District’s proposed $99 million acquisition of the Shoshone water rights and the interstate negotiations over the post-2026 operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Both decisions will have ramifications for all Colorado River users — including agriculture, recreation, and municipal water — but are stalled by competing interests, be it political, geographic, or otherwise…The River District is currently working through a multi-year process to purchase the Shoshone water rights from Xcel Energy for $99 million. The rights — established in the early 1900s — are the oldest, non-consumptive water rights on the Colorado River…The Shoshone water right is currently tied to the hydroelectric power plant in Glenwood Canyon, which returns 100% of the water used to produce electricity to the river. However, he said that uncertainty surrounding the plant’s longevity, given its age and location — which he called an “area of great geohazard” — led the River District to seek acquisition of the rights. Under the proposed acquisition, Xcel would continue to operate the plant…The district intends to purchase the right and reach an instream flow agreement with the Colorado Water Conservation Board — the only entity that can hold an instream flow water right in Colorado. Doing so would maintain the status quo of the river, the River District claims. Defining what the status quo looks like, though, has led to disagreements between the West Slope entity and East Slope water providers…
Water allocation on the Colorado River dates back to the 1922 compact agreement, which divided the river between the upper and lower basins. Right now, it’s not the compact, but the 2007 operational guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead that are being renegotiated. While the four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — rely predominantly on snowpack for water supply, the Lower Basin states — Arizona, Wyoming, and Nevada — rely on releases from Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The 2007 guidelines for the two reservoirs, which govern how they store and release water, are set to expire in 2026. The seven states have until Nov. 11 to try and reach a consensus on the reservoirs’ post-2026 operations; otherwise, the federal government will step in and impose its own plan.
Becky Mitchell, who has been negotiating on Colorado’s behalf, said on Friday that she is “hopeful” for this seven-state consensus “because the alternative is not great.” “I think we’ve kicked the can and we’re at the end of the road,” Mitchell said…Throughout the negotiations, the Lower Basin states have advocated for basin-wide water use reductions. The Upper Basin states, however, have pushed back on the idea, claiming they already face natural water shortages.
“In Western Colorado, it happens every year,” [Andy] Mueller said.
President Donald Trump’s quest for what he calls energy dominance has run into a few snags, many of which are of his own making. Let’s set aside, for a moment, the fact that the term “energy dominance” doesn’t really make sense (What is energy dominating? Or are we dominating energy? Or …????). Let’s assume that it’s just an insecure male’s version of energy independence (so woke!), or just a dumb term for producing enough energy to keep all the data centers running.
In that case, don’t you think you’d want to use all of the tools — or weapons, if you prefer — at your disposal? Certainly any reasonable person, even one who doesn’t care about pollution or greenhouse gas emissions, would do that, pushing for more solar, wind, battery storage, hydropower, and geothermal, in addition to nuclear and natural gas. But as has been shown over and over, Trump tends to let his personal whims — along with a desire to crush everything that he thinks Democrats favor — erase rationality.
As a result, he has waged war on the most promising energy sources (i.e. solar and wind), while trying to dust off the old, dying ones (i.e. fossil fuels) and prop them up on the battle lines in hopes they won’t fall down too soon. Well, it’s not working out so well.
Oil and gas drilling is continuing on federal lands, although at a much slower pace than during the Biden administration, even though Trump has handed out drilling permits like candy at a parade. That’s in part due to low oil prices, and in part due to higher drilling costs: Trump’s tariffs have increased the price of pipe and other materials used on the rigs.
The number of rigs actively drilling has stayed somewhat steady over the last nine months, but rig counts remain below what they were in 2023 and 2024 and there are no signs that Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric is having the desired effect. Source: Baker Hughes, Land Desk graphic.
But the most obvious failure is playing out in the administration’s bid to revitalize the flagging coal industry. Let’s take a look:
After the administration and congressional Republicans made much ado about rescinding Biden-era moratoria on new federal coal leasing, the Interior Department rushed to auction off parcels containing hundreds of millions of tons of coal in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. They flopped:
In Montana, the Navajo Transitional Energy Company bid $186,000 for a tract containing an estimated 167 million tons of coal adjacent to its Spring Creek Mine in the Powder River Basin. That’s a mere 1/10 of one cent per ton. Contrast that with other Powder River Basin leases in 2012 that brought in more than $1/ton. The feds rejected the bid, saying it was below fair market value.
The dismal result prompted the Bureau of Land Management to cancel the 441-million-ton West Antelope coal lease sale in Wyoming.
And then the Interior Department rejected a single lowball bid for a lease containing about 6 million tons of federal coal in Utah.
On a somewhat related note: After the Trump administration announced it would subsidize the coal industry to the tune of $625 million, PacifiCorp said it would go forward with its plans to convert the Naughton coal plant in Wyoming to run on natural gas.
You’d think that maybe the administration would get a hint and adjust their strategy accordingly. Yeah, right.
A warning sign in the Lisbon Valley. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
Last week, Anfield Energy announced that Utah regulators had approved its proposed Velvet Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley. “Permitting Complete, Construction to Follow,” the company’s press release says, adding that they expected to break ground within 30 days. The project was the first beneficiary of Trump’s accelerated “energy emergency” permitting, and the BLM completed its environmental review in a mere 13 days.
The company may be jumping the gun a bit. The Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining actually gave only tentative approval to the project, conditioned upon the company posting a $539,000 bond. And it specifies that no ground disturbance can happen until the project gets other applicable agencies’ go-ahead.
But as Sarah Fields of Uranium Watch points out, Anfield has not yet received approvals from other state agencies for its radon ventilation shafts, wastewater treatment plant, or its air quality permit.
Anfield — or at least its PR team — is busy as of late. They also announced that they had completed the first phase of exploratory drilling at the defunct JD-7 uranium mine in the Paradox Valley. While these announcements are a dime-a-dozen, I was a bit intrigued by this one, because the JD-7 is like a poster child of the follies of the last uranium “boom.” It’s an open pit, a gaping wound overlooking the valley, but never actually produced any uranium because the “boom” busted before it even really began. Somehow I’m not convinced that this time will be much different.
As one might expect, the recent rains and resulting flooding boosted reservoir levels. Navajo Reservoir saw its surface level jump considerably (rising about 10 feet) due to all that water in the San Juan River. However, it’s still lower than it was this time last year.
Source: Lake Navajo Water Database
Lake Powell, which is much, much bigger, only added 1.28 feet to its surface level, and remains 32 feet below what it was on this date last year. But as the following graph shows, the big water is still making its way into the reservoir, so its level could keep climbing.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
I’m on the road right now, making my way from southern Oregon to southwestern Colorado via a circuitous route. And no, I’m not in the Silver Bullet (I’ll reveal the purpose of the trip later, along with more details about Land Desk transportation). I don’t have my good camera with me, but I’ve tried to get some snapshots anyway.
Gravestones in City Cemetery, Yreka, California. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson
Snow and water in the eastern Sierras. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Basin and Range country along Hwy 50. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson
“About 80% of the water goes to agriculture. If you’re using a big share and it’s more cost-effective, then that’s going to need to be the target,” said a co-author of the study. (Photo: Bureau of Reclamation Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The most cost-effective and quickest way to conserve the Colorado River’s shrinking water supply amid persistent drought and rapid population growth is changing how states handle the largest use of water on the river: agriculture.
Agriculture uses about 80% of the river’s water, but the good news is that paying farmers not to use water allotted to them has proved to be remarkably cost-effective.
That’s according to a comprehensive study examining 462 federally funded Colorado River conservation and supply projects using available spending data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association last week, was conducted by UC Riverside’s School of Public Policy in partnership with the Utah Rivers Council.
The water projects examined – ranging from large-scale infrastructure such as reservoirs and wastewater treatment plants to agricultural water use – totaled about $1 billion in federal funding between 2004 and 2024.
“How much water is actually being saved for every dollar we are spending?” asks Mehdi Nemati, an assistant professor of public policy, co-author of the study. “If we want to be more efficient or gain more water saved per dollar spent, then answering this question matters.”
“The big message is not all water savings are equal. Some projects saved water at a fraction of the cost of others,” he continued.
Agricultural conservation programs conserved water for as low as $69.89 per acre-foot. On average, agricultural conservation programs cost about $417 per acre-foot, while local supply projects —such as reservoirs, wells, and wastewater treatment facilities—cost more than $2,400 per acre-foot on average. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot, or about 325,851 gallons.)
“Spending money to conserve water within the agriculture sector seems to be one of the most cost-effective ways. There’s also a lot of room to improve and save more water in this sector,” Nemati said. “About 80% of the water goes to agriculture. If you’re using a big share and it’s more cost-effective, then that’s going to need to be the target.”
Historically, farmers have been reluctant to lower their water use out of fear the government might take their water permanently. But the study found that agricultural conservation programs, particularly those that provided financial incentives to promote behavioral changes among farmers, were successful at delivering water savings at a relatively low cost.
The most common type of agricultural conservation program was paying farmers who rely on the Colorado River to reduce their water use on crops during certain non-critical periods, saving an average of 747 acre-feet per year at a cost of about $140 per acre-foot.
Paying farmers to temporarily leave their fields empty – particularly for water-intensive crops like alfalfa – produced an average annual water saving of 17,500 acre-feet per year at an average cost of about $193 per acre-foot, according to the study.
“Grass, alfalfa, corn pasture, these are all water intensive crops. That’s where we get our most savings per dollar, and there is huge room for savings. I would say these are low hanging fruit,” Nemati said.
Other programs studied paid farmers to replace flood irrigation with precision methods such as drip or sprinkler systems, which demonstrated substantial efficiency improvements while maintaining agricultural productivity.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spent about 30% of water conservation funding between 2004 and 2024 on agricultural projects.
Agricultural conservation projects had an average lifespan of about three years, meaning once those short-term projects end water savings are expected to gradually decline.
Water-intensive crops are where the savings are
Much of the funding used to pay farmers to conserve Colorado River water was provided by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, which helped double agricultural water conservation from 1.5 million acre-feet of water to over 3 million acre-feet of water, according to the study.
Water recycling and treatment facilities also proved to be a cost-effective way to conserve substantial amounts of water in the long-term, despite higher initial construction costs. Water recycling and treatment facilities had an average lifetime cost of $385 per acre-feet with an average annual water savings of about 18,600 acre-feet.
Despite the large potential for water savings through water reuse projects, only about 7% of the bureau’s water conservation funding was spent on reuse projects. California got the lion’s share of that funding, about 80%. Upper Basin states received only 4% of reuse funding, while Tribal areas received no funding.
There’s a lot of room for improvement in water recycling across states that rely on the Colorado River. One recent study found that Upper Basin states – Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico – recycled less than 5% of their water, as compared to Lower Basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada– which recycled more than 30% of their water.
The study also revealed a major disparity in federal funding for water conservation projects between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin states.
Between 2004 and 2024, Upper Basin states only received about 6% of overall water conservation spending by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, while about 75% was directed to the Lower Basin, and about 19% was designated for Tribal areas, some of which extend across both regions.
Nevada received nearly $6 million for 28 water conservation projects for an average annual savings of roughly 1,500 acre-feet at a cost of about $3,800 per acre-foot.
It’s a stark contrast to Upper Basin states like Colorado, which received about $610,000 in federal funding for 47 water conservation projects for an average annual savings of about 2,100 acre-feet at a cost of about $285 per acre-foot.
It’s an example of how federal dollars could be more efficiently used to conserve water across the Colorado River Basin by rethinking funding priorities.
“In some areas in Nevada there has been tremendous investment in the urban side and efficiency gains in the urban side. But if you’re looking at the lowest dollar per acre feet, water-intensive crops are the areas we want to target,” Nemati said.
“There are areas in the Upper Basin that could save water for a fraction of money being used in Nevada or southern California,” he said.
Just after the Southwest suffered through one of the drier summers on record, the remnants of cyclone Priscilla barreled through the region and dumped enormous amounts of rain in the San Juan Mountains and other areas. Previously dry arroyos became raging torrents, and the rivers swelled up and, in many cases, jumped their banks and wreaked havoc and destruction. And it happened not once, but twice — so far — with the first wave hitting over the weekend of Oct. 11, and the second wave underway as I write this on Tuesday morning.
Priscilla favored — if that’s the right word here — the high country, depositing more than four inches of rain during the first wave at Columbus Basin in the La Plata Mountains, more than five inches at the Vallecito SNOTEL station, and more than six inches at Wolf Creek Pass. Interestingly, Molas Pass south of Silverton received “only” three inches during the first wave.
Rain totals for select locations from the first wave of the storm (Oct. 10-12). Source: National Weather Service.
The moisture on Wolf Creek and surrounding areas made its way into the San Juan River, which ballooned into a roiling monster that inundated parts of downtown Pagosa Springs, including sections of the hot springs resort. During the first wave, the river’s flow reached 8,270 cubic feet per second, which was the highest level since the flood of 1927. And during the second wave, it reached a whopping 8,450 cfs.
Note that this is for water years (which is why today’s flows appear under 2026), that several years are missing prior to 1935, and that the 1911 number is an estimate and the 1927 number may be as well. Source: USGS.
While today’s high waters pale in comparison to those that raced through Pagosa (destroying homes and infrastructure) in 1911, it is notable that they far exceed those during the flood of 1970, which was the largest flooding to hit the region in more recent memory. Here’s my take on the 1911 flood in Pagosa:
Clearly all the water will relieve some drought conditions, though certainly not cure them yet. And it is a huge start to the 2026 water year, as can be seen in this graph of accumulated precipitation at Wolf Creek Pass. The station has received 9.9 inches of rain in just two weeks, the highest amount on record.
The San Juan wasn’t the only river to rage. Vallecito Creek above the reservoir hit a mind-blowing 6,980 cubic feet per second on Oct. 11, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of homes in the area. The second wave was substantial, as well, but so far isn’t as extreme as the first wave.
The Animas River through Durango, meanwhile, also grew tremendously, but did not reach flood stage during the first wave, topping out at just under 5,000 cfs. Levels are still increasing as I write this, but it doesn’t appear that they will go much higher this time around. Stay safe everyone!
And, if you want to read more about the history of flooding in the Four Corners Country, check out my long-read from a few years back. I’ve taken down the paywall for a limited time on this one, so everyone can read it — even you free-riders! (And if you like it, maybe you’d consider subscribing).
Wonk warning: I’ll be explicating the chart above. If this sort of thing bores you, or just gets you more, not less confused about what’s going on with the river today as the negotiators for post-2026 system management continue to negotiate with a November 11 deadline, then I’d say take a break until next post, when I’m going to try to explain why I call this stuff ‘Romancing the River.’
For those reading on here, remember my purpose from earlier posts: to show a reasonably equitable division of the consumptive use of the Colorado River waters among the seven states and Mexico, with no ‘temporary’ division into competitive Upper and Lower Basins – the Compact they really wanted to do in 1922. I present the table above as just a draft effort in that direction; there will be arguments about some of the specific figures, but the method to the madness might have some merit.
All the consumptive use information is from Bureau of Reclamation records accessible online, or from other cited historical documents going back to the 1922 Compact. The Bureau publishes consumptive use records every five years – eventually. (Figures for 2016-2020, for example, still have ‘Coming soon!’ where one would click to get them.) All quantities are expressed in millions of acre-feet (maf) or thousands (kaf).
To just jump into it, here’s a column-by-column explication of the chart. I suggest clicking on the image above to get an enlargable view of the table. If nothing else, this table is kind of a history-in-numbers of the Colorado River in the 20th century CE. (It is important to remember too that, thanks to the 1952 McCarran Amendment, all the Indian tribal rights are negotiated intrastate, although suits and appeals go to the federal courts – a separate set of challenges from what the seven states are trying to negotiate right now.)
Column 1, River Users: I make no reference to the Upper and Lower Basin, but it does make sense to distinguish between the ‘hot desert’ states below the canyon region, and the ‘cold (orographic) desert’ states above the canyons, due to the significant difference in system losses – evaporation, transpiration, bank and aquifer storage and other losses. We will start with some analysis of those lines in the table, one for each set of desert states (considerably higher for the subtropical ‘hot desert’ region than the higher and cooler ‘cold (or steppe) desert’ region.
System Losses, Structural Deficit and Surpluses: These constitute the river’s wild card. Natural system losses were listed in the paragraph above – all the natural things that happen to water mixed with sun, wind and thirsty ground. Storage reservoirs are built on snowmelt rivers to increase the amount of water available for use through a longer period of time, storing the two-month snowmelt flood for use through the rest of the year. But increasing in reservoirs the amount of water available for use does not increase the amount of water; in fact, it decreases that, as the stored water spreads out in reservoirs under a desert sun that can evaporate annually as much as six acre-feet per acre off of open water in the lower Colorado River.
This was completely ignored in the Colorado River Compact, despite the fact, that as Eric Kuhn and John Fleck pointed out in their book Science Be Dammed, there were scientists who tried to advise the commissioners. Today, with two huge reservoirs, another half dozen big reservoirs and a lot of little ones, along with around 600 miles of large open aqueducts meandering through the hot deserts, somewhere between 12 and 16 percent of the river is lost to the system under the sun and wind.
The compact commissioners, thinking they had an 18 maf river, believed that evaporation would be covered by the surplus they anticipated above and beyond the quantities consumed by the seven states and Mexico. That was actually the case, well into the 1980s. But as more users materialized in the states above the canyons, and the Central Arizona Project began to draw from the mainstem, the ‘structural deficit’ from ignoring the system losses began to draw down the big reservoirs. These natural system losses were estimated at around 800,000 af annually from the mainstem for the states below the canyons, and between 400,000 and 500,000 from Powell and the other Colorado River Storage Project reservoirs.
Another element in the structural deficit was consistent provision for Mexico’s treaty allotment of 1.5 maf per year. The compact made the Upper and Lower Basin each responsible for half of whatever portion of that allotment which was not covered by surplus flow (up to 750 kaf). Beginning in 1971, however, under a 1970 reservoir management agreement, the Bureau began releasing the Upper Basin’s full half of the 1.5 maf each year, whether it was a ‘surplus year’ or not. A similar arrangement was not made for the Lower Basin share of the Mexican allotment; the Bureau apparently has just continued to charge it to ‘surplus’ – along with the Lower Basin’s system losses – whether or not there was actually that much surplus. These ‘structural deficits’ were almost as responsible for the big 21st-century reservoir drawdown as was the ‘millennial drought.’ A figure of around 2 maf was established for these natural and cultural commitments: 1.5 maf for the ‘hot desert’ states, 1.2 maf for the ‘cold desert’ states – those states having consistently delivered their 750 kaf share for Mexico (leaving the 450 kaf in the table). The three states below the canyons have apparently agreed to accept responsibility for their 1.5 maf after 2026, although they are not saying much yet about how that consumption will be divided up.
Back now to the columns.Column 2, Authorized Allotments: These are based on the 18 million acre-feet (maf) river we all believed we were working with back in the 1920s. The Colorado River Compact allotted 7.5 maf to each of its Basins. The Boulder Canyon Project Act made the Bureau water-master for the Lower Basin states, and set their individual allotments, contested by Arizona but confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the last Arizona v. California case (BCPA/SC). The Mexican allotment was set by the 1944 two-rivers treaty. And in 1948, the four Upper Basin states created the Upper Colorado River Compact. Knowing by then that it was not an 18 maf river, they gave themselves percentages ‘of whatever’s left’ (OWL) after compact obligations to the downriver states and their share of the Mexican treaty obligation were fulfilled. This column shows what that ‘% OWL’ would be if those states actually got 7.5 maf regularly. The cold-desert states have never even come close to those figures.
Column 3: This column shows the allotments for the 14.5 maf average of the river’s ‘natural’ flows for the 1930-2000 period, the period when all of the river’s major development took place. All of the ‘averaging’ fell on the states above the canyons. Allotments for Mexico and the three states below the canyons were legally and physically ‘set in concrete’ at 9 maf – legally by the Supreme Court affirmation of the BCPA allotments, and physically by the two big linked reservoirs, Mead and Powell. The four states above the canyons took their floating percentages from what nature provided, or didn’t – estimated natural flows for that period ranged between 5 and 24 maf. The average ‘of whatever’s left’ (OWL) after the obligatory quantity was sent to the states below the canyon and Mexico was assumed to range between 5 and 6 maf – if no attention was paid to the structural deficit and system losses. And for most of that period, there were no worries there; the states above the canyon were not using that much water until the substantial transmountain diversions (100 percent depletions) were completed. The table figures for those states (unlike the figures for the states below the canyons) amounted to wishful thinking for a future that will never happen.
Column 4 gets real: a compilation of three columns with five-year consumptive use averages for three periods, covering the time when the physical development of the river storage and delivery systems was being completed, and consumptive use of the river was approaching full development too – but just on the edge of the trauma of the ‘millennial drought’ (which may last for a millennium) and the near-collapse of the storage system. The attempt at normal distribution for the 2001-2005 period might be considered just beyond that edge – like the roadrunner cartoons, when Wiley Coyote runs a few yards into the air beyond a cliff – then looks down…. These dates are bookended by two ‘reservoir coordination’ elements in the ‘Law of the River’: the 1970 ‘Criteria for the Coordinated Long-range Operation of Colorado River Reservoirs’ and the 2007 ‘Interim Guidelines’ for coordinated operation of the Powell and Mead Reservoirs, set to expire next year.
The Bureau’s five-year compilation tables include, for the first time maybe, the system losses/structural deficit.
Something worth noting: California’s consumptive use during this 35-year period started well above the state’s 4.4 maf compact allotment, and then declined, while uses for all the other states were increasing. This is because California’s major users had decided, before Hoover Dam was even started, that they would ‘borrow’ 800,000 af of unused Upper Basin water until the Upper Basin needed it. They would, in other words, grow on borrowed water. The Bureau of Reclamation allowed this, because they assumed that the Colorado River would eventually be augmented by even greater public works from some larger river basin. Optimism is a sunny thing. On the strength of this, the Metropolitan Water District on the Southern California coast built its 250-mile aqueduct to carry twice the 500,000 af that was their share of California’s 4.4 maf allotment. They began decreasing their ‘borrowed’ usage during this 35-year period, in anticipation of the 2006 California Limitation Act – thanks mostly to the California State Water Project exporting water from Northern California.
Arizona’s jump in usage between 1971-75 and 1991-95 was due to the completion of the Central Arizona Project. To give a more accurate picture of ‘the completed river system,’ only its 1991-95 and 2001-2005 figures were used in compiling Column 5.
Column 5: A compiled average for the three five-year periods – resulting in the 14.5 maf river of 1930-2000.
Column 6: An attempt to divvy up the system losses/structural deficit (SLD) between the seven states and Mexico. My operating assumption is that the ‘hot desert’ states and the ‘cold desert’ states should share these losses proportionally to their consumptive use. This meant creating percentages of the 9.0 maf of decreed use for the four entities below the canyons; the four entities above the canyons were already operating on percentages.
I’m sure the state (guess which one) with a lot of pre-compact ‘senior’ water will object vehemently to this concept, wanting all the junior users to absorb those losses. This is a misapplication of the appropriation doctrine, in my estimation; it was set up for resolving differences among specific users, not for the resolution of major river management issues related to natural phenomena like evaporation and riparian storage, or natural and cultural changes like a warming climate. These issues fall equally on all users, everyone’s fault and responsibility. But such rational and moral arguments will probably not dent California’s resolve of seniority uber alles.
Column 7 just adds those proportionate shares of the system losses/structural deficit to the consumptive use averages for the seven states and Mexico in Column 5, leaving the system losses/structural deficit lines empty. This is not increasing the amount of water for each state; it is increasing the amount of consumption each has to manage. This column, I’m arguing, is the seven-way equitable division of consumptive use that the Compact commissioners wanted to create in 1922, but lacked the information about both the river and their futures to develop. Now, a century later, that future is here, like it or not, and we’re sadder but wiser in knowing the river.
There’s probably an error at the bottom of this column; instead of 0.00 in the ‘Surplus or Drain’ column, it should probably be ‘-2.00 maf’: the difference between the 14.5 maf 20th-century river and the 12.5 maf early 21st-century river. This was the frightening drawdown of the early 21st century decades.
Column 8 then uses the Column 7 figures to calculate what percentage of the 14.5 maf river each of the eight entities ‘owns.’
Column 9 then applies those percentages to the 12.5 maf Colorado River of the 21st century – and subtracts from each state’s total consumption its share of system losses and structural deficit – thus showing what each state will actually have with which to try to do what it is doing today with its presumed allotment for consumptive use of the 14.5 maf river of bygone days. Read it and weep. (Note that I’ve put the 1.5 and 0.45 maf system losses/structural deficit numbers back in Column 9 to remind you that they have not disappeared from the system; they’ve just been re-collated from those portions of the individual states’ total consumptive uses.)
I would welcome comments and criticisms of this work. I do believe it is the kind of pinning down of numbers we need to finally do for the Colorado River, if we are going to go into the post-2026 era with our eyes open. ‘Woke,’ you might say.
By my next post, there will probably either be a new management plan for the river in the messy agonies of birthing – or there won’t. If there is, I would wager a six-pack that they will drag along the old two-basin cold-war division. And I’d wager further that the ratio of total consumptive use for the four ‘states’ below the canyons to the four states above the canyons will be between within a few points either way of 70-30. Is that ‘equitable’? Given the amount and productivity of land under cultivation, and the number of people gathered in large metropolitan ganglia, and the location of most of the Indian nations, it probably is. But – it’ll probably be another point of discussion.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Here’s the release from the Colorado Water Trust (Kate Ryan and Blake Mamich):
October 7, 2025
Colorado’s rivers are running on empty as drought grips the intermountain west. But a record-setting response from Colorado Water Trust is helping keep critical stretches of rivers around our state flowing for fish, farms, and communities alike.
This year, Colorado Water Trust is operating more projects across more rivers than at any point in its 24-year history—and restoring more water to streams than ever before. Across the state and on both sides of the Continental Divide, Colorado Water Trust is partnering with local irrigators, water districts, state agencies, and funders to release more than 16,000 acre-feet of water (over 5.2 billion gallons) back into rivers when it’s needed most. This unprecedented effort highlights how collaboration and creativity can sustain Colorado’s rivers through crisis, offering a model of resilience at a time when the state’s waterways face one of their toughest seasons yet.
Colorado is in the grip of a devastating drought. Nearly 45% of the state is currently experiencing at least moderate drought conditions, with significant portions in severe and extreme drought. Streams across the state are shrinking, water temperatures are rising, and ecosystems, farms, and communities are all feeling the strain. In many places, streamflow gauges are reporting flows in the lowest 10-25 percentile for this time of year. Rivers in some regions are hitting historically low levels far earlier in the season. This year marks the earliest call on the Yampa River in recorded history. The situation is dire, and without swift, creative intervention, stretches of Colorado’s treasured rivers could be left dry.
In response, Colorado Water Trust is rising to meet this challenge by running nearly all of its projects across the state, ensuring that water is returned to rivers when it is needed most. The scale of the response is unprecedented—this year is predicted to see more water restored to Colorado’s rivers through Colorado Water Trust’s work than in any other year since the organization was founded. Some of this year’s projects include:
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Map credit: CWCB
Colorado River: On the Colorado River, Colorado Water Trust is again operating its project on the 15-Mile Reach, a stretch of river critical to the survival of four endangered and threatened fish species. Colorado Water Trust is expected to restore well over 1 billion gallons of water to this critical reach by releasing water from Ruedi Reservoir near Basalt which is then restored to the Fryingpan and Roaring Fork Rivers before it reaches the 15-Mile Reach of the Colorado River. Through innovative partnerships with the Grand Valley Water Users Association, Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, and the Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Recovery Program, water is being delivered at key times to support flows in this fragile habitat. Backed by generous support from corporate partners such as Niagara Cares, Coca-Cola, and Coors Seltzer, this project has become a model of collaboration and creativity.
Yampa River: Further north in the Yampa Valley, Colorado Water Trust is implementing our projects on the Upper and Lower Yampa River. Releases from Stagecoach Reservoir, made possible through collaboration with Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District and the Colorado Water Conservation Board, have been restoring significant volumes of water to the Upper Yampa as it passes through downtown Steamboat Springs since June. This water is vital for endangered fish within the reach, as well as the recreation economy downstream. Additionally, on the Lower Yampa, strategic releases out of Elkhead Reservoir in coordination with the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program and the Colorado River District are sustaining critical habitat for endangered fish, as well as supporting the agricultural community downstream. These projects—already amounting to thousands of acre-feet—are keeping the Yampa River flowing through one of its most critical seasons. Without these boosts, irrigators, fish, and the communities of the valley would be facing even greater hardship. These projects are made possible thanks to generous funding from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the Yampa River Fund, Colorado River District, and more.
Around the state: On smaller tributaries, Colorado Water Trust is also making a difference.The Slater Creek Project, in partnership with local ranchers and Western Resource Advocates, is improving conditions for an important headwater tributary to the Yampa River while supporting the local agricultural economy. So far, this project has restored over 100 million gallons of water to Slater Creek. On the Fraser River, Colorado Water Trust has teamed up with the Grand County Mutual Ditch and Reservoir Company to improve late-season flows through the Vail Ditch Project. This effort, which will return roughly 16 million gallons of water this year, helps cool the river and support critical trout spawning runs. In Boulder County in the Indian Peaks Wilderness by the Continental Divide, Colorado Water Trust’s project out of Jasper Reservoir released water and accounted for approximately 32% of flows in Middle Boulder Creek upstream of Barker Reservoir and 25% of flows in Boulder Creek in downtown Boulder. Across the state, permanent long-term projects are also running, steadily and reliably delivering water to rivers during the hottest, driest part of the year.
Taken together, these efforts represent the most ambitious season in Colorado Water Trust’s history. By weaving together partnerships with irrigation companies, conservancy districts, state and federal agencies, and local communities, and by drawing on the support of a diverse array of funders—Colorado Water Trust is delivering hope where it is needed most.
“These projects demonstrate the power of partnership to keep rivers flowing, even in the toughest years,” said Kate Ryan, Colorado Water Trust’s Executive Director. “It just goes to show how everyone—no matter who you are or where you live—cares about protecting Colorado’s rivers and the people who depend on them.”
While drought continues to tighten its grip on Colorado, these projects demonstrate that collaboration and innovation can keep rivers alive. In the face of crisis, Colorado Water Trust is proving that when partners and funders come together, rivers can be sustained for people, farms, fish, and communities alike. This year will mark the most flow ever restored to Colorado’s rivers through Colorado Water Trust’s work—a milestone born from collaboration, ingenuity, and urgent necessity.
“It’s a strange mix of pride and worry,” said Blake Mamich, Program Director for the Colorado Water Trust “On one hand, I’m thrilled to see so much water restored to rivers this year. On the other, I know that the only reason we can do this work at this scale is because it’s so needed: drought and climate stress are hitting us harder and harder. That’s a hard truth we carry with us every day.”
As Colorado enters one of its most critical water years in recent memory, Colorado Water Trust is committed to ensuring that, even in the face of historic drought, Colorado’s rivers will continue to flow.
About Colorado Water Trust
Colorado Water Trust is a statewide nonprofit organization with a mission to restore water to Colorado’s rivers. Since 2001, they’ve restored over 26 billion gallons of water to Colorado’s rivers and streams. ColoradoWaterTrust.org.
As the Upper Division States negotiate ways to equitably and sustainably manage the Colorado River’s future supplies, their water users face the harsh reality of living within the river’s 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.
“The 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,” said Diane Agnew, the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s Water Rights Program Manager. “This 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.”
In Colorado, the Dolores Water Conservancy District’s water users faced cuts of up to 44%. Thousands of acres remain fallowed both on the Ute Farm & Ranch and north towards Dove Creek.
“Our farmers are left with year-by-year gambles with last-second planning going late into May and limiting farmers’ abilities to make long-term, successful crop rotation planning,” said Ken Curtis, GM of the Dolores Water Conservancy District. “The Dolores snowpack is disappearing, and the historic runoff has dropped by even greater magnitudes. Water is no longer reliably available.”
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 — all of their shortages are uncompensated and involuntary.
The District supplies water to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s 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].
“We [FRE] are merely surviving, not adapting,” said FRE irrigation manager Michael Vicente when responding to his view of the historic drought. Severe water shortages in Utah’s Uintah Basin, driven by Colorado River cuts, are forcing ranchers to reduce cattle herds, raising production costs and straining the local economy.
“Spring runoff 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 affected senior 1861 water rights.
These shortages are directly impacting cattle production,” said Dan Larsen, Board Member at the Colorado River Authority of Utah. “Ranchers are being forced to cut back their herds, which not only raises costs for producers but also ripples through our entire local economy.”
Hydrologic shortage is also impacting Utah’s 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 “Persistent 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.”
In Wyoming, historic drought and Colorado River shortages have driven the Black’s Fork River down to a 1891 priority date, forcing the state to regulate off water rights to more than 52,000 irrigated acres in 2025 in that drainage alone.
“This year, more than 163,000 acres of irrigation were shut off in Wyoming’s portion of the Green River Basin,” said Kevin Payne, Division IV Superintendent of the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office. “This is an extraordinary reduction with serious impacts on producers and rural communities across southwest Wyoming.”
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 Basin’s sacrifices aren’t 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 an underwater dam to keep salt water from moving up the Mississippi River in Louisiana.
A cold-water flow experiment at Glen Canyon Dam to disrupt non-native fish downstream will end within a week.
Senate passes a defense spending authorization bill with water-related provisions.
And lastly, EPA sits on a “forever chemical” toxicity assessment, ProPublica finds.
“Do not make American families pay the price for Trump’s war on affordable American energy.” – Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) speaking on the Senate floor to rally votes to end President Trump’s 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 Democrats’ effort to repeal the emergency declaration failed.
River Mile 53.1: Approximate location of the front of the saltwater “wedge” 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 “advanced nuclear” 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 town’s 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 ‘Forever Chemical’ Report An EPA report on the toxicity of PFNA – one of the thousands of PFAS in circulation – 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 – 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 Dam’s 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 “significant.” 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 …
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 he’s 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 “Department of War” to target the “enemy within,” they are suing and bullying the media for reporting the truth and making fun of him, and they have engaged in a brutal — and performative — intimidation and terror campaign against immigrants and anyone who “looks” 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 America’s 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 — even his beloved oil and gas industry).
His quest for “Energy Dominance” is anything but that. Sure, he’s trying to help out his fossil fuel tycoon buddies, but I think he’s even more interested in retribution against the “libs” and the environmentalists that takes the form of an all-out assault on the environment, the climate, public lands — 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 “all of the above” 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. Where’s 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), it’s 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 won’t be saved just because you’re 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 Colorado’s Front Range, in Nevada, and elsewhere.
I’m not saying all of these projects were wonderful, or that they’d 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. Here’s 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 to install 1,000 megawatt-hour iron-air battery energy storage systems in Colorado and Minnesota.
$50 million: Amount rescinded from the Tribal Energy Consortium’s 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 a 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 — 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 it’s been since 2021. Go figure.
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
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 Management’s Rock Springs 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, Wyoming’s 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. That’s 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 Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” agenda. More details and commenting instructions here.
The BLM is “reassessing” 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 lobby sued to overturn the plan, but were shot down in court. You have until Oct. 24 to comment on this one.
During water year 2025, drought moved into and intensified throughout most of the Interior West. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor.
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
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 aren’t updated yet, and may not be for a while, thanks to the government shutdown and the Trump administration’s fear of the word “climate.”
For the most part, the water year started out quite nicely, precipitation wise, with above “normal” 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 Powell’s 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 Powell’s 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 Powell’s 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).
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.
🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡
You just can’t make this stuff up. MAGA-world is rife with conspiracies about the Charlie Kirk killing last month, which is hardly surprising. I guess it’s 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 — a favorite theory among a certain sect of the right wing.
But then there’s Candace Owens, MAGA podcaster and Crazytown mayoral candidate. She’s 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 — with Ryan Bundy and his “militia” buddies making a cameo — 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 Owens’ argument and alleged evidence (including the link, with a suggestion not to click on it) regarding Lyman and couldn’t make any sense of it. But I guess Owens’s 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, I’ll 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 — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — 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.
“The Upper Basin’s sacrifices aren’t abstract; they carry real human and economic consequences,” 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. That’s 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. It’s enough to cover a 1-acre field in 1 foot of water.
For the entire water year — from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30 — about 4.69 million acre-feet ran into Lake Powell from the Upper Colorado River. That’s 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 state’s portion of the Green River Basin, according to the river commission news release.
“This is an extraordinary reduction with serious impacts on producers and rural communities across southwest Wyoming,” said Kevin Payne, Division IV superintendent of the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office.
Severe water shortages in Utah’s 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 District’s 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.
“Our farmers are left with year-by-year gambles with last-second planning going late into May and limiting farmers’ abilities to make long-term, successful crop rotation planning,” Curtis said in the news release. “The Dolores snowpack is disappearing, and the historic runoff has dropped by even greater magnitudes. Water is no longer reliably available.”
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s Farm and Ranch Enterprise, one of Colorado’s 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.
“We are merely surviving, not adapting,” Michael Vicente, the enterprise’s irrigation manager, said about the historic drought.
These shortages are uncompensated and involuntary, the Upper Colorado River Commission pointed out. That’s 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 river’s 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.
“As Colorado River negotiations continue, Upper Basin leaders are clear,” the Upper Colorado River Commission news release said. “River operations must adapt to the actual supply and prioritize rebuilding storage to restore resiliency.”
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.
“We are working hard to steadily grow YBASIN in order to monitor changing conditions in our region connected to our changing climate,” said Jayla Poppleton, YVSC resilient water and watersheds director. “It’s critically important that we understand how aridification and dry soils are impacting runoff and water availability for our communities, agricultural producers and ecosystems.”
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.
“The goal of YBASIN is to establish long-term soil moisture data to better understand how dry soil conditions impact snowmelt runoff across the watershed,” CW3E Director Marty Ralph said. “As extremes continue to impact precipitation – and correspondingly spring runoff and water availability – a continuous record will support more accurate water supply forecasting and help inform critical management decisions.”
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.
“The YBASIN network is a critical investment in the effective management of local water resources,” said Andy Rossi, general manager of the conservancy district. “By 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.”
It’s 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 “limit the Colorado River Conflict.”
The primary “conflict” in this case is the growing rift between supply and demand: The Colorado River’s 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 it’s 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.
Let’s go through the proposed solutions and I’ll elaborate a bit more there:
Recommendation 1: Forgo New Dams and Diversions
This is a no-brainer. Reality and nature are forcing the Colorado River’s 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 GBWN’s interactive map here). While some of these projects are, pardon the pun, mere pipe dreams, others are serious proposals.
The project’s 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 “not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.”3
Thing is, there’s 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 isn’t 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 Mead’s 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. California’s cuts don’t kick in at this level because it has the most senior rights.
The Upper Basin doesn’t have this sort of curtailment schedule. Again, they can justify this by saying they aren’t 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 “Natural Flow” Plan Won’t 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, there’s no way that the “Supply Driven” or “Natural Flow” plan will work.
What that proposal does, by the way, is divide the river up according to what’s actually in the river. The Upper Basin would release from Glen Canyon Dam a percentage of the rolling three-year average of the “natural flow” — an estimate of what flows would be without any upstream diversions — at Lee Ferry. While this plan has been deemed “revolutionary” and a major “breakthrough,” 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 Basin’s consumptive use, the same is not true for the Lower Basin — 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 Southwest’s grid. That becomes no longer possible when the reservoir’s 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 “run-of-the-river” facility, meaning reservoir outflows would equal inflows and there would be no storage capacity.
Other possibilities include operating the dam as a “run-of-the-river” 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 Authority’s lead on this, which makes sense, given that they’ve 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. They’ve 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 “vital for stabilizing water supplies in times of drought and feeding the nation in the winter months for decades to come.” 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.
Farmers’ adaptation must be supported by federal, state, and local governments, and, “these farmers must be able to choose how to adapt for the future themselves. They know their land and business models the best.”
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 — in parts of Arizona it goes unregulated and virtually unmonitored — and begin managing it “with the understanding that it is all one conjunctive source.”
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. “I don’t think this means throwing out the compact,” he replied. “But it does mean adapting to the river we have, not the one assumed in the compact.”
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, it’s 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.
“Glen Canyon Dam was built in the era of excess water to meet a specific accounting obligation,” Balkan said. “Today, there is no more excess water and the accounting obligation is going away. So let’s start the conversation about the post Lake Powell future.”
Screenshot from Carbon Mapper’s 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.
🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭
Today’s 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.
It’s 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, it’s 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 California’s Central Valley. Source: Carbon Mapper.
⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️
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. Miami’s little downtown seems on the brink of being swallowed up by Freeport-McMoran’s massive Miami copper mine, while Globe, with its stately brick and stone buildings, was clearly the more prosperous of the two sister communities. They’re 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 didn’t 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 don’t really count as a diversion or an increase in consumption. The problem on the Colorado River, however, is not a lack of storage, it’s a lack of water. Even huge water years like 2023 failed to even get close to filling up the system’s 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 Basin’s allocation to 8.5 MAF. This still leaves room, theoretically, up to 2 MAF for Mexico. Even back in 1922, however, the river didn’t actually deliver that much water.
3 During the 10-year period from 2015 to 2024, the Upper Basin delivered about 84 MAF to the Lower Basin, meaning they’ve 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.
“We are just preparing for a hotter, drier environment to make sure that we always have safe drinking water,” Renstrom said.
The plan is currently being reviewed by leaders within the county’s 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.
