January date scrapped in favor of June 29, 2026, after โkey witness unavailabilityโ โ four years after Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management was first approved by Subdistrict 1 and with the unconfined aquifer still in a historic decline
The San Luis Valleyโs highly-anticipated district water court case โ the water trial of this century if you will โ originally scheduled to last five weeks beginning in January has been pushed back six months to the summer of 2026 due to the departure of a key witness in the fallout from a series of contentious October emails.
The Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management by Subdistrict 1 in the Rio Grande Water Conservation District has lived a precarious life without ever being implemented, going back to 2022 when it was originally crafted by subdistrict managers and January 2023 when it was adopted by Rio Grande Water Conservation District board.
Later came approval by the state engineer, and then after objections were filed against the new amended plan, Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales set a trial date to commence on Jan. 5, 2026, and to last five weeks.
That is, until the week before Thanksgiving when Gonzales scrapped the January date in favor of June 29, 2026, some four years after the plan was first approved at the subdistrict level and the unconfined aquifer still in a historic decline. The judge did so after a series of emails sent by a key expert witness for the main objectors to the plan surfaced.
The effect is that a new plan to recover the Rio Grandeโs unconfined aquifer, which has been approved at the local and state levels but still requires sign-off from district water court, remains in limbo.
Following filings by the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group requesting a six-month continuance to the start of the trial, and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and state Division of Water Resources objecting to the request, Gonzales ruled the two main objectors challenging the new aquifer recovery plan had good reason to ask for a six-month continuance after Taylor Adams, an environmental and water resources engineer for Hydros Consulting in Boulder, resigned from the case due to โpersonal and family circumstances.โ
Adams was set to challenge the Subdistrict 1 water plan on a variety of engineering fronts until a series of emails he sent in October to State Engineer Jason Ullman and Senior Assistant Attorney General Preston Hartmann came to light. In one email, he tells Ullman, โAlso, GFY.โ In another, he emails that he is โno longer interested in anything other than publicly exploding the rampant corruption at DWR and the AG Office.โ
And in an email sent Sunday, Oct. 19, to Attorney General Phil Weiser, Adams writes, โWe havenโt met, but I understand that youโre running for governor of Colorado. You should know that if you continue this pursuit without addressing the persistent and laughable perjury that has been carried out in your name by Preston Hatman (sic) and Jason Ullman, you will be the subject of my attention throughout your campaignโฆโ
The Rio Grande Water Conservation District asked Gonzales not to delay the water court proceedings due to the urgency to recover the unconfined aquifer and the lack of โcredible evidence that demonstrates that Mr. Adams is unavailable. Rather, they now assert that he โshould not be pressured into returning to the case at the risk of further harm to his mental health.โโ
โIn any event,โ district water attorneys argued in their objection to a trial delay, โnone of this changes the fact that the unconfined aquifer is still over 1.3 million acre-feet below the water levels measured in 1976, and more than 830,000 acre-feet below the water levels previously determined by this Court and the Colorado Supreme Court to be sustainable.โ
State Engineer Jason Ullman, consultant Taylor Adams, Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales
Subdistrict 1 is home to the San Luis Valleyโs richest crops of potatoes, barley and alfalfa. Without recovery of the shallow aquifer, the state is threatening mass shut down of groundwater pumping wells and requires both a master plan and annual replacement plans to show recovery efforts.
The subdistrictโs proposed Fourth Plan of Water Management is its most drastic effort yet to meet the stateโs orders. The new plan, crafted in 2022 and adopted by the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in January 2023, is designed to โmatch the amount of groundwater pumping to the amount of water coming into the subdistrict.โ
It does this through a 1-to-1 augmentation, meaning for every acre-foot of water used, an acre-foot has to be returned to the unconfined aquifer through recharging ponds. The amended plan relies on covering any groundwater withdrawals with natural surface water or the purchase of surface water credits.
Farmers in the subdistrict have expressed support for the plan, which includes a $500 per acre-foot overpumping fee that farmers would pay if they exceed the amount of natural surface water tied to the property in their farming operations.
Objections are coming from farmers who do not have natural surface water coming into their property and around the steep fee for purchasing surface water credits from a neighboring operation to offset groundwater pumping irrigation. Both proponents and opponents of the plan say the $500 per acre-foot overpumping fee could put farmers who rely on groundwater pumping out of business.
The five-week water trial will sort through these issues in much more granular detail. With the trial date pushed back six months, any new strategy to recover the Valleyโs ailing aquifer will shift into 2027 at the soonest.
San Luis Valley farm. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
The News:The Trump administration last week weighed in on the 53-year battle over what waterways are covered by the 1972 Clean Water Act โ with a draft rule that would narrow the definition of โWaters of the United States,โ or WOTUS. The rule would effectively remove federal CWA protections from hundreds of arroyos, rivers, and ephemeral streams in the Southwest, giving developers industries more latitude to alter or pollute those waterways. The public has until Jan. 5 to submit comments.
The Context: For years, the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineersโthe agencies charged with enforcing the CWAโconsidered WOTUS to include everything from arroyos to prairie potholes to sloughs to mudflats, so long as the destruction or degradation thereof might ultimately affect traditionally navigable waters or interstate commerce (which could include recreation, sightseeing, or wildlife watching). It was a broad definition that gave the agencies latitude to โrestore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nationโs waters,โ as Congress mandated when creating the law in 1972.
Developers and property rights ideologues pushed back on this definition, saying it was too broad and therefore gave the feds too much power to curb pollution or restrict development. The issue ended up in the courts and, ultimately, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The waters were muddied, so to speak, by the 2006 Supreme Court split decision on the Rapanos case. The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote what would become the right-wingโs preferred definition of waters of the U.S. He argued that they should include only โrelatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water โฆ described in ordinary parlance as streams[,] โฆ oceans, rivers, [and] lakes.โ Scaliaโs definition emphatically excluded โephemeral streamsโ and โdry arroyos in the middle of the desert.โ Justice Anthony Kennedy disputed Scalia, saying instead the CWA should extend to any stream or body of water with a โsignificant nexusโ to navigable waters, determined by a wetlandโs or waterwayโs status as an โintegral part of the aquatic environment.โ
Then, in 2023, in its ruling on the Sackett case, the SCOTUS majority deferred to Scaliaโs Rapanos definition, writing: โโฆ we conclude that the Rapanos plurality was correct: the CWAโs use of โwatersโ encompasses โonly those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming geographical features that are described in ordinary parlance as streams oceans, rivers and lakes.โโ
Itโs up to the relevant agencies to translate these rulings into actual rules, often adding their own ideological twists. The W. Bush, Obama, and Trump I administrations issued their own post-Rapanos definitions of WOTUS, Biden weighed in post-Sackett, now Trump II is submitting its own set of industry-friendly, deregulatory definitions.
The EPAโs proposed definition of โโwaters of the United Statesโโ would include:
โRelatively permanent,โ under the new rule, would mean
And then thereโs this weird and vague, yet critical, term, โwet season,โ which the rule defines as:
Sometimes you have to wonder whether the bureaucrats who come up with these things have ever even been to the Western U.S., particularly the arid Southwest.
The โrelatively permanentโ requirement clearly excludes thousands of arroyos, ephemeral streams, washes, gullies, and even rios and rivers โ from the Santa Cruz to the Rillito to the Santa Fe to the Puerco and the Dirty Devil โ from CWA jurisdiction. Indeed, it leaves huge swaths of the Southwest without Clean Water Act protections, and at the mercy of respective states or counties. A 2008 EPA study estimates that ephemeral and intermittent streams make up 59% of all of the waterways in the U.S. (excluding Alaska) and over 81% in the arid and semi-arid Southwest (AZ, NM, UT, CO, CA).
Source: U.S. EPA.
The ecological benefits of ephemeral streams are obvious to any Western wanderer who happens to venture down a seemingly dry and barren arroyo bed, where they may find cool air, the smell of water even on the hottest day, tiny tracks of animals seeking sanctuary from the sun, the lascivous bloom of a datura, and cottonwoods and even willows miles and miles away from any โrelatively permanentโ water source. And if thatโs not enough, then consider that peer-reviewed research has found that these same ephemeral streams are major contributors to the water quantity and quality of the entire river drainage network of which they are a part.
Ephemeral streams are streams that do not always flow. They are above the groundwater reservoir and appear after precipitation in the area. Via Socratic.org
A 2024 study by Craig Brinkerhoff et al concludes: โThis ephemeral influence directly implicates downstream water quality standards: Excluding ephemeral streams from coverage under the CWA would substantially narrow the extent of federal authority to regulate water quality in the United States.โ
While the administration was looking to provide โclarity,โ the โwet seasonโ provision does exactly the opposite, especially when one tries to apply it to the desert Southwest. If southern Arizona has a wet season, wouldnโt it be the days and weeks of the late summer monsoon? Many arroyos do run continuously during a good monsoon season, even if it is only for two or three weeks. So would that put them back under CWA jurisdiction?
How these proposed changes would play out on the ground is a bit of a puzzle โ especially given the โwet seasonโ ambiguity. But what is clear is that developers of big housing projects in the desert outside Phoenix or Las Vegas or Tucson, for example, would be allowed to fill in or build roads through arroyos and washes without obtaining a federal CWA permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. That would leave it to the state and county to implement their own, similar, permitting systems if they chose to do so.
As one might expect, the energy industry, developers, ranchers, and farmers generally support the changes, since it will eliminate some of the red tape that tangles up and delays projects.
โFor U.S. oil and natural gas operators, this is a game-changer,โ wrote the head of a Texas petroleum industry group in the Odessa American. โPicture the Permian Basin or Bakken Formation: vast swaths dotted with intermittent draws and playas that previous rules treated like sacred rivers, triggering Section 404 permits under the U.S. Army Corps that could drag on for years and cost millions in mitigation. Now, with ephemeral features sidelined and groundwater off-limits, operators can overcome those hurdles for well pads, access roads, and seismic surveys.โ
If you live in the West, you probably live near at least one of the ephemeral streams that would lose federal protections under these new definitions. You might want to go walk up it sometime soon before it goes away.
In the meantime, you have until Jan. 5 to send your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPAโHQโ OWโ2025โ0322, by any of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal:ย https://www.regulations.gov/ย (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.
Email: OW-Docket@epa.gov. Include Docket ID No. EPAโHQโOWโ 2025โ0322 in the subject line of the message.
Mail: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460.
Read more about the Clean Water Act, WOTUS, and the value of ephemeral waterways here (but remember, you gotta become a paid subscriber to bust through the paywall!)
Scene from a huge coal mine in the Powder River Basin. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
๐ต Public Lands ๐ฒ
Congressional Republicans have apparently decided that the best way to turn over public lands to the extractive industries is to do away with the plans guiding management of those lands. Earlier this year, Congress revoked three Bureau of Land Management resource management plans in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska. Now, theyโve done the same for the RMP for the BLMโs Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming, which covers a good portion of the coal-rich Powder River Basin.
These mark the first times ever that the Congressional Review Act, which is intended to give Congress the power to review and possibly revoke recently implemented administrative rules, has been used in this manner. Thatโs in part because RMPs have not been considered โrulesโ in the past, meaning they are not subject to congressional review.
Resource Management Plans provide a framework for managing large swaths of land and authorize the BLM to permit mining, drilling, grazing, and other activities. They endeavor to balance the agencyโs multiple-use mandate with environmental protections, guiding resource extraction and development away from sensitive areas and toward more appropriate ones, for example. They can take years to develop, and incorporate science, legal considerations, court orders, tribal consultation, and input from local officials and the general public.
And then, with just a few hours of debate and no opportunity for public input, Congress can toss the whole thing into the can.
In this case, the main target was a provision of the Biden-era RMP that halted new coal leasing on that swath of public land. While the moratorium was celebrated by environmentalists and panned by fossil fuel lovers when it was implemented late last year, it was largely symbolic, since existing leases contain enough coal to meet demand at least until 2040. So revoking the ban similarly wonโt lead to any new mining anytime soon, nor are resulting lease sales likely to fetch much industry interest or acceptable bids.
But in their haste to scrap the ban, Congress also may have taken away the BLMโs power to issue new leases altogether โ not just for coal, but for oil and gas drilling, grazing, or any other use. And not just for the Buffalo Field Office, either. This is a bit wonky, but basically it goes like this:
By applying the CRA to RMPs, Congress is saying that RMPs are โrules.โ
According to the CRA, rules must be submitted to Congress before they can take effect.
No RMP that has been implemented since 1996 has been submitted to Congress.
Therefore, no post-1996 RMP has legally taken effect, making it invalid.
The Federal Land Policy Management Act says the BLM can only issue permits, leases, rights of way, and other authorizations โin accordance withโ a valid land use plan, or RMP.
Therefore all permits, leases, ROWs, and other authorizations issued under post-1996 RMPs โ including over 5,000 oil and gas leases, and hundreds more coming up for auction in the near future โ are invalid.
This summer, 31 law professors and public land experts called on Congress to refrain from using the CRA to revoke RMPs. โThe resulting uncertainty could trigger an endless cycle of litigation,โ they wrote, โeffectively freezing the ability of the BLM and other agencies to manage public lands for years, if not decades to come.โ
Just last week, a group of conservation organization legal analysts expanded on the potential for chaos, and called on the BLM to pause new leasing and address the โpotential legal deficienciesโ of oil and gas leases covering some 4 million acres that were issued under now potentially invalid RMPs. The agency should not issue drilling permits for those leases, the analysts wrote, and it should consider canceling the leases.
Somehow, I donโt think the BLM under the current administration is going to follow that suggestion. Given its track record, it seems more likely that the agency will see the sudden lack of valid RMPs as an open gate through which it can ferry its pro-extractive agenda. This one is almost sure to end up in court.
๐ฆซ Wildlife Watch ๐ฆ
The Trump administration is proposing new regulations that would dial back Endangered Species Act protections and weaken the landmark law to โstrengthen American energy independence,โ according to an Interior Department news release.
The new rules would:
Make it more difficult for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat in areas that are not currently occupied by an endangered species โ likely because they were extirpated from the area โ but that are essential for the conservation of that species. This would make recovering an endangered species that much more difficult.
Remove a rule that extends ESA protections to species that are listed as โthreatened,โ which is one step away from โendangered.โ This would potentially remove protections for species such as the marbled murrelet, vernal pool fairy shrimp, western snowy plover, Gunnison sage grouse, northern sea otter, and many others.
Direct agencies to give economic impacts greater weight when deciding whether to extend ESA protections to a species. This could have potentially pushed the feds to, say, back off on listing the Tiehmโs buckwheat under the ESA, because doing so would potentially restrict or nix a proposed lithium mine in its only known habitat.
Make it more difficult for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat in areas that are not currently occupied by an endangered species โ likely because they were extirpated from the area โ but that are essential for the conservation of that species. This would make recovering an endangered species that much more difficult.
Remove a rule that extends ESA protections to species that are listed as โthreatened,โ which is one step away from โendangered.โ This would potentially remove protections for species such as the marbled murrelet, vernal pool fairy shrimp, western snowy plover, Gunnison sage grouse, northern sea otter, and many others.
Direct agencies to give economic impacts greater weight when deciding whether to extend ESA protections to a species. This could have potentially pushed the feds to, say, back off on listing the Tiehmโs buckwheat under the ESA, because doing so would potentially restrict or nix a proposed lithium mine in its only known habitat.
โThis plan hacks apart the Endangered Species Act and creates a blueprint for the extinction for some of Americaโs most beloved wildlife,โ said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a written statement.
๐ธ Parting Shot ๐๏ธ
Raven and the red, white, and blue. Digital Painting by Jonathan P. Thompson.
And, finally, theย Land Deskย readers have spoken, and they have chosen El Burro Blanco as the name for the newย Land Desk dispatch-mobile, with Hank coming in a distant second.
Sandhill cranes and some mallard ducks roost on a sandbar of the Rio Grande River at sunset on Jan. 22, 2025 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Copyright Credit ยฉ WWF-US/Diana Cervantes.
The Colorado River and its woes tend to get all of the attention, but the Southwestโs โotherโ big river, the Rio Grande, is in even worse shape thanks to a combination of warming temperatures, drought, and overconsumption. Thatโs become starkly evident in recent years, as the river bed has tended to dry up earlier in the summer and in places where it previously had continued to carry at least some water. Now Brian Richter and his team of researchers have quantified the Rio Grandeโs slow demise, and the conclusions they reach are both grim and urgent: Without immediate and substantial cuts in consumption, the river will continue to dry up โ as will the farms and, ultimately, the cities that rely on it.
The Rio Grandeโs problems are not new. Beginning in the late 1800s, diversions for irrigation in the San Luis Valley โ which the river runs through after cascading down from its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains โ sometimes left the riverbed โwholly dry,โ wrote ichthyologist David Starr Jordan in 1889, โall the water being turned into these ditches. โฆ In some valleys, as in the San Luis, in the dry season there is scarcely a drop of water in the riverbed that has not from one to ten times flowed over some field, while the beds of many considerable streams (Rio la Jara, Rio Alamosa, etc.) are filled with dry clay and dust.โ
San Luis Valley farmers gradually began irrigating with pumped groundwater, allowing them to rely less on the ditches (but causing its own problems), and the 1938 Rio Grande Compact forced them to leave more water in the river. While that kept the water flowing through northern and central New Mexico, the Rio Grandeโs lower reaches still occasionally dried up.
Then, in the early 2000s, the megadrought โ or perhaps permanent aridification โ that still plagues the region settled in over the Southwest. [ed. emphasis mine] Snowpack levels in the riverโs headwaters shrank, both due to diminishing precipitation and climate change-driven warmer temperatures, which led to runoff and streamflows 17% lower than the 20th century average, according to the new study. And yet, overall consumption has not decreased.
โIn recent decades,โ the authors write, โriver drying has expanded to previously perennial stretches in New Mexico and the Big Bend region. Today, only 15% of the estimated natural flow of the river remains at Anzalduas, Mexico near the riverโs delta at the Gulf of Mexico.โ Reservoirs, the riverโs savings accounts, have been severely drained to the point that they wonโt be able to withstand another one or two dry winters. As farmers and other users have increasingly turned to groundwater pumping, aquifers have also been depleted. The situation is clearly unsustainable.
Somethingโs gotta give on the Rio Grande, and while we may be tempted to target Albuquerqueโs sprawl, drying up all of the cities and power plants that rely on the river wouldnโt achieve the necessary cuts.
Source: โOverconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basinโ by Brian Richter et al.
It will come as little surprise to Western water watchers that agriculture is by far the largest water user on the Rio Grande โ taking up 87% of direct human consumption โ and that alfalfa and other hay crops gulp up the lionโs share, or 52%, of agricultureโs slice of the river pie. This isnโt necessarily because alfalfa and other hays are thirstier than other crops, but because they are so prevalent, covering about 433,000 acres over the entire basin, more than four times as much acreage as cotton.
Source: Overconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basin
This kind of math means farmers are going to have to bear the brunt of the necessary consumption cuts โ either voluntarily or otherwise. In fact, they already have: Between 2000 and 2019, according to the report, Colorado lost 18% of its Rio Grande Basin farmland, New Mexico lost 28%, and the Pecos River sub-basin lost 49% (resulting in a downward trend in agricultural water consumption). Some of this loss was likely incentivized through conservation programs that pay farmers to fallow their fields. But it was also due to financial struggles.
Yet even when farmers are paid a fair price to fallow their fields there can be nasty side effects. Noxious weeds can colonize the soil and spread to neighborsโ farms, it can dry out and mobilize dust that diminishes air quality and the mountain snowpack, and it leaves holes in the cultural fabric of an agriculture-dependent community. If a fieldโs going to be dried up, it should at least be covered with solar panels.
Another possibility is to switch to crops that use less water. This isnโt easy: Farmers grow alfalfa in the desert because itโs actually quite drought tolerant, doesnโt need to be replanted every year, is less labor-intensive than other crops, is marketable and ships relatively easy, and can grow in all sorts of climates, from the chilly San Luis Valley to the scorching deserts of southern Arizona.
Still, it can be done, as a group of farmers in the San Luis Valley are demonstrating with theย Rye Resurgence Project. This effort is not only growing the grain โ which uses less water than alfalfa, is good for soil health, and makes good bread and whiskey โ but it is also working to create a larger market for it. While itโs only a drop in the bucket, so to speak, this is the sort of effort that, replicated many times across the region, could help balance supply and demand on the river, without putting a bunch of farmers out of business.
Photo credit: The Rye Resurgence Project
***
Oh, and about that other river? You know, the Colorado? Representatives from the seven states failed to come up with a deal on how to manage the river by the Nov. 15 deadline. The feds had mercy on them, giving them until February to sort it all out. Iโm not so optimistic, but weโll see. Personally, I think the only way this will ever work out is if the Colorado River Compact โ heck, the entire Law of the River โ is scrapped, and the states and the whole process is started from scratch, this time with a much better understanding of exactly how much water is in the river, and with the tribal nations having seats at the table.
โ๏ธ Mining Monitor โ๏ธ
There are a bunch of wannabe uranium mining companies out there right now, locating claims and acquiring and selling claims and touting their exploratory drilling results. But there are only a small handful of firms that are actually doing anything resembling mining. One of them is the Canada-based Anfield, which just broke ground on its Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley, even without all of the necessary state permits.
Now Anfield says it has applied for a Colorado permit to restart its long-idle JD-8uranium mine. The mine is on one of a cluster of Department of Energy leases overlooking the Paradox Valley from its southern slopes, and was previously owned and operated by Cotter Corporation. The mine has not produced ore since at least 2006. Anfield says it will process the ore at its Shootaring Mill near Ticaboo, Utah, which has yet to get Utahโs green light.
๐ Random Real Estate Room ๐ค
Look! Affordable housing near Moab! Sure, itโs a cave, but itโs only $99,000. Oh, whatโs that? $998,000? Theyโre selling a cave for a million buckaroos? But of course they are. To be fair, itโs not just a cave. Itโs several of them, plus a trailer. Crazy stuff.
๐ธย Parting Shotย ๐๏ธ
A work train in the Animas River gorge just below Silverton. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
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
San Luis Valley farm. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
November 20, 2025
In November 2023, I stopped by the office of Cleave Simpson, then (and still now, at least for a brief time more), the general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservancy District.
There, in Alamosa, he shared with me his observation that the Rio Grande during the 21st century has had water declines parallel to those of the Colorado River.
Both rivers originate in Colorado, and neither river has been able to deliver the water assumed by any number of diversion projects. Problems began in the 20th century but have intensified greatly in the 21st century because of drought but also rising temperatures.
The Rio Grande has had 17% reduced flows since 2000. The Colorado River flows have declined 20%.
Of the two rivers, the Rio Grande is longer, at 1,900 miles but carries less water, 9.1 million acre-feet/year. The Colorado flows 1,450 miles and has been carrying an average 15.4 million acre-feet. Neither river has delivered water into oceans with any reliability in decades.
Sandhill cranes and a few mallard ducks roost at sunset on a sandbar of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque during January. Photo(and copyright)/WWF-us, Diana Cervantes. Top: The San Luis Valley near Del Norte. Photo/Brian Richter
Despite these parallels, the Colorado has received far more attention, as is pointed out in a new report by Brian Richter of the World Wildlife Fund and nine others from academic institutions in Arizona, California, and other states.
Why is that? The Colorado provides drinking water for about 40 million people compared to 15 million for the Rio Grande. In irrigated agriculture, itโs a similar story: 22,300 square kilometers in the Colorado River Basin vs. 7,800 square kilometers in the Rio Grande.
โHowever, the water crisis facing the Rio Grande Basin is arguably more severe and urgent than the Colorado River Basin,โ Richter and his colleagues contend. They argue for some rethinking and institutional alignments to help ratchet water use down to sustainable levels.
The study is the first full accounting of how water is consumed across the entire Rio Grande Basin. Mexico calls it the Rio Bravo.
Doesnโt Colorado also have a strong accounting system, as necessary to meet requirements of the 1938 compact among states that share the Rio Grande?
Yes, says Richter. However, he adds a โbut.โ He reports difficulty in getting estimates of how much water is being consumed by each sector and by each crop. He believes he has succeeded.
โTo my knowledge, nobody has laid out the numbers at the level of clarity and accuracy that we were able to accomplish,โ he said.
Another major contribution of the paper is the estimation of the degree to which water consumption is unsustainable, he said.
โWe estimate that 11% of water consumption in Colorado is unsustainable. Natural replenishment from snowmelt runoff, precipitation, and groundwater recharge supplies only 89% of the water being consumed; the remainder (deficit) is being met by depleting groundwater.โ
โThe Rio Grande basin is at a tipping point, and everyone needs to be part of the solution,โ said Enrique Prunes, a co-author and the World Wildlife Fund Rio Grande manager. โThese findings will help us rethink how we manage water to secure a future for everyone.โ
For the second time in the 21st century, this segment of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque went dry, leaving this image of cracked sediment on a blistering afternoon on Aug. 7, 2025. Photo(and copyright)/WWF-us, Diana Cervantes
Dry cracked sediment from the Rio Grande on a blistering afternoon on Aug. 7, 2025 in Albuquerque, N.M. For the second time in the 21st century the Rio Grande has gone dry in the Albuquerque stretch. (TC) (EDITORโS NOTE: T/C, to fact check).
Agriculture uses 99.9% of the water in Coloradoโs San Luis Valley and 87% in the basin altogether.
Dramatic declines in reservoir storage illustrate the scope of problem. Altogether, 12% of reservoir storage has been lost in the 21st century. The decline is most severe in New Mexico, where 71% less water was stored at the end of 2024 compared to 2002.
Groundwater depletion has been even more drastic. Roughly 15 times more groundwater has declined compared to surface storage. The two are coupled. As surface water supplies decline, groundwater mining grows.
โIn the San Luis Valley of Colorado, diminished river flows and aquifer recharge have led to continued over-pumping, causing aquifers levels to decline,โ Richter and his team write. โThe Colorado state engineer has threatened to shut off hundreds of groundwater wells if the aquifer supporting irrigated farms cannot be stabilized.โ
The San Luis Valley is famous for its potatoes as well as the barley to make Coors beer, but potatoes use just 7% of the water and barley 9%. The vast majority of water in the valley produces feedstocks for livestock: 47% for alfalfa, 27% for other hay, and 6% for pasture lands.
The study finds that groundwater in the San Luis Valley has been depleted at a rate of 89,179 acre-feet/year, equivalent to 11% of the annual average of direct water consumption in the valley.
What can be done? Large cities have done more with less. Albuquerqueโs population grew 40% while its water use declined by 17%. However, municipal and commercial water consumption account for only 7% of all direct consumption in the three-state and two-country basin.
Strategies for reducing consumption in irrigated agriculture have been proven but must be rapidly deployed at sufficient scale and financially sustained by governments, companies, and credit institutions to rebalance the basinโs water budgets, state, and binational levels.
At the same time, water shortages have contributed to the loss of 18% of farmland in the riverโs headwaters in Colorado, 36% in New Mexico, and 49% in the Pecos River tributary in New Mexico and Texas.
Strategies being embraced to curb groundwater drafting in the closed basin of the San Luis Valley have been controversial. A key case is likely to go before the Colorado Supreme Court. In Mexico, cutbacks have led to violence. One protestor died.
The study points to several strategies that could reshape how water is used in the basins. These include restoring river habitats, adjusting dam operations to better support seasonal flows, improving water-sharing agreements, and helping farmers switch to crops that require less water.
That effort to encourage crop-switching has been underway in the San Luis Valley, but with successes only at the margins.
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
Chart showing water use trends in US and Mexico. Credit: Overconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basin. Map via Springer Nature.
major new study on the nearly 1,900-mile long Rio Grande Basin โ from the San Luis Valley into the Gulf of Mexico โ shows a โsevere water crisis emergingโ with total reservoir storage in decline at around 4.24 million acre-feet or 26 percent of capacity.
The study brings together detailed water consumption estimates of surface and ground water use throughout the basin and concludes โa likely outcome will be continued loss of farmland due to financial insolvency from lowered crop production and other factors including the aging of farmers and lack of affordable farm labor,โ without urgent action.
โClimate scientists have reframed the long-running drought as the onset of long-term aridification and are forecasting additional river flow diminishment of 16-28% in coming decades as the climate continues to warm,โ the study notes.
The authorsโ analysis shows that during 2000โ2019, Colorado lost 18 percent of its farmland in the Upper Rio Grande Basin, New Mexico lost 28 percent along its Rio Grande sub-basins, and the Pecos River sub-basin lost 49 percent.
Further drying puts farmers and cities who rely on the Rio Grande in an โexistential water crisis.โ
Brian Richter, one of the authors of the study, says San Luis Valley farmers are central to the development and implementation of solutions for the rapidly drying Rio Grande given that โthe vast majority of the direct human consumption of water in the SLV takes place on irrigated farms.โ
Researchers estimate that the present level of over-consumption of both surface and groundwater in the Valley is approximately 11 percent. โThat means that water consumption needs to be reduced by that percentage,โ Richter said.
Richter is president of Sustainable Waters and senior freshwater fellow for the World Wildlife Fund. The two organizations teamed with researchers to provide a full accounting of the consumptive uses as well as evaporation and other losses within the Rio Grande Basin.ย
The Rio Grande stretches nearly from the San Luis Valley through New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. It provides drinking water for more than 4 million in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, and 11 million people in Mexico, the study notes. More than 1.9 million acres of irrigated farmland is tied to the Rio Grande.
The study, โOverconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basin,โ relies on data from annual runoff volumes, municipal and commercial consumptive use estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey, and reservoir storage levels, among other data sets.
Snowmelt runoff has decreased 17 percent over the past 25 years, according to the report. At the same time, total direct water consumption has been increasing since 2000, largely due to increasing water usage by farmers in Mexico.
When comparing challenges of Colorado River users to the Rio Grande, researchers say the โwater crisis facing the RGB is arguably more severe and urgent than the CRB,โ given the fact groundwater in the San Luis Valley has been depleted at a rate of 89,000 acre-feet per year; New Mexico has a water debt to Texas; and Mexico has a mounting water debt to the U.S. under a 1944 treaty that is causing political tension between the two countries.
The Upper Rio Grande here at the end of 2025 is benefitting from heavy October rainsthat materialized across the southwest and provided a stopgap to what were some of the worst summer river flows ever recorded on the river.
Management of the Upper Rio Grande Basin will be back in the spotlight come January 2026 when Colorado Water Court Division Three takes up the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District. The new strategy calls for a groundwater overpumping fee of $500 per acre-foot any time an irrigator in Subdistrict 1 exceeds the amount of natural surface water tied to the property of their operation. The rule punishes farmers who do not have natural surface water coming into their fields but instead rely solely on groundwater pumping for their crops.
The whole point of the plan for the agricultural-rich area of the San Luis Valley is to let Mother Nature dictate the pattern of how irrigators in Subdistrict 1 restore the unconfined aquifer and build a sustainable model for farming in the future.
Richter credits Colorado and irrigators in the Valley for taking steps to address the Rio Grande. The proposed $500 fee for overpumping in Subdistrict 1, he says, โis going to set off a lot of change in the Valley, because many/most farmers wonโt be able to continue producing the same crops theyโve been growing in recent years.โ
โColorado has definitely taken some important steps, and manages its water resources far better than New Mexico or Texas,โ Richter says. โBut Colorado still has not been able to reduce pumping to anywhere near the needed degree, so itโs no surprise the aquifer continues to decline.โ
The study looks at crops grown along the Rio Grande and how agricultural fields account for 87 percent of direct water consumption.โOverall, agricultural consumption is nearly seven times the volume of all other direct uses combined.โ
Alfalfa and grass hay โ water-intensive crops that dominate the landscape in the Valley and in Northern and the Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico โ account for nearly 45 percent of the irrigation water consumed along the Rio Grande Basin. A shift to less-intensive crops, as the Rye Resurgence Project advocates, and a moratorium on new wells in over-drafted areas of basin in New Mexico and Texas, are necessary first steps to addressing the Rio Grandeโs challenges, according to researchers of the study.
โPotatoes might be one of the few crops that remain sufficiently profitable to persist in the Valley,โ says Richter. โIf those transitions to other crops or to permanent farmland retirement lead to reduced water consumption to the level needed (11 percent), there is hope that the (unconfined) aquifer can be rebalanced with natural replenishment. However, it will require a greater level of pumping reductions to enable the aquifer to recover to the level required by the state engineer.โ
San Luis Valley center pivot August 14, 2022. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
On the far edge of suburban Phoenix, a giant concrete arch spans the Central Arizona Project, dubbed a โBridge to Nowhereโ by developers and neighborhood activists alike. Nobody can use it; even pedestrians are barred by a chain-link fence sporting a huge โRoad Closedโ sign. To the bridgeโs 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 nationโs fastest-growing metro areas.
But now, this development is on hold over concerns that thereโs not enough groundwater to supply the community. And itโs 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 cityโs 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 nationโs 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 Phoenixโs 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 โreached the anticipated limits of growth on groundwater supplies,โ 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 cityโs outer ring of suburbs. Nowhere on Phoenixโs 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 stateโs 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 โbeginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country,โ 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 โ and of the stateโs determination to rein it in.
The moratoriumโs 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 โ 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 peopleโs 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, Arizonaโs 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 โBridge to Nowhere.โ Caitlin OโHara/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. Thatโs nothing, though, compared to the future growth already approved by the Buckeye City Council โ enough new development to push the cityโs population to more than 1 million.
State officials and local governments like Buckeyeโs 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 theyโre 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 peopleโs housing needs.
โIn Phoenix, land development has always been as natural as breathing,โ Andrew Ross observed in his 2011 book Bird on Fire, one of the few works that has ever taken a critical look at the regionโs growth practices. โAny corner of the landscape is a parcel, begging for a contract; each building is a renovation opportunity, every open space a โvacant lot,โ awaiting its approver, and, with a little backing, it could be you.โ
Efforts to rein in sprawl have run into economic โ and political โ walls. Growth-related industries such as construction and real estate account for a substantially larger share of the areaโs economic base than they do in the U.S. as a whole โ 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 industryโs 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 โ the โgod of growth,โ 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 Arizonaโs past excesses. โWe are not going to have growth without water,โ she said. โWe will have water in hand before growth is allowed.โ
Today, Ferris, at 76, is a key player in the ongoing struggle over the cityโs water issues โ 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 Arizonaโs water troubles.
Kathleen Ferris has spent her career working toward water security in Arizona as the stateโs population doubled. Caitlin OโHara/High Country News
In 1980, her presence loomed even larger: She was at the center of Arizonaโs seemingly intractable groundwater wars. Back then, when lawmakers were drafting the bill that would ultimately spawn the current moratorium, the stateโs groundwater levels were already nearing a crisis point: There were essentially no limits on groundwater pumping in any sector of the stateโs 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 stateโs 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 Arizonaโs most prominent businessmen, โhad scammed millions of dollars from Easterners who thought they were buying a retirement home rather than a chunk of barren desert,โ reporters for the Arizona Project wrote.
โIt just seemed horrible to me,โ Ferris recently recalled. โGrowth was really starting to happen big-time in Arizona. We were using way too much groundwater.โ
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 stateโs Groundwater Management Act. Ferris, one of the stateโs 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 lawโs prime architect, sifting through the billโs 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 committeeโs 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 Arizonaโs total overdraft โ even if substantial farmland was retired.ย
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 CAPโs 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.
โWe were late in the negotiations, and I just remember Babbitt saying something like โI guess weโre going to have to put the issue aside. Weโre not going to resolve this one,โโ Ferris said.
โI just lost it,โ Ferris recalled. โTears 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.โ
Within days, though, cooler heads prevailed. Ferrisโ 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 OโHara/High Country News
WHEN NEWS BROKE OF THE STATEโS 2023 BAN on new groundwater-based subdivisions, sparking apocalyptic national coverage, local and state officials switched into defense mode.
โIt seems in some ways like thereโs criticism for us for doing planning and smart development,โ Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego told the Arizona Republic after the ADWR moratorium was announced. โIt is a strength, not a weakness. We are planning ahead. We have a very simple principle: Water first, then development.โ
While the moratorium is unlikely to stop the areaโs runaway growth โ 80,000 lots had already been approved โ 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. Arizonaโs Constitution mandates that such lands be sold or leased to help fund public schools, meaning itโs 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 โthe community of your futureโ and โthe nationโs next premier master planned community.โ 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 shouldnโt have: For more than two decades, Arizona water officials had been sending out warnings, echoed by Ferrisโ high-profile criticism. Time after time, they concluded that far less groundwater was available for proposed subdivisions than the developers claimed.
Belmontโs 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, Tartessoโs 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 subdivisionsโ groundwater demands likely exceeded known supplies.
But then-Gov. Doug Duceyโs Republican administration was said to have prevented the modelโs 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 โhad pretty devastating impacts to housing,โ homebuilder lobbyist Spencer Kamps told an ADWR advisory committee meeting a few weeks after its release. โWe are the only land use that does meet the 100-year requirements,โ since apartment, commercial and industrial development were not covered by the 1980 law.
Emilie Myth and her dog, Piper, at home in September. Caitlin OโHara/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 Tartessoโs many parks. Similarly, North Star Ranch would lie an hourโs drive north of downtown Buckeye. Just south at one of Festival Ranchโs subdivisions, thereโs a lone restaurant attached to a golf course, and a single Subway outlet and convenience market at the developmentโs entrance. The nearest grocery store is a Safeway 20 miles east.
The Festival Ranch housing development in Buckeye, Arizona. Caitlin OโHara/High Country News
Yet, in some ways, Myth enjoys the isolation. โI like the quiet,โ she said. โThe only things you hear are cars going by, people talking and dogs barking, whereas in cities it was traffic, 24-7.
โI never felt at peace.โ
But itโs 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. โWhat do kids do around here? What do teenagers do around here?โ she wondered. โI just feel like as a kid I could be more independent than a child is here.โ
The very thing she struggles with now contributes to her new neighborhoodโs 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, โThere are few suitable alternatives for affordable homes in the region if Buckeye cannot continue to develop homes.โ Pollackโs 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 ASUโs 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. โIn the absence of economic studies, it is difficult to say whether or how the (ADWR) moratorium might impact housing affordability.โ
But it does mean that residents like Myth will likely continue to live in suburban isolation. โIn a lot of ways, it sucks,โ said Myth. โI understand why the governor wants to do that. We donโt 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 itโs not going to happen for decades now.โ
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. โIโll probably stay here,โ 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 OโHara/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 theyโre standing firm on behalf of the stateโs 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 โwe figured that Arizona was going to be a hot spot.โ But Schooley, a local Republican party activist, is now openly disdainful of the stateโs decision to stop allowing new homes to be built on groundwater supplies. He even doubts the stateโs talk of a water shortage.
โWhen I moved here, it was all farmland, all of it,โ Schooley recalled โNow, 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?โ ADWRโs model found, however, that even those kinds of reductions in water use โ moving away from farming, cutting back water use โ hadnโt been enough.
Arizona officials are โplaying with fireโ and are โkind of short-sightedโ by stopping so much development simply because of water, he added. โIt seems kind of heavy-handed.โ
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 ADWRโs 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 ruleโs backers say this provision is essential for reducing dependence on native groundwater, homebuilders and Republican legislative leaders have claimed it is an illegal โtax.โ (ADWR has denied this, saying that it isnโt 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 ADWRโs 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 ADWRโs rules have become โinsurmountable obstaclesโ to obtaining state certification of a 100-year supply.
In response, ADWR filed to have that lawsuit dismissed. โWhat 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 donโt run out or water levels fall to alarming depths of 1,000 feet due to new groundwater pumping,โ Buschatzke, a defendant in the Goldwater lawsuit, wrote in an op-ed. โThe 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.โ
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 โ 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 wonโt 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 ASUโs Kyl Center. โThey are designed from top to bottom, and everything is beautifully designed for a look, to work well together. Itโs very hard to do that in an old farming town.โ
A roofer works on a home in a housing development in Buckeye, Arizona, in September. Caitlin OโHara/High Country News
WHATEVER THE OUTCOME of the various debates and lawsuits, Phoenixโs future growth ultimately depends on the publicโs willingness to pay. โFor 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,โ said Brett Fleck, a water resources manager for the city of Peoria, northwest of Phoenix. โItโs not about running out. Itโs about: Are you willing to pay for what it costs?โ
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 โ enough to serve more than 17,000 homes annually โ 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 Projectโs permission to put the water into the canal to bring it about 60 miles to the Phoenix area. That wonโt 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 itโs 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 stateโs 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 wouldnโt 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 โ projected to cost $4 billion to build, and thatโs 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?
โI would say that we are not being as imaginative about water as we could be,โ she said. โIf we could pipe oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, why canโt we pipe water from the Great Lakes here, or bring water up from the Sea of Cortez and treat it up here?โ
Tom Berry at home in the Festival Ranch housing development in Buckeye, Arizona in September. Caitlin OโHara/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 Phoenixโs rural suburbs as an option. โI thought, โWho in their right mind would ever live out there?โ It was so remote.โ 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. โIt was really going to impact our lifestyle.โ So he drove to Festival Ranch โon a whim,โ 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.
โ(The city is) enamored with the high growth rate of Buckeye,โ he said. โIt is growth at any cost, and too bad if you already live here.โ
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 โWatch for cattle.โ
โSo one of my friends said, โHow about we put signs on the fenceline facing the desert that says โWatch for cars?โโ 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.
โI donโt want any development up there. Itโs more traffic, more people, more everything,โ said Ryan. โThe whole reason I moved out here was to get away from that.
โYou go five miles down the road and youโre in open desert. You see snakes and bugs. Thereโs nothing to the north of us, to the east or to the west. Weโre kind of like an island,โ he added. โIf you like being outside, in nature, itโs ideal.โ
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 โyou canโt stop progress.
โIt will happen,โ he said. โThe developers always get their way. At the same time โฆ if people want to develop here, they need to find a better way to get the water.
โI donโt 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.โย
Development meets the desert in suburban Phoenix, Arizona. Caitlin OโHara/High Country News
A major question looms over Coloradoโs energy future: why does geothermal energy โ a natural renewable resource โ remain virtually untapped?
Professor Bri-Mathias Hodge. Photo credit: University of Colorado Boulder
Professor Bri-Mathias Hodge, based in the Department of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering, along with Assistant Teaching Professor Shae Frydenlund from the Center for Asian Studies, will examine the technological and social barriers that have held back geothermal development in Colorado.
Geothermal energy comes from the natural heat stored beneath the Earthโs surface. Itโs harnessed by tapping underground reservoirs of steam or hot water to produce electricity or provide direct heating.
Colorado is home to significant geothermal areas including the areas of Mount Princeton Hot Springs, Waunita Hot Springs and the San Luis Valley โ yet no geothermal power plants currently operate in the state. That could soon change, thanks to growing collaboration among researchers, energy companies and policymakers.
Assistant Teaching Professor Shae Frydenlund. Photo credit: University of Colorado Boulder
โWe know there is an abundant amount of geothermal energy potential in our state,โ said Hodge, who brings two decades of experience in renewable energy integration and power systems simulation. โWhat we need is a better understanding of the social, economic and regulatory factors that influence its development.โ
Bridging technology and community
Frydenlundโs work with Indigenous communities in Indonesia, some of whom oppose geothermal projects due to environmental justice concerns, sparked an interdisciplinary collaboration with Hodge.
โI became very interested in bringing together physical science and social science perspectives,โ Frydenlund said, โand to understand why a place as geothermal-rich as Colorado hasnโt tapped into this natural resource.โ
Her research, together with Geography Professor Emily Yeh, revealed that struggles over geothermal projects emerge in and through the politics of indigeneity, land tenure and uneven development.
โThere are concerns over land rights, sacred territories, livelihoods and environmental justice,โ she said. โWe need to bring those perspectives as we think about using geothermal here.โ
To capture both the human and technical sides of geothermal development, the CU Boulder team will combine tools, such as power systems modeling, spatial statistics and GIS mapping along with community forums, surveys and interviews. Gaining community input will be integral for this project.
One of their main goals is to create an interactive map tool of Colorado showing potential geothermal sites, layered with data on social and technological factors.
โJust because an area has strong potential doesnโt mean itโs a good place to develop geothermal energy,โ Frydenlund said. โIf itโs not culturally appropriate or desired by the community, resources can be wasted and projects can fail.โ
The issue isn’t unique to Colorado.
โWeโve seen this already in the U.S.,” Hodge said. “Hawaii has been a leader in decarbonization goals and has great geothermal resources. Yet, thereโs very little being developed there because you have to be mindful of the traditions in Hawaiian culture.โ
The planning phase for the project includes three major steps: campus-wide town halls to connect with geothermal experts, identifying industry and community partners across the state and gathering preliminary data through stakeholder engagement. Between January and March 2026, Frydenlund will conduct fieldwork at six sites across Colorado, including Steamboat Springs, Buena Vista and Sterling Ranch in the South Metro area.
Building toward carbon neutrality
Geothermal exploration speaks directly to CU Boulderโs goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 and the Western Governors Associationโs Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative, which announced $7.7 million in funding in May 2024 to advance geothermal technology in Colorado.
Geothermal technologies can operate at multiple scales from single buildings to community thermal networks to large-scale power generation.
โWhatโs really interesting from a power systems standpoint is that geothermal affects not only electricity supply, but also demand,โ Hodge said. โIf ground-source heat pumps became widespread, Coloradoโs power grid could shift from a summer to a winter peak system.โ
However, these technological advances alone canโt drive an increased transition to geothermal.
โUnderstanding the intimate relationships that people have with land and with energy and with each other will make for a much richer picture of what kind of future geothermal energy has in this state,โ Frydenlund said.
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 Tuesdayโs quarterly meeting of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.
Knowing that, now imagine the conversations that would be happening in the Valleyโs 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.
โThatโs a big amount of water in just a short amount of time,โ 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 yearโs 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 new nonprofit in Hartsel is seeking to raise funds to support a Community Water Station Project that would benefit area residents who struggle with water access. Recently formed this May, the community-driven initiative is rallying residents to support its ongoing efforts through monthly community meetings and an upcoming family-friendly Fall Festival Fundraiser in October.ย Angie Mills, Vice President of Hartsel Water, explained that the organization will be applying for funding from the Park County Land and Water Trust Fund (LWTF) with an ask of $2 million, 10% of which would be covered by Hartsel Water. โWeโre currently working on trying to raise $200,000,โ said Mills. โThatโs our primary focus right now.โย Mills stressed the strong need for the local water station in Hartsel, as many residents are unable to drill their own wells. โWhether it is for financial reasons or their location,โ said Mills. โCloser to town, thereโs a lot of hard water, and unless you put it in an expensive filtration system, it makes things tough.โย As a result, Mills said that most residents use cisterns, water totes, or drive to other cities to retrieve their water resources, which is not always convenient or even feasible in the rural mountain town.ย Currently working with an engineer on technicalities, Mills said Hartsel Water has a few potential plots for the station in mind, ideally close to Highway 24 and Highway 9, conveniently located close to town.
Rick Jones strides quickly into the offices of the May Valley Water Association. Heโs running late after a morning of checking leaks in a pipeline that is one of several delivering well water to his 1,500 customers.
Jones has lived in Wiley, nearly 200 miles southeast of Denver, most of his life and has served as superintendent of the association for 38 years.
Outside the front door of his office in a small, well-kept brick building on Main Street, a dispenser delivers radium-free water for 25 cents a gallon to anyone who walks up with a container. It helps the small water company offer clean water because its own groundwater-based system struggles with radium contamination. Having the dispenser helps it meet its state obligations to deliver some clean water to the public.
Last year, the machine dispensed 24,000 gallons.
โItโs usually pretty busy,โ Jones says.
But this may be changing. With construction of the long-awaited Arkansas Valley Conduit finally underway, the May Valley Water Association is in line to get clean water from Pueblo Reservoir, more than 100 miles to the west. Then contamination notices from the state health department will stop and the cloud that lies over these small towns in the Lower Arkansas River Basin due to their historically bad water will begin to lift.
The long-awaited conduit, he says, โis what everyone is hanging their hopes on.โ
Arkansas Valley Conduit map via the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (Chris Woodka) June 2021.
A dark water history
The need for clean water in the Lower Arkansas Valley became apparent long before the conduit was initially approved more than 60 years ago. In the 1950s and earlier, by some accounts, wells drilled near the river were showing a range of toxic elements, including naturally occurring radium and selenium. Both can cause severe health problems, including bone cancer, with long-term exposure to radium, and heart attacks and lung issues with selenium, if high amounts are consumed.
In 1962, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation prepared to build the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, an ambitious plan to capture clean water from the Arkansas and Colorado rivers and store it in Pueblo Reservoir. The conduit, or AVC, was a component of the project that never got built.
Source: Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District
Why? No one could figure out how to provide clean water to so few people living in a remote area of the state, let alone how to pay for it, according to Chris Woodka, a senior policy manager with the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District. The district operates the sprawling Fryingpan-Arkansas Project for the federal government and is overseeing the conduitโs construction.
But everything changed in 2023, when decades of lobbying Congress produced some $500 million in cash toward the $1.39 billion pipeline. That equals $30,888 per person, a cost many people say is extraordinary in a region whose household income of $47,000 is roughly half of the state average of $89,000.
โItโs a very expensive project for 45,000 people,โ said Keith McLaughlin, executive director of the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, which has set aside $30 million in federal grant money to help cover the cost. โItโs an enormous project for that number of people.โ
Still he said itโs important for the state, despite the stateโs own budget challenges. โYou have very low-income communities down there and itโs a really critical project. That makes this very high on our priority list,โ McLaughlin said.
To date, 39 communities have signed onto the project. Towns at the far western end of the conduit, such as Avondale and Boone just outside Pueblo, could see water as soon as 2027, while others farther east will wait another 10 years or so as each segment of pipeline is laid and spurs to each community are built, Woodka said.
Alarm as costs rise
La Junta is the largest customer so far, according to Tom Seaba, who manages the historic townโs water and sewer department. He canโt remember a time when the much-delayed conduit and water quality problems didnโt hang darkly over the region.
La Junta residents are among the most critical of the pipeline largely because itโs not clear exactly when it will reach the town, and costs are expected to continue rising, Seaba said..
In the valley these are not idle concerns. The federal governmentโs first construction estimate in 2016 put the price of the pipeline at $600 million. Nearly 10 years later it has more than doubled, to $1.39 billion, according to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.
Seaba wonโt say whether he supports or opposes the giant pipe, but he will say that the final cost is likely to be breathtaking.
โCould peopleโs water bills double? Absolutely,โ he said.
To address those staggering costs, Coloradoโs congressional delegation, in a bipartisan effort, has pushed hard to make sure the cash comes through and that repayment terms are affordable. The delegation is proposing, right now, to cut interest rates in half and extend the life of the loans to 75 years. The bill has passed the U.S. House, where it was sponsored by Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd, whose congressional districts span the valley. It is pending in the U.S. Senate, where it is being sponsored by Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet.
The State of Colorado has also stepped in to help. The Colorado Water Conservation Board is offering $30 million in grants, and a $90 million loan. The Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority can provide up to another $30 million in federal grants if application deadlines can be met.
A plan to share costs
Right now, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is slated to pick up 65% of the projectโs $1.39 billion cost, or $903.5 million. The Southeastern Conservancy District will cover its 35% share, or $486.5 million.
At the same time, there are also plans to ask the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to declare the project a hardship due to the regionโs low income, and its shrinking population and economy, Woodka said. Should that occur, the valleyโs remaining costs could be picked up by the federal government.
Sources: Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, Colorado Water Conservation Board
Still financial pressures are rising. The Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority received millions in federal funding after the pandemic, but it must spend all the cash by 2028. And that means that small towns and water districts hoping to connect to the pipeline must move quickly to design new delivery systems, get cost estimates, and submit applications to the state.
McLaughlin, the water and power authority director, is worried these communities, some with just 200 or 300 people, wonโt be able to get their loan applications for the spur lines done in time to meet his agencyโs deadlines with the federal government. Only a handful have been received to date.
โWhile we want to fund as many of the spur lines coming in as possible, there are lots of projects competing for the same dollar,โ McLaughlin said. โAnd the money is awarded first-come, first-served.โ
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is also watching the clock as the valleyโs water woes continue.
Seventeen of the 39 districts and towns that plan to tap the conduitโs clean water, are under state enforcement orders to permanently remove contaminants, according to the CDPHE. Some of those orders have been in place for decades, and the state has, so far, allowed them to continue delivering flawed water as the long-awaited pipeline comes together.
โAs part of this regulatory process, the public drinking water systems are required to do public notice, and certainly they are aware of the health risk associated with their drinking water so they can decide whether they want to make another choice,โ said Ron Falco, safe drinking water program manager for the state health department.
Las Animas is one of them, according to Bill Long, a resident who also serves as president of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.
โIn Las Animas, we built a reverse osmosis plant. Now our drinking water is perfect, but we have a problem with the reject water from the RO plant,โ Long said, referring to the contaminated wastewater that is a byproduct of treatment. โWe can discharge that back to the river, but we canโt do that in perpetuity. We solved one problem but we created a new one. โฆ The state wonโt allow us to discharge that forever.โ
To Long, the pipeline is the only way to ensure long-term, clean drinking water for the Lower Valley and to provide a chance to rebuild its economy.
โBetter water creates new opportunities,โ Long said. โIf we try to do anything in Las Animas that requires a new water supply, we canโt do it. We would have to build a new RO plant, and apply for a new discharge permit, which the state would likely not give us.โ Long was referring to the Arkansas Riverโs own water quality problems, which can be worsened by the discharges.
Back in Wiley, Jones said the May Valley Water Association plans to start saving to pay for the $5.1 million he expects to spend to repair aging pipes, and install the new lines and pumps that will allow him to connect to the conduit and get off the stateโs list of drinking water safety violators.
Does his community feel shortchanged that it has taken so long to have what most communities take for granted?
โYes. There are people who say โYeah, we got shorted.โ But the good thing is theyโve started it. I guess Iโm hopeful. It will bring better water quality, and for some places like us, we will finally get out of trouble with the state.โ
โAmericaโs Data Centers Could Go Dark,โ the subject line of the email read.
If only, I mused. Iโm less worried about data centers going dark than about everything else going dark because of data centers. But whatever. Thatโs not what the PR person (or AI bot?) who sent the email was trying to say. They were there to ask, rhetorically: โCan Microreactors Save the Day?โThey then offered to connect me with James Walker, CEO of a firm called NANO Nuclear Energy, who would then try to sell me on his KRONOS MMRโข, described as a โcompact, carbon freeโ way to power data centers.
There is a lot of hysteria around data centers these days. Folks like me are worried about how much energy and water they use, and the effect that might have on the grid, the climate, scarce water supplies, and other utility customers. Others are panicking over the possibility that the U.S. might fall behind in the AI race โ though I have no idea what winning the race would entail or look like.
And, in our capitalistic system, where there is fear, there are myriad solutions, most of which entail building or making or consuming more of something rather than just, well, you know, turning off the damned data centers. The Trump administration would solve the problem by subsidizing more coal-burning, while the petroleum industry is offering up its surplus natural gas. Tech firms are buying up all the power from new solar arrays and geothermal facilities, long before theyโre even built.
Perhaps the most hype, and the loftiest promises of salvation, however, involve nuclear power and a new generation of reactors that are smaller, portable, require less up-front capital, and supposedly not weighed down with all of the baggage of the old-school conventional reactors, which not only cost a lot to build, but also tend to evoke visions of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima.
Yet for all the buzz โ which may be loudest in the Western U.S. โ itโs far from certain that this so-called nuclear renaissance will ever come to fruition. The latest generation of reactors may go by slick, newfangled names, but they are still expensive, require dangerous and damaging mining to extract uranium for fuel, produce waste, are potentially dangerous โ and are still largely unproven.
Experimental Breeder Reactor II on the Idaho National Laboratory. The reactor was shut down and decommissioned in 1994. Now Oklo is building a new reactor, using similar technology, nearby. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Several years ago I visited Experimental Breeder Reactor I, located west of Idaho Falls. It has been defunct since 1963 and is now a museum, and a sort of time capsule taking one back to heady times when atomic energy promised to help feed the exploding, electricity-hungry population of the post-war Western U.S. and its growing number of electric gadgets (remember electric can openers?).
The retro-futuristic facility is decked out with control panels and knobs and valves and other apparatus that possess the characteristic sleek chunkiness of mid-century high-tech design. A temperature gauge for the โrod farmโ goes up to 500 degrees centigrade, and if you look closely youโll see a red button labeled โSCRAMโ that, if pushed, would have plunged the control rods into the reactor, thereby โpoisoningโ the reaction and shutting it down. If you have to push it, youโd best scram on out of there.
I couldnโt help but get caught up in the marvels of the technology. On a cold December day in 1951, scientists here had blasted a neutron into a uranium-235 atom and shattered it, releasing energy and yet more neutrons that split other uranium atoms, causing a frenetically energetic chain reaction identical to the one that led to the explosions that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki several years earlier. Mass is destroyed, energy created. Only this time the energy was harnessed not to blow up cities, but to create steam that turned a turbine that generated electricity that illuminated a string of lightbulbs and then powered the entire facility โ all without burning fossil fuels or building dams.
This particular reactor was known as a โbreederโ because its fuel reproduces itself, in a way. During the reaction, loose neutrons are โcapturedโ by uranium-238 atoms, turning them into plutonium-239, which is readily fissionable, meaning it can be used as fuel for future reactions.
A diagram of the atomic fission and breeding process at Experimental Breeder Reactor-I in Idaho. The reactor began generating electricity in 1951. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
At first glance it seems like the answer to the worldโs energy problems, and two years after EBR-I lit up, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his 1953 โAtoms for Peaceโ speech. Nuclear energy would help redeem the world from the terrible scourge of atomic weapons, the president said; it would be used to โserve the needs rather than the fears of the world โ to make the deserts flourish, to warm the cold, to feed the hungry, to alleviate the misery of the world.โ*
Now, with Arizona utilities teaming up to develop and build new reactors; with Wyomingโs, Idahoโs, and Utahโs governors collaborating on their nuclear-powered โEnergy Superabundanceโ effort; and with Oklo looking to build a modern version of EBR-I not far from the original, itโs beginning to feel like 1953 all over again. Only now the nuclear reaction promises to serve the needs of cyberspace rather than the real world โ to make AI do your homework, to cool the server banks, to feed the Instagram feeds, to send out those Tik-Toks at twice the speed.
Advertisement from 1954.
Seven decades later, Eisenhowerโs hopes have yet to be fulfilled.
It turns out a lot of people arenโt comfortable with the idea nuclear reactions taking place down the road, regardless of how many safety backstops are in place to avoid a catastrophic meltdown a la Chernobyl. Nuke plants cost a lot of money and take forever to build. They need water for steam generation and for cooling, which can be a problem in water-constrained places and even in water-abundant areas: Diablo Canyon nuke plant sucks up about 2.5 billion gallons of ocean water to generate steam and to cool the reactors, before spitting it โ 20 degrees warmer โ back into the Pacific. This kills an estimated 5,000 adult fish each year, along with an additional 1.5 billion fish eggs and fry and messes up water temperature and the marine ecosystem. And while nukes are good at producing baseload power (meaning steady, 24/7 generation), they arenโt very flexible, meaning they canโt be ramped up or down to accommodate fluctuating demand or variable power sources like wind and solar.
And then thereโs the waste. The nuclear reaction itself may seem almost miraculous in its power, simplicity, and even purity.
But the steps required to create the reaction, along with the aftermath, are hardly magical. To fuel a single reactor requires extracting hundreds of thousands of tons of ore from the earth, milling the ore to produce yellowcake (triuranium octoxide), converting the yellowcake to uranium hexafluoride gas, enriching it to concentrate the uranium-235, and fabricating the fuel pellets and rods.
Each step generates ample volumes of toxic waste products. Mining leaves behind lightly radioactive waste rock; milling produces mill tailings containing radium, thorium, radon, lead, arsenic, and other nasty stuff; and enrichment and fabrication both produce liquid and solid waste. It has been about 40 years since the Cold War uranium boom busted, and yet the abandoned mines and mills are still contaminating areas and still being cleaned up โ if you can ever truly clean up this sort of pollution.
Yet the reaction, itself, generates the most dangerous form of leftovers, containing radioactive fission products such as iodine, strontium, and caesium and transuranic elements including plutonium. This โspent nuclear fuel,โ or radioactive waste, is removed from the reactor during refueling and for now is typically stored on site. Efforts to create a national depository for these nasty leftovers have failed, usually because the sites arenโt deemed safe enough to contain the waste for a couple hundred thousand years, or because locals donโt want it in their back yard. If it were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be used in a โdirty bomb,โ a conventional explosive that scatters radioactive material around an area.
Plus, breeder reactors, especially, produce plutonium, which can then be used in nuclear warheads (India used U.S.-supported breeder technology to acquire nuclear weapons). Thatโs one of the reasons folks soured on the technology and the U.S. ended its federal plutonium breeder reactor development program in the 1980s. The other reasons were high costs and sodium coolant leaks (and resulting fires). After the EBR-I shut down in 1963, because it was outdated, the Idaho National Laboratory built EBR-II nearby. It was shut down and decommissioned in 1994.
Nevertheless, Oklo โ one of the rising new-nuke stars โ is touting its use of similar technologyย as the EBR-II, i.e. liquid-metal-cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor, as a selling point for the reactor it is currently developing at the INL.
The envisioned new fleet of reactors go by many names: SMRs, or small modular reactors, and advanced, fast, micro, or nano-reactors. Most of them can be fabricated in a factory, then trucked to or assembled on-site. Some are small enough to fit in a truck. They can be used alone to power a microgrid or a data center, or clustered to create a utility-scale operation that feeds the grid.
Their main selling point is that they require less up-front capital than a conventional reactor, that you can build and install one of these things for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time (once the reactors are actually licensed, developed, and produced on a commercial scale, which is still not the case).
A decade ago, companies like NuScale were also promoting them as ways to power the grid in a time of increasing restraints on carbon. Now that the feds are not only declaring climate change a โhoax,โ but also forbidding agencies from even uttering the term, that no longer carries as much weight. Instead, almost every new proposal now is marketed as a โsolutionโ to the data center โproblem.โ Google, Switch, Amazon, Open AI, and Meta are all looking to power their facilities with nukes, if and when they are finally up and running.
The new technology is not monolithic. Some are cooled in different ways, or use different types of fuel, but they all work on the same principle as old-school conventional reactors. As such, they also require the same fuel-production process, also have potential safety issues, and also create hazardous waste.
In fact, a 2022 Stanford study found that small modular reactors could create more, and equally hazardous, waste than conventional reactors per unit of power generated. The authors wrote: โResults reveal that water-, molten saltโ, and sodium-cooled SMR designs will increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal by factors of 2 to 30 {compared to an 1,100 MW pressurized water reactor}.โ
The cost thing isnโt all that clear cut, either. The smaller reactors may be cheaper to build, but because they donโt take advantage of economies of scale, they are more expensive per unit of electricity generated than conventional reactors, and still can be cost prohibitive.
In 2015, for example, Oregon-based NuScale proposed installing 12 of its 50-MW small modular reactors at the Idaho National Laboratories to provide 600 MW of capacity to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS (which also includes a handful of non-Utah utilities). In 2018 โ after receiving at least $288 million in federal subsidies โ NuScale upped the planned capacity to 720 MW, saying it would lower operating costs.
But what started out as a $3 billion project in 2015 kept increasing, so that even after it was ramped down to 421 MW, the projected price tag had ballooned to $9.3 billion in 2023 (still about one-third of the cost of the new Vogtle plant in Georgia, but with a fraction of the generating capacity). UAMPSโs collective members, realizing there were plenty of more cost-effective ways to keep their grids running, canceled the project later that year.
It kind of makes you wonder: Is this new wave of nuclear reactors solving the data center energy demand problem? Or are data centersโ energy-gobbling habits solving the nuclear reactorsโ cost and feasibility problems?
I suspect itโs a little bit of both, with the balance swinging toward the latter. In that case, nuclear reactors are not alone: The Trump administration is using data center demand as the prime justification for propping up the dying coal industry.
Before the Big Data Center Buildup, utilities really had no need for expensive, waste-producing reactors โ they could more cheaply and safely build solar and wind installations with battery storage systems for backup. If needed, they could supplement it with geothermal or natural gas-fired peaker plants.
But if data centers end up demanding as much power as projected (like 22,000 additional megawatts in Nevada, alone), utilities will need to pull out all the stops and add generating capacity of all sorts as quickly as possible, or theyโll tell the data centers to generate their own power. Either scenario would likely make small nukes more attractive, even if they do cost too much, and even if it means that data centers end up being radioactive waste repositories, too.
Another plausible scenario is that the tech firms figure out ways to make their data centers more efficient; that itโs more cost-effective (and therefore profitable) to develop less energy- and water-intensive data processing hardware than to spend billions on an experimental reactor that may not be operating for years from now.
What a novel concept: To use less, rather than always hungering for more and more and more.
Scientists secure jute netting over mulch on a newly planted section of the Ophir Pass fen in Coloradoโs San Juan Mountains. Anna Marija Helt/High Country News
The resinous scentof Engelmann spruce wafted over a shallow, mossy pool surrounded by lush sedges near the 11,800-foot summit of Ophir Pass, in southwestern Coloradoโs rugged San Juan Mountains. This type of wetland, known as a fen, forms when perennial water saturates the ground, limiting plant decomposition and allowing organic matter to accumulate as peat.
Just downhill, however, on that hot, sunny July day, another part of the fen was visible: a degraded area, bare soil exposed on a steep slope.
Peatlands โ fens and bogs โ are key climate regulators. (Bogs are maintained by precipitation, but fens, which, in North America, occur in the Northeast, Midwest and Mountain West, depend on groundwater.) Their peat retains plant carbon that would otherwise decompose and be released as carbon dioxide. Despite covering only about 4% of Earthโs land area, peatlands store a third of the worldโs soil carbon โ twice the amount trapped in forest biomass. โFens are old-growth wetlands,โ said Delia Malone, a recently retired field ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program. Some of Coloradoโs fens are over 10,000 years old.
In relatively dry southern Colorado, they also provide a secondary round of water storage. The first round is Coloradoโs snowpack, which, as it melts, feeds groundwater that fensโ spongy peat captures and later releases to dwindling waterways and drying landscapes after the snow is gone.
But the steep and degraded bare patch at Ophir Pass no longer functions. Where sedges, mosses, bog birch and other wetland species should be thriving, white PVC groundwater testing wells dot the ground, and heavy straw tubes called wattles reduce water and sediment runoff into the creek below.
โThis is the steepest peatland weโve ever tried to restore, as far as I know,โ said wetland ecologist Rod Chimner, a professor at Michigan Tech. In the Rockies, fens lie at high elevations, which complicates restoration. Approximately 2,000 fens have been mapped so far in the San Juans, and about 200 need work. Chimnerโs Ph.D. advisor, David Cooper, began restoring the areaโs fens decades ago, and together theyโve literally written the book on mountain peatland restoration. Now, Chimner and staff from Mountain Studies Institute (MSI) โ a local nonprofit research and education center โ are restoring an ecosystem born from the last ice age but damaged by bulldozing in the 1970s.
Dams, road-building and other human activities harm Coloradoโs fens, which can take 1,000 years to build just 8 inches of peat soil. The Ophir Pass fen is a rare iron fen, fed by groundwater rendered acidic by iron pyrite. The resulting chemistry supports unique plant communities โ and leaves iron and other minerals incorporated in the peat or deposited in hardened layers. This fen was likely damaged by bog iron mining, which has degraded several iron fens in the San Juans.
Wattles on a steep degraded section of the fen. Anna Maria Helt/High Country News
Lenka Doskocil examines roots in peat that could be centuries old. Anna Maria Helt/High Country News
A restored pool flanked by sedges. Anna Maria Helt/High Country News
CLOUDS STARTED TO BUILD as workers used hand saws to extract plugs of sedge and soil from a healthy, already restored part of the fen. Like Goldilocksโ bed, the plugs have to be just right: Too large or too many, and digging them up disturbs the soil surface; too small, and they wonโt survive transplantation. โAs long as it has at least one rhizome, it will plant and spread,โ said Lenka Doskocil, a research associate with MSIโs Water Program and Chimnerโs graduate student. She split a plug, revealing rhizomes embedded in the rusty-brown peat, then nestled it into a bucket of plugs. Sometimes, workers plant nursery plugs or greenhouse starts from seeds collected in the area.
Chimner and Doskocil hauled the first bucket of plugs up to the bare patch, began digging small, regularly spaced holes, then gently inserted one sedge plug per opening. A stiff breeze provided relief as several other people joined in. โTake your time and do it right,โ Chimner said encouragingly as he stepped back to observe. Otherwise, the plugs wouldnโt take.
Doskocil spotted an older plug protruding from the soil. But it wasnโt from rushed planting: Frost heave, a freeze-thaw cycle that thrusts soil upwards, had kicked it out of the ground, she said, tucking it back in. Frost heave complicates planting and breaks rhizomes, preventing nearby plants from colonizing bare soil. But Chimnerโs past research has yielded a solution: Team members insulated the surface around each newly transplanted sedge with Excelsior, a shredded aspen mulch tough enough to withstand several winters. โWeโre giving them little down jackets,โ Chimner said.
A rhythm of extract-portage-dig-plant-mulch ensued as the iron-painted ridge of Lookout Peak towered to the north. A passenger yelled โthank youโ from a truck descending the pass. Doskocil broke open a handful of peat, revealing roots that were hundreds of years old, if not older.
Planting the steepest quarter acre here has been difficult, and a 2021 fire didnโt help. โWeโre kind of starting all over againโ in that section, Chimner explained. Theyโre experimenting with direct seeding, which is common in wetland restoration, but challenging at the high-elevation site. โIโve seeded here three times,โ said Haley Perez, a community science program assistant with MSI.
Conservation biologist Anthony Culpepper, associate director of MSIโs Forest Program, gestured uphill toward what used to be a bare โMars slope.โ He listed the challenges: timing, winds that blow seeds away, variable winter and monsoonal precipitation, a short growing season, a sunbaked slope and animals that eat the seeds. Still, over many seasons and with multiple collaborators โ several federal agencies, San Juan National Forest, Purgatory Village Land, the National Forest Foundation, San Juan Citizens Alliance and others โ theyโve made great progress. That former Mars slope is now covered with mat-forming, soil-stabilizing wetland plants, including rare species.
The fen is wetter from strategic placement of wattles and check dams, wooden slats that slow surface water flow so that it soaks into the ground instead of running straight downhill. In turn, more groundwater has enabled transplantation and spread of thousands of plants. Much of the fen is now green, with mosses and other vegetation colonizing on their own. โThis is the first time Iโve seen arnica at the site,โ said Culpepper, who also noted the lack of invasives, a promising sign.
MSI takes an adaptive approach to restoration: Research guides planning and execution, and outcomes are carefully monitored to guide future work. Thatโs important in a region and state where rising temperatures and declining snowpack are predicted to lower water tables, which could disrupt new peat formation and even promote peat decomposition, potentially shifting some fens from carbon storage to carbon release. โHow do we get our systems to a spot where theyโre resilient enough to withstand the challenges that are going to continue to come?โ asked Doskocil. MSI and its collaborators are working on it โ at Ophir Pass; at Burrows Fen, a new project north of Silverton; and elsewhere throughout the San Juans.
Fat raindrops landed as the group debated whether to secure the mulch with a layer of jute netting. A wind gust decided it; they added the netting and then, just as the sun returned, trooped uphill to their vehicles to head home. Someone asked Chimner if he was satisfied with the day. โWhen I can look down and see all green, Iโll be satisfied,โ he replied.
In Alaskaโs Brooks Range, rivers once clear enough to drink from now run orange and hazy with toxic metals. As warming thaws formerly frozen ground, it sets off a chemical chain reaction that is poisoning fish and wreaking havoc on ecosystems.ย
Researcher testing murky waters in Alaska’s Brooks Range. (Photo: Taylor Rhoades)
As the planet warms, a layer of permafrost โ permanently frozen Arctic soil that locked away minerals for millennia โ is beginning to thaw. Water and oxygen creep into the newly exposed soil, triggering the breakdown of sulfide-rich rocks, and creating sulfuric acid that leaches naturally occurring metals like iron, cadmium, and aluminum from rocks into the river.ย
Often times, geochemical reactions like these are triggered by mining operations. But that is not the case this time.ย
โThis is what acid mine drainage looks like,โ said Tim Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside. โBut here, thereโs no mine. The permafrost is thawing and changing the chemistry of the landscape.โ
How the Salmon River looked prior to the permafrost thawing. (Patrick Sullivan/University of Alaska)
A new paper detailing the severity of the contamination has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Though the study focuses on the Salmon River, researchers warn that similar transformations are already underway across dozens of other Arctic watersheds.
โI have worked and traveled in the Brooks Range since 1976, and the recent changes in landforms and water chemistry are truly astounding,โ said David Cooper, Colorado State University research scientist and study co-author.
Ecologist Paddy Sullivan of the University of Alaska first noticed the dramatic changes in 2019 while conducting fieldwork on Arctic forests shifting northward โ another consequence of climate change. A pilot flying Sullivan into the field warned him the Salmon River hadnโt cleared up after the snowmelt and looked โlike sewage.โ Alarmed by what he saw, Sullivan joined forces with Lyons, Roman Dial from Alaska Pacific University, and others to investigate the causes and ecological consequences.
The research team on site in the Alaska wilderness. (Photo: Taylor Rhoades)
Their analysis confirmed that thawing permafrost was unleashing geochemical reactions that oxidize sulfide-rich rocks like pyrite, generating acidity and mobilizing a wide suite of metals, including cadmium, which accumulates in fish organs and could affect animals like bears and birds that eat fish.
In small amounts, metals arenโt necessarily toxic. However, the study shows that levels of metals in the riverโs waters exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toxicity thresholds for aquatic life. In addition, the iron-clouded waters reduce the amount of light reaching the bottom of the river and smother insect larvae eaten by the salmon and other fish.
While current metal concentrations in edible fish tissue are not considered hazardous to humans, the changes to the rivers pose indirect but serious threats. Chum salmon, a key subsistence species for many Indigenous communities, might struggle to spawn in gravel beds choked with fine sediment. Other species, such as grayling and Dolly Varden, may also be affected.
Hoof prints serve as reminders that river contamination affects more than fish. There are implications for whole ecosystems. (Photo: Taylor Rhoades)
โItโs not just a Salmon River story,โ Lyons said. โThis is happening across the Arctic. Wherever you have the right kind of rock and thawing permafrost, this process can start.โ
Unlike mine sites, where acid drainage can be mitigated with buffers or containment systems, these remote watersheds might have hundreds of contamination sources and no such infrastructure. Once the chemical process begins, the only thing that can stop it is recovery of the permafrost.
โThereโs no fixing this once it starts,โ Lyons said. โItโs another irreversible shift driven by a warming planet.โ [ed. emphasis mine]
The study, funded by the National Science Foundationโs Rapid Response program, highlights the potential danger for other Arctic regions. The researchers would like to help communities and land managers anticipate future impacts and, when possible, prepare for them.
โThere are few places left on Earth as untouched as these rivers,โ Lyons said. โBut even here, far from cities and highways, the fingerprint of global warming is unmistakable. No place is spared.โ
For the most part, President Donald Trump has done everything we feared the candidate would do and then some: following Project 2025 to a T, gutting environmental and public health protections, shredding the First Amendment (to the point of even losing Tucker Carlson), threatening political opponents, and generally embracing authoritarianism.
But when it comes to public lands, there is actually one act we expected the administration to do shortly after the inauguration, but that it hasnโt yet attempted: Shrinking or eliminating national monuments, especially those designated during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations. Even after Trumpโs Justice Department opined (wrongly, Iโd say) that the Antiquities Act authorizes a president to shrink or revoke national monuments, the administration didnโt actually do it.
I suspect this is because they realize how deeply unpopular that would be. Sure, Trumpโs first-term shrinkage of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments may have garnered some support from a handful of Utah right-wingers, but theyโd be behind him regardless. Meanwhile, it pissed off a lot of Americans who value public lands but might otherwise support Trumpโs policies.
Thatโs not to say the national monuments are safe. Itโs just that the administration seems to be intent, for now, to outsource their destruction to their friends in Congress. The House Republicansโ proposed budget, for example, would zero out funding for GSENMโs new management plan โ a de facto shrinkage.
And now, Rep. Paul Gosar, a MAGA Republican from Arizona, has introduced bills that would nullify Baaj Nwaavjo Iโtah Kukveni โ Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and the Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of Tucson. The former blocks new mining claims in an area that has been targeted for uranium extraction. And the latter, established by Bill Clinton in 2000, covers a 189,713-acre swath of ecologically rich Sonoran Desert near the gaping wound known as the Asarco Silver Bell copper mine. The national monument designation blocked new mining claims.
Interestingly enough, neither of the national monuments are in Gosarโs district, which covers the heavily Republican western edge of the state, so he wonโt suffer from voter blowback if the legislation succeeds.
โ๏ธ Mining Monitor โ๏ธ
Congressional Republicans, with some Democratic support, are again trying to pass legislation that would allow mining companies to dump their waste on public lands.
The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2025, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, made it through the House Natural Resources Committee this week on a 25-17 vote. It would tweak the 1872 Mining Law to ensure that mining companies can store tailings and other mining-related waste on public land mining claims that arenโt valid, meaning the claimant has not proven that the parcels contain valuable minerals. This was actually the norm for decades until 2022, when a federal judge ruled that the proposed Rosemont copper mine in Arizona could not store its tailings and waste rock on public land. That ruling was followed by a similar one in 2023, leading mining state politicians from both parties to try to restore the pre-Rosemont Decision rules.
The bill would supplement Trumpโs executive order from March invoking the Defense Production Act to expedite mining on public lands, and his โemergencyโ order that fast-tracks mining and energy permitting on public lands.
***
Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
IsoEnergy, the company that owns the controversial Daneros Mine just outside Bears Ears National Monument and the Tony M Mine,plans to begin exploratory drilling at its Flatiron claims in Utahโs Henry Mountain uranium district. Last year, the Canada-based company staked a whopping 370 lode claims on federal land. Along with two Utah state leases, this adds up to about 8,800 acres south-southwest of Mt. Hillers.
๐ข๏ธ Hydrocarbon Hoedown
A peer-reviewed study out of UCLA recently found that pregnant women living near the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Los Angeles during the sustained blowout of 2015 experienced more adverse birth outcomes than expected. Specifically, the prevalence of low birthweight was 45% to 100% higher than those living outside the affected area. This should concern not only folks living near Aliso Canyon (which is still operational), but also anyone who lives near an oil and gas well or other facility.
Aliso Canyon is a depleted oil field in the hills of the Santa Susana Mountains in northern LA. Southern California Gas pipes in natural gas, pumps it into the oil field, and stores up to 84 billion cubic feet of the fuel there. In October 2015, one of the wells blew out and for the next 112 days spewed a total of about 109,000 metric tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and the main ingredient of natural gas.
Thatโs bad. But also mixed into the toxic soup that erupted from the field were other compounds such as mercaptans including tetrahydrothiophene and t-butyl mercaptan, sulfides, n-hexane, styrene, toluene, and benzene. All really nasty stuff that you donโt want in your air, and that is often emitted by oil and gas wells. The authors write:
โThe emissions of BTEX and other HAP compounds are of particular concern as even at levels below health benchmarks they have been linked to health effects, including neurological, respiratory, and developmental effects.โ
That appears to have been the case with the Aliso Canyon blowout, where โlow birth weight and term low birth weight was higher than expected among women living in the affected area whose late pregnancy overlapped with the disaster.โ
Itโs simply more confirmation that fossil fuel development and consumption can take a big toll on the environment, the climate, and the people who live in or near the oil and gas patch or associated infrastructure. And that limits on methane emissions are important, even if you donโt care about climate change.
***
Long-time Land Desk readers might remember my story about the Horseshoe Gallup oil and gas field and sacrifice zone in northwestern New Mexico. I wrote about how the area had been ravaged by years of drilling and largely unfettered development, how the wells had been sold or handed off to increasingly irresponsible and slipshod companies as they were depleted, and how that had left dozens of abandoned facilities, oozing and seeping nasty stuff, but were not cleaned up because state and federal regulators still considered them to be โactive.โ
The field is still there, along with most of the abandoned wells. But Capital & Mainโs Jerry Redfern reports that some of the worst sites, including the NE Hogback 53, are being cleaned up. Well, sort of. The extensive reclamation of the well and the tank battery was started, only to be halted in May at the end of the stateโs fiscal year. It resumed in July, and is expected to cost about $650,000.
This highlights the need for stronger enforcement and, most importantly, adequate reclamation bond requirements. At prices like that, cleaning up just the Horseshoe Gallup could cost tens of millions of dollars, and the taxpayer will be left to shoulder most of the bill.
๐ฅต Aridification Watch ๐ซ
Clarification: In Tuesdayโs dispatch on the Colorado River and Lake Powell, I wrote that another dry winter would put โโฆ the elevation of Lake Powell at 3,500 feet by this time next year. And, due to the infrastructureโs limitations, Glen Canyon Dam would have to be operated as a โrun of the riverโ facility.โ That probably needs a bit more explanation.
One smart reader pointed out that even after the surface level of Lake Powell drops below minimum power pool, or 3,490 feet in elevation, the dam can still release up to 15,000 cfs from its river outlets. Technically, managers would not be forced to go to run of the river until the surface level dropped below 3,370 feet, which is known as โdead pool.โ
However, the Bureau of Reclamation is very wary of relying on the river outlets, because they werenโt designed for long-term use and could fail under those circumstances. So, BoR is intent on keeping the water levels above minimum power pool so that all releases can go through the penstocks and the hydroelectric turbines. โIn effect,โ the authors of the paper wrote, โat least for the short term, the engineering and safety issues associated with the ability to release water through Glen Canyon Dam mean that the amount of water actually available for release from Lake Powell is only that which exists above elevation 3500 feet.โ
So, as long as this is the case, the BoR will need to go to run of the river as soon as the elevation drops to 3,500 feet. I hope that helps clear things up!
๐บ๏ธ Messing with Maps ๐งญ
Todayโs map is less about the map than it is about the publication it comes from, the USGSโs Guidebook of the Western United States Part E. the Denver & Rio Grande Western Route, published in 1922. This thing is super cool, and super detailed (itโs 384 pages long). Itโs got some great photos and maps, like this one (click on the image to see it in larger size on the website).
Besides having a cool, hand drawn style, this map struck me because it was made prior to the reservoirs on the Gunnison River. And it shows how the railroad tracks used to go into the Black Canyon at Cimarron and continue along the river all the way to Gunnison (most of that section is now under water). I suppose I should have known that was where the tracks went, but it never really occurred to me before. Credit: USGS
Related to that map were these two photos illustrating the miracle of irrigation.
SALT LAKE CITY โ Researchers at Utah State University just completed a joint study with the Utah Division of Water Rights to better understand surface water movement and measurement near Great Salt Lake.
The critical study comes as efforts are underway by the Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Trust, Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner and other agencies to increase flows to benefit the lake’s diverse objectives including lake level, habitat and salinity.
By speaking with local water managers, USU researchers were able to gather key information about how surface water moves throughout the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, inclusive of Great Salt Lakeโs peripheral wetlands and its water body, as well as document existing measurement infrastructure, which was previously unavailable in one location.
โThis information was not included in the first report because we realized we needed extra time to understand the important nuances of the whole lake ecosystem connectivity,โ said Eileen Lukens, a Utah Water Research Laboratory researcher on the project.
Measurement of the water flowing to the Great Salt Lake commonly relies on four gages upstream of Great Salt Lakeโs peripheral wetland complexes with little measurement below those points prior to 2024, according to USU researcher Eryn Turney. This unique study involved a three-season field campaign in which the USU team visited sites at the last measurable points of inflow to Great Salt Lake.
โWe realized that there was a gap in our understanding of how water moves not only to Great Salt Lakeโs ecosystem as a whole, but also between distinctive portions of the ecosystem like the wetlands and water body,โ Turney said. โWe wanted to understand the interconnection of these areas and how increased measurement could facilitate future water delivery.โ
With this in mind, USU researchers were able to identify locations where additional measurement infrastructure is needed to aid in lake-oriented objectives as well as develop diagrams to identify potential pathways for water delivery to areas of Great Salt Lakeโs ecosystem.
โThis study is an important step forward in understanding how water moves through the Great Salt Lake ecosystem,โ said Division of Water Rights Deputy State Engineer Blake Bingham. โBy identifying where additional measurement is needed, we can make better-informed decisions that support management objectives of the lake and water distribution across the basin. Collaboration like this between state agencies and our research partners strengthens our ability to administer and distribute water rights with greater confidence and transparency.โ
Lukens added that their work is a part of a larger whole made up of many lake stakeholders with projects underway that contribute to tracking and managing water.
โThe United States Geological Survey, Division of Water Rights and other agencies made huge efforts this past year while our study was underway to address some of the measurement gaps around the lake.โ Lukens said. โAlthough there are still more gaps to address, we are a lot closer to understanding inflow to Great Salt Lake now.โ
Sunset from the western shore of Antelope Island State Park, Great Salt Lake, Utah, United States.. Sunset viewed from White Rock Bay, on the western shore of Antelope Island. Carrington Island is visible in the distance. By Ccmdav – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2032320
Dave Fosdeck climbs a hill of dirt surrounding an excavation at the site of a Chuza tank battery outside Farmington, New Mexico, in June. The orange staining in the hole is the result of years of leaking oil waste from the tanks and equipment that once sat here.ย Jerry Redfern
This story was originally published by Capital & Main and is republished here by permission.
Dave Fosdeck crested a dirt berm on the Hogback, a ridge of hills west of Farmington, New Mexico, when the scent hit him. โWhoa! It stinks!โ he yelped. It was June, and he was there with two others to look at the cleanup operations around a battery of massive oil tanks that sat abandoned for years in this rolling, high-desert corner of New Mexico.
The berm surrounds a hole where a semi-buried tank the size of a backyard swimming pool once sat, collecting and leaking waste sludge from surrounding oil wells. Nearby is an even bigger but much newer hole where a cleanup crew had removed contaminated soil. The void wasnโt fully excavated but already was big enough to drop a small house in. The pitโs sides were stained orange and an even stronger petroleum smell rose from it.
For years, a separator, a semi-trailer-sized machine that split valuable oil from wastewater and other contaminants, sat here. And for years, that separator leaked those toxic compounds onto the ground, where they soaked in, leading to the orange, contaminated soil and foul air.
The two holes, the stink and a few massive piles of dirt were about all that remained of a facility โ known as a tank battery โ that treated oil from 30 nearby wells for decades. In addition to the separator and sludge pit, the site was home to seven cylindrical green tanks the size of small grain silos, a decades-old tanker truck with flat tires, several plastic barrels and dozens of ruptured, unlabeled, cube-shaped tanks leaking mystery chemicals. Thatโs mostly gone now, except for the white and yellow chemical staining on the ground where those cubical tanks leaked.
โI canโt believe they didnโt dig that all out,โ Fosdeck said.
For a few years, all of this belonged to Chuza Oil, whichย went bust in 2018, leaving the wells, tank battery and other equipment to bake in the high desert sun. In 2022, Fosdeck, Mike Eisenfeld of the San Juan Citizens Alliance and local rancher Don Schreiber identified the remote site covered in abandoned wells and leaking equipment and began nagging federal and state officials to do something about it.
A view of the Chuza tank battery in 2023. It had been abandoned for years at this point and several unmarked plastic containers were clearly leaking. Jerry Redfern
This spot in the Hogback exemplifies a worrying, expensive trend in New Mexicoโs changing oilfield remediation landscape, where well operators declare bankruptcy and abandon highly contaminated and dilapidated facilities for state and federal agencies to clean up. Itโs a national trend that sweeps from the countryโs first oilfields inย Pennsylvaniaย to theย Californiaย coast.
Currently, New Mexico pays contractors as much as $165,000 to plug an old oil well, according to the Oil Conservation Division, the stateโs primary oil and gas regulator. Thatโs $65,000 more than the Division reported paying just three years ago. A recent report by the stateโs Legislative Finance Committee warns that New Mexico could be on the hook for up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs in coming years from bankrupt oil and gas companies and rising plugging costs. (The report also gave the Oil Conservation Division a tongue lashing over โinconsistent cost controlโ in its oilfield remediation contracts.)
And while the report does talk about cleaning up tank batteries โ and describes three very expensive examples โ it doesnโt mention how many more may be lurking in the stateโs oilfields, or what they could cost the state in the future.
Well plugging involves pulling old equipment out of the ground and scraping and flushing the wellbore before sealing it. So when a contractor arrives on site, often, โNobody knows what theyโre dealing with because itโs subsurface,โ said Jason Sandel, the president of Aztec Well Servicing. Pipes rust. Pipes break. Wells might be shallower or deeper than recorded. After the pipe comes out, the contractor injects a series of cement plugs underground to keep oil, gas and other contaminants from migrating to water-bearing formations.
A tank battery has none of that, so at first glance cleaning one up looks like the easier task. But thatโs not necessarily the case. The Chuza Oil tank battery site covers only about half an acre, and according to the Oil Conservation Division, the cleanup operation is on track to cost more than $650,000, much of that incurred because it was necessary to dig out and truck away the contaminated soil where the separator leaked at the remote location.
In mid-June, the cleanup clearly wasnโt finished. Orange barrier netting flapped in the wind around the pits, and the orange staining and gassy reek indicated more contaminated soil awaited removal. (Sidney Hill, public information officer for the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said that work stopped in May due to the end of the stateโs 2025 fiscal year and resumed in July with the new fiscal year.)
Fosdeck, Eisenfeld and Schreiber have spent years tracking and highlighting problems in the oilfields around Farmington. Fosdeck, on his own, follows the paper trails of abandoned wells and other fossil fuel ventures. Schreiber and Eisenfeld rattle the cages of state and federal government officials to get oil, gas and coal sites cleaned up.
โThis whole part of the equation โ the cleanup part โ has been neglected,โ Eisenfeld said. Thatโs one of many reasons why he thinks digging for oil, gas and coal shouldnโt be done in the first place.
Randy Pacheco retired recently from a company that plugs and cleans up old well sites like Chuzaโs, and before that he was dean of the School of Energy at San Juan College in Farmington, the stateโs oilfield trade school. He visited the Hogback field with Fosdeck, Eisenfeld and Schreiber before the cleanup began. It wasnโt the worst thing he had ever seen, but, still, it was a mess.
โI think thereโs people who have big aspirations to make a lot of money in the oil and gas industry and they end up purchasing these assets and then they donโt know what to do,โ he said.
Even so, the site confounded him. โHow would you get yourself in this kind of a mess?โ he wondered about the abandoned equipment and dilapidated tank battery he saw. โWhoโs selling them those dreams?โ
Mike Eisenfeld, the energy and climate program manager at the San Juan Citizens Alliance, checks out a piece of abandoned equipment in the remains of the Chuza oilfield in June. Jerry Redfern
SOMETIMES THE DREAM sells itself.
Bobby Goldstein is best known for producing Cheaters, a COPS-style reality TV show of hidden cameras, secret lovers, slapped faces and shattered dreams.
โIโve got a thousand episodes that run wild all over the world, every day, all day,โ Goldstein said. Those episodes made him wealthy. In July, over a long, free-wheeling phone call, Goldstein explained in his smooth Texas patter how he, a Dallas lawyer and TV impresario, followed a dream to become an oil man and how that venture completely collapsed.
โIโll never forget all this shit,โ he said.
In 2010, Goldstein persuaded a couple of acquaintances to go into the oil business with him. They formed Chuza Oil โ the name behind the Hogback mess โ and, for a little less than $3 million, they bought Parowan Oil, a small company with some old wells and a tank battery near Farmington.
โ[I] grew up around a bunch of rich brats whose families were big oil people,โ he said. โThey made the earth shake and I always thought, โMan, I wish I had some sense to do that.โ That opportunity came about, and I went on it.โ
He continued, โI never was an oil man. I was a speculator, and for a minute there I looked real smart. โฆ You see, I bought the land cheap, [and] oil rose and rose and rose.โ
Goldstein said Chuza spent about $2 million redeveloping the oilfield infrastructure. โWe made a vast improvement to the field so that it would be more efficient and more likely to be operational. So, over time, most all of those wells were working โฆ I even moved to Santa Fe where I could be closer,โ he said. โShit, I bought a jet so I could fly out there direct in an hour and a half and be on that field. I was out there a lot.โ
What happened next set the stage for the collapse of Chuza Oil and what became of the Hogback Field.
Goldstein said the company spent millions drilling two fracked wells, which involved ramming huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals into long, horizontal branches of a main wellbore to fracture the surrounding rock and loosen oil and gas trapped within.
Those wells produced for two months, but the oil was laden with paraffin. The naturally occurring, waxy hydrocarbon can slowly clog wells, in much the same way that cholesterol blocks arteries. In addition, the fracking loosened paraffin in Chuzaโs other wells, fouling them as well, Goldstein said.
Then, a financial catastrophe: โThe son of a bitch [partner] that was supposed to pay for the wells left us a $3 million unpaid bill with various creditors,โ Goldstein said. โSo not only did we have a fiscal issue going on, but we also had production issues and the company wound up into a Chapter 11,โ he said.
โIf everybody had listened to me on that field, weโd probably already sold it for $200 or $300 million. But people that have a little money think they know something, especially when they inherited it and never worked for it,โ Goldstein said. โThose are the worst kind of idiots to have to deal with.โ
After spending around $15 million to buy and expand the operation, Goldstein said Chuza Oil collapsed into years of bankruptcy litigation, foreclosure, 30 abandoned, paraffin-clogged wells and one messy tank battery.
โIt was my Tom Sawyer experience,โ Goldstein said. โI did something that I never had any background in, training for, education. And it was just a Wild West venture capital gamble.โ
And if he made a show about the experience? โI would call it โPricks and Jackasses Gone Wild,โโ he said.
As for his former oilfield in New Mexico, Goldstein said, โI donโt really know whatโs going on.โ He was unaware that the wells had been plugged and the tank battery removed. In part, thatโs because heโs no longer responsible.
One reason to set up a corporation is to protect its principals from fiscal fallout should the company fail. And in that, Chuza Oil succeeded: Bankruptcy protected Goldstein and the other partners from paying for the cleanup.
Chuzaโs assets were on Navajoย tribal trust land, managed by the U.S. government for the benefit of the tribe. The Bureau of Land Management managed those operations, making it responsible for the overall cleanup that began late last year.
Fosdeck, left, and Schreiber talk while standing next to an abandoned Chuza oil well west of Farmington, New Mexico, in 2023. The site is on tribal trust land and the warning sign is written in Navajo. Jerry Redfern
Federal regulations give the Bureau the ability to go after earlier but still extant owners to clean up well sites abandoned by recent owners. In this case, Chuza Oil was the last in a string of owners stretching back to the 1940s for some of the oldest wells. In the end, a Bureau spokesperson said Marathon Petroleum, BP America, Woodside Energy/BHP and Enerdyne plugged 23 Chuza wells they sold years ago. BLM asked the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division to plug five wells and deal with the tank battery โ none of which had extant previous owners. The Bureau plugged the remaining two wells. The cost of the cleanup bypassed Goldstein and the bankrupt Chuza Oil entirely.
Goldstein wasnโt too wistful about his wells getting torn out and smoothed over. โIโm sure the Navajo are glad that all that shitโs gone. I donโt think they ever liked all that going on there and itโs a beautiful piece of land. It was really nice to be out there,โ he said.
โSpecial experience for me,โ he concluded.
THE CLEANUP OF Chuza Oilโs wells and tanks represents a nominal victory after years of work by Fosdeck, Eisenfeld, Schreiber and others to expunge the legacy of neglect from the northwest corner of the state. But the victory is small.
According to Oil Conservation Division numbers from the beginning of September, New Mexico has 70,000 oil and gas wells and 6,717 registered tank batteries. About 100 new wells are drilled each month. Eventually, all of those will have to be plugged, and the land returned to something resembling its natural state.
The Legislative Finance Committee report notes that over the past 20 years, operators themselves plugged 95% of nonproducing wells in New Mexico, as the law requires. The remaining 5% were declared orphaned wells and plugged by the Oil Conservation Division.
The report says there are around 700 orphan wells awaiting state plugging with another 3,400 inactive or low-producing wells that could be added to the list in the near future. Extrapolating forward, the report suggests New Mexico could be on the hook for up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs over the coming years as more small companies declare bankruptcy before fulfilling their obligations to plug their wells and remove equipment.
New Mexicoโs Oil and Gas Reclamation Fund โ filled by a fraction of a tax paid by oil and gas producers โ covers the costs of implementing the Oil and Gas Act, which defines how the industry can operate in the state. The fund also pays for plugging and reclamation costs of abandoned wells and facilities. Earlier this year, the fund had $66 million, its highest balance ever. The state has kept that much in the fund by paying for plugging operations with $55.5 million in recent federal grants, as well as forfeited financial assurances that well owners are required to carry but rarely cover the actual costs of cleanup. The Finance Committee report says that the state is eligible for another $111 million from the feds.
All told, itโs a long way from $1.6 billion.
โThat is why the Reclamation Fund is not a substitute for adequate bonding and financial assurance from operators,โ state Rep. Matthew McQueen (D โ Galisteo) said. He thinks that the reportโs $1.6 billion estimate is โscary enough,โ but could be low. He said the report seems to expect a stable future for an industry with a notorious boom-and-bust cycle. โIn a significant downturn, the Stateโs liability could skyrocket rapidlyโ as weak companies fold and abandon wells, he said.
Smaller companies are often the first to feel economic shocks, and the state has a lot of smaller oil and gas producers. In 2024, 326 companies reported producing 740 million barrels of oil to New Mexicoโs Oil Conservation Division. Just 25 companies produced 92% of that total. The numbers are similar for natural gas production.
Fosdeck holds a methane detector as it lights up from a leak at an abandoned Chuza oil well in 2023. Schreiber shields the detector from the wind with his hat. Jerry Redfern
In the last legislative session, McQueen proposed a bill that would have kept well owners on the hook for remediation costs into the future if they sell wells to owners that go bankrupt โ similar to what the federal government does. โIt would cause the industry to self-police and make sure that any future operators had the wherewithal to properly remediate well sites,โ he said. It didnโt pass.
McQueen also proposed legislation to weed out potential buyers without the money or know-how to run an oil production business, as well as so-called bad actors with histories of negligence or bankruptcy. That, too, didnโt pass.
The Finance Committee report recommends several procedural and definition changes, as well as creating a law allowing the Oil Conservation Division to disallow well sales if โthe purchaser is unlikely to be able to fulfill its asset retirement obligationsโ โ much like McQueen proposed. It also called for increasing the required financial assurances paid by oilfield operators for cleanup costs on low-producing wells, which are more likely to be orphaned.
However, the Chuza Oil assets wouldnโt have been subject to these proposed laws, because the wells and tank battery were on federal land not subject to state jurisdiction, despite the fact that the state ended up paying for the cleanup.
Ben Shelton, deputy cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department โ the mothership to the Oil Conservation Division โ said, โThe report got a lot right, including identifying a need for [the Division] to be able to scrutinize transfers more closely in order to reduce the likely incidences of orphaned wells.โ
Shelton said that the Division didnโt have an estimate for either the number of orphaned tank batteries or their average cleanup costs, but the oilfield cleanups of a trio of tank batteries were some of the most expensive the state paid for in the last couple of years, at $623,000, $5.1 million and $7.6 million. The estimated $650,000 Chuza Oil tank battery cleanup will eventually join the list.
As of publication, that months-long process wasnโt finished. And in the end, the cleanup around the Chuza Oil tank battery, while expensive and time-consuming, isnโt necessarily uncommon, according to Sandel at Aztec Well Servicing, which is cleaning up the site.
โThere were many more yards of contaminated soil than expected. โฆ But I donโt think thatโs abnormal,โ Sandel said. โI wouldnโt characterize it as outside the bounds at all.โ
Center pivot south of Holyoke. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
September 18, 2025
Cumulus clouds towering over the Great Plains on Tuesday afternoon inspired visions of Greek gods casting bolts. In McCook, Neb., the storm dumped five inches of rain accompanied by hail that ranged from the size of golf balls to baseballs.
McCook is located along the Republican River, which originates on the eastern plains of Colorado far distant from mountain snows. Despite summer thunderstorms, itโs a dry area with an average annual precipitation of about 17 inches. The water in the river that flows into Nebraska comes almost entirely from the Ogallala Aquifer, much of that water deposited millions of years ago.
In Colorado, the North Fork of the Republican River flows through Yuma. It stormed there on Tuesday night, too, lightning flashing occasionally through the windows. But the storm inside a room at the Yuma County Fairgrounds was of an entirely different sort.
The simple question was how did those farmers who pump water from the underlying Ogallala aquifer wish to tax themselves? For Colorado to honor its compact commitments to Nebraska and hence Kansas, both of them downstream, it has to make changes.
Those who spoke loudest said they did not want to be taxed based on the volumes of water they use. Some questioned the need for any fees. Some questions suggested a denial that any problem exists. Just let us keep pumping the aquifer as we have!
The meeting was the finale of six meetings held across the Republican River Basin in recent weeks. Like the others, it was well attended. At least 75 people showed up, many wearing the cap and blue jeans they had worn earlier in the day while working in their fields of corn and other crops.
In November, directors of the Republican River Water Conservation District must decide exactly how they want to move forward. To stay in compact compliance, the district wants to expand a well field that has allowed them to do so, if sometimes with narrow margins.
A 1942 compact among Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas specified how much water the upstream states must allow to flow downstream. That wasnโt an issue until the massive application of high-capacity pumps and then center-pivot sprinklers in the 1960 and 1970s allowed farmers to mine the aquifer in the Republican River Basin. In Colorado, more than a million acre-feet of water were pumped in peak years.
This has had the effect of reducing flows in downstream states. Kansas sued Nebraska, and then Nebraska sued Colorado. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, as all interstate compacts must.
The upshot is that Colorado agreed to toe the line. The Republican River Water Conservation District was created in 2004 with the principal function of keeping Colorado in compact compliance.
Thatโs a tall order. Rod Lenz, the president of the board of directors, said that farmers in the district need to figure out how to reduce their pumping to extract an average of 600,000 acre-feet a year. They have averaged 700,000 acre-feet in recent years.
The warming climate has not helped. Drought most definitely does not. In 2022, a hot and dry year, farmers pumped 940,000 acre-feet.
By reducing pumping to 600,000 acre-feet, farmers in the basin will have a longer glide path as they figure out more sustainable ways to farm.
Pumping at current rates will cause some areas to lose water in 25 years, although other areas will have water for many more decades. Yuma lies in one of the more water-flush areas.
โWeโre not here to regulate,โ said Lenz at a meeting in Joes the prior week. โWeโre here to stay in compact compliance.โ
Thatโs a thin distinction but one suggestive of the tricky line being negotiated by directors. Change must occur, but change is rarely welcomed except by babies with soiled diapers.
The districtโs directors have adopted a two-pronged strategy for keeping Colorado out of the courtroom with Nebraska. One strategy, which was initiated in 2016, involving taking land out of irrigated production. By early 2025, more than 17,000 acres had been removed from irrigation, almost entirely within the riverโs south fork area. The Ogallala in that area around Cheyenne Wells, Burlington, and Idalia never was as thick, the reservoir of water amid the underground rocks never as plentiful. In many places, the aquifer has been drained.
The second strategy to ensure compact compliance has been to mine water from north of Wray, where the aquifer has greater quantities of water, to deliver at the Nebraska border to ensure compact compliance. Those wells have produced 98,519 acre-feet in the first 10 years.
All of this has not come cheaply. More than $123 million has been spent by the district so far, a combination of federal and state funds along with assessments by the Republican River district of irrigated lands. Those assessments began at $5 an acre but have elevated to $30 an acre.
At the meeting in Yuma, as they had the week before in Joes, Lenz and other directors outlined their thoughts and choices. Foremost in their current strategy is to continue to pay landowners enough money to take land out of production to achieve the goal of 25,000 acres before the end of 2029. The district has about 8,000 acres to go. Landowners are paid for full or partial retirement of land from cultivated agriculture.
More controversially, they also want to expand the well field that allows water to be pumped and then delivered to Nebraska. They plan eight more wells at an estimated cost of $11 million.
Beyond that, they envision even more wells, elevating the total cost to more than $165 million to keep in compliance. That would allow the farmers now mining the Ogallala to continue to mine it without drastic alteration.
The immediate question is whether to stay with the existing assessment of $30 per acre of land. Another approach would be to adopt a fee, half of it to be based on amounts of land being irrigated and half on the amount of water pumped. The third option is the amount of land being irrigated and a tiered rate based on amount of water used, with those using more water paying more.
These latter two proposals would have the effect of encouraging conservation. Directors say they would keep the districtโs budget at $15 million annually. However, itโs not clear what impact expanding the well field will have on that budget.
A show of hands at the Yuma meeting showed little appetite for changes in the fee structure. Some questions from audience members suggested rejection of the need for change. Do you really need this money? And is this expensive expansion of the well field needed? Might just two wells, not eight, suffice?
One speaker even challenged whether Colorado had to comply with the compact.
The short answer is that yes, it must. Itโs that or agree to spend considerable money in litigation that would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, as it has already twice.
The question beyond that question is what would be the stance of Coloradoโs governor and attorney general in 2030 if Colorado were to choose to violate the compact? The state water engineer โ an appointee of the governor โ has authority to shut down all wells in the basin as necessary to comply. Would the state water engineer do so?
That strategy would be risky, responded Randy Hendrix, the river districtโs engineering consultant. Wells could be shut down for multiple years.
A few audience members, however, did acknowledge the difficult challenge. โI want to thank all you guys for the hard work. This is a hard job, hard subject,โ said one audience member.
What can be said with certainty is that directors of the district who fielded questions managed to keep their cool in the face of the sometimes hard questions and statements.
At their quarterly meeting in November, directors must figure out how to move forward. Or, as some suggested, just ignoring Nebraska and the state engineer and letting those chips fall where they may.
San Luis Valley center pivot August 14, 2022. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
September 12, 2025
Woes of the Colorado River have justifiably commanded broad attention. The slipping water levels in Lake Powell and other reservoirs provide a compelling argument for changes. How close to the cliffโs edge are we? Very close, says a new report by the Center for Colorado River Studies.
But another cogent โ and somewhat related โ story lies underfoot in northeastern Colorado. Thatโs the story of groundwater depletion. There, groundwater in the Republican River Basin has been mined at a furious pace for the last 50 to 60 years.
Much of this water in the Ogallala aquifer that was deposited during several million years will be gone within several generations. In some places it already is. Farmers once supplied by water from underground must now rely upon what falls from the sky.
In the San Luis Valley, unlike the Republican River Basin, aquifers can be replenished somewhat by water that originates from mountain snow via canals from the Rio Grande. The river has been delivering less water, though. It has problems paralleling those of the Colorado River. Changes in the valleyโs farming practices have been made, but more will be needed.
In a story commissioned by Headwaters magazine (and republished in serial form at Big Pivots), I also probed mining of Denver Basin aquifers by Parker, Castle Rock and other south-suburban communities.
Those Denver Basin aquifers, like the Ogallala, get little replenishment from mountain snows. Instead of growing corn or potatoes, the water goes to urban needs in one of Americaโs wealthier areas.
Parker and Castle Rock believe they can tap groundwater far into the future, but to diversify their sources, they have joined hands with farmers in the Sterling area with plans to pump water from the South Platte River before it flows into Nebraska. This pumping will require 2,000 feet of vertical lift across 125 miles, an extraordinary statement of need in its own way.
Like greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere, these underground depletions occur out of sight. Gauges at wellheads tell the local stories, just like the carbon dioxide detector atop Hawaiiโs Mauna Loa has told the global story since 1958.
Coloradoโs declining groundwater can be seen within a global context. Researchers from institutions in Arizona, California, and elsewhere recently used data from satellites collected during the last two decades. The satellites track water held in glaciers, lakes, and aquifers across the globe. In their study published recently in Science Advances, they report that water originating from groundwater mining now causes more sea level rise than the melting of ice.
โIn many places where groundwater is being depleted, it will not be replenished on human timescales,โ they wrote. โIt is an intergenerational resource that is being poorly managed, if managed at all, by recent generations, at tremendous and exceptionally undervalued cost to future generations. Protecting the worldโs groundwater supply is paramount in a warming world and on continents that we now know are drying.โ
This global perspective cited several areas of the United States, most prominently Californiaโs Central Valley but also the Ogallala of the Great Plains.
In Colorado, the Ogallala underlies the stateโs southeastern corner, but the main component lies in the Republican River Basin. The river was named by French fur trappers in the 1700s, long before the Republican Party was organized. The area within Colorado, if unknown to most of Coloradoโs mountain-gawking residents, is only slightly smaller than New Jersey.
A 1943 compact with Nebraska and Kansas has driven Coloradoโs recent efforts to slow groundwater mining. The aquifer feeds the Republican River and its tributaries. As such, the depletions reduce flows into down-river states.
Farmers are being paid to remove land from irrigation with a goal of 25,000 acres by 2030 to keep Colorado in compliance. So far, itโs all carrots, no sticks. Colorado is also deliberately mining water north of Wray to send to Nebraska during winter months. This helps keep Colorado in compact compliance. So far, these efforts have cost more than $100 million. The money comes from self-assessments and also state and federal grants and programs.
In some recent years, more than 700,000 acre-feet of water have been drafted from the Ogallala in the Republican River Basin. To put that into perspective, Denver Water distributes an average annual 232,000 acre-feet to a population of 1.5 million.
Hard conversations are underway in the Republican River Basin and in the San Luis Valley, too. They will get harder yet. Sixteen percent of all of Coloradoโs water comes from underground.
The Colorado River has big troubles. Itโs not alone.
Part II: South Metro cities starting to diversify water sources: Castle Rock and Parker 25 years ago were almost entirely dependent upon groundwater. They are diversifying, and one plan is to import water from far down the South Platte River Valley.
The Republican River basin. The North Fork, South Fork and Arikaree all flow through Yuma County before crossing state lines. Credit: USBR/DOIRio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868Water stored in Coloradoโs Denver Basin aquifers, which extend from Greeley to Colorado Springs, and from Golden to the Eastern Plains near Limon, does not naturally recharge from rain and snow and is therefore carefully regulated. Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.The South Platte River Basin is shaded in yellow. Source: Tom Cech, One World One Water Center, Metropolitan State University of Denver.Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The San Luis Valley is running out of water and thereโs no way around it.
In Saguache County specifically, the amount of water in Saguache Creek has consistently been going down, while the amount needed to irrigate remains the same. This lack of water due to climate change, drought and overuse affects every aspect of life. Impacts on water access and streamflow are making irrigation more complicated and unpredictable, and for a community that has been built around, and economically relies on, agriculture, this is concerning. Millions of dollars are being spent to try to find solutions and mitigate the impacts, but as these challenges persist, a broader discussion is opening up about the future of agriculture in the Valley.
The question at the heart of the issue: how do communities around the San Luis Valley, like Saguache, not only manage and survive this crisis, but sustainably adapt to a landscape with less water?
The answer is complicated.
Saguache Creek in September, 2025. Credit: Ryan Michelle Scavo
Since 2002, the entire American southwest has been experiencing a severe drought. The San Luis Valley is at the center of this crisis, warming faster than any other region. Increased temperatures, inconsistent precipitation, and decreasing snowpack โ alongside overpumping and overuse โ has created a dire situation in which the amount of water available for use in Saguache County is rapidly decreasing.
There are two ways to access water in the Valley: pulling directly from surface water sources like creeks, rivers, and lakes, or pumping from wells that pull from the aquifer below. The water system is all connected, and the water level of the aquifer contributes to the streamflow of creeks and surface water through groundwater discharge and baseflow.
Currently, the unconfined aquifer is down over a million acre-feet of water, an amount equal to the size of the Blue Mesa Reservoir in Gunnison. The San Luis Valley has both an unconfined and confined aquifer, but the part that is under Saguache in the north end of the Valley is the confined artesian aquifer. With the structure of a confined aquifer, the loss of water, though concerning, does not prevent well users from accessing water.
It does, however, impact surface water. Unlike the aquifer, where there is still water to pull from even with losses, for surface water, significant losses to the water system mean lower streamflow and sometimes a nonexistent water source.
โIf the water table drops 3 to 5 feet, suddenly it becomes disconnected from the creek and doesnโt support the streamflows. The streams just start sinking into the ground,โ said Tom McCracken, a farmer and former Saguache creek surface water user. โStreamflows are down across the board. Itโs really really getting bad, and itโs exacerbated by the fact that the aquifer is so low. The water is just soaking into the ground instead of running out into the Valley like it used to.โ
San Luis Valley Groundwater
This means that when the wells are pumping from the aquifer, if the water level drops low enough, theyโre inadvertently depleting the flow of the creek, which is water somebody has a right to divert. While this pumping impacts the aquifer as a whole, and is not localized specifically to Saguache County, streamflow of surface water around the Valley feels the impacts. These losses are considered injurious depletions, and they have been disproportionately impacting surface water rights holders, who rely on streamflow to irrigate.
This is especially problematic because water rights in the Valley operate on the concept of prior appropriation, where the longer a water right has existed, the more seniority it gets. In times of water shortage, older water rights have priority over newer water rights.
Saguache rancher George Whitten, owner of Blue Range Ranch and San Juan Ranch. Credit: Ryan Michelle Scavo
โOn a creek system like this, thereโs a longstanding history of struggles between one ranch and the other because the doctrine of prior appropriation kind of sets up a struggle for water rights right from the very beginning,โ said George Whitten, a lifelong rancher in Saguache, who owns Blue Range Ranch and San Juan Ranch. โItโs not a system of sharing but a system of allocation. You have all the water until thereโs enough for the next guy and on down. And that changes daily depending on the flow of the stream.โ
Generally, in Saguache County, surface water rights are older, and considered senior, often holding numbers that rank priority within surface rights, and well water rights are newer and considered junior.
This has created a unique and challenging problem, spurring tensions in the community, as surface water users, used to having senior water rights, are finding themselves with decreasing water access because of low streamflow, while well water users are able to continue pumping from the aquifer.
โPeople with surface water rights that are from the 1870s are never happy with the idea that a well that was drilled in 1970 could be flowing when their water right is not there anymore,โ said Whitten. โAs the Valley starts to dry up, with climate change and a lack of snow fall, surface rights are less and less dependable. Weโre set up in this epic struggle for how to deal with that.โ
The solution to this problem might seem simple: people just need to pump less water. And while that is true to a degree, addressing this problem is a lot more complicated than that.
โMost people want to restore the aquifer, really, in their heart,โ said McCracken. โBut itโs like โIโm not going to do it if my neighborโs not going to do it. Why should I be the one to suffer?โโ
Under the current state Division of Water Resources model, established with the passing of Senate Bill 04-222, the state provides subdistricts with a maximum amount of predicted depletions for the area annually. Subdistricts then must find enough water to repair those depletions before the growing season starts, mapping it out in an annual replacement plan, which is approved by the state.
That means that for wells to continue operation, the injurious depletions must be remedied, by putting an amount equal to the amount of depletions back into the creek, so that surface water users also have access.
If enough water isnโt located and the plan isnโt approved, users wonโt be granted access until it can be figured out. This means water shut off during the growing season. In 2021, Subdistrict 5โs replacement plan was rejected, resulting in about 230 wells being shut off from April 1 through the end of June, when a challenge to the rejection was finally approved, granting water access. Nearly half of the growing season was lost, yielding serious economic consequences.
In order to meet these goals, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District (RGWCD) has been leasing and buying properties and water rights around Saguache County, retiring them from agricultural production, and redirecting the water to repair depletions.
In early 2022, Subdistrict 5 was looking to be in a similar spot as 2021: without enough water to counter the depletions and unable to agree on how to get that water. The RGWCD bought its first big property, the Hazard Ranch, in May of 2022. The purchase consisted of 110 acres of property and 143 acres of water rights from the Hazard family, who had been ranching in the Valley since the 1870s. The water from the Hazard sale was enough to replenish the remaining depletions and got the annual replacement plan approved, allowing other water users to stay in operation. This last-minute purchase ultimately saved Subdistrict 5โs water from being shut down for a second year in a row.
The way the process works is that the subdistricts can purchase water rights and sometimes also the property that those water rights sit on, retiring the land from agricultural use. But finding the right properties and water rights can be tricky. There are limited water rights that are available to be used by the subdistricts, because existing conservation easements along the creek and other factors restrict the locations of potential surface water rights purchases. Each subdistrict also has its own criteria and valuations for what water rights are valuable, and only certain properties meet those criteria.
Currently, Subdistrict 5 is funding projects using loans from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Right now it has two loans worth about $12 million.
Once purchases have been made, the subdistrict files a change of use form that switches the waterโs usage designation from irrigation to augmentation. Because this process is usually happening quickly in order to meet depletion needs, this form is often filed as a temporary change of use. A permanent change requires a lengthy court process that can take up to 20 years. As long as the subdistrict has started the court process to get the designation changed, it can continue to operate under the new, temporarily changed designation, until that is officially changed, which allows for more immediate action.
After the change of use, using augmentation wells that pump water to the creek, the water that was previously irrigation and consumptive use (the amount being consumed by the crops) can be redirected and returned, offsetting depletions.
For Subdistrict 5, when it makes this switch to augmentation, it isnโt actually retiring the water rights. The water remains available to be pumped if the subdistrict needs more water to meet requirements in years with large depletions. It is still conserving water because it usually isnโt pumping, and when it is, it isnโt getting anywhere near the historical levels that were pumped when pumping was used for agriculture.
โWe all need to pump significantly less or else everybody is going to be shut down. So if we shut down these quarters here, it will allow the other quarters to continue to operate versus everyone being shut down,โ said Chris Ivers, program manager for Subdistrict 5. โItโs not that we want to retire productive agricultural land, itโs just that the rules limit how much we can sustainably pump โ the rules of nature, I mean.โ
Subdistricts must meet both sustainability mandates and injurious depletion mandates from the state. Currently, to meet sustainability goals, Subdistrict 5 must remain within the limits of the historical pumping that took place between 1978-2000 for a 10-year period. Because the district is well within this sustainable range, it has been able to focus on buying water rights without having to prioritize full retirement for sustainability reasons, which is the main focus of some other subdistricts.
โWhat weโre seeing in the stateโs annual measurement under the groundwater rules is that the Saguache response area, the aquifer, is actually recovering in that area at a greater rate than anywhere else in the confined aquifer in the Valley,โ said Amber Pacheco, deputy general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.
The districtโs next big purchase will likely be more of North Star Farm, from whom it has been leasing and buying property for years. North Star, one of the largest water users in the Valley, runs around 30 circles in Subdistrict 5, growing alfalfa for large dairy operations in California. North Star only holds junior, groundwater rights, and its operation consists of a system that pumps water from wells and irrigates using water pivots at the center of every circle.ย
Farm land in Saguache. Credit: Ryan Michelle Scavo
For surface water users, this purchase is a step in the right direction, as North Starโs water usage has been a point of contention for many years.
โItโs a difficult thing to see a sprinkler running on North Star Farm when the number 10 water right is off in Saguache Creek,โsaid Whitten, who is vice president of the Subdistrict 5 board of managers. โSeeing them able to pump a full supply of water without any surface rights whatsoever, when the people on the creek, due to the lack of inflows, are sitting there drying up and watching that go on โ itโs a hard spot in this community for sure,โ said Whitten. โI totally get it. I have a lot of land that is not usable anymore because of North Star.โ
This situation acts as a prime example of the cultural clash that exists in the Valley, not only between surface and well water rights holders, but also between a large corporate entity in a sea of family-owned and operated businesses.
But even though North Star is an out-of-state corporation, the situation is complicated because the locals who are employed by North Star are a part of the community as well.
โYou know the people who work there, who manage that farm, they live in Sanford, but they have kids in school and theyโre part of the community too. If you get too focused on Saguache Creek you lose your perspective,โ Whitten said.
Drying up North Star has been a longtime goal of the RGWCD and other community members. They have embarked on several endeavors over the years with the goal of purchasing the whole property and all of its water rights, but the price has always been just out of reach. Ultimately people want the land dried up and revegetated, with all of that water being put back into the creek.
Today, the goal remains the same, but instead of all at once, itโs starting to happen in small pieces. Starting in 2021, Subdistrict 5 was leasing one to three groundwater irrigated sprinkler quarter sections from North Star, negotiating those leases annually. Each quarter contains about 120 acres of irrigated ground. In 2024, Subdistrict 5 purchased the water rights to those three leased quarters, and Subdistrict 2 purchased twoย quarters as well. Subdistrict 5 is planning to purchase fourย additional quarters in the upcoming year, using funding from a loan approved in January of this year.
Having recently made big purchases like the Hazard Ranch and parts of the North Star property, Subdistrict 5 has a large quantity of water available to be redirected.
Some wells that already exist work as augmentation wells, but sometimes new augmentation wells need to be built in more optimal locations in order to connect certain groundwater areas to the creek. This is a priority for the subdistrict right now.
โOur current problem isnโt the amount of water. [With recent purchases], we have enough water, but we donโt have enough ability to deliver that water,โ said Ivers. โWeโre really focused on finding locations for augmentation wells on Saguache Creek.โ
While things are moving in a positive direction, the situation will likely only intensify in the upcoming years. When the state model gets updated, predicted depletions change based on the water situation from the prior decade. The new calculations that have come out, which would go into effect in 2026, show a drastic jump in the amount of depletions Subdistrict 5 will have to remedy.
โItโs a pretty significant increase for the subdistrict, which means itโs going to have a significant and kind of an immediate impact on those subdistrict members to try to recover enough groundwater that they can pay for these increased depletions,โ said Pacheco. โItโs going to be a big, big challenge for Subdistrict 5 especially, to try to be able to meet those with the limited availability of what they can use in the area. Theyโre working on it already and I have faith that weโll be able to do that successfully, but it will be a challenge for sure.โ
While the subdistricts operate individually, 1, 4, and 5 all owe depletions to Saguache Creek, and are combining efforts and sharing resources when they can to make sure depletions and goals get met.ย
โSubdistricts 1, 4, and 5 have agreed to work together as best they can to solve the problem as one. Itโs kind of a good opportunity for a more collaborative effort for Saguache Creek,โ said Ivers.
While the purchasing and retirement of agricultural land has been regarded as one of the only sustainable solutions to the problem, the strategy has been met with some questions and concerns โ both economic and environmental.ย
The establishment of the state model was controversial in some circles because it created an irrigation season and seasonal restrictions on water access for all water rights holders. It was met with backlash from certain parts of the community, particularly surface water users, who were used to irrigating when they felt it was necessary, even if it was outside of the usual growing season. Many still donโt love it, and a consistent point of frustration has been centered around the impacts of climate change, which is causing fluctuations in the timing of runoff and snowpack melt. Earlier flows, coming down before the start of the stateโs irrigation season, means farmers have to watch water go by in the river that canโt be diverted, while struggling with a lack of water later in the season.
How the property retirement and dry-up will impact taxes is another area of concern.
โSaguache Countyโs tax base could be drastically affected by all this dry-up. The property tax base is based on agriculture mainly, and if we lose that, we gotta find alternative ways to finance the countyโs operations. It really should be part of the negotiations to dry up a circle to maintain that tax base, but itโs not at the moment. So Iโm really concerned about it,โ said McCracken, who serves on the Saguache County Board of Commissioners.
Property taxes are calculated based on how productive the land is, so when it gets dried up and stops, it loses that productivity and therefore also the tax classification. Losing large properties to dry-up, while good for water, could mean a huge loss to county coffers. The Rio Grande Water Conservation District says that this is something it takes into consideration.
โIf the RGWCD buys the land and actually controls the land, we do work with the counties to try to continue the tax base for that property, even though itโs now gone to a different taxable classification,โ said Pacheco. โWe try to keep their budgets as whole as we can when we buy properties, so we pay Alamosa County, we get bills from Saguache County, all to try to minimize the impact on those government services.โ
Retiring agricultural land also creates a few environmental concerns. First, putting surface water back into the ground, while sustainable, endangers riparian zones on the creeks going up into the canyons, which are critical wildlife habitats and for regional tourism.
Diverting a propertyโs water without the proper plan, especially with a persistent drought, can also create the optimal conditions for a dust bowl. Changing weather, with decreasing precipitation and strong, unpredictable winds, alongside the removal of water and crops, causes the topsoil to dry up. With no roots or vegetation to hold the soil in place, the potential for it to blow away increases.
โYou potentially have these huge dust storms where you lose an inch of top soil in the storm, and thereโs traffic pile ups on Highway 17 and thereโs drifts of soil up to the top of the fencelines. I mean itโs just out of control,โ said McCracken. โThose circles, if theyโre dried up, have to be revegetated. Itโs just an absolute necessity.โ
The RGWCD, along with other groups in the Valley, is working to make revegetation a priority. Whitten is part of a group, along with Patrick OโNeill and Madeline Wilson from CSU Extension, that has been discussing the best ways to go about revegetation in the area. The goal would be to improve soil health and restore nutrients that have been stripped during prior agricultural use, by bringing in native plant cover and potentially grazing livestock as well. Different plans allow for a few inches of water to be left on retired land to support revegetation efforts in the first few years.
Enforcing revegetation is a problem the RGWCD and county officials are still working to address. If the RGWCD doesnโt control the land, either because it only owns water rights, or because landowners had to dry up land they couldnโt afford to farm, but arenโt connected to a program, the RGWCD canโt force them to revegetate. These situations are complicated, because while people may want those properties to be revegetated for environmental and aesthetic reasons, itโs unclear who has the authority, and whose responsibility it is, to make those decisions or enforce rules.
Many also question whether or not the millions of dollars being spent buying properties could be better allocated toward other sustainability and conservation efforts that impact water. Instead of so much money being used to buy properties, a portion could be going to farmers to help them start practicing more sustainable methods, like sequestering carbon and improving soil health, which naturally help reduce water usage while also restoring the ecosystem.
A view of silos in Saguache. Credit: Ryan Michelle Scavo
This concern is rooted in the idea that, if industrial agriculture practices are going to continue running through water and harming the soil, eventually requiring more and more land to be bought up and retired โ which some call a โBand-aid solutionโ โ it might be productive to look into reworking the agricultural system into a more sustainable model.
โWe have farmers in the Valley using sustainable farming methods that have reduced their water usage by like 40 to 50 percent. Why arenโt we doing that? Why arenโt we taking the resources we have and spending at least some of them to try to change, not just take land out of agriculture permanently,โ said McCracken. โChange their way of farming and maybe change some of the crops and the number of rotations that they do. Maybe we can get that water back if we do this right. Maybe we can keep more people in business. Maybe it doesnโt have to be only the corporations that survive all of this.โ
The efforts being made around the Valley by Rio Grande Water Conservation District and other organizations are an important part of the search for a solution to what could be considered an impossible problem, one that communities around the southwest continue to grapple with.
โIโm really proud of the San Luis Valley and the RGWCD and the people here who have tried to figure out a way to mitigate those impacts on surface rights by well pumping,โ said Whitten. โIโve spent most of my life involved in this struggle and weโre way ahead of most people in the West, I think, in dealing with these issues.โ
It will likely only continue to get more complex, as climate change, drought, and water availability become more unpredictable. But, it is a Valley-wide and basin-wide issue that affects everyone, and it seems as though, despite certain disagreement points, the community can agree that attempting to adapt and find sustainable paths forward is the only solution.
โWhat we endeavored to do back in the day was to control the collapse of the agricultural empire that weโve built here. Weโre running out of water and thereโs just no way around that,โ said Whitten. โSo do you let everybody just pump until the last guy who can drill the deepest well is the last one left? Or do you somehow try to control this collapse of our economy and somehow salvage it? The natural world is going to prevail in the end. How do we control this and try to become sustainable and resilient?โ
These questions remain at the center of conversations in Saguache County.
1869 Map of San Luis Parc of Colorado and Northern New Mexico. “Sawatch Lake” at the east of the San Luis Valley is in the closed basin. The Blanca Wetlands are at the south end of the lake.
Lincoln Creek, just above its confluence with the Roaring Fork River, on June 14, 2017. Passersby had left rock piles in the clear, warm, and shallow stream.
About 200 fish were found dead on Aug. 18 on the banks of Grizzly Reservoir, a popular fishing and camping site near Aspen. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials determined that naturally occurring metals had become toxic for rainbow trout the agency had stocked in the reservoir. Kendall Bakich, an aquatic biologist with CPW, is part of a team measuring the concentration of metals in the reservoir. She said this new metal toxicity is part of a growing trend.
โI would probably say across the world, but certainly across North America, there’s rivers that are becoming more impacted by heavy metals from natural sources, due to climate change,โ Bakich said.
Human-caused climate change has led to warming temperatures and drought, increasing the concentration of naturally occurring metals in bodies of water and creating deadly conditions for fish. Bakich said the main culprit in this case was copper, to which fish are especially sensitive. That copper comes from a body of heavy metals at the top of Lincoln Creek, which feeds into Grizzly Reservoir and eventually into the Roaring Fork River.
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
EPA withdraws a proposed rule to reduceย wastewater pollution from slaughterhouses.
EPA will seek to cut federal protections forย wetlands.
USDA will prepare an environmental impact statement for repealing theย Roadless Ruleย that shields national forests and grasslands from logging and road building.
New Mexico and Texas agree toย Rio Grande lawsuitย settlement.
CBO reports onย U.S. agricultureโs greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA proposes allowing Wyoming to manage its ownย coal-waste program.
Interior Department completes work onย soil burn severity assessmentย for a large fire north of the Grand Canyon.
And lastly, the Department of Energy supports a feasibility study for what would be one of the countryโs largest pumped storage hydropower projects.
โThe seven states need to recognize that there is pain and sacrifice all over the place and try and get past that visceral perception and figure out what they can do to work together to provide water reliability for the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River.โ โ Scott Cameron, senior adviser to the interior secretary, speaking at a meeting of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group on August 20. Cameron, who said he is โcautiously optimisticโ about a seven-state deal on managing the river before the current operating rules expire at the end of next year, said the basin needs to look for strategies to reduce consumption and โto facilitate transfers and exchanges.โ
By the Numbers
10 Percent: Share of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions generated by agriculture, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. The main pollutants in this total are nitrous oxide, a byproduct of fertilizer, and methane, which comes from livestock manure and cow burps.
$21 Million: Research and development funding from the Department of Energy for hydropower projects. The largest portion ($7.1 million) is to investigate the feasibility of a massive pumped storage hydropower project proposed for Navajo Nation land. Pumped storage toggles water between a lower and upper reservoir, a system that functions like a battery. New Mexico State University is the co-investigator for Carrizo Four Corners, the 1,500-megawatt pumped storage project that could provide 70 hours of energy storage, far more than the several hours of storage provided by the largest lithium-ion batteries.
News Briefs
Slaughterhouse Waste The Environmental Protection Agency will not strengthen wastewater discharge rules for meat and poultry producers. The rules were proposed during the Biden administration.
To justify the action, the agency cited its desire to lower food prices and reduce industry operating costs.
The Biden-era rule intended to reduce the volume of pollutants that enter waterways from some 3,879 slaughterhouses nationally. Those pollutants include nitrogen, phosphorus, organic matter, fecal coliform, and grease. They contribute to harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen dead zones in rivers, lakes, and coastal ecosystems.
A Narrow Wetlands Definition The EPA is preparing to release a rule by the end of the year that would shrink the number of wetlands with federal protection under the Clean Water Act, E&E News reports.
According to a slide presentation seen by E&E, the agency โwould regulate wetlands only if they meet a two-part test: They would need to contain surface water throughout the โwet season,โ and they would need to be abutting and touching a river, stream or other waterbody that also flows throughout the wet season.โ
The changes are in response to a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that provided narrower, but undefined criteria for determining which water bodies have federal protection.
Rio Grande Settlement By signing a settlement agreement, New Mexico, Texas, and the Justice Department are closer to ending a long-running dispute over water rights from the Rio Grande and the groundwater pumping that affects river flows, Inside Climate News reports.
โThe settlement package includes new formulas to calculate how much water each entity is owed; an agreement for New Mexico to reduce groundwater depletion, and changes to the operating manual for the Bureau of Reclamationโs Rio Grande Project.โ
Roadless Rule The U.S. Department of Agriculture is pushing ahead with its attempt to undo a 24-year-old rule that prevents logging and road building in โroadlessโ areas of national forests and grasslands.
Rescinding the Roadless Rule, which was adopted in the last month of the Clinton administration, will affect more than 44 million acres, mostly in 10 western states.
The department will prepare an environmental impact statement for its intent to repeal the rule. It argues that more local control over land management decisions are needed.
Comments are due September 19. Submit them via http://www.regulations.gov using docket number FS-2025-0001.
Studies and Reports
Dragon Bravo Fire Burn Severity An Interior Department team completed an evaluation of the soil burn severity of the Dragon Bravo Fire, which has burned across more than 149,000 acres north of the Grand Canyon.
The fire severely burned the soils on just over 2 percent of the acres. Another 26 percent was moderately burned. The most severe burns cook the soil, which increases surface runoff after storms. Erosion and downstream floods can be the result.
Emergency Alert System Improvements The Federal Communication Commission is beginning the process to assess and potentially upgrade the nationโs emergency alert systems that local agencies use to inform residents about natural hazards like floods and fires.
The commission is taking public comments through September 25. Submit them hereusing docket number 25-224.
Wyoming Coal Waste The EPA wants to grant more states the authority to regulate waste products from burning coal for electricity. Wyoming is the latest state to seek this power, called primacy.
The agency is proposing to approve Wyomingโs bid to oversee its coal ash permitting program.
A public meeting will be held October 30. Public comments on the proposed approval are due November 3. Details are in the above link.
Three states currently have primacy. North Dakotaโs application is being reviewed.
Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
The Rio Grande flows over 1,800 miles from the mountains of southwestern Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. A lawsuit filed in 2013 between Texas and New Mexico over Rio Grande water has taken as many twists and turns as the river itself.
A settlement signed this week by New Mexico, the Department of Justice and two irrigation districts, and reviewed by Inside Climate News, lays out agreements for irrigation management on the Rio Grande. It is one part of a larger settlement package that will be presented to a special master in the case, Judge D. Brooks Smith of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, for approval next month.
The outcome of the case is expected to have broad implications for cities that rely on the Rio Grande and farmers throughout New Mexico and far west Texas.
The settlement package includes new formulas to calculate how much water each entity is owed; an agreement for New Mexico to reduce groundwater depletion, and changes to the operating manual for the Bureau of Reclamationโs Rio Grande Project.
Under the settlement, New Mexico could transfer water rights from the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) in Southern New Mexico in order to meet its obligations to Texas. The state agrees in the settlement that it would compensate EBID.
The case began when Texas alleged that groundwater pumping in Southern New Mexico deprives the state of water it is owed under the Rio Grande Compact. Colorado and the United States are also parties to the case. Local irrigation districts, cities and agricultural interest groups have been involved as friends of the court. The case has evolved from a dispute between Texas and New Mexico to encompass conflicts between groundwater and surface water users in the area.
โWe are ecstatic to have reached a settlement and look forward to continue delivering water to our farmers and the City of El Paso,โ said Jay Ornelas, general manager of the El Paso Water Improvement District No. 1, an irrigation district. โThe agreement provides long-term protection to El Paso farmers and the City of El Paso that rely on water from the federal Rio Grande Project.โ
A Strained Inter-State Compact
The Rio Grande Compact, signed in 1938, lays out how much water Colorado, New Mexico and Texas can use from the Rio Grande. The compact only addresses surface water in the river. But hydrologists now understand that aquifers and rivers are connected. Wells drilled into adjoining aquifers can reduce the flow of water into the Rio Grande.
At issue in the case is a 100-mile stretch of the river between Elephant Butte Reservoir in Southern New Mexico and the Texas-New Mexico state line. Water is released from the reservoir for both Southern New Mexico and far West Texas, including El Paso.
As agriculture expanded and severe droughts hit the region, farmers drilled more wells into the aquifer. Texas argues these wells in Southern New Mexico are siphoning off water that should flow to Texas.
โIn one way itโs a conflict between the state of Texas and the state of New Mexico,โ said Burke Griggs, a professor of water law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. โBut the conflict that really matters here is the conflict between surface water rights and groundwater pumping.โ
Climate change is impacting snowmelt in the riverโs headwaters. Extreme heat is increasing evaporation rates from the river where it flows downstream through the desert. The case is closely watched in New Mexico, where scientists predict thatwithin 50 years water supply from rivers and aquifers will decline by 25 percent. The City of El Paso, which relies on Rio Grande water, has diversified its water sources as the river became less reliable.
The Supreme Court rejected a settlement that the states reached in 2022 because the federal government had not consented to its terms. The parties went back to the drawing board. A new settlement was announced on May 15, with the United States on board.
โThe United States got what it needed in terms of firm commitments by New Mexico to reduce groundwater depletions,โ Griggs said.
In a statement, the El Paso Water Improvement District No. 1 said that the settlement will improve efficiency, conserve scarce water resources and ensure that water is available for the districtโs farmers and the City of El Paso. EBID has also signed on to the settlement.
Judge Smith, the special master, has called the parties to appear in court in Philadelphia on September 30 to explain the agreements. The details of the other parts of the settlement package have not been made public. As surface water dwindles across the Southwest, the settlement could bring to an end years of uncertainty surrounding the Rio Grande.
โWeโll know with this settlement, I think with much greater precision, how much water there is to be used, how much water people are going to be able to pump a year or two out,โ Nat Chakeres, general counsel for New Mexicoโs Office of the State Engineer, told lawmakers in Santa Fe earlier this month.
While Texas v. New Mexico may soon come to a close, water challenges in the desert Southwest are becoming ever more urgent. The settlement comes as Elephant Butte reservoir is at less than four percent capacity, nearly a record low, and the Rio Grande south of Albuquerque has run dry for over a month.
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
Lake Pleasant (pictured), located north of Phoenix, serves as the Central Arizona Projectโs water storage reservoir, as well as being a popular recreational amenity. Water shortages are impacting Colorado River basin reservoirs such as Lake Mead in Nevada and Lake Powell, which stretches across northern Arizona and southern Utah. Environmental changes throughout the Southwest are presenting challenges to maintaining flows. Photo courtesy of Central Arizona Project
Arizona is about to enter a new era when it comes to water rights and distribution.
The stateโs main source of surface water โ the Colorado River โ has been dwindling as a result of climate change and increased water demand.
That means less water for approximately 40 million people in two countries, seven states and 30 Native American tribes. And the rules that govern how states face water cuts are set to expire on Dec. 31, 2026.
The seven states involved have struggled to reach an agreement regarding the future of these cuts. But whatever the outcome may be of negotiations or potential litigation between these seven states, experts say that Valley residents face significant water risks, including:
Arizona could lose up to 40% of its water supply.
The Central Arizona Water Project could be significantly cut and would deliver less water.
The reuse of water will become paramount to the state, including turning wastewater into drinking water.
One Arizona State University expert says not to panic but be prepared to open your wallet.
Rhett Larson, the Richard Morrison Professor of Water Law at ASUโs Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, estimates water prices could significantly increase in some parts of the Valley if Arizona cannot come to an equitable and sustainable agreement with the other six states on how to share in decreased flows of the Colorado River.
โArizona is not running out of water. We are running out of cheap water,โ said Larson, who is also a senior research fellow with the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. โThis means not just higher water rates, but also difficult choices on economic trade-offs โ for example, higher food prices due to less water for agriculture but lower housing prices with more water for residential growth.โ
ASU News spoke to several water policy scholars to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the seven states are working together on the new agreement, what are some viable options in case of a shortfall, and what Arizonaโs future looks like when it comes to its most precious resource.
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
A ticking clock
Over the past century, the Colorado River’s flow has declined by about 20%. With rising temperatures and declining Rocky Mountain snowpack, scientists have predicted flow reductions of up to 30% by mid-century.
The seven states within the Colorado River basin are under increasing pressure to develop long-term management strategies, as the existing agreements are set to expire at the end of 2026. A significant challenge lies in managing the persistent drought while balancing the requirements of stakeholders, including agricultural interests, urban water consumers, environmental needs and Indigenous rights holders.
In response to a prolonged drought, diminishing storage capacities and increasing demands for Colorado River water, the secretary of the interior issued a directive in May 2005 for reclamation to formulate enhanced strategies aimed at optimizing the coordinated management of the reservoirs within the Colorado River system.
On April 23, 2007, all seven states signed an interim agreement that memorialized the consensus recommendation to the secretary. Those rules have remained in place for the last 18 years, but the flow of recent events demand dramatic action.
โThereโs no way that this ends without lower water supplies in Arizona,โ Larson said. โEven the best-case scenario means that Arizona will have to make do with less water.โ
However, Larson said thereโs been progress as of late. He said there is a proposal on the table where the upper basin states would shift the way the water is measured to align more closely with reality.
โThere have been some promising breakthroughs, but it could also collapse into litigation,โ said Larson, who is representing Arizona in the agreement.
โThereโs a decent chance the states of the basin will sue each other in the United States Supreme Court, and who knows how that will play out?โ he said.
Options on the table
If the seven Colorado River basin states canโt come to an agreement by the deadline, Arizona does have other water options. Some are legal, some are logistical and some are long shots. And they all come with a price tag.
โTrends are pointing to the fact that the Colorado River is becoming drier and I think it would be safe to say that the Central Arizona Project wonโt be as large a provider of water as at present,โ said Enrique Vivoni, ASUโs Fulton Professor of Hydrosystems Engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment and the director of the Center for Hydrologic Innovations. โSo, if thatโs the case, it means Arizona will have to start thinking about replacing that water supply. That would require investments.โ
Vivoni, whose research focuses on hydrology and water resources, said Arizona has several water augmentation options at its disposal. They include groundwater extraction, water desalination, reservoir expansion, wastewater reclamation and interbasin transfers from other areas.
All these options require complex agreements and investments.
For example, Vivoni said groundwater extraction would require major investment in infrastructure, such as new wells and pipelines to bring water supplies to existing systems. The desalination option could involve paying to build a plant in Mexico in exchange for a portion of their Colorado River water. Expansion of Arizonaโs Bartlett Reservoir capacity will require raising the dam to retain more Verde River water.
โAll of these options require capital expenses and large operations and maintenance costs on an annual basis,โ Vivoni said. โItโs going to require some hard choices. There will be some winners and some losers, and itโs going to require some behavioral changes by individuals, residents, communities, industry and cities.โ
By measuring the gravitational pull of water for more than two decades, NASA satellites have peered beneath the surface and measured changes in the groundwater supplies of the Colorado River Basin for years 2015 to 2024. Credit: NASA
Pressure on groundwater
In addition to the costs of tapping groundwater, ASU researchers recently reported that the stateโs unseen groundwater losses have been great as well.
Karem Abdelmohsen, Jay Famiglietti and colleagues used orbiting satellites to measure changes in groundwater from 2002 to 2024 in the Colorado River basin, in comparison to losses in streamflow and reservoir storage.
The satellite study found that groundwater depletion accounted for more than half of the total water storage loss in the upper Colorado River basin and more than two-thirds of losses in the lower Colorado River basin, which is greater than the losses in lakes Powell and Mead.
โThe rate of depletion has actually accelerated over the last decade,โ said Famiglietti, science director for ASUโs Arizona Water Innovation Initiative.
With less access to water from the Colorado River, demand for groundwater will grow. Famiglietti said that the effectiveness of groundwater management varies across the Colorado River basin states, leaving the resource open to overexploitation.
Cautious optimism abounds
If the seven states donโt come to an agreement soon, one possible scenario is that the secretary of the interior would make unilateral decisions on cuts and deliveries. Such actions would likely lead to lawsuits challenging the secretaryโs authority to do so.
โNot having a consensus agreement in place means we could go from relative certainty about the conditions of shortage to total uncertainty,โ said Kathryn Sorensen, who oversees the research efforts of the Kyl Center for Water Policy, serves as a professor of practice at the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and contributes to the Global Futures Laboratory. โWhat we donโt want is someone making those decisions for us.โ
That lack of certainty could lead to many drawbacks, according to Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy.
โBeing in the dark about this situation could lead to higher (water) prices,โ Porter said. โIt could also lead to a disruption in economic development and the stateโs prosperity. Not having clarity regarding how much water will be available over the long term could impact the stateโs ability to attract industry. If thereโs too much uncertainty about our long-term water supplies, then weโre not a good bet for investment.โ
But water scarcity is not a new issue for Arizona. The state has a history of managing limited resources for collective benefit.
And thatโs reason for hope as the state faces these current challenges.
โIf you look at the history of water management in the Phoenix area, itโs a story of adaptation and overcoming obstacles and finding ways to be innovative,โ Sorensen said. โWe know how to do more with less, and weโre good at it.โ
Weโre also good at problem-solving and finding solutions, Porter said.
โIโm very optimistic about our water future because weโve had over 100 years as a seven-state basin to figure out solutions,โ Porter said. โIโm also optimistic because Iโve seen how creative and dedicated Arizona municipal water managers are โ theyโre resourceful, prepared and have their short- and long-term plans in place.
โI think thereโs going to be water to help us enjoy a good quality of life and a thriving economy for central Arizona for a long time.โ
ASU News reporter Joe Rojas-Burke contributed to this article.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
July 22, 2025
This is the final part of a series about four groundwater basins in Colorado. The story was commissioned byย Water Education Coloradoย and benefited from editing by Caitlin that organizationโs staff. It appears in a variant form in theย summer 2025 issue of Headwaters magazine.ย
The San Luis Valley, like the Republican River Basin, has almost no tax base other than irrigated agriculture. โNearly everything in the valley is somehow related to agriculture. Our hospital, our schools โ everything is dependent on agricultureโs existence in the valley,โ says Amber Pacheco from her office in Alamosa. From her office in Wray, Deb Daniel has a parallel observation.
What then constitutes sustainability of the water that is the foundation of agriculture or, in the case of Parker, Castle Rock, and other south metro communities, their economic vitality? What decisions should be made now to foster that vitality through the 21st century?
Smuggler Mine back in the day via GregRulon.com
Thoughts about conservation have shifted over time. When Coloradoโs gold and silver miners arrived, they had no goal of conserving. They either mined the veins to exhaustion, or it became too costly to continue. In a sense, that has happened in the Republican River Basin. The only limits to this groundwater mining are those triggered by the interstate compact. Because the Republican River and its tributaries get most of their water from aquifers, pumping must be limited โ or supplemented.
In the last 20 years, the Republican River Water Conservation District has done some of both. It has or soon will have committed $86 million to pump water from wells expressly to deliver water to the Nebraska state line. One of the directors, Tim Pautler, has called this a strategy of kicking the can down the road. Other directors have started to agree.
โItโs like the clock is ticking when it comes to sustainability,โ said Rod Lenz, the board chair, at the boardโs quarterly meeting in May 2025. โWhat more can we do with the tools we have? Do we dare ask for more tools such [as would be delivered by] statute changes? Do we really want all the groundwater districts in the basin to ask the state engineer to reconsider how much weโre allowed to pump, or do we just stay in compliance until we canโt?โ
San Luis Valley Groundwater
In the San Luis Valley, coming off the century-defining drought of 2002, state legislators went in exactly the opposite direction. They said that the unconfined aquifer was to be managed sustainably. Granted, thatโs easier said if you have a major river flowing nearby, even if that river has been hammered hard by the warming, drying climate of the 21st century.
Water stored in Coloradoโs Denver Basin aquifers, which extend from Greeley to Colorado Springs, and from Golden to the Eastern Plains near Limon, does not naturally recharge from rain and snow and is therefore carefully regulated. Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.
The south metro area falls somewhere between these two extremes. State legislators nearly a half-century ago ordered a โslow sipโ of the groundwater such as to preserve it for a century. In some places, there seems to be sufficient water to slow sip for another 300 years. In other places, the aquifer might have enough water for a few decades. Some water utilities hope for a completely sustainable water supply in decades ahead. Much work has been done. The harder work lies yet ahead.
What we need are aspirations premised not on entitlement and enrichments solely for today, but instead to build economies and cultures that more comprehensively look several generations ahead. That should be the question in all these meetings, all these court cases, all of these individual actions. Based on what we know and understand today, what should we be doing for the kids, grandkids and their grandkids, too? Are we doing better than kicking the can down the road?
A satellite view of Mesa, Arizona, showing a handful of the 91 energy- and water-intensive data centers in the greater Phoenix metro area. Source: Google Earth.
When I first read a recent headline in Matthew Yglesiasโs Slow Boringnewsletter, I assumed it was a sort of joke to rope me into reading. โThereโs plenty of water for data centers,โ it said, reassuringly. โProbably the last worry you should have about either water or AI.โ
Unfortunately, he wasnโt joking. But he opened his piece with a line that should have warned his readers to take everything else he said with a grain of salt:
Before I continue with my rant, Iโd just like to encourage Yglesias to do a little more thinking about water scarcity before writing about it. Oh, and also, maybe consider spending a little bit of time in the water-starved West before committing punditry about it. (This is the same guy who tweeted that Sen. Mike Leeโs proposal to sell off public land was โpretty reasonableโ and an โokay idea on the meritsโ).
Yglesias acknowledges that data centers use water, and that more data centers will lead to more water consumption. But itโs okay, he says, because โWeโre not living on Arrakis, and rich countries are not, in general, abstemious in their water usage.โ
No, we are not on Arrakis, but have you seen the lower reaches of the Colorado River or even the mid-reaches of the Rio Grande lately? Itโs looking pretty Dune-like if you ask me.
Well, sure, Yglesias argues, but even in those places, people are doing frivolous things with water, like filling up their Super Soakers or using it to make ice cubes for their cocktails. Yes, he used those actual examples. Never mind that the potable water used each day by a single Microsoft data center in Goodyear, Arizona, could yield more than 35 million ice cubes or fill about 223,000 Super Soakers. That would be one big, drunken water fight.
Yglesias also notes that agriculture, especially growing alfalfa and other feed crops for cattle, is an even larger water consumer than Big Tech. True, for now. And he writes:
His logic appears to be: People are currently using a lot of water for all sorts of things โ frivolous or otherwise. So, it should be fine to use a lot more water for data centers in perpetuity, since water is โsufficiently plentiful.โ This is the sort of thinking that got the Colorado River Basin into its current mess, in which there actually may not be enough water to drink very soon if its collective users donโt change their ways. Adding a fleet of water-guzzling hyperscale data centers to places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, andย Tucson, where water is anything but โsufficiently plentiful,โ will only exacerbate the crisis.
Researchers have tried various methods to determineย how much water a single ChatGPT query or AI-assisted Google search usesย as compared to, say, streaming a Netflix video or writing a standard e-mail.ย So far the estimates diverge wildly. An early calculation came up with a whopping 500 ml for each AI query, but the estimates have since gone down. The difficulty is due in part to the fact that water use data isnโt always publicly available, and also because data centersโ water use can vary depending on location, as do theirย carbon footprints.
What is clear is this: Data centers use large quantities of both energy and water, no matter where they are. The massive server banks churning away in warehouse-like buildings on the fringes of Phoenix and Las Vegas, and even in rural Washington and Wyoming, each gobble as much electricity as a small city to process AI queries, cryptocurrency extraction, and other aspects of our increasingly cloud-based society. The harder they work, the hotter they get, and the more power and water they need to cool off to the optimum operating temperature of between 70ยฐ to 80ยฐ F.
Evaporative or adiabatic cooling, where air is cooled by blowing it through moistened pads (i.e. high-tech swamp coolers), works well in arid areas like Phoenix, Tucson, or Las Vegas. They use less energy than refrigerated cooling, but also use far more water.
Data centers can also indirectly consume water through their energy use, depending on the power source. Thermal coal, nuclear, or natural gas plants need water for cooling and steam-production (some of this water may be returned to the source after use, except with zero-discharge facilities); natural gas extraction uses water for hydraulic fracturing; and solar installations can require large amounts of water for dust-suppression and cleaning. This explains how Googleโs data centers withdrew 8.65 billion gallons of water globally in 2023 1.
A 2023 study found that a single Chat GPT-3 request processed at an Arizona data center uses about 30 milliliters of water, compared to 12 ml per request in Wyoming. That doesnโt seem like much (itโs less than a shot-glass) until you consider that there are at least 1 billion ChatGPT queries worldwide per day and growing, using a total of some 8 million gallons of water daily, worldwide. And, training the AI at an Arizona data center would use about 9.6 million liters โ or 2.5 million gallons โ of additional water.
Another estimate finds the average data center uses between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water per day, onsite, which would be far more than the aforementioned Goodyear center (56 million gallons/year), but in line with a planned Google data center in Mesa, Arizona. When Google was first planning the facility back in 2019, the city of Mesa guaranteed delivery of nearly 1 million gallons of water per day. If they reach certain milestones they can use up to 4 million gallons daily, or about 4,480 acre-feet per year.
Now multiply those numbers by the more than 90 data centers of various sizes and water and energy intensity in the Phoenix area, alone, which would amount to somewhere between 14 million to 450 million gallons per day. No matter how you add it up, they collectively are sucking up a huge amount of water and power, and enough to strain even Yglesiasโs purported โsufficiently plentifulโ supplies (which do not exist in Arizona, by the way).
The average Phoenix-area household uses about 338 gallons of water per day, or almost 123,000 gallons per year. One of these big data centers, then, could guzzle as much water as some 10,000 homes. And yet housing developments in groundwater-dependent areas on Phoenixโs fringe must obtain 100-year assured water supply certification before they can begin building. The same is not the case for data centers.
According to Open ET maps, a 75-acre alfalfa field in Buckeye (western Phoenix metro area), uses about 156 acre-feet โ or 50.8 million gallons โ per year. Thatโs far less than the 28-acre Apple Data Center in Mesa consumes. Of course, there are the equivalent of about 3,470 alfalfa fields of that same size in Arizona (260,000 acres), meaning the total water consumption of hay and alfalfa is still greater than that of data centers. But it shows that while replacing an alfalfa field with houses would result in a net decrease in water consumption, replacing those same fields with data centers would substantially increase consumption.
And donโt forget that the 75-acre alfalfa field produces about 690 tons of alfalfa per year, which could feed quite a few dairy cows, which in turn would produce a bunch of milk for making cheese and ice cream. Just saying. Maybe itโs time to update the old saying: โIโd rather see a cow than a data center.โ
Data centers arenโt going away. After all, they are the hearts and brains of the Internet Age. Many of us may wish that AI (not to mention cryptocurrency), which are more water- and energy-intensive than other applications, would just up and vanish. But thatโs probably too much to ask for. Besides, AI, at least, does have real value.
So what can be done to keep the data center boom from devouring the Westโs water and driving its power grid to the snapping point? Hereโs where Yglesias had a good point: Policymakers and utilities should adjust water and power pricing for large industrial users, i.e. data centers, to discourage waste, incentivize efficiency and recycling, and push tech firms to develop their own clean energy sources to power their facilities.
Itโs imperative that utilities force data centers to pay their fair share for infrastructure upgrades made necessary by added water or power demand, rather than shifting those costs to other ratepayers, as is usually the case. Arizona should make data centers prove out their water supply, just like they do with housing developments. Plus, states should stop trying to lure data centers with big tax breaks, which ultimately are paid for by the other taxpayers. And local governments and planners should subject proposed data centers to the highest level of scrutiny, and not give in to promises of jobs and economic development if it means sacrificing the communityโs water supply or the reliability of the power grid.
Proper policy isnโt a cure all, by any means. But it could mitigate the impacts of the imminent data center boom. Meanwhile, Mr. Yglesias, I will reiterate that the West, at least, does not have plenty of water for data centers, and I will continue to worry about them guzzling up what little water remains.
๐ Reading Room ๐ง
The Land Desk is reading all of yโallโs great responses to last weekโs open thread about forms of resistance. Check it out and weigh in if you havenโt already.
Len Necefer has had some really strong pieces on hisย All At Once by Dr. Lennewsletter recently, includingย this oneย musing about the opportunities for the Navajo Nation to build a recreation economy on the San Juan River (great idea!). He writes about how strange it is that he, a Navajo Nation citizen, must get a permit from the BLM to raft the river, when it borders his homeland (and is at the heart of Dinรฉ Bikeyah). I also like that he sees boating/recreational opportunities along the entirety of the river, not just from Sand Island to Clay Hills Crossing. Iโve always thought it would be super cool to boat the reaches between Farmington and Bluff (actually, Iโve always wanted to boat from Durango to Farmington to Bluff).ย
Another Substack thatโs been getting my attention isย Time Zero, a podcast and Substack on โthe nuclearized world.โ Theย Wastelandingย series is about the legacy of uranium mining and milling on the Colorado Plateau, the Navajo Nation, and on Pueblo lands. Very powerful stuff.ย
Theย Colorado Sunโs Shannon Mullane has aย good storyย about the Southern Ute Tribe finally getting some of its Animas-La Plata water, which was the whole reason the last big Western water project, as itโs known, was finally built.
1 This is not the same as consumption, which is the amount of water withdrawn minus the amount returned to the source.
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
The continents are rapidly drying out and the earthโs vast freshwater resources are under threat, according to a recently released study based on more than 20 years of NASA satellite data. Here are the reportโs key findings and what they portend for humankind:
Much of the Earth is suffering a pandemic of โcontinental drying,โ affecting the countries containing 75% of the worldโs population, the new research shows.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, examined changes to Earthโs total supply of fresh water and found that nearly 6 billion people live in the 101 countries facing a net decline in water supply, posing a โcritical, emerging threat to humanity.โ
Mining of underground freshwater aquifers is driving much of the loss.
According to the study, the uninhibited pumping of groundwater by farmers, cities and corporations around the world now accounts for 68% of the total loss of fresh water at the latitudes where most people live.
Much of the water taken from aquifers ends up in the oceans, contributing to the rise of sea levels.
Mined groundwater rarely seeps back into the aquifers from which it was pumped. Rather, a large portion runs off into streams, then rivers and ultimately the oceans. According to the researchers, moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the oceans.
Water From Land Has Become a Leading Driver of Sea Level Rise
Most of the water lost from drying regions is from groundwater pumping, which ultimately shifts fresh water from aquifers into the oceans.
Note: Glaciers refer to the parts of the continents covered in glaciers but excludes the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Drying land and aquifers refer to the water lost by the continents in areas not covered by glaciers, including river flow and evaporation. Groundwater loss accounts for 68% of the drying in those places. Credit: Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
As droughts grow more extreme, farmers increasingly turn to groundwater.
Worldwide, 70% of fresh water is used for growing crops, with more of it coming from groundwater as droughts grow more extreme. Only a small amount of that water seeps back into aquifers. Research has long established that people take more water from underground when climate-driven heat and drought are at their worst.
Drying regions of the planet are merging.
The parts of the world drying most acutely are becoming interconnected, forming what the studyโs authors describe as โmegaโ regions. One such region covers almost the whole of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia.
Drying of the Earth has accelerated in recent years.
The study examines 22 years of observational data from NASAโs Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, satellites, which measure changes in the mass of the earth and have been applied to estimate its water content. Since 2002, the sensors have detected a rapid shift in water loss across the planet. Around 2014, the study found the pace of drying appears to have accelerated. It is now growing by an area twice the size of California each year.
The Drying of the Earth Accelerated in Recent Years
The dramatic depletion of groundwater and surface water plus the melting of glaciers between 2014-24 has connected once-separate arid places, forming โmega-dryingโ regions that stretch across whole continents.
Credit: Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
Credit: Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
Credit: Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
Note: Data is for February 2003 to December 2013 and January 2014 to April 2024. The first time period contains seven more months of data than the second.
Water pumped from aquifers is not easily replaced, if it can be at all.
Major groundwater basins underlie roughly one-third of the planet, including about half of Africa, Europe and South America. Many of those aquifers took millions of years to form and might take thousands of years to refill. The researchers warn that it is now nearly impossible to reverse the loss of water โon human timescales.โ
As continents dry and coastal areas flood, the risk for conflict and instability increases.
The accelerated drying, combined with the flooding of coastal cities and food-producing lowlands, heralds โpotentially staggeringโ and cascading risks for global order, the researchers warn. Their findings all point to the likelihood of widespread famine, the migration of large numbers of people seeking a more stable environment and the carry-on impact of geopolitical disorder.
Data Source: Hrishikesh. A. Chandanpurkar, James S. Famiglietti, Kaushik Gopalan, David N. Wiese, Yoshihide Wada, Kaoru Kakinuma, John T. Reager, Fan Zhang (2025). Unprecedented Continental Drying, Shrinking Freshwater Availability, and Increasing Land Contributions to Sea Level Rise. Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298
Center pivot in the San Luis Valley. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
July 20, 2025
Center, as its name implies, lies at the center of the San Luis Valley. The valley is among the nationโs two most prominent places for growing potatoes. Among the growers is a fourth-generation family operation, Aspen Produce LLC.
Jake Burris married into the family. In addition to spuds, the family grows barley and alfalfa on 3,500 acres. Some neighboring farmers also grow canola. Burris is president of the board of managers of one of six subdistricts in the San Luis Valleyโs Rio Grande Water Conservation District. His subdistrict โ called Subdistrict No. 1 โ was formed in 2006 in response to a declining water table. Whatโs known as the unconfined aquifer supports this area, the most agriculturally productive in the San Luis Valley. With just seven inches of annual precipitation, irrigation in the San Luis Valley is everything. And in Subdistrict 1, much of that water comes from 3,617 wells..
Alfalfa grown is quite thirsty, but potatoes get grown on much larger areas of the Rio Grande Water Conservancy District. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Alfalfa is the thirstiest crop, using 24 to 36 inches of water to get three cuttings. The strong sunshine and cooler temperatures found above elevations of 7,000 feet produce a high-quality hay that draws orders from dairies as far as California. Alfalfa is grown on 21,100 acres in the district. Potatoes cover 51,100 acres. Barley is grown on 28,000 acres. Some have replaced barley with rye. Several thousand acres have together been devoted to canola, lettuce, and other crops. A recent census found about 25,000 acres had been fallowed.
The San Luis Valley has two primary aquifers. Lower in the ground, separated by relatively impermeable beds of clay from what lies above, is the confined aquifer. The first well into the confined aquifer was bored in 1887. Because of the pressures underground, it was an artesian well. No pumping was needed to bring water to the surface. Louis Carpenter, a professor at the Colorado Agriculture College (now Colorado State University), estimated the valley had 2,000 artesian wells when he visited in 1891.
The unconfined aquifer lies above the confined aquifer. The unconfined aquifer existed prior to major water development in the valley but water volumes rose greatly when farms began using Rio Grande water in the 1880s. Four ditches deliver Rio Grande water to the farms and hence to the aquifer. Introduction of high-capacity pumps in the 1950s and center-pivot sprinklers in the 1970s accelerated groundwater extraction. In 1972, the state engineer imposed a moratorium on new wells from the confined aquifer, followed in 1981 by a moratorium on new wells in the unconfined aquifer. These moratoria acknowledge that groundwater drafting had to be limited.
Then came 2002, hot and dry, escalating the challenge. Impact to the unconfined aquifer was drastic with rising temperatures causing growing water demand even as snowpack declined.
The unconfined aquifer โhas been dropping overall since about 2002,โ says Craig Cotten, the Colorado Division of Water Resources engineer for Division 3, which encompasses the San Luis Valley. โWe just have not had a real good series of years as far as the surface water.โ
In 2004, state legislators passed a law that sets the San Luis Valleyโs aquifers apart from those of the Republican River and Denver Basin groundwater stories. That law, SB04-222, explicitly orders both the confined and unconfined aquifers in the San Luis Valley be managed for sustainability. The Colorado law governing the Denver Basin aquifers requires a โslow sipโ but does not imagine sustainability. In the Republican River Basin, no law speaks to sustainability. There, only the interstate compact insists upon limits.
San Luis Valley Groundwater
Hereโs another difference. Water from aquifers create the Republican River and its tributaries. In the south-metro area, surface streams cause little recharge to the Denver Basin aquifers. In the San Luis Valley, the Rio Grande as well as some surface streams coming off the San Juans contribute water to both the unconfined and confined aquifers. The hydrogeology is more complex.
This 2004 law also encouraged the formation of groundwater subdistricts within the Rio Grande Water Conservation District. The thinking was that very local groups of farmers could work together to figure out how to keep their portions of the aquifers sustainable. They could also be more effective in this pursuit by working together than doing so individually.
Six subdistricts have been created in the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and one in the Trinchera Water Conservancy District. Subdistrict No. 1 began operations in 2012 after the state approved its operating plan.
All these groundwater districts have the goal of reducing water consumption as necessary to replenish the aquifers or by introducing water into the aquifer from the Rio Grande or other sources.
Agriculture constitutes nearly the entire economy of the San Luis Valley. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Exactly how much restoration of the aquifers is needed? The state law specified a return to volumes that approximate those of 1976 to 2001 in the confined aquifer. But thereโs some guesswork about how much water the confined aquifer had then. Detailed records on Subdistrict No. 1 were not kept until 1976.
In August 2024 the unconfined aquifer in Subdistrict 1 was estimated to have averaged almost 1.2 million acre-feet less water during the five preceding years than it had in 1976. The rules approved by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2011 in a document called the Plan for Water Management call for the unconfined aquifer recovery within 200,000 to 400,000 acre-feet of where it was in 1976. That would be deemed sustainable, as ordered by the 2004 law.
To achieve this, the state engineer said that Subdistrict No. 1 would need to recover 170,000 acre-feet each year between now and 2031. Initially, Subdistrict No. 1 aimed to take 40,000 acres out of irrigation per year, or about 80,000 acre-feet of annual groundwater pumping, to allow the unconfined aquifer to recover. That goal is unattainable, say water officials, and hence a rethink is needed. Success has occurred, though. In 2024, for example, roughly 176,000 acre-feet were pumped from the confined and unconfined aquifers in Subdistrict No. 1, the fewest since groundwater metering began in 2009. Thatโs about a 30% reduction.
More sustained success will be necessary. โYou donโt recover that unconfined aquifer through single years of good runoff,โ says Ullmann, the state engineer. โThere are difficult decisions that have to be made in order to recover and restore the aquifers, but thatโs what these subdistricts are trying to do.โ
Unlike the Republican River Basin, the unconfined aquifer in the San Luis Valley is fed water diverted from the Rio Grande, seen here at Monte Vista, and into irrigation canals. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
This success is at least partly due to efforts to modify irrigation practices and taking land out of production. Amber Pacheco, deputy general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, explains that itโs difficult to quantify the reductions.
โSome farmers, for example, have simply reduced the number of alfalfa cuttings (and hence the irrigation required), for example. Or they only irrigate when they need to do so. Others have changed the cover crops planted after a potato harvest to reduce the amount of water needed.โ
As in the Republican River District, local efforts to take land out of production use the foundation of federal programs, particularly CREP, or Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. The subdistrict provides 20% of funds and the federal government 80%.
As did the Republican district in 2022, the Rio Grande district got an additional $30 million allocation of federal money funneled through the state. That money allows $3,000 in payment per acre-foot of curtailed groundwater use.
More must be done to recover the aquifer. The current proposal assembled by Burris and other directors of Subdistrict No. 1, their fourth iteration, would require aquifer recharge as a condition of pumping on a one-to-one basis. Water for recharge would come from water secured from the Rio Grande or native flows into the unconfined aquifer. This new plan allows subdistrict members with surface water credits to pump from the aquifer, because they are resupplying it.
The pumping allowed under the plan would be cut drastically. The Rio Grande district does not have authority to shut down wells, but it does have authority to assess fees for over-pumping. That fee stands at $150 per acre-foot. The plan would elevate that to $500. And, if aquifer recovery is not achieved, it would rise to $1,000.
Ultimately, the state engineer has authority to curtail wells that do not provide replacement water pursuant to an approved groundwater management plan or some other augmentation plan.
Some farmers in the subdistrict disagree with this plan. Opponents banded together as the Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, or SWAG, and filed a lawsuit to block implementation of the plan. A five-week trial has been scheduled for early 2026. Nobody expects that courtโs decision to be the end of it. Whoever loses might well appeal the decision to the Colorado Supreme Court, a process likely to continue into 2028.
Might the problem of the depleted unconfined aquifer be resolved by diverting more water from the Rio Grande? The river has long been over-appropriated. This year, for example, rights junior to 1880 were being curtailed in May. As with the Republican River, water must be allowed to flow downstream as required by the Rio Grande Compact.
For the unconfined aquifer to recover quickly, Mother Nature would need to quickly step up. โIt would take multiple years of above-average flows [in the Rio Grande] to recover to the level that we need,โ says Pacheco. In fact, 19 of the last 20 years have been sub-average as compared to 1970 to 2000. This yearโs runoff in mid-May was forecast to be 61% of the average from 1890 through 2024.
Part IV: โItโs like the clock is ticking when it comes to sustainability,โ said Rod Lenz, chair of the Republican River Water Conservation District, at a recent board meeting. This and other parting thoughts about the three groundwater basins examined in this story. Also, a study is underway to provide a better estimate of the groundwater remaining in Baca County.You can also download the entire story here in a magazine format.
Unlike the sparsely populated Republican River Basin, the south metro area of the Denver Basin has large and still-growing cities. Most of the south metro area lies within Douglas County, whose population ballooned between 1980 and 2025 from 25,200 to nearly 400,000.
Castle Rock, the countyโs largest city, has 87,000 residents. Based on approved development, the city expects to grow to a population of 120,000 to 140,000. Parker, the second largest city, has 68,000 residents and has zoning for 80,000. Utilities serving these two cities in 2005 were almost 100% dependent upon extractions from the underlying Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills aquifers. Both cities as well as other jurisdictions have lessened their dependence, but they have much work to do.
How much water remains? Thatโs not an easy answer to deliver, as a consultant told the Castle Rock City Council in 2005. A council member asked him: โJust how much water remains?โ Perhaps leery of trying to offer easy answers that required a half-hour explanation, he simply smiled and said: โItโs dark down there.โ
That absence of total certainty was at the heart of a Colorado Supreme Court decision handed down in late 2024. Parker Water and Sanitation District, Castle Rock Water and others had squared off in water court beginning in 2021 with the Colorado Division of Water Resources. Parker Water has 33 wells that are 515 to 2,745 feet deep. State-issued permits for the newest five wells limit the volumes to what could be withdrawn during 100 years at a rate of 1% a year. Parker Water and several other south-metro jurisdictions disputed the stateโs authority to attach this stipulation.
The stipulation was premised on a 1973 law in which state legislators ordered a โslow sipโ of Denver Basin aquifers. Later legislation and rulemaking clarified that withdrawals were not to exceed 1% of total recoverable water in that portion underlying the land of the permitteeโs well in any given year.
Castle Rock believes it has underlying water in the Denver Basin aquifers to satisfy its needs for 300 years but is also making efforts to reduce per-capita use while also diversifying sources. It has 87,000 residents now but expects to grow to between 120,000 and 140,000. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
This dispute is about the future. When the cities reach those 100-year limits and the total volumetric limits associated with their wells, will they be able to continue pumping. Must they cease pumping even if water remains in the aquifer?
Aurora, which lies within a half-mile of Parker Water wells, argued its water rights could be harmed if Parker pumped more than the total volume of water found to be available for its wells.
Itโs crucial to understand that water underground knows no property lines, no signs saying โWelcome to Parker.โ Water could, in theory, flow from below Auroraโs land to Parkerโs wells. Underground, there are no fences.
Colorado Supreme Court justices, in their November 2024 majority opinion, warned of a โrace to the bottom of the aquifer, with earlier permittees receiving a significant head start.โ What would happen if Parker Water, Castle Rock Water and others had their druthers? โAbsent a total volumetric limit, a permittee who continues to pump at the maximum permitted rate for more than 100 years would end up pulling water to its well that would not otherwise be underlying its land,โ said the justices in their majority opinion.
In his dissent, Justice Brian Boatright came to the opposite conclusion, siding with the south-metro jurisdictions.
A study by the U.S. Geological Survey published in 2011 used a model that found 1% to 2% of precipitation becomes water in the bedrock aquifers and 7% in the alluvial aquifer. For urban irrigation, such as at the Watercolor subdivision in Castle Rock, 2.5 inches of water makes it back to underlying aquifers each year. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Some south-metro entities may seek state legislation that reflects what they believe is the best policy. As it stands now, a permit-holder that has withdrawn the total volumetric amount identified on a well permit must cease pumping, says Jason Ullmann, the state engineer and director of the Colorado Division of Water Resources. He has authority to notify users in writing of their violations. Could he shut down wells? They would be given โtime as may reasonably be necessary to correct deficiencies,โ he says. But yes, they would be โsubject to enforcement.โ
Just how much water remains in the Denver Basin aquifers? The Division of Water Resources issues well permits, and in doing so, estimates the potential volume of water underlying the applicantโs parcel. But the state agency does not track changes in volume over time, nor does it track the amount of water that wells pump. It requires well owners to maintain pumping records.
When asked how much water remains in Castle Rockโs wells, Mark Marlowe, director of the cityโs water utility, suggested consultation of a hydrogeologist, perhaps from the U.S. Geological Survey. Pressed further, he said Castle Rockโs groundwater supply will last more than 300 years โfrom a legal standpointโ based on current rates of use.
The practical effect of the Supreme Court ruling on Castle Rock? Very little in the short term, Marlowe says. In 2005, Castle Rock set out to create a pathway to dramatically lessen groundwater dependence. โWeโve been headed down this road for a long time,โ he says. So why participate in Parkerโs lawsuit? Because, he replied, the city wants to make long-term use of its investment in groundwater extraction. And as a practical matter, the city commonly extracts less than the 1% allowed annually.
Marloweโs answer is not totally satisfying, but the work done by Castle Rock since 2005 must be acknowledged. It was 100% dependent on groundwater extraction then. It is adding new impoundments to store surface water, pumping water upstream from Chatfield Reservoir, and doubling the daily capacity for treating wastewater. Castle Rock already has lessened its dependence on groundwater to less than 69% over the last four years and Marlowe says heโs confident that by 2050 it will lessen to 25%.
Several of Castle Rockโs successes have involved working with other south-metro jurisdictions, including the Parker Water and Sanitation District. In 2013, when Ron Redd was hired by Parker Water as general manager, the utility was still 90% groundwater reliant. He was given a mission: transition to renewable sources.
A key project has been water reuse. Water introduced into the South Platte River from other basins or from groundwater can be reused. Aurora Water set out to do so in 2003. The $680 million Prairie Waters Project pumps water from the river-side aquifer near Fort Lupton to a reservoir in the southeast metropolitan area. From there, in 2010, Parker Water, Castle Rock and eight other south-metro communities joined Denver Water and Aurora Water in a partnership called WISE (Water Infrastructure and Supply Efficiency) to further manage infrastructure cooperatively and deliver the reclaimed water to their members.
Making this possible was a new 75,000-acre-foot impoundment called Rueter-Hess Reservoir. Completed in 2012, it is a core asset for Parker Water and three other utilities who share its use.
Jim Yahn, left, manager of the Prewitt Reservoir, which might become part of the Platte Valley Water Partnership, speaks with Ron Red, manager of Parker Water and Sanitation District, and Joe Frank, general manager of the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, which is part of the proect. There is still hope that Prewitt would be part of the plan,โ says Yahn. โThe decree that Parker and Lower South Platte are seeking still has Prewitt Reservoir as a component of the plan.โ Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
The Platte Valley Water Partnership is even more ambitious. Parker Water and Castle Rock Water have joined with the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District.
They plan to detain South Platte River water that currently flows downstream into Nebraska during winter and spring runoff. The South Platte River Compact allows the use of this water. Little excess exists in many years, but when there is, such as in 2023, no place exists to store that water. The project plans to use Prewitt Reservoir and a new reservoir northwest of Akron in the capture and storage of those flows before pumping some of that water 125 miles to Rueter-Hess Reservoir.
Farmers will also have access to a cut of this โnewโ water โ with agricultural users receiving 50% of the captured water and municipalities receiving 50%. Construction is set to begin around 2035, at an anticipated cost of $780 million.
As of mid-July, itโs not clear how the Nebraska lawsuit against Colorado involving water for Nebraskaโs proposed Perkins Canal might affect this project.
A final important component of the path forward for the water utilities who mine Denver Basin aquifers lies in conservation, particularly for outdoor landscaping. The prevailing theme at one time was use as much as you want โ but pay for it. That thinking has shifted to limits and goals of reduced use.
Parker has reduced groundwater dependence to 60% and has goals to reduce it to 25%. Might that be achieved in tapping the aquifers of the San Luis Valley? The idea has provoked outrage for more than 30 years.
โThanks, but no thanks,โ is how Redd describes Parkerโs response to the idea of a lengthy straw sucking water from two river basins away.
โWe have our project, and financially it makes a lot more sense to go that route.โ
For that matter, the San Luis Valley aquifers have their own problems.
Part III: Declines in flows of the Rio Grande parallel those of the Colorado River during the 21st century. There were problems anyway for the potato and other growers around in the eponymously named San Luis Valley farm community of Center. Simply put, less water must be pumped from underground. Easier said than done. You can also download the entire story here in a magazine format.
Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Natalia Mesa):
July 1, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Courtโs 2023 decision on Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency dramatically weakened protections for millions of acres of the Westโs essential wetlands and streams. Under the ruling, only bodies of water with a โcontinuous surface connectionโ to a โrelatively permanentโ traditional, navigable water body can be legally considered part of the waters of the United States (WOTUS) and therefore covered by the Clean Water Act.
The courtโs definition excludes wetlands with belowground connections to bodies of water as well as those fed by ephemeral or intermittent streams. In effect, an estimated 60% of wetlands have lost federal protection, according to a National Resources Defense Council report. The language in the decision was ambiguous โ exactly how wet a wetland has to be to fall under WOTUS and qualify protections was left up to federal agencies.
Wetlands are critical to both human and ecosystem health as well as for climate change mitigation. But they are also prime targets for dredging, filling and other disruptions because of their proximity to water and rich, fertile soil.
Under President Biden, the EPA broadly interpreted Sackett, focusing on protecting wetlands adjacent to bodies of water, with no explicit threshold for how often they had to be flooded. In March, however, Donald Trumpโs EPA released a memoindicating that it plans to restrict all WOTUS, although itโs not yet clear by how much.
โThe current EPA seems to be using Sackett as a springboard to find any perceived ambiguities and narrow the definition of WOTUS further,โ said Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel at Earthjustice.
In the absence of federal regulations, state dredge-and-fill permitting programs can protect wetlands, and California, Oregon and Washington all have broad protections for non-WOTUS wetlands and streams. And since the Sackett decision, Colorado and New Mexico have passed laws restoring clean water protections for waters excluded from WOTUS. โItโs a dereliction of duty on the federal governmentโs part by not appropriately protecting the waters of the U.S. and that leaves it up to the states to fill in those protections,โ said Rachel Conn, deputy director of Amigos Bravos, a New Mexico conservation organization.
The result is a patchwork of laws protecting the nationโs wetlands. But if more Western states were to emulate their neighborsโ efforts and take action, millions of acres of wetlands could be saved, even in the absence of strong federal protections.
National Resources Defense Council estimates are based on scenarios in which the federal government adopts two interpretations of Sackett that are supported by industry and some states: one, excluding wetlands adjacent to intermittent or ephemeral streams (bottom of range), and another, excluding wetlands that are not wet or flooded most of the year (top of range). According to legal experts, the EPAโs current guidance suggests that the administration will limit WOTUS significantly, excluding most wetlands. Alaska is excluded from this graph due to lack of data. Credit: Hannah Agosta/High Country News
Arizona
Wetland oversight is primarily conducted through the Surface Water Protection Program (SWPP), administered by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. House Bill 2691, passed in 2021 before Sackett, established the SWPP, which allows the state to protect some waters not covered under the Clean Water Act.
Wyoming
While Wyoming lacks a permitting program, it does bar the discharge of any pollution or wastes into its waters without a clean water permit. In addition, Wyoming established a Wetland Banking Fund before Sackett to encourage individuals and companies to preserve wetlands. It enables entities to bank wetland credits earned from wetland conservation projects and use them later to offset a developmentโs impacts on wetlands, with the goal of achieving โno net loss of wetland function and value in the state.โ
Colorado
Wetland protections are primarily governed by House Bill 24-1379, a law passed in 2024 that aims to restore Clean Water Act protections to state wetlands that lost them owing to Sackett. It establishes a state permitting program.
New Mexico
The Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Act (SB 21), which was signed into law on April 8, gives the state authority to regulate surface waters. It creates a statewide permitting program and addresses polluted groundwater that falls outside federal programs.
How wetlands work
Approximately 40% of species, including half of all federally listed species, rely on wetlands, which act like sponges for excess water, offering billions of gallons of flood protection and storing this water for later use. Their plants, roots and microbes filter pollution from drinking water and also store 20%-30% of the worldโs total soil carbon. But Western states have lost 50% of their wetlands since colonization, and roughly half of the regionโs remaining ones are degraded.
Illustrations by Hannah Agosta/High Country News
SOURCES: From Gold, 2024 in Science/Environmental Defense Fund, National Resources Defense Council, U.S. Fish and Wildlife National Wetlands Inventory, Wetlands International.
Blanca Wetlands, Colorado BLM-managed ACEC Blanca Wetlands is a network of lakes, ponds, marshes and wet meadows designated for its recreation and wetland values. The BLM Colorado and its partners have made strides in preserving, restoring and managing the area to provide rich and diverse habitats for wildlife and the public. To visit or get more information, see: http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/slvfo/blanca_wetlands.html. By Bureau of Land Management – Blanca Wetlands Area of Critical Environmental Concern, Colorado, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42089248
By measuring the gravitational pull of water for more than two decades, NASA satellites have peered beneath the surface and measured changes in the groundwater supplies of the Colorado River Basin for years 2002 to 2024. Credit NASA
By measuring the gravitational pull of water for more than two decades, NASA satellites have peered beneath the surface and measured changes in the groundwater supplies of the Colorado River Basin for years 2015 to 2024. Credit: NASA
By measuring the gravitational pull of water for more than two decades, NASA satellites have peered beneath the surface and measured changes in the groundwater supplies of the Colorado River Basin. In a recent analysis of the satellite data, Arizona State University researchers reported rapid and accelerating losses of groundwater in the basinโs underground aquifers between 2002 and 2024. Some 40 million people rely on water from the aquifers, which include parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
The basin lost about 27.8 million acre-feet of groundwater during the study period. โThatโs an amount roughly equal to the storage capacity of Lake Mead,โ said Karem Abdelmohsen, an associate research scientist at Arizona State University who authored the study.
About 68 percent of the losses occurred in the lower part of the basin, which lies mostly in Arizona. The research is based on data collected by the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE-FO (GRACE Follow-On) missions. The data were integrated with output from land surface models, such as NASAโs North American Land Data Assimilation System, and in-situ precipitation data to calculate groundwater losses.
The conclusions were similar to those arrived at by Arizona State University Global Futures Professor Jay Famiglietti in an analysis of the Colorado River Basin published in 2014, when his team was at the University of California, Irvine. “If left unmanaged for another decade, groundwater levels will continue to drop, putting Arizonaโs water security and food production at far greater risk than is being acknowledged,โ said Famiglietti, previously a senior water scientist at NASAโs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal investigator of both studies.
The maps above underscore the accelerating rate of groundwater loss detected by the GRACE missions. In the first decade of the analysis, between 2002 and 2014, parts of the basin in western Arizona in La Paz and Mohave counties and in southeastern Arizona in Cochise County lost groundwater at a rate of about 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) per year. Between 2015 and 2024, the rate of groundwater loss more than doubled to 12 millimeters (0.5 inches) per year. [ed. emphasis mine]
1950 – 2023
Two key factors likely explain the acceleration, the researchers said. First, there was a global transition from one of the strongest El Niรฑos on record in 2014-2016 to a period when La Niรฑa reasserted control, including the arrival of a โtriple-dipโ La Niรฑa between 2020 and 2023. La Niรฑa typically shifts winter precipitation patterns in a way that reduces rainfall over the Southwest and slows the replenishment of aquifers.
Second, there was an increase in the amount of groundwater being used for agriculture. โ2014 was about the time that industrial agriculture took off in Arizona,โ Famiglietti said, noting that large alfalfa farms arrived in La Paz and other parts of southern Arizona around that time. Dairies and orchards in southeastern Arizona likely impacted groundwater supplies as well, he added. Other โthirstyโ crops grown widely in the state include cotton, corn, and pecans. Data from the U.S. Department of Agricultureโs Cropland Data Layer(CDL) shows that these crops are common in several parts of southern Arizona, including Maricopa, Pinal, and Cochise counties.
Irrigated agriculture consumes about 72 percent of Arizonaโs available water supply; cities and industry account for 22 percent and 6 percent, respectively, according to Arizona Department of Water Resources data. Many farms use what Famiglietti described as โvastโ amounts of groundwater in part because they use a water-intensive type of irrigation known as flood irrigation (or sometimes furrow irrigation), a technique where water is released into trenches that run through crop fields. The long-standing practice is typically the cheapest option and is widely used for alfalfa and cotton, but it can lead to more water loss and evaporation than other irrigation techniques, such as overhead sprinklers or dripping water from plastic tubing.
Captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8, shows desert agriculture in La Paz and Maricopa counties on July 12, 2025. CDL data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates that most of the rectangular fields around Vicksburg and Wenden are used to grow alfalfa, while the fields around Aguila are typically used for fruits and vegetables, such as melons, broccoli, and leafy greens. Some of the alfalfa fields in Butler Valley (upper part of the image) have gone fallow in recent years following the termination of leases due to concerns from the Arizona State Land Department about groundwater pumping.
The satellite image above, captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8, shows desert agriculture in La Paz and Maricopa counties on July 12, 2025. CDL data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates that most of the rectangular fields around Vicksburg and Wenden are used to grow alfalfa, while the fields around Aguila are typically used for fruits and vegetables, such as melons, broccoli, and leafy greens. Some of the alfalfa fields in Butler Valley (upper part of the image) have gone fallow in recent years following the termination of leases due to concerns from the Arizona State Land Department about groundwater pumping.
The new analysis found some evidence that managing groundwater can help keep Arizona aquifers healthier. For instance, the active management areas and irrigation non-expansion areas established as part of the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980 lessened water losses in some areas. The designation of a new active management area in the Willcox Basin in 2025 will likely further slow groundwater losses. โStill, the bottom line is that the losses to groundwater were huge,โ Abdelmohsen said. โLots of attention has gone to low water levels in reservoirs over the years, but the depletion of groundwater far outpaces the surface water losses. This is a big warning flag.โ
NASA supports several missions, tools, and datasets relevant to water resource management. Among them is OpenET, a web-based platform that uses satellite data to measure how much water plants and soils release into the atmosphere. The tool can help farmers tailor irrigation schedules to actual water use by plants, optimizing โcrop per dropโ and reducing waste.
This is the first part of the series from the summer issue of Headwaters Magazine. Click the link to read the series on the Water Education Colorado website. Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
July 20, 2025
To understand the predicament in the Republican River Basin of eastern Colorado, you need to appreciate the volume of water being hoisted from the underlying High Plains Aquifer. The most important component is the Ogallala.
Farmers and the few small towns in the Republican River Basin average 720,000 acre-feet of withdrawals annually. In one hot and dry year, 2012, they pumped 940,000 acre-feet. As a point of reference, Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest water body in the state, can hold 947,435 acre-feet.
Groundwater mining cannot be sustained far into the future in many areas of the Republican River Basin. Wells in some areas have not declined while wells in other areas have declined 13 feet during the last decade. Pumping at existing rates cannot be maintained. Within 25 years, about a third of land thatโs now irrigated will have no water. In other places, pumps already sputter.
โSustainableโ and โpumpingโ do not belong in the same sentence in this basin. The water of the Republican River Basin in the High Plains Aquifer accumulated from 18 to 4 million years ago.
Far from the snowmelt of the Rocky Mountains, it is recharged by minimal surface water. Based on studies, the Republican River Compact of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas assumes that 17% of the water on the surface trickles down through the ground to the aquifers. So, only very slowly is the aquifer recharged. Itโs mostly an ancient bank account with now small, almost tiny deposits and fast-and-furious withdrawals.
The Republican River Basin and several other regions of the state rely largely on groundwater. In a 2024 decision, Colorado Supreme Court justices pointed out that it would be difficult to overstate the importance of groundwater given the stateโs population and arid climate. The 285,000 wells poked into the earth across the state deliver 18% of Coloradoโs water.
The Republican River Basin, the San Luis Valley, and the south metro area of the Denver Basin are all, to varying degrees, rethinking water โ both its sources and uses. All three have historically relied heavily on groundwater, and all have made at least limited progress in shifting toward more sustainable groundwater use in the last 20 years. The cities have adopted policies that foster smaller, less water-intensive lawns. They have diversified their sources. Two south-metro water utilities that 20 years ago pulled nearly all their water from wells, today have lessened that dependency to 60% to 65%.
Farmers in the Republican River Basin and San Luis Valley have somewhat different challenges. They have taken action to use less water and to save their communities, but whether those actions match the scale of the challenges they face is another matter. Changes can best be achieved before emergency sirens wail. In the Republican River Basin, some already see a swirl of red lights warning of catastrophe ahead.
Irrigation pipe and corn crop near Holyoke. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Itโs going fast! What needs to be done in the Republican River Basin?
The Republican River Basin consists of 7,000 square miles, an area slightly smaller than New Jersey. It is largely located within a triangle between Julesburg, Limon and Cheyenne Wells. A few businesses cater to travelers but agriculture constitutes nearly all of the basinโs economic foundation.
An average 17 inches of precipitation falls per year across the basin, less in some areas. High-dollar agriculture depends almost entirely upon water drawn from the Ogallala. A 2010 state report found that of the basinโs 600,000 acres then under irrigation, only 1,000 were supplied by surface water. Locals suggest the true number is far, far less.
Dryland farming prevailed until the arrival of high-capacity pumps and rural electrification in the late 1940s. Farmers in the 1950s began converting dryland areas to irrigation, dramatically expanding crop yields. Other farmers arrived to plow hitherto virgin turf. Twice in the 1970s, groundwater extraction exceeded a million acre-feet per year.
Drafting of groundwater via 5,000 wells today produces a bounty of herbaceous crops. Most end up in the bellies of livestock. Two feedlots near Yuma alone can each hold more than 150,000 cattle and several others can accommodate 75,000. The basin also has three hog farms, several dairies, and an ethanol plant.
Republican River Basin map. Credit: Republican River Compact Administration
In 1942, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas allocated the waters of the Republican River and its tributaries in an interstate compact. The state engineer in 1973 ordered a moratorium on new wells. The most powerful limitation did not come until 1990. Rules were changed, reducing the allowed rate of depletion, effectively precluding new well permits.
Existing wells, however, were drawing down the aquifers in the Republican River Basin. Kansas in the 1990s complained that it was getting shorted by Nebraska. Nebraska in turn blamed Colorado. A 2002 settlement stipulation among the three states represented a new line in the sand. By whatever means, Colorado had to figure out how to deliver water to the downriver states.
Colorado responded by forming the Republican River Water Conservation District. In effect, the state gave farmers and others in the eight-county district responsibility for figuring out how to comply with the compact. To help achieve compliance, legislators gave the district authority to levy fees on irrigators. The fee, originally $5 per acre, has been boosted twice and is now $30 per acre annually.
The Ogallala is plumbed by many wells in the Republican River Basin within Colorado.
This $15 million in annual revenue is used in several ways. An early project was a pipeline to boost the amount of water flowing into Nebraska. The pipeline carries water from eight wells previously used for irrigation. They had been drilled amid hills with sugar-like sand between Wray and Holyoke in the deepest part of the aquifer. The water from these wells flows 12.6 miles through the pipeline and into the North Fork near the Nebraska border. The wells are pumped from October to April, ensuring minimal loss to evaporation or riverine trees or grasses.
This pipeline, since its completion in 2012, has allowed Colorado to meet its compact delivery requirements. The cost of the wells, pipeline, and water rights was $72 million. Faced with declining production from these wells, the district in 2025 is planning four more wells and 9.5 miles of pipe at an estimated cost of $14 million to deliver what the compact pledges to Nebraska.
With members and staff of the Republican River Water Conservation District looking on, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill in May 2023 that allocated $30 million to be used to retire irrigated acreage as necessary to meet a 2029 deadline. Photo/Office of Jared Polis
In another move toward compact compliance, Bonny Reservoir, a 165,238 acre-foot impoundment on the South Fork of the Republican, was drained. Prior to the 2011 draining, Bonny had delighted boaters and anglers but lost too much water to evaporation and seepage. Water now flows more efficiently downstream.
More actions were needed to ensure Nebraska and Kansas received their apportioned water. Beginning in 2006, Colorado removed 30,000 to 35,000 acres from irrigation. A multi-state agreement in 2016 specified that Colorado would remove an additional 25,000 acres in the South Fork drainage by 2029. Dick Wolfe, then Coloradoโs state engineer, was asked at the time how this was to be done. He paused a moment, then likened it to getting a haircut: a snip here, a snip there.
This snipping of irrigated acreage has been encouraged with financial incentives assembled from pots of local, state and federal funds. The money is delivered via two federal programs: the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The latter allows farmers to use the land for dryland farming or grazing.
By early 2025, the Republican River Water Conservation District had retired 17,120 of the 25,000 acres as required by the 2016 settlement. It was a milestone, a time for momentary celebration. The harder work lies ahead. Nearly 8,000 additional acres must be retired to meet the December 2029 deadline. If the goal is not met, the state engineer has authority to shut down wells. Nobody wants that, least of all the state engineer. To help sweeten the incentives in 2025, state legislators appropriated $6 million. This adds $750 to the $4,500 per acre paid to farmers participating in CREP and $750 to the $3,500 per acre in EQIP.
By June 2025, Bonny Reservoir had a forest of trees, but the water that had drawn boaters and anglers was drained in 2011. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Using less water is the paramount challenge. This has been accomplished almost exclusively by taking land out of irrigation. There are other ways, too. Today, corn is king, responsible for about 85% of irrigated acres in the basin. It commonly receives 20 to 22 inches of supplemental water. A growing realization of late has been that less can be more. Planting fewer seeds โ say 18,000 per acre instead of 30,000 โ will save money and require less fertilizer. Fewer seeds will then require only 12 to 14 inches of supplemental water, meaning less pumping and shaving electricity bills. Lower crop yields can counterintuitively produce better profit margins.
Conversations are also underway about water-conserving crop alternatives: milo, millet and wheat, kidney and pinto beans, even black-eyed peas. Itโs partly a matter of developing markets. Deb Daniel, the general manager of the district since 2011, has been toying with how to emphasize productivity strategies with the phrase โcrop per drop.โ
None of this adds up to the scale of the challenge, though.
Above: Most of the water in the Republican River comes from the aquifers, and by Wray, thereโs little in the river. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Republican River in Colorado January 2023 near the Nebraska border. During winter, water is pumped from wells north of Wray for delivery into the North Fork of the Republican at the Nebraska state line. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Kenny Helling, a fourth-generation farmer from the Idalia area of Yuma County, believes more is needed than financial incentives to take land out of production. โContinuing to throw money at the problem wonโt fix the problem,โ he says. Ways must be found to keep land in irrigation, because irrigated land pays more in property taxes. Those taxes are crucial for operating fire departments, schools and other community purposes. โItโs a very big concern to me.โ
The answers? Helling sees value in permits specifying reduced volume of pumped water. He would like to see more crop rotation.
Helling was a member of the Republican River Water Conservation District Board of Directors for nine years. He says the district needs other tools. The true authority for limiting pumping belongs to the eight groundwater subdistricts within the basin. They do not use it. Why?
โEverybody on those groundwater management districts are generally irrigators,โ says Helling. โMost of them are neighbors. A lot of them go to church together. A lot of them might have kids and grandkids in school together. Nobody wants to make anybody mad. And so, unfortunately, the groundwater management districts do not use all the authority they could to restrict the amount of water used.โ
Colorado legislators, he says, need to give the Republican River Water Conservation District more authority. It needs sticks, not just carrots. โWe need to use less water.โ
Tim Pautler told members of the Colorado Groundwater Commission something similar in May 2025. A dryland farmer from the Stratton area, he has served on the Republican River Water Conservation Districtโs Board of Directors for 21 years. He says that the board has accomplished almost no basin-wide conservation. It hasnโt figured out how to substantially reduce water use.
Most landowners who have taken advantage of the incentives have been irrigators who have less groundwater available in their wells. Nearly all in the southwestern portion of the basin, where many wells were already sputtering. He says if reduced water use is the goal, the fees charged to farmers must be based on acre-feet of water pumped and not just on irrigated acres.
Thereโs no pretense of sustainability in the Republican River Basin. The water deposited over millions of years is now being mined. The task is to maximize value of the remaining water, to prolong the availability of the High Plains Aquifer. Few have yet been willing to talk about the gravity of the challenge.
โI hope enough water remains in the hole to sustain society,โ says Pautler. โI hope we donโt go completely dry.โ
Part II: Entering the 20th century, the Denver metro communities of Castle Rock and Parker were growing fast โ and almost entirely reliant upon Denver Basin aquifers. They still are, but they have started diversifying their sources while encouraging conservation of water. You can also download the entire story here in a magazine format.
Click the link to read the article and listen to the Valley Pod on the Alamosa Citizen website:
July 9, 2025
A draft agreement settling the long-running Rio Grande Compact lawsuit dealing with New Mexicoโs delivery of water to the Texas border is on the one-yard line and should be pushed across the goal line come fall, says Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Weiser was on a two-day tour of the San Luis Valley this week when he gave an update on the lawsuit to members of the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable. All three compact states โ Colorado, New Mexico and Texas will be party to the settlement.
Earlier this week, Special Master D. Brooks Smith scheduled a hearing for the week of Sept. 29 on the parties motions toward a settlement.
The states had worked out a previous agreement to the 2013 case, only to have the federal government object when the proposed settlement was presented to the U.S. Supreme Court. This time, said Weiser, the federal governmentโs role has been addressed.
โWeโre on track,โ Weiser said during a recording of The Valley Pod. โWe have a settlement that properly has the federal government in its place and resolves the concerns which were mostly between New Mexico and Texas.โ
Listen hereย to the full Valley Pod episode with AG Phil Weiser.
Colorado has nine interstate water compact agreements, including the Colorado River Compact which dominates the headlines. At the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable meeting, Conejos Water Conservancy District Manager Nathan Coombs asked Weiser how the state and local water users could collaborate on more โcreative waysโ in administering the river compacts.
โWe all agree with keeping our compacts whole. But I would ask what are some of the processes we could go through to make them more vehicles for the water users within the state as we see this drying?โ Coombs said.
On The Valley Pod, Weiser addressed the Valleyโs efforts to recover the Upper Rio Grande Basinโs confined and unconfined aquifers.
โWe will have to continue looking at this situation of groundwater and have to keep asking โHow do we best manage this precious resource?โ I donโt have any immediate views on what to do in the face of the challenging hydrology. I do believe we have to keep thinking hard about a series of strategies that include โHow are we most smartly storing water, how are we re-using water, and how are we conserving water?โโ
Weiser, a two-term attorney general, is a candidate for governor, seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 2026. In The Valley Pod episode he talks more about his candidacy as well as the 27 different lawsuits Colorado has been party to in the past six months in challenging the Trump Administration.
โThis is an extraordinary moment unlike any in history,โ Weiser said.
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
Cooper Fieseler places stones intended to prevent erosion during a June 2025 Zeedyk structure-building outing on the White Acorn Ranch. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Mike Koshmrl):
Tom Christiansen drew a parallel to the human body as he described the purpose of the low-tech rock structures heโs been building for years within the creases of western Wyomingโs sagebrush sea.
The malady? Erosion. The treatment: A carefully placed stone.
โEach of these is a stitch on what we donโt want to become a sucking chest wound,โ Christiansen told a group of rock-moving volunteers on Saturday in late June.
The group was assembled on the White Acorn Ranch, a picturesque cattle operation south of the Lander Cutoff Road thatโs within the spectacular Golden Triangle โ a 367,000-acre region along the flanks of the Wind River Range that houses the best remaining sagebrush habitat on Earth.
In a June 2025 outing near South Pass, Tom Christiansen, Mark Kot and Lindsey Washkoviak distribute stones that will be positioned into Zeedyk structures intended to protect wet meadows. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
The high desertโs sagebrush-steppe has enormous ecological value. Thatโs evidenced by the struggling species that depend upon the embattled biome. But itโs an arid environment, and certain nooks and crannies play an outsized role in nourishing the landscapeโs native and domesticated inhabitants. High on that list are the grassy wet meadows that convey precious water, like arteries pump blood, through the contours of the sagebrush-covered hills.
โThese areas are pretty small, but theyโre very important,โ said Christiansen, a retired sage grouse coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. โThese are the grocery stores.โ
Youngsters Cooper Fieseler and Camryn Christiansen-Fieock check out a mega-sized Zeedyk structure built to address an especially broad โheadcutโ that was eroding into the green grass uphill. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
But those bottomlands can become barren of the biomass that feeds insects, sage grouse chicks and on down the food chain. Erosion, although a natural phenomenon, can be hastened by factors like overgrazing and extreme weather events made more likely by climate change. When erosion runs out of control into grassy gulches, they become incised gullies. Out goes the vegetation.
Thatโs where the simple rock structures come in.
The same spot before the mega-sized Zeedyk structure went in. (Tom Christiansen)
โPrevent that erosion, get more water into the soil, keep the water table up, keep the green vegetation โ thatโs the intent of these structures,โ Christiansen said.
Known as Zeedyk structures, after their inventor, Bill Zeedyk, the stone assemblies come in different shapes and sizes. At the White Acorn Ranch and numerous other corners of the West, there are โone rock dams,โ โzuni bowls,โ โrock mulch rundownsโ and other hand-built structures intended to arrest vertical โheadcutsโ in ephemeral streambeds.
By facilitating the flow of water and slowing it down, the structures can prevent erosion from spreading uphill. Although the ecological do-gooding tactic relies on simple concepts and materials โ essentially well-placed rocks โ building it out requires hard physical labor.
Mark Kot listens to a discussion about Zeedyk structures in June 2025. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
A bevy of volunteers flocked to South Pass on June 21 to erect new Zeedyk structures and shore up old ones.
Jared Oakleaf, Liz Lynch and Lindsey Washkoviak ventured up from Lander. Mark Kot, bad back and all, came from Rock Springs to move rock. Christiansen made the drive from Green River alongside his granddaughter, Camryn Christiansen-Fieock, of Big Piney. On a day off, Wyoming Game and Fish Department habitat biologist Troy Fieseler made the trek from Pinedale and with his son, Cooper.
A group of volunteers building Zeedyk structures in June 2025 aims to preserve the grassy bottoms pictured in this photo on the White Acorn Ranch. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
The rocks were donated, too. Robert Taylor, an avid sage grouse hunter from Washington state, ponied up for the materials the volunteers carefully placed.
Several of the bunch devoting their Saturday to moving rocks up on South Pass were seasoned. Fieseler even learned the ropes from the techniqueโs namesake himself.
โThe very first time I did it, we had Bill Zeedyk come out,โ he said. โHe taught us to read the landscape.โ
Troy Fieseler motions while talking with fellow volunteers during a June 2025 Zeedyk structure-building outing on the White Acorn Ranch. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
That 2021 workshop, held at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge, imparted Fieseler with lessons he hasnโt forgotten. Protecting uneroded wet meadows is a far more efficient use of time and resources than trying to restore those that have already washed out, he recalled.
Over the last decade, Zeedykโs erosion-control tactics have gained traction in Wyoming and well beyond. The Natural Resources Conservation Serviceโs Sage Grouse Initiative gave the concept its legs, Christiansen said. Now there are thousands of structures dispersed across hundreds of projects, he said.
โEach of these, whatโs its significance?โ Christiansen said. โAn individual one, itโs not so much, but when you start doing thousands of these across the West, there is significance.โ
Zeedyk structures in action helping to control erosiion and retain moisture on a gulch in the White Acorn Ranch. (Tom Christiansen)
Enough time has passed since the techniqueโs inception that restoration specialists know it works, thanks to long-term monitoring.
The White Acorn Ranchโs Zeedyk structures also have proven hardy and able to withstand the worst that the harsh Wyoming environment can throw their way. Christiansen and his fellow volunteers labored in a corner of the state that got walloped during the winter of 2022-โ23 by an unusually hefty snowpack.
โThis ensured the runoff from the heavy snow,โ Christiansen said. โThey dealt with a lot of energy, and handled it. Very few rocks moved.โ
Christiansen spoke of the rock structureโs resilience on the front end of a day of labor. From a section of state land, he motioned down a draw.
โThereโs over 20 structures between here and where that slope toes off,โ he said.
Every one of them had been erected by Christiansen, the crews of Zeedyk structure-building volunteers and agency folks that have also chipped in.
Frances Brennan, Cooper Fieseler and Camryn Christiansen-Fieock pose after a couple hours of playing and moving rocks that went into Zeedyk structures on the White Acorn Ranch. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
A serious mess, also known as the NE Hogback #53 well and associated infrastructure. Chuza, the most recent owner of the site in the Horseshoe Gallup oil field in northwestern New Mexico, went bankrupt. That left New Mexico and federal taxpayers holding the cleanup bill. The site has been partially reclaimed, but only partially. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
๐ข๏ธย Hydrocarbon Hoedownย ๐ย Data Dumpย ๐
A new report on New Mexicoโs abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells presents an alarming and expensive scenario for the state. It reveals that while the industry generates a lot of revenue for the state, cleaning up its mess is also poised to cost state and federal taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. No, this report was not put out by an environmental or progressive advocates, but by the stateโs legislative finance committee.
New Mexico has been an oil and gas hotspot for more than a century, during which drillers have sunk at least 121,000 wells, mostly in the San Juan and Permian basins in the northwest and southeast portions of the state. Newly drilled wells typically kick out a large volume of oil and/or gas during the first months after drilling, generating a lot of cash for their operators and for state coffers, and helping to push production numbers for the state through the roof.
Decline curve generated by decline curve analysis software, utilized in petroleum economics to indicate the depletion of oil & gas in a petroleum reservoir. By Richard Banks – Sent to me personally, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33914059
But the wells are soon afflicted with whatโs known as the decline curve, meaning that the longer they pump, the less they pump. You know, itโs kind of like aging in people. Eventually, aging will render all oil and gas wells into low-producing stripper wells (Iโm not sure how this analogy extends to the human realm, but hey โฆ) that kick out less than 10 barrels of oil per day. Thousands of New Mexico wells are extreme strippers, producing one barrel or less daily. Yet they continue to spew methane, hydrogen sulfide, and volatile organic compounds at the same as or an even higher rate than their younger, more vital counterparts.
This is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, the operators of stripper wells are likely to be smaller, less financially secure companies, and itโs easier and cheaper for them to keep the wells in a nearly inactive state โ during which the wells continue to ooze pollutants into the air and groundwater โ than to decommission, plug, and reclaim them. It may make economic sense to abandon these wells, or for the companies to cease to exist and โorphanโ the wells, leaving them to the state or federal taxpayers to clean up, since reclamation bonds are woefully inadequate. And, finally, these wells generate almost nothing in production taxes, meaning that they arenโt contributing much to the stateโs conservation fund, a portion of which is used to clean up abandoned and orphaned wells.
The near constant drone of drilling for over a century has resulted in a near-constant addition of low- to non-producing wells to New Mexicoโs rosters. While responsible and financially solvent companies plug and reclaim their own wells, many smaller operators simply walk away.
New Mexicoโs Oil Conservation Division is currently responsible for plugging close to 1,000 abandoned and orphaned wells, including 700 on state or private land, and for remediation and reclamation of an additional 500 well sites and 18 infrastructure sites (such as leaky tank batteries).
Detail of interactive map showing orphaned, inactive, and low-producing wells on state and private land in the San Juan Basin (this leaves out hundreds of additional such wells on federal lands).
At recent rates, plugging them will take close to a decade, not including remediation/reclamation. OCD is also responsible for remediation and reclamation of an additional 500 well sites and 18 infrastructure sties. In total, plugging, remediation, and reclamation of all currently orphaned wells and infrastructure on state and private land is estimated to cost a minimum of $208 million, and likely more. And thatโs just for now.
The report goes on to say: โโฆ in addition to wells the state already has legal authority to plug, thousands of inactive and low-producing wells are at risk of being orphaned, potentially increasing the stateโs liability by many orders of magnitude.โ There are about 1,400 inactive at high risk of being orphaned on state and private land, according to the OCD. And there are thousands more that are extremely low-producing wells โ putting out less than one barrel of oil equivalent per day โ for which the โexpected cost of cleanup far exceeds predicted future revenues, increasing their risk of being orphaned.โ
And the kicker: โAltogether, the stateโs current and near-future liability for well plugging and site remediation is estimated to be between $700 million and $1.6 billion.โ
More data from the report:
38,817 Number of stripper wells, meaning they produce less than 10 barrels of oil-equivalent daily, in New Mexico, making up about 64% of the stateโs active wells. This number will continue to increase.
$100,000 Average cost to plug single oil and gas well.
450% Percent the average state-contracted cost to plug an oil and gas well in New Mexico has increased since 2019.
$250,000 Maximum amount of financial assurance an operator in New Mexico must post to cover the costs of plugging and reclaiming its wells. This cap applies whether the operator has five wells or 500 wells, meaning it actually provides almost no financial assurance whatsoever.
$46.4 million Amount spent by the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division to plug and reclaim 360 wells and associated infrastructure between 2019 and 2024.
9% Percent by which the cost of plugging a gas well exceeds that of an oil well. Most of the wells in the San Juan Basin are gas wells.
$208 million Estimated cost to New Mexico to plug, remediate, and reclaim all existing orphaned and abandoned wells and infrastructure on state and private land.
$5.6 million Amount in financial assurance associated with orphaned wells or their operators, meaning most of the costs will be shouldered by the taxpayers โ either via the state reclamation fund or federal grants.
$66.7 million April 2025 balance of New Mexicoโs oil and gas reclamation fund (which is funded by a portion of conservation tax revenues).
$6 million Tax revenue New Mexicoโs 3,024 wells producing less than 1BOE/day would generate with the West Texas Intermediate oil price at $70/barrel (itโs currently lower than that). Plugging and reclaiming those same wells would cost an estimated $531 million to $885 million. โThe vast majority of the wellsโ87%โare owned by private companies whose financial health is difficult for regulators to assess.โ
$1.6 millionย Amount New Mexico paid in 2024 to plug six of Ridgeway Arizonaโs wells under a 2023 settlement agreement with the company. Under the agreement, the state pays to plug 299 of the companyโs wells, and the company reimburses the state $2 for each barrel of oil it sells, with a minimum payment of $30k per month. But at current rates, the total cost to plug the remaining wells could be $60 million or more, meaning it would take the company as long as 170 years to pay it off.
๐ต Public Lands ๐ฒ
By now youโve probably heard that Sen. Mike Lee pulled his public land sell-off provision from the budget reconciliation bill that the Senate just passed following intense backlash. And perhaps youโre planning on celebrating the salvation of Americaโs public lands on July 4.
Thereโs so much BS in Leeโs statement. How, for example, does selling public land to developers keep it from being ruined for the next generation? It doesnโt, it just locks up that land for every generation except those that can afford to buy a house in the new subdivision that would go there. Public land is not โlocked away from the people who live there.โ But it would be locked away if it was privatized. And while there is no property tax on public lands, there are federal payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT, which a county can use to fund schools and search and rescue operations. Plus, public lands generate billions in revenue for gateway communities through public land usersโ sales and lodgers taxes and local spending.
Well, I hate to be Mr. Buzzkill, but while this victory may be sweet, it does little to offset the bitterness brought by continuing attacks on public lands, along with democracy, morality, decency, and, well, America, itself, this Independence Day week.
The โBig, Beautiful Billโ perpetuates and amplifies the massive transfer of wealth from low- and middle-income and working-class Americans to the richest 10%. It will slash Medicaid and other vital programs Americans have paid into and rely upon, while also dismantling tribal sovereignty. And yet, it will also drive up the deficit by trillions of dollars due to additional spending on the military industrial complex, which is reaching its tentacles further into immigration enforcement, wildlife blocking border walls, deportations, and $450-million-per-year concentration camps. With Trump threatening to revoke citizenship from U.S.-born citizens whom he considers threats (e.g. Zohran Mamdani and Elon Musk), those camps may end up housing his political opponents. I really hate to make this comparison, but that is some severe Nazi-esque nastiness.
The Senateโs bill gives more handouts to the oil and gas and coal industries, while revoking tax credits for wind and solar power, which could kill those industries when they are needed most.
And yes, some of you may cheer a weaker renewable-energy industry, since it will mean fewer utility-scale installations blanketing the desert. I get that. But it will also hurt rooftop solar and larger installations on big box stores, over parking lots, or in fallow agricultural land, brownfields or other appropriate sites. A western Colorado farmerโs plan to install solar panels to generate electricity and shade his crops, for example, is imperiled by the GOPโs plans.
This at a time when strain on the power grid is exponentially increasing due to the outsized demand of more and more AI-powering, hyperscale data centers. That power will come from somewhere, and if itโs not solar or wind or batteries, then itโs likely to be from pollution-intensive coal and natural gas (mined and drilled from public lands), fish-killing hydropower, or new nuclear reactors (that will require uranium mined from public lands).
And keep in mind, oil and gas leasing and mining claims represent a sort of quasi-privatization of public lands. Sure, the government retains title to the land, but the corporations get access to the minerals within, can rip the land apart to get to them, and can cut off public access with the necessary permits. With its accelerated 14-day โenergy emergencyโ permitting process, the Trump administration is making it a heck of a lot easier for corporations to mine, drill, and otherwise develop public lands, sans public input. The latest beneficiaries include:
NorthWestern Energy, which was given the Bureau of Land Management green light to build aย 74-mile natural gas pipelineย between Helena and Three Forks, Montana.
Ormat got the BLM go-ahead to move forward on three separate geothermal projects in Nevada: โข Exploration work at theย Diamond Flat projectย near Fallon; โข Upgrades at theย McGinness Hills projectย in Lander County; โข Exploration drilling at theย Pinto Geothermal Projectย near Denio.
Iโm not suggesting that these are horrible projects that shouldnโt have been approved. Geothermal holds a lot of potential as a relatively clean, round-the-clock baseline power source, and these are merely upgrades and exploration, not full on developments. Still, geothermal development and even exploration have impacts and can affect groundwater aquifers, springs, and wetlands. Land agencies should have as much time as it takes to adequately analyze potential effects, and tribal nations should be consulted and have time to do their own analysis. And if itโs happening on public lands, then the public deserves to know about it and have an opportunity to weigh in. None of that is possible under this 14-day permitting process.
So, yeah, happy Fourth of July, yโall and welcome to the Divided States of Project 2025. And on that note, the Land Desk will be taking the rest of the week off.
๐ธ Parting Shot ๐๏ธ
Just getting into the olโ July Fourth spirit with this picture of Raymond “Squeekโ Huntโs signs near his mutton meat slaughterhouse and shop in Waterflow, New Mexico. I mean, it does have an American flag in it, after all.
Lock and Dam No. 1 on the Cape Fear River in Bladen County, North Carolina. By Bud Davis, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual LibraryImage pageImage description pageDigital Visual Library home page, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2000782
Click the link to read the article on the Propublica website (Anna Clark):
July 2, 2025
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claims to prioritize combatting long-lasting chemicals called PFAS. Despite this, the agency has delayed enforcement of standards and terminated over $15 million in funding for โforever chemicalsโ research.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receiveย our biggest storiesย as soon as theyโre published.
One summer day in 2017, a front-page story in the StarNews of Wilmington, North Carolina, shook up the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The drinking water system, it said, was polluted with a contaminant commonly known as GenX, part of the family of โforeverโ PFAS chemicals.
It came from a Chemours plant in Fayetteville, near the winding Cape Fear River. Few knew about the contaminated water until the article described the discoveries of scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency and a state university. Given that certain types of PFAS have been linked to cancer, there was widespread anxiety over its potential danger.
In the onslaught of legal action and activism that followed, the EPA during President Donald Trumpโs first term took an assertive stance, vowing to combat the spread of PFAS nationwide.
In its big-picture PFAS action plan from 2019, the agency said it would attack this complex problem on multiple fronts. It would, for example, consider limiting the presence of two of the best-known compounds โ PFOA and PFOS โ in drinking water. And, it said, it would find out more about the potential harm of GenX, which was virtually unregulated.
By the time Trump was sworn in for his second term, many of the planโs suggestions had been put in place. After his first administration said PFOA and PFOS in drinking water should be regulated, standards were finalized under President Joe Biden. Four other types of PFAS, including GenX, were also tagged with limits.
But now, the second Trump administration is pulling back. The EPA said in May that it will delay enforcement on the drinking water limits for PFOA and PFOS until 2031, and it will rescind and reconsider the limits on the other four. Among those who challenged the standards in court is Chemours, which has argued that the EPA, under Biden, โused flawed science and didnโt follow proper rulemaking proceduresโ for GenX.
These EPA decisions under Trump are part of a slew of delays and course changes to PFAS policies that had been supported in his first term. Even though his earlier EPA pursued a measure that would help hold polluters accountable for cleaning up PFAS, the EPA of his second term has not yet committed to it. The agency also slowed down a process for finding out how industries have used the chemicals, a step prompted by a law signed by Trump in 2019.
At the same time, the EPA is hampering its ability to research pollutants โ the kind of research that made it possible for its own scientists to investigate GenX. As the Trump administration seeks severe reductions in the EPAโs budget, the agency has terminated grants for PFAS studies and paralyzed its scientists with spending restrictions.
Pointing to earlier announcements on its approach to the chemicals, the EPA told ProPublica that itโs โcommitted to addressing PFAS in drinking water and ensuring that regulations issued under the Safe Drinking Water Act follow the law, follow the science, and can be implemented by water systems to strengthen public health protections.โ
โIf anything,โ the agency added, โthe Trump administrationโs historic PFAS plan in 2019 laid the groundwork for the first steps to comprehensively address this contamination across media and we will continue to do so this term.โ
In public appearances, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has pushed back on the suggestion that his agency weakened the drinking water limits on GenX and similar compounds. Future regulations imposed by his agency, he said, could be more or less stringent.
โWhat we want to do is follow the science, period,โ he has said.
That sentiment perplexes scientists and environmental advocates, who say there is already persuasive evidence on the dangers of these chemicals that linger in the environment. The EPA reviewed GenX, for example, during both the first Trump and Biden administrations. In both 2018 and 2021, the agency pointed to animal studies linking it to cancer, as well as problems with kidneys, immune systems and, especially, livers. (Chemours has argued that certain animal studies have limited relevance to humans.)
Scientists and advocates also said itโs unclear what it means for the EPA to follow the science while diminishing its own ability to conduct research.
โI donโt understand why we would want to hamstring the agency that is designed to make sure we have clean air and clean water,โ said Jamie DeWitt, a toxicologist in Oregon who worked with other scientists on Cape Fear River research. โI donโt understand it.โ
Delays, Confusion Over PFAS
Favored for their nonstick and liquid-resistant qualities, synthetic PFAS chemicals are widely used in products like raincoats, cookware and fast food wrappers. Manufacturers made the chemicals for decades without disclosing how certain types are toxic at extremely low levels, can accumulate in the body and will scarcely break down over time โ hence the nickname โforever chemicals.โ
The chemicals persist in soil and water too, making them complicated and costly to clean up, leading to a yearslong push to get such sites covered by the EPAโs Superfund program, which is designed to handle toxic swaths of land. During the first Trump administration, the EPA said it was taking steps toward designating the two legacy compounds, PFOA and PFOS, as โhazardous substancesโ under the Superfund program. Its liability provisions would help hold polluters responsible for the cost of cleaning up.
Moving forward with this designation process was a priority, according to the PFAS plan from Trumpโs first term. Zeldinโs EPA describes that plan as โhistoric.โ And, when he represented a Long Island district with PFAS problems in Congress, Zeldin voted for a bill that would have directed the EPA to take this step.
The designation became official under Biden. But business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and organizations representing the construction, recycling and chemical industries, sued. Project 2025, The Heritage Foundationโs playbook for the new administration, also questioned it.
Zeldin has said repeatedly that he wants to hold polluters accountable for PFAS, but his EPA requested three delays in the court case challenging the Superfund designation that helps make it possible.
The agency said in a recent motion it needed the latest pause because new leadership is still reviewing the issues and evaluating the designation in context of its โcomprehensive strategy to address PFOA and PFOS.โ
The EPA also delayed a rule requiring manufacturers and importers to report details about their PFAS use between 2011 and 2022. An annual bill that sets defense policy and spending, signed by Trump in his first term, had charged the EPA with developing such a process.
When Bidenโs EPA finalized it, the agency said the rule would provide the largest-ever dataset of PFAS manufactured and used in the United States. It would help authorities understand their spread and determine what protections might be warranted.
Businesses were supposed to start reporting this month. But in a May 2 letter, a coalition of chemical companies petitioned the EPA to withdraw the deadline, reconsider the rule and issue a revised one with narrowed scope.
When the EPA delayed the rule less than two weeks later, it said it needed time to prepare for data collection and to consider changes to aspects of the rule.
In an email to ProPublica, the agency said it will address PFAS in many ways. Its approach, the agency said, is to give more time for compliance and to work with water systems to reduce PFAS exposure as quickly as feasible, โrather than issue violations and collect fees that donโt benefit public health.โ
The court expects an update from the EPA in the Superfund designation case by Wednesday, and in the legal challenges to the drinking water standards by July 21. The EPA could continue defending the rules. It could ask the court for permission to reverse its position or to send the rules back to the agency for reconsideration. Or it could also ask for further pauses.
โItโs just a big unanswered question whether this administration and this EPA is going to be serious about enforcing anything,โ said Robert Sussman, a former EPA official from the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As a lawyer, he now represents environmental groups that filed an amicus brief in PFAS cases.
Back in North Carolina, problems caused by the chemicals continue to play out.
A consent order between the state and Chemours required the manufacturer to drastically reduce the release of GenX and other PFAS into the environment. (The chemicals commonly called GenX refer to HFPO-DA and its ammonium salt, which are involved in the GenX processing aid technology owned by Chemours.)
Chemours told ProPublica that it invested more than $400 million to remediate and reduce PFAS emissions. It also noted that there are hundreds of PFAS users in North Carolina, โas evidenced by PFAS seen upstream and hundreds of miles awayโ from its Fayetteville plant โthat cannot be traced back to the site.โ
PFAS-riddled sea foam continues to wash up on the coastal beaches. Chemours and water utilities, meanwhile, are battling in court about who should cover the cost of upgrades to remove the chemicals from drinking water.
Community forums about PFAS draw triple-digit crowds, even when theyโre held on a weeknight, said Emily Donovan, co-founder of the volunteer group Clean Cape Fear, which has intervened in federal litigation. In the fast-growing region, new residents are just learning about the chemicals, she said, and theyโre angry.
โI feel like weโre walking backwards,โ Donovan said. Pulling back from the drinking water standards, in particular, is โdisrespectful to this community.โ
โItโs one thing to say youโre going to focus on PFAS,โ she added. โItโs another thing to never let it cross the finish line and become any meaningful regulation.โ
A letter dated April 29, 2025, notifying Michigan State University about the termination of a grant for research into PFAS, one day after the EPA said in a press release that it was committed to combating PFAS contamination by, in part, โstrengthening the science.โ Credit: Obtained by ProPublica
Research Under Fire
The EPA of Trumpโs first term didnโt just call for more regulation of PFAS, it also stressed the importance of better understanding the forever chemicals through research and testing.
In a 2020 update to its PFAS action plan, the EPA highlighted its support for North Carolinaโs investigation of GenX in the Cape Fear River. And it described its efforts to develop the science on PFAS issues affecting rural economies with โfirst-of-its-kind funding for the agriculture sector.โ
Zeldin, too, has boasted about advancing PFAS research in an April news release. โThis is just a start of the work we will do on PFAS to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water,โ he said.
At about the same time, though, the agency terminated a host of congressionally appropriated grants for PFAS research, including over $15 million for projects focused on food and farmlands in places like Utah, Texas and Illinois.
Scientists at Michigan State University, for example, were investigating how PFAS interacts with water, soil, crops, livestock and biosolids, which are used for fertilizer. They timed their latest study to this yearโs growing season, hired staff and partnered with a farm. Then the EPA canceled two grants.
In virtually identical letters, the agency said that each grant โno longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.โ
The contrast between the agencyโs words and actions raises questions about the process behind its decisions, said Cheryl Murphy, head of Michigan Stateโs Center for PFAS Research and co-lead of one of the projects.
โIf you halt it right now,โ she said, โwhat weโre doing is weโre undermining our ability to translate the science that weโre developing into some policy and guidance to help people minimize their exposure to PFAS.โ
At least some of the researchers are appealing the terminations.
About a month after PFAS grants to research teams in Maine and Virginia were terminated for not being aligned with agency priorities, the agency reinstated them. The EPA told ProPublica that โthere will be more updates on research-related grants in the future.โ
Even if the Michigan State grants are reinstated, there could be lasting consequences, said Hui Li, the soil scientist who led both projects. โWe will miss the season for this year,โ he said in an email, โand could lose the livestock on the farm for the research.โ
Federal researchers are also in limbo. Uncertainty, lost capacity and spending restrictions have stunted the work at an EPA lab in Duluth, Minnesota, that investigates PFAS and other potential hazards, according to several sources connected to it. As one source who works at the lab put it, โWe donโt know how much longer we will be operating as is.โ
The EPA told ProPublica that itโs โcontinuing to invest in research and labs, including Duluth, to advance the mission of protecting human health and the environment.โ
Meanwhile, the agency is asking Congress to eliminate more than half of its own budget. That includes massive staffing cuts, and it would slash nearly all the money for two major programs that help states fund water and wastewater infrastructure. One dates back to President Ronald Reaganโs administration. The other was spotlighted in a paper by Trumpโs first-term EPA, which said communities could use these funds to protect public health from PFAS. It trumpeted examples from places like Michigan and New Jersey.
The EPA lost 727 employees in voluntary separations between Jan. 1 and late June, according to numbers the agency provided to ProPublica. It said it received more than 2,600 applications for the second round of deferred resignations and voluntary early retirements.
โThese are really technical, difficult jobs,โ said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. โAnd the EPA, by encouraging so many employees to leave, is also losing a lot of institutional knowledge and a lot of technical expertise.โ
The shake-up also worries DeWitt, who was one of the scientists who helped investigate the Cape Fear River contamination and who has served on an EPA science advisory board. Her voice shook as she reflected on the EPAโs workforce, โsome of the finest scientists I know,โ and what their loss means for public well-being.
โTaking away this talent from our federal sector,โ she said, will have โprofound effects on the agencyโs ability to protect people in the United States from hazardous chemicals in air, in water, in soil and potentially in food.โ
On Oct. 2, 2024, a geyser erupted in Toyah, a town in west Texas 50 miles from the New Mexico border. This was not a case of water miraculously appearing in the desert, a deliverance from the areaโs long-standing drought. Rather, it was an environmental disaster: a blowout from an orphaned oil and gas well.
What gushed from the ground wasnโt actually water, but rather a vile brine of heavy metals, radioactive substances, chemical additives and noxious organics โ the by-product of fracking.
The Toyah incident is the latest of at least eight leaks over the preceding 12 months in the Permian Basin, a fracking hub across west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. It highlights the increasingly urgent challenge of what to do with frackingโs wastewater โ what fossil fuel companies euphemistically call โproduced water.โ But some New Mexico legislators have a solution in mind: For the last few years, theyโve proposed reusing the wastewater off the oil field for industrial purposes, such as data center cooling and hydrogen production.
Part of their argument is that New Mexico desperately needs water. More than 90% of its residents live in areas facing drought. In the next 50 years, the already-arid state will see its ground- and fresh water sources shrink by 25%.
Political pressure is mounting on New Mexicoโs lawmakers to tap into fracking wastewater as a new resource. Environmental groups, however, strongly oppose the idea, arguing that there is still no way to make the wastewater safe for off-field use. Year after year, the New Mexico Legislature finds itself at a crossroads.
โWe are, as a state, very beholden to oil and gas,โ said Carlos Matutes, the New Mexico director at the advocacy group GreenLatinos thatโs part of the coalition opposing produced water reuse. Any bill that sanctions produced water, he said, โis almost guaranteed to come back.โ
PRODUCED WATER is an existential dilemma for the oil and gas industry. Fracking involves blasting underground rock with water to free up trapped oil and gas, but when that water returns to the surface, it is laden with contaminants it picks up from the earth. Every barrel of hydrocarbons reaped also generates up to 10 barrels of contaminated water. In 2021 alone, New Mexico was spewing 147 million gallons of toxic wastewater daily.
Drilling companies usually dispose of wastewater in dedicated injection wells. Water, however, does what water always does: It flows where it wishes, heedless of human-drawn boundaries. And it can travel for miles underground, then burst forth from improperly sealed oil wells, as it did with Toyah. (So far, no company has claimed ownership of the well, though its use dates back to 1961.) Even wastewater that stays underground finds ways to revolt โ by triggering earthquakes. As fracking operations have ramped up over the last decade, so too has the tally of tremors. In the past year alone, New Mexico experienced over 2,500 quakes, most of them concentrated in the southeastern corner of the state, where fracking is most flagrant. In comparison, only 45 tremors rumbled the state in 2017.
Currently, most of New Mexicoโs produced water is either injected underground or transported across state lines for disposal elsewhere. By contrast, neighboring Texas permits repurposing treated wastewater for other uses or discharging it into the environment.
Produced water. Graphic credit: U.S. Department of Energy
In late 2023, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham floated a strategic water supply proposal to follow in the footsteps of its neighbor. Initially, she proposed investing $500 million of state funds in treating produced water. But that measure dried up in legislative budget negotiations. In subsequent revisions, Lujan Grisham has watered down the funding allocation, from $250 million in 2024 to $75 millionin 2025. Each time, pushback from environmental groups helped flush produced water treatment from the proposals altogether.
Even if the plan had sailed through, though, it would not have recouped a significant amount of water, said Rachel Conn, the deputy director of the water conservation organization Amigos Bravos. Removing contaminants from fracking wastewater requires copious energy to boil off and squeeze fresh water from dissolved toxins. Her team estimates that it costs at least $2 to treat a barrel, twice as much as it costs to send it down an injection well. The total amount could easily top $1 billion a year. (In Texas, oil companies pay more, as much as $10 per barrel for treatment.) Given the high costs, Conn said that the amount of water the strategic water supply could afford to treat would meet no more than 1% of New Mexicoโs water needs โ a literal drop in the bucket.
Additionally, environmental organizations like Amigos Bravos have raised concerns about the safety of fracking wastewater, whether itโs treated or untreated. Radioactivity levels around several injection wells in Ohio and West Virginiaexceed the federal safety limit by several hundred-fold; and in one Pennsylvanian river, radium still persists among mussels even five years after the last discharge of produced water.
The complex cocktail of chemicals found in produced water makes it hard to characterize, said Bonnie McDevitt, a research physical scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Companies usually guard the chemical additives in their fracking fluid as a trade secret. Toxicity requirements cannot cover every contaminant present, essentially leaving some questionable compounds completely unregulated. That means that even if the treated wastewater technically meets drinking water standards, it may not necessarily be safe to drink. Environmental advocates are calling for testing limits on 600 compounds potentially found in fracking wastewater before it can be used off fracking fields.
But the fossil fuel industry insists that the treatment technology is ready; Ryan Hall, the director of technical operations at NGL Energy Partners, said, โWe can treat to any spec.โ As one of the nationโs largest handlers of the industryโs wastewater, his company manages 2.5 million barrels from the Permian Basin, mainly by disposing of it in injection wells. NGL Energy has also explored wastewater treatment in some states, and Hall said it is eager to start in New Mexico once authorities give the legislative greenlight.
The New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium, which is partially funded by oil and gas companies, is currently leading the effort to develop purportedly safe and affordable treatment methods. The instituteโs recent projects include advancing various separation technologies and studying the health impacts of produced water on indicator species, like aquatic microbes and plants. โIโm with the environmental groups,โ said Pei Xu, the instituteโs research director and an environmental engineer at New Mexico State University. โWe also want this water to be very safe. I think we have made a lot of very good progress.โ
THE BATTLE BETWEEN industry and environmental groups is heating up. In April, New Mexicoโs Water Quality Control Commission announced that it would allow pilot treatment projects to discharge up to 84,000 gallons of wastewater into groundwater daily. Environmental groups filed court briefs and staged a protest outside the Capitol, and 27 state legislators wrote a letter to the commission urging it to reconsider. In a follow-up hearing on May 13, the commission rescinded its April decision and reinstituted the ban.
What environmental groups want, ideally, is to end fracking altogether. But thatโs unlikely to happen anytime soon: New Mexico is economically dependent on oil and gas, ranking second in the nationโs top fossil fuel-producing states. Industry has a solid grip on politics here โ roughly 60% of Lujan Grishamโs 2017-2022 campaign contributions came from the stateโs largest oil corporations.
At the very least, environmental groups say, taxpayer dollars shouldnโt be used to solve a problem of the industryโs own making. โIt should be the industryโs responsibility to clean up that produced water,โ Conn said. Her suggestion: Reuse the wastewater for future fracking. About 60% of wastewater is recycled on oil fields; Conn says bumping the rate to 90% could save 4 billion gallons of fresh water โ more than all the produced water that the strategic water supply proposal would treat.
Meanwhile, drilling shows no signs of slowing down. Across the Permian playa, pumpjacks rise like giant birds pecking at the ground. Strewn alongside these steel flocks are miles-deep injection wells, each designated by a comparatively squat wellhead that often comes in the shape of a cross โ a headstone for an otherwise unmarked grave for the vast refuse that refuses to go quietly.
Environmental groups protest outside New Mexicoโs Capitol after the state announced it would allow pilot treatment projects to discharge up to 84,000 gallons of wastewater into groundwater daily. Courtesy of New Energy Economy
A new U.S. Geological Survey study identifies Wyomingโs western border as part of a massive geothermal reserve. Geologists say it could be tapped to generate electricity equal to 10% of Americaโs current power supply.
A new federal assessment identified Wyoming as part of a massive underground geothermal energy resource that could generate electricity equal to 10% of America’s current power supply…A May U.S. Geological Survey’s report on geothermal systems in the Great Basin found that the arid lands of Nevada and adjoining parts of California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and a sliver of Wyoming’s western border with Idaho contain enough geothermal energy to generate 135 gigawatts of electricity from the upper 6 kilometers of the Earth’s crust. The assessment spotlights the potential for a dramatic increase in geothermal electricity production, which now provides less than 1% of the nation’s power supply. However, realizing this potential depends on widespread deployment of enhanced geothermal systems technology.
“USGS assessments of energy resources are about the future,” said Sarah Ryker, acting director of the USGS. “We focus on undiscovered resources that have yet to be fully explored, let alone developed.”
Enhanced geothermal systems involve engineers creating open fractures in impermeable rock, allowing water to circulate and extract heat to generate electricity…With the recent findings from the USGS, the current focus is on enhanced geothermal systems, which makes geothermal electricity generation possible in more places…Thatโs where fracking technology from the oil and gas industry comes in, which Wyoming knows well.ย
“We call it hydraulic stimulation. And oil and gas, they call it fracking. It’s the same physics, but it’s a different process,” Podgorney said.ย
The sun shines on homes in Phoenix, Arizona on October 19, 2024. A significant portion of the Colorado River basin’s groundwater losses came from Arizona, but the new study says those losses might have been worse without state regulations. Experts are now calling for more regulations around groundwater pumping to stem further depletion. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):
June 2, 2025
This story is part of ongoing coverage of water in the West, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
The Colorado River basin has lost huge volumes of groundwater over the past two decades according to a new report from researchers at Arizona State University.Researchers used data from NASA satellites to map the rapidly-depleting resource.
The region, which includes seven Western states, has lost 27.8 million acre-feet of groundwater since 2003. Thatโs roughly the volume of Lake Mead, the nationโs largest reservoir.
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
The findings add a layer of complication for the already-stressed Colorado River. As demand for its water outpaces supply, more users may be turning to groundwater instead, which is often less regulated than water from above-ground rivers and streams.
The majority of water conservation work throughout the Colorado River basin has been focused on cutbacks to surface water use. Some river experts say the focus should be broader.
Brian Richter analyzes water policy and science as president of Sustainable Waters. He was not an author of the study but says its findings show the need for a โholistic perspectiveโ on water management from the regionโs leaders.
โIt suggests that we have to become more aggressive and more urgent in our reduction of our overall consumption of water,โ he said.
Creating a balance of water that’s taken from aquifers and water that replenishes aquifers is an important aspect of making sure water will be available when itโs needed. Image from โGetting down to facts: A Visual Guide to Water in the Pinal Active Management Area,โ courtesy of Ashley Hullinger and the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center
The study found that groundwater losses in the Colorado River basin were 2.4 times greater than the amount of water lost from the surfaces of Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and a number of other smaller reservoirs that store Colorado River water. The study highlights agricultureโs outsized water use in the Colorado River basin, and said that industry could suffer some of the greatest consequences if the region keeps sapping limited water supplies.
Most of the losses happened in the riverโs Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada. The study says Arizonaโs โActive Management Areas,โ which the state set up to regulate groundwater withdrawal, may have helped slow depletion.
Kathleen Ferris, an architect of Arizonaโs groundwater laws, said much more work is needed to protect groundwater.
โWe are not on track,โ said Ferris, who was not involved in the study. โWe are way behind the eight ball, and I’m really sad that nothing seems to get done. We should have been thinking about this issue 25 years ago.โ
Ferris is now a senior research fellow at Arizona State Universityโs Kyl Center for Water Policy.
As experts call for more robust groundwater management policies, Richter said this study presents a small silver lining: scientists are producing better data than ever before, giving policymakers a better sense of the regionโs water problems.
โFrom a public policy standpoint, this is bad news,โ he said. โThis tells us that it’s worse than we thought, because now we understand what’s going on underground as well. From a science perspective, this kind of study is good news, because it says that we are now much more capable of accurately describing a water problem like what we’re experiencing in the Colorado River system.โ
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
GRACE TWS trend map. (a) The time series of nonseasonal GRACE/FO TWS (km3/year) over UCRB and LCRB for the period (4/2002โ10/2024). (b) Spatial variation in TWS trends for the Colorado River Basin for the investigated period (mm/year) (c) Time series comparison of the change in storage ฮS/ฮt derived from the water balance equation (Equation 1) and GRACE/FO. ฮS/ฮt calculated from GRACE/FO TWS anomalies in km3. The light shading represents uncertainties.
New research based on satellite data shows the depletion of groundwater in the Colorado River Basin far exceeds losses from the riverโs reservoirs.ย
Scientists say overpumping is leading to alarmingly rapid declines in groundwater at a time when climate change is putting growing strains on the Southwestโs water supplies.
Scientists at Arizona State University examined more than two decades of satellite measurements and found that since 2003 the quantity of groundwater depleted in the Colorado River Basin is comparable to the total capacity of Lake Mead, the nationโs largest reservoir. The researchers estimated that pumping from wells has drained about 34 cubic kilometers, or 28 million acre-feet, of groundwater in the watershed since 2003 โ more than twice the amount of water that has been depleted from the riverโs reservoirs during that time.
โThe Colorado River Basin is losing groundwater at an alarming rate,โ said Karem Abdelmohsen, the lead author and a researcher at ASUโs School of Sustainability.
[…]
Groundwater movement via the USGS
The losses are being driven largely by heavy pumping to supply agriculture, he said. At the same time, prolonged drought and rising temperatures have sapped river flows and decreased the amount of water percolating underground and recharging aquifers.
โAs surface water becomes less dependable, the demand for groundwater is projected to rise significantly,โ the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. โGroundwater is a crucial buffer โฆ but it is rapidly disappearing due to excessive extraction.โ
The โBonita Peak Mining Districtโ superfund site. Map via the Environmental Protection Agency
Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Reuben M. Schafir) Here’s an excerpt:
April 29, 2025
The Bureau of Land Management is restoring up to 11 cubic feet per second of water previously diverted to the Uncompahgre River Basin back to the headwaters of the Animas River north of Silverton. Thatโs a win for fish, other aquatic wildlife and mining remediation, said Trout Unlimitedโs Mining Coordinator Ty Churchwell, because the water will dilute heavy metals to less toxic concentrations. Both the national organization of Trout Unlimited and the local Five Rivers chapter provided financial assistance with the acquisition. The 11-cubic-foot diversion is aboutย 10% of the riverโs total current flowsย in Silverton before the confluence with Cement Creek…
The previous owner held the rights to divert the water through the Mineral Point Ditch โ before it entered Burrows Creek โ over into the Uncompahgre Basin for agricultural use. This resulted in a 100% depletion of that water from the Animas River…The BLM paid $297,000 โ fair market value โ to buy the water right from a willing seller, agency spokeswoman Katie Palubicki said in an email to The Durango Herald, using funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the agencyโs Abandoned Mine Lands program to acquire the right.
The Town of Kiowa has good news to report, including a new Main Street Board and progress towards funding the Water Well Redundancy Project…After some starts and stops, theย Kiowa Water and Wastewater Authorityย is making headway on its Water Well Redundancy Project, thanks in part toย Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. On March 20, Boebert visited with Town of Kiowa staff and town trustees…Boebert pledged to write letters supporting road improvement and parks projects, and also agreed to write Kiowa Water and Wastewater Authority a congressional letter of support for the Well Redundancy Project, [Kim] Boyd said. Boyd further explained that the Town of Kiowa currently relies on a single 66-foot alluvial groundwater well to meet the communityโs water needs.
โThis infrastructure is insufficient for current demands and poses a significant risk in the event of mechanical failure or environmental stress,โ she shared. โIt limits the townโs ability to grow and sustain essential services, including domestic water supply and fire protection.โ
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) mandates that municipal water systems maintain at least two wells to ensure redundancy and protect public health.
The town of De Beque is seeking Congressionally directed spending to help it secure a secondary water source, as it currently relies solely on the Colorado River to supply water to the community. De Beque Town Treasurer Katherine Boozell said the town is looking at drilling a well near the townโs Water Treatment Plant. According to Boozell, the well could cost in excess of $400,000 to drill.
โAt present, the Town of De Beque relies solely on the Colorado River as its drinking water source,โ Boozell wrote in an email. โThis dependence leaves the community vulnerable during periods of high turbidity, which occur frequently due to mudslides from wildfire burn scars upstream or sediment disruption caused by storms. When turbidity levels spike, we are forced to shut down intake to our treatment plant because the water is too muddy to process.โ
The town does have a tank where it can store treated water, but that is a temporary solution, she said. When the tank is dry, the town is unable to provide treated water until the riverโs water conditions improve. This poses a public health risk, she said, making a secondary water source an urgent need…According to a fact sheet about the proposal, a new well would not only improve reliance for the townโs water but also improve the water quality as well.
The Rio Grande at Isleta Blvd. and Interstate 25 on Sept. 7, 2023. (Photo by Anna Padilla for Source New Mexico)
Click the link to read the article on the Source NM website (Danielle Prokop):
April 16, 2025
The federal judge overseeing the lawsuit between New Mexico, Texas and Colorado over Rio Grande water has ordered a 10-day trial in Philadelphia starting June 9 at the request of all the parties, who are also pursuing mediation talks to resolve the lawsuit in the meantime.
The case, officially called Original No. 141 Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, began more than a decade ago, sparked by escalating legal disputes around Rio Grande water below Elephant Butte between Texas and New Mexico.
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the federal government โ which operates a network of dams, and nearly 140 miles of irrigation canals to deliver water to two irrigation districts in the region and Mexico โ to enter as a party to the case in 2018.
In the February status hearings, the federal mediator and attorneys for all three parties told United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Chief Judge D. Brooke Smith, who is overseeing the case, that they were still seeking a resolution to the 12-year old case.
Jeffrey Wechsler, the lead attorney representing New Mexico, said setting a trial date would help mediation talks.
โDeadlines help negotiations rather than hinder them,โ Wechsler said, according to transcripts of the hearing.
The New Mexico Department of Justice and other partiesโ attorneys confirmed to Source NM that mediation talks are ongoing as of April, with another mediation session scheduled for April 22, according to NMDOJ Chief of Staff Lauren Rodriguez. โMeanwhile, the trialโfocused on determining liability and establishing a baseline for apportionment under the compactโremains on schedule,โ she wrote in a statement, โif an agreement is not reached by then.โ
Any potential settlement or recommendation from Smith based on a trial would still need approval from the U.S. Supreme Court, the only court that handles interstate waters disputes.
Last year, U.S. Supreme Court justices struck down a deal proposed by New Mexico, Colorado and Texas to end the litigation in a close 5-4 decision. They sided with objections from the federal government that the statesโ deal unfairly excluded the โunique federal interests,โ and sent the case back to the negotiation table and potentially trial.
The alliances between the state and federal government in the case have dramatically shifted since 2022 as the nature of the dispute changed. Initially, Texas and the federal government agreed that New Mexico pumping below Elephant Butte threatened Rio Grande water for both Texas irrigation and treaty obligations to Mexico.
However, since Colorado, New Mexico and Texas proposed a deal to measure Texasโ water at the state line and include transfers of water between New Mexico and Texas irrigation districts to balance out shortfalls, the federal government is going to have to build its own case.
โTexas and the United States are no longer aligned,โ federal attorney Thomas Snodgrass told Smith in February. He said the federal government was still preparing a case that New Mexico should be held liable for groundwater pumping impacts on the Rio Grande since 1938.
The court already held one part of a two-part trial in October 2021, but the proposed settlement delayed the second part indefinitely.
Weschler told Smith in February that if the case does proceed to trial in June, it will be shorter than the three-months set aside for trial in 2021.
โThe case is prepared for trial. In fact, itโs halfway through trial,โ Weschler said. โWeโve completed our discovery, weโve completed disclosures โ thereโs really not much more to do other than to begin.โ
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 corn crop is harvested in the U.S. Great Plains, where center-pivot irrigation systems draw water from the Ogallala Aquifer. Photo ยฉ Brian Lehmann / Circle of Blue
To save a dying aquifer โ or at least their piece of it โ a group of roughly 60 farmers in northwest Kansas decided on a self-imposed diet.
The move a dozen years ago to voluntarily restrict the water they pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer, the lifeblood of the High Plains, was seen by some as a risky proposition. In the semi-arid region, farmers might have gone bankrupt without water drawn from deep underground. But they were skilled and savvy land managers, and thought they could survive a 20 percent water cut.
Years of scholarship and economic analysis have proved them correct โ in more ways than one.
The farmers in northwest Kansas not only remain profitable. They are practicing irrigated agriculture with a significantly lighter environmental footprint. Fewer carbon emissions, less fossil energy use. Annual groundwater declines of 1.5 to 2 feet before the restrictions are now a half foot or less. In some years, the groundwater level has inched up. Their part of the Ogallala is not quite stable, but a balance between recharge and extraction is closer than it has been in generations.
In light of these successes, the experiment in little Sheridan County is instructive, illustrating a plan of attack for other areas of the planet where agriculture โ the biggest consumer of water โ is exceeding the limits of a finite resource. Northern India, Californiaโs Central Valley, Iran, and the North China Plain โ all are arid and semi-arid farming hot spots and epicenters ofย groundwater depletionย that could learn from Kansas, where four additional groundwater management areas with varying conservation targets have been established following the Sheridan model. For an ag industry that can be leery of untested practices and new methods, the undisputed achievement on the High Plains is a compelling proof of concept.
โI think itโs been pretty transformational, particularly in the area of Kansas water policy and management, but certainly in adjacent states as well, because I think it helped to allay fears of the producers of trying to tackle change,โ said Jean Steiner, an adjunct professor of agronomy at Kansas State University.
McGuire, V.L., and Strauch, K.R., 2022. Data from U.S. Geological Survey.
The importance of the Ogallala Aquifer to the economy of the High Plains is difficult to understate. Spanning eight states from South Dakota in the north to Texas in the south, the Ogallala is North Americaโs largest source of underground fresh water. In a region with few flowing rivers and sporadic rain, its groundwater nurtures vast harvests of cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat, in addition to some of the nationโs biggest cattle feedlots. All told, the Ogallala supports an agriculture industry worth $35 billion.
Because of limited precipitation, the Ogallala as it has been managed is essentially a finite resource, a bank account slowly being drawn down to produce immense quantities of grain. Some areas on the aquiferโs fringe are already too depleted for irrigation.
Seeing the trend lines and wanting to delay or avoid that fate, farmers in Sheridan County said enough. In 2013, they became the first group in the state to adopt a new conservation tool, called a Local Enhanced Management Area.
The LEMA was locally designed but came with the force of law. It bound farmers in the 99-square-mile management area to a 20 percent cut in groundwater pumping. To help farmers cope, the volume restrictions were paired with more flexible rules for water use. If they did not need a portion of their water allocation one year โ because of sufficient rain or a different crop mix โ farmers could carry it over to the next. The change allowed them to take advantage of a wet year by saving their pumping for a drier period in the future.
What benefits did this bring? Previous studies found that pumping restrictions did not hurt farm profitability. Farmers cut their operational costs โ less money spent on seeds, fertilizer, energy โ or shifted from corn to less water-intensive crops, and were less wasteful with the water they had, producing yields that were a bit smaller than before but not drastically so. The dollars and cents penciled out.
โWe can safely say itโs not economically detrimental to reduce water use,โ said Bill Golden, a Kansas State University agricultural economics professor who conducted the research.
The Ogallala Aquifer crosses eight states and is North Americaโs largest underground source of fresh water. Map: Erin Aigner for Circle of Blue
To the economic gains, now add ecological benefits.
Steiner is a co-author on a new study that is the first to assess the LEMAโs effect on the environment. The study, using computer models that simulated resource inputs and crop outputs, found a host of co-benefits to reducing water use.
Compared to nearby farmland that had no water limits, the Sheridan LEMA came out ahead. Fossil energy use โ natural gas is the most common fuel source for the groundwater pumps โ was 22 percent lower. Greenhouse gas emissions were 20 percent lower. Losses of reactive nitrogen, linked to fertilizer use, were down 1.4 percent.
Because yields were smaller in the LEMA, the numbers were slightly less impressive when measured per unit of grain produced. Reactive nitrogen losses were even a touch higher than the control group without water limits. Still, the benefits were impressive overall, Steiner said.
โReplicating LEMA-type policies more widely across the region can be a viable solution (environmental and economic) to stabilize the Ogallala Aquifer water levels for the next few decades, as demonstrated by this and previous research,โ the study concluded.
Stabilizing the aquifer is a main reason the Sheridan farmers went on their water diet. They wanted to preserve the aquifer for their children and grandchildren. That outcome appears to be happening.
Before the LEMA went into effect in 2013, annual water level declines in the area averaged 1.5 feet, sometimes as much as 3 feet, said Brownie Wilson of the Kansas Geological Survey, which conducts annual groundwater monitoring. Now the declines are roughly a half foot, and some years the water level has increased.
โYou can definitely see a shift in water use and a shift in water level,โ Wilson said.
Shifting behaviors are another measurement of the LEMAโs success. The concept is spreading through the state. Sheridan County farmers have twice extended their LEMA agreement, which now runs through 2027. Four other LEMAs have been established, including all of Groundwater Management District 4, which is the district that contains Sheridan County.
Golden is working on an economic analysis for Wichita County, which established a LEMA in 2021. He is finding similar results as in Sheridan County: no decrease in net revenue.
State officials are also looking for ways to reward this locally driven conservation. Last year representatives from the office of Gov. Laura Kelly and the Kansas Water Authority held public meetings to gather suggestions for a state water infrastructure funding program. The blueprint, published in December, recommends that farmers participating in a LEMA should have top priority for irrigation funding.
The next time a water exportation project is pitched to move water from the San Luis Valley โ and there will be a next time โ the speculator will learn the value of that water to the six-county region measures into the billions of dollars.
A new report by American Rivers and senior economist Claire Sheridan of One Water Econ captures for the first time the economic value of the water that runs through the San Luis Valley. It was a study prompted in 2022 by the threat of water exportation from the Upper Rio Grande Basin by Renewable Water Resources.
As part of its proposal to export and sell 20,000 acre-feet of water every year from the Valley, RWR offered to establish a $50 million community fund that it argued would fairly compensate the Valley for its water. The study, โThe Economic Value of Water Resources in Coloradoโs San Luis Valley,โ pegs fair compensation of the RWR proposal at around $1.3 billion per year. (More on that figure below)
โItโs a really complex question to answer. What is the value of water in the San Luis Valley?โ said Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District. โThe value of water in the San Luis Valley is so much greater than a one-time payment of $50 million.โ
Dutton, Sheridan from One Water Econ, and American Riversโ Emily Wolf presented the findings of the report at the annual Rio Grande State of the Basin Symposium held March 29 at Adams State.
The study goes beyond putting a dollar value to water for the Valleyโs agricultural purposes. It also examines the value of water as it relates to the Valleyโs outdoor recreation industry and wildlife and natural habitat surroundings.
Boat ramp on the Rio Grande. Credit: The City of Alamosa
And it looks at โwater-dependentโ industries that are key to the Valleyโs economy and their reliance on water for their customers and sanitation services. Those โwater-dependentโ industries like San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center and Adams State University account for approximately 21 percent of total direct economic output and 23 percent of employment in the Valley, according to the study.
โCapturing the value of water as it is used in homes, businesses, and for environmental purposes can add important information to conversations about the future of the Valley and its water resources,โ noted the studyโs authors.
The study puts into perspective how valuable water in the Upper Rio Grande Basin is when you apply it to the Valleyโs economy and livelihood. According to the report, the San Luis Valley economy generates $4.5 billion in total annual economic output, largely driven by hospitals, electric power companies, insurance, crop farming and cattle ranching. Alamosa and Rio Grande Counties account for 60 percent of the population and 67 percent of total economic output in the region.
Sandhill Cranes
Other insights from the report:
Agriculture in the San Luis Valley, including cattle ranching, generates 10 percent of all output in the region (although this varies significantly by county) and makes up 39 percent of Coloradoโs total agricultural output.
Agriculture is the single largest private employer in the SLV, and irrigated agriculture employs 8 percent of the total workforce (an estimated 2,322 jobs per year). Approximately 64 percent of these jobs are in the category of all other crop farming (which represents alfalfa and grass hay) and 34 percent are in vegetable farming (mostly potatoes).ย
The agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting sector generate over 4,000 jobs each year. This sector also leads in economic output, generating $566 million annually.ย
The value of clean drinking water in the San Luis Valley is estimated to be over $3,600,000 per day.
The analysis also found that water-related habitat in the Valley is valued at more than $49 million annually and the annual Crane Festival generates $4 million in direct revenue from visitor spending.
โItโs just apparent that just as water flows through this community, so do the dollars that are generated from that water,โ said economist Claire Sheridan.
Sheridan did the math for the audience at the Rio Grande Symposium in explaining how far under value RWRโs $50 million community fund pitch was when considering the value of water to residents of the Valley.
She used a model FEMA goes by in its emergency management work that factors in two components in creating a value for water to a community: One component is a willingness to pay for clean and safe drinking water. โIf you go to your tap and turn on your water, what are you willing to pay to make sure that you can drink that water? What is that worth to you?โ The other component is โavoided replacement costโ that factors in costs if a resident has to go buy water.
For the San Luis Valley and its estimated population of 46,600, those two components combined come out to about $77.23 per person, per day, said Sheridan. When you apply $77.23 to the Valleyโs population, the value for clean drinking water in the San Luis Valley is about $3.6 million per day or $1.3 billion annually.
1869 Map of San Luis Parc of Colorado and Northern New Mexico. “Sawatch Lake” at the east of the San Luis Valley is in the closed basin. The Blanca Wetlands are at the south end of the lake.
A view of one of the Valley’s major agriculture resources, cattle. Credit: Owen Woods
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Heather Dutton and Emily Wolf):
March 27, 2025
Here in the San Luis Valley, water is deeply connected to our way of life. The Rio Grande, its tributaries and connected groundwater support local heritage, agriculture, recreation and the natural environment. Like all of the regionโs streams and rivers, the Rio Grande is critical to the livelihood and economies of the communities of the SLV and is a growing recreational and economic asset to communities outside of the Valley as well.
Photo credit: Sinjin Eberle/American Rivers
To help illustrate the critical value water plays across all sectors in the Valley, American Rivers and One Water Econ released a new study this week, The Economic Value of Water Resources in Coloradoโs San Luis Valley, which presents the economic benefits of key sectors and services that depend on water in the Valley. The analysis looks at irrigated agriculture, municipal and industrial uses, tourism and recreation, and environmental values like wildlife habitat.
While we all know and understand the intrinsic value of water in the Valley, economic data will further elevate not only the social importance of water, but also the economic contributions the Rio Grande and Conejos River, other streams, and connected groundwater provide to the San Luis Valley. Our community can use this economic data to tell the story of ongoing collaborative water management projects, help fight future threats, including groundwater export schemes, and make the case for multi-benefit river restoration efforts that are a win-win-win for agriculture, communities, and the environment.
San Luis People’s Ditch March 17, 2018. Photo credit: Greg Hobbs
Irrigated agriculture, a key economic driver in the SLV, is reliant on the surface water flowing through the Valley along with the vast number of groundwater wells and is deeply connected to the history of the Valley. The study found that crops supported by surface and groundwater make up 39 percent of Coloradoโs total agricultural output, despite the population of the Valley being less than 1 percent of Coloradoโs population. Additionally, irrigated agriculture was found to contribute more than $480 million annually in economic output. For every $1 that is spent on local inputs for agriculture production, an additional $1.56 is generated in the regional economy. Potatoes and vegetables are the largest economic generators in the agricultural space, with an annual economic output of $184 million. Not only does irrigated agriculture provide critical economic benefits, but the irrigated fields and wet meadows also support critical migratory bird habitat.
Sandhill cranes stop and gather in a field near the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge during their yearly trek.
Recreation, a growing economic sector for the Valley, is heavily reliant on water flowing from the surrounding mountains into the Valley and provides significant economic value. The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve attracts national and international travelers, as do the world-class birding and wildlife viewing opportunities at the nine state and national wildlife refuges that are made up of wetland, riparian, and open water ecosystems, and support numerous species of resident and migratory birds, including sandhill cranes. Additionally, the Rio Grande and Conejos River draw many visitors for both whitewater boating and world class fishing. The recent economic analysis found water-related recreation provides $213.7 million in benefits annually in the San Luis Valley, and for every $1 spent on recreation, $1.91 is generated through ripple effects within the local economy. The Valleyโs riverside lands, wetlands, and wet meadows are a critical part of the natural infrastructure supporting recreation and many species of wildlife. The analysis found that water-related habitat in the Valley is valued at more than $49 million annually and the annual Crane Festival generates $4 million in direct revenue from visitor spending.
Many other industries beyond recreation and agriculture also rely on water โ local breweries, distilleries, bakeries, greenhouses, hospitals, and hotels among others โ all rely on water. These โwater-dependentโ industries (WDIs) generally rely on the services of water utilities to support and grow their businesses. Water-dependent industries in the Valley support nearly $1.3 billion annually in total economic output. Water is undeniably a critical resource for the Valley, providing not only economic benefits but other ecosystem services, and intrinsic and cultural values. The economic data from this new analysis provides San Luis Valley communities with information to help protect the Valley from export schemes, further support water projects that conserve the Valleyโs precious resources, and illustrate to those outside the Valley why water is so critical to the livelihoods of every person in the SLV.
Partners involved in the creation of the study from American Rivers, One Water Econ, and the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District will present information about the study at the Rio Grande State of the Basin Symposium at Adams State University on March 29. The event is open to the public and all are encouraged to attend. The analysis is also available on American Riverโs website at www.americanrivers.org/SLVEconomicReport.
Here in New Mexico, our growing season has lengthened since the 1970s, even as stream flows have decreased. Fire season starts earlier, lasts longer, and in some years, ignites the forests into record-breaking blazes, like the gargantuan Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon and Black fires in 2022.
If you look at the last century in New Mexico, stretches of higher temperatures have lengthened; heat waves are hotter and nights, consistently warmer.
Rising heat and expanding aridity harm ecosystems and wildlife and hotter days are dangerous for anyone outside, especially people without housing or access to cool spaces. Extreme heat even interacts with certain medications people need for their physical and mental health.
It should be no surprise that weโre facing another crackly-dry spring, summer, and fall. Fans watching the March 2 Oscars on Albuquerque TV saw flashing red-flag fire warnings. The next day, high winds and dust storms blasted the state; near Deming, a haboob of fast-moving dust shut down highways.
West Drought Monitor map March 11, 2025.
As of early March, 92 percent of New Mexico was experiencing drought, with almost 30 percent of the state in severe to extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Arizona is in even worse shape: 100 percent of the state is in drought, with 87 percent in severe to exceptional drought. And the interior Westโs three-month outlook is for warm, dry conditions โ especially in Arizona and New Mexico.
Here in New Mexico, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy Districtโwhich supplies water for farmsโis warning runoff season will be short and river flows, low. The districtโs leaders are urging farmers to plan for extended periods between irrigation deliveries and say that without summertime monsoons, they will not meet everyoneโs needs this year.
During the 1900sโincluding during the infamous 1950s drought and earlier in this centuryโarmers could often still expect full water allocations in a dry year.
Now, when farmers donโt receive waterโand the Rio Grande dries for long stretchesโitโs not only because there isnโt enough snow melting off the mountains. Itโs also because consistently dry soils suck up any moisture, making both forests and croplands thirstier.
Not only that, but decades of persistent drought and warming temperatures have desiccated reservoirs along the Rio Grande and its tributary, the Chama River.
On the Chama River, Heron Reservoir is 14 percent full; its neighbors, El Vado and Abiquiu, are at 14 percent and 51 percent respectively. Further down the watershed, on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, Elephant Butte Reservoir is only 13 percent full, and its neighbor, Caballo, nine percent full.
In New Mexico, some water users, including the irrigation district, rely on water piped from the Colorado River watershed into the Chama and then the Rio Grande. This year, most of that supplemental water wonโt be there.
The view upstream on both watersheds is also troubling, especially in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah where the snowpack is โbelow to well-below median.โ Last month, the Colorado Riverโs two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, were 34 percent full, the lowest theyโd been in early February for the last 30 years of records.
Iโm alarmed by many things happening right now, including the disappearance of climate data from federal websites and the gutting of federal workforces and budgets. We need wildland firefighters, scientists, and the staffers who kept our parks and public lands functioning.
But as a reporter who has covered climate change and its impacts in my state for more than two decades, I take the long view along with a local view.
We have known for decades that the planet is steadily warming and that the impacts of climate change would intensify. And we must resist focusing solely on the current chaos of the federal government. [ed. emphasis mine]
Laura Paskus. Photo credit: Writers on the Range
Thereโs never been a better time to become immersed in local politics or organizing, and to hold state and local leaders accountable for action on climate.
We can collaborate on local solutions and work together to better deal with the crises we face. Really, we have no choice.
Laura Paskus is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues She is longtime reporter based in Albuquerque and the author of At the Precipice: New Mexicoโs Changing Climate and Water Bodies.
Freshwater use in oil and gas drilling has come under scrutiny in Colorado as the state faces a historic drought. On Wednesday, March 12, state regulators announced new rules that will require drillers to use more recycled water in their operations and, hopefully, relieve pressure on scarce freshwater resources.
As Colorado continues to produce fossil fuels at record pace, the Centennial State has become awash in a caustic, brackish and chemically-laden fluid known as produced water, a byproduct of the drilling and fracking process.
This water can have high levels of salts, metals and other contaminants, making it more difficult and expensive to treat for reuse than for disposal. Oil and gas companies in Colorado typically dispose of produced water by pumping it back into old, out-of-service wells and other geological formations using injection wells, permanently severing it from the hydrological cycle. Meanwhile, freshwater demand for oil and gas production in Colorado is forecasted to rise in the coming decade as the industry drills deeper vertically and farther horizontally.
The oil and gas industry, whose activity in Colorado accounts for almost 4 percent of U.S. total crude oil output, uses about 11 billion gallons of fresh water annually in Colorado, according to data collected by the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC). Thatโs comparable to the amount of water stored behind a small dam, but accounts for less than one percent of all fresh water used in the state.
โThings are changing quicklyโ for Colorado as climate change intensifies, said Harmony Cummings, a director of the Green House Connection Center, an environmental nonprofit party to the rulemaking. โHow low the reservoirs are is terrifying to me.โ
Turning Waste Into a Resource
In 2023, the Colorado state legislature passed HB23-1242 (Water Conservation In Oil And Gas Operations: Concerning water used in oil and gas operations, and, in connection therewith, making an appropriation), which required the ECMC to adopt rules โrequiring a statewide reduction in usage of fresh water and a corresponding increase in usage of recycled or reused water in oil and gas operations.โ
The bill also created Coloradoโs Produced Water Consortium, a body of 31 people including regulators, industry representatives, environmentalists and scientists. The group is studying how produced water that comes to the surface during drilling can be reused in other oil and gas operations to reduce freshwater consumption, and its reports served as the basis for its recommendations to the ECMC.
โThe consortium started out with everyone coming in with an agenda,โ said Hope Dalton, the consortiumโs director. โThen they began to learn from each other and trust each other and really work to create these data-informed recommendationsโฆI think the recommendations are very solid.โ
Produced water is a catch-all term for water that flows out of oil and gas wells after conventional drilling or hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. This liquid waste can contain drilling chemicals injected into wells, toxic hydrocarbons like benzene, a known carcinogen, and water dislodged from deep underground that carries sediments, salts, metals like barium, manganese and strontium, and Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM).
Oil and gas evaporation pond
The Produced Water Consortium compiled data on existing water practices in Coloradoโs oil and gas industry to inform the rule-making. It found that water diverted for fracking in Colorado totals about 26,000 acre feet a year, or 0.17 percent of the stateโs total water use. One acre-foot is 325,851 gallons of water, meaning the oil and gas industry holds rights to about 8.5 billion gallons of freshwater annually.
Between July 2023 and March 2024, according to the consortiumโs findings, operators reported to the state that they disposed of 87 percent of their produced water and recycled the remaining 13 percent. Companies reported that 93.2 percent of produced water disposal was into underground injection wells. Much smaller volumes of water are disposed of in pits or discharged into state surface water bodies. The initial data on recycling rates is self-reported by the companies and only reflects the short period of time that reporting has been required.
The Denver-Julesburg basin, or DJ Basin for short, along Coloradoโs Front Range is home to a vast majority of the industryโs development and water demand. It is also home to the vast majority of the stateโs population, including the metro areas of Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. From 2019 to 2024, an average of two new fracking wells were completed daily in the DJ Basin, five-and-a-half times the industryโs rate in other basins in the state, according to ECMC data.
Niobrara Shale Denver Julesberg Basin
Companies in the DJ Basin account for almost three quarters of the industryโs total water use, according to ECMC data from 2022. In the DJ Basin, only 0.4 percent of that water is recycled. The Western Slope, which is more rural, has fewer drilling companies but a much higher rate of recycling produced water for operations, sometimes as high as 100 percent.
Under Coloradoโs new regulations, by the beginning of 2026, oil companies must use at least 4 percent recycled produced water across their operations in the state. In 2030, that requirement increases to a minimum of 10 percent.
The ECMC will convene again in 2028 to draft new benchmarks beyond 2030. If a consensus fails to emerge, minimum averages of 20 percent recycled water in 2034 and 35 percent in 2038, as recommended by the Consortium, will become law.
If an operator is unable to meet these thresholds, they would be allowed to purchase โcreditsโ for excess produced water recycled by other operators, but only if those credits would be used in the same basin.
โIncreasing recycling doesnโt necessarily equate to a decrease in freshwaterโ use, said Cummings. If the rate of fracking in Colorado rises faster than the produced water recycling thresholds, itโs possible that produced water reuse and freshwater use could both go up, she said.
Other new rules require oil and gas companies to make quarterly reports on what freshwater is used for, the total amount of water and produced water used in each basin, and figures on emissions from truck traffic, among other statistics. Operators will also be required to report how they would meet produced water reuse thresholds. The ECMC could issue penalties to companies that donโt comply with the new rules.
But Cummings worried those penalties arenโt onerous enough. There are โno real teethโ in the enforcement mechanisms, said Cummings, who spent eight years working in the oil and gas industry. If given the proper combination of regulation and incentives, she is confident companies could recycle produced water at greater rates than Colorado is requiring.
โIโve seen them do incredible projects when profits are on the other side of that,โ she said.
Ryan Bundy speaks at the 2014 Recapture rally to protest federal land management, which took place just days after armed insurrectionists threatened federal officers who had tried to detain Cliven Bundyโs cattle, which had long been grazing on public lands illegally. Karen Budd-Falen โ reportedly appointed to be the number three at Interior โ represented Bundy years before the standoff, but later condemned his response. Nevertheless, her writings and court cases provided an ideological underpinning for the Bundys and their fellow insurrectionists. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has given another indication of how he plans to oversee public lands with the reported appointment of Karen Budd-Falen, a Wyoming property rights lawyer and rancher, as associate deputy Interior secretary, the departmentโs third in command. This will be Budd-Falenโs third stint at Interior: She worked under James Watt, Ronald Reaganโs notorious Interior secretary, and served as deputy Interior solicitor for wildlife and parks under the first Trump administration. Budd-Falen revealed the appointment to Cowboy State Dailythis week, though the administration has yet to announce it.
Budd-Falen has spent much of her five-decade-long career fighting against federal oversight and environmental protections โ she has been called an โarchitect of the modern Sagebrush Rebellionโ โ and is a private property rights extremist (except when they get in the way of public lands grazing).
In 2011, Budd-Falen divulged her core philosophy โ and her distorted view of the U.S. Constitution โ in a keynote speech to a meeting of Oregon and California county sheriffs, many of who adhered to the โconstitutional sheriffโ creed. She told them that โthe foundation for every single right in this country, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote, our freedom to petition, is all based on the right of ownership of private property.โ
While this is obviously a messed up interpretation, it is an honest reflection of her worldview, and she has often stuck with it even if it meant going after extractive interests. In the 1990s, for example, Budd-Falen represented the legendary, stalwart Republican-turned-anti-oil-and-gas activist Tweeti Blancett in her attempt to get the Bureau of Land Management to clean up the mess its industry-friendly ways had facilitated on and around her northwest New Mexico ranch. And Budd-Falenโs law firm often worked with landowners to get the best possible deal from energy companies that developed their property.
But more often than not, Budd-Falenโs vision of private property rights extends beyond a landownerโs property lines and onto the public lands and resources โ at the expense of the land itself, the wildlife that live there, and the people who rely upon it for other uses.
In a telling article in the Idaho Law Review in 1993, Budd-Falen and her husband, Frank Falen, argued that grazing livestock on public lands was actually a โprivate property rightโ protected by the Constitution. If you were to extend this flawed logic to oil and gas and other energy leases and unpatented mining claims, then corporations and individuals would have private property rights on hundreds of millions of acres of public lands. This may sound alarmist, but the fact is, the federal land management agencies often adhere to this belief. Once an oil and gas lease is issued, for example, a BLM field office is unlikely to deny a drilling permit for the lease, since doing so would be violating the companyโs private property rights. Who needs public land transfers when this sort of de facto privatization is commonplace?
Many of Budd-Falenโs cases relied on a similar argument: That private property rights can apply to public resources. She defended Andrew VanDenBerg, for example, who bulldozed a road across the Whitehead Gulch Wilderness Study Area in Coloradoโs San Juan Mountains to access his mining claim โ just one of many times she wielded RS-2477, the 160-year-old statute, to try to keep roads across public lands open to motorized travel and bulldozers. She represented big landowners who felt that they had the right to kill more big game โ a public resource โ than the law allowed, because they owned more acreage.
Budd-Falen was instrumental in crafting a slew of ordinances for Catron County, New Mexico, declaring county authority over federally managed lands and, specifically, grazing allotments. While the ordinances and resolutions focused on land use, they also contained language influenced by the teachings of W. Cleon Skousen, an extreme right-wing author, Mormon theologian, and founder of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, nรฉe the Freeman Institute, known for its bestselling pocket-size versions of the US Constitution.
The ordinances were โabout the legal authority of county governments and the legal rights of local citizens as regards the use of federal and state lands.โ They were intended to preserve the โcustoms and cultureโ of the rural West, which apparently included livestock operations, mining, logging, and riding motorized vehicles across public lands. And the Catron County commissioners were ready to turn to violence and even civil war to stop, in the words of the ordinance, โfederal and state agentsโ that โthreaten the life, liberty, and happiness of the people of Catron County โฆ and present danger to the land and livelihood of every man, woman, and child.โ The National Federal Lands Conference, a Utah-based organization launched in the late 1980s by Sagebrush Rebel Bert Smith, a contemporary and philosophical collaborator of Skousenโs, peddled similar ordinances to other counties around the West.
Budd-Falen has been especially antagonistic toward the Endangered Species Act, often representing clients hoping to reduce the lawโs scope or to water down its enforcement or applicability. In 2013, for instance, she filed an amicus brief in support of People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Ownersโ claim that the ESA should not apply to Utah prairie dogs because the speciesโ range was confined to one state. The property owners lost and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Occasionally Budd-Falen has veered away from defending property rights, however, if it means keeping cows on public lands. After Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, the Grand Canyon Trust bought out grazing allotments in the monument from willing sellers with the intention of retiring the permits for good. It was a win-win situation, one that allowed ranchers to bring in a pile of cash and maybe retire or move operations to a more cattle-appropriate area, and it protected sensitive areas from the ravages of grazing.
Nevertheless, Kane and Garfield County commissioners didnโt like the deal, mostly because they didnโt like the monument. So they sued to block the permit retirements, in an attempt to undercut the transactions, and Budd-Falen stepped in to represent them. She said she was trying to ensure the survival of the โcowboyโs Western way of life,โ apparently even if it was against the cowboysโ own wishes. โI think itโs important to keep ranchers on the land,โ she told the Deseret News. She definitely will not do anything to reform public lands grazing during her tenure, but then thatโs no different from any other administration so far, Republican or Democrat.
In the early 1990s Budd-Falen represented a number of southern Nevada ranchers โincluding Cliven Bundy โ in their beef with the feds over grazing in endangered desert tortoise habitat. Budd-Falen was quick to condemn the Bundysโ armed insurrection against the federal government when BLM rangers tried to remove their cows from public lands, where they had been grazing illegally for years. And she also spoke out against the Bundy-led armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Still, one canโt deny that her work and words โ often hostile and aimed at environmentalists and federal land agencies โ provide an intellectual underpinning for the Bundy worldview. She is an alumni of the Mountain West Legal Foundation, the breeding ground for the Sagebrush Rebellion and Wise Use movement that helped launch the careers of Watt and Gale Norton, the Interior secretary under W. Bush. And in 2007 Budd-Falen toldHigh Country Newsโs Ray Ring that her most important case was when she used RICO, and anti-racketeering law, to go after BLM agents who had cited her client for violating grazing regulations.
Her rhetoric outside the courtroom not only inflames, but also provides justification for those who may be inclined to take up arms against their purported oppressors. She has referred to federal land management agencies as โa dictatorshipโ wielding its โbureaucratic power โฆ to take private property and private property rights.โ She once made the spurious claim that โthe federal government pays environmental groups to sue the federal government to stop your use of your property.โ
Seems pretty crazy to put someone like that near the top of a federal land management agency, but then, thatโs par for the course for Trump and company.
The tally at Interior now includes, in addition to Budd-Falen:
Deputy Interior Secretary Katharine McGregor, who served the same position during the final year of Trumpโs first term, and was most recently the VP of Environmental Services at NextEra Energy in Florida.
โ๏ธMining Monitor โ๏ธ
It appears that Trumpโs executive orders are beginning to change the way regional public lands offices operate. Patrick Lohmann with Source NMreports, for example, that Cibola National Forest Service employees โ at least the ones that werenโt fired by DOGE โ were ordered to prioritize โmission criticalโ activities, including reviews of proposed uranium mines, to comply with Trumpโs energy orders.
There are currently two proposed uranium mines on the forest, which includes Mount Taylor and surrounding areas near Grants, New Mexico. Energy Fuels โ the owner of the Pinyon Plain uranium mine and the White Mesa uranium mill โ is looking to develop the Roca Honda mine on about 183 acres. And Laramide Resources wants to build the La Jara Mesa mine. Both projects would be underground, not surface mines, and were originally proposed over a decade ago, but stalled out when uranium prices crashed. Now that prices have increased, the firms have expressed renewed interest.
The dots show abandoned uranium mining and milling sites.
The Grants and Mount Taylor area was ravaged by Cold War-era uranium mining and the wounds from the previous boom continue to fester. That include the remnants of Anaconda Minerals Companyโs Jackpile-Paguate Mine on Laguna Pueblo land, which was once the worldโs largest open-pit uranium mine, producing some 24 million tons of ore.
Miners were exposed to radioactive and toxic heavy metals daily, even spending their lunch breaks sitting on piles of uranium ore. Blasting sent tremors through the puebloโs adobe homes, and a cloud of poisonous dust drifted into the village of Paguate, just 2,000 feet from the mine, coating fruit trees, gardens, corn, and meat that was set out to dry. A toxic plume continued to spread through groundwater aquifers, and the Rio Paguate, a Rio Grande tributary, remains contaminated more than a decade after the facility became a Superfund site, despite millions of dollars in cleanup work. Laguna residents and former mine workers still suffer lingering health problems โ cancer, respiratory illnesses and kidney disease โ from the mine and its pollution.
Now the feds are saying approving new uranium mines in the same area is โmission critical.โ
***
In December, the Biden administration began the process of halting new mining claims and mineral leasing for the next 20 years on 165,000 acres in the upper Pecos River watershed west of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This included holding meetings to gather public input on the plan. But the BLM canceled the first such meeting, scheduled for late February, and has not announced a new date, sparking fears that the new administration may be withdrawing plans for a mineral withdrawal.
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
Included within the acreage are more than 200 active mining claims held by Comexico LLC, a subsidiary of Australia-based New World Resources. For the past several years, Comexico has been working its way through the permitting process to do exploratory drilling at what it calls its Tererro mining project. It has met with stiff resistance from locals and regional advocacy groups, partly because mining has a dark history in the Pecos River watershed. In 1991, a big spring runoff washed contaminated mine and mill waste from a long-defunct mine into the upper Pecos River, killing as many as 100,000 trout. That prompted a multi-year cleanup of various mining sites.
***
๐ธ Parting Shot ๐๏ธ
And now for a special treat, or maybe torture, but either way it might help take your mind off the dismantling of Democracy for a few moments. Itโs my blow-by-blow analysis of the 1978 movie Avalanche, starring Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. Normally this would be behind a paywall, like all of the other Land Desk archives. But Iโm opening up to everyone for a limited time only in honor of the snowslide-triggering storm that is pounding the San Juans as I write. Enjoy. And, while youโre at it, check out our interactive map of long-lost ski hills in southwest Colorado.
AVALANCHE: A blow-by-blow analysis of the 1978 disaster flick — Jonathan P. Thompson, February 9, 2022
Audubon Rockies is committed to advocating for smart, science-driven, and collaborative water policies that sustain healthy rivers and resilient ecosystemsโbecause protecting water means protecting the birds, communities, and economies that depend on it. As the 2025 legislative session unfolds, water remains a foundational topic. By collaborating with both Republicans and Democrats, we have successfully driven meaningful change over the years.
Key decisions at the Colorado State Capitol shape how we manage this vital resource in the face of climate change-influenced supplies and changing demands. From securing funding for water conservation efforts to advancing nature-based solutions and ensuring equitable water management, this yearโs legislative discussions will have ripple effects across our landscapes, wildlife, and people. Stay tuned as we break down the important areas of water legislation work moving through the State Capitol this session.
Funding for Water
Coloradoโs budget plays a critical role in protecting and sustaining our water resources, yet ongoing fiscal challenges, a deficit of more than one-billion dollars, and federal funding fluctuations put pressure on funding water, habitat conservation, and more. Colorado is facing a budget crisis due to a combination of factors, including declining tax revenues, rising costs, and constitutional constraints like the Taxpayerโs Bill of Rights (TABOR), which limits the state’s ability to generate and allocate funds. Increased demands on essential services such as education, healthcare, transportation, and water infrastructure, coupled with inflation and economic uncertainty, have strained available resources. As demands on our water supply grow and climate change intensifies pressures on our rivers, wetlands, and watersheds, it is essential to advocate for sustainable financial solutions that support Coloradoโs long-term resilience. Audubon is working to ensure that state water funding remains strong and dedicated to conservation, restoration, and resilience-building efforts.
Healthy mountain meadows and wetlands are characteristic of healthy headwater systems and provide a variety of ecosystem services, or benefits that humans, wildlife, rivers and surrounding ecosystems rely on. The complex of wetlands and connected floodplains found in intact headwater systems can slow runoff and attenuate flood flows, creating better downstream conditions, trapping sediment to improve downstream water quality, and allowing groundwater recharge. These systems can also serve as a fire break and refuge during wildfire, can sequester carbon in the floodplain, and provide essential habitat for wildlife. Graphic by Restoration Design Group, courtesy of American Rivers
Wetlands Rulemaking
In 2025, Audubon Rockies remains actively engaged in the HB24-1379 rulemaking process. In collaboration with state agencies and conservation partners, Audubon is advocating for science-based policies to ensure that permitting prioritizes avoiding and minimizing impacts to vital ephemeral streams and wetlands, and that any key ecological functions lost due to permitted activities in these waters are compensated for through restoration activities. These objectives align with the legislative intent of HB24-1379 and are vital to protecting the fragile wetland ecosystems birds rely on. By providing expert input, supporting transparent decision-making, and championing nature-based solutions, Audubon works to secure strong, practicable, lasting protections for freshwater habitats and the birds and communities that depend on them.
Protecting Land and Rivers
Audubon works closely with the State of Colorado to ensure that public lands and healthy watersheds are protected and sustainably managed for both people and wildlife through federal administration changes. Through outreach, collaboration, and on-the-ground conservation efforts, Audubon supports management and policies that enhance watershed resilience, improve habitat connectivity, and safeguard the vital water resources that flow through our public lands.
As Colorado River negotiations continue, Audubon remains committed to supporting collaborative, science-based solutions that balance the needs of people, wildlife, and ecosystems. With increasing pressures from drought, climate change, and growing water demands, finding equitable and lasting agreements among basin states is critical. Audubon advocates for water management strategies across the Colorado River basin that prioritize healthy ecosystems and sustainable water use while ensuring that birds and communities reliant on the Colorado River have a secure future. By working with policymakers, water leaders, and conservation partners, Audubon advocates for consensus-based solutions that promote the riverโs ecological integrity and support a sustainable water future for all.
