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

May 1, 2026

⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️

If someone were to be dropped from another planet into the North Fork Valley in western Colorado today, they would be forgiven for assuming there is not a water crisis. A thick carpet of green covers the valley floor, the irrigation canals are filled to the brim, trees are leafing out, the river is running and Paonia Reservoir is almost full, and the mountains are still graced with snow.

I didn’t even come from outer space — I think — and I find the contrast between the news reports of water shortages and restrictions and the on-the-ground situation here to be quite jarring. Is it possible that April precipitation has averted the calamity?

Yes, a series of storms, some quite abundant, have moved through the Upper Colorado River Basin, boosting snowpack and soothing the desiccated earth. It has certainly felt cooler and wetter than normal, but that was mostly an illusion brought on by the abnormally dry winter and the searing March heatwave. And it hasn’t been nearly enough to offset the warm winter and the lack of snow, as the graphs below indicate.

As for the full ditches, I guess you could attribute that to a “make hay while the water is available” sort of ethos. You might as well douse the fields and fill ponds while spring runoff is in full swing and the river still runs, knowing that it may not last beyond June. Meanwhile, Paonia Reservoir’s relatively healthy levels are the result of the Fire Mountain irrigation canal — which relies on reservoir water — being shut down for emergency repairs.

Meanwhile, there is a conspicuous absence here in this agricultural hotspot: There are no blossoms or fruit on apple, cherry, peach, or pear trees. The March heatwave sparked a spectacular orchard super-bloom. That was followed by a devastating freeze that killed all of the fruit, even in orchards where extreme preventative measures were taken, and even “burned” the leaves on some trees. Wacky weather indeed.

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

Phil Lyman, the former and hopeful Utah politician, recently posted this on Facebook:

Just to sum it up: He’s knocking a federal program that pays willing farmers to voluntarily cut off irrigation to their fields in order to conserve water in an effort to balance Colorado River demand with the shrinking supplies. And he’s blaming it all on California. 

Lyman’s general sentiment is not new, nor is it uncommon among water users in the Upper Basin states. In fact, it’s basically a cliché. Since I was a kid I’ve heard folks saying something along the lines of: If we don’t use the water, it’ll just run on down to California, where those L.A. folks will guzzle it up to fill their swimming pools and water their golf courses. It’s a rather simplistic view, and one that doesn’t account for the realities of water law or the way the Colorado River system works. In other words, it’s just plain wrong, and a candidate for Congress — as Lyman is — should know better.

The Colorado River and its users have a problem: Demand for the water exceeds supply, and the supply is continually shrinking. Since boosting supply is not a feasible option, demand — i.e. consumptive use — must be reduced significantly. While everyone must make cuts, agriculture is the river’s largest water user by far, meaning that sector is going to have to make the largest cuts, by volume. This isn’t about demonizing farmers or alfalfa, it’s not about whether Californians or Utahns are more deserving of the water. It’s simple math.

The farm fallowing program is one way to cut consumption quickly by paying willing farmers to voluntarily forego irrigating some or all of their fields on a year-by-year basis. It’s not ideal, but it is legal, voluntary, and can save junior water rights holders, including cities and towns throughout the watershed, from being forced to shut off their water intakes. And in no way is farm fallowing exclusive to Utah. It’s occurring all over the place.

Let’s do a little fact-check of Lyman’s other points:

• Farm fallowing in Utah is being done to benefit California, which “demolished its water storage infrastructure.” No and no. The goal here is to leave a little more water in the river, to keep the whole system from collapsing. Any amount conserved in one place will potentially benefit all other river users, as well as the river itself. Foregoing irrigation on a Utah farm, for example, could help keep the taps on in St. George or some other Utah community that relies on the river. Dams have been removed in California, most significantly four structures on the Lower Klamath River. But those were primarily for hydropower production, not irrigation or water storage, and they are far removed from the Colorado River or any associated water storage.
• “Paying farmers not to feed us to bail out California’s failures …” Actually, the feds and state and other programs mostly are paying farmers not to grow alfalfa or hay, which feed cattle, and it has nothing to do with California’s “failures.” Indeed, California grows a lot of alfalfa, too, but it also grows all kinds of vegetables — far more than in Utah.
• If the water saved in Utah does make it to the Lower Basin and California, then the biggest beneficiary would be … farmers. Most of the water in the Lower Basin goes to the Imperial Irrigation District, where it is used for farming. Those farmers have also been part of the federal fallowing program, and have managed collectively to reduced their Colorado River water consumption by about nearly 1 million acre-feet since 2003.
• Lyman calls for eliminating or restructuring federal farm fallowing programs. I’m curious if he’s talked to the farmers about this, especially the ones who may lose their water and be forced to fallow anyway. Isn’t it better to get paid not to grow something than to not get paid for it?
• “… fight to end federal policies that separate water from the people who depend on it. Water rights are property rights.” We all depend on water; the California farmers depend on water just as much as Utah farmers do. Furthermore, the California farmers also own their land, they have some of the most senior water rights on the Colorado River, and according to the “Law of the River,” they could likely go to court to force many Utah farmers to stop irrigating altogether, without compensation. The farm fallowing program does not separate water from the farmers, it simply pays them to temporarily forego irrigation.
• “… end the war on farm water.” Look, there is not enough water in the Colorado River for everyone. Everyone will have to take cuts, but irrigated agriculture is the biggest user by far, and therefore will have to make cuts in order to balance supply and demand. It’s simple math: All of Las Vegas and southern Nevada use less than one-tenth of the water that goes to the farms in the Imperial Irrigation District.
• “… propose that the federal government build and operate desalination plants in California to free up Colorado River water for Utah …” Desalination will likely be a part of the West’s water future, especially for coastal urban areas. But building the plants, and processing and transporting these kinds of volumes of water, would be outrageously expensive and energy-intensive, which would be especially harmful to farmers, who rely on cheap water.

***

The Bureau of Reclamation recently decreased Glen Canyon Dam releases from about 8,200 cfs to a steady 7,000 cfs (without the usual nighttime reductions). This appears to be the lowest sustained releases since the dam was built, and if continued throughout the entire year would lead to only 5 million acre-feet of annual releases, which would make the Lower Basin states even more grumpy and litigation-happy than they already are.

But not to worry, the feds are still on course to release 6 MAF for the water year, because they released about 10,000 cfs during January and February. Still, it’s going to change the complexion of rafting in the Grand Canyon, for sure, and it is certainly pushing the boundaries of the Grand Canyon Protection Act.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado River Board of California website:

May 1, 2026

The Lower Basin States of Arizona, California, and Nevada today advanced a plan to stabilize the Colorado River through 2028, responding to declining reservoir levels, record low inflows to Lake Powell, and increasing risk of reaching critical elevations at both Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Earlier in the post-2026 process, the Lower Basin took a significant step by proposing 1.25 million acre-feet in annual reductions, with an additional 250,000 acre-feet from Mexico, totaling approximately 1.5 million acre-feet per year.

This proposal builds on that foundation with an expanded system conservation program across the Lower Basin with an estimated contribution of at least 700,000 acre-feet. In total, the plan identifies up to 3.2 million acre-feet of water savings to the system through 2028.

The proposal is an integrated package addressing Lake Powell releases, Upper Initial Unit operations, Lower Basin reductions, additional conservation, use of Intentionally Created Surplus, and system infrastructure improvements. Lower Basin contributions are contingent on these coordinated operations to ensure system stability as well as appropriate funding.

“With this proposal, the Lower Basin is putting forth real action to stabilize water supply along the Colorado River. We’re putting forward additional measurable water contributions for the system. Without that, the system will continue to decline,” said JB Hamby

“This proposal is about moving from ideas to implementation,” said John Entsminger. “It pairs real measurable water contributions with sensible dry-condition operations at Lake Powell and across the Upper Initial Units. Now is the time for every water user in the Basin to double down on water conservation as we face historically dry hydrology.”

“This proposal reflects the creativity and commitment of water users across the Lower Basin who continue to step forward with solutions that support the river,” said Tom Buschatzke. “We have shown that collaborative, voluntary efforts and reductions that are certain can produce meaningful water savings.”

The Lower Basin states recognize the Upper Basin’s call for mediation and are open to that process. However, current conditions require immediate, measurable water reductions from every state. The Lower Basin states stand ready to engage in a meaningful process for long-term solutions while encouraging the Upper Basin to step forward now with verifiable water contributions to help stabilize the system and support a near-term, seven-state bridge.

The Lower Basin states confirmed that the proposal preserves legal accountability under the Colorado River Compact, including Upper Basin delivery obligations, while maintaining a clear path toward a broader agreement among all seven Basin States.

The plan has been advanced to the federal government for consideration as part of the ongoing post-2026 planning process and is intended to provide a near-term bridge through 2028 while long-term operating guidelines are finalized.

Implementation of key elements of the proposal, including expanded system conservation, will require federal partnership. The proposal remains subject to approval by the Arizona Legislature and relevant California and Nevada water agency governing boards.

Press Contacts: 

Arizona: Doug MacEachern, dmaceachern@azwater.gov

Nevada: Bronson Mack, bronson.mack@snwa.com

California: Fernando Castro-Alvarez, fscastro@iid.com

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

April 29, 2026

This story was produced by Circle of Blue, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

KEY POINTS

• Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963, was not designed to be operated at extremely low water levels in Lake Powell.
• The decline of Lake Powell is putting hydropower generation and downstream water deliveries at risk.
• The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal water manager, is studying options for retrofitting Glen Canyon Dam.

In the span of U.S. history certain years are turning points, milestones in the nation’s story. 1776. 1865. 1929. 1968. Circumstance and consequence conspire to make it so.

For the Colorado River and those who rely on it, 2026 is on the verge of similar prominence. Circumstances in the basin today are that urgent.

A slow-developing water supply calamity, decades in the making, has boiled over, like a cold war turning hot. Extreme heat in March – triple-digit temperatures never witnessed that early in the year – obliterated a meager snowpack. The basin’s big reservoirs, the supposed buffers against short-term drought, were already uncomfortably low after a quarter-century of declining river flows. They will drop even lower. The amount of water flowing this summer into Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, will be one of the smallest ever measured, barely a trickle.

“This is unprecedented, but it’s not unpredicted,” said Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. “I like to say that this is the most predicted disaster of all time.”

Lake Powell is formed by Glen Canyon Dam, a striking 710-ft tall concrete arch braced against ruddy sandstone walls. It plugs the Colorado just after the river enters Arizona. Meant to ensure water deliveries to the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963 to complement the Colorado River’s audacious engineering that distributes water through mountains and uphill to the largest cities in the Southwest and to the region’s most productive farmland. When full, Lake Powell holds enough water to flood the entire state of Virginia to the depth of one foot.

Climate change and water demand that still exceeds supply have flipped the engineering script. Lake Powell is less than 25 percent full today. Glen Canyon Dam, instead of being a guarantor of water, is now the most significant water chokepoint in the basin. The hard-won asset has become a glaring liability.

The reversal of fortune is because of how Glen Canyon Dam was designed. The dam was never meant to be operated at the extremely low water levels that Lake Powell is rapidly approaching. Doing so for extended periods of time could damage the pipes that move water through the dam, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the structure.

Reclamation is now studying its options for retrofitting Glen Canyon Dam to accommodate a lower Lake Powell. It expects to release those findings later this year or in early 2027. As any home remodeler knows, renovating an aging structure is neither quick nor cheap, especially when failure could have disastrous consequences.

In the short term, Reclamation is relying on operational band-aids for Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. With the consent of the seven states in the basin – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – the agency took unprecedented action this month to prop up the reservoir. Releasing more water from upstream reservoirs and holding back more in Powell will delay Glen Canyon’s infrastructure reckoning. But that day will soon come, and Reclamation’s answer to the dam’s engineering problems will have far-reaching implications – not only for the reliability of the basin’s water supply, but also for its power customers, ecology, and recreation economy.

An Assessment Deferred

Dams are difficult to manage under any circumstance. Management is even more troublesome when operators must balance multiple, conflicting objectives. In Glen Canyon’s case those objectives are water supply, flood control, hydropower generation, and releasing water to protect the ecology downstream in the Grand Canyon – namely, beach-building and threatened native fish like the humpback chub. This is in addition to ensuring the safe operation of the dam itself.

How to operate Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, its larger downstream sibling, is what the seven basin states and Reclamation are attempting to figure out right now. The current agreement covers operations through 2026. Reclamation published a draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, in January that would impose severe cuts on water users in the lower basin, particularly Arizona, in part to protect Glen Canyon Dam’s fragile infrastructure.

For that reason, water users in the lower basin and elsewhere support an engineering fix for Glen Canyon Dam. Many were incredulous that Reclamation did not include an assessment of dam modifications in its draft environmental analysis.

“This EIS could have been a great avenue to look at real changes at Glen Canyon Dam that could solve the water delivery problem and some of the ecological problems, too,” Balken said. 

Patrick Dent is the assistant general manager for water policy at the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which delivers Colorado River water to the densely populated center of the state. He said that CAP does not favor any particular fix – only one that provides dam managers with more flexibility.

“Our primary interest is that they could release water at a lower lake level,” Dent said.

The Gila River Indian Community, which receives Colorado River water through CAP, told Reclamation that the agency has a duty to safeguard the tribe’s water rights, which are at risk if the dam cannot release enough water. “The United States must take action to fix Glen Canyon Dam,” Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis wrote in a March 2026 letter.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board, which represents that state’s water interests, said it supports a reevaluation of Glen Canyon Dam, but “in a separate action” from the EIS.

Becki Bryant, a Reclamation spokesperson, said the agency will release an appraisal study assessing three dam modification alternatives at the end of this year or in early 2027. Any action beyond the study, she said, requires congressional authorization and funding.

‘Antiquated Plumbing’

The tool for managing the dam’s multiple objectives, which are a legislative requirement as well as a practical necessity, is the water held in Lake Powell, said David Wegner, a scientist who has worked on Glen Canyon policy for more than four decades. But even water has limits when the engineering is inadequate. “Sadly, these dams were not built for multiple objectives,” Wegner said. And Glen Canyon was certainly not built for extremely low water, he added.

The problem with Glen Canyon is what a coalition of environmental groups calls the dam’s “antiquated plumbing.” The groups – Glen Canyon Institute, Great Basin Water Network, and Utah Rivers Council – published a report in August 2022 that outlined these engineering deficiencies.

Water can exit Glen Canyon in only three ways. One is the spillways, a pressure-release valve for flooding, which are located at elevation 3,648 feet, near the top of the dam. They are irrelevant today. Lake Powell rests 122 feet below them.

The main exit point is through the eight penstocks, the 15-foot diameter tubes that move water through the turbines to generate hydroelectricity. The penstocks are incapacitated when Powell drops below 3,490 feet. (The lake today is 36 feet higher than that level.) If the lake falls below what is known as minimum power pool, hydropower generation also ceases.

If that happens, water must be released through four 8-foot diameter pipes called the river outlet works. Smaller than the penstocks, the river outlet works are located at elevation 3,370. Below that elevation water cannot be released from Powell, a status known ominously as “dead pool.” (Functionally, the river outlet works may be useless at elevation 3,394, Reclamation says.)

The environmental groups identified two limitations with the river outlet works. One is that they were not designed to be operated full-time. They are a role player, not the star. The other is that their smaller size means less water can pass through them. That’s a problem because the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming are required to send a set amount of water downstream to the lower basin, according to the 1922 Colorado River Compact that divided the river.

The flow restrictions imposed by the river outlet works, if they had to be used full time, means that the upper basin could violate the compact, which could mean water cutbacks imposed by the lower basin.

“It’s just so counterintuitive that the tool that was designed to meet this delivery obligation” – the construction of Glen Canyon Dam – “is now going to be the roadblock that may prevent the delivery obligation from being met,” said Balken of the Glen Canyon Institute.

The engineering problems are not a new discovery. Wegner, who was with the Bureau of Reclamation at the time as its Grand Canyon environmental studies manager, helped lead a 1987 National Academies report on Glen Canyon. The report recommended that the Interior Department consider the “installation and operation of multiple outlet structures” at Glen Canyon, which would give dam managers more flexibility with water releases.

Glen Canyon’s structural problems were substantiated in 2023, when Reclamation used the river outlet works during an experimental “high-flow” release of water to flush sediment downstream and rebuild eroding Grand Canyon beaches.

The high-volume release caused pitting, or cavitation, within the river outlet works, a risk that was heightened due to the physics of water when Lake Powell is low. Reclamation coated the pipes with epoxy as a temporary fix to prevent more damage, a process that took several months. The agency has since used two small-scale physical models at its Technical Service Center in Denver to test dam operations at low water levels and the effect on infrastructure.

Reclamation acknowledged the limitations of the river outlet works in a technical memopublished in March 2024 by Richard Lafond, director of the agency’s Technical Service Center. The memo’s conclusions were endorsed by the top decision-makers in Reclamation’s Upper Colorado River Office.

“Long term operation of the river outlet works will result in accelerating regular operation and maintenance tasks,” LaFond wrote. Reclamation should “not rely on the river outlet works as the sole means for releasing water from Glen Canyon Dam.”

Wegner put it in starker terms. If the river outlet works had to be relied upon and the pipes began to erode again, then Reclamation could potentially lose control of water flows.

“Potentially that could fail,” Wegner said, meaning an inability to control water releases through the dam if the pipes are structurally compromised. “And if that fails, now you have a catastrophe on your hand and you have limited options to manage that catastrophe.” 

In other words, there would be no way to release water downstream into the Grand Canyon and into the lower basin.

Neither Quick Nor Easy

What fixes are possible? Reclamation received $2 million from Congress in the fiscal year 2022 budget for an appraisal study.

Reclamation outlined three engineering possibilities in a 2023 presentation, most of which centered on preserving hydropower generation as Lake Powell declines.

One possibility is a new, lower intake that uses the existing power generation turbines. An intake located deeper in the reservoir would allow Glen Canyon to pass water in what is currently dead pool. But it would entail “increased risk from penetration through the dam.”

The second would connect new power generation equipment to the river outlet works.

The third option is tunneling through the canyon wall and installing a new underground power station. This would also provide more flexibility for water releases.

Reclamation also included three operational or policy changes for power production, including investing in wind and solar to offset hydropower declines.

Other ideas that seemed kooky and fringe just a few years ago – draining Lake Powell and filling Lake Mead first; changing the basin’s water accounting system – are now being discussed throughout the basin with more seriousness and candor.

Beyond that presentation, Reclamation has not said much publicly about dam modification. The agency declined an interview request to discuss Glen Canyon Dam’s engineering problems.

Whatever direction Reclamation chooses – an option outlined above or something new – the process will not be quick or easy. Any change to Glen Canyon must go through an environmental analysis and public comment period. Congress will have to authorize actions and appropriate the funds. Construction alone will take years.

Wegner, who was the staff director for the House Natural Resources Water and Power Subcommittee from 2008 to 2014, knows the difficulty and sees a lack of leadership. “There’s nobody in Washington who has been willing to lead the charge trying to get Congress to provide authorized funding to do this sort of work.”

‘Reservoir Triage’

Because Reclamation is not confident it can operate the river outlet works for an extended run, the agency is focused on keeping Powell above elevation 3,500 feet.

Protecting 3,500 feet comes with all sorts of baggage. It preserves hydropower generation, which power customers appreciate. But in effect the redline at that elevation strands some 4.4 million acre-feet in Lake Powell. (Only 3.7 million acre-feet is technically accessible with the current plumbing.) Some have called this elevation a “de facto” dead pool. Thus, the agitation in the lower basin for a plumbing system within the dam that provides access to this water.

Balken said that downstream water deliveries, not preserving hydropower, should be Reclamation’s biggest concern.

“When these decision makers are talking about Glen Canyon Dam from only a hydropower perspective, I think it’s missing the larger point, which is the dam is about to become the biggest roadblock of water deliveries that the basin has ever seen,” Balken said.

To avoid the infrastructure risks of dropping below 3,500 feet, Reclamation has started to take extraordinary action. The agency has two emergency levers it is pulling. One is to hold more water back in Lake Powell. Reclamation cut water releases to the legal minimum this year, something it has never done. The other is releasing more water from Flaming Gorge, a reservoir upstream that is in better shape.

As Balken describes it, “This is reservoir triage.”

These emergency actions have serious side-effects. Upstream, Flaming Gorge is expected to lose 35 feet of elevation by next spring, once the extra water has been released. That will hurt the recreation economy of northeastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming – fewer boat ramps in the water, less fishing access.

These upstream releases have limited utility, Wegner said. “You can do that once or twice. But you got to then depend upon Mother Nature refilling those reservoirs upstream.”

Downstream, Lake Mead will drop quickly and it too will approach a level in which hydropower generation at Hoover Dam severely drops. Algal blooms in a warmer, shallower lake could be a problem. “They’re going to be robbing Mead to pay Powell,” Balken said.

Trying Not to Hit Bottom

The idea of dead pool – when Lake Powell can no longer release water – was almost inconceivable when the reservoir was designed and filled. The official device for measuring Lake Powell’s elevation ends at the top of the penstocks, at elevation 3,477.5 feet. According to Reclamation’s 2024 technical memo, “This is an indication that reservoir elevations below minimum power pool” – 3,490 feet – “were not anticipated.”

Reclamation finished filling the reservoir in 1980. Three years later, after an intense El Niño winter, the dam’s upper limits were tested. Floodwaters in the summer of 1983 nearly broke the dam. Such volumes are almost inconceivable now.

In a typical year, Lake Powell would be rising in late April, flush with the deposits of snowmelt from headwater basins in the Rocky Mountains. Not this year. The snowpack peaked in many basins in late February or early March. What little snow there was has already melted. As of April 28, Lake Powell inflows are projected to be just 16 percent of average. Lake level forecasts from mid-April showed a long downward slope for the next 12 months. Those projections were what triggered the emergency release of water from Flaming Gorge and the reduction in Lake Powell releases.

Scientists have been warning about circumstances like this for years. In a defining period for the basin, all the predictions of water supply shocks in the Colorado River from the past two decades are coming to pass.

“We should have been prepared for this,” Balken said.

Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

April 20, 2026

With a historic drought hitting the Colorado River basin, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is making preparations to slow releases from the river’s largest reservoir while increasing withdrawals from an Upper Basin reservoir. 

“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife and recreational uses across the region,” said Andrea Travnice, the Bureau of Reclamation’s assistant secretary of water and science in a Friday, April 17 news release…

As a result, the Bureau of Reclamation is anticipating that inflow to Lake Powell will be 29% of the historical average, which it reports is one of the lowest on record. If water levels fall below a certain elevation — below 3,490 feet or roughly 15% of its capacity — it can impact operations, regional power and water supplies as well as reduce hydroelectric power generation. The Bureau is projecting it could hit this minimum power pool level by August. As of April 19, Lake Powell and Lake Mead were 24% and 32% full, respectively. 

Click the link to read the article on The Water Desk website (Annie MacKeigan):

April 23, 2026

The Colorado River basin has been here before. 

This year’s historic winter of low snow might feel novel. But recent years give some insight into just how dry the West’s most important river system can get. This season’s scant snowpack is melting rapidly, and turning up memories of other notably dry years. 

Prolonged drought conditions and warming temperatures since 2000 have produced severe single-year droughts in 2002, 2012, 2018 and 2020 in the river’s headwaters states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. As severe drought years continue to put the Southwest’s water infrastructure to the test, communities in the region are grappling with how best to understand and adapt to a changing climate. 

2002 stands as the worst drought on record for the Colorado River, measured as the flow into one of its biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border. It’s possible 2026 could break that record. Back then the year acted as a wake-up call to the region’s water leaders, spurred important policy changes, and reshaped attitudes around conservation. 

We asked Colorado River experts Eric Kuhn, Jeff Lukas and Jim Lochhead to share five important takeaways from the 2002 drought, and what to know as we enter the warmer, drier months of 2026.  

1. Reservoirs have memory

Reservoirs act as batteries for water availability, charged by inputs such as snowmelt, streams, rivers and precipitation. 

“What you did two or three years ago can affect your water supply now,” said Eric Kuhn, former general manager for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “So in a good year, if you are conserving, you are actually helping the system out for the next drought.” 

The 2002 drought prompted municipal utilities to rethink their reservoir usage. 

“Water managers and agencies have absorbed several lessons from 2002, including holding something back. They’re operating the reservoirs a little differently,” said Jeff Lukas, an independent climate and water researcher who has lived on Colorado’s Front Range for 40 years. 

By conserving reservoir water, municipal utilities can maintain water storage for less abundant water years of the future. But as dry conditions have dogged the entire Colorado River basin for more than a quarter-century, the system’s buffer is gone. 

“The biggest issue is that Lake Powell and Lake Mead were relatively full in 2002,” Kuhn said. Now, both Lake Powell and Lake Mead are at critically low levels, and the water scarcity is increasing the likelihood of multi-state litigation.

In 2002, drought was dealt with on a local level; water utilities were not thinking about drought in terms of the entire river system, but instead how to regulate municipal water use. This year’s dry conditions are pushing the whole region to the brink. 

2. Conservation can make a big difference, if it is mandatory

Individual contributions to water conservation, adhering to local outdoor watering restrictions for example, can make a difference. Prompted by the 2002 drought, a 2004 University of Colorado study aimed to measure the effectiveness of water restrictions put in place by water providers on the state’s populated Front Range. 

The study followed municipal water providers Thornton, Aurora, Westminster, Fort Collins, Boulder, Louisville, Lafayette and Denver Water, comparing 2002 usage to average water usage in 2000 and 2001. Researchers determined that water restrictions are most effective when mandatory. Mandatory restrictions in Lafayette reduced water usage by as much as 53%, according to the study. 

The same study found that under mandatory restrictions, savings of expected water use per capita was as successful as 56%, while voluntary restrictions only measured up to 12%. 

Outdoor watering represents a big slice of a city’s water budget, and 2002 showed utilities that in times of crisis people can rein in their use. 

“Everyone should realize that they can make a small contribution to the solution,” Kuhn said. “Even though their individual contribution might be miniscule, when you add up all their neighbors and other people, it’s not miniscule. It’s very, very big.” 

Watering a lawn once or twice a week, and not during peak hours, is a practical way to conserve water while keeping grass alive. 

3. This is not a one-off year

It’s easy to shrug off a dry year and hope for wet weather’s return. But the long-term trends are concerning. 

“This is really the 26th year of extreme drought,” said former Denver Water CEO Jim Lochhead. On a larger scale, the seven Colorado River basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—have been preparing for worsening drought conditions since the shock of 2002. But river policy hasn’t kept pace with the aridification, leaving the region’s largest reservoirs at near record lows. 

“This has been a slow moving train that I think the states have known was coming, and they have frankly failed to do anything about it,” said Lochhead, who also represented the state of Colorado amid interstate Colorado River negotiations in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The Colorado Climate Center anticipates droughts to increase in severity and frequency, a trend that is only expected to continue in Colorado and across the Southwest as warming temperatures upend the water cycle. 

“We should be managing and thinking about water, using water, as though it were always a drought,” Lukas said. 

4. Communities have more practice dealing with drought, but still struggle  

Drought conditions in 2002 led some municipal water utilities to organize and create incentives for conservation, and transformed the urban landscape, swapping grass for more drought-tolerant plants. Those water restrictions allowed municipal water providers to curb water demand while steadily growing in size. However, there is still room for improvement in disproportionately affected communities.  

According to Lochhead, urban areas need to prioritize heat reduction in neighborhoods that have fewer trees in order to lessen the impacts of drought and warming temperatures. Using scarce water supplies to encourage tree-planting and increase shade should remain a priority. 

“I think we need to work with those communities to enhance some landscaping,” Lochhead said. “Whether it’s the homeless population, whether it’s just kids that are out, whatever it may be, those areas are where they’re pretty hard hit by heat.” 

Farmers and ranchers are used to riding the highs and lows of western weather. But extremely dry years like 2002, and now 2026, can push their operations to the limits. 

“This is going to be a really tough year,” Lukas said. “You’re going to have a lot of people selling off their herds and taking insurance out because of low crop yields.”

The majority of Colorado’s annual water supply is used for irrigation, so any proposed restrictions can be costly for the agricultural community. “There are going to be a lot of farms and ranches that just can’t operate because they don’t have any water,” Lochhead said. “There are going to be some significant economic consequences.” 

5. Stay aware, even if things seem bleak 

For Lukas, this year and its predecessors test our expectations about what nature can provide.

Even in periods of prolonged drought, there are wet years. “Judging from history, that tends to put everyone back on their heels, a little complacent,” Lukas said, but maintaining water storage relies on year-to-year vigilance, not complacency.  

Another primary concern during drought years is wildfire. With less moisture in the soil, dry vegetation acts as fuel for wildfire, which becomes harder to contain under hot and dry conditions. 

“I worry a lot less about municipal water supply than I do about wildfire,” Lukas said. Many of Colorado’s notably dry years have also recorded severe and destructive wildfires. 

It comes at no surprise that worsening drought falls in line with worsening wildfires. “Climate change is delivered to people through changes in the hydrologic cycle,” Kuhn said, so being aware of water usage now is just as, if not more important as it was in 2002.

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

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Caitlin Ochs):

April 24, 2026

The federal government ordered Flaming Gorge water released and cuts to Lake Powell releases, to prevent collapse.

Last week, the federal government ordered emergency measures to prevent water levels at Lake Powell from falling so low that Glen Canyon Dam, which created the reservoir, could no longer generate power or deliver water downstream. Without this intervention, models showed that the reservoir could drop below safe operating levels in August, meaning that the river would not have a reliable way to flow past the dam. This would threaten water and power supplies for millions of people across the Southwest, as well as the flow of water through the Grand Canyon.

Across the Colorado River Basin, an extremely low snowpack combined with a record-shattering March heat wave, have left water managers with few other options. The region’s reservoirs were already depleted from years of relying on wet winters to balance the growing demand with the ongoing drought.

The Bureau of Reclamation ordered releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which straddles the Utah-Wyoming border, to bolster Lake Powell’s water levels. At the same time, the amount of water delivered from Powell to downstream users will be significantly reduced.

“This is a short-term solution,” said Jenny Dumas, water attorney for the Jicarilla Apache Nation, which sits near the border of Colorado and New Mexico. “It’s going to take time to recover these reservoirs before we can do this again. So while we can exhaust our reserves to avoid system collapse this year, it means reserves won’t be there next year.”

This is not the first time water managers have turned to Flaming Gorge to stabilize the larger river system. In 2022, the federal government ordered the reservoir to release 550,000 acre-feet to stabilize the downstream river system, which disrupted recreation and rattled upstream communities. This time, Reclamation has authorized releases of up to 1 million acre-feet. Over the next year, a third of the reservoir’s storage is expected to be gradually released. By September, water levels are projected to drop about 12 feet.

“This is an unprecedented release volume — more than double the last time,” said Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, who briefed communities bracing for the releases at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. “We really just don’t know the actual impacts of these releases to surrounding communities, and our water users are struggling. My goodness, we are on target to become one of the worst water years on record. The forecasts are stunning to all of us.

The amount of water projected to flow into the river from snowmelt is rapidly declining. Over the first two weeks of April, forecasts for Lake Powell fell by 500,000 acre-feet. The spring forecast is shifting so quickly, some experts believe the releases from Flaming Gorge may need to increase.

“I think it’s a target, and they’re going to have to revise it,” said veteran water manager and researcher Eric Kuhn, who co-authored a paper last September predicting this kind of shortage and calling for action. “It’s many river miles from Flaming Gorge to Lake Powell. What are the transit losses?”

“Also, when March looked like June, what are June and July going to look like?” he added. “I could easily see that 1 million becomes 1.5 million acre-feet by March of 2027.”

Kuhn sees the emergency actions as a sign of broader failure to address the underlying issues that led to the current situation. “The Department of Interior no longer acknowledges that the fundamental problem is climate change. We’re dealing with the symptoms of the disease. We’re not dealing with the underlying problem,” he said. “The law of the river was written for a river that no longer exists from a hydrologic standpoint.”

In a meeting Tuesday, Upper Basin state commissioners acknowledged the need for emergency action but warned that this was not a long-term solution. 

“I want to make darn sure people understand … the incredibly difficult, heartbreaking decisions that are having to be made with the lives of generations of cattle production, and farming communities in the Upper Basin states,” particularly in Utah, said Gene Shawcroft, Utah’s Colorado River commissioner.

Wyoming Commissioner Brandon Gebhardt reported that 13,000 acres of agricultural land in the South Piney drainage on the eastern slopes of the Wyoming Range had been cut off from water, adding that even some of the state’s oldest and most senior water rights — some dating to 1898 — will likely be impacted. 

“We expect three of the five Flaming Gorge boat ramps in Wyoming will be rendered unusable, and low reservoir levels will have long-lasting negative impacts on reservoir fisheries,” said Gebhardt. “We recognize what we are approving today will have significant negative impacts on our water resources, local economies and recreation.”

Shortage is affecting more than agriculture and recreation. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, for example, reported its sacred springs going dry, affecting ceremonies, and the tribal farm will have to operate with just 14% of its normal water supply. Meanwhile, the Jicarilla Apache Nation said it received just 25% to 35% of its contracted water allocation, leaving tribal leaders uncertain about whether they can divert enough water from the Navajo River to meet the community’s domestic needs.

With no sign of long-term agreement on how to manage the river past September, legal tensions among the basin states remain high.

Arizona’s Department of Water Resources released a statement agreeing with plans to order upstream releases to stabilize Lake Powell but also warning that the revised downstream releases were “substantially less than required under the 1922 Colorado River Compact,” referencing the foundational legal document dividing the river. “Failure to comply,” the release stated, “is itself a serious development that Arizona will assess and respond to accordingly.”

Upper Basin state commissioners plan to hold a special meeting to revisit the issue and vote on whether to continue emergency actions past August after assessing water levels and determining whether or not the releases are working.

Regardless of the possible legal battles, the reduced water in the river, infrastructure limits and political gridlock have left basin communities feeling uncertain about their future water security. After the planned releases from Flaming Gorge, if next winter brings another dry year, it is unlikely that upstream reservoirs will have enough water to stabilize Lake Powell.

The basin needs more than emergency actions, Dumas said. “We really want to emphasize the need for serious and permanent changes in how we use and manage the river to adjust to current and future hydrology.”

This story was produced by High Country News, in partnership with The Water Deskat the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Lauren Gilger,  Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:

April 21, 2026

It’s been a record dry winter across the West — and it’s making an already bad situation on the Colorado River even worse. If water levels get any lower, Lake Powell and the dam that holds it back could be in dire straits. So now, the federal government is stepping in to prop up water levels. But, as KJZZ’s Alex Hager reports, it could be a Band-Aid solution to a much bigger problem. Hager joined The Show to explain.

LAUREN GILGER: Good to have you. So, what’s the situation on Lake Powell right now after this really dry winter? Kind of a worst-case scenario almost.

ALEX HAGER: Well, right now water levels there are forecast to drop to dangerously low levels as soon as this summer. And when I say dangerous, that means we would start to see some of the infrastructure in Glen Canyon Dam, which is up in Page, Arizona, start to fail. So water levels are on track right now to drop below the intakes for the hydropower turbines that sit inside the dam. That means it would become difficult or impossible to spin them and make electricity for 5 million people across seven states. If water drops a little bit further than that, it might not be able to pass through the dam at all. We are already looking at — you know, if it falls below that hydropower intake, it could only travel through this little-used set of backup pipes. We don’t know that it could carry enough water through. You start to have all of these problems. So we are seeing some actions to prevent that from happening now.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So tell us about those actions. This is the federal government sort of taking control of at least this aspect of it. What are they going to do?

ALEX HAGER: That’s right. The federal government is stepping in. It is kicking into action something of an emergency backup plan. It’s been done before, but it is definitely a backup plan. And they’re going to shuffle some water around. There is another big reservoir up in Utah and Wyoming called Flaming Gorge, and they’re going to release extra water from Flaming Gorge, send it down the Colorado River to help fill up Lake Powell. At the same time, they’re going to start tightening the tap on Lake Powell, meaning that less water comes out of it. That water will — less of it will flow into the Grand Canyon downstream to Lake Mead and downstream to us.

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

April 17, 2026

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

Sometimes it feels like there are two parallel Southwestern United States out there.

One is naturally arid, is getting hotter and hotter by the year and is gripped by the most severe drought of the last millennium or more. Its water lifeline, the Colorado River system, is on the brink of collapse, and communities and farmers from Wyoming to Calexico are facing painful mandatory water cutbacks this summer.

And then there’s the other one, a sort of fantasy world, or maybe just an oblivious one, in which new water diversion projects like the Lake Powell Pipeline remain on the table, state leaders prepare to go to legal war to protect their states’ profligate water consumption, and a developer is breaking ground on a 2,300-acre “city within a city” called Halo Vista in North Phoenix.

Halo Vista’s developers are billing it as a companion development to TSMC’s $165 billion semiconductor fabrication facility complex. It will wrap around the industrial campus (thus the “halo” in the name), and plans call for some 30 million square feet of industrial, retail, office, research, and healthcare spaces along with 9,000 or more residential units.

“You have to think about all the people at full build-out who’ll work in this area — about 60 to 80,000 people,” Greater Phoenix Economic Council President Christine Mackay told AZFamily. “They’ll work in the Halo Vista science and technology park. They need restaurants, hotels, places to live — and places to shop for what they need.”

Historically, Arizona’s economy was said to run on five Cs: copper, cotton, citrus, cattle, and climate. Copper is still going fairly strong, most of the citrus groves have given way to housing developments, alfalfa has surpassed cotton, and the beef-cattle have been replaced by dairy factories. Now another C — computer chips — is being added to the mix, as the Phoenix-area experiences a semiconductor manufacturing boom and a coinciding data-center buildup.

The tech industry’s expansion is adding economic diversity, making the city somewhat less vulnerable to 2008-like financial breakdowns. But as Halo Vista demonstrates, it is also feeding Phoenix’s dominant economic force, the Growth Machine. And both the Growth Machine and the data center/semiconductor boom need water, and quite a lot of it. This, in turn, increases Phoenix’s exposure to future water shortages, which seem more and more likely with each passing day.

According to TSMC’s draft environmental assessment, the first phase of its Phoenix fabrication plants will initially use about 4.75 million gallons of water per day, or 5,320 acre-feet per year, which would jump to about 19,400 acre-feet yearly if and when all three phases are built out. But the company says it will eventually install a recycling system that will bring that number down considerably. The 9,000 residential units in Halo Vista would use about 2,800 acre-feet per year (based on Phoenix’s current per-capita water consumption multiplied by a rough estimate of 20,000 people occupying those residences). Halo Vista’s other industrial and commercial properties will consume an unknown additional amount of water.

So let’s say the whole development, including the “fabs,” will use about 25,000 acre-feet per year — less if the water efficiencies are realized, more if Halo Vista’s tech district includes data centers or other water-intensive industries.

That’s a lot of water, or a drop in the bucket, depending on how you look at it.

On the one hand it is equal to about one-fourth of Nevada’s total consumptive use from the Colorado River. Yes, the city of sin and excess only uses about four times more water than the TSMC/Halo Vista “city” will use.

On the other, it’s far less than the alfalfa farms in Maricopa County — in which Halo Vista is located — use for irrigation each year, which totals something like 500,000 acre-feet.1 And yet, Halo Vista/TSMC, once all built out in 20 years or so, will have a significantly larger economic output than a bunch of hay fields (which isn’t the only measure of value or even the most important one, and yet, well, water does flow uphill to money).

So yes, it is possible to sidestep water concerns by pulling out the “what about alfalfa” comparison. But it’s also not all that productive.

Halo Vista, which is being built on a plot of uncultivated state land in the desert, is not displacing an alfalfa farm’s water use. Rather, it represents a new water use piled on top of existing consumption. The water will come out of Phoenix’s municipal system, and therefore officially has an “assured and adequate” 100-year water supply, which is necessary in Arizona for this sort of development.

Yet there’s nothing assured about Arizona’s water future. Phoenix’s water comes primarily from high priority rights on the Salt and Verde Rivers, and from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project. But those rights will hardly matter if the rivers dry up: This year’s Salt River Basin meagre snowpack had vanished by March 1, spring runoff peaked weeks ago, and flows are rapidly falling. Meanwhile, the Central Arizona Project has relatively low priority rights, meaning it will be the first to take cuts as the river shrinks.

In other words, aridification and the Colorado River crisis pose an existential threat to Phoenix’s tech boom and, well, Phoenix, itself, which is one of the reasons Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is preparing for a bitter legal fight with the feds and the Upper Basin states over the Colorado River.

The good news for the developers and the semiconductor makers is that agriculture continues to use a lot of water in Arizona. And where there is large consumptive use, there is also more room for increased efficiencies and, if it comes to it, “buying and drying” the farms for their water — which has its own negative consequences. The bad news is that the shortages to come may very well exceed the amount that could be wrung out of the existing farms.

Halo Vista, which is on a 20-year buildout schedule, is far from the only major water- and energy-guzzling development on slate for the increasingly arid West. And maybe it’s not realistic to expect all such development to come to a screeching halt simply because the water may run out sometime in the future. After all, climate change could cause more precipitation; maybe in 20 years we’ll be worrying more about flooding than desiccation.

But you would think that planners and policymakers and the developers would at least act in line with our current reality, where resources, especially water, are limited. Halo Vista-esque projects should be required not just to certify an “assured” 100-year supply, but they also should have to offset new consumption with cuts somewhere else, whether it’s paying for farmers to install drip irrigation or funding treated wastewater recycling projects.

Continuing to consume water at current rates is one thing. Adding new uses on top of our current overconsumption is quite another.

***

And so it begins. It looks like residents of the small Arizona community of Kearney may lose their water altogether later this summer, making developments like Halo Vista look even more surreal.

The town sent this emergency memo out to residents in April:

Kearney sits in Arizona’s “Copper Triangle” along the banks of Gila River and in the proverbial shadow of the Hayden copper smelter smokestack. The town was established by the Kennecott Mining Company in 1958 to house residents displaced from Ray, Sonora, and Barcelona as the mine’s gaping Ray mine pit gobbled up the communities. Resolution Copper’s proposed Oak Flat mine is also nearby, as is Faraday’s proposed Copper Creek project.

Kearney has a maximum allotment of 610 acre-feet of water from the Gila River. This year, however, extreme drought conditions have brought the allotment down to just .76 acre-feet, forcing the town to impose severe restrictions on use to try to make it last until the monsoon arrives.

As for all the mines surrounding Kearney? I’m guessing their dealing with their own water issues, but I’d also wager that they’re allowed a heck of a lot more than three-fourths of an acre-foot.

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

🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧

In the comment section on the last Land Desk dispatch, reader wkarls reported on the Colorado River’s flows during a recent raft trip on the Grand Canyon. It got me to thinking about how low those flows might go and what that could mean.

I’ve only boated down the Grand Canyon once, back in October and November of 1995 with a group of slightly crazy Salida rafting folks. It was a beautiful, terrifying, sublime — if somewhat debauched — experience. During the trip, releases from Glen Canyon Dam — which make up about 95% of the flow in the Grand Canyon — fluctuated between 11,000 and 16,000 cubic feet per second, a number that was bolstered downstream after a good rainstorm moved through, turning the river that intimidating blood-and-chocolate-milk color. That seemed like plenty of water to me; it was certainly enough to generate waves big enough to toss our little rafts about like toys (did I mention it was scary as hell?).

Somewhat surprisingly, the releases were about the same in September of last year, bouncing between 10,000 and 16,000 cfs, which appears to have been an effort to get the annual flows past Lees Ferry up to about 7.5 million acre-feet to keep the Upper Basin in compliance with the Colorado River Compact’s non-depletion obligation. Then, on Oct. 1, the beginning of the 2026 water year, releases plummeted. This spring they’ve been in that 7,000 to 9,000 cfs range that wkarls mentioned.

That’s in line with the Bureau of Reclamation’s plan to release just 6 million acre-feet from the dam this water year: 6 million acre-feet per year averages out to about 8,200 cfs. That’s also right in line with the Grand Canyon Protection Act’s operating criteria, which set a minimum allowable release during the day (between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.) at 8,000 cfs, while the minimum nighttime release is 5,000 cfs.

So, given all of that, we can assume that the flows shouldn’t drop much below current levels this summer. Of course, if conditions are worse than expected, then the reservoir could drop to 3,500 feet earlier than anticipated, which could force dam operators to further curtail releases to “defend” minimum power pool. If so, then you might see nighttime releases drop as low as 5,000 cfs. If that’s not enough, then I suppose dam operators would have to go to a run-of-the-river scenario, where flows could plummet to 2,000 or 3,000 cfs, which would make rafting quite interesting.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️