The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency dramatically weakened protections for millions of acres of the West’s essential wetlands and streams. Under the ruling, only bodies of water with a “continuous surface connection” to a “relatively permanent” 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 court’s 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 — 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 Trump’s EPA released a memo indicating that it plans to restrict all WOTUS, although it’s not yet clear by how much.
“The current EPA seems to be using Sackett as a springboard to find any perceived ambiguities and narrow the definition of WOTUS further,” said Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel at Earthjustice.
“The current EPA seems to be using Sackett as a springboard to find any perceived ambiguities and narrow the definition of WOTUS further.”
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. “It’s a dereliction of duty on the federal government’s part by not appropriately protecting the waters of the U.S. and that leaves it up to the states to fill in those protections,” said Rachel Conn, deputy director of Amigos Bravos, a New Mexico conservation organization.
The result is a patchwork of laws protecting the nation’s wetlands. But if more Western states were to emulate their neighbors’ 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 EPA’s 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: 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 development’s impacts on wetlands, with the goal of achieving “no net loss of wetland function and value in the state.”
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.
Credit: Hannah Agosta/High Country News
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 world’s total soil carbon. But Western states have lost 50% of their wetlands since colonization, and roughly half of the region’s 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.
Iron Fen. Photo credit from report “A Preliminary Evaluation of Seasonal Water Levels Necessary to Sustain Mount Emmons Fen: Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests,” David J. Cooper, Ph.D, December 2003.
The San Luis Valley is searching for ways to use less water without shrinking agriculture. [The Rye Resurgence Project] effort believes rye could help. But turning the grain into part of the valley’s future will require more than convincing farmers to plant it.
“The situation is urgent, and we have to take action to reduce water use,” said Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District…
For years, groundwater has been pumped from the valley’s aquifer faster than nature can replenish it. If that continues, Dutton said, state regulators could eventually require irrigation wells to shut down. One option would be farming fewer acres. But Dutton said that would come at a steep cost.
“It wrecks our economy. It wrecks the fabric of our society of having people employed in agriculture and the heritage of this place,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important that we figure out other alternatives and ways that we can remain in farming, but use less water.”
[…]
The effort, launched by Dutton and Hooper farmer Sarah Jones, is exploring whether rye can help farmers reduce water use without taking more land out of production.
“This is a rye field that’s being used strictly for grazing and green manure,” project manager Morgan Neely said while walking along the perimeter of a lush green field in the San Luis Valley. Cows were cornered off to a section of the field.
Rye requires less than 12 inches of water each year — roughly one-third to one-half as much as many traditional valley crops, Neely said. Its living roots help hold down topsoil during the valley’s powerful spring winds, and it can be grazed by cattle, incorporated into the soil or harvested for grain.
It was among the first to see its lower-priority water eliminated in the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan.
The Eloy irrigation district secured state and federal aid to resume pumping groundwater, but those wells only produce a fraction of the water that the Central Arizona Project once delivered.
In a gravity-fed system like CAIDD’s, less water in canals means less momentum to push water to every customer.
“Some laterals are better than others,” said district president Dan Shedd, who irrigated 2,200 acres when Colorado River water was still flowing.
That’s down to about 600 acres now.
“My neighbor can’t farm as much as I can because of where the wells are situated. Most of us are less than 50%.”
Farms need extra in summer
Farmers across the district have adapted to this new reality.
Most have fallowed land. Some have sold or leased parcels to solar projects to help make ends meet.
Many remaining fields have been reconfigured into smaller plots, so lower-pressure water can move uniformly across them.
And farmers are diversifying what they grow.
“Normally, I’d have 1,600 acres in cotton,” Shedd, an Arizona Farm Bureau member, said.
“But now I’m growing wheat and garbanzo beans in the winter when there’s more water. It’s just a break-even deal.”
Summer is a different story.
Though more profitable alfalfa, cotton, corn and Bermuda grass can be grown then, it can be a struggle to pump enough water when the heat’s on and everyone needs irrigation at once.
In past years, the irrigation district has secured extra supplies from nearby providers to supplement when needs are highest.
But that water is growing scarce as others across Arizona now face cuts.
CAIDD knows it needs to do more.
Cadiz has groundwater to sell
Meanwhile, a California company called Cadiz is looking for interested parties to sell its groundwater, which it says would otherwise be lost to evaporation in a dry lakebed.
The water and land management company has secured rights to pump up to 75,000 acre-feet of water a year from an aquifer roughly the size of Lake Mead.
Its Mojave Groundwater Bank, located about two hours west of Lake Havasu City in Arizona, is neither new nor universally welcomed in California.
Opponents have tried to stop the project multiple times over 30 years.
But Cadiz recently secured the last federal permit it needs to begin converting a natural gas line to transport its water north and west.
The idea, at least initially, is to exchange that water with users who receive supplies from the State Water Project.
That water would flow to Los Angeles, in an agreement that has yet to be cemented, where users there would agree to conserve a commensurate amount of Colorado River water.
Central Arizona Project map via Mountain Town News
And then, in other agreements that still must be negotiated, 10,000 acre-feet of that water would flow to CAIDD through the Central Arizona Project canal.
Effort now is to lower the price
If this sounds complicated, it is.
Finalizing complex agreements to move water every year for at least five decades is one thing.
Lowering the price for CAIDD to officially bite on this deal is another.
“We can’t pass the cost onto food,” Cadiz CEO Susan Kennedy said, particularly when farmers already operate on slim margins.
Kennedy — a long-time California political operative — is rustling the bushes for private investment and an 80% federal funding match.
She is also working with the Bureau of Reclamation to develop a model exchange agreement that could be used to expedite other interstate water transfers.
This could change the narrative
Ten thousand acre-feet is a drop in the bucket for CAIDD, which even at diminished capacity delivered about 160,000 acre-feet last year.
It’s not enough water to restore fields that have been taken out of production.
But it is enough to provide more long-term certainty for those that remain.
If the deal comes together, it could prove to other irrigation districts that new supplies aren’t necessarily out of reach, and that agriculture has a more secure future in Arizona, despite its current water challenges.
And even if it doesn’t, district leaders contend, the conversation could open doors to other ideas and opportunities.
“This could bring water to Arizona, whether or not we can utilize it,” said Ron McEachern, CAIDD’s former general manager.
A map being shown around El Paso County by suburban water agencies traces the path of the Loop, a complex $134 million pipeline and pumping project that would allow northern and eastern communities in the county to reuse aquifer water returning to Fountain Creek, and pipe along water rights they have bought up on the southern side of the county. (Provided by Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District)
On Monday evening [August 3, 2026], the Monument town council voted unanimously to begin exiting the multidistrict authority. The Loop is left with just two water district members of the original four after the decision…Proposed in 2022, the Loop would divert water flowing down Fountain Creek, pumping it northward and east around Colorado Springs to districts along the way. Billed as a way to break the reliance of communities on the nonreplenishing groundwater of the Denver Basin, the Loop was first estimated to cost between $160 and $190 million to construct…Town staff recommended the action after hearing that Donala Water & Sanitation District, one of the remaining partners, would also be voting to remove itself from the agreement soon…Cherokee Metro District pulled out of the project in 2024. Interim General Manager Kevin Brown previously told The Gazette the district had to divert resources to remove forever chemicals in its supply before a compliance deadline. Instead of the Loop, Cherokee was going to focus its efforts on securing access to water rights in the Upper Black Squirrel Creek Basin.
Water stored in Colorado’s 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 Rio Grande County Board of Commissioners is the latest government body to place a moratorium on data centers. The commissioners also adopted a resolution prohibiting any large-scale, or hyperscale data centers in the county.
During Wednesday’s regular meeting, the commissioners unanimously approved the year-long data center moratorium to allow the county’s departments to address land use codes. The moratorium is broad as existing language relating to data centers didn’t exist in the county’s codes before. The separate resolution prohibiting large-scale and hyperscale data centers was approved unanimously.
Commissioners said they are using Colorado Municipal League definitions for large-scale and hyperscale.
This decision comes two weeks after a public hearing and work session that allowed county department heads and commissioners to hear the concerns from the public.
Rio Grande County Administrator Skip Schoen said there has been “considerable concern” in the county about data centers as “a category.”
More than 30 people spoke at the public hearing with more members of the public writing in their comments.
The public concern in Rio Grande County echoes widespread concern about data center construction in the rest of the San Luis Valley and much of the country.
Alamosa County has yet to signal an intent to place a moratorium on data centers as it is currently going through a process with a company called Strata Inc. that intends to build a small-scale, closed loop-cooled data center in the county.
The city of Alamosa will take up a resolution to place a temporary moratorium on “Utility Scale Battery Energy Storage Systems and Large Load Data Centers” during Wednesday night’s regular meeting.
Valley cities have spent years preparing for Colorado River shortages and say they are prepared to keep water flowing even under major federal cutbacks. Photo credit: Ted Wood/The Water Desk
Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Alex Hager):
August 4, 2026
Colorado River shortages are no surprise. Climate change and drought have been steadily cutting into water supplies for about 26 years. Various plans to rein in demand have emerged throughout that time, and new cutbacks have been in the works for more than a year. The amount of water that each Valley city gets from the Colorado River varies significantly from city to city, but the majority receive at least some. Some cities are more prepared than others to weather today’s drier conditions, but most have at least some plan to deal with new Colorado River reductions. The Interior Department set the table for new cuts on Friday [July 31, 2026], laying out the framework of a plan that would allow the federal government to cut the Colorado River supply for Arizona, California and Nevada by up to 40%…A second announcement, which may come in the next few days, will deliver specifics about the size of cuts to the Phoenix area in 2027 and 2028.
Regardless of their scale, city leaders say they will be able to keep taps running.Like any good investor, most utility managers have focused on diversifying their portfolios. Essentially, the more different sources of water that flow to a city, the more it can tolerate cuts to one of those sources. In the Valley, that primarily means getting water from underground aquifers and the Salt River. Underground stores of water, pulled up by a system of wells, are carefully managed under state law and can give cities a backup in times of shortage on the surface. In some cases, water agencies have been taking excess water from the Colorado River for years and adding it to the underground stash, with the idea that it could be retrieved in times like these…In July, the Arizona Water Banking Authority announced that it will use its stored waterto make utilities whole in the event of cutbacks to their supplies from the Colorado River…Older, larger cities also tend to have more money for the kind of expensive engineering that can help diversify a water portfolio. For example, Phoenix is building a massive, high-tech water treatment plant that can safely recycle sewage back into purified drinking water. Major cities around the West are betting big on the technology to help withstand drought and climate change in the long term. Phoenix aims to send water from the $350 million facility into city pipes in early 2029. Cities that use water from the Salt River system are contributing to a multibillion-dollar expansion of Bartlett Dam, which holds back Bartlett Lake. In recent years, after particularly snowy winters, the river has provided more water than the reservoir can hold. A larger dam, cities say, would help them capture, store and use more water from the Salt River system in the future. For cities that lack diverse water portfolios and the kind of money needed for massive engineering projects, there’s a way for them to benefit from the cities that do. In April, as Colorado River cuts were becoming imminent, the city of Phoenix announced a new water transfer program called the “Secure Water Arizona Program”, or SWAP. Details are still emerging about how it would work, but it promises to connect cities that have water to cities that need water…Other water transfers, both in Arizona and across state lines, may be a big part of the long-term plan for cities and towns in the Valley. For example, farms may find it lucrative to sell some of their supplies to fast-growing cities in the metro that are willing to pay top dollar. Native American tribes, which often hold large, powerful legal rights to access the Colorado River, may also be willing to sell. A $5 billion settlement deal is currently in the works to give three Arizona tribes more access to their Colorado River water. If it passes, they could also gain the ability to lease their water to cities far from their reservations. Desalination, a high-tech process that can turn salty ocean water into pure, drinkable fresh water, has long been a tempting proposition for water-short cities. High costs and major logistical challenges mean that Arizona is unlikely to build its own desalination plant anytime soon, but a transfer program could allow it to benefit from an already-operational desalination facility. The Central Arizona Project and a handful of other water agencies around the region are exploring a deal to exchange water rights with a desalination facility in Carlsbad, California.
Click the link to read the release on the USDA website:
July 24, 2026
USDA is investing $3 million to support the development of wetland mitigation banks for agricultural producers. through the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program (WMBP).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing $3 million to support the development of wetland mitigation banks for agricultural producers. Through the USDA’s Wetland Mitigation Banking Program (WMBP), wetlands are restored, created or enhanced, generating credits that can be purchased by producers looking to compensate for unavoidable impacts to wetlands at another location.
“Wetland mitigation banks provide farmers and ranchers a clear and efficient compliance pathway, while at the same time helping to restore and protect vital wetlands and all the benefits they provide,” said USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Chief Colton L. Buckley. “Through the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program, we can help ensure the long-term resilience and productivity of American working landscapes.”
WMBP awardees work with NRCS to develop a mitigation banking instrument that provides details for developing, establishing and operating a mitigation banking program. Priority will be given to banks in states with significant numbers of individual wetlands, wetland acres and conservation compliance requests. Based on NRCS data, these states are Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
City and county governments, organizations, tribal governments and other entities are eligible to apply. See the notice of funding on Grants.gov for a full list of eligible entity types.
Applications are due by September 8, 2026. Visit the Grants.gov opportunity for additional details and to apply.
More About WMBP
To participate in most USDA programs, agricultural producers agree to comply with the wetland conservation provisions, meaning producers will not plant agricultural commodities on converted wetlands or convert wetlands to enable agricultural production. In situations where avoidance or on-site mitigation is challenging, the Farm Bill allows for off-site mitigation through the purchase of mitigation banking credits.
Purchasing credits from a wetland mitigation bank provides a legal mechanism for agricultural producers to maintain their eligibility for USDA program benefits if they convert agricultural wetlands.
WMBP award recipients can use the funding to support the costs of developing and establishing a mitigation bank, like costs for site identification, development of a mitigation banking instrument, site restoration, land surveys, permitting and title searches, and market research. WMBP funding cannot be used to purchase land or a conservation easement.
NRCS awarded the first WMBP grants in 2016. Since then, NRCS has awarded 39 projects supporting the creation or expansion of wetland mitigation banks in 14 states.
Awardees can request up to $1 million for a project. Projects may last up to four years.
When a mitigation bank is established, the landowner retains ownership and use of the property, while a conservation easement protects the wetlands from incompatible degrading activities.
To learn more about the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program, and how wetland mitigation banks work, visit the WMBP webpage.
For more than 90 years, NRCS has helped farmers, ranchers and forestland owners make investments in their operations and local communities to improve the quality of our air, water, soil, and wildlife habitat. NRCS uses the latest science and technology to help keep working lands working, boost agricultural economies, and increase the competitiveness of American agriculture. NRCS provides one-on-one, technical advice and financial assistance and works with producers to help them reach their goals through voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs. For more information, visit nrcs.usda.gov.
Wetlands, like these in the Prairie-Pothole Region of North Dakota, may capture and store nutrient runoff from cropland fields. Photo Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The different sides each presented closing arguments, but it was the reflections of Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales that had the courtroom thinking as he brought to a close the water trial dealing with the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management.
At times it was a bruising trial Gonzales noted Thursday in his closing remarks, as he encouraged all the parties to move on and to not let the four-week trial wear on them and their own personal relationships.
“We all know that there’s no way this court can fashion an order or an opinion that’s going to satisfy everybody. It’s just not going to happen,” the judge said. “I mean, it can’t because we know that we have mutually exclusive and competing interests. We know that this petition when it was created recognized that, but we still said ‘cooperation’ and all those nice things. And in reality, I think we all knew at some point that was going to come to a head. And I think we’re there, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t move forward.”
San Luis Valley Groundwater
This was the big water trial because it dealt with a plan to recover the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin, Gonzales noted. He pointed to testimony of Mosca-area farmer Lyle Nissen as one he enjoyed the most.
“I just loved his testimony. Someone who’s made some recognition, someone who’s made some changes, someone who didn’t come in here and complain and just said, ‘This is how it is. I recognize it and I move forward.’ And that was great to hear,” Gonzales said.
He also referenced a term he learned during the course of the trial, “deep percolation,” and used it to provide further insight into his thinking.
“I sat in my back yard and I watched the rain come down,” he said of the week’s weather. “I watched puddles form and I thought about my second favorite term from this trial, ‘deep percolation’ and I said, ‘Aha.’ And then I came back 10 minutes later and that puddle was completely gone. I said, ‘Wow.’
“I also sat there and I thought about the testimony I think was from this current state engineer when he said that we need rainstorms of biblical proportion to get us where we need to be, and that hit home. And no matter how wonderful that rain was, there needs to be things that happen.”
The state Division of Water Resources and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District are asking Gonzales to reject the protestors’ arguments and approve the plan. Without it, they argued, the unconfined aquifer won’t recover and broad groundwater well curtailment in the subdistrict becomes inevitable.
The cornerstone of the new plan is the “one-for-one” feature, which limits groundwater pumping to the amount of natural surface water that flows into the subdistrict over a five-year running average. The intent is to put more water into the unconfined aquifer system than is taken out and one-for-one pumping guarantees that, according to the state and subdistrict.
Gonzales noted “the monstrosity of an equation” within the Fourth Amended Plan when he was quizzing Rio Grande Water Conservation District attorney Pete Ampe during his closing remarks.
The one-for-one pumping feature, the equation to determine success, and a new “depletion fee” that sets the value of water in the subdistrict at $500 per acre-foot were all argued over, discussed and debated throughout the month-long trial.
Attorney Mirko Kruse, representing his family’s farming interest, and attorney Andy Jones, representing L Cross Ranch, want Gonzales to refer the plan back to the subdistrict for adjustments they’re requesting but are otherwise good with the plan.
Two other protesting groups, Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, want the plan tossed entirely on grounds it isn’t legal; they asked Gonzales to order the subdistrict to only make changes to the existing third plan of water management.
Gonzales told all the attorneys to address Rule 8.7 of the state groundwater rules governing the Upper Rio Grande Basin. That rule determines how “proportional responsibility for maintaining a sustainable water supply is divided among all the well users within the Response Area.”
It gets to one of the key arguments made by SWAG and its belief that groundwater irrigators like their clients are being illegally targeted and asked to share a disproportionate share of the burden in the unconfined aquifer recovery efforts.
Gonzales provided a timeline that leads to this Thanksgiving for when all the case documents and filings will be completed and he can begin his deliberations.
“I guess if there’s one message that we all need to take to heart is that we need to change the things we’ve been doing,” Gonzales said in completing his comments. “We can’t continue down the path we’ve been because if we think that’s the only way we can go, we’re dooming our children, our children’s children. And I don’t want to be a part of that time.”
Little doubt was left following the conclusion of Tuesday’s [July 21, 2026] water court session that the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management will ultimately be decided on appeal by the Colorado Supreme Court.
Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales said as much as he ruled, following arguments, to allow testimony from former state engineer Kevin Rein, who is expected to testify as a rebuttal witness on Wednesday morning.
Ryan Donovan, attorney for the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group which are protesting the subdistrict plan, argued that Rein should not be allowed to testify as a “lay witness” to rebut the testimony of SWAG expert witness Ken Knox.
He also told Gonzales that his comments at the conclusion of the court session on Friday, July 17, where the judge made known his interest in hearing from Rein, created the appearance of impropriety which would be grounds for appeal should Gonzales rule against NWUA and SWAG in their bid to have the plan rejected by the water court.
“Now the supporters wish to call the exact witness identified by the court to the stand and are using the court’s statement as a basis for doing so. This tells me that the supporters would not be calling Mr. Rein, but for those statements. The extent the court relies on Mr. Rein’s testimony to fill the gaps in the state’s case and Mr. Rein’s testimony serves as a basis for the court’s ruling, NWUA and SWAG certainly have a colorful issue on appeal because the statements and the proponent’s subsequent action in response to those statements create the appearance of impropriety,” Donovan said.
In making his ruling that Rein could testify and that Rein’s testimony would be part of the court’s deliberations, Gonzales told Donovan and Subdistrict 1 attorney Pete Ampe that from his perspective, it’s felt that all sides have been working toward an appeal rather than to convince him.
“Pretty much all the evidence I’ve heard for the last three weeks has been cumulative, could be considered a waste of time and confusing. The same argument you just made for the evidence that I potentially could hear from Mr. Rein … I’ve let you guys present as much evidence as possible. I think maybe I have sustained two objections the entirety of the trial so that all the evidence comes in so the court has a basis to make what I would call a very ‘unenviable decision’ to quote language used by others and to be able to rely on enough information, sufficient information.
“I’ve let it all come in. I haven’t stopped, really, anybody from presenting any evidence during the course of these proceedings. Quite frankly, I will tell you from my perspective…it’s felt like no one really has been concerned as to what decision this court is going to make because you’ve been setting up an appeal from the very beginning on both sides, on all sides.That’s what it’s felt like,” Gonzales said.
Earlier in the day, Jake Burris, president of the Subdistrict 1 Board of Managers, and Subdistrict 1 farmer Lyle Nissen testified in support of the Fourth Amended Plan as rebuttal witnesses to testimony from farmers SWAG put on the witness stand.
Nissen walked the court through all the ways he has retooled his farming operation in light of the declining unconfined aquifer.
“It is a different day, a different time. We’ve got to have rules. We have to have parameters. We have to get to the point where we’re sustainable,” Nissen told the court.
The water trial resumes Wednesday [July 22, 2026], with final arguments coming as early as Thursday.
The Colorado Division 3 water trial that virtually every farmer and rancher who operates in the Upper Rio Grande Basin is paying attention to is on track to wrap up this week, with former State Engineer Kevin Rein scheduled to testify before final arguments are made, Judge Michael Gonzales signaled Monday.
San Luis Valley Groundwater
The trial in Alamosa water court deals with the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, which outlines a new approach to the aquifer recovery by limiting the subdistrict’s groundwater withdrawals to the amount of surface water that naturally comes into the lands annually. It is the subdistrict with the largest cash crop receipts in the Valley’s growing fields, the subdistrict with the largest volume of groundwater pumping, and the subdistrict under orders from the state to recover the basin’s shallow unconfined aquifer.
The new plan, approved by Rein before he retired as state engineer in 2023, has been dissected by farming operations protesting the plan in water court by arguing groundwater irrigators will be driven out of business because of the plan’s limits on groundwater pumping and a hefty $500 per-acre-foot pumping fee.
“It will be a hard nut to crack,” Dee Greeman, who works the L Cross Ranch, testified Monday.
L Cross is among the operations protesting the plan. Given the multi-decade drought conditions, the overpumping fee and the fact L Cross would no longer be allowed under the new plan to offset its pumping with its own surface water as credits to its groundwater withdrawals, the value of the ranch would be affected long term, Greeman told the court.
“It’s a gamestopper,” he said, if wells can’t pump because it is from its groundwater pumping that L Cross finds profit in producing hay.
Greeman’s testimony on Monday wrapped up presentations by the different protestors to the plan. The state Division of Water Resources, which is defending the plan, will bring back witnesses to rebut different testimony and key to it all will be Rein.
It was the testimony of former state Division of Water Resources engineer Ken Knox at the conclusion of week 3 of the trial that prompted Gonzales to tell the state that it is only common sense for Rein to testify. Knox trashed Rein’s review, saying it didn’t take all the proper steps and didn’t include all the critical information for a state engineer to conduct a review of a water management plan.
Following a motion Monday by Preston Hartman, the state assistant attorney general defending the Fourth Amended Plan in water court, to dismiss the protestors case, Gonzales ruled that the protestors have provided sufficient evidence to keep going and scheduled closing arguments for the end of week after Rein testifies on Wednesday.
Once the final arguments are made, Gonzales will set a timeline for his review and decision.
“This is not something we want to push out too far,” the judge said at the conclusion of Monday’s session.
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia
Colorado Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales said from the bench Friday that he wants to hear from former State Engineer Kevin Rein and without his testimony it will be “very hard for this court” and its decision on whether to allow the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management in Subdistrict 1 to go into effect.
And that’s how Week 3 of the most important water trial in the past 25 years affecting the Upper Rio Grande Basin ended in Alamosa water court – the judge telling the state Division of Water Resources as it defends the plan that he would like to hear from the state engineer who approved the plan.
“Without hearing from Mr. Rein, it’s a concern,” Gonzales said.
Earlier during Friday’s afternoon session, he cautioned attorneys on their tone and their questioning of witnesses in a week when emotions inside the courtroom ran high.
“Let’s everybody cool their jets,” the judge said before he added an extra 10 minutes to the afternoon courtroom break.
The week opened with State Engineer Jason Ullman telling Gonzales that without the Fourth Amended Plan in action, Subdistrict 1 faces widespread curtailment since it will not meet the “sustainable” level of the unconfined aquifer by 2031 when the current plan of water management expires.
In 2018 Rein first alerted the Rio Grande Water Conservation District that broad curtailment could be on the table given the lack of progress in restoring the unconfined aquifer. It was then the subdistrict began working on a fourth amendment to its water management plan, which was ultimately adopted by the Subdistrict 1 board and then the Rio Grande Water Conservation District before Rein gave his sign off.
Ullman, who succeeded Rein as state engineer, told the court as he wrapped up his testimony that in his view the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management, which features a one-for-one pumping mechanism, is the “most reasonable I can think of that would be likely to cause the aquifer to increase in level.”
The one-for-one features means the subdistrict would offset its groundwater withdrawals by returning an acre-foot of water for every acre-foot pumped during the irrigation season. The new plan also contains an overpumping fee of $500 per acre-foot which groundwater irrigators would pay if they cannot offset their groundwater withdrawals with their own surface water or surface water credits.
“Like I said, I understand that that decision has consequences, but there’s pretty significant consequences to doing something. And at some point as the policy decision makers, we have to make a decision to do something to meet these goals the General Assembly has set out. And I feel like that’s what we’ve done here. The consequences of doing nothing are much more drastic and draconian than the consequences of this plan,” Ullman told the court.
It was Rein’s review and sign off on the Fourth Amended Plan that has come under scrutiny by opponents to the plan. Rein retired at the end of 2023 after approving the plan and conducted this exit interview with Alamosa Citizen. During the conversation for an episode of The Valley Pod, he was reluctant to dive into the details of the plan because it was headed to water court and Judge Gonzales for a legal review.
“Without saying too much about that and the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict, from my perspective as a state engineer, there’s one critical aspect of that for both cases and that is the sustainability of the unconfined aquifer. As we know, that’s a difficult component of groundwater management in the Valley because we have a statutorily required sustainability objective. And that has found its way into the rules and into the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict,” he said at the time.
He added that under the existing plan of water management for Subdistrict 1, “it’s going to be very difficult to meet that sustainability objective … And I know that the subdistrict has worked hard toward an alternative in this current plan that I approved and is before the court, and the way that plays out is going to be so important to the irrigators in the Valley.”
Ken Knox, a former employee of state Division of Water Resources who at one point served as acting state engineer for approximately 18 months, criticized Rein during his testimony Friday for not conducting a thorough review and that the plan in sections was “devoid of necessary information” to approve the plan by the state engineer.
Rein’s review was a “dramatic step backwards for professionalism of agency standards,” Knox told the court. He was the final expert witness for the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, who are asking Gonzales to throw the plan out on legal grounds.
Rein’s review was a “dramatic step backwards for professionalism of agency standards,” Knox told the court. He was the final expert witness for the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, who are asking Gonzales to throw the plan out on legal grounds.
The farmers opposing the plan are trying to thread a few legal arguments to persuade Judge Gonzales to reject the plan. Their contention is the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group are being asked to bear a disproportionate share of the burden in the aquifer recovery efforts because they are groundwater irrigators. They contend Rein didn’t conduct a full legal review of the sustainability and proportionality rules contained in state statutes governing recovery of the unconfined aquifer and the $500 fee makes the plan beyond the economic means of all the irrigators who hold water rights in the subdistrict.
“My land would have no value,” groundwater farmer Asier Artaechevarria testified, acknowledging that his operations rely 100 percent on groundwater withdrawals.
Ernie Myers, another farmer opposing the plan and who served on the Subdistrict 1 board for a several years, said it was after 2002, when the Upper Rio Grande Basin first experienced historic low flows from a lack of snow runoff, that he first began to feel targeted as a groundwater irrigator and had the feeling that surface water farmers were trying to put him out of business.
“I was pumping their water. I had no right to pump their water. I had a few farmers telling me, ‘I’m third, fourth generation. You’re a newcomer. You came in ’73 with your father. You have no right to do what you’re doing,’” Myers testified.
“And were there actually people saying that they intended to put you out of business?” a SWAG attorney asked.
“Yes, yes,” testified Myers.
Myers was the first to testify on behalf of SWAG and the Northeast Water Users Association. Knox was their final witness, and it was after his testimony that Gonzales made his interest in Rein testifying known.
“Common sense means a great deal to me,” the judge said.
Common sense tells the judge he should hear from the person who approved the plan he’s being asked to give legal approval to.
The trial resumes Monday with the L Cross Ranch, another legal opponent to the plan, making its arguments before Gonzales.
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
Retired farmer Ernie Myers spoke Tuesday to the threats and hostilities he faced as a groundwater irrigator and how he felt like a “whipping boy” for surface water farmers who complained “that I was pumping their water.”
Myers was the first to testify in protest of the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management as part of the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group opposition to the plan.
He served on the Subdistrict 1 board of managers from 2012 to 2016 and told Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales that “I was exhausted,” when he stepped down. “They beat me up mentally and financially.”
Myers and his family, along with Asier Artaechevarria, are asking Gonzales to reject the plan, which is designed to recover the unconfined aquifer through a one-for-one pumping mechanism — for every acre-foot of water pumped, an acre-foot of water must be returned to the aquifer — that limits pumping to the amount of natural surface water that comes into the subdistrict.
Groundwater irrigators with little or no natural surface water coming into their fields will have to offset their pumping either by purchasing surface water credits or paying a $500 per acre-foot fee, which Myers and Artaechevarria told the judge would put them out of business.
The plan has been approved by the Subdistrict 1 board of managers, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District board of directors, and the state engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
Artaechevarria told the court that he didn’t think enough had been done under the current plan of water management to try to make it work. Both Artaechevarria and Myers said they were willing to retire more acreage under the current plan and that the $500 acre-foot fee is beyond the economic means of groundwater irrigators.
“My land would have no value,” Artaechevarria testified, because he wouldn’t be able to market it for sale and wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage as a result.
“You can see the issue there,” he told the court.
Myers said it was after 2002, when the Upper Rio Grande Basin first experienced historic low flows from a lack of snow runoff, that he first began to feel targeted as a groundwater irrigator and had the feeling that surface water farmers were trying to put him out of business.
“I was pumping their water. I had no right to pump their water. I had a few farmers telling me, ‘I’m third, fourth generation. You’re a newcomer. You came in ’73 with your father. You have no right to do what you’re doing.’”
“And were there actually people saying that they intended to put you out of business?” SWAG’s attorney asked.
“Yes, yes,” testified Myers.
The Division 3 water trial is in its third week at the Alamosa Judicial Center.
Some kind of “biblical flood” would have to occur over the next few years for the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin to recover, given the current downward measurements and the anticipated negative trajectory of the shallow aquifer’s storage area. That according to State Engineer Jason Ullman, whose testimony Friday wrapped up week 2 of the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management trial underway in Alamosa state Division 3 Water Court.
Ullman followed by telling the water court that without such a historical climate event, the current Subdistrict 1 Plan of Water Management is unlikely to meet its goal of reaching a sustainable aquifer by 2031, or five years from now and 20 years since the plan was first approved.
His option over the next five years without a new plan of water management, he told Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales, would be to not approve annual replacement plans, which is the mechanism groundwater well pumpers use for irrigation.
If annual replacement plans don’t get approved, wells cannot pump.
San Luis Valley Groundwater
“I think I would say that it’s nearly impossible outside of some kind of biblical flood,” he testified of the current state of the unconfined storage area. “And even if that was to happen, there’s a limit to how much water can infiltrate into the aquifer on an annual basis or a monthly basis. So I don’t know that you can infiltrate enough water into the aquifer to reach that level by the 2031 deadline.”
According to monthly readings by Davis Engineering, the unconfined storage study area is measuring as low as it ever has since measurements by the consultant firm began in 1976, the court heard.
“In your opinion, will the current plan’s method of dry-up be able to achieve aquifer sustainability?” Rio Grande Water Conservation District lawyer Pete Ampe followed up with Ullman.
“No,” the state engineer told the water court. “I think it’s clear that based upon previous testimony that the goal in the previous plan was to reach 40,000 acres of dry-up that would’ve resulted or estimated to result in 80,000 acre-feet of reduction in use from the aquifer. And I think previous graphs showed that that has occurred, and yet we still see this precipitous decline.
“I mean, I think some folks have talked about how it’s maybe leveled out some, but if you look here at the graph, if I was to plot a longer term or a longer than five-year average, I think you could agree that the trend is downward. It’s not upward, which is problematic when we have very limited time, five years to reach the sustainable water supply level defined in the current plan.”
The sustainable measurement definition is a five-year running average of water storage at negative-400,000 to negative-200,000 below surface and toward the 1976 readings.The current measurement, according to court exhibits, is 1.2 million acre-feet below and declining.
The state engineer’s office approved the fourth amended plan in June 20203, and it is the state engineer who would order widespread groundwater well curtailment. Gonzales must approve the new plan for it to move forward and Ullman to take that option off the table.
During testimony throughout week 2 of the subdistrict plan of water management trial, state Division 3 engineer Craig Cotten and state engineer Ullman testified to the limited amount of time left, without court approval of the updated plan, before wells are shut off.
“We have other impacts because of the lower aquifer supply that are occurring to other water users, to well owners,” Cotten told the water court. “As I’ve discussed, the amount of electricity costs that it takes to pump water out from a lower aquifer, the lowered efficiency of getting flood irrigation across a field, the impact to the environment from not having a water table at the near surface and potentially some ponds around. So lots of impacts. And I do think that we do need to recover the aquifer in a reasonable time period.”
The water trial is moving along speedier than anticipated during pre-trial conferences when Gonzales set the case to be over five weeks. William Schreüder, who created and maintains the Rio Grande Decision Support System Groundwater Model which is a key exhibit in the case, faced limited cross examination to his testimony, and Clinton Phillips, who maintains the unconfined aquifer storage area study for Davis Engineering and whose monthly storage graph provides key data for the state Division of Water Resources decisions, faced no cross examination.
One attorney, Mirko Kruse who is arguing his family’s specific concern around ditch decrees but overall supports to new plan, told the judge that in trying to be efficient with the court’s time he was prepared to make the very specific legal points to his client’s objections next week, if the judge wanted to hear those early.
The judge declined and said he preferred to hear all the expert witness testimony first.
There is little argument to the problem that the unconfined aquifer storage is declining due to groundwater withdrawals and the warming climate of the era, which is hugely problematic for any natural recovery through high elevation snow melt.
After two weeks, the arguments before Judge Gonzales center around surface and groundwater water rights, recharge decrees, and whether the fourth amended plan was crafted legally and openly and creates an economically fair playing field for all the irrigators in the subdistrict.
“Dr. Schreüder, what in your opinion does this all just come down to?” came the question from RGWCD attorney Pete Ampe toward the end of Friday.
“Well, your Honor, the basic premise of the fourth plan is that they will do one-for-one (pumping) which means we’re going to put more water into the aquifer than we’re going to take out and it’s common sense that under those conditions the aquifer should recover.”
The trial moves into week 3 on Monday, July 13, with State Engineer Ullmann still on the witness stand.
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
Attorney: ‘In order to evaluate the current state of the aquifer in context, you would need to know how much the aquifer holds, wouldn’t you?’
Engineer: ‘I don’t believe so’
How much water is in the storage area of the unconfined aquifer? That was a question SWAG attorney Brad Grasmick posed to state Division 3 Water Engineer Craig Cotten and left the Alamosa water court hanging on at the conclusion of Wednesday’s day in water court.
In his first full day of cross examining Cotten, Grasmick covered a variety of territory from surface water credits to the one-to-one pumping feature of the new plan to Cotten’s responsibility to administer the plan. At times he got so deep into the proverbial weeds in grilling Cotten that Gonzales spoke of his own frustration in trying to follow along.
“You’re losing me on focus,” Gonzales told Grasmick as he called for a lunch break.
The question Grasmick posed at the end of his nearly six hours of cross examination offered a unique exchange. Grasmick started by saying he hasn’t seen a figure on how much water the unconfined storage area can hold. It’s been well-established in the testimony of Cotten and HRS hydrologist Matt Seitz that the unconfined aquifer functions as an underground reservoir and was built up initially through early subirrigation practices and then canal diversions.
Storage readings of the unconfined aquifer that go back to 1976 show it responsive to strong spring runoff seasons but now transitioning through the process of aridification to the San Luis Valley floor as it adapts to 25 years of drought and the lack of consistent snow melt.
“Nor have I seen how much water is presently in storage in the unconfined aquifer. Do you agree with that?” Grasmick asked.
Cotten: “Well, we have the Davis Engineering service change in storage, so we know the change in storage from 1976. The total amount of water in storage at the present time, I’m not aware of that number.”
Grasmick: “OK. In order to evaluate the current state of the aquifer in context, you would need to know how much the aquifer holds, wouldn’t you?”
Cotten: “I don’t believe so.”
Grasmick: “Well, and you would also need to know how much is in the aquifer in order to evaluate this decline in context, correct?”
Cotten: “No, I don’t believe so.”
Grasmick: “Well, as an example, if there was a one million acre-foot decline in storage, that’s very different if the reservoir holds one and a half million acre-feet than if it holds say four million acre-feet, isn’t it?”
Cotten: “There again, I don’t believe so if you’re shooting for an actual storage amount, change in storage amount as your goal.”
In the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management under consideration, Subdistrict 1 is charged with recovering the unconfined aquifer to a “sustainable” level of negative-200,000 to negative-400,000 acre-feet of water storage.
Grasmick continued his questioning: “So you disagree that contextual analysis of data is necessary to ensure that it’s not misinterpreted?”
Cotten: “I don’t agree that we need to know the total storage or the actual storage right now in developing this plan.”
The exchange continued for about another three minutes before Grasmick began to shift to another subject and Gonzales intervened.
“I apologize. I think it’s been a long day, so I think it’s probably a good place to stop,” the judge said.
The water trial on the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management resumes Thursday [July 9. 2026].
The fire situation in the Four Corners area is not improving. The weather remains hot, dry, and windy, and this week’s forecast calls for more of the same. Next week may even be hotter, if longer-range models hold. Meanwhile, air quality has deteriorated in some places that previously seemed to avoid the worst of the smoke. The good news is that the Fourth of July weekend came and went without any new major fire starts in the region.
So far this year some 37,209 fires have burned through about 3.3 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s the second highest acreage for the first half of the year in the last decade.
Here’s a rundown of some of the Four Corners area fires. By no means is this a complete list.
The Babylon Fire, burning in the higher elevation parts of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, had grown to over 96,000 acres by Monday night, making it the nation’s largest active blaze (the Cottonwood Fire in the western part of the state has gone through about the same amount of acreage, according to Watch Duty). The two are also tied for the fourth largest fires in the state’s recorded history. The Babylon Fire is at 0% containment, with the most active area moving up the west slope of the Abajo Mountains, between Shay Mountain and Mount Linnaeus. Air tankers are pulling water from Lake Powell, and officials are asking boaters to avoid the area between Dangling Rope and Rainbow Bridge.
Closed public lands include: The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Manti-La Sal National Forest lands within the Monticello Ranger District, and BLM lands in the Indian Creek Corridor, Beef Basin, Dark Canyon, and the Sweet Alice Wilderness Study Area. Still Open: Natural Bridges National Monument, Cedar Mesa, Grand Gulch, and other lower elevation areas in the southern reaches of Bears Ears National Monument.
The Ferris Fire along the Dolores-Montezuma County line in southwestern Colorado initially burned in a northeasterly direction toward the Disappointment Valley. Then the winds shifted and the most active front of the fire curved back to the northwest, crossing the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River, and is within about 12 miles of the town of Dove Creek. As of Monday night the fire was at 51,622 acres and 22% containment.
The Gold Mountain Fire north of Ouray, Colorado, has burned across almost 29,300 acres of San Juan Mountain high country and was 2% contained as of Monday night. Firefighters on Monday conducted strategic backfiring operationseast of Ridgway to provide more protection for structures in that area. There is a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, which could bring dry lightning along with gusty and erratic winds, with high temperatures reaching the high 80s and low 90s.
The Pocket Fire north of Sedona, Arizona, has reached 26,442 acres and was at 48% containment as of Monday night. Forecasters are predicting more hot and dry weather today, with the mercury topping out around 100° F and sub-20% relative humidity.
On July 6, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality approved Energy Fuels’ request to amend its aquifer quality permit for a groundwater monitoring well at its Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon. The change raises the allowable concentration of arsenic from .050 milligrams per liter to .055 milligrams per liter and the associated alert level from .040 to .050 mg/l.
The Havasupai Tribe strongly condemned the change in a written statement, calling the approval a “profound attack on the Tribe’s inherent responsibility to guard and protect the waters of the Grand Canyon.”
Energy Fuels asked for the revision — and ADEQ granted it — after finding that construction of the mine’s shaft had created a hydraulic sink that allowed naturally occurring arsenic — a known toxic substance — to move toward the facility’s perimeter wells, putting them in violation of their permit.
So, regulators simply altered the permit’s limits and, according to the tribal nation’s statement, “chosen to weaken environmental protections instead of strengthening them.”
Dr. Bradley K. Esser, a retired Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientist, submitted technical comments on the proposed revision last year. He cast doubt on Energy Fuels’ hydraulic sink explanation, and demonstrated that the arsenic concentrations detected in the monitoring wells are far higher than regional natural background levels. He posited that it was far more likely the elevated arsenic concentrations came from sump water from the mine’s workings contaminating the groundwater.
Uranium, arsenic, and lead concentrations shot up in the Pinyon Plain Mine’s “sump water,” or groundwater that had flowed into the mine shaft, after active mining began in 2023. While an independent scientist acknowledges that it’s possible elevated arsenic levels in perimeter monitoring wells are the result of a mining-related hydraulic sink pulling naturally occurring arsenic to the wells, he posited that it’s more likely that sump water made its way into the groundwater in the wells. Source: Grand Canyon Trust.
Esser also writes:
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Monsoon season officially kicked off in the Southwest in the middle of last month, but it has yet to bring significant amounts of moisture. Earlier forecasts predicting higher than average precipitation beginning later this month are still in place for some parts of the West, but they likely will be accompanied by above-normal temperatures just about everywhere.
Next week isn’t looking so hot for fire-dousing moisture in the Southwest, but after that the chances of above-normal precipitation start climbing.
Smoky skies and three-digit heat? Ick.
The drought situation has grown worse over the last year in most of the Interior West, though there has been improvement in the deep Southwest. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor.
‘As you might expect, the hot, dry weather is taking a toll on streams around the region. The Animas River through Durango is running at 190 cubic feet per-second; the median flow for this date is over 1,000 cfs.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
Red rocks and crazy clouds in Utah before fire season had arrived and sullied up the skies. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The Colorado State Engineer’s office opened its defense this week of Subdistrict 1’s approved Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management with a history lesson on the origins of the San Luis Valley and the development of irrigated agriculture over the past 174 years when the first water right was issued to the San Luis People’s Ditch.
Featured in the state engineer’s defense was testimony by Matt Seitz of HRS Water Consultants, who took the state Division 3 Water Court through ancient history and into the era of early irrigation and storage practices of farmers in the Valley.
“Yeah, so we covered 25 million years pretty quickly, see how long the rest of it takes here,” he said from the witness stand Tuesday. Seitz stayed on the witness stand for the better part of the week, working to bolster to the state engineer’s defense of the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management and then under cross-examination from a Sustainable Water Augmentation Group attorney, who worked to show faults in Seitz’ testimony and undermine the case of the state engineer in the eyes of Division 3 Water Court judge Michael Gonzales.
It is Gonzales who will decide this case. He will take in all the testimony around the various takes on the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management to rule on whether the plan will be implemented.
Plan of Water Management Equation
The subdistrict itself is charged with recovering the shallow unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and its Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management is the latest attempt to do so. The complexity of the basin’s hydrology has been an early theme.
“I think there’s been a lot of great research over the years,” Seitz said in speaking to the state’s modeling of groundwater in the Upper Rio Grande Basin and other studies on the Valley’s hydrology. “So I think we’ve made some good progress, but there’s a lot of complexity. Again, I’ve been saying that word a lot, but there certainly is and I think we’re on our way, but it’s never going to be fully understood.”
Week 1 of the trial ended with Craig Cotten taking the witness stand. He is witness number three for the state engineer’s defense of the plan, following Cleave Simpson, the general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District who was the lead witness, and then Seitz, the hydrologist consultant who endured four days on the witness stand.
“Wonderful way to start the Fourth of July weekend,” quipped Gonzales as Cotten, the state water division engineer for the San Luis Valley area, stepped into the witness box at 1:50 p.m. on Thursday. He spent the initial two hours testifying to his background and his credentials before Gonzales broke for the Fourth of July weekend.
Cotten is the enforcer of the state’s groundwater management rules in the San Luis Valley. His testimony will reignite the trial when it resumes on Monday for week two of the water trial.
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Clayton Chaney). Here’s an excerpt:
July 1, 2026
The Archuleta County Board of Health (BoH) held a special meeting on June 15 to consider approval of Regulation 43, pertaining to on-site wastewater treatment system (OWTS), also known as septic systems…
According to the regulation attached to the meeting agenda, “The purpose of these Regulations is to establish the minimum standards for the location, design, construction, performance, installation, alteration, and use of OWTS with a design capacity equal to or less than 2,000 gallons per day within the Jurisdiction.”
[…]
It also states that the regulations apply to all OWTS in the unincorporated areas of the county and over all municipal corporations within the territorial limits of Archuleta County.
Furthermore, it explains that an “OWTS permit must not be issued to any person when the subject property is located within a municipality or special district that provides public sewer service, except where such sewer service to the property is not feasible according to the determination of the municipality or special district, or the permit is otherwise authorized by the municipality or special district.”
The document explains that Archuleta County Water Quality Department “may enter upon a private property at reasonable times and upon reasonable notice for the purpose of determining whether or not an operating OWTS is functioning in compliance with the OWTS Act and applicable regulations adopted pursuant thereto and the terms and conditions of any permit issued and to inspect and conduct tests in evaluating any permit application.”
Map of the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, USA. Made using USGS National Map data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47456307
While the Trump administration 2.0 has so far rexfrained from trying to shrink or eliminate national monuments, its non-executive-branch proxies just keep on trying.This week the 10th Circuit federal appeals court issued a decision keeping alive Utah’s lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s 2021 re-establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments following Trump 1.0’s shrinkage of the same.
The state and Garfield and Kane counties filed one lawsuit in 2022, with the Blue Ribbon Coalition and other parties filing their own suit. In 2023, a federal court dismissed both lawsuits; that ruling was appealed.
This week’s decision confirmed the dismissal of the Blue Ribbon suit. But it also determined that presidential national monument designations under the Antiquities Act are subject to federal judicial review, and sent Utah’s case back to the district court.
***
Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with three travel management plans in Utah that will determine which roads, trails, and areas of the respective field offices’ jurisdiction are open to motorized vehicles. Given that the stated aim is to bring the plans in line with Trump’s recent executive order rescinding restrictions on motorized vehicles on public lands, we can assume that the idea here is to expand motorized access to some remote areas. The plans include:
The Moab Field Office has released preliminary alternatives for the Dolores River Travel Management Plan on about 127,000 acres in Grand County, Utah, east of Moab and abutting the Colorado border. This would include roads along the Utah section of the Lower Dolores River, and on mesas and in canyons on either side of it. Maps of the alternatives can be found here. This one is not yet open to public comment.
The Kanab Field Office has released a draft environmental assessment for its Trail Canyon Travel Management Plan on nearly 330,000 acres in Kane County. It is open to public input.
And the Vernal Field Office has also released a draft review for the Dinosaur North Travel Management Plan. The public comment period is open.
***
I typically stay away from electoral politics, especially the horse-race part of it and polls and such. But sometimes a particular contest or candidate can provide a lens on bigger trends or phenomena, and so are worth looking into.
The latest race that has caught my interest is the one to replace Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who is retiring at the end of this term. Since it’s Wyoming in 2026, it’s safe to assume the winner will be a Republican (though this wasn’t always the case), meaning the primary is the contest that matters. The front-runner, I suppose, is Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump sycophant and MAGA extremist who unseated Liz Cheney back in 2022 after Cheney failed to show adequate fealty to Trump.
But it’s one of her challengers that I’m interested in: Sam Mead. Mead is a fifth-generation Wyoming rancher, comes from a long line of Republican Wyoming politicians, and is the nephew of former governor Matt Mead. Mead is young (36), charismatic, has strong conservative credentials on fiscal issues and gun-rights, and a background in engineering and business, having run a whiskey distillery in Kirby. But what really distinguishes him from his opponents is his willingness to speak out against some of Trump’s policies, and his priority on protecting public lands and keeping them in the public’s hands.
Mead, in other words, appears to be an old-school, pre-MAGA Western Republican. He reminds me a bit of Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, back before extreme polarization pulled him more and more rightward and into MAGA land. Wyoming’s primary is on Aug. 18.
Meanwhile, Utah just held its primaries, with some surprising results. Utah State Senate President Stuart Adams, a Republican, was defeated by challenger Stephanie Hollist. Adams was a strong supporter of the controversial proposed Stratos Project data center complex on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake. Also, incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy trounced challenger Phil Lyman in the GOP primary for the 3rd Congressional District, with about 70% of the vote.
While Maloy was endorsed by Trump, and has plenty of extreme views, Lyman is the more MAGA of the two. And Trump pardoned Lyman after his conviction for leading an OHV rally down Recapture Canyon in the southeastern part of the state. Political consultant Taylor Morgan told the Utah News Dispatch that Lyman’s resounding defeat showed that his “very angry, very conspiracy-based, populist, toxic form of Republicanism (is) frankly wearing very thin, especially here in Utah.” Let’s hope he’s right!
Pumpjack in the Aneth oil field. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
I wrote Tuesday about how the Trump administration is eviscerating Biden-era oil and gas rules aimed at reducing methane emissions and ensuring companies clean up their own messes rather than foisting them onto the taxpayers. Now the changes are open for public comment.
Here are a few of the changes Trump and co. are proposing:
Bring back pre-Biden reclamation bond rates, which amount to just over $2,000 per well, which is insane, since the cost to reclaim and plug a single well easily can exceed $100,000. These numbers incentivized petroleum companies to walk away, forsake the bond, and abandon the well, leaving the tab for the taxpayers.
Reduce the current $10 minimum per-acre bid for leasing public land to $2, restore noncompetitive leasing, and slash royalties and filing fees for oil and gas companies.
Implement a new fee for protesting leases. And they plan to cut the 90-day public input period to just 10 days. In other words, they’re trying to cut out the public from decisions regarding public lands.
Gut the waste prevention rule (they wanted to roll it back altogether, but chose to revise it instead because it wasn’t clear which rule would replace it) by removing limits on royalty-free flaring and killing requirements that companies develop leak detection and repair plans.
Trump’s changes to the waste prevention rule will turn back the regulatory clock to the days when oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land vented and flared an average of 44.2 billion cubic feet annually of methane, which is usually accompanied by nasty volatile organic compounds and other dangerous compounds. That’s as bad for the climate as burning around 9 million tons of coal. But it also amounts to lighting money — your money — on fire and throwing it away. That vented methane is basically the same stuff you pay for to run your furnace, or to generate much of the electricity running through the grid. And since operators don’t pay royalties on gas they throw away, that cost American taxpayers some $166 million in lost revenue over a decade.
The result of all of this (and more) will be to rob taxpayers and sacrifice public lands and the climate to subsidize the same energy corporations that are raking in obscene profits thanks to Trump’s disastrous war on Iran. The administration argues that their proposed changes will save petroleum corporations operating on federal lands $17 million annually in compliance costs.
That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that high oil prices have driven corporation’s profits to absurd highs. During the first quarter of 2026 alone, ExxonMobil raked in $8.8 billion in underlying, adjusted profits. Somehow, I don’t think several million in compliance costs is going to deter them from drilling.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
Many of the West’s streams have entered their summer low-flow phase, a period that falls between the end of snowmelt and the beginning of the monsoon, while irrigation diversions are in full-swing. One of the most dramatic cases of this is, perhaps, the Colorado River itself as it flows through Grand Junction. This morning, the river was running at just 366 cubic feet per second near Palisade, which as reader Dave Grossman pointed out is low enough to allow someone to walk across the sprawling river bed.
Some other notably low flows:
Animas River in Farmington, NM: 104 cfs.
Dolores River at Bedrock, CO: .76 cfs (effectively dry)
White River near Watson, UT: 76.4 cfs
Green River above Flaming Gorge: 551 cfs
Green River below Flaming Gorge: 1,590 cfs
San Juan River near Caracas, CO (above Navajo Reservoir): 85 cfs
Colorado River near Hite, UT: 4,300 cfs
This has reduced daily average inflows into Lake Powell to about 4,800 cfs and dropping. It would be much lower than that, except that flows are being bolstered by upstream reservoir releases. Either way, inflows are far less than Glen Canyon Dam releases, which are averaging about 8,500 cfs daily (approx. 6,500 cfs at night and 10,600 cfs during the day). This disparity, exacerbated by reservoir evaporation, is lowering Lake Powell’s surface level, which currently sits at about 3,526.75 feet. Without substantial upstream rain, it will likely drop to 3,520 feet by early August.
📖 Reading (and watching) Room 🧐
Matt Jenkins wrote an excellent overview for the Water Education Foundation of the potential “Grand Bargain” on the Colorado River, which would require both the Upper and Lower basins to give up some of their Colorado River Compact claims not only to keep the system from collapsing, but also to avoid litigation.
The piece lays out the fact that the Compact is not only outdated, but also internally conflicted, in that it apportions the Upper Basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year, while also obligating it to allow the same amount of water to flow to the Lower Basin annually. That’s just not possible these days, given that there’s far less than 15 MAF in the river.
Southeastern Utah is known mostly as a mining hotspot for uranium, copper, with lithium emerging more recently. But it also hosts a potash extraction industry, and at least one company is looking to expand the potash footprint. Sage Potash says it has secured permits from Utah and San Juan County to begin drilling at is Sage Plain Potash project.
While this is only exploratory drilling, it’s notable in that it’s not occurring in the Lisbon Valley or near existing potash sites near Moab. Rather it is on the Great Sage Plain southeast of Monticello, in the archaeologically rich zone north of Hovenweep National Monument.
***
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Yet another reason to worry about spewing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere via fossil fuel burning: It can exacerbate acid mine drainage, the phenomenon that leads to toxic heavy metal loading in streams and other waterways. That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study published in Communications Earth & Environment this April.
Acid mine drainage occurs when a mine excavation exposes once-buried sulfide-bearing rocks such as iron pyrite (FeS2) to oxygen and water. The hydrogen, sulfide, and oxygen come together to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Thus, the water becomes acidic, or its pH drops. The acidity dissolves heavy metals and the water picks them up. As the pH level of the water drops below 4.8, acidophilic bacteria begin feeding off the metals, releasing more acid into the solution and causing metal loading to occur up to 1 million times faster than in water with higher pH. Metal loading is bad for fish and other aquatic life.
The study found that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enhance the acidophilic bacterial activity, which accelerates iron and sulfur oxidation, acid formation, and metal loading. Zinc and cadmium, both of which are harmful to aquatic life, are more sensitive than other metals to rising carbon dioxide levels. Zinc loading is especially problematic in the Upper Animas watershed in southwestern Colorado.
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Okay, I really don’t care that Anfield bought its first underground haul truck for its Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley of southeastern Utah. But I found this press release interesting for another tidbit: The haul truck was built by Young’s Machine Company, located in Monticello, Utah. I never knew Monticello had this sort of manufacturing industry. I gotta say, it’s kind of cool.
The Hoback River joins the Snake River following a landslide upstream on June 18, 2026. Robert Frodeman photo.
🚣🏽 Water Watch 🌊
Water Quality in the Greater Yellowstone
A Guest Post by Robert Frodeman
Four million people visit Teton County, Wyoming, each year. They come to hike, float, and ski, snap pictures under the elk antler arches, and to partake in the myths of the American West. As the sign at the top of Teton Pass says, “Welcome Stranger. Yonder is Jackson Hole, the Last of the Old West.” Visitors expect to find a pristine environment. They don’t expect water quality problems reminiscent of a developing nation.
Teton County has some of the best drinking water in the country. Or most of Teton County does: Hoback, in the southern part of the County, has a nitrate problem. Nitrate is a health risk — most acutely to infants under six months, in whom nitrate is converted to nitrite by gut bacteria, interfering with oxygen transport in the blood and causing methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome). Many of the water systems in Hoback are on their last legs: two weeks ago, I had no running water and then a boil order at my home.
Jackson is the town, Jackson Hole is the valley that runs north of town in front of the Tetons. (‘Hole’ was what mountain men called a valley.) If you drill 20,000 feet into the valley floor you will hit the same sandstone layer that sits on top of the Tetons. This implies that the Tetons have risen some 25,000 feet over the last 10 million years.
Of course, mountains come down as they go up: the Tetons have been shedding sediment across all that time, piling up thousands of feet of gravel on the valley floor. Still more gravel was brought by the glaciers that flowed down from the Yellowstone Plateau. The Snake River meanders in front of the Tetons, but much of the river passes unseen below the surface, forming what is known as the Snake River Aquifer.
In effect, Jackson and Jackson Hole sit on top of a huge bathtub filled with gravel and water. This provides an abundant source of high-quality water for the town. But the bathtub only extends so far. The southern rim of the tub comes up at Munger Mountain five miles south of town. This is where the Yellowstone glacier stopped, and where the Snake River Canyon begins, which runs for 30 miles to Alpine and the Mormon communities of Star Valley.
Hoback lies four miles south of Munger Mountain — beyond the reach of the aquifer. Local residents must drill for their water. Local wells reach 200 feet down to the Bear River Formation. The water isn’t ideal – it’s brackish and can have a distinct sulfur smell (as do some of the local hot springs). The groundwater is also contaminated from horse farms and pig farms and (mainly) septic tanks and leach fields. Septic tanks can leak, and there is not enough biotic activity at this elevation and latitude for leach fields to function well. The result is nitrate levels in our drinking water which sometimes exceed EPA daily maximums.
Hoback is distinctive not only because of its geology. The billionaires live elsewhere in the County. There are two trailer parks nearby. Historically, local politicians have directed their attention to the Town of Jackson, Wilson, and the ski resort of Teton Village. But this has changed in recent years. Carlin Gerard of the Teton Conservation District formed a Hoback Stakeholders Group in 2019 to highlight drinking water problems. Covid disrupted that effort, but then a local non-profit called Protect Our Water Jackson Hole brought its energy and resources to southern Teton County.
In 2023 Hoback residents formed a water and sewer district. The district has now raised $7 million from the County and the State to build a municipal drinking water system. Water will be drawn from the Snake River just above the confluence with the Hoback. Construction should begin this fall and be done in a year or two depending on the weather.
At first it will only serve 125 residents: the district was made small out of fear of opposition. Teton County is solid blue, but past attempts had failed because of Hoback’s history of Red State, don’t-tread-on-me politics. In any case, it turned out that the demographic transition had already occurred: when the election was held the vote was 36-0 in favor. And there are now plans to annex a new affordable housing development that Teton County hopes will help address the local housing shortage.
Of course, the new system will only isolate residents from the nitrate problem. The environment will remain polluted, and people outside the district will still be on wells. The district has begun to price out a wastewater system, which is liable to be quite expensive. But you’d hope for nothing less for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem – and officials would hate to see an article in the New York Times about Teton County’s leaky septic systems.
Map of Greys River in Wyoming, United States. By Feydey – Nasa World Wind 1.3.5 public domain NLT Landsat 7 satellite photo, layered with PD vmap0 vector data. Image:Map_of_USA_highlighting_Wyoming.png was used for the smaller image., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1589723
Rio Grande Water Conservation District General Manager Cleave Simpson outside the courtroom as the water trial over the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 opened Monday at the Alamosa County Judicial Center. Credit: The Citizen
Rio Grande Water Conservation District General Manager Cleave Simpson testified it’s not a foregone conclusion that groundwater irrigators would pay the $500 per acre-foot fee for overpumping but have other options under the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1.
Simpson was the first to take the witness stand Monday in a state water trial that will determine if the Subdistrict 1 plan will go into effect. The plan, which calls for Subdistrict 1’s groundwater withdrawals not to exceed the amount of natural surface water that comes into the Upper Rio Grande Basin, has been approved by the state engineer and now is being tested in state water court.
Opponents to the plan argue the state engineer’s review was not thorough, did not follow Colorado water law and should not be allowed to go into effect. Other opponents have more nuanced arguments around surface water credits.
The linchpin to the subdistrict’s Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management is the overpumping fee, which some farmers and ranchers argue will put them out of business. Simpson testified that groundwater irrigators can purchase surface water credits from neighboring operations or submit their own plan of augmentation for approval from the state without incurring the subdistrict’s overpumping fee.
A 2018 letter sent by then-State Engineer Kevin Rein that warned of mass groundwater curtailment without progress on the unconfined aquifer “created a heightened sense of urgency,” within the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and Subdistrict 1, Simpson testified.
The federal government’s voluntary Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program became one program the water conservation district shifted into to reduce the amount of productive acres farmed. A Fourth Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 became another, Simpson said.
The water trial comes three and a half years after the subdistrict water management plan was adopted by Simpson’s Rio Grande Water Conservation District board. The effort is tied to recovering the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and restoring it to sustainable levels.
A group of subdistrict irrigators organized under the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group are opposing the plan. They irrigate on 11,000 acres in the Center area. Also in opposition are owners of the L Cross Ranch, who rely on La Garita Creek and Carnero Creek as water sources in addition to their own groundwater pumping.
The trial will continue through July.
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
The most significant water trial the San Luis Valley has ever seen opens this Monday morning in Courtroom A of the Alamosa County Judicial Center. At stake is the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, which calls for a dramatic shift designed to match the amount of groundwater pumping to the amount of natural surface coming into the subdistrict.
Producers in Subdistrict 1 are under pressure to recover the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin, but so far the subdistrict has made little to no progress in creating a sustainable aquifer. The trial is scheduled for five weeks before Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales.
The San Luis Valley’s highly-anticipated district water court case — the water trial of this century if you will — was originally scheduled to last five weeks beginning in January. It was pushed back six months to this summer 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 Grande’s 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 “personal and family circumstances.”
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, “Also, GFY.” In another, he emails that he is “no longer interested in anything other than publicly exploding the rampant corruption at DWR and the AG Office.”
And in an email sent Sunday, Oct. 19, to Attorney General Phil Weiser, Adams writes, “We haven’t met, but I understand that you’re 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 campaign…”
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 “credible evidence that demonstrates that Mr. Adams is unavailable. Rather, they now assert that he ‘should not be pressured into returning to the case at the risk of further harm to his mental health.’”
“In any event,” district water attorneys argued in their objection to a trial delay, “none 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.”
State Engineer Jason Ullman, consultant Taylor Adams, Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales
Subdistrict 1 is home to the San Luis Valley’s 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 subdistrict’s proposed Fourth Plan of Water Management is its most drastic effort yet to meet the state’s orders. The new plan, crafted in 2022 and adopted by the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in January 2023, is designed to “match the amount of groundwater pumping to the amount of water coming into the subdistrict.”
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. Any new strategy to recover the Valley’s ailing aquifer will shift into 2027 at the soonest.
The Havasupai Tribe is concerned about a proposed increase in the allowable arsenic level near the Pinyon Plain uranium mine.
State regulators claim the increased arsenic is naturally occurring, not a result of mining pollution.
Tribal leaders and environmental groups worry the change could contaminate Havasu Creek, the tribe’s sole water source.
The Havasupai Tribe has raised new concerns about a proposal to allow higher levels of arsenic in a groundwater monitoring well near the Pinyon Plain uranium mine south of the Grand Canyon, warning that the changes threaten Havasu Creek, the tribe’s sole water source. A proposed amendment to a state Aquifer Protection Program permit would revise the mine’s alert level and aquifer quality limit for arsenic after groundwater monitoring detected changes in arsenic concentrations in the well. According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the changes were not the result of pollutants discharged from the mine into the aquifer, but naturally occurring.
In a June 25 public notice, the agency said that Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., the mine’s operator, and ADEQ have entered into a changed application agreement for an amendment to the Pinyon Plain Mine’s permit.
“The Havasupai Tribe first learned of the proposed amendment, which appears to have been a private deal between ADEQ and Energy Fuels, only after a concerned citizen discovered this new amendment on ADEQ’s website and promptly notified the Tribe,” said Havasupai Tribal Chairwoman Melinda Yaiva.
The Havasupai Tribe was shocked by ADEQ’s decision, she said, citing longstanding concerns that the Pinyon Plain Mine could contaminate Havasu Creek, the tribe’s only water source. Tribal leaders said the creek is vital to the community, its culture and its tourism economy, and reiterated their opposition to the mine.
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website (Susan Montoya Bryan). Here’s an excerpt:
May 27, 2026
In a brief order Tuesday, the court accepted the recommendation of a special master to move forward with agreements first proposed last year by New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. The settlement calls for reducing groundwater pumping along the dwindling river and retiring water rights from irrigated farmland in southern New Mexico. The states held up the proposal as a promise to restore order to an elaborate system of storing and sharing water between two vast irrigation districts in southern New Mexico and western Texas.
“We’re very excited to be redirecting resources from costly and lengthy litigation to solutions on the ground,” Hanna Riseley-White, director of the Interstate Stream Commission, said Wednesday…
Those solutions will include everything from long-term fallowing programs and more efficient irrigation infrastructure to developing new sources of water, like tapping brackish supplies or importing water, and improving stormwater management so more runoff can be captured and stored.
A whistleblower and watchdog advocacy group used an EPA database of locations that may have handled PFAS materials or products to map the potential impact of PFAS throughout Colorado. They found about 21,000 Colorado locations in the EPA listings, which were uncovered through a freedom of information lawsuit. Locations are listed by industry category. (Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility analysis of EPA database)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $44.3 million in new grant funding for “Small or Disadvantaged Communities” to address polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in Colorado water. That funding comes as the agency rolls back some regulations on those chemicals…The funding for Colorado water is part of a billion dollar investment across the country. The money can be allocated to testing, planning, and infrastructure projects. According to a press release from the EPA, “small, rural, and disadvantaged water systems often have fewer resources.“ The program is ”specifically designed to ensure these communities are not left behind.” […] New rules announced Monday would rescind some Biden-era regulations on PFAS chemicals and extend the deadline for water to meet federal standards by two additional years, to 2031.
Anna Vargas, of Manassa, Colorado, is a sixth-generation resident of the San Luis Valley who is deeply embedded in local water management initiatives. She hasn’t drunk her own tap water in years out of fear of contamination. Credit: Jacob Spetzler/Inside Climate News
In the San Luis Valley, the ongoing megadrought and a record-low snowpack are draining groundwater and increasing its concentrations of toxic metals. There are few protections for residents drinking from private wells.
Julie Zahringer hears a common refrain at her environmental laboratory in Alamosa, Colorado: A customer has been drinking well water on family land where they’ve lived for years, but recently noticed it has changed. They want to know why.
“All of a sudden it looks different, tastes different, there’s odor, there’s color,” said Zahringer.
Zahringer’s SDC Laboratory is one of the few testing water in the San Luis Valley, an 8,000-square-mile, high-altitude desert in south-central Colorado. She has tested thousands of wells during more than 30 years in the field.
Residents of the valley, which has large Hispanic populations and a high poverty rate, have been concerned about naturally occurring heavy metals in their water for decades, she said. But in the past five years, the rate of change has accelerated.
“Every year it just seems like this is the climax of it, and the next year, it gets worse,” said Zahringer. “This year, we’re looking at probably the worst as far as water quality.”
San Luis Valley Groundwater
The San Luis Valley relies on surface water from the Rio Grande and a massive aquifer system, one of the largest in North America, to drive its agricultural economy. But the aquifer is severely overallocated, losing an estimated 1.2 million acre-feet of water between 1976, when tracking began, and 2013—equivalent to more than five times what the city of Denver consumes each year. This year, the aquifer could hit another record low, as Colorado’s snowpack, which recharges the state’s aquifers, is at the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1941.
San Luis, CO – MAY 5, 2026: The sun sets over agriculture fields in San Luis, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. The primary agriculture in the valley are potatoes and livestock. The Rio Grande recharges the aquifer which is the source of water for the entire San Luis Valley, including agriculture, which is the industry which economically sustains the area. The amount of water necessary for large scale agriculture is also the primary reason for the aquifer’s depletion. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
Manassa, CO – MAY 5, 2026: A water control gate controls flow in an irrigation ditch in Manassa, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
Researchers are finding that as groundwater levels drop, the remaining water can contain higher concentrations of carcinogenic heavy metals.
The valley’s well water users, many of them in historically underserved communities, are increasingly concerned about what’s in their drinking water. But with little governmental oversight of private wells or resources to help track and manage quality, they have few options to make it safe.
Shifting Chemistry
Anna Vargas, a sixth-generation resident of the San Luis Valley, remembers making snowmen often as a child, and her mother talking about the daily rains during the summer monsoon season. Now, monsoon season barely exists here, Vargas said.
“As the years have gone by, there’s less rain, less snowfall. I’ve lived in the valley long enough to see the changes in weather patterns,” says Vargas, project manager with the SLV Ecosystem Council. “We depend a lot on snowpack, and we have hardly any this year. It’s concerning for all of us in the Rio Grande basin…The heavy metals will just become more concentrated.”
Map of the San Luis Valley
Heavy metals like arsenic, tungsten, uranium, manganese and selenium occur naturally in rocks and soils and come up with groundwater that is pumped to the surface. With drought, Zahringer said, they can become a problem.
“We’re not seeing a dilution of any of the contaminants…so anything that’s in the geologic makeup is just really concentrating,” said Zahringer, whose tests have documented contaminant levels rising in the wells during dry periods.
Alamosa, CO – MAY 5, 2026: Julie Zahringer, owner and laboratory director of the Sangre de Cristo (SDC) Laboratory, poses for a portrait in her office in Alamosa, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. The SDC Laboratory is the only source of water testing in the San Luis Valley. The company tests water for both private well owners and municipalities as well as water used in agriculture. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
In addition, as aquifer levels drop during droughts—and due to overpumping—its geochemistry shifts, says Kathy James, Ph.D., associate professor with the Colorado School of Public Health. Users reaching deeper into the ground to access the remaining water can draw small amounts of water connected to geothermal sources or underground reservoirs of hot water, which can have high arsenic concentrations, into the drinking supply. Even in small amounts, this can increase arsenic concentrations to dangerous levels. James notes that these relationships are complex and non-linear, however, and additional research is needed.
Zahringer’s estimates mirror these results: Of all the well waters her lab tests in southern Colorado, about 25 percent exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contaminant level for arsenic in drinking water.
Zahringer said that some customers come to her lab on referrals from their primary care physicians trying to determine the root cause of elevated levels of heavy metals in their bloodstream. Her own well water is high in arsenic, but her filtration system thoroughly treats it before it enters her house.
“I’m in a unique situation where I’m educated and vigilant, and I have the resources to test and make sure it’s OK,” said Zahringer. “A lot of my neighbors, I know they’re just drinking it right out of the ground.”
Half of the U.S. population relies on groundwater for drinking, irrigation, industry and livestock. Much of it is pumped through public water systems, which must limit contaminants to comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, in addition to state requirements that may be more stringent. But private wells, which are the main source of drinking water for 15 percent of Americans and about a third of San Luis Valley residents, are not regulated or monitored. In effect, about 51 million Americans are responsible for monitoring the safety of their own drinking water.
In the San Luis Valley, residents are asking more questions about how their water is impacting their health, crops and cattle, Vargas said, making it easy for her to recruit some of the more than 800 private well owners involved in James’s study.
“We filled it up so fast that that just shows how much the community members wanted their wells tested,” says Vargas.
After a few months of recruiting, the study group was nearly at capacity.
Later, neighbors would stop her at the grocery store to tell her about their results: manganese, arsenic, uranium or other contaminants were often above the EPA thresholds.
Today, many residents in Vargas’s community have turned to bottled water. “They just don’t know if they can drink the water,” she said.
“As those contaminants are increasing, we are going to start to see these rural areas really can’t afford these treatment plants and mitigation for it,” said Zahringer. “We’re dealing with a lot of really small communities that are really struggling to pay for their water testing, let alone to build these new plants.”
San Luis Valley is one of the poorest rural areas of Colorado, with an estimated 21.4 percent poverty rate. Even if well users can access a water test, consistent filtration remains an economic burden.
San Luis, CO – MAY 5, 2026: Water from a natural spring pours out of a pipe in the town of San Luis in the San Luis Valley, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
San Luis, CO – MAY 5, 2026: The town of San Luis in the San Luis Valley, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
Household reverse osmosis systems can remove up to 99 percent of contaminants, including arsenic. But they are expensive—often costing thousands of dollars to install and hundreds more annually to maintain—and can waste up to 80 percent of the water that passes through them. And because the San Luis Valley has moderately to extremely hard water, compounds and metals accumulate much faster on filtration systems, requiring replacement more than twice as frequently as in areas with soft water.
“I come from a rural and impoverished community, and my community members can’t always be changing out these filters for this reverse osmosis filtration system,” Vargas said.
Researchers at Arizona State University are planning to field test a new type of filter that removes a range of heavy metals from hard water systems without losing water in hopes of providing more accessible water quality mitigation for residents. Alireza Farsad, a postdoctoral research scholar at ASU who founded AmorPH2O, the company developing the filter, expects it to be commercially available next year.
Meanwhile, Vargas and James have presented the water quality study results to local county commissioners and talked with state lawmakers about the increasing concentrations of heavy metals.
But, for now, the issue has seen little action beyond testing.
San Luis, CO – MAY 5, 2026: Shirley Romero Otero, a local activist and teacher poses for a portrait in town of San Luis, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. As an educator and activist Romero Otero has spent decades organizing for land and water rights in the San Luis Valley. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
For Shirley Romero Otero, a local educator and activist who helped implement James’s study, water quality in the San Luis Valley is an issue of environmental justice. She says the valley, home to the state’s largest native Hispanic population, is often left out of policymaking conversations.
“Those folks in Denver that make those decisions for testing and resources need to pay attention…We are part of Colorado. We should have equality when it comes to testing and finding out what the hell is really going on,” says Otero, who lives in San Luis, the state’s oldest continuously occupied town, which has fewer than 600 residents.
“Regardless of socioeconomic status, political affiliation or racial geographic areas, water is the most precious resource that we have. It is the lifeblood of every community. You don’t have water, you die. It’s that simple.”
San Luis , CO – MAY 5, 2026: An acequia flows into San Luis, Colorado on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. Acequias are traditional community-managed irrigation ditches that channel water from rivers and streams to farms and towns. (Photo by Jacob Spetzler/Special to Inside Climate News)
On April 1, 2026, the Indian Peaks Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, represented by the Native American Rights Fund, filed a Notice of Appeal and Petition for Stay with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Hearings and Appeals, Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA), challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s March 2, 2026, approval of the Pine Valley Water Supply Project.
The filing seeks review of BLM’s decision authorizing a large‑scale groundwater extraction and pipeline project in southern Utah and asks the IBLA to stay the project approvals while the appeal is pending. The Band argues that the decision violates federal law, including the National Environmental Policy Act, and unlawfully threatens the Band’s federally reserved water rights and culturally significant resources.
The Band’s former Reservation, which is on the ancestral lands of the Band, is located just a few miles west of the Pine Valley Water Supply Project’s proposed wellfield. The amount of water that the Cedar Valley Water Conservancy seeks to extract from the Pine Valley exceeds the amount of water available and will harm the Band’s water resources.
“These water resources are fundamental to our Band’s history, culture, and future,”said Chairwoman Tamra Borchardt-Slayton of the Indian Peaks Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. “Federal law is clear that the Band’s water rights must be protected, and we are asking the Interior Department to do just that.”
The Indian Peaks Band holds federally reserved water rights associated with its former reservation lands under longstanding federal law. Those rights, which predate many other uses of water in the region, remain protected today and cannot be impaired by federal agency action. The appeal asserts that BLM failed to adequately consider these rights or uphold its federal trust responsibility to Tribal Nations before approving the project.
“Federal agencies have both a legal and moral obligation to protect Tribal water rights,” said NARF Staff Attorney Tom Murphy. “This appeal seeks to ensure that those obligations are honored for the Band’s water rights.”
The appeal and petition for stay were filed pursuant to 43 C.F.R. Part 4, which governs administrative appeals of BLM decisions. If granted, the stay would preserve the status quo and prevent construction or further project commitments while IBLA considers the merits of the appeal.
Study reach in the Cliff-Gila Valley, showing the three study transect locations for this work: upstream perennial (UP), seasonally dewatered (SD) and downstream perennial (DP); major irrigation diversion sites and the approximate regions where the channel was seasonally dewatered by diversions in normal and extremely dry years. The dewatered region is magnified in the inset figure to show the position of the Fort West ditch overflow channel. USGS gaging station 09430500 is located at the upstream end of the valley. Gila River flows from north to south.
Click the link to access the research paper on the Wiley Online Library website (Ellen Soles, Martha Cooper, Laurel Saito). Here’s the abstract:
In arid regions with limited water supplies like the Colorado River basin of the southwestern United States, flow regimes and water availability are major controls on native riparian ecosystems resilience, persistence and function. In this paper, we share a case study that uses a long-term dataset of topographic, vegetation and groundwater data collected over water years 2011–2021 to demonstrate how secondary channels formed during high flow events enhance groundwater-dependent riparian ecosystem resilience, favouring native over non-native vegetation. In the Cliff-Gila Valley of southwestern New Mexico, channelization and levee construction between 1940 and 1980 profoundly altered the floodplain and channel of the Gila River, a Colorado River tributary. During subsequent large floods, river anastomosis (branching) left a network of secondary channels across the floodplain. Long-term data show that these channels improve vegetation access to groundwater, facilitating regeneration and expansion of diverse native groundwater-dependent vegetation. Data also show that even the lowest perennial flows (0.4–0.6 m3 s−1) sustain rates of groundwater recession favourable to successful native riparian seedling recruitment in the topographic lows created by secondary channels. Alluvial groundwater recedes more sharply in a reach seasonally dewatered by irrigation diversions, but seepage through diversion structures and unlined ditches maintains shallow groundwater levels. This case study demonstrates that even in arid regions, robust native groundwater-dependent riparian areas can co-exist with human water demands when large floods can move across broad floodplains and create topographic complexity. [ed. emphasis mine] The study also highlights the importance of long-term datasets for documenting ecosystem resilience to floods, drought and ongoing climate change.
The Pinto Valley Mine, processing area, and tailings depositories in the Globe-Miami mining district. Pinto Creek is to the viewer’s left. Source: Google Earth.
Pinto Creek used to run year-round. Bubbling up from springs and occasional snowmelt in the Pinal Mountains of central Arizona, it nourished a riparian ribbon of green through the rocky, arid landscape, shaded by sycamores, willows, and alders, until it empties into Theodore Roosevelt Reservoir. Gila topminnow, longfin dace, and roundtail chub plied its waters. Even during drought years it reliably delivered at least 1,000 acre-feet of water at its Magma Weir gauge, and in wet times as much as 39,000 acre-feet annually might flow along its bed.
Then, a little over a decade ago, something odd happened. The flow volume plummeted from 4,147 acre-feet in 2013 to just 482 acre-feet in 2014, and ever since the once year-round stream has run only intermittently and at similarly diminished levels. Towering trees along its banks have died and toppled, and the green swath has lost much of its color. It’s possible that long-term aridification simply caught up with the little stream, as 2013 was a dry year. But there’s a more likely culprit: In October 2013 Capstone Copper Corporation acquired the nearby Pinto Valley Mine, a massive, open pit copper and molybdenum operation that had just emerged from several years of dormancy, and resumed heavy groundwater pumping from its Peak Well field.
While correlation is not causation, the Tonto National Forest saw enough evidence of a link to ask the Arizona Department of Water Resources to put the brakes on the mine’s groundwater pumping. Failing to do so would harm the Forest Service’s instream Pinto Creek water right — along with the downstream riparian ecosystem it supports. The state did nothing and the Forest Service dropped the complaint and approved the mine’s expansion in 2021.
The Land Desk has often looked at mining’s effects on water quality.1 But the Pinto Valley case highlights the fact that mines can also affect water quantity — and vice versa, as water scarcity can limit mining operations. It warrants a closer look during these water-constrained times, when water consumption by everything from data centers to golf courses to alfalfa farms has attracted more scrutiny.
A mining operation goes through water in two ways. First, the mine itself, whether underground or open pit, can act like a well. Dig a hole into the earth, and groundwater will flow into it. While gravity can drain this flow in underground mines burrowed into the sides of mountains, the water must be pumped from open pit and underground shaft mines, a practice known as dewatering, which can take large amounts of water out of the aquifer. Capstone says it pumps about 400 gallons per minute from its pit.
This draws down groundwater wells and can dry up springs and diminish streamflows. Without dewatering, you end up with something like the Berkeley Pit, which is now a 50-billion-gallon, acidic and contaminated lake that’s about 900 feet deep. Because this water is usually contaminated by acid mine drainage, it often can’t be reused without some treatment, and dumping it into a stream or back into the aquifer is also problematic.
A mining operation also requires significant amounts of water for dust control, mineral processing, slurrying, and other uses. Capstone’s 2024 sustainability report says its Pinto Valley Mine withdrew a total of 8,932 acre-feet — or 2.9 billion gallons — of groundwater and surface water.
West Drought Monitor map March 24, 2026.
The company has not released its 2025 data yet, but in financial filings reported that the Pinto Valley Mine had to slash mine production and mill throughput by about 37% in 2025 due to “unplanned downtime driven by water constraints due to the drought conditions in central Arizona.” The company is trying to address this by reducing per-ton water usage by 20%, but that may not be enough given the extreme drought conditions spreading across the Southwest.
A central clearing house or database of mine water use in Arizona does not exist, but various sources can help paint a picture of how much water the mining industry in the state uses (I’ll look at other states in a future dispatch).
Safford Mine Complex: Consumptive water use increased from 3,624 acre-feet per year to 6,099 af/yr following a 2020 expansion, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources 2025 Safford supply and demand report. Municipal uses in the Safford Basin use about 6,000 acre-feet per year, while agriculture — primarily for cotton, pecans, pistachios, and alfalfa — consumes about 138,301 acre-feet annually.
Freeport-McMoran reported to the AZDWR that in 2023 it withdrew 22,490 acre-feet of groundwater for its Sierrita Mine south of Tucson. The cost? $3.50 per acre-foot. That’s about one penny for 1,000 gallons of water.
Freeport-McMoran’s Morenci Mine, one of the nation’s largest copper operations, uses about 14,000 acre-feet per year on average, according to the AZDWR. The mine imports much of its water from the Black River, a tributary to the Salt River, under a lease with the San Carlos Apache Tribe for a portion of its Central Arizona Project allocation.
The following chart is from an Arizona Department of Mines & Mineral Resources report from 2010 by Dr. Madan M. Singh. It’s a nice, comprehensive look at how much water the state’s major mines used in the preceding years. Current use is likely about the same, except that now there are additional mines (the Pinto Valley Mine was not operational in 2010, which is why it’s missing).
Source: Water Consumption at Copper Mines in Arizona, by Dr. Madan M. Singh, 2010.
So, according to Singh’s report, Arizona’s largest mines used a total of 55,659 acre-feet per year during the 2000s. Add the Pinto Valley Mine (8,932 af) and Safford Mine (6,099 af) and you get about 70,600 acre-feet per year, or 23 billion gallons annually.
That’s a lot of water, but it pales in comparison to many other uses. Arizona alfalfa, alone, probably uses more than 1.5 million acre-feet (based on 6 af water/acre over 280,000 planted acres, according to the USDA). “Turf facilities” guzzled some 157,000 af in 2024, according to the AZDWR, while power generation used 86,053 acre-feet. TSMC’s north Phoenix chip manufacturing facility is projected initially to use about 19,000 acre-feet of water annually.
In other words, when Arizona’s water cops come looking for the big water users, the mines probably won’t be at the top of their list. Since most mines rely on groundwater, Colorado River water shortages may not affect them too much, at least in the near future.
Still, some mines, including ASARCO’s Mission Mine, do pull some water from the Central Arizona Project, which could be hit hard by the Colorado River crisis as early as next year. And, as the Pinto Valley Mine situation last year demonstrated, continued aridification and relentless pumping could lead to groundwater shortages at the mines, forcing them to reduce production even as they work to become more water-efficient.
Prospective mines could face serious challenges, as well. Resolution Copper estimates its contentious Oak Flat mine would use between 15,700 acre-feet and 20,000 acre-feet per year. Others, however, say this is too low; one study says it would likely be closer to 50,000 acre-feet annually, based on the per-ton water consumption for copper at other Arizona mines. Resolution has said it would rely at least partly on Central Arizona Project water, the security of which grows shakier with each passing year. It’s hard to imagine that there will be any water available for new users by the time that mine is up and running if current climatic trends continue.
That may be what Faraday Copper had in mind when it signed a letter of intent to acquire the San Manuel copper mine in southern Arizona. While Faraday said it would be reopening the long-shuttered operation and combining it with its proposed Copper Creek venture nearby, it may also be eying the substantial water rights BHP Copper holds for the San Manuel Mine. Those could come in handy if and when the Copper Creek facility is developed.
Regardless, however, one thing is clear: Any new mine is going to rob the springs, the streams, and the wildlife and communities that rely on them of at least some of their precious water. [ed. emphasis mine]
1 In 1993, when the Pinto Valley Mine was operated by Magma Copper, a large rain event “overwhelmed the mine’s water management capabilities,” causing the reservoir to overflow the tailings pile, tear out a levee, and carry hundreds of tons of tailings and millions of gallons of contaminated water into Pinto Creek. The creek was found to have low pH (high acidity) and high concentrations of cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, and zinc, resulting in significant fish die off, specifically of desert or Gila Mountain suckers.
Lamar Fields, a tribal member, gathers blue corn to sample. With increasingly unreliable access to water, flexible crops like corn have become integral to the farm’s survival. To increase revenue, the farm built a mill to process crops like blue corn. Caitlin Ochs
For a century, the Colorado River has been managed in pieces. Legally and politically, it’s divided into two basins, with each state and community focused on securing its respective water supply. But that is not how a river functions. The Colorado River is an interconnected system, sustained by Rocky Mountain snowpack, rainfall and groundwater.
It is fragile, and under increasing stress. Two and a half decades into this century, the river that built the modern West has 20% less water flowing through it than it did on average in the last century. As heat and drought intensify, so do the stakes: Failure to recognize the severity of changing conditions, managing the river in parts without considering needs of the whole and inadequate planning for long-term shortages put the future of all the basin at risk.
For the last five years, I have documented how the Colorado River Basin’s farmers are navigating water shortages and uncertainty amid deep political divisions about the river’s future. This project, called American Adaptation, examines three agricultural communities whose survival is threatened by a shrinking river, examining what happens to people when policies and water management struggle to keep pace with a changing climate.
In one of the river’s northern watersheds, the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise is adapting its management as the water it relies on becomes less dependable. In central Arizona, farmers have returned to well water after becoming the first communities to have their supply cut off completely due to the basin-wide shortage. And in California’s Imperial Valley, the farms that receive the river’s largest water allocation are under growing pressure to share the burden of shortage.
Together, their stories illustrate the stakes — and rising tensions — of the current negotiations over the river’s future management. States, tribal nations and the federal government are reckoning with 100 years of developing water infrastructure based on assumptions of continuing abundance and expansion. These ideas — and the legal frameworks built around them — are colliding with the reality of a river with much less water than expected, raising complex questions about what the Colorado can sustain, how its water should be used and who will shoulder the necessary cuts.
The Dolores Project, located in the Dolores and San Juan River Basins in southwestern Colorado, develops water from the Dolores River for irrigation, municipal and industrial users, recreation, fish and wildlife, and hydroelectric power. It also provides vital water to the Dove Creek area, central Montezuma Valley area, and to the Towaoc area on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation. McPhee Dam and Reservoir is the principle storage feature of the Dolores Project which includes a system of canals, tunnels, and laterals to deliver water to over 61,000 acres of land. Photo credit: Kenny Browning/Flickr
When Water is Uncertain
On 7,600 acres painstakingly carved out of desert brush, the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch, a tribally run enterprise of the Ute Mountain Ute nation, produces cattle, alfalfa, corn and wheat. Its operations are led by Simon Martinez, Eric Whyte and Michael Vicente, who have deep personal connections to the enterprise. Martinez helped build the dam for the reservoir that provides the farm’s water, while Whyte cleared desert brush and mapped where the fields would go. Vicente, as the lead irrigator, can account for every drop of water that’s used.
In good years, the farm’s circular fields flourish in brilliant green bursts. But the past decade has brought increasingly erratic access to water. Each spring, the local irrigation district announces potential cuts after assessing snowpack runoff and the available water stored in nearby McPhee Reservoir. In 2021, the farm received just 10% of its water allocation and was forced to leave 6,000 acres unplanted. In 2022, 30% of the water came in, and last year, 34%, which the farm was able to increase to 50% after leasing shares from other water users.
To survive, they adapted. Every year, the farm’s leadership creates numerous plans for different water scenarios. They have applied for grants, implemented low-flow nozzles in the irrigation system, installed small-scale hydropower generators. They joined a Land Institute pilot program to test crops that use less water.
On a day in late May [2022] when wildfire smoke obscured the throat of an ancient volcano called Shiprock in the distance, I visited the Ute Mountain Ute farming and ranching operation in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
“We still haven’t thrown the towel in,” said Simon Martinez. “Nobody ever thought, when the reservoir was built, that there wouldn’t be enough water to supply the farms that have been put out here. It’s not only us; it’s happening all through southwestern Colorado.”
Low-water years leave their mark. Brush and scrub quickly reclaim unplanted fields. Employees laid off during dry years are hard to replace. During consecutive years of heat and drought, farms that rely on the basin’s many smaller reservoirs become even more vulnerable. As the number of dry years grows, it is increasingly uncertain how much shortage the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise can sustain in the long term, despite the farmers’ determination to adapt.
“We still haven’t thrown the towel in,” said Simon Martinez. “Nobody ever thought, when the reservoir was built, that there wouldn’t be enough water to supply the farms that have been put out here. It’s not only us; it’s happening all through southwestern Colorado.”
Low-water years leave their mark. Brush and scrub quickly reclaim unplanted fields. Employees laid off during dry years are hard to replace. During consecutive years of heat and drought, farms that rely on the basin’s many smaller reservoirs become even more vulnerable. As the number of dry years grows, it is increasingly uncertain how much shortage the Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise can sustain in the long term, despite the farmers’ determination to adapt.
Arizona Rivers Map via Geology.com.
When Water Disappears
Hundreds of miles south, Will Clemens manages his uncle’s 2,100-acre farm, cultivating cotton, alfalfa and Bermuda grass. Farmers in this region operate with a year-round growing season punctuated by dust storms and summer monsoons.
In this intense environment, wells were the only water source before Colorado River water became available. Until the 1980s, farmers drew their water from deep underground, contributing to fissures, land subsidence and drying wells. The completion of the Central Arizona Project alleviated the pressure, delivering farmers cheap imported river water that was classified as lower priority and the first to be cut during shortages. Deliveries continued until 2022, when low water levels at Lake Mead triggered federal cuts, and central Arizona farms lost access. In response, Clemens’ local irrigation district drilled a dozen new wells.
Without the river, Clemens and his neighbors have seen the canals’ water drop. At times, their irrigation district will cut off water before a field is fully irrigated, or struggle to keep up with the farmers’ water orders. More pressure on groundwater raises questions about what is sustainable in the future. Large parts of Arizona have no legal limits on pumping water from the ground. Even areas with legally protected groundwater have failed to meet a safe yield goal set in the 1980s to balance groundwater taken each year with naturally replenished water by 2025.
Some central Arizona farmers are selling or leasing their farmland to solar developers, as water dwindles and energy demands grow. Miles up the road from where Clemens farms, sleek black grids of solar panels gleam next to green alfalfa. For years, Arnold Burruel, Clemens’ uncle, has been in talks with a solar developer about selling the land.
“I’ve been asking myself: Does America really need to be in the agriculture industry?” Burruel said. “America is not totally enamored with agriculture when it comes to pesticides, herbicides, groundwater, GMOs — all of the above. We are at a crossroads. Are we going to continue to farm the way we are farming and heavily subsidize growers that can’t make ends meet? Society has to come up with an answer.”
California uses the most water of any state in the Colorado River Basin, partly for its cities along the Pacific Coast but a substantial amount for agriculture in the Imperial Valley. Photo December 2015/Allen Best
When Water is Abundant
From above,the All American Canal forms a stark blue line, slicing through the Algodones Dunes. One of the world’s largest canals, it is fed by the Imperial Dam, which diverts up to 6.8 million gallons of water each minute from the Colorado River.
This is the only water source for 500,000 acres of Imperial Valley farmland. Farms here are protected by senior rights at low risk of cuts and receive regular releases from Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. During summer months, the sun looms over the valley’s dusty, flat horizon, and temperatures often climb above 100 degrees. Despite decades of drought and growing water shortage, water has flowed uninterrupted to the Imperial Valley.
Fourth-generation family farmer Jack Vessey, who oversees a 10,000-acre produce operation, knows the canal system well. Growing up, he searched for places to swim on hot summer days.
“We take water seriously,” said Vessey, who added sprinkler systems, which are more efficient than flood irrigation. In recent years, the Imperial Irrigation District joined other communities throughout the basin in voluntarily cutting water through 2026 in exchange for federal funds. The district’s compensation was several hundred dollars more per acre-foot than other participants. But as funding set aside for Western water by the Biden administration is drawn down, it is unclear how much will be available to pay for future voluntary cuts.
Vessey is aware of the growing pressure on the river and the valley’s farms, but he emphasizes that the community has helped with shortages and is protective of its water.
“I have a responsibility for the people who work here to make sure we survive,” he said. “I have to be a little selfish at some point and say, ‘Keep giving us the water we need.’ I know we’ve got to do our part, but I can look in the mirror and say we are not wasting water, we are growing food people need.
“If it wasn’t for that canal coming off the Colorado River, this would just turn to desert.”
This project was supported by the National Geographic Society’s World Freshwater Initiative.
An early start to the irrigation season in the San Luis Valley is coinciding with the arrival of spring’s first heat wave.
Craig Cotten, Division 3 engineer for Colorado Division of Water Resources, announced a staged approach to opening the water year for producers in the Upper Rio Grande Basin.
The water season will begin on March 16 for surface and groundwater irrigators in the Conejos River area (Water District 22), the Culebra Creek area (Water District 24), the Trinchera Creek area (Water District 35) and the La Jara Creek area. The irrigation season will begin on March 23 for all surface and groundwater irrigation structures in the Rio Grande area (Water District 20).
“I decided to start the irrigation season earlier than the presumptive April 1 date for many valley areas due to the very warm, dry spring and the low current snowpack. We are already seeing an increase in streamflows due to the warmer weather, and it is beneficial for water rights holders to be able to use this water while it is available,” Cotten said in an email exchange with Alamosa Citizen. [ed. emphasis mine]
On the Conejos River and Rio Grande, another reason is that Colorado is projected to meet its compact obligation without needing to deliver water during the irrigation season, Cotten said.
“In order to avoid a significant over-delivery of water to the stateline, I have decided to begin the irrigation season on these rivers prior to April 1.”
The coming week of March 16 could see record-setting temperatures to the official start of spring. The forecast calls for midweek daytime highs in the low- to mid-70s. March has seen 21 of its 31 days establish new record high temperatures since 2004, a heating trend that accentuates the warming winters and spring months.
This March opened with back-to-back days of new daily high records. More heat records could fall in the coming week. The irrigation season can’t open soon enough.
Upper Rio Grande SWE March 14, 2026. Note the early melt-out.
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.
Corn in Baca County. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
February 28, 2026
Study being completed will help guide decisions about continued mining of groundwater in the Springfield area. Ogallala will be gone within 20 years, but deepest formation could last a century.
Before center-pivot sprinklers powered by rural electrification in the mid-20th century, farmers in Colorado’s southeastern corner necessarily relied upon what came from the sky for water. HIgh-capacity pumps, first used in the Springfield area during the late 1940s allowed the farmers to go underground, to more lucratively plumb a series of aquifers and deliver far-higher crop yields.
The Ogallala — also called the High Plains — is the water-bearing geologic formation nearest the surface, followed by the more water-rich Dakota and Cheyenne formations. Underlying both is a far larger reservoir yet called the Dockum Group.
How long will that water last? A new report commissioned by Colorado, still in rough draft stage, finds that a little more than 2,000 wells mine these formations in Baca County and a portion of adjoining Prowers County. The vast majority of the water, 97%, irrigates alfalfa, corn and other crops. Remaining water goes to hog farms, stock ponds, and domestic wells for farmhouses as well as municipal supplies in Springfield and several even smaller towns.
An average 157,000 acre-feet were mined annually from these subterranean deposits from 2020 through 2024. To put that into perspective Denver Water delivers an average 232,000 acre-feet to the 1.5 million residents in Denver and adjoining jurisdictions.
The answer to the question about how long the water will last has not been fully answered. At current rates of pumping, the Ogallala will be gone by 2045, according to this draft study. The next two deeper formations, Dakota and Cheyenne, have been depleted more rapidly but have more water.
The deepest water, in the Dockum, could last a century or more. It depends partly on the quality of water extracted at greater depths. There seem to be some unknowns about this. Cost of extraction is also a factor. Deeper wells cost more money to drill. It also takes more electricity to pump water to the surface. Would crop prices justify the added expenses?
Pueblo can be seen in the upper left-hand corner of this map, and the southern high plains district is designated by lavender.
With those asterisks in mind, the study estimates nearly 33 million acre-feet of water can be economically recovered from the four water-bearing geologic formations in that southern high plains groundwater district.
On average, Colorado consumes 5.3 million acre-feet of water per year, although some of that water gets reused. Think of runoff from farm fields or treated sewage that reenters streams and rivers. When that is added up, Colorado’s total diversions hit 15.3 million acre-feet. This southern plains basin bordering Kansas and Oklahoma is just a small part of Colorado.
Unlike Colorado’s rivers, which are mostly derived from snowmelt and rainfall, the groundwater recharges but much more slowly than the extraction. This study estimates an annual recharge of 32,000 acre-feet compared to the 157,000 acre-feet withdrawn.
Apart from the river valleys, dryland areas of southeastern Colorado were among the last places homesteaded in Colorado. First came the settlements of Denver, Colorado Springs, and Boulder with their access to water from the mountain streams and rivers and proximity to the mountain mining camps. Very quickly, water was diverted to create farms.
Homesteading of the high plains began about 30 years later. By then, the buffalo were gone, and the last battle with Native Americas had occurred in 1869 at Summit Springs. Settlement near Springfield, Walsh and other Baca County towns continued through the 1920s. Peak settlement occurred in about 1930, before the weather turned hotter and drier and the skies filled with dust. Baca County during the decade of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression lost more than a third of its population.
Baca County since then has continued to lose population as farm sizes have grown. While groundwater extraction has provided a modicum of prosperity, the county ranked 57th among Colorado’s 64 counties in per-capita income as of 2022.
The hydrogeology that is believed to exist in this basin can be seen in this west-east profile. Some formations, including the Graneros and Kiowa shales, contain no water and act as barriers.
The Colorado Ground Water Commission — created in 1965, before groundwater became a common word — has legal purview over extraction. The commission can set limits on the allowable rate of depletion.
The southern high plains district limits new wells within a half-mile of existing high-capacity wells. But it is still possible to get a permit for a new well. That is in dispute. Some think the basin needs to be “closed,” to bar future wells and hence prolong the life of the aquifers.
This groundwater basin in southeastern Colorado is very different from the Republican River Basin of northeastern Colorado in one crucial way. The aquifers do not deliver water to a river subject to a multi-state compact. The Cimarron River nicks the extreme corner of Colorado, but testimony to the poverty of water in this “river” is provided by those traveling to Santa Fe in the 19th century. Nearly all followed the Arkansas River, not the Cimarron, despite the latter route being much shorter.
In contrast, a compact struck in 1943 governs flows in the Republican River. It arises far from Colorado’s mountains and is instead nourished by water seeping out of the Ogallala in places like Holyoke and Yuma and Burlington. Mining of groundwater in the basin to grow crops reduced flows to the extent that Kansas sued Nebraska, which in turn sued Colorado. Now, farmers in the basin are trying to reduce their withdrawals by voluntary retirement of 25,000 acres from active irrigation. The 19,000-plus acres retired so far have been induced by financial incentives that tap federal but also state funds.
Without a compact to force reduced pumping in southeastern Colorado, the state can adopt its own rules.
Residents of southeastern Colorado appear to be somewhat conflicted about whether new rules governing withdrawal are needed and what they should look like. Baca County’s Herald Plainsman in March 2023 reported on a “highly charged” meeting in Springfield called by the state’s Division of Water Resources. Tracy Kosloff, the deputy state engineer, explained that a group from the community had requested a rule change in the previous year.
Their intent was to block the issuance of new permits for high-capacity wells. Kosloff asked for the community to come to a consensus, if possible.
No consensus was evident at that meeting. at least according to the Plainsman Herald report. One speaker said that “without high-capacity wells, there will be no people left in the county.” Tim Hume, who is the region’s representative on the Colorado Ground Water Commission, said that without irrigation, two thirds of the people in the room would not be there. He also noted that one of the 67 monitoring wells had actually shown higher levels in the previous 20 years. But another speaker, Jack Dawson, said to keep irrigation going for quite some time, there was a real need to start conserving water.
With aid of a special $250,000 appropriation by state legislators, the Division of Water Resources commissioned a study by Wilson Water Group and HRS Water Consultants to provide new estimates of how much water remains that can be recovered economically. These consultants are also creating a planning tool to allow groundwater basin users to evaluate future groundwater use scenarios.
At a meeting scheduled for March 16 in Springfield, the consultants hope to glean insight from farmers about what constitutes economically viable extraction. How deep into the Dockum can they go and hope to be able to make money? How much water treatment is required and feasible? The big question is whether new rules will be needed to limit extraction.
Also to be determined are the goals under future conditions. How fast should the groundwater be mined? Or should there be limits beyond those few already in place? The consultants are to submit a final report before the end of 2026.
What comes of this new knowledge? It’s possible — maybe even likely — that some residents of southeastern Colorado will then file a petition with the Colorado Ground Water Commission to adopt new rules restricting extraction. This study sets up the facts for helping make that decision of whether to do so, and if so, how.
The draft study says a range of viewpoints can be expected. Some stakeholders will favor the status quo. Others might favor restricted pumping from specific aquifers or even from new wells, conceivably all wells. Expansion of irrigated acreage cold be curbed — although in some cases land has been taken out of irrigated production already.
Also relevant is the shifting climate. The study mentions climate change just once, noting that hotter or drier conditions may occur in 50 years, affecting crop irrigation requirements. Already, however, the hotter temperatures of southeastern Colorado cause crops to need a third more water than those grown 200 miles north.
The most direct parallel to a ban on new wells in southeastern Colorado would be a similar ban on new wells in the upper Crow Creek drainage northeast of Greeley near the Wyoming border. The alluvial, Fan and White River aquifers within the designated basin were declared over-appropriated effective April 14, 2017.
Hydrogeology of Colorado’s southeastern corner has been studied several times. First was a studyby the U.S. Geological Survey in conjunction with the Colorado Water Conservation Board completed in 1954. It recorded springs and creeks and pumping from wells for house and towns and stock ponds, with some of the records gleaned by New Deal workers in the 1930s. It made no attempt to quantify groundwater storage volume. Aquifer mining was non-existent in that area as high-capacity pumps had been created less than a decade before.
A 1967 study by R.W. Beck and Associates did attempt to quantify the groundwater resources. It estimated that groundwater extraction of 13,200 acre-feet in 1950 had grown by 1964 to 118,700 acre-feet.
The study projected that groundwater extraction in the basin would grow to 276,000 acre-feet by 2017. It is somewhat less. That study also projected that population of Baca County would grow to 4,700 by 2017. Actually, it declined to 3,500.
That study made no mention of the Dockum, the formation now believed to have the most water, based on well logs and other lines of evidence.
That study also recommended creation of a groundwater management district to assist in “development” of the extraction. That district was created.
Southeastern Colorado’s groundwater was also part of a six-state study of the Ogallala Aquifer in 1983.
Most recent were two related reports in 2002 by McLaughlin Water Engineers. This new study differs in a substantial way in that it uses data deeper than the 200 feet of the Dockum and hence increases the volume of water that may potentially be extracted. It also employs newer tools to figure out what exactly is going on down there in the dark, although exactly how much sharper insight this report delivers is not yet clear.
The Division of Water Resources also has conducted three studies in this century that define a steady but not dramatic decline of the aquifers in southeastern Colorado.
Helen Silver has helped lead a statewide effort to improve soil-moisture monitoring and to make data widely available. She is co-director of the Integrated Rocky Mountain-region Innovation Center for Healthy Soils. Photography: Matthew Staver.
CSU scientists have installed dozens of new soil moisture monitoring sensors across the state, increasing capacity by 60%, and have received additional funding to install more sensors this year.
Researchers have also launched a new web-based platform that allows anyone to view both historical and real-time statewide soil moisture data.
Interest in soil moisture is skyrocketing, and the data is useful to farmers, foresters, scientists, water managers, weather forecasters and others.
Colorado State University is leading an effort to track a critical but unseen resource in Colorado: water stored in soil. This statewide effort to enhance soil moisture monitoring is producing important insights that can help everyone from farmers to weather forecasters better predict water supplies, understand the risk of wildfire and assess the impacts of drought.
“Soil moisture is one of the most under-monitored natural resources, yet it is a foundational driver of ecosystem services and risk management,” said Helen Silver, co-director of CSU’s Integrated Rocky Mountain-region Innovation Center for Healthy Soils, or IN-RICHES, which is helping to lead the work. “Because soil moisture data are both scarce and difficult to access, this project addresses both challenges by expanding monitoring infrastructure while making the resulting information openly available and usable for land managers, policymakers and researchers.”
In Colorado, estimates suggest that the amount of water stored in soils is more than twice the amount that flows on the surface. As the Western U.S. faces growing challenges with water availability due to drought, climate variability and competing demands, there is heightened interest in better understanding and monitoring this critical resource. The work is being done in collaboration with the Colorado Climate Center and the CSU’s Department of Computer Sciences.
Historically, soil moisture monitoring in Colorado has been concentrated in high-elevation mountains, with croplands and forests underrepresented. This imbalance has limited the ability of land managers and others to fully understand soil-water dynamics across areas where water scarcity, wildfire risk and agricultural drought are most acute.
Aimed at filling this critical gap, the federal government allocated $1.45 million to CSU in spring 2023 to lead an expansion of the number of in-ground sensors, create a publicly available platform to increase access and expand other precipitation monitoring efforts. From May to October, a team of researchers installed 64 additional sensors at underrepresented sites across the state, expanding Colorado’s monitoring capacity by roughly 60%. This project was known as the Colorado Open Soil Moisture Monitoring Network. CSU recently received additional funding from the state’s Colorado Water Plan Grant Program to install another 15 sensors this year.
An above-ground apparatus is connected to below-ground moisture sensors that help scientists understand the amount of water stored in soils. Photo credit: Colorado State University
Beneficial collaboration
There are several entities monitoring soil moisture in Colorado, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which operates snow telemetry, or SNOTEL, sites; the Roaring Fork Observation Network, supported by the nonprofit Aspen Global Change Institute; and the CSU-run Colorado Agricultural Meteorological Network, which operates automated weather stations capable of tracking soil moisture.
Quench is the first centralized tool for viewing all available soil moisture data, including historic data, in Colorado.
“The integration of soil moisture data into a single platform is a monumental advancement,” said Megan Machmuller, IN-RICHES co-director and a research scientist in CSU’s Soil and Crop Sciences Department. “This publicly accessible tool will streamline comparisons across the state, providing critical insights for managing water resources and proactively addressing risks.”
Expanding the soil moisture network and launching Quench involved input from dozens of water managers, farmers and ranchers, researchers, and state and local officials. Elise Osenga, who works for the University of Colorado in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Integrated Drought Information System, said she appreciated the collaboration. “There’s so much interest in soil moisture, especially in the Western U.S., because of recent intense droughts,” Osenga said. “But a lot of people aren’t really sure where to find that information.”
She added, “This work is beneficial not just for the information itself, but also as a model of collaboration; CSU did a great job of reaching out to different groups to develop this platform.”
Eric Schroder, a soil scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, is looking forward to sharing Quench with Forest Service personnel in Colorado. “The ability to easily access real-time soil moisture data from multiple partner networks and explore historical trends to see how conditions are changing over time will support and improve our ongoing management of USFS lands in Colorado,” Schroder said.
Schroder emphasized that the Forest Service relies on soil moisture data to support disaster preparedness and to inform ongoing land and water management operations, including fire prediction, controlled burn operations, drought forecasting, landslide risk, flood risk, reforestation initiatives and timber management.
In addition to installing new sensors, the CSU team plans to continue to upgrade Quench, eventually integrating satellite-based soil moisture data and other features.
Helen Silver | Co-director of IN-RICHES
Soil science • Soil water dynamics • Drought and water resilience • Soil data systems
Helen Silver is an environmental policy expert focused on soil health, water and sustainable food systems in the Rocky Mountain West, bridging science, law and data to support farmers, land managers and climate resilience efforts.
The Quench Open Knowledge Platform brings data collected from in-situ soil moisture sensing stations across a range of monitoring networks into one easy-to-use platform. Users can view current conditions, compare trends across regions, and access satellite-derived soil moisture data.
Spud Valley Energy Center’ would be built on 2,578 acres near Mosca and Hooper; it would ultimately develop 600 megawatts of solar energy and 600 megawatts of battery storage.
‘Spud Valley Energy Center’ would be the largest ever conceived for the Valley, and one of Colorado’s biggest solar projects, at a time when ag producers are being forced to reduce their footprint to save on the water
It is an agricultural corridor in Alamosa County that is drying faster and seeing more buy-and-dry deals than other parts of the San Luis Valley due to the scarcity of water from the Upper Rio Grande Basin.
On 2,578 acres of private land off State Highway 17 leading into Mosca and Hooper, a number of families are entering into contracts with NextEra Energy and its bid to ultimately develop 600 megawatts of solar energy and 600 megawatts of battery storage on the fields that once grew crops.
The solar project, dubbed the “Spud Valley Energy Center,” is the largest ever conceived for the Valley and one of Colorado’s biggest. It comes at a time when ag producers in Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District are being forced to reduce their footprint to save on the water. Solar development then, in a Valley plentiful with sunshine, becomes an alternative for the land and a company like NextEra Energy has the means to make it happen.
“A number of the landowners we’re working with have already either retired their wells or they’re participating in CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program) to rest their lands for longterm,” said Evan Reimondo, the project manager, in an interview with Alamosa Citizen.
Spud Valley is perfectly sited when you consider the other solar development already in the corridor, the Public Service Co. substation near the project site, the water conservation subdistrict it is in, and Alamosa County’s own interests for solar development through its 1041 permit process.
A different solar development proposal — Korsail Energy’s Cornflower Solar project — had its permit application denied by the county commissioners last year after it met a headwind of resistance from locals concerned about the location of the project that was within a migratory range of sensitive wildlife areas in west Alamosa County.
Korsail was seeking to build 90 megawatts of solar and 80 megawatts of battery storage on 986 acres, but was doomed because of the location it selected. NextEra Energy’s Spud Valley doesn’t seem to carry that burden with its location, and at 600 megawatts puts the Valley on the map for solar generation to support Colorado’s goal of a state power grid built on 80 percent renewable energy by 2030.
“Colorado’s demand for electricity is going to keep growing as the population grows and technology develops and all of those things,” said Reimondo, Spud Valley’s project manager. “So we’re preparing for the future when we over-permit. By permitting for 600, it gives us that future flexibility.”
The plan is to build an initial 200 megawatts of solar and 200 megawatts of battery storage, and then stage to 600 megawatts of each from there. The transmission bottleneck — bringing power in and out of San Luis Valley — presents the biggest challenge.
“As the grid is built out, as network upgrades are completed in the future, new (transmission) lines are built, and we’ll be ready to take advantage of that,” Reimondo says.
Alamosa County is currently reviewing NextEra Energy’s 1041 permit application and eventually will hold public hearings at the county planning level and then before the county commissioners.
Reimondo says the company hopes to begin construction in 2027, with the first 200 megawatts of solar and battery storage built and tied into the neighboring Public Service Co. substation by the end of 2029.
Division engineer Craig Cotten, left, and Pat McDermott of the Colorado Division of Water Resources, deliver the state water resources report on the final day of the 2026 Southern Rocky Mountain Ag Conference. Credit: The Citizen
An unconfined aquifer that is getting “worse and worse,” not better.
Such is the reality of the situation for the Upper Rio Grande Basin and warnings given to the San Luis Valley farming and ranching community on the final day of the 2026 Southern Rocky Mountain Ag Conference.
If you’re a praying sort, it isn’t too early in 2026 to fold your hands together toward the heavens. If not, a good wish or two would be fine as well.
The outlook is that dire. Except for the hope that a changing weather pattern from La Niña to El Niño at some point this year will deliver the goods and avoid even more of a collapse.
“We do anticipate at this moment, at this date that it’s going to be a poor runoff in 2026,” said Pat McDermott of the Colorado Division of Water Resources. It is customary for him and state division engineer Craig Cotten to provide a look back at the recent water year and a look ahead to the next spring runoff.
McDermott typically attempts a positive spin for the large audience that fills the main conference room at the Outcalt Center of the Ski Hi Complex in anticipation of the state water resources report. He did his best by pointing to a rosier outlook in the 2026 Farmer’s Almanac, the last annual edition.
It is the state, after all, that governs groundwater pumping in the San Luis Valley and has metrics Valley farmers are required to meet to stay in business. One is the recovery of the unconfined aquifer through buy-and-dry and reduced groundwater pumping strategies.
“It just kind of gets worse and worse every year that we look at it,” said Cotten in referencing the storage levels of the Upper Rio Grande’s unconfined aquifer and the greater level of recovery efforts crop producers in Subdistrict 1 are facing as a result.
“Unfortunately it’s going in the wrong direction and it has been for quite some time here,” Cotten said in referencing the latest five-year average for storage.
THE NUMBERS
Rio Grande 2025
493,000 acre-feet – Annual index flow or 80 percent of long-term average past 30 years
125,000 acre-feet – Obligation to New Mexico and Texas under Rio Grande Compact
Rio Grande saw an increase of 95,000 acre-feet due to October 2025 rain.
Conejos River 2025
205,000 acre-feet – Annual index flow or 68 percent of the long-term average of 300,000 acre-feet
46,900 acre-feet – Obligation to New Mexico and Texas
Conejos River saw an increase of 15,000 acre-feet due to October 2025 rain.
February’s current conditions
Statewide snowpack: 55 percent of median
Upper Rio Grande snowpack: 48 percent of median
Warmest December on record for nine western states based on 131 years of temperature data.
Nathan Coombs and Heather Dutton, both key players in the water conservation world locally and at the state level, gave further explanation on the changing weather patterns that are impacting the basin and the amount of water available for irrigation.
Coombs pointed to the problem of overnight temperatures in the late fall and winter months, and the fact the Valley just isn’t getting the sub-zero temperatures it used to.
Look at December 2025, which saw an average daily low for the month of 11 degrees – double digits overnight – when the normal low for December is 0.8 degrees. January of this year had an average daily low of 4 degrees instead of the -1 that is a normal overnight low temperature for the month. It would have been higher than 4 degrees were it not for sub-zero overnight lows in 5 of the last 7 nights of January.
“We’re not sunburning that much harder, we’re just losing the cold,” Coombs said to his fellow farmers.
The timing of when the moisture comes is off, too. Look at the past two water years – 2024 and 2025 – when heavy rains in October came through and added to the total overall amount of water in the Rio Grande and Conejos River systems.
Too late to help irrigators, but good enough to help the amount of water in the Rio Grande and Conejos River, overall.
“Look at how it’s changing,” Coombs said. “Useful water for irrigation is changing in more ways than just volumes. We’re seeing timing change. So that’s part of what this is. Mother Nature is playing a big role in this. We’ve got to figure that component out a little better. We don’t need to look across the fence at what our neighbors are or aren’t doing. Let’s figure out how we correct to that.”
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
There is another emerging issue that decades of drought and the warming climate is causing in the San Luis Valley – elevated levels of heavy metals in drinking wells that can cause health issues for households that rely on them.
It’s a topic Kathy James, Ph.D., and associate professor with the Colorado School of Public Health, knows well after spending the past three years working with families in the Valley that rely on private drinking wells.
James provided an update to the work during Tuesday’s opening day of the 2026 Southern Rocky Mountain Ag Conference. She reported that 15 to 25 percent of the private groundwater wells used for drinking water in the San Luis Valley contain elevated levels of arsenic, uranium and other heavy metals.
Her confidence in the findings is bolstered by the fact that 850 households in the different counties of the Valley participated in the study and provided samples to help James and her team evaluate the effect drought is having on water quantity and water quality.
“The comprehensive information that we have about distribution of metals across the Valley is by far one of the best we’ve seen in most western states that do experience elevated metals,” James said.
She noted how low snowpack impacts the age of water underground and ultimately the quality of water people are drinking from a private well.
The Upper Rio Grande Basin, like the Colorado River, is suffering from snow droughtsin the high elevations of the west and below-normal spring runoff levels.
Less snow, less spring runoff for recharge of the aquifers, and higher levels of arsenic, uranium and other heavy metals is the emerging issue. James talks more about the study and the team’s findings in the next episode of The Valley Pod, which streams Wednesday on AlamosaCitizen.com.
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The Rundown
South Dakota representatives introduce three bills to authorize feasibility studies for regional water supply projects, including two Missouri River diversions.
BLM revises its publication date for a final environmental assessment of a proposed groundwater pipeline in southwest Utah.
White House advisory group recommends changes to FEMA’s disaster response.
USGS researchers assess a less-toxic means of controlling a non-native, ecologically-damaging reed in the Great Lakes.
And lastly, a federal financial oversight board’s annual report notes that the Trump administration removed climate-risk guidance for large financial institutions.
“The associated mission drift can also lend itself to political ends, such as excessive focus on climate risk and the effective debanking of certain industries. Collectively, this increases distraction and compliance costs while impeding responsible lending and risk-taking.” – Excerpt from the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s 2025 annual report. The council, established after the 2007-09 financial crisis, oversees the nation’s banking system. The report argues that the council should focus on “material financial risks” instead of things like climate risk. Last year, the Trump administration retracted federal climate-risk guidance that applied to financial institutions with more than $100 billion in assets, saying it was “distracting.”
By the Numbers
11: Features that the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Interior should incorporate into their agreements with tribes that would strengthen tribal co-management of land and waters, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The features include clear definition of roles and goals, dispute resolution, and accountability. The three agencies signed a joint order in 2022 to collaborate with tribes on natural resources management.
News Briefs
Water Bills in Congress Representatives in the western states introduced several water-supply bills in the last week.
South Dakota’s delegation introduced a trio of bills in the House and Senate that would require the Interior Department to study the feasibility of new or expanded rural water supply projects in that state and its neighbors. One study, authorized at $10 million, regards a potential diversion of Missouri River water to the growing Rapid City area. This bill failed in the previous Congress. Another bill is to study a potential Missouri River diversion to a separate regional water system in eastern South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. Still another bill is to study an expansion of the Lewis and Clark rural water system, which extends into Iowa and Minnesota and has been under construction for more than two decades.
Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) is seeking to protect his state in the tussle over the Colorado River. His bill would require proportional cutbacks among Arizona, California, and Nevada, instead of relying on the Supreme Court’s decreed rights, which do not favor Arizona.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduced a bill to establish a $15 million per year grant program for “natural water retention and release” projects that hold water in aquifers and floodplains.
Studies and Reports
Proposed FEMA Changes A White House advisory group is preparing to recommend an overhaul in how FEMA distributes post-disaster aid, according to Politico’s E&E News.
A draft of the plan would shift post-disaster funding to a “parametric” model – paying out based on thresholds like river height and wind speed – rather than the current one that is derived from estimated loss and damage.
The change would prioritize speed over precision, disaster aid experts told the news site.
Great Lakes Phragmites Fight Phragmites is a reedy, non-native wetland plant that has grown into dense, ecologically-damaging clusters along Great Lakes shorelines.
Weedkillers are a common management strategy, but U.S. Geological Survey researchers contributed to a study that assessed a less toxic alternative.
They found that “cut-to-drown” – cutting phragmites stems below water – was an effective way of “drowning the plant and depleting its stored resources.”
On the Radar
Senate Cybersecurity Hearing On February 4, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing on cybersecurity for America’s water infrastructure systems. Witnesses include a researcher and water utility representatives.
Southwest Utah Groundwater Pipeline The Bureau of Land Management now expects to publish a final environmental impact statement for the Pine Valley Water Supply Project on February 27, 2026.
The initial publication date of November 2025 was delayed due to the government shutdown.
The project is a 70-mile pipeline to pump 15,000 acre-feet of water per year from wells in Beaver County to customers in neighboring Iron County.
When people think about agricultural pollution, they often picture what is easy to see: fertilizer spreaders crossing fields or muddy runoff after a heavy storm. However, a much more significant threat is quietly and invisibly building in the ground.
Across some of the most productive farmland in the United States, a nutrient called phosphorus has been accumulating in the soil for decades, at levels far beyond what crops actually require. While this element is essential for life-supporting root development and cellular chemistry to grow food, too much of it in the wrong places has become a growing environmental liability.
Phosphorus is one of the three primary nutrients plants require for growth, along with nitrogen and potassium. Without enough phosphorus, crops struggle and production suffers.
For decades, applying phosphorus fertilizer has been a kind of insurance policy in American agriculture. If farmers weren’t sure how much was already in the soil, adding a little extra seemed safer than risking a shortfall. Fertilizer was relatively inexpensive, and the long-term consequences were poorly understood.
However, phosphorus can still be carried off fields when rain or irrigation water erodes phosphorus-rich soil, or some of the built-up phosphorus dissolves into runoff.
Years of application have led to something no one initially planned for: accumulation.
How much phosphorus has built up?
Since the mid-20th century, farmers across the United States have applied hundreds of millions of tons of phosphorus fertilizer. From 1960 to 2007, phosphate fertilizer consumption in the U.S. increased from approximately 5.8 million metric tons per year to over 8.5 million metric tons annually.
In more recent decades, fertilizer use has continued to rise. In corn production alone, phosphorus applications increased by nearly 30% between 2000 and 2018. Crops absorb some of that phosphorus as they grow, but not all of it. Over time, the excess has piled up in soils.
Scientists call this buildup “legacy phosphorus.” It’s a reminder that today’s environmental challenges are often the result of yesterday’s well-intentioned decisions.
If phosphorus stayed locked in the soil, farmers would have wasted money on fertilizer they didn’t need. And excess phosphorus in soil can hinder the uptake of essential plant micronutrients and alter the soil microbial community, reducing diversity that is important for good soil health.
Unfortunately, phosphorus doesn’t always remain in place. Rainfall, irrigation and drainage can transport phosphorus – either dissolved in water or attached to eroded soil particles – into nearby canals, streams, rivers and lakes. Once there, it becomes food for algae.
The result can be explosive algal growth, known as eutrophication, which turns clear water a cloudy green. When these algae blooms die, their decomposition consumes oxygen, sometimes creating low-oxygen “dead zones” where fish and other aquatic life struggle to survive. This process is primarily driven by phosphorus leaching, as seen in the Florida Everglades.
Another prime example is the largest dead zone in the United States, covering about 6,500 square miles (16,835 square kilometers), which forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. Cutting back on nitrogen without lowering phosphorus can worsen eutrophication.
Some algal blooms also produce toxins that threaten drinking water supplies. Communities downstream may be told not to drink or touch the water, and face high treatment costs and lost recreational opportunities. National assessments document toxins associated with algal blooms in many states, particularly where warm temperatures and nutrient pollution overlap.
Rising global temperatures are exacerbating the problem. Warmer waters hold less oxygen than colder waters, increasing the likelihood that phosphorus pollution will trigger eutrophication and dead zones.
A phosphorus monitor operates next to a small stream near an agricultural field in Ohio. AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel
Flawed testing hid the problem
Given the risks, a natural question arises: Why don’t farmers simply stop adding phosphorus where it isn’t needed?
Part of the answer lies in how the amount of phosphorus in the soil is measured. Most soil tests used today were developed decades ago and were designed to work reasonably well across many soil types. But soils are incredibly diverse. Some are sandy; others are rich in organic matter formed from centuries of decayed plants.
And those traditional soil tests use acids to extract phosphorus from the soil, delivering inaccurate findings of how much phosphorus plants can actually access. For instance, in soils that have more than 20% organic matter, like those found in parts of Florida and other agricultural regions, the tests’ acids may be partially neutralized by other compounds in the soil. That would mean they don’t collect as much phosphorus as really exists.
In addition, the tests determine a total quantity of phosphorus in the soil, but not all of that is in a form plants can take up through their roots. So soil where tests find high phosphorus levels may have very little available to plants. And low levels can be found in soil that has sufficient phosphorus for plant growth.
When farmers follow the recommendations that result from these inaccurate tests, they may apply fertilizer that provides little benefit to crops while increasing the risk of pollution. This isn’t a failure of farmers. It’s a mismatch between outdated tools and complex soils.
Soil testing determines levels of various nutrients, but the results don’t always line up with what’s available to plants. Wayan Vota via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
A smarter way forward
The solution isn’t to eliminate phosphorus fertilization. Crops still need it, and many soils genuinely require additional nutrients. The challenge is knowing when enough is truly enough.
Researchers, including me, are developing improved testing methods that better reflect how plants actually interact with soil. Some approaches mimic plants’ root behavior directly, estimating how much phosphorus crops can realistically take up from any given field or type of soil – rather than only measuring how much exists chemically.
Other tests look at the amount of phosphorous a field’s soil can hold before releasing excess nutrients into waterways. These approaches can help identify fields where farmers can use less phosphorus or pause it altogether, allowing crops to draw down the legacy phosphorus already present.
The phosphorus problem is a slow-moving one, built over decades and hidden below ground. However, its effects are increasingly visible in the form of algal blooms, fish kills and contamination of drinking water supplies. Farmers can measure and manage soil nutrients differently and reduce pollution, save money and protect water resources without sacrificing agricultural productivity.
Firefighting foam containing PFAS chemicals is responsible for contamination in Fountain Valley. Photo via USAF Air Combat Command
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elliot Wenzler). Here’s an excerpt:
January 21, 2026
An Adams County water district filed a lawsuit against Denver on Tuesday [January 20, 2026], alleging that foam from the city’s fire training facility has contaminated its water for decades. The South Adams County Water and Sanitation District says the city’s Roslyn Fire Training Facility, near the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, has used firefighting foam containing a group of chemicals known as PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” since at least 1991…
“Denver has failed to eliminate or control releases of (the chemicals) at and from the fire training facility and those releases have contaminated and continue to contaminate the District’s drinking water supplies,” the lawsuit alleges.
The district serves about 75,000 residents in Commerce City and unincorporated Adams County. It first discovered the contamination in 2018. Since then, the district has spent tens of millions of dollars to mitigate the issue, according to the lawsuit. Officials there built another water treatment facility specifically to treat PFAS, and it purchased water from Denver Water to dilute the contaminated water…Even with state and federal funding, the lawsuit says, “there remains a huge deficit” from the costs associated with the firefighting foam. The district asks a U.S. District Court judge to rule that Denver is liable for the response costs and for the ongoing costs the district will incur. It notes that water district officials notified Denver city officials of this claim back in 2019. The amount that the city of Denver would have to pay, if found liable, would be determined in a trial.
The world is now using so much fresh water amid the consequences of climate change that it has entered an era of water bankruptcy, with many regions no longer able to bounce back from frequent water shortages.
About 4 billion people – nearly half the global population – live with severe water scarcity for at least one month a year, without access to sufficient water to meet all of their needs. Many more people are seeing the consequences of water deficit: dry reservoirs, sinking cities, crop failures, water rationing and more frequent wildfires and dust storms in drying regions.
Water bankruptcy signs are everywhere, from Tehran, where droughts and unsustainable water use have depleted reservoirs the Iranian capital relies on, adding fuel to political tensions, to the U.S., where water demand has outstripped the supply in the Colorado River, a crucial source of drinking water and irrigation for seven states.
Droughts have made finding water for cattle more difficult and have led to widespread malnutrition in parts of Ethiopia in recent years. In 2022, UNICEF estimated that as many as 600,000 children would require treatment for severe malnutrition. Demissew Bizuwerk/UNICEF Ethiopia, CC BY
Water bankruptcy is not just a metaphor for water deficit. It is a chronic condition that develops when a place uses more water than nature can reliably replace, and when the damage to the natural assets that store and filter that water, such as aquifers and wetlands, becomes hard to reverse.
In financial bankruptcy, the first warning signs often feel manageable: late payments, borrowed money and selling things you hoped to keep. Then the spiral tightens.
Water bankruptcy has similar stages.
At first, we pull a little more groundwater during dry years. We use bigger pumps and deeper wells. We transfer water from one basin to another. We drain wetlands and straighten rivers to make space for farms and cities.
How the Aral Sea shrank from 2000 to 2011. It was once closer to oval, covering the light-colored areas as recently as the 1980s, but overuse for agriculture by multiple countries drew it down. NASA
That last one, subsidence, often surprises people. But it’s a signature of water bankruptcy. When groundwater is overpumped, the underground structure, which holds water almost like a sponge, can collapse. In Mexico City, land is sinking by about 10 inches (25 centimeters) per year. Once the pores become compacted, they can’t simply be refilled.
The Global Water Bankruptcy report, published on Jan. 20, 2026, documents how widespread this is becoming. Groundwater extraction has contributed to significant land subsidence over more than 2.3 million square miles (6 million square kilometers), including urban areas where close to 2 billion people live. Jakarta, Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City are among the well-known examples in Asia.
A sinkhole in Turkey’s agricultural heartland shows how the landscape can collapse when more groundwater is extracted than nature can replenish. Ekrem07, 2023, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
About 3 billion people and more than half of global food production are concentrated in areas where water storage is already declining or unstable. More than 650,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers) of irrigated cropland are under high or very high water stress. That threatens the stability of food supplies around the world.
In California, a severe drought and water shortage forced some farmers in 2021 to remove crops that require lots of irrigation, including almond trees. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Droughts are also increasing in duration, frequency and intensity as global temperatures rise. Over 1.8 billion people – nearly 1 in 4 humans – dealt with drought conditions at various times from 2022 to 2023.
Every year, nature gives each region a water income, depositing rain and snow. Think of this like a checking account. This is how much water we receive each year to spend and share with nature.
When demand rises, we might borrow from our savings account. We take out more groundwater than will be replaced. We steal the share of water needed by nature and drain wetlands in the process. That can work for a while, just as debt can finance a wasteful lifestyle for a while.
The exposed shoreline at Latyan Dam shows significantly low water levels near Tehran on Nov. 10, 2025. The reservoir, which supplies part of the capital’s drinking water, has seen a sharp decline due to prolonged drought and rising demand in the region. Bahram/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Those long-term water sources are now disappearing. The world has lost more than 1.5 million square miles (4.1 million square kilometers) of natural wetlands over five decades. Wetlands don’t just hold water. They also clean it, buffer floods and support plants and wildlife.
Water quality is also declining. Pollution, saltwater intrusion and soil salinization can result in water that is too dirty and too salty to use, contributing to water bankruptcy.
Climate change is exacerbating the situation by reducing precipitation in many areas of the world. Warming increases the water demand of crops and the need for electricity to pump more water. It also melts glaciers that store fresh water.
Despite these problems, nations continue to increase water withdrawals to support the expansion of cities, farmland, industries and now data centers.
Not all water basins and nations are water bankrupt, but basins are interconnected through trade, migration, climate and other key elements of nature. Water bankruptcy in one area will put more pressure on others and can increase local and international tensions.
Stop the bleeding: The first step is admitting the balance sheet is broken. That means setting water use limits that reflect how much water is actually available, rather than just drilling deeper and shifting the burden to the future.
Protect natural capital – not just the water: Protecting wetlands, restoring rivers, rebuilding soil health and managing groundwater recharge are not just nice-to-haves. They are essential to maintaining healthy water supplies, as is a stable climate.
In small island states like the Maldives, sea-level rise threatens water supplies when salt water gets into underground aquifers, ruining wells. UNDP Maldives 2021, CC BY
Use less, but do it fairly: Managing water demand has become unavoidable in many places, but water bankruptcy plans that cut supplies to the poor while protecting the powerful will fail. Serious approaches include social protections, support for farmers to transition to less water-intensive crops and systems, and investment in water efficiency.
Measure what matters: Many countries still manage water with partial information. Satellite remote sensing can monitor water supplies and trends, and provide early warnings about groundwater depletion, land subsidence, wetland loss, glacier retreat and water quality decline.
Plan for less water: The hardest part of bankruptcy is psychological. It forces us to let go of old baselines. Water bankruptcy requires redesigning cities, food systems and economies to live within new limits before those limits tighten further.
With water, as with finance, bankruptcy can be a turning point. Humanity can keep spending as if nature offers unlimited credit, or it can learn to live within its hydrological means.
Lake Powell is seen from the air in October 2022. Three of the management options released by the feds have the option for an Upper Basin conservation pool in Lake Powell. CREDIT: ALEXANDER HEILNER/THE WATER DESK
Federal officials have released detailed options for how the Colorado River could be managed in the future, pushing forward the planning process in the absence of a seven-state deal. But some Colorado River experts and water managers say cuts don’t go deep enough under some scenarios and flow estimates don’t accommodate future water scarcity driven by climate change.
On Jan. 9, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released a draft of its environmental impact statement, a document required by the National Environmental Policy Act, which lays out five alternatives for how to manage the river after the current guidelines expire at the end of the year. This move by the feds pushes the process forward even as the seven states that share the river continue negotiating how cuts would be shared and reservoirs operated in the future. If the states do make a deal, it would become the “preferred alternative” and plugged into the NEPA process.
“Given the importance of a consensus-based approach to operations for the stability of the system, Reclamation has not yet identified a preferred alternative,” Scott Cameron, the acting Reclamation commissioner, said in a press release. “However, Reclamation anticipates that when an agreement is reached, it will incorporate elements or variations of these five alternatives and will be fully analyzed in the final EIS, enabling the sustainable and effective management of the Colorado River.”
For more than two years, the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and the Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada) have been negotiating, with little progress, how to manage a dwindling resource in the face of an increasingly dry future. The 2007 guidelines that set annual Lake Powell and Lake Mead releases based on reservoir levels do not go far enough to prevent them from being drawn down during consecutive dry years, putting the water supply for 40 million people in the Southwest at risk.
The crisis has deepened in recent years, and in 2022, Lake Powell flirted with falling below a critical elevation to make hydropower. Recent projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show that it could be headed there again this year and in 2027.
John Berggren, regional policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, helped craft elements of one of the alternatives, Maximum Operational Flexibility, formerly called Cooperative Conservation.
“My initial takeaway is there’s a lot of good stuff in there,” Berggren said of the 1,600-page document, which includes 33 supporting and technical appendices. “Their goal was to have a wide range of alternatives to make sure they had EIS coverage for whatever decision they ended up with, and I think that there are a lot of innovative tools and policies and programs in some of them.”
The infamous bathtub ring could be seen near the Hoover Dam in December 2021. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has released a draft Environmental Impact Statement for post-2026 management of the river. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Alternatives
The first alternative is “no action,” meaning river operations would revert to pre-2007 guidance; officials have said this option must be included as a requirement of NEPA, but doesn’t meet the current needs.
The second alternative, Basic Coordination, can be implemented without an agreement from the states and represents what the feds can do under their existing authority. It would include Lower Basin cuts of up to 1.48 million acre-feet based on Lake Mead elevations; Lake Powell releases would be primarily 8.23 million acre-feet and could go as low as 7 million acre-feet. It would also include releases from upstream reservoirs Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo to feed Powell. But experts say this alternative does not go far enough to keep the system from crashing.
“It was pretty well known that the existing authorities that Reclamation has are probably not enough to protect the system,” Berggren said. “Especially given some of the hydrologies we expect to see, the Basic Coordination does not go far enough.”
The Enhanced Coordination Alternative would impose Lower Basin cuts of between 1.3 million and 3 million acre-feet that would be distributed pro-rata, based on each state’s existing water allocation. It would also include an Upper Basin conservation pool in Lake Powell that starts at up to 200,000 acre-feet a year and could increase up to 350,000 acre-feet after the first decade.
Under the Maximum Operational Flexibility Alternative, Lake Powell releases range from 5 million acre-feet to 11 million acre-feet, based on total system storage and recent hydrology, with Lower Basin cuts of up to 4 million acre-feet. It would also include an Upper Basin conservation pool of an average of 200,000 acre-feet a year.
These two alternatives perform the best at keeping Lake Powell above critical elevations in dry years, according to an analysis contained in the draft EIS.
“There are really only two of these scenarios that I think meet the definition of dealing with a very dry future: Enhanced Coordination and the Max Flexibility,” said Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University. “Those two kind of jump out at me as being different than the other ones in that they actually seem to have the least harmful outcomes, but the price for that are these really big shortages.”
The final scenario is the Supply Driven Alternative, which calls for maximum shortages of 2.1 million acre-feet and Lake Powell releases based on 65% of three-year natural flows at Lees Ferry. It also includes an Upper Basin conservation pool of up to 200,000 acre-feet a year. This option offers two different approaches to Lower Basin cuts: one based on priority where the oldest water rights get first use of the river, putting Arizona’s junior users on the chopping block, and one where cuts are distributed proportionally according to existing water allocations, meaning California could take the biggest hit.
This alternative is based on proposals submitted by each basin and discussions among the states and federal officials last spring. Udall said the cuts are not deep enough in this option.
“You can take the supply-driven one and change the max shortages from 2.1 million acre-feet up to 3 or 4 and it’s going to perform a lot like those other two,” he said. “I think what hinders it is just the fact that the shortages are not big enough to keep the basin in balance when push comes to shove.”
Reclamation’s Acting Commissioner Scott Cameron speaks at the Colorado River Water Users conference in Las Vegas in December 2025. The agency has released a draft Environmental Impact Statement, which outlines options for managing the river after this year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Pivotal moment
In a prepared statement, Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District officials expressed concern that the projected future river flows are too optimistic.
“We are concerned that the proposed alternatives do not accommodate the probable hydrological future identified by reliable climate science, which anticipates a river flowing at an average of 9-10 [million acre feet] a year,” the statement reads. “The Colorado River Basin has a history of ignoring likely hydrology, our policymakers should not carry this mistake forward in the next set of guidelines.”
The River District was also skeptical of the Upper Basin conservation pool in Lake Powell, which is included in three of the alternatives. Despite dabbling in experimental programs that pay farmers and ranchers to voluntarily cut back on their water use in recent years, conservation remains a contentious issue in the Upper Basin. Upper Basin water managers have said their states can’t conserve large volumes of water and that any program must be voluntary.
Over the course of 2023 and 2024, the System Conservation Pilot Program, which paid water users in the Upper Basin to cut back, saved about 101,000 acre-feet at a cost of $45 million.
The likeliest place to find water savings in Colorado is the 15-county Western Slope area represented by the River District. But if conservation programs are focused solely on this region, they could have negative impacts on rural agricultural communities, River District officials have said.
“Additionally, several alternatives include annual conservation contributions from the Upper Basin between [200,000 acre-feet] and [350,000 acre feet],” the River District’s statement reads. “We do not see how that is a realistic alternative given the natural availability of water in the Upper Basin, especially in dry years.”
In a prepared statement, Colorado officials said they were looking forward to reviewing the draft EIS.
“Colorado is committed to protecting our state’s significant rights and interests in the Colorado River and continues to work towards a consensus-based, supply-driven solution for the post-2026 operations of Lake Powell and Mead,” Colorado’s commissioner, Becky Mitchell, said in the statement.
The release of the draft EIS comes at a pivotal moment for the Colorado River Basin. The seven state representatives are under the gun to come up with a deal and have less than a month to present details of a plan by the feds’ Feb. 14 deadline. Federal officials have said they need a new plan in place by Oct. 1, the start of the next water year. This winter’s dismal snowpack and dire projections about spring runoff underscore the urgency for the states to come up with an agreement for a new management paradigm.
Over a string of recent dry years, periodic wet winters in 2019 and 2023 have bailed out the basin and offered a last-minute reprieve from the worst consequences of drought and climate change. But this year is different, Udall said.
“We’re now at the point where we’ve removed basically all resiliency from the system,” he said. “Between the EIS and this awful winter, some really tough decisions are going to be made. … Once we finally get to a consensus agreement, the river is going to look very, very different than it ever has.”
The draft EIS will be published in the Federal Register on Jan.16, initiating a 45-day comment period that will end March 2.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Just over a month before the deadline for the Colorado River states to agree on a plan for sharing the river’s diminishing waters, the feds released their options, one of which could be implemented if the states don’t reach a deal. The Bureau of Reclamation’s “Post-2026 Operational Guidelines and Strategies for Lake Powell and Lake Mead” offers five alternative scenarios for how to run the river, all of which are aimed at keeping the two reservoirs viable through different methods of divvying up the burden of inevitable shortages in supply.
The document, and the need to deal with present and future shortages, is necessary because human-caused climate change-exacerbated aridification has diminished the Colorado River’s flow, throwing the supply-demand equation out of balance. So it is somewhat surreal to peruse the voluminous report that was published by an administration whose leader has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job.”
My cursory search of the document turned up only one occurrence of the term “climate change.”1 Yet the authors do acknowledge, if obliquely, that global warming is shrinking the river. “The Basin is experiencing increased aridity due to climate variability,” they write, “and long-term drought and low runoff conditions are expected in the future.” This tidbit also evaded the censors: “Since 2000, the Basin has experienced persistent drought conditions, exacerbated by a warming climate, resulting in increased evapotranspiration, reduced soil moisture, and ultimately reduced runoff.”
All of the alternatives put most of the burden of cutting consumptive use on the Lower Basin states, while directing the Upper Basin to take unspecified conservation measures. I’ll summarize the alternatives below, but first, it seems telling to see which which proposed alternatives the Bureau considered, but ultimately eliminated from detailed analysis.
The “boating alternative,” which would prioritize maintaining Lake Powell’s surface level at or above 3,588 feet to serve recreational boating needs. This proposal was put forward in the “Path to 3,588” plan by motorized recreation lobbying group BlueRibbon Coalition. It was dismissed because, basically, it would sacrifice downstream farms and cities for the sake of boating.
The ecosystem alternative, which would prioritize the Colorado River’s ecosystem health by focusing management and reducing consumptive human use to protect wildlife, vegetation, habitats, and wetlands.
One-dam alternative, a.k.a. Fill Mead First. This proposal would entail either bypassing or decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam with the aim of filling Lake Mead. The Bureau said they rejected the plan because it would be inconsistent with the Law of the River and might be unacceptable to stakeholders (even though some Lower Basin farmers got a little Hayduke-fever a couple of years back, suggesting that ridding Glen Canyon of the dam might be the best way to manage the river).
Okay, so that’s what’s NOT going to happen. So what might happen if the feds feel the need to intervene? Here’s a very short summary of each alternative:
No Action: This is always offered in these things, and it just means that they would revert back to the pre-2007 interim guidelines era, when releases from Lake Powell were fixed at an average of 8.23 million acre-feet per year and shortages were determined based on Lake Mead levels and would be distributed based on priority.
Basic Coordination Alternative: Lake Powell releases would range from 7 to 9.5 maf annually, based on the reservoir’s surface level, and releases from upper basin reservoirs would be implemented to protect Glen Canyon Dam’s infrastructure. Lower Basin shortages (and cuts) would be based on Lake Mead elevations and would be distributed based on water right priority (meaning Arizona gets cut before California).
Enhanced Coordination Alternative: Lake Powell annual releases would range from 4.7 maf to 10.8 maf, based on: a combination of Powell and Mead elevations; the 1-year running average hydrology; and Lower Basin deliveries. The Upper Basin would implement conservation measures to bolster Lake Powell levels if needed, and the Lower Basin shortages would range from 1.3 maf (when Mead and Powell, combined, are 60% full) to 3.0 maf (when Mead and Powell are 30% full or lower) annually. The Lower Basin shortages would be distributed proportionally, meaning that California — which has the largest allocation — would take 49% of the cuts, Arizona 31%, Nevada 3.3%, and Mexico 17%.
Maximum Operational Flexibility Alternative: Lake Powell annual releases would range from 5 maf to 11 maf, based on total Upper Basin system storage and recent hydrology. But when Lake Powell’s surface level drops to 3,510 feet, Glen Canyon Dam would be operated as a “run of the river” facility, meaning that it would release only as much as what it running into the reservoir minus evaporation and seepage to keep the elevation from dropping further. Lower Basin shortages would be on a sliding scale, starting when Powell and Mead drop below 80% full, reaching 1 maf when the two reservoirs are 60% full. When the reservoirs drop below 60%, then shortages would be determined by the previous 3-year flows at Lee Ferry, topping out at a maximum shortage of 4 maf. Shortages would be distributed according to priority and proportionally.
Supply Driven Alternative: This one is based on the amount of water that is actually in the river (go figure!). Lake Powell releases would range from 4.7 maf annually to 12 maf, or about 65% of the 3-year natural flows at Lees Ferry. Lower Basin shortages would kick in when Lake Mead’s surface elevation drops below 1,145 feet, reaching a maximum of 2.1 maf at 1,000 feet and lower. (As of Jan. 12, Mead’s level was 1,063 feet). Shortages would be distributed according to priority and proportionally.
The estimated “natural flow” at Lee Ferry. Some of the alternatives would base Lake Powell releases on recent average natural flows at Lee Ferry. If the recent past is an indicator of what’s to come, we could expect a relatively minuscule amount of water running through the Grand Canyon to the Lower Basin states. Source: Bureau of Reclamation.
The Lower Basin states reportedly aren’t too happy about any of the alternatives, because they put most of the onus for cutting consumption on the Lower Basin. Under the Maximum Flexibility option, for example, Lower Basin shortages could go as high as 4 million acre-feet, or about half of those states’ total annual consumptive use. And under another, California alone could have to cut up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water use, which could trigger litigation, since California users have some of the most senior rights on the river. Some of the alternatives would potentially nullify the Colorado Compact’s clause ordering the Upper Basin to “not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75 maf for any period of ten consecutive years.”
The Bureau does not pick a “preferred” alternative, like federal agencies typically do with environmental impact statements, leaving readers guessing about which option or combination of options might be chosen should the need arise. But it also gives more room for the states to reach some sort of agreement to pick an option from the provided list.
* It is found in the Hydrologic Resources section: “While the flows in the Colorado River would not affect groundwater in the region, changes to the groundwater systems in the Grand Canyon due to climate change may be an additional environmental factor that affects flows in the Colorado River.”
The snowpack remains dismal in most of the West, and it’s not just because of lack of precipitation. In fact, it’s probably more due to the crazy-warm temperatures. The average temperatures across the Interior were way above normal in November and December, as the map below shows. And January’s similarly unseasonably balmy so far. Yikes.
Precipitation levels were mixed across the West during late autumn and early winter, but temperatures were warmer than normal across the entire region, diminishing snowpack and leading to rather unwintery conditions. Source: NOAA.
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
Last week the new public lands media outlet, RE:PUBLIC, warned readers of “major shrinkage” this year. They meant, of course, that the Trump administration will probably get around to eliminating or eviscerating at least one national monument in the next twelve months. It’s probably a pretty safe bet, given that in Trump’s first term he shrank Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, and Project 2025, which the administration has hewn closely to, calls for even more reductions.
Indeed, I’m surprised they haven’t already moved to eliminate some of these protected areas, especially the more recently designated ones like Bears Ears, Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, or Chuckwalla National Monument in California. An optimist might hope that the Trump administration has realized how deeply unpopular this would be, or has come to terms with the fact that the Antiquities Act only allows presidents to establish national monuments, not eliminate them. But I think it’s more likely they were simply too busy dismantling other environmental safeguards — and, for that matter, democracy — to get around to diminishing national monuments.
I was a little surprised by RE:PUBLIC’s list of vulnerable national monuments, however. It included Bears Ears et al, which makes sense, but then also speculates about other “likely targets, due to their proximity to energy and mining interests,” including: Aztec Ruins, Dinosaur, Hovenweep, and Natural Bridges national monuments.
I hate trying to predict what the Trump administration will do in the future, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that these particular national monuments are not in the administration’s crosshairs. While these protected areas are close to energy-producing areas, and probably have some oil and gas, uranium, lithium, and/or potash producing potential, they simply offer too little to the extractive industries to make it worth the political blowback from eviscerating them.
Hovenweep National Monument. Jonathan P. Thompson photo
For those who may be unfamiliar with these places, I’ll take each one individually:
Aztec Ruins: First off, this tiny national monument adjacent to the residential neighborhoods of Aztec, New Mexico, is an amazing place and well worth the visit. The Puebloan structures here are built in the style of Chacoan great houses, and the community — which was established at the end of Chaco’s heyday — may have been become succeeded Chaco as a regional cultural and political center. It is in the San Juan Basin coalbed methane fields and is surrounded by gas wells. In fact, there are a few existing, active wells within the monument boundaries. But no one is champing at the bit to drill any new wells in this region, and they certainly don’t need to do so in this tiny monument.
Dinosaur National Monument, in northwestern Colorado, is probably somewhat vulnerable, given its size and proximity to oil and gas fields. But again, there’s not a whole lot of new drilling going on in the area. It was established in 1915 to protect dinosaur quarries — clearly in tune with the Antiquities Act — so shrinking it would be met with serious bipartisan political pushback.
When Warren G. Harding designated Hovenweep National Monument in 1923 to protect six clusters of Puebloan structures in southeastern Utah from development and pothunters, he strictly followed the Antiquities Act’s mandate to confine its boundaries to “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” As such, the boundaries of each “unit” is basically drawn right around the pueblo and a small area of surroundings, leaving little room for shrinkage. Though it lies on the edge of the historically productive Aneth Oil Field, oil and gas drillers have no need to get inside the boundaries to get at the hydrocarbons. Besides, Trump and Harding have a lot in common, so Trump’s not likely to want to erase his predecessor’s legacy.
Natural Bridges: It’s odd to me that this one, which is currently surrounded by Bears Ears National Monument, is included on this list. Yes, there are historic uranium mines nearby, and yes, White Canyon, where the monument’s namesake formations are located, was once considered for tar sands and oil shale development. But the small monument itself — which was designated by Teddy Roosevelt in 1908 — is not getting in the way of any of this sort of development. It’s much more likely that Trump would remove the White Canyon area from Bears Ears National Monument, as he did during his first term, potentially opening the area around Natural Bridges back up to new uranium mining claims, while leaving the national monument’s current boundaries intact.
So, in summary: Don’t fret too much about these national monuments getting eliminated or shrunk anytime soon. And for now, maybe we shouldn’t worry about any national monument shrinkage. It is possible that Trump won’t go there this term. Trump shrunk Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante during his first term in part out of spite toward Obama and Clinton, but also to get then-Sen. Orrin Hatch’s legislative support. That the shrinkage also re-opened some public lands to new mining claims and drilling was a secondary motivation.
This time around, Trump has come up with far more generous gifts for the mining and drilling companies, and much more sinister ways to attack his political adversaries. Besides, he’s got his eyes on much bigger prizes — like Greenland.
1 * The single use of the term “climate change” is found in the Hydrologic Resources section: “While the flows in the Colorado River would not affect groundwater in the region, changes to the groundwater systems in the Grand Canyon due to climate change may be an additional environmental factor that affects flows in the Colorado River.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 at the Interior Department, didn’t disclose a $3.5 million water-rights contract between her husband and the developers of a Nevada mine, records show.
A high-ranking official in the Interior Department is drawing scrutiny from ethics experts because she failed to disclose her family’s financial interest in the nation’s largest lithium mine that had been approved by her agency, according to state and federal records. In 2018 Frank Falen sold water from a family ranch in northern Nevada to Lithium Nevada Corp., a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, for $3.5 million. The company was planning a $2.2 billion lithium mine nearby called Thacker Pass, and lithium mining requires significant amounts of water. The mine needed a permit from the Interior Department, where Mr. Falen’s wife, Karen Budd-Falen, worked as the deputy solicitor responsible for wildlife from 2018 until 2021. She returned to the agency last year and is now the associate deputy secretary, the third highest-ranking position. Mr. Falen’s sale of his water rights also depended on the mine getting a permit from the Interior Department. Without it, Lithium Nevada Corp. could have terminated its deal with him…In November 2019, about two years before the agency approved the mine, Ms. Budd-Falen met with Lithium Americas executives over lunch in the cafeteria at the Interior Department.
Tim Crowley, a spokesman for Lithium Americas, said executives did not discuss the mine or pending environmental reviews with Ms. Budd-Falen. “We haven’t worked directly with Karen Budd-Falen related to Lithium Americas,” he said in an email, “nor have we ever met with her in a formal capacity regarding our project.”
Ms. Budd-Falen did not respond to questions for this article. Her husband, who was not at the lunch, characterized it in a telephone interview as a social occasion, not a work meeting. He said his wife knew few details about the water contract and may not have known that the company was seeking approval from the Interior Department.
In May of 2023, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that significantly limited the scope of the Clean Water Act, undoing protections that safeguarded the nation’s waters for over 50 years. Specifically, it erased critical protections for tens of millions of acres of wetlands, threatening the clean drinking water sources for millions of Americans.
While the Biden administration amended rules to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, the Trump administration recently released a new draft rule that would go further than even the Supreme Court in limiting what waters can be protected.
Nooksack River, Washington | Brett Baunton
The Clean Water Act’s definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) is core to defining what waters are protected and which aren’t. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration’s newly proposed WOTUS rule would roll back protections for vast areas of wetlands and river tributaries. It’s estimated that close to 80% of America’s remaining wetlands would lose Clean Water Act protections. As written, the rule would leave many waterways vulnerable to pollution, degradation, and destruction, threatening water quality and community resilience across the country.
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
Here are our top four concerns with the new WOTUS proposal
1. The rule requires streams and wetlands to have surface water “at least during the wet season” in order to qualify for protection. But it never defines what the wet season actually is.
What this means for rivers: Wet seasons vary dramatically from region to region, and without a clear, science-based definition, many healthy and ecologically important streams risk being excluded.
2. Narrow definitions and expanded exemptions shrink the scope of protected waters.
What this means for rivers: By redefining “tributary” to include only streams with year-round or steady “wet-season” flow, and expanding exemptions for wastewater and waste-treatment systems, the new rule would eliminate protections for many intermittent streams and man-made infrastructure that function like natural streams, opening the door to more unregulated pollution. Many rivers in the Southwest only flow for part of the year. This updated definition would put many of these rivers at risk.
3. The rule suggests any artificial or natural break in flow cuts off upstream protection.
What this means for rivers: Under the proposed rule, a culvert, pipe, stormwater channel, or short dry stretch can sever jurisdiction. This means upstream waters that feed larger rivers may no longer be protected, allowing pollution to still flow into nominally protected rivers and streams.
4. The rule significantly eliminates wetland protections by requiring “wetlands” to physically touch a protected water and maintain surface water through the wet season.
What this means for rivers: The new definition excludes many wetlands, which naturally store floodwater, filter pollutants, and safeguard communities. This puts the drinking water for millions at risk and increases the risks of flooding for many communities.
The health of our rivers depends on the small streams and wetlands that feed them. By discarding science, narrowing long‑standing definitions, and creating confusing jurisdictional tests, the Trump Administration’s proposed WOTUS rule risks undoing decades of progress toward cleaner, safer water. America’s rivers—and the communities that depend on them—deserve better.
These rollbacks will put our waterways and the life that depends on them in jeopardy. The public comment period to speak up and defend clean water protections is open until January 5. Please take action today and send a letter to the EPA urging them to keep the current definition of Waters of the United States in place!
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 private development company is investing $150 million in an ambitious plan to harvest groundwater lying beneath sprawling northern Colorado ranches to serve fast-growing towns along the Interstate 25 corridor.
FrontRange H2O, backed by a Texas oil and real estate company, is behind the venture. The firm has been operating in Colorado for more than 20 years, treating and delivering wastewater from oil wells for oil industry reuse on the West Slope, and overseeing extensive real estate holdings in Denver and elsewhere, according to Brent Waller, who is president of the Loveland-based company.
“We were recycling produced water before it was cool,” Waller said. Produced water describes wastewater that is generated through oil production.
Experts say the large-scale, private urban water development is the first of its kind in Colorado and could help thirsty towns like Fort Collins and Loveland shore up their water systems.
But others worry that the privatization of water in the state could lead to price hikes and might also, because of its reliance on nonrenewable groundwater, undermine the state’s future water security.
Still, Front Range H20 believes its system will deliver water at less cost and sooner than other government-backed projects.
Until now, Colorado communities have relied on water that is captured, stored and treated by public, nonprofit water utilities, such as Denver Water. The agency is an independent entity governed by commissioners who are appointed by the Denver mayor. In other cases, cities operate their own water systems. Public entities such as these are required by law to regulate water rates, to issue bonds to finance their work, and they are subject to oversight by elected or appointed bodies.
But FrontRange H2O is a private company that is using millions of dollars in private financing to secure the water rights, obtain state permission to drill the groundwater wells, and to build a water treatment system and pipeline to carry the water. Although it must obtain state permission to drill the wells and build the water treatment plant, it is not subject to the same public oversight as a public government system would be.
“This kind of thing is common in Texas and Arizona, particularly with groundwater, but it is unique in Colorado,” said Adam Jokerst, Rocky Mountain regional director for WestWater Research, based in Fort Collins. Jokerst is a groundwater expert who has consulted with Front Range H2O on its northern Colorado plans.
FrontRange H2O refers to its current project as VitaH2O. Nine wells drilled into the aquifer are expected to generate up to 5,000 acre-feet of water initially, Waller said. An acre foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons of water and is eough to serve to two to four urban households for one year. The water will be treated at a new plant north of Nunn and then delivered down to Cobb Lake, a reservoir owned by the Fort Collins-Loveland Water District, or FCLWD.
The district was in the news earlier this year when it opted out of a large-scale water and reservoir project run by Northern Water known as NISP, the Northern Integrated Supply Project. It will instead partner with VitaH2O.
Typical water well
As the project moves forward, Waller said FCLWD will contribute an additional $150 million to help complete the new water supply project. Chris Pletcher, general manager of FCLWD, declined an interview request. The water district was NISP’s largest customer and was on track to pay $400 million to help build the giant system.
Colorado derives most of its water supplies from melting snows that fill its streams and rivers, but large swaths of the state, including Douglas County, rely heavily on wells drilled deep into aquifers, many of which are not recharged through rain and snow.
As the state grows, the pressure to tap these nonrenewable waters is growing as well.
According to the Colorado Division of Water Resources, interest in drilling high producing groundwater wells in northern Colorado is growing.
“There has been more activity in this area in the last 10 years,” said Tracy Kosloff, deputy state engineer at Colorado’s Division of Water Resources.
Major players in the area include Front Range H2O and the city of Greeley, among others.
The interest in nonrenewable groundwater worries people like Steve Boand, a former Douglas County commissioner and water consultant who has watched his region’s nonrenewable groundwater supplies shrink as they are used by fast-growing towns like Parker and Castle Rock.
Any project that relies on nonrenewable groundwater is problematic, Boand said.
“In general, sustainable water supplies are the preferred source,” Boand said, noting that Douglas County water providers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to recycle water and tap rivers and streams to wean themselves off nonrenewable groundwater. Their hope is, eventually, to use their aquifers only in drought years when surface supplies are scarce.
And that is part of the plan with VitaH2O, Waller said. The project will use surface supplies that the Fort Collins-Loveland district already owns to recharge the aquifers they plan to withdraw water from, in hopes that the treated water being pumped back into the ground in wet years will extend the life of the nonrenewable aquifers.
Under Colorado water law, groundwater can be drilled by whomever owns the land above the aquifer, but they must demonstrate that they are extracting water gradually and must prove it will last at least 100 years.
Waller said he believes the surface supplies that VitaH2O will inject back into the aquifers in wet years will extend the life of the system beyond 100 years, to 300 years or more.
The location of the wellfield as seen in a PDF provided by the Vita H20 Project.
East of Waller’s development, the city of Greeley has already invested $85 million in developing an aquifer system under the Terry Ranch that will supply water in drought years and will also store treated water, according to Sean Chambers, Greeley’s director of water and sewer utilities.
“What you are seeing now is a new approach to diversifying surface water supplies with this deep aquifer, nonrenewable groundwater … and there is a rush on that,” Chambers said.
Looming in the background is Northern Water’s NISP project. It was originally designed to serve 15 entities, but three have already pulled out, including the largest, the Fort Collins-Loveland district. Waller said he is in talks with several other communities, including Wellington and Eaton, who are looking for an alternative to the costly $2.7 billion NISP, which will rely on renewable water supplies from the Poudre and South Platte rivers.
Brad Wind, general manager of Northern Water, said NISP’s growing cost is prompting long-time supporters to rethink their participation and that some will inevitably go with other providers, such as VitaH2O.
“People have some hard choices to make,” Wind said.
How much water is available to be mined from these aquifers isn’t clear yet, though developers such as Waller and Greeley have invested heavily in doing the hydrological analysis that gives them an estimate of what is available.
But overuse is a major concern and Chambers says that is a key issue the city is addressing as it develops its system.
“Collectively we will have to find ways over time to make sure that northern Colorado and other communities that rely on this water don’t just mine it to extinction … Greeley goes into this effort with our eyes very wide open about that,” Chambers said.
“This is a resource that should last for 10 generations or longer and provide a runway for public officials to figure out how to build resilience into all of our sources of supply,” he said.
Boand isn’t convinced that the recharge technologies and state rules designed to make the water last longer are going to be enough to protect the aquifers.
“Recharge has been somewhat successful but everybody has talked about it as if it is the great salvation, even though it is very much in the testing phase,” Boand said. “And it takes the same attention to detail that running a nuclear power plant takes … lots of engineers and lots of scientists.”
Another concern with having a private company develop a major public water supply is the stability of the company and the water system if the company should fail.
Waller says his company’s contracts provide protection for that possibility.
“If we go belly up, five years or 10 years down the road, the water districts and participants have the right to step in and take over the system. There are controls in place,” Waller said. They expect to deliver water in the first quarter of 2029.
As with most new water projects, developers go through a special court review where they must prove their water estimates are accurate and that their water use won’t harm others. Waller said his company’s water court application was filed in October.
And it is being closely watched.
Chambers, with the city of Greeley, is concerned that the VitaH2O project may impact the Terry Ranch project, which lies nearby. He said he expects to fight to defend Greeley’s rights and will object to anything he sees as threatening.
“We intend to be an objector in the water court process to protect our decree and our investments,” he said.
January date scrapped in favor of June 29, 2026, after ‘key witness unavailability’ — 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 Valley’s highly-anticipated district water court case — the water trial of this century if you will — 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 Grande’s 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 “personal and family circumstances.”
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, “Also, GFY.” In another, he emails that he is “no longer interested in anything other than publicly exploding the rampant corruption at DWR and the AG Office.”
And in an email sent Sunday, Oct. 19, to Attorney General Phil Weiser, Adams writes, “We haven’t met, but I understand that you’re 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 campaign…”
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 “credible evidence that demonstrates that Mr. Adams is unavailable. Rather, they now assert that he ‘should not be pressured into returning to the case at the risk of further harm to his mental health.’”
“In any event,” district water attorneys argued in their objection to a trial delay, “none 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.”
State Engineer Jason Ullman, consultant Taylor Adams, Colorado Water Court Division 3 Judge Michael Gonzales
Subdistrict 1 is home to the San Luis Valley’s 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 subdistrict’s proposed Fourth Plan of Water Management is its most drastic effort yet to meet the state’s orders. The new plan, crafted in 2022 and adopted by the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in January 2023, is designed to “match the amount of groundwater pumping to the amount of water coming into the subdistrict.”
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 Valley’s 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 — with a draft rule that would narrow the definition of “Waters of the United States,” 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 Engineers—the agencies charged with enforcing the CWA—considered 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 “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters,” 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-wing’s preferred definition of waters of the U.S. He argued that they should include only “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water … described in ordinary parlance as streams[,] … oceans, rivers, [and] lakes.” Scalia’s definition emphatically excluded “ephemeral streams” and “dry arroyos in the middle of the desert.” Justice Anthony Kennedy disputed Scalia, saying instead the CWA should extend to any stream or body of water with a “significant nexus” to navigable waters, determined by a wetland’s or waterway’s status as an “integral part of the aquatic environment.”
Then, in 2023, in its ruling on the Sackett case, the SCOTUS majority deferred to Scalia’s Rapanos definition, writing: “… we conclude that the Rapanos plurality was correct: the CWA’s use of ‘waters’ encompasses ‘only 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.’”
It’s 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 EPA’s proposed definition of ‘‘waters of the United States’’ would include:
“Relatively permanent,” under the new rule, would mean
And then there’s this weird and vague, yet critical, term, “wet season,” 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 “relatively permanent” requirement clearly excludes thousands of arroyos, ephemeral streams, washes, gullies, and even rios and rivers — from the Santa Cruz to the Rillito to the Santa Fe to the Puerco and the Dirty Devil — 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 “relatively permanent” water source. And if that’s 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: “This 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.”
While the administration was looking to provide “clarity,” the “wet season” provision does exactly the opposite, especially when one tries to apply it to the desert Southwest. If southern Arizona has a wet season, wouldn’t 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 — especially given the “wet season” 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.
“For U.S. oil and natural gas operators, this is a game-changer,” wrote the head of a Texas petroleum industry group in the Odessa American. “Picture 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.”
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. EPA–HQ– OW–2025–0322, by any of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov/ (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.
Email: OW-Docket@epa.gov. Include Docket ID No. EPA–HQ–OW– 2025–0322 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.
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
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, they’ve done the same for the RMP for the BLM’s 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. That’s in part because RMPs have not been considered “rules” 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 agency’s 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 won’t 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 BLM’s power to issue new leases altogether — 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 “rules.”
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 “in accordance with” a valid land use plan, or RMP.
Therefore all permits, leases, ROWs, and other authorizations issued under post-1996 RMPs — including over 5,000 oil and gas leases, and hundreds more coming up for auction in the near future — are invalid.
This summer, 31 law professors and public land experts called on Congress to refrain from using the CRA to revoke RMPs. “The resulting uncertainty could trigger an endless cycle of litigation,” they wrote, “effectively freezing the ability of the BLM and other agencies to manage public lands for years, if not decades to come.”
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 “potential legal deficiencies” 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 don’t 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.
🦫 Wildlife Watch 🦅
The Trump administration is proposing new regulations that would dial back Endangered Species Act protections and weaken the landmark law to “strengthen American energy independence,” 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 — likely because they were extirpated from the area — 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 “threatened,” which is one step away from “endangered.” 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 Tiehm’s 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 — likely because they were extirpated from the area — 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 “threatened,” which is one step away from “endangered.” 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 Tiehm’s buckwheat under the ESA, because doing so would potentially restrict or nix a proposed lithium mine in its only known habitat.
“This plan hacks apart the Endangered Species Act and creates a blueprint for the extinction for some of America’s most beloved wildlife,” said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a written statement.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
Raven and the red, white, and blue. Digital Painting by Jonathan P. Thompson.
And, finally, the Land Desk readers have spoken, and they have chosen El Burro Blanco as the name for the new Land Desk dispatch-mobile, with Hank coming in a distant second.
The Colorado River and its woes tend to get all of the attention, but the Southwest’s “other” big river, the Rio Grande, is in even worse shape thanks to a combination of warming temperatures, drought, and overconsumption. That’s 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 Grande’s 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 — as will the farms and, ultimately, the cities that rely on it.
The Rio Grande’s problems are not new. Beginning in the late 1800s, diversions for irrigation in the San Luis Valley — which the river runs through after cascading down from its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains — sometimes left the riverbed “wholly dry,” wrote ichthyologist David Starr Jordan in 1889, “all the water being turned into these ditches. … 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.”
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 Grande’s lower reaches still occasionally dried up.
Then, in the early 2000s, the megadrought — or perhaps permanent aridification — that still plagues the region settled in over the Southwest. [ed. emphasis mine] Snowpack levels in the river’s 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.
“In recent decades,” the authors write, “river 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 river’s delta at the Gulf of Mexico.” Reservoirs, the river’s savings accounts, have been severely drained to the point that they won’t 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.
Something’s gotta give on the Rio Grande, and while we may be tempted to target Albuquerque’s sprawl, drying up all of the cities and power plants that rely on the river wouldn’t achieve the necessary cuts.
Source: “Overconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basin” 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 — taking up 87% of direct human consumption — and that alfalfa and other hay crops gulp up the lion’s share, or 52%, of agriculture’s slice of the river pie. This isn’t 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 — 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 neighbors’ 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 field’s 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 isn’t easy: Farmers grow alfalfa in the desert because it’s actually quite drought tolerant, doesn’t 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 the Rye Resurgence Project. This effort is not only growing the grain — which uses less water than alfalfa, is good for soil health, and makes good bread and whiskey — but it is also working to create a larger market for it. While it’s 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. I’m not so optimistic, but we’ll see. Personally, I think the only way this will ever work out is if the Colorado River Compact — heck, the entire Law of the River — 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.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
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 Utah’s green light.
🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑
Look! Affordable housing near Moab! Sure, it’s a cave, but it’s only $99,000. Oh, what’s that? $998,000? They’re selling a cave for a million buckaroos? But of course they are. To be fair, it’s not just a cave. It’s several of them, plus a trailer. Crazy stuff.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
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, it’s a similar story: 22,300 square kilometers in the Colorado River Basin vs. 7,800 square kilometers in the Rio Grande.
“However, the water crisis facing the Rio Grande Basin is arguably more severe and urgent than the Colorado River Basin,” 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.
Doesn’t 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 “but.” 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.
“To my knowledge, nobody has laid out the numbers at the level of clarity and accuracy that we were able to accomplish,” he said.
Another major contribution of the paper is the estimation of the degree to which water consumption is unsustainable, he said.
“We 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.”
“The Rio Grande basin is at a tipping point, and everyone needs to be part of the solution,” said Enrique Prunes, a co-author and the World Wildlife Fund Rio Grande manager. “These findings will help us rethink how we manage water to secure a future for everyone.”
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) (EDITOR’S NOTE: T/C, to fact check).
Agriculture uses 99.9% of the water in Colorado’s 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.
“In the San Luis Valley of Colorado, diminished river flows and aquifer recharge have led to continued over-pumping, causing aquifers levels to decline,” Richter and his team write. “The Colorado state engineer has threatened to shut off hundreds of groundwater wells if the aquifer supporting irrigated farms cannot be stabilized.”
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. Albuquerque’s 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 basin’s water budgets, state, and binational levels.
At the same time, water shortages have contributed to the loss of 18% of farmland in the river’s 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 — from the San Luis Valley into the Gulf of Mexico — shows a “severe water crisis emerging” 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 “a 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,” without urgent action.
“Climate 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,” the study notes.
The authors’ analysis shows that during 2000–2019, 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 “existential water crisis.”
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 “the vast majority of the direct human consumption of water in the SLV takes place on irrigated farms.”
Researchers estimate that the present level of over-consumption of both surface and groundwater in the Valley is approximately 11 percent. “That means that water consumption needs to be reduced by that percentage,” 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.
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, “Overconsumption gravely threatens water security in the binational Rio Grande-Bravo basin,” 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 “water crisis facing the RGB is arguably more severe and urgent than the CRB,” 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, “is going to set off a lot of change in the Valley, because many/most farmers won’t be able to continue producing the same crops they’ve been growing in recent years.”
“Colorado has definitely taken some important steps, and manages its water resources far better than New Mexico or Texas,” Richter says. “But Colorado still has not been able to reduce pumping to anywhere near the needed degree, so it’s no surprise the aquifer continues to decline.”
The study looks at crops grown along the Rio Grande and how agricultural fields account for 87 percent of direct water consumption.“Overall, agricultural consumption is nearly seven times the volume of all other direct uses combined.”
Alfalfa and grass hay – water-intensive crops that dominate the landscape in the Valley and in Northern and the Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico – 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 Grande’s challenges, according to researchers of the study.
“Potatoes might be one of the few crops that remain sufficiently profitable to persist in the Valley,” says Richter. “If 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.”
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 “Bridge to Nowhere” by developers and neighborhood activists alike. Nobody can use it; even pedestrians are barred by a chain-link fence sporting a huge “Road Closed” sign. To the bridge’s north, the desert sits as raw as ever.
The bridge was built in recent years to connect an existing subdivision to the planned North Star Ranch and its proposed 9,600 homes. North Star was to be the latest of many new master-planned communities in Buckeye, one of the fastest-growing cities in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metro areas.
But now, this development is on hold over concerns that there’s not enough groundwater to supply the community. And it’s not the only project: High Country News found that almost half a million homes, including thousands in North Star, are currently on pause, far more than developers or local elected officials have acknowledged publicly.
Developments like North Star have long represented the future of housing for local developers and prospective homebuyers. Phoenix has sprawled endlessly in every direction since World War II, a beacon of the Sun Belt. The city’s rampant growth has transformed former agricultural fields and open desert into homes and tested the bounds of the water supply in Maricopa County, which usually ranks as one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties. The proposed new developments would stretch past the White Tank Mountains, a low-slung collection of peaks that has long served as Phoenix’s unofficial western boundary, making them the most remote developments yet.
But then, in June 2023, state modeling studies concluded that Phoenix and the surrounding areas had “reached the anticipated limits of growth on groundwater supplies,” and the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) made the stunning decision to stop issuing new water supply certificates to developments served by groundwater in the city’s outer ring of suburbs. Nowhere on Phoenix’s edges did this moratorium hit harder than in Buckeye, where many of the halted projects were slated to be built.
The decision stemmed from a provision in the state’s pioneering 1980 Arizona Groundwater Management Act that required metro areas and developers to prove that new subdivisions have enough water to last 100 years.
A slew of sensational headlines followed. The New York Times said it likely signaled the “beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country,” a prediction echoed by other outlets. The number of homes halted due to unsustainable reliance on groundwater is a striking indication of how widespread the practice has become — and of the state’s determination to rein it in.
The moratorium’s impacts heightened a political crisis that had been building in Phoenix for years as the demand for cheap housing and the limits on its water supply collided. Not only did the moratorium come during the worst drought to hit the Southwest in at least 1,200 years, it also hit in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis that has impacted even the Phoenix area, once a bastion of affordability. Developers and their supporters argue that it has caused real economic harm to homebuyers, because they say growth has stopped where the housing is most affordable. But the moratorium could also encourage denser growth in the city — something urban planners say would be healthy for Phoenix and also preserve desert habitat, conserve water and bolster the sense of community.
In the two years since the moratorium began, the housing and water pressures on the area have only increased. Phoenix has become trapped between a demand for affordable homes that meet people’s expectations for a good middle-class life and what government officials say is the dwindling amount of water available to supply those homes. And decision-makers have splintered along partisan lines, seemingly intractably, divided over the best way forward. Republican legislators have pushed hard for bills that would ease or lift the moratorium, while Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, whose administration introduced it, and most Democratic legislators have continued to stand by it.
Phoenix is at an inflection point, Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s water chief, said at a June 2023 press briefing announcing the new restrictions. The question remains: In which direction will Phoenix tip?
Locals call this bridge over the Central Arizona Project canal in Buckeye, Arizona, the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
ONCE A QUIET FARMING COMMUNITY, Buckeye has rapidly mushroomed; town officials say about 125,000 people live here today, making it about 19 times larger than it was in 2000. That’s nothing, though, compared to the future growth already approved by the Buckeye City Council — enough new development to push the city’s population to more than 1 million.
State officials and local governments like Buckeye’s have routinely enabled this kind of growth through zoning and planning policies that treat sprawl as a way of life. Homes built within the urban core typically use less land, consume less water and require less infrastructure. Although they’re more expensive to build due to land costs, their urban location preserves desert habitat. But development on the edges has long been seen as the quickest, simplest way to meet people’s housing needs.
“In Phoenix, land development has always been as natural as breathing,” Andrew Ross observed in his 2011 book Bird on Fire, one of the few works that has ever taken a critical look at the region’s growth practices. “Any corner of the landscape is a parcel, begging for a contract; each building is a renovation opportunity, every open space a ‘vacant lot,’ awaiting its approver, and, with a little backing, it could be you.”
Efforts to rein in sprawl have run into economic — and political — walls. Growth-related industries such as construction and real estate account for a substantially larger share of the area’s economic base than they do in the U.S. as a whole — nearly 19% compared with 14.3% nationally. In 2000, the Sierra Club led a high-profile ballot initiative to compel Arizona cities to form growth management plans and impose urban growth boundaries on all cities with more than 2,500 people. A sizable majority of voters favored it initially, but the effort ultimately crashed at the polls, crushed by the real estate industry’s over $4 million opposition campaign.
Kathleen Ferris, a former state water director who is now a senior researcher studying water supply issues at Arizona State University, takes a particularly cynical view of the local attitude toward development — the “god of growth,” as she calls it.
An architect of the 1980 law that, years later, would halt North Star Ranch and the hundreds of thousands of other new suburban homes, she sees the restrictions as a protection against the worst of Arizona’s past excesses. “We are not going to have growth without water,” she said. “We will have water in hand before growth is allowed.”
Today, Ferris, at 76, is a key player in the ongoing struggle over the city’s water issues — one part water lawyer, one part researcher and one part crusader. She regularly talks with legislators and gives ADWR a piece of her mind about pending bills and regulations. As a water expert and a prominent voice speaking against groundwater-based development, her presence has become almost obligatory in discussions of Arizona’s water troubles.
Kathleen Ferris has spent her career working toward water security in Arizona as the state’s population doubled. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
In 1980, her presence loomed even larger: She was at the center of Arizona’s seemingly intractable groundwater wars. Back then, when lawmakers were drafting the bill that would ultimately spawn the current moratorium, the state’s groundwater levels were already nearing a crisis point: There were essentially no limits on groundwater pumping in any sector of the state’s economy, which was booming with the same intensity as it is today. Cities, farms and mines were at one point pulling at least 1.9 million more acre-feet a year out of the state’s aquifers than rainfall and snowmelt could replenish. In some areas, the aquifers were so depleted that they were collapsing, causing the land to sink and subside.
Around 200 miles of earth fissures caused by this subsidence have been mapped across Arizona. In both rural and suburban areas, earth fissures have undermined and closed roads, power lines, irrigation canals and sewer systems. In 2007, a horse fell into a 10-foot-deep, 15-foot-wide fissure in suburban Phoenix and died before it could be rescued.
Arizona already had a well-earned national reputation as a haven for land fraud. Legendary swindlers like Nathan Waxman, the self-proclaimed godfather of land fraud, were behind the sale of lots without any water supplies, roads or a clear understanding of who even owned the land. In the 1960s and 1970s, Waxman, working secretly with some of Arizona’s most prominent businessmen, “had scammed millions of dollars from Easterners who thought they were buying a retirement home rather than a chunk of barren desert,” reporters for the Arizona Project wrote.
“It just seemed horrible to me,” Ferris recently recalled. “Growth was really starting to happen big-time in Arizona. We were using way too much groundwater.”
In late 1979 and into 1980, then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt and more than a dozen lobbyists and legislators gathered in a downtown Phoenix law office for a closed-door meeting to hammer out details of what would become the state’s Groundwater Management Act. Ferris, one of the state’s preeminent groundwater authorities, and one of her staff members were the only women in the room.
Ferris was a few months shy of 31, but she was already regarded as an authority on groundwater. She had been intimately involved in day-to-day negotiations and politicking over the groundwater law. She spent countless mornings and evenings with Babbitt, the law’s prime architect, sifting through the bill’s fine points and hashing out the details.
As director of the Arizona Groundwater Management Study Commission, she spent nearly two years during the late 1970s traversing the state, seeking public comments on how to cobble together a new law regulating groundwater pumping. The committee’s recommendations would form the basis of the negotiations over the 1980 law.
Congress authorized construction of the $4 billion Central Arizona Project (CAP) in 1968, hoping to ease the groundwater deficit and deliver Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. It was still under construction in the late 1970s, but a report commissioned by then-State Water Engineer Wes Steiner predicted that CAP would only bring in enough river water to fill two-thirds of central Arizona’s total overdraft — even if substantial farmland was retired.
Ferris agreed. She worked with Babbitt to orchestrate a quiet, successful effort to induce then-Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus to threaten to cut off federal funding for finishing CAP’s construction unless Arizona enacted a groundwater law.
But at one spring 1980 meeting, Bill Stephens, an attorney for the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, made it clear that his group had strong objections to the assured water supply rule. And his association, which represented water utilities in Phoenix and its largest suburbs, had plenty of influence. Many of its members were already formalizing contracts to buy very expensive CAP water, and Stephens felt the rule was unfair.
“We were late in the negotiations, and I just remember Babbitt saying something like ‘I guess we’re going to have to put the issue aside. We’re not going to resolve this one,’” Ferris said.
“I just lost it,” Ferris recalled. “Tears were starting to flow down my face. I gathered up my books and my papers, and I walked out of the room. I was demoralized; I was so sad. I just had to get out of the room. I left while all those men were sitting around the table watching me.”
Within days, though, cooler heads prevailed. Ferris’ supporters among the negotiators convinced her to stay. If she walked out, it would permanently sink the bill. Some crafty negotiating got the cities back on board with the assured supply provision.
After the law was passed, Ferris became the first chief counsel of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, which the law created, then the director. These days, she sits on a water policy council that Gov. Katie Hobbs appointed shortly after taking office.
Kathleen Ferris holds a copy of the 1980 Arizona Groundwater Management Act at her office in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
WHEN NEWS BROKE OF THE STATE’S 2023 BAN on new groundwater-based subdivisions, sparking apocalyptic national coverage, local and state officials switched into defense mode.
“It seems in some ways like there’s criticism for us for doing planning and smart development,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego told the Arizona Republic after the ADWR moratorium was announced. “It is a strength, not a weakness. We are planning ahead. We have a very simple principle: Water first, then development.”
While the moratorium is unlikely to stop the area’s runaway growth — 80,000 lots had already been approved — the initial response far downplayed the number of homes on hold, according to a High Country News review of state records.
Developers had filed for confirmation that they had enough water to move ahead on roughly 300,000 home lots when the state decision came down. Another 162,000 home lots on state-owned land from Phoenix west to Buckeye also remain undeveloped due to water shortfalls, ADWR records show. Arizona’s Constitution mandates that such lands be sold or leased to help fund public schools, meaning it’s usually developed with housing. But the application process for the assured water supply certificates started in the 2000s and never came through. The development plans were halted.
Among the biggest developments currently on hold are Teravalis and Belmont. Both have been in the works more than two decades. The aftereffects of the 2008 real estate crash delayed them, but they had recently been revived.
Teravalis, at 100,000 homes on nearly 37,000 acres, heralds itself as “the community of your future” and “the nation’s next premier master planned community.” Its website is packed with photos of sunset-drenched saguaros and chollas, and it promises to reduce water use by promoting native landscaping and to set aside 7,000 acres as natural open space, parks and trails. To its west runs Sun Valley Parkway, a seldom-traveled, 30-mile-long four-lane road, itself long known as the Road to Nowhere. Belmont would be only a little less grandiose, building 80,000 homes on 24,000 acres in unincorporated Maricopa County, along with data centers and autonomous vehicles, according to a 2017 press release.
In 2022, developers began construction on 8,000 homes in Teravalis that already had a guaranteed water source. Some are now listed for sale; model homes are already up and the first homes could be occupied by early 2026. But since none of the other planned homes were certified prior to the ruling, the rest of the project is on hold.
THE MORATORIUM CAME AS A COLLECTIVE SHOCK to the Phoenix-area homebuilding industry. But it shouldn’t have: For more than two decades, Arizona water officials had been sending out warnings, echoed by Ferris’ high-profile criticism. Time after time, they concluded that far less groundwater was available for proposed subdivisions than the developers claimed.
Belmont’s original developers, for example, wanted permission to use 39,000 acre-feet of groundwater per year. But back in 2003, ADWR determined that barely half that amount was physically available. Around the same time, Tartesso’s developer asserted that 26,000 acre-feet was available, while ADWR said it was actually only about 19,000 acre-feet. Similar discrepancies arose around proposed developments across the West Valley.
Then, in 2021 and 2022, ADWR told the developers of several subdivisions, including Festival Ranch and North Star Ranch, that it was finalizing a computer model for the West Valley area that showed the subdivisions’ groundwater demands likely exceeded known supplies.
But then-Gov. Doug Ducey’s Republican administration was said to have prevented the model’s public release. The day after Gov. Hobbs took office in January 2023, Ferris urged the new governor to release the study in an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic. Hobbs did so six days later. Alarm bells began to go off for developers and builders.
The moratorium that ADWR declared five months later “had pretty devastating impacts to housing,” homebuilder lobbyist Spencer Kamps told an ADWR advisory committee meeting a few weeks after its release. “We are the only land use that does meet the 100-year requirements,” since apartment, commercial and industrial development were not covered by the 1980 law.
Emilie Myth and her dog, Piper, at home in September. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
He estimated that developers and homebuilders were sitting on at least $2 billion worth of investments in infrastructure in the Buckeye area, including roads and sewer and water lines, along with the Bridge to Nowhere. His estimate rose to $4 billion as the moratorium continued. Kamps also said it contributed to rising housing costs as well, adding to the existing 45,000-unit housing shortage in the metro area.
The moratorium has also intensified the isolation of suburban areas where new development had been planned. Emilie Myth moved to Tartesso, a subdivision of Buckeye, well over three years ago. She had been living in Torrance, south of Los Angeles, but found herself stressed by the cost and concerned about the safety of her neighborhood. Late one night, for example, she found a woman sleeping in her garage and was barely able to wake her and get her to leave.
So she moved to Tartesso, where the mortgage for a four-bedroom house costs the same as the rent for her one-bedroom apartment back in California: about $1,600 a month.
The downside is being marooned on a service-less island. Tartesso, with its 3,400 homes housing 10,000 residents, is about 10 miles east of the nearest gas station and 20 miles west of the nearest place to buy groceries. A convenience store is expected to open a few miles away at the end of this year. The only food service available comes from the handful of food trucks that spend evenings in one of Tartesso’s many parks. Similarly, North Star Ranch would lie an hour’s drive north of downtown Buckeye. Just south at one of Festival Ranch’s subdivisions, there’s a lone restaurant attached to a golf course, and a single Subway outlet and convenience market at the development’s entrance. The nearest grocery store is a Safeway 20 miles east.
The Festival Ranch housing development in Buckeye, Arizona. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
Yet, in some ways, Myth enjoys the isolation. “I like the quiet,” she said. “The only things you hear are cars going by, people talking and dogs barking, whereas in cities it was traffic, 24-7.
“I never felt at peace.”
But it’s been an adjustment, too. She grew up in South Sacramento, where she could take the bus to the movies or walk to the convenience store to get a candy bar. “What do kids do around here? What do teenagers do around here?” she wondered. “I just feel like as a kid I could be more independent than a child is here.”
The very thing she struggles with now contributes to her new neighborhood’s low cost: Since World War II, homebuilders have hopped over the urban fringe and alfalfa and cotton fields to develop the vast swaths of cheap desert land beyond them. This made the housing more affordable; denser construction would have cost more per unit, as would including commercial services.
Buckeye, for example, is among the handful of areas in the Phoenix area where homeowners can find a new home for under $400,000, a study by longtime Phoenix economic consulting firm Elliott D. Pollack and Co. found. Between June 2019 and June 2025, the median home price in Maricopa County jumped 65% to nearly $474,000, according to one real estate company, putting home ownership out of reach for much of the working class. In a 12-month stretch, though, more than a quarter of the 2,700 homes that sold for less than $400,000 were in Buckeye. According to Pollack, “There are few suitable alternatives for affordable homes in the region if Buckeye cannot continue to develop homes.” Pollack’s study was commissioned by the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.
Other reports, though, suggest that the moratorium may have had less of an impact than developers claim. There are dozens of homes listed in Tartesso, Festival Ranch and Buckeye in general for under $400,000. And a variety of other factors affect housing prices, according to a recent study from ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy: federal interest rates, inflation, supply chain interruptions, migration patterns, remote work, labor markets, inventory and local, state and federal government policies and regulations.
For example, the single-family, low-density zoning that covers most of the metro area can discourage lower-cost housing development and increases the cost of infrastructure such as roads and utilities. Macroeconomic influences account for much of the housing costs and availability, the study found. “In the absence of economic studies, it is difficult to say whether or how the (ADWR) moratorium might impact housing affordability.”
But it does mean that residents like Myth will likely continue to live in suburban isolation. “In a lot of ways, it sucks,” said Myth. “I understand why the governor wants to do that. We don’t want to turn off water for some people and have other people have it. But at the same time, when I moved here, I was told there is going to be more housing soon and eventually there will be a grocery store. That looks like it’s not going to happen for decades now.”
Some Tartesso homeowners told HCN they were leaving, or at least considering it, due to the long bus rides for schoolchildren and the onerous drives to get basic groceries. Not Myth, though. “I’ll probably stay here,” she said, since anywhere else, her mortgage bill could easily double.
Clouds catch the last light of the day behind a sign for the Tartesso development in Buckeye, Arizona. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
WITH TIME, THE FIGHT OVER THE MORATORIUM has hardened along familiar lines. Republican legislators have essentially accused ADWR of waging war against affordable housing, while ADWR and its backers say they’re standing firm on behalf of the state’s 45-year-old tradition of responsible groundwater management. A complicated history and a challenging present, distilled into a simple fight: affordability versus environment.
Duane Schooley Jr. bought two houses in Tartesso to rent out at first back in 2018 and 2019 because “we figured that Arizona was going to be a hot spot.” But Schooley, a local Republican party activist, is now openly disdainful of the state’s decision to stop allowing new homes to be built on groundwater supplies. He even doubts the state’s talk of a water shortage.
“When I moved here, it was all farmland, all of it,” Schooley recalled “Now, you have the Walmarts, the Boeings, the distribution centers. You displaced 1.3 million square feet of farmland for a concrete warehouse. Where did the water rights go? How much water were they using?” ADWR’s model found, however, that even those kinds of reductions in water use — moving away from farming, cutting back water use — hadn’t been enough.
Arizona officials are “playing with fire” and are “kind of short-sighted” by stopping so much development simply because of water, he added. “It seems kind of heavy-handed.”
Homebuilders began looking for a way around the moratorium just weeks after it was implemented. Industry representatives argued that developments that had been in process should be allowed to move forward, but state legislation on that got nowhere. After that and other efforts to overturn the moratorium failed, they pushed for a bill to allow new subdivisions to be built on retired farmland, since homes generally guzzle less water than cotton fields. The Legislature passed it in 2024, but Hobbs vetoed it after ADWR officials claimed it could actually lead to more water use in those areas. Developers have also challenged the accuracy of the forecasts made by ADWR’s groundwater model, saying its forecasts make faulty assumptions about where wells would be placed, overestimate future demands and underestimate supplies. Their consultant prepared an alternative model that projected groundwater supplies would more than suffice for 100 years. ADWR, however, pushed back on its findings.
For now, the department has focused instead on extending the responsibility to restrict groundwater use to some cities as well, by requiring them to cut groundwater use once renewable supplies arrive. While the rule’s backers say this provision is essential for reducing dependence on native groundwater, homebuilders and Republican legislative leaders have claimed it is an illegal “tax.” (ADWR has denied this, saying that it isn’t a tax.)
In early 2025, the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona joined two lawsuits against ADWR. One was filed on their behalf by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. This complaint challenged ADWR’s decision to stop issuing certificates for development, while the other, which was filed along with the Arizona Senate and House of Representatives, went after the requirement that cities importing renewable water cut groundwater use by 25%.
The Goldwater Institute lawsuit alleges that ADWR lacked the authority under state law to impose its moratorium in the first place, arguing that ADWR’s rules have become “insurmountable obstacles” to obtaining state certification of a 100-year supply.
In response, ADWR filed to have that lawsuit dismissed. “What is at stake in this lawsuit is the ability of the state to protect the Arizonans that are here today, by ensuring that their water supplies don’t run out or water levels fall to alarming depths of 1,000 feet due to new groundwater pumping,” Buschatzke, a defendant in the Goldwater lawsuit, wrote in an op-ed. “The Goldwater lawsuit would create a policy directive to rubber-stamp new developments if water was available beneath them, while forcing ADWR to ignore any potential impacts to neighboring homeowners or communities.”
The various factions have found one area of compromise, however: Legislation was passed this summer that could allow several hundred thousand new homes to be built on farmland. New subdivisions can only be built if they use as much as 1.5 acre-feet of groundwater per acre of developed land — enough water to serve three Phoenix-area homes for a year but far less than the farms themselves would have used.
But the new law won’t help the hundreds of thousands of planned homes in Buckeye and other suburbs in the desert. Instead, it focuses on developments that are less likely to move quickly.
Developers of master-planned communities want to build in lush desert mountain landscapes because they are selling atmosphere, said Sarah Porter, director of ASU’s Kyl Center. “They are designed from top to bottom, and everything is beautifully designed for a look, to work well together. It’s very hard to do that in an old farming town.”
A roofer works on a home in a housing development in Buckeye, Arizona, in September. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
WHATEVER THE OUTCOME of the various debates and lawsuits, Phoenix’s future growth ultimately depends on the public’s willingness to pay. “For enough money, people can dig a trench between Phoenix and the ocean to bring water. It might cost a trillion dollars, but it can be done,” said Brett Fleck, a water resources manager for the city of Peoria, northwest of Phoenix. “It’s not about running out. It’s about: Are you willing to pay for what it costs?”
Even relatively straightforward solutions are expensive and quickly run into problems. The city of Buckeye, for instance, agreed in early 2023 to pay $80 million to buy rights to 5,926 acre-feet of groundwater a year — enough to serve more than 17,000 homes annually — from a company that represents farms west of Phoenix. The town of Queen Creek spent $30 million for about 5,000 acre-feet from farms in the same area a year earlier.
In July, ADWR allowed the cities to take the water. But they still need the Central Arizona Project’s permission to put the water into the canal to bring it about 60 miles to the Phoenix area. That won’t be easy, since the water will require costly treatment: Much of it is contaminated with unsafe levels of naturally occurring arsenic and nitrates from crop fertilizers. If it’s put in the canal untreated, it would make water flowing to other houses and farms unusable.
And the CAP canal itself may very well be carrying less water soon. It has delivered renewable Colorado River water supplies to the state’s hot, dry interior since 1985, but with officials of the seven river basin states locked in tense negotiations over how to apportion the water supply from the oversubscribed river, the prospect of cuts looms large. Water officials of five Phoenix-area suburbs that get Colorado River water told HCN that they may have to scale back their future growth plans if the region sustains a significant cut to CAP deliveries.
Another proposal is to raise the Bartlett Dam on the Lower Verde River northeast of Phoenix so it can store an additional 323,000 acre-feet of water for metro-area cities in central Arizona. But one projection estimated it will cost about $1 billion, needs congressional authorization and wouldn’t go online until the late 2030s. The city of Phoenix is considering a facility that would treat upward of 80 million gallons of wastewater per day to make it drinkable — projected to cost $4 billion to build, and that’s a decade away.
Former Gov. Ducey proposed spending more than $1 billion for seawater desalinization plants on the Gulf of California and a pipeline to ship the treated seawater 200 miles north to the CAP canal. Ducey proposed this billion-dollar allocation toward the cost of such a project to the Arizona Legislature in 2022, but major state revenue shortfalls in 2024 led to a more than $400 million cut to the funding, leaving the prospect for water imports uncertain at best.
Myth would like to see some of these options considered more seriously. Why not, she asks, if the question is having enough water for people to drink and to bathe and to live?
“I would say that we are not being as imaginative about water as we could be,” she said. “If we could pipe oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, why can’t we pipe water from the Great Lakes here, or bring water up from the Sea of Cortez and treat it up here?”
Tom Berry at home in the Festival Ranch housing development in Buckeye, Arizona in September. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
But for some residents the moratorium has offered unexpected benefits. They have come to love their subdivisions marooned in the desert and dread the revival of the growth machine. Tom Berry began thinking of moving to Arizona more than a decade ago but dismissed Phoenix’s rural suburbs as an option. “I thought, ‘Who in their right mind would ever live out there?’ It was so remote.” But after years living in a booming neighborhood of northern Peoria west of Phoenix, he grew concerned about all the development he could see coming. “It was really going to impact our lifestyle.” So he drove to Festival Ranch “on a whim,” and bought a new home there in September 2021. Like many Festival Ranch residents, he was delighted that the state had blocked North Star Ranch.
“(The city is) enamored with the high growth rate of Buckeye,” he said. “It is growth at any cost, and too bad if you already live here.”
Just across the Sun Valley Parkway from his neighborhood lies the huge White Tank Mountains Regional Park, he noted. The parkway drive passes through open desert where cattle that graze on neighboring state land occasionally break through fences and stroll onto the road. Authorities have posted signs between Festival Ranch and Surprise warning drivers to “Watch for cattle.”
“So one of my friends said, ‘How about we put signs on the fenceline facing the desert that says ‘Watch for cars?’” Berry said.
A few streets over, Billy Ryan, a 39-year-old paramedic and Phoenix-area native whose four-bedroom house lies a block away from the bridge, was also cautiously celebrating the halt on new homes.
“I don’t want any development up there. It’s more traffic, more people, more everything,” said Ryan. “The whole reason I moved out here was to get away from that.
“You go five miles down the road and you’re in open desert. You see snakes and bugs. There’s nothing to the north of us, to the east or to the west. We’re kind of like an island,” he added. “If you like being outside, in nature, it’s ideal.”
Still, he tempers his relief at the indefinite delay imposed on the North Star Ranch project with the intuitive awareness of someone born in the state that “you can’t stop progress.
“It will happen,” he said. “The developers always get their way. At the same time … if people want to develop here, they need to find a better way to get the water.
“I don’t know where they are going to get the water, it is a finite resource, to be sure. But at the end of the day, developers are the ones with cash. If not this election cycle, not now, four years later, five years later, 15 years later, it will get done.”
Development meets the desert in suburban Phoenix, Arizona. Caitlin O’Hara/High Country News
A major question looms over Colorado’s energy future: why does geothermal energy — a natural renewable resource — 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 Earth’s surface. It’s 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 — 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
“We know there is an abundant amount of geothermal energy potential in our state,” said Hodge, who brings two decades of experience in renewable energy integration and power systems simulation. “What we need is a better understanding of the social, economic and regulatory factors that influence its development.”
Bridging technology and community
Frydenlund’s work with Indigenous communities in Indonesia, some of whom oppose geothermal projects due to environmental justice concerns, sparked an interdisciplinary collaboration with Hodge.
“I became very interested in bringing together physical science and social science perspectives,” Frydenlund said, “and to understand why a place as geothermal-rich as Colorado hasn’t tapped into this natural resource.”
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.
“There are concerns over land rights, sacred territories, livelihoods and environmental justice,” she said. “We need to bring those perspectives as we think about using geothermal here.”
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.
“Just because an area has strong potential doesn’t mean it’s a good place to develop geothermal energy,” Frydenlund said. “If it’s not culturally appropriate or desired by the community, resources can be wasted and projects can fail.”
The issue isn’t unique to Colorado.
“We’ve seen this already in the U.S.,” Hodge said. “Hawaii has been a leader in decarbonization goals and has great geothermal resources. Yet, there’s very little being developed there because you have to be mindful of the traditions in Hawaiian culture.”
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 Boulder’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 and the Western Governors Association’s 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.
“What’s really interesting from a power systems standpoint is that geothermal affects not only electricity supply, but also demand,” Hodge said. “If ground-source heat pumps became widespread, Colorado’s power grid could shift from a summer to a winter peak system.”
However, these technological advances alone can’t drive an increased transition to geothermal.
“Understanding 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,” Frydenlund said.
