Dry soils lingered along much of the eastern seaboard w/mix of improvement & degradations. Soil moisture in most states in the West + Plains is s/vs.
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
May 6, 2025
Coloradoโs southern mountains had another miserable snowpack. This is not good for the Colorado or Rio Grande rivers. It fits in with a theme.
Louis Meyer awoke on Monday morning at his farm about 10 miles north of Durango to see Engineer and Red mountains wearing fresh blankets of snow. The two mountains had been scantily clad for much of the winter.
The spring snow was welcome news, he said, but unlikely to change the story of southwest Colorado. Runoff will be abysmal.
A resident of southwest Colorado for about eight years, Meyer has conferred with others with deeper local knowledge. Right now, it appears that those farmers and ranchers who might normally expect to get three or four cuttings of hay will get no more than two. And in La Plata County, they will be lucky to get one cutting of hay.
Snow contributing water to the Animas, San Juan and other rivers of southwestern Colorado have only 28% of median of snow-water equivalent, according to maps released on Monday by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal agency.
East of Wolf Creek Pass, in the upper Rio Grande drainage, numbers were worse yet, 21% of median. Last week, before the fresh snow, they had been even less.
Water managers in the San Luis Valley warned in a May 1 posting on Facebook that they expect early runoff, low rivers flows, and a short boating season. Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District, said there had been high hopes several times of 16- to 18-inch snow dumps, even 36 inches. โIt just never materialized for us.โ
Snowpack in Coloradoโs southern mountains always has been uneven. Some years are better, other years worse. But a trend has emerged of earlier springs and less moisture in the San Juan Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Range of Colorado, and this yearโs snowpack and weather fits in with it.
Russ Schumacher, the Colorado state climatologist, and associates at the Colorado Climate Center have analyzed data from the Snotel stations in Colorado going back to at least 1979. Their studies have focused on the volumes of peak snow-water equivalent in the snow and the dates of those readings.
Snotel stands for SNOwpack TELemetry, an automated system.
โIn Coloradoโs northern mountains, trends over the last 45 years are fairly modest overall, with some mixed signals,โ he wrote in in an April 14 posting at Colorado Climate Center.
Many stations in the San Juans and Sangre de Cristo mountains showed levels below the 10th percentile of records, he said.
โBut in the southern mountains, the data make a very clear statement: snowpack is declining, and the peak is happening earlier. At many of the stations in the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains, the peak snow-water-equivalent has declined by 3% to 5% per decade, and the peak has shifted two to four weeks earlier.โ
The 1980s were unusually wet, which makes the recent declines look even worse. Contributing to the declines have been dust-on-snow events and the rising temperatures.
During the 21st century, Colorado has had just one year of below-average annual temperatures when compared to the 1971-2000 average, according to a study commissioned by the state government. Seven of the top 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2010.
Coloradoโs northern mountains looked somewhat below average as of early April. But unseasonably warm temperatures caused the snowpack to sag as the month went on.
โIt was clear by early April that it was going to be a bad year in southern Colorado,โ Schumacher wrote to Big Pivots in an e -mail on April 29. โBut with very little snow and a lot of sunshine in the last couple weeks, snowpack in the northern mountains has started declining early as well.โ
Snow was notably absent in Coloradoโs southern mountains this winter. It started out OK, then got warm and dry. By late January, the odds were for a very poor runoff.
A Snotel station near Wolf Creek Pass had the second lowest peak snow-water equivalent since the station was established in 1979. The lowest reading was in 2002. This was even less than in 2018, a year plagued by wildfires in southern Colorado.
At his farm along the Animas River, Meyer first noticed a problem in February. The well that taps water for domestic purposes went dry. The water table had dropped 35 feet. He persuaded others on the ditch to begin diverting water from the Animas River through the ditch. This caused the groundwater level to rise. It worked, although he was out of water for a week to 10 days.
Meyer is relatively new to southwest Colorado but not to Colorado water issues. An engineer by training, he operated a Glenwood Springs-based water consulting business for 35 years before he retired. He then bought ranch property in southwest Colorado near the community of Mancos. After a drought in 2021, he resolved to get a property with better access to water.
The property north of Durango is where the San Juan Mountains begin to pinch the Animas River Valley. The farm he and his children tend has plentiful orchards: peaches, apples, and pears. They also grow cherries and plums along with raspberries, strawberries and blackberries.
Family members also like to raft, but on Sunday found too little water to do so.
At his office in Cortez, Ken Curtis, director of the Dolores Water Conservancy District, has been monitoring the snowpack numbers. In late April they suggested a runoff of 30% of average. Because his district owns more senior water rights, the farmers of alfalfa, pinto beans and other crops in his district will probably do better than that might suggest.
โItโs been a weird year,โ he said. โWe are definitely going to have a shortage.โ
The good news he reported was the relative absence of dust-on-snow, a phenomenon that warms the snow more rapidly and causes faster melting.
This was the eighth or ninth year out of the last 15 that the runoff from the winter snowpack has been on the low side.
Cortez lies amid the remains of the Ancestral Pueblo, known colloquially as the Anasazi. Because of a multi-decade drought about 1200, they abandoned their cliff dwellings and took up homes along the Rio Grande to the east.
At least part of this drought is something different, the result of rising temperatures created by accumulating greenhouse gases. The process is called aridification, and scientists since about 2017 have conducted studies that convincingly demonstrate that it is responsible for roughly half of declined flows. Drought may go away, but human-caused aridification will not any time soon.
The Colorado River during the last 25 years has yielded significantly less water than the 20th century average โ and even less than delegates from the seven basin states assumed when they drew up the Colorado River Compact in 1922.
The states, divided into the upper and lower basins, have been trying to come to grips with the new realities of the 21st century for most of the century. Results have been uneven.
First California and then Arizona gulped waters from the river with giant diversion projects. Colorado but especially other basin states were slower to put straws into the river and they have also been smaller straws.
Who should cut back given the clear evidence for need? At his farm near Durango, Meyer thinks that Colorado must recognize it needs to cut back somewhat in line with what Arizona and California have agreed to do.
Runoff into Lake Powell during March 2as 61% of average. The reservoir is 31.4% full, far better than in 2022, when capacity dipped to below 23% of capacity. Runoff in the last couple of years has been at least okay. This yearโs runoff will be a stern reminder that new agreements must be hammered out.
On April 25, water journalist and author John Fleck and four collaborators โ including Anne Castle and Eric Kuhn of Colorado โ issued a short paper that outlined what they said are the seven essential pillars for post-2026 management of the Colorado River. The first calls for enforceable reductions in water use in both the Upper and Lower Basin.
The compact assumed far more water than occurred in the 20th century, but that faulty assumption was tolerable until the 1990s, when the Central Arizona Project withdrawals began. Then came the drought and aridification of the 21st century. The river that delivered 14.5 million acre-feet (unlike the 20 million acre-feet that was assumed) was in trouble.
Colorado, to a small extent, but Wyoming and Utah especially, had not been using the amount of water that was assumed by the compacts. California and Arizona had been โ and then some.
In recent years, California and Arizona have cut back their use of the Colorado River dramatically. The argument made by Castle and Kuhn as well as the others is that there must be shared pain in reduced wager use. That runs counter to the official stance of Colorado and other basin states that itโs a lower-basin problem.
โShared pain is also critical to inducing the various states not to litigate over the interpretation of the 1922 Compact,โ they wrote. โShared does not mean equal, either in amount, triggers or duration,โ they added.
They also say that reductions in water use cannot be predicated on federal compensation, as was important in enabling Arizona and California to reduce their flows during the last few years.
Kuhn was the long-time general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District in Glenwood Springs, and Castle, an attorney who specialized in water, was undersecretary for Water and Science in the Interior Department during the Obama administration. She is now with the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School.
From email from the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (Sue Uerling):
Please see the attached notice for the May Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District and Lake San Cristobal Water Activity Enterprise Meetings in Lake City, Colorado on Tuesday, May 20th, 2025 with lunch beginning at noon. If you would like to join the meeting via Zoom, please use the following link to pre-register for the meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpfuiprT8uHNakChm1C21AdG737XbK7MUu
Questions? Please contact the District at (970)641-6065
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Newsline website (Allison Prang):
April 5, 2025
President Donald Trump and his team have signaled a strong interest in continuing to strengthen federal support for nuclear power, an energy source Democratic states are increasingly open to expanding.
The administrationโs loudly pro-nuclear position creates a rare point of overlap between Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, whose signature legislation funded hundreds of millions in tax credits for low-carbon energy sources, including nuclear power.
Trump during his first roughly three months in office issued multiple executive orders mentioning nuclear energy, casting his broad energy strategy as a way to expand the countryโs power resources and shore up its security. State lawmakers are also pushing their own policy moves, sometimes just in an effort to set themselves up to embrace nuclear power at some point in the future.
โThere are a lot of really positive signals,โ said Rowen Price, senior policy adviser for nuclear energy at Third Way, a centrist policy think tank.
A new law that Colorado state leaders enacted this year, House Bill 25-1040, designates nuclear energy as clean. That means utilities can meet clean-energy targets with nuclear power, and it also allows private projects access to financing thatโs earmarked for clean energy development.
But Price said sheโs concerned that support for nuclear power could be swept up in bigger political fights, such as many congressional Republicansโ goal of axing clean-energy tax credits in Democratsโ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The administrationโs broad cuts to the federal workforce could also eventually hurt the governmentโs nuclear ambitions, she added.
The promise of a nuclear resurgence in the United States isnโt a new goal for the industry or its backers in Washington, D.C., but how successful efforts to expand nuclear power generation will be in the U.S. โ a metric that hasnโt budged from around 20% in decades โ remains to be seen.
Americansโ support for the energy source, meanwhile, is just short of its record high, a recent Gallup Poll found. And more blue states have also started to embrace nuclear power, which has traditionally been more favored by Republicans, to reach climate goals and grow electricity capacity amid anticipated increases in demand.
But even as interest in states grows, the cost of building nuclear infrastructure remains an impediment only the federal government is positioned to help scale.
โRenaissance of nuclearโ
Energy Secretary Chris Wright in April talked about the administrationโs desire to elevate nuclear power by making it easier to test reactors, delivering fuel to next-generation nuclear firms and utilizing the departmentโs Loan Programs Office to help bring nuclear power projects online.
โWe would like to see a renaissance of nuclear,โ Wright said at the news outlet Semaforโs World Economy Summit in Washington. โThe conditions are there and the administration is going to do everything we can to lean in to help commercial businesses and customers launch nuclear.โ
Wright said he wants the department to help launch 10 to 20 new nuclear reactors to get the industry moving again and to bring down costs. The departmentโs loan office could make debt investments alongside large-scale data center companies that use massive amounts of power to build nuclear projects and then exit those deals after the projects are built, allowing the office to recycle that funding, he said.
The department recently announced that it approved a third loan disbursement to reopen the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert, Michigan, which Holtec has been working on doing for the last few years.
Last month, the department said it was reopening $900 million in funding to help companies working on small modular reactors after changing some of the Biden administrationโs guidance on the program.
Federal workforce cuts
Third Wayโs Price noted that a portion of staffers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission โ which she described as already โtightly constrainedโ โ are eligible for retirement either now or in the next five years.
Workforce cuts at the Energy Department and elsewhere could also hurt efforts to grow the nuclear power sector, she said.
โFrankly, all of the verbal support from this administration for nuclear only matters if theyโre actually going to put forward and implement policies that support it,โ Price said. โWe need to make sure that they do it.โ
An Energy Department spokesperson said in an email that it โis conducting a department-wide review to ensure all activities follow the law, comply with applicable court orders and align with the Trump administrationโs priorities.โ
The agency said it didnโt have a final count on how many staffers have left the department through its resignation program, but noted that it doesnโt necessarily approve all requests. The department didnโt comment on how many staffers focused on nuclear energy have been laid off.
Nuclear programs were among those affected by the Trump administrationโs pausing of federal programs and funding, said David Brown, senior vice president of federal government affairs and public policy at Constellation Energy, which runs the biggest fleet of nuclear plants in the country. But Brown said that even so, the industry is coming out on top.
โI think what we are seeing is that as they work through their various review(s) of programs that theyโre greenlighting the nuclear stuff,โ Brown said.
Federal support crucial, but politics tricky
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill could also change the outcome for industry, for better or worse.
Wright, in his remarks last month, said he hopes Congress will take action to help expand nuclear energy, and said lawmakers could do so in the budget reconciliation package on which the U.S. House has started to work.
Republican House members have not yet released text of the sections of the package that will deal with energy policy. Wright said support for nuclear power could be included in the reconciliation package, but some advocates are also worried that the package, or the annual appropriations bills, are the exact kind of political battles that efforts to support nuclear power, like the tax credits, could get tied up in.
Some state lawmakers point to financial support from the federal government as essential for the industry to grow, even if states make their own headway to build support for nuclear power.
Colorado state Rep. Alex Valdez, a Democrat who sponsored a bill signed into law this session to include nuclear in the stateโs definition of clean energy, said he hopes the administration follows through on its admiration of nuclear power with funding for states.
โGenerally, states do not have the financial resources the federal government does,โ Valdez said. โItโs going to be the federal government that puts their investments behind these things, and thatโs whatโs going to enable states as a whole to be able to move forward on them.โ
Click the link to read the article on the Gunnison Country Times website (Bella Biondini). Here’s an excerpt:
April 30, 2025
Aerial images of the Gunnison Basin revealed that much of the rolling lowlands had already melted out by the end of March. With warmer-than-usual temperatures lingering most of April, the high country is also on track for a speedy melt, triggering the potential for a short water supply this summer. Snowfall was sporadic across much of the valley and Colorado this winter.
According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, on April 30 snowpack statewide is 57% of normal, with the southwestern portion of the state faring far worse than its northern neighbors. These are the lowest snowpack levels for this time of year since the 2014-15 water year. Marked on the map in hues of red and orange โ signaling a drought is in place โ the snowpack this week in the Gunnison Basin sat at 47% of normal, the Upper Rio Grande at 23% and the San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan at 28%. There is little moisture in the current forecast, and the NOAA Climate Prediction Center outlook continues to show a warm and dry spring.. Winter 2024-25 started off with momentum with a huge early-season storm around Thanksgiving. Headed into the spring runoff season, near- to above-normal soil moisture conditions were also present in the Gunnison Basin, Cody Moser said during a water supply update on April 24. Moser is a senior hydrologist with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. Positive soil moisture conditions impact the water supply outlook as these areas can expect increased runoff. But over the last four months, the valley dried out, Moser said. Precipitation levels October through March across the Gunnison Basin were 88% of the 30-year average (this spans from 1991-2020, some of the driest years on record). December was by far the worst, at 48% of average. The arrival of spring brought no relief. The dry trend continued in April and brought record-high temperatures. The heat resulted in an early melt, draining some of the high-altitude areas that usually hang onto snow much later in the season.
According to the 10-day forecast the melt is expected to pick up this week. Water supply projections across the Gunnison River Basin are below normal, ranging from between 50-80% of average. At Blue Mesa Reservoir, projections show an inflow of just under 500,000 acre-feet of water as the snow melts. This runoff year falls into the โmoderately dryโ category, similar to 2020 and 2022. Blue Mesa is currently 61% full, and is expected to fill to 80%.
Click the link to read the letter on the AGU website (Patrick Naple,ย S. McKenzie Skiles,ย Otto I. Lang,ย Karl Rittger,ย Sebastien J. P. Lenard,ย Annie Burgess,ย Thomas H. Painter). Here’s an excerpt:
Abstract
In the mountainous headwaters of the Colorado River episodic dust deposition from adjacent arid and disturbed landscapes darkens snow and accelerates snowmelt, impacting basin hydrology. Patterns and impacts across the heterogenous landscape cannot be inferred from current in situ observations. To fill this gap daily remotely sensed retrievals of radiative forcing and contribution to melt were analyzed over the MODIS period of record (2001โ2023) to quantify spatiotemporal impacts of snow darkening. Each season radiative forcing magnitudes were lowest in early spring and intensified as snowmelt progressed, with interannual variability in timing and magnitude of peak impact. Over the full record, radiative forcing was elevated in the first decade relative to the last decade. Snowmelt was accelerated in all years and impacts were most intense in the central to southern headwaters. The spatiotemporal patterns motivate further study to understand controls on variability and related perturbations to snow water resources.
Key Points
- Spatiotemporal patterns in dust on snow radiative forcing and melt contribution assessed over the MODIS period of record
- Dust darkens snow every year and impacts were generally higher in the first half of the record
- The dust on snow radiative impacts accelerate snowmelt every spring with relevant melt contribution even in lower magnitude years
Plain Language Summary
Seasonal melt from mountain snowpacks dominates water resource availability in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). The mountainous Colorado River headwaters are adjacent to arid regions that regularly emit dust that darkens the snow. Darker snow melts earlier and faster due to the snowpack absorbing more of the sun’s energy. This study uses 23 years of daily remotely sensed images to observe patterns in dust on snow impacts during the melt season across the UCRB. Results showed that impacts were greatest in the central-southern Rocky Mountains at mid-alpine elevations. Over time, snow darkening and accelerated melt were generally higher in the first half of the record with a slight declining trend across the full record. However, dust contributed to accelerating melt every spring over the record. Results suggest the need for further study to understand what controls dust on snow variability and magnitude of impact from year to year.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
April 30, 2025
๐ฆซ Wildlife Watch ๐ฆ
During the 1910s, a large gray wolf โ christened Olโ Big Foot by his human admirers and adversaries โ roamed from one end of what is now Bears Ears National Monument to the other, from the sinuous White Canyon to Clay Hills, from the ponderosa-studded glades of Elk Ridge to the gorge-etched Slickhorn Country to the Colorado River where it tumbles through Cataract Canyon.
Big Foot was one of the last remnants of the pre-settler colonial era, a vestige of a time when the landscape โ and the people who lived with it โ existed in a more harmonious and balanced way. Iโve been thinking alot about this wolf, and its counterparts in other parts of the region in the years prior to the speciesโ extirpation, amid the news that Mexican gray wolves are making their way north from southern New Mexico and Arizona, and gray wolves reintroduced in northern Colorado are moving southward. Though it ended tragically, Big Footโs story gives me an inkling of hope during hopeless times.
By the time Big Foot had established dominion over a big chunk of southeastern Utah, the Hole-in-the-Rock settlers had been in the region for a few decades, hunting the deer, elk, and bighorn sheep nearly to extinction, while livestock operators such as J.A. Scorup, the โMormon Cowboy,โ were also covering the vast swaths of un-roaded public domain with thousands of head of cattle and sheep. In other words, they were robbing the wolves, cougars, coyotes, foxes, bears, and lynx of their natural prey, and replacing it with another fatter and slower food source, with a predictable outcome.
Olโ Big Foot was rumored to be the most efficient livestock culler around, and was constantly trailed by a pack of coyotes looking to scavenge his many kills. The big canine allegedly took down 150 calves in one fell swoop โ although that figure is almost certainly exaggerated to provide further justification for slaughtering predators. Not that the invaders needed an excuse: Killing wildlife, especially charismatic megafauna, was part and parcel of the white settler colonial project, even in areas where livestock predation wasnโt an issue. The goal was not just to settle on the land, but to โsettle,โ or tame, the land itself; to rob the wilderness of its wildness.
Ranchers and their cowboy hands were no match for the predators so, as is often the case, the fiercely independent Western individualists pleaded for government aid. Federal and county agencies paid cash for evidence of predator kills. La Plata County, Coloradoโs โscalp recordsโ from the late 1800s record payouts for some 300 hawk heads (at 25 cents apiece), 200 bear pelts, two-dozen mountain lion hides, and a handful of wolf skins. The mercenary killing spree took a heartrending toll, but it wasnโt enough for the ranchers. So in 1915 the federal government tasked the U.S. Biological Survey with the extermination of every predator in the West, by whatever means necessary, including rifles, traps, and poisons. The resulting systematic slaughter was popularly dubbed โUncle Samโs War on Varmints,โ thusly described in a 1927 wire service story:
As twisted as it may be, the sentiment in the last phrase โ that killing wild predators was actually preserving wildlife and saving other animals from extinction โ was a commonly held belief. And the bizarre notion persists among many of those who oppose bringing the wolf back, saying they would compete with human hunters for wild game.
The death toll from the โwar,โ or attempted speciecide, is stunning. In 1924, for example, the government hunters reported killing 2,000 animals in Colorado, alone, including more than 1,700 coyotes, 153 bobcats, 50 lynx, 8 wolves, 6 mountain lions, 4 bears, and 2 wild dogs. The toll for wolves, cougars, and bears is relatively low because by that point, those speciesโ populations had plummeted. In 1919 the Biological Survey predicted the West would be wolf-free within five years, and estimated only 100 remained in Utah.
As the wolf populations declined hunters and newspaper reporters started focusing on individual animals, ascribing them with personalities and even christening them. The descriptions often read like those of human outlaws: a mix of fear, condemnation, and veneration.
โLobo, a great gray wolf who was the king of the pack at Currumpaw, a vast cattle range in New Mexico, was a thinker as well as a ruler,โ Ernest Thompson Seton told a newspaper reporter in 1905, after he had killed the wolf by using his dead mate as a decoy. Avintaquint, of the Vernal, Utah, area, was the โcrafty leader of one of the wiliest brand of pillagers of the cattle range that ever roamed the west.โ Two Toes feasted on lambs in the Laramie River region; another Big Foot led a pack in the Unaweep area of western Colorado; Big Lefty was known to be one of the largest and most cunning wolves in the Crested Butte area, even though he had lost a leg to a trap; and Big Tooth Ben loped about Valencia County, New Mexico.
Old Three-Toes was known not just for preying on livestock, but also for seducing domesticated ranch dogs, which she was forced to settle for since most of the males of her species had been slaughtered. She lived in southern Pueblo County in Colorado and, according to news accounts, would sidle up to a ranch house in the dark, โmaking her coming known by a peculiar howl. And when she left, the family dog often went with her. Several ranch dogs have paid the death penalty to trapper or hunter when found fraternizing with this vicious destroyer of ranch property.โ
In 1923, government hunters trapped some of Three Toesโ pups and lured the matriarch in for the kill. It was an especially deadly time for the other famous wolves, all of whom were captured and killed, to much fanfare, via cruel methods in the early and mid-twenties. Many were poisoned, one dragged a trap for miles before being shot, and at least one was captured alive and used as a decoy to lure others into traps or shooting range.
The Salt Lake Telegram ran a piece on Old Easyfoot, โthe celebrated wolf of eastern Kane county,โ noting that the huge animal โbattled six dogs into submission on Oct. 6, 1928, and gave up the fight only when he had been drilled through and through by the high powered rifles of the biological survey hunters.โ Easyfootโs stuffed carcass was later installed in the state capitol building.
Dr. A.K. Fisher, the Biological Surveyโs Director, predicted in 1926 that โwithin a year Colorado would be a sportsmanโs paradise because of the elimination of the wolf and the mountain lion.โ He said only six wolves remained in the entire state: one north of Eagle; one north of Fruita; two near Mancos; and two that ranged into Colorado from New Mexico. โCoyotes are our greatest trouble at this time,โ Fisher added. โBut the elimination of the wolf has given us more funds to concentrate on coyote work and progress is being made against them.โ
Fisher was a bit premature in his forecast โ Coloradoโs last wolf was killed in 1940, and they never got close to wiping out the coyote. Nor did he mention that even as the predator-killing campaign garnered success, the agency found itself putting more and more resources into exterminating prairie dogs, rats, squirrels, and rabbits. Go figure! But his assessment was correct: The wolf of the Western U.S. (outside of Alaska) was doomed, aside from a few specimens that traveled over the border from Canada or Mexico.
The war was not without its critics. In 1931, the American Society of Mammalogists called the biological survey โthe most destructive organized agency which ever threatened the native fauna of the United States.โ Not that it seemed to sway the agency from its mission, and by then it was too late for the wolf anyway.
In 1929, Arthur H. Carhart and Stanley P. Young wrote Last Stand of the Pack, a non-fiction account of the lives and deaths of the โlast nine renegade wolves.โ A passage from the Carhartโs introduction illustrates the sometimes contorted, sometimes conflicted, often bizarre attitudes towards wolves โ which he refers to as cruel โwilderness killers.โ
***
I grew up in southwestern Colorado in the 1970s and โ80s. Our family vacations were camping trips โ itโs what we could afford โ and I started backpacking with friends up Junction Creek when I was 12. I donโt remember ever seeing a bear, a mountain lion, or even a bobcat. We knew they were out there, sure, but even black bears were rare enough that we didnโt think about securing our food in camp. My friends and I often prowled around under the light of a full moon without a single worry that we might make a tasty mountain lion meal.
Not only were the grizzlies and wolves long gone by then, but I donโt think I would have believed that at one time they were so plentiful in the San Juan Mountains that members of the 1874 Hayden Survey came to see them as unavoidable pests, encountering grizzlies nearly everywhere they ventured, even on 13,000-foot peaks. I lived right next to, and often ventured into the Weminuche Wilderness, a vast and rugged and untrammeled region, and yet wildness of the kind that flourished in pre-settler-colonial times remained a myth to me, something that may have existed but that was ungraspable, even to my active and sometimes zany imagination.
The idea that wolves or grizzlies would ever return to the region? Inconceivable.
After all, the march of โcivilizationโ and โprogressโ is linear, the human population and the resources it consumes and the space it occupies and the impacts it has is a runaway train barreling toward inevitable collapse. The climate will continue to heat up, the skies will grow smoggier, the forests will burn, the mighty saguaro will topple, wilderness and solitude will become increasingly commodified, even the coyoteโs nocturnal yips will become a thing of the past. Or so it seems, especially in times like these, when greedโs toll becomes more and more apparent, when a huge bloc of the U.S. citizenry puts more value on the price at the pump than they do on the survival of the planet, when the people allow fear to override compassion and leaders cherish wealth and power over humanity and justice.
And yet. In my hometown of Durango, black bears roam freely and plentifully, purloining apples and pears and garbage. Herds of deer graze front lawns up in Tupperware Heights. Mountain lion sightings on the Test Tracks trails on the edge of town are frequent. Up in Silverton, moose-sightings are common, bighorn sheep lick the salt off the roads on Red Mountain Pass, and a lucky few catch a glimpse of Canada lynx. The wildlife, so rare in my youth, has returned, bringing a bit of wildness with it.
Nearly a century after Canis lupus was extirpated from the Southwest, there is a spark of hope, an inkling of possibility that the wolf will return to the Bears Ears country. In March, a Mexican gray wolf named Ella by local school children, was spotted north of Interstate 40 near Mount Taylor. It was killed by still undisclosed means, but it was an indication that the reintroduced wolf population in the southern part of the state is looking to broaden its horizons. And just last week, Colorado Parks & Wildlife published a map showing where radio-collared gray wolves, reintroduced in the northern part of the state, had roamed. One traveled some 1,200 miles, making it as far south as the Uncompahgre River watershed.
Some might argue that there is no longer a place in Colorado or southern Utah for the solitary wolf. There are too many people, too much development, far too many highways, too many public lands ranchers who refuse to learn non-lethal ways to deter predators, and too many right-wing politicians who despise the wolf and all it symbolizes. Maybe theyโre right. Government hunters with Wildlife Services continue the work of their Biological Survey predecessors: Last year, they killed 58,000 coyotes and 317 wolves nationwide, adding to the toll taken by private hunters (hunting wolves is legal in the Northern Rockies, where the population has somewhat recovered), cars, and other causes.
Still, for every human that yearns for the wolfโs demise, there are ten filled with awe and wonder for what the species, and its return, represents. As old Big Footโs story illustrates, the wolf is resilient. In the spring of 1920, a trap set by bounty hunter Roy Musselman out on Cedar Mesa a few miles east of Grand Gulch finally ensnared Big Foot, doing โwhat a dozen or more trappers are trying to do,โ according to an account by A.R. Lyman following Big Footโs death.
Lyman wrote that the twelve-year old, eight-foot long wolf had been tormenting ranchers for a decade at least, and had killed thousands of dollars worth of cattle. Big Foot foiled countless hunters and cowboys over the years, driving his bounty up to $1,000, and even Musselman had been on its trail for four years, catching seven other wolves during that time, including Big Footโs mate. He had a distinctive howl that could be distinguished five miles away, Lyman wrote, โand he has led many an interesting race with white men and Indians, always making safe his escape by his speed and his knowledge of the country.โ
His country is one of the few places in the U.S. that hasnโt changed all that much in the last 100 years. Another Big Foot would find plenty of landscape for roaming and many a nook and cranny for hiding out in. And now there are more deer and elk to eat (along with some slow-moving elk, if you know what I mean). Iโll leave you with Lymanโs words from April 1920:
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Heather Dutton and Daniel Boyes):
May 2, 2025
San Luis Valley water managers have reviewed streamflow forecasts, available water stored in reservoirs, and anticipated reservoir operations for the 2025 spring, summer, and fall seasons, and determined that 2025 will likely be a year with early runoff, low flows in streams and rivers, and a short boating season.
The Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 3 Engineerโs March 31 10-day report forecasted the total annual flow at the Del Norte gage will be 390,000 acre-feet. For reference, the flows in 2020 totaled 377,000 acre-feet. The National Weather Service is forecasting hot and dry conditions into July, with chances of a normal monsoon season in late summer. The snow water equivalent for the Upper Rio Grande Basin was 25 percent of the median for the 1991-2020 time period on April 28, 2025. The irrigation season began on April 1 on the Rio Grande. As such, on-stream reservoirs are required to pass all inflows to satisfy the needs of downstream senior water rights holders.
Given the low amount of snow remaining in the mountains and the anticipated summer drought conditions, it is likely that local rivers and streams will reach their peak runoff in May. The reservoir operators at Rio Grande, Santa Maria, and Continental Reservoirs will begin releasing stored irrigation water to downstream farmers after the river peaks. The San Luis Valley Irrigation District (SLVID) will release water from Rio Grande Reservoir to the Farmers Union Canal as soon as their first direct flow priorities come into priority on the Rio Grande at anticipated rates of 150-400 cubic feet per second for up to 15 days.
This schedule will be updated through May as river conditions change.
The Santa Maria Reservoir Company anticipates beginning releases from Santa Maria and Continental Reservoirs to the Rio Grande Canal and Monte Vista Canal in late May or early June. The timing of the releases of water will depend on flow rates in the canals and when farmers order water. The natural river flows and releases of irrigation water will provide the highest rates of flow during the summer season. As such, boatable flows on the Rio Grande may diminish as early as mid to late June.
Entities including Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District (SLVWCD), and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District (RGWCD) store water in reservoirs in the Upper Rio Grande Basin and call for releases for their operations in accordance with their water rights decrees. Where possible, releases by these organizations will be prioritized during hot periods to supplement the natural flow of the Rio Grande helping to reduce high water temperatures and low river flows, thereby protecting the health of fish. Generally, when water temperatures reach 68 degrees, fish become very stressed and voluntary fishing restrictions are enacted at 72 degrees. Stakeholders will watch temperatures on the Rio Grande and the South Fork of the Rio Grande carefully and take action to release water where possible.
The water managers and reservoir operators in the Rio Grande Basin are working in partnership to manage water in order to meet multiple needs. These efforts build off of many years of collaboration amongst water users on the Rio Grande. In order to better inform the local communities of water management operations, additional information will be compiled and shared via news outlets, social media, and email as reservoir releases are planned and executed.
Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Chris D’Angelo):
April 29, 2025
This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump’s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S.
Americaโs federal public lands are truly unique, part of our birthright as citizens. No other country in the world has such a system.
More than 640 million acres, including national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, as well as lands open to drilling, mining, logging, and a variety of other uses, are managed by the federal government โ but owned collectively by all American citizens. Together, these parcels make up more than a quarter of all land in the nation.
Congressman John Garamendi, a Democrat representing California, has called them โone of the greatest benefits of being an American.โ
โEven if you donโt own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures,โ he wrote in 2011.
Despite broad, bipartisan public support for protecting public lands, these shared landscapes have come under relentless attack during the first 100 days of President Donald Trumpโs second term. The administration and its allies in Congress are working feverishly to tilt the scale away from natural resource protection and toward extraction, threatening a pillar of the nationโs identity and tradition of democratic governance.
โThereโs no larger concentration of unappropriated wealth on this globe than exists in this country on our public lands,โ said Jesse Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a conservation nonprofit. โThe fact that there are interests that would like to monetize that, theyโd like to liquidate it and turn it into cash money, is no surprise.โ
Landscape protections and bedrock conservation laws are on the chopping block, as Trump and his team look to boost and fast-track drilling, mining, and logging across the federal estate. The administration and the GOP-controlled Congress are eyeing selling off federal lands, both for housing development and to help offset Trumpโs tax and spending cuts. And the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is wreaking havoc within federal land management agencies, pushing out thousands of civil servants. That purge will leave Americaโs natural heritage more vulnerable to the myriad threats these lands already face, including growing visitor numbers, climate change, wildfires, and invasive species.
The Republican campaign to undermine land management agencies and wrest control of public lands from the federal government is nothing new, dating back to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and โ80s, when support for privatizing or transferring federal lands to state control exploded across the West. But the speed and scope of the current attack, along with its disregard for the publicโs support for safeguarding public lands, makes it more worrisome than previous iterations, several public land advocates and legal experts told Grist.
This is โprobably the most significant moment since the Reagan administration in terms of privatization,โ said Steven Davis, a political science professor at Edgewood College and the author of the 2018 book In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer. President Ronald Reagan was a self-proclaimed sagebrush rebel.
Deubel said the conservation community knew Trumpโs return would trigger another drawn out fight for the future of public lands, but nothing could have prepared him for this level of chaos, particularly the effort to rid agencies of thousands of staffers.
The country is โin a much more pro-public lands position than weโve been before,โ Deubel said. โBut I think weโre at greater risk than weโve ever been before โ not because the time is right in the eyes of the American people, but because we have an administration who could give two shits about what the American people want. Thatโs whatโs got me scared.โ
The Interior Department and the White House did not respond to Gristโs requests for comment.
In an article posted to the White House website on Earth Day, the Trump administration touted several โkey actionsโ it has taken on the environment, including โprotecting public landsโ by opening more acres to energy development, โprotecting wildlifeโ by pausing wind energy projects, and safeguarding forests by expanding logging. The accomplishments list received widespread condemnation from environmental, climate, and public land advocacy groups.
That same day, a leaked draft strategic plan revealed the Interior Departmentโs four-year vision for opening new federal lands to drilling and other extractive development, reducing the amount of federal land it manages by selling some for housing development and transferring other acres to state control, rolling back the boundaries of protected national monuments, and weakening bedrock environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act.
Meanwhile, Trumpโs DOGE is in the process of cutting thousands of scientists and other staff from the various agencies that manage and protect public lands, including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. Nearly every Republican senator went on the record this month in support of selling off federal lands to reduce the federal deficit, voting down a measure that would have blocked such sales. And Utah has promised to continue its legal fight aimed at stripping more than 18 million acres of BLM lands within the stateโs border from the federal government. Utahโs lawsuit, which the Supreme Court declined to hear in January, had the support of numerous Republican-led states, including North Dakota while current Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was still governor.
To advance its agenda, the Trump administration is citing a series of โemergenciesโ that close observers say are at best exaggerated, and at worst manufactured. [ed. emphasis mine]
A purported โenergy emergency,โ which Trump declared in an executive order just hours after being inaugurated, has been the impetus for the administration attempting to throw long-standing federal permitting processes, public comment periods, and environmental safeguards to the wind. The action aims to boost fossil fuel extraction across federal lands and waters โ despite domestic oil and gas production being at record highs โ while simultaneously working to thwart renewable energy projects. Trump relied on that same โemergencyโ earlier this month when he ordered federal agencies to prop up Americaโs dwindling, polluting coal industry, which the president and his cabinet have insisted is โbeautifulโ and โclean.โ In reality, coal is among the most polluting forms of energy.
โThis whole idea of an emergency is ridiculous,โ said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado, Boulder. โAnd now this push to reinvigorate the coal industry seems absolutely crazy to me. Why would you try to reinvigorate a moribund industry that has been declining for the last decade or more? Makes no sense, itโs not going to happen.โ
Coal consumption in the U.S. has declined more than 50 percent since peaking in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, largely due to market forces, including the availability of cheaper natural gas and Americaโs growing renewable energy sector. Meanwhile, Trumpโs tariff war threatens to undermine his own push to expand mining and fossil fuel drilling.
The threat of extreme wildfire โ an actual crisis driven by a complex set of factors, including climate change, its role in intensifying droughts and pest outbreaks, and decades of fire suppression โ is being cited to justify slashing environmental reviews to ramp up logging on public lands. Following up on a Trump executive order to increase domestic timber production, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed a memo declaring a forest health โemergencyโ that would open nearly 60 percent of national forest lands, more than 110 million acres, to aggressive logging.
Then thereโs Americaโs โhousing affordability crisis,โ which the Trump administration, dozens of Republicans, and even a handful of Democrats are pointing to in a growing push to open federal lands to housing development, either by selling land to private interests or transferring control to states. The Trump administration recently established a task force to identify what it calls โunderutilized lands.โ In an op-ed announcing that effort, Burgum and Scott Turner, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, wrote that โmuch ofโ the 500 million acres Interior oversees is โsuitable for residential use.โ Some of the most high-profile members of the anti-public lands movement, including William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trumpโs first term, are championing the idea.
Without guardrails, critics argue the sale of public lands to build housing will lead to sprawl in remote, sensitive landscapes and do little, if anything, to address home affordability, as the issue is driven by several factors, including migration trends, stagnant wages, and higher construction costs. Notably, Trumpโs tariff policies are expected to raise the average price of a new home by nearly $11,000.
Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit working to protect BLM-managed lands, said the lack of affordable housing is a serious issue, but โwe shouldnโt be fooled that the idea to sell off public lands is a solution.โ
โThe vast majority of public lands are just not suitable for any sort of housing development due to their remote locations, lack of access, and necessary infrastructure,โ she said.
David Hayes, who served as deputy Interior secretary during the administrations of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and as a senior climate adviser to President Joe Biden, told Grist that Trumpโs broad use of executive power sets the current privatization push apart from previous efforts.
โNot only do you have the rhetoric and the intentionality around managing public lands in an aggressive way, but you have to couple that with what youโre seeing,โ he said. โThis administration is going farther than any other ever has to push the limits of executive power.โ
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation group, said Trump and his team are doing everything they can to circumvent normal environmental rules and safeguards in order to advance their agenda, with no regard for the law or public opinion.
โEverything is an imagined crisis,โ Weiss said.
Oil, gas, and coal jobs. Mining jobs. Timber jobs. Farming and ranching. Gas-powered cars and kitchen appliances. Even the water pressure in your shower. Ask the White House and the Republican Party and theyโll tell you Biden waged a war against all of it, and that voters gave Trump a mandate to reverse course.
During Trumpโs first term in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly boasted that the administrationโs conservation legacy would rival that of his personal hero and Americaโs conservationist president, Theodore Roosevelt โ only to have the late presidentโs great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, and the conservation community bemoan his record at the helm of the massive federal agency.
Like Zinke, Burgum invoked Roosevelt in pitching himself for the job.
โIn our time, President Trumpโs energy dominance can be Americaโs big stick that will be leveraged to achieve historic prosperity and world peace,โ Burgum said during his confirmation hearing in January, referencing a 1900 letter in which the 26th president said to โspeak softly and carry a big stick.โ
The Senate confirmed him to the post in January on a bipartisan 79-18 vote. Some public land advocates initially viewed Burgum, now the chief steward of the federal lands, waters, and wildlife we all own, as a palatable nominee in a sea of problematic potential picks. A billionaire software entrepreneur and former North Dakota governor, Burgum has talked at length about his fondness for Rooseveltโs conservation legacy and the outdoors.
Whatever honeymoon there was didnโt last long. One hundred days in, Burgum and the rest of Trumpโs team have taken not a stick, but a wrecking ball to Americaโs public lands, waters, and wildlife. Earlier this month, the new CEO of REI said the outdoor retailer made โa mistakeโ in endorsing Burgum for the job and that the administrationโs actions on public lands โare completely at odds with the longstanding values of REI.โ
At an April 9 all-hands meeting of Interior employees, Burgum showed off pictures of himself touring oil and gas facilities, celebrated โclean coal,โ and condemned burdensome government regulation. Burgum has repeatedly described federal lands as โAmericaโs balance sheetโ โ โassetsโ that he estimates could be worth $100 trillion but that he argues Americans are getting a โlow returnโ on.
โOn the worldโs largest balance sheet last year, the revenue that we pulled in was about $18 billion,โ he said at the staffwide meeting, referring to money the government brings from lease fees and royalties from grazing, drilling, and logging on federal lands, as well as national park entrance fees. โEighteen billion might seem like a big number. Itโs not a big number if weโre managing $100 trillion in assets.โ
In focusing solely on revenues generated from energy and other resource extraction, Burgum disregards that public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy, nevermind the numerous climate, environmental, cultural, and public health benefits.
Davis, the author of In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer, dismissed Burgumโs โbalance sheetโ argument as โshriveledโ and โwrong.โ
โYou have to willfully be ignorant and ignore everything of value about those lands except their marketable commodity value to come up with that conclusion,โ he said. When you add all their myriad values together, public lands โare the biggest bargain you can possibly imagine.โ
Davis likes to compare public lands to libraries, schools, or the Department of Defense.
โThere are certain things we as a society decide are important and we pay for it,โ he said. โWe call that public goods.โ
The last time conservatives ventured down the public land privatization path, it didnโt go well.
Shortly after Trumpโs first inauguration in 2017, then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican representing Utah, introduced legislation to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 Western states that he said had โbeen deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.โ
Public backlash was fierce. Chaffetz pulled the bill just two weeks later, citing concerns from his constituents. The episode, while brief, largely forced the anti-federal land movement back into the shadows. The first Trump administration continued to weaken safeguards for 35 million acres of federal lands โ more than any other administration in history โ and offered up millions more for oil and gas development, but stopped short of trying sell off or transfer large areas of the public domain.
Yet as the last few months have shown, the anti-public lands movement is alive and well.
Public land advocates are hopeful that the current push will flounder. They expect courts to strike down many of Trumpโs environmental rollbacks, as they did during his first term. In recent weeks, crowds have rallied at numerous national parks and state capitol buildings to support keeping public lands in public hands. Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who voted to confirm Burgum to his post and serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has taken to social media to warn about the growing Republican effort to undermine, transfer, and sell off public lands.
โI continue to be encouraged that people are going to be loud. They already are,โ said Deubel, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. โWeโre mobilizing. Weโve got business and industries. Weโve got Republicans, weโve got Democrats. Weโve got hunters and weโve got non-hunters. Weโve got everybody speaking out about this.โ
In a time of extreme polarization on seemingly every issue, public lands enjoy broad bipartisan support. The 15th annual โConservation in the Westโ poll found that 72 percent of voters in eight Western states support public lands conservation over increased energy development โ the highest level of support in the pollโs history; 65 percent oppose giving states control over federal public lands, up from 56 percent in 2017; and 89 percent oppose shrinking or removing protections for national monuments, up from 80 percent in 2017. Even in Utah, where leaders have spent millions of taxpayer dollars promoting the stateโs anti-federal lands lawsuit, support for protecting public lands remains high.
โEven in all these made up crises, the American public doesnโt want this,โ Hill said. โThe American people want and love their public lands.โ
At his recent staffwide meeting, Burgum said Rooseveltโs legacy should guide Interior staff in the mission to manage and protect federal public lands. Those two things, management and protection, โmust be held in balance,โ Burgum stressed.
Yet in social media posts and friendly interviews with conservative media, Burgum has left little doubt about where his priorities lie, repeatedly rolling out what Breitbart dubbed the โfour babiesโ of Trumpโs energy dominance agenda: โDrill, Baby, Drill! Map, Baby, Map! Mine, Baby, Mine! Build, Baby, Build!โ
โProtect, baby, protect,โ โconserve, baby, conserve,โ and โsteward, baby, stewardโ have yet to make it into Burgumโs lexicon.
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):
May 3, 2025
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
The seven states that use the Colorado River are deadlocked about how to share it in the future. The current rules for dividing its shrinking supplies expire in 2026. State leaders are under pressure to propose a new sharing agreement urgently, so they can finish environmental paperwork before that deadline.
Right now, they donโt appear close to an agreement, so a group of prominent Colorado River experts co-signed a letter outlining seven things they want to see in the next set of rules.
The letter gives a clear, concise list of recommendations for ways to keep taps flowing while protecting tribes and the environment. Whether the states will listen is another matter entirely.
โShared painโ
The letter, written by a group of academics and retired policymakers, makes no bones about it: states need to find a collective solution to their collective problem. And some of them might not be happy.
State leaders have been reluctant to volunteer cutbacks, and have largely stayed divided along a decades-old fault line. On one side, the Upper Basin โ which consists of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. The other side, the Lower Basin, is made up of California, Arizona and Nevada.
The recent letter is interesting in part because itโs co-authored by people from both sides of the Colorado River debate. Eric Kuhn led an agency that defends Western Coloradoโs water. Kathryn Sorensen led Phoenixโs water department.
The letter was also written by Anne Castle, who has worked in federal water policy positions, and Jack Schmidt, a water researcher at Utah State University. Co-authors John Fleck and Katherine Tara research water policy at the University of New Mexico.
The authors write that states need to engage in some level of โshared pain,โ meaning cutbacks to the amount of water that flows to farms, homes, and businesses.
โโSharedโ,โ the letter writes, โDoes not mean equal, either in amount, triggers, or duration.โ
The Lower Basin states have already proposed relatively modest cutbacks, and the Upper Basin seems to be digging in its heels on the idea that they should not have to give up any water at all.
This letter pushes back on that stance.
โThere’s lots of wonderful legal arguments about why it shouldn’t be me that needs to use less water,โ Anne Castle, one of the letterโs authors, told KUNC. โBut in order to have a viable and politically viable agreement, everybody has to do a share.โ
Other recommendations
In addition to calling for states to put their heads together, the authors also warned against leaning too hard on federal checks as a way to conserve water. Money from the federal government has been a key part of avoiding catastrophe on the Colorado River in recent years. Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to big water users, often farmers, as an incentive to use less water.
Those funds have come under threat during President Donald Trumpโs second term. The letter says new rules for the Colorado River โcannot assume that federal taxpayers will reimburse Western water users over the long term to forgo the use of water that does not exist.โ
The letter goes on to advocate for groups that can sometimes be an afterthought in Western water policy. It essentially re-ups an earlier call from a group of tribes in the Colorado River basin, which are asking for a bigger seat at the table after more than a century of exclusion. It also pushes for new rules to be more flexible, which would make it easier to protect river ecosystems. That mirrors similar comments from a group of nonprofits.
The shortest and final recommendation in the letter says that any new Colorado River rules have to make sure thereโs enough water to keep people safe and healthy.
โThere must be absolute protection of domestic water deliveries for public health and safety,โ it reads.
In short, itโs asking to make sure that a worst-case-scenario doesnโt see drinking water reserves go dry, while agriculture and other industries keep their faucets flowing.
โI don’t think that would happen,โ Castle said. โI think the market would intervene and take care of this situation.โ
The reaction
KUNC reached out to top water negotiators in Arizona and Colorado for this story. Their answers fell in line with oft-repeated talking points from each basin.
A spokesman for the Arizona Department of Water Resources wrote that its director, Tom Buschatzke, โagreed with the authors that โevery state and sector of the economy must contribute to the solution to this imbalance.โโ
Coloradoโs top water official, Becky Mitchell, wrote that the recommendations overlooked climate changeโs impact on Upper Basin water supplies, and that states already take โmandatory and uncompensatedโ cuts.
โColorado water users do not enjoy a guaranteed delivery of the full amount of their water rights each year,โ she wrote.
Jennifer Gimbel, Coloradoโs former top water official, did not contribute to the letter and also took issue with the suggestion that both basins could afford to make cutbacks.
โAre the authors of the paper thinking that federal law should be enacted to override state law?โ Gimbel wrote to KUNC in an email. โAre they thinking that users in the Upper Basin, who they say should not rely on federal compensation, should just give up their livelihoods voluntarily or be compensated by the state legislatures? I donโt know because they donโt say.โ
Click the link to read the article on the Carbon Brief website (Orla Dwyer). Here’s an excerpt:
May 2, 2025
Forests around the world are taking longer to recover from severe wildfires โ potentially indicating forest decline, according to a new study.ย
The research, published inย Nature Ecology & Evolution, finds a โsignificant increaseโ in the severity of forest fires from 2001-10 to 2010-21 โ especially in western North America, parts of Siberia and south-eastern Australia. It also finds that recovery from large fires has become โmore difficultโ for forests in recent years, particularly in theย boreal forestsย of the far-northern latitudes. Furthermore, fewer than one-third of all forests studied recovered successfully within seven years of a โmegafireโ โ a broadย termย used to refer to extreme fires. A โsurprising discoveryโ was that fire severity had the largest impact on forest recovery โ even more than climate change, one of the study authors tells Carbon Brief.ย
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
April 25, 2025
A group* of my Colorado River collaborators has put together what we hope can be a useful set of foundational principles as the basin states and federal leadership search for a path toward a negotiated agreement for post-2026 Colorado River management. Theyโre based on a number of key premises:
- The Colorado River Compact will remain the foundation of the riverโs management, but we have to find a way past the deep disagreement between Upper and Lower basin states on what the Compact actually says.
- Colorado River Basin tribes must be essential partners in crafting the next set of guidelines, including through compensation for foregone water use.
- Shared pain is essential. The path toward a sustainable river system requires everyone to contribute to the solution to the problem of the river we all share.
Thereโs more. I encourage you to read the whole thing. (Itโs short!)
* In alphabetical order: Anne Castle, John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara.
Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jennifer Sahn):
May 1, 2025
For several years I served on the board of a rural school district, and every year, when our draft budget was presented at our monthly public meeting, the audience would fill with people concerned about higher taxes. Seniors on fixed incomes spoke about the precarity of their budgets, while people of significantly greater means railed against โirresponsibleโ spending. As a board, we were trying to keep class sizes small enough for good learning outcomes and to avoid having to cut art and music and Spanish classes. I typically let the more senior board members handle the tough questions, but one year, as a young mom, I felt compelled to speak on behalf of the intergenerational social contract: the idea that when we were in school, we benefited from the investment of the generations before us, and it is therefore our moral obligation as adults today to invest in schools for the generations coming after us.
The intergenerational social contract is an old idea, far older than the U.S. government, Social Security and Medicare. It is not about entitlement. Itโs about intergenerational caretaking โ the recognition that there are no isolated moments of history, that we are obliged to pass on a world of hope and possibility to future generations. Indigenous communities have always understood this, which is why traditional ecological knowledge is increasingly being looked to for ways of managing the land for long-term health and sustainability. Itโs a line of thinking that respects, and assumes a responsibility to, future inhabitants of Earth.
The intergenerational social contract also applies to public lands. Land-management agencies in the U.S., including the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior and the Forest Service, have a legal responsibility to manage lands and resources with the future in mind. The words โto the benefit of present and future generationsโ are all over the charters and laws governing these agencies. Current proposals to sell off public land are not only a blatant violation of the social contract, but a violation of the very idea of public land. Transferring a public good into private hands is a crime against future generations.
The reckless actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as charted by Jonathan Thompson in this issue, are another blatant assault on the public good, slashing budgets for public land and firing its caretakers. Cutting funds for cancer and climate research is an assault on present and future generations, as is defanging the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. This activity should be considered un-American: enriching the wealthiest while stealing from the everyday Americans of today, tomorrow and as long as our republic shall stand.
Alexandra Klass, University of Michigan
An ancient legal principle has become a key strategy of American children seeking to reduce the effects of climate change in the 21st century. A defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2025 has not stopped the effort, which has several legal actions continuing in the courts.
The legal basis for these cases is called the โpublic trust doctrine,โ the principle that certain natural resources โ historically, navigable waters such as lakes, rivers and streams and the lands under them โ must be maintained in government ownership and held in trust for present and future generations of the public.
Although the origins of the doctrine remain in some dispute, most scholars cite its first mention in ancient Roman law. Over the centuries the principle made its way to England and later to the United States.
For the past decade, a nonprofit called Our Childrenโs Trust has argued for a 21st-century interpretation of the public trust doctrine to support lawsuits against state and federal agencies and officials, seeking to force them to take specific actions to fight climate change. Our Childrenโs Trust has focused on children, saying they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change because their futures, which the public trust doctrine protects, will be lived in an unsafe and unhealthy climate unless governments take action. Children around the world have filed similar lawsuits against their governments on alternate legal grounds, including claims of constitutional and human rights violations.
The U.S. Supreme Court first endorsed the public trust doctrine in 1892, when it ruled that the doctrine prevented the Illinois legislature from selling virtually the entire Chicago harbor in Lake Michigan to a private railroad company. In the 20th century, state courts have ruled that the doctrine bars states and local governments from selling off lakefront property or harbors to private owners and protects public access to beaches, lakes and oceans.
The public trust doctrine had little to do with environmental protection until the 1970s, however, after law professor Joseph Sax wrote an influential article arguing that the doctrine could form the basis for lawsuits to protect water and other natural resources from pollution, destruction and other threats.
Over the past five decades, some statesโ courts have expanded the public trust doctrineโs application beyond access to water-based resources, ruling it can also require governments to protect parks and wildlife from development. And Montana, Minnesota and several other states followed Saxโs recommendation to pass laws or amend their state constitutions to impose broader obligations on states to protect natural resources.
In 2011, Our Childrenโs Trust argued for the first time that governments had a legal obligation to protect the atmosphere as a public trust resource. The group filed lawsuits in all 50 states on behalf of children. Most state courts dismissed the lawsuits quickly, holding that there were no court decisions in their states that supported extending the public trust doctrine to claims involving the climate or the atmosphere.
In 2015 the group filed a similar lawsuit in federal court in Oregon, this time against the federal government. That lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, alleged that the federal governmentโs inaction to address climate change violated the public trust doctrine as well as the 21 young plaintiffsโ rights to life, liberty and property under the U.S. Constitution.
The plaintiffs asked the court to order the federal government to prepare an inventory of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and to implement a national plan to phase out fossil fuels to โstabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend.โ
The federal lawsuit survived an early effort from the government to dismiss the case but never reached a full trial. In 2016 an Oregon federal judge ruled that the U.S. government had an obligation to protect the climate under both the public trust doctrine and the U.S. Constitution. However, this ruling was reversed on appeal. After years of back-and-forth in the court system, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the caseโs dismissal in March 2025. https://www.youtube.com/embed/1L6ufLmmyS0?wmode=transparent&start=20 A talk with one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the U.S. government seeking to force regulatory action to reduce the effects of climate change.
Since the initial wave of litigation, Our Childrenโs Trust has continued to file lawsuits to force governments to address climate change. These newer ones are more narrowly tailored to state-specific constitutional and statutory provisions that protect environmental and public trust resources. And, so far, they have been more successful.
In a 2020 Montana lawsuit, for example, the plaintiffs relied on a 1972 amendment to the state constitution declaring that the state and every person โshall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generationsโ and that the legislature shall โprovide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.โ Montana Supreme Court decisions prior to the 2020 lawsuit had held that the framers of the 1972 amendment had intended it to contain โthe strongest environmental protection provision found in any state constitution.โ
Relying on these court decisions, the Montana plaintiffs argued that a state law preventing state agencies from considering the effects of greenhouse gases in issuing permit applications for projects such as power plants or mines violated the state constitution.
The plaintiffs won at trial, and in a landmark opinion in 2024 the Montana Supreme Court upheld the trial courtโs finding that greenhouse gases were harmful to the stateโs โclimate, rivers, lakes, groundwater, atmospheric waters, forests, glaciers, fish, wildlife, air quality, and ecosystem.โ The court similarly found that โa stable climate system โฆ is clearly within the object and true principlesโ of the stateโs constitution.
Children in Hawaii filed a similar lawsuit in 2022 against the state Department of Transportation, alleging that its failure to reduce transportation emissions in the state violated the state public trust doctrine and the stateโs constitution. The lawsuit relied on Hawaii courtsโ previous rulings that the stateโs public trust doctrine and state constitution broadly protect natural resources for present and future generations. In 2024, days before trial was to begin, the parties reached a landmark settlement in which the state agreed to take concrete actions to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. https://www.youtube.com/embed/VjHqeNB89L0?wmode=transparent&start=0 In the Montana lawsuit, a U.S. court ruled that the government had failed to protect the rights of children by failing to take action to reduce or prevent climate change.
Looking back, it was perhaps not surprising that a one-size-fits-all nationwide legal strategy based on a doctrine that varies widely state by state would face long odds. But the public trust doctrine itself has been historically incremental, expanding and contracting as society and the needs of its citizens change over time. And Our Childrenโs Trust has several cases still pending, including in Alaska and Utah state courts, and in a federal court in California.
The campaignโs successes broke new legal ground: Montana courts held the first trial in the United States that examined evidence of the effects of climate change and statesโ obligations to address them. The Hawaii settlement set concrete benchmarks and included provisions for continued feedback on state policies by the youth plaintiffs.
More broadly, Our Childrenโs Trustโs campaign demonstrates that a combination of legal advocacy and nationwide publicity over the plight of young people in a rapidly changing climate have the potential to result in real change, both in the law and in public perception of the importance of addressing climate change.
Alexandra Klass, James G. Degnan Professor of Law, University of Michigan
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Reuben M. Schafir) Here’s an excerpt:
April 29, 2025
The Bureau of Land Management is restoring up to 11 cubic feet per second of water previously diverted to the Uncompahgre River Basin back to the headwaters of the Animas River north of Silverton. Thatโs a win for fish, other aquatic wildlife and mining remediation, said Trout Unlimitedโs Mining Coordinator Ty Churchwell, because the water will dilute heavy metals to less toxic concentrations. Both the national organization of Trout Unlimited and the local Five Rivers chapter provided financial assistance with the acquisition. The 11-cubic-foot diversion is aboutย 10% of the riverโs total current flowsย in Silverton before the confluence with Cement Creek…
The previous owner held the rights to divert the water through the Mineral Point Ditch โ before it entered Burrows Creek โ over into the Uncompahgre Basin for agricultural use. This resulted in a 100% depletion of that water from the Animas River…The BLM paid $297,000 โ fair market value โ to buy the water right from a willing seller, agency spokeswoman Katie Palubicki said in an email to The Durango Herald, using funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the agencyโs Abandoned Mine Lands program to acquire the right.
Click the link to read the article on the KVNF website (Brody Wilson):
April 29, 2025
The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the American Southwest. Forty million people depend on it โ not just here in Colorado, but in cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
Here on the Western Slope, we donโt always feel directly connected to the Colorado River. After all, we live in the Gunnison Basin โ a different watershed, right?
Not quite. The Gunnison River contributes about 17% of the Colorado Riverโs total annual flow. So any decision made about the Colorado Riverโs future directly affects us โ how much water we can use, when, and for what purpose. For decades, the river has been in a slow-moving crisis. Climate change, explosive population growth, and overallocation have pushed the system to the brink. In 2022, the riverโs two main reservoirs โ Lake Powell and Lake Mead โ reached such low levels that hydropower turbines at Glen Canyon Dam were nearly shut down and dam operators were near “dead-pool” where water would no longer be able to pass through the dam. But today, nearly three years later, the system isnโt bouncing back. Andy Mueller, General Manager of the Colorado River District, has a blunt message: the Colorado River is carrying less water than it used to, and if we donโt change course, the future of agriculture, recreation, and the our way of life across the Western Slope could be at risk.
โThe average temperature in March has gone up 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit,โ Mueller told the crowd in Ridgway. โAnd for every 1 degree of warming, streamflow drops by 3 to 5 percent. Weโre looking at a 20% decline right here in the Uncompahgre Valley over the last 125 years.โ
These trends are part of a long-term warming and drying pattern. Less snow is falling, and what does fall melts earlier. That means less water reaches our rivers โ and more of it is lost to evaporation or absorbed by plants growing in longer, hotter seasons.
To understand whatโs happening now, you have to go back to 1922. Thatโs when the seven states in the Colorado River Basin signed a compact to divide the riverโs water. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming became the โUpper Basin.โ California, Arizona, and Nevada formed the โLower Basin.โ Each side was promised 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year. But there was a problem: the river wasnโt carrying that much water โ and certainly doesnโt now. For decades, this over-allocation was masked by big reservoirs like Lake Powell and Lake Mead. But as the drought continues, those buffers have disappeared. In 2007, the states and federal government adopted a temporary fix: interim guidelines to manage the system during dry years. Those guidelines are set to expire in 2026. New rules must be negotiated now โ and the clock is ticking.
โThereโs a lot of confusion out there,โ Mueller said. โPeople talk about renegotiating the Compact โ but thatโs not whatโs happening. The Compact isnโt being touched. Whatโs being negotiated are the guidelines for how Powell and Mead are operated โ especially in times of shortage.โ
Click the link to read the paper on the InkStain.net website (Kathryn Sorensen, Sarah Porter, Eric Kuhn, and Cynthia Campbell). Here’s an excerpt:
April 18, 2025
Conserving water now in reservoir savings banks, as a hedge against future risks associated with drought and declining flows, has emerged as one of the central tools for managing the Colorado River. The Lower Basin “Intentionally Created Surplus” program, created in the 2007 Interim Guidelines, has shown the idea’s promise and given the basin nearly two decades to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. With tweaks to allow similar efforts in the Upper Basin and other modifications based on what we have learned about the current ICS approach, such “Floating Pools” are one of the key tools being considered as negotiators try to thread the needle of a seven-state agreement for post-2026 Colorado River management. Done properly, they have the potential to finesse the states’ disagreement over the terms of the 1922 Colorado River Compact in a way that could avoid potentially disruptive litigation. But getting the details right will be crucial to the development of an enduring bargain that can help the basin avoid the risk of interstate litigation.
Context
Negotiations over post-2026 operating rules for Lakes Powell and Mead are a proxy battle over whether the 1922 Compact acts as a limitation on yet-to-be used water in the Upper Division States or as a cut to existing water uses in the Lower Division States. Much of the conflict focuses on Article III(d) of the Colorado Compact, which states, โThe states of the Upper Division will not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years. . .โ
The Upper Division States have a fundamentally different interpretation of their Compact obligations at Lee Ferry than the Lower Division States. Clearly, the best-case scenario for the Lower Division States, especially in Central Arizona, is a court decision that confirms the Upper Division States have a compact obligation to not deplete the flow of the river below 75 million acre-feet every ten years plus ยฝ of the annual delivery to Mexico under the 1944 Treaty, approximately 82 million acre-feet every ten years. This outcome would mostly stabilize the water supply available to the Lower Division States and likely limit consumptive uses in the Upper Division States to about the same or a little less water than they are currently using, approximately 4 million acre-feet per year. If the high court rules instead that the Upper Division States have a non-depletion obligation, and that consumptive uses in the Upper Division States are not the โcauseโ of inadequate flows needed to deliver 8.23 million acre-feet to the Lower Division States and Mexico, the result in a declining river system is a cut, potentially even to zero, for water delivered via the Central Arizona Project (CAP) into the Sun Corridor from Phoenix to Tucson and potential cuts to water-right holders in Western Arizona, Southern California and Nevada who are next on the chopping block.
Distilled to its core, here is the question before us: in a declining river system and in the absence of an agreement among the Divisions, does the operation of Article III(d) of the Compact result in a limitation on future new uses in the Upper Division States or an elimination to existing ones in the Lower Division States?
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain.net website (John Fleck):
April 21, 2025
Itโs easy to take for granted the accounting innovations in the Colorado River governance regimeโs 2007 guidelines, which have governed river management and the upstream-downstream relationships between the upper and lower basins. โIntentionally Created Surplusโ (ICS) is now part of the lexicon, and the idea behind it shows enough promise that itโs at the heart of the current negotiations over the post-โ07 guidelines management of the river.
But we need to be careful about the lessons that we learn, and the details of how we implement the successor to ICS. How should the successor to ICS related to action levels for reservoir management? How do we ensure that water in ICS-like accounting pools is really conserved water, part of a sincere effort to reduce basin consumptive use?
Those questions are at the heart of the argument in Floating Pools & Grand Bargains, a new white paper by Kathryn Sorensen from Arizona State University and a group of colleagues, including Eric Kuhn:
Highly Recommended.
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):
May 1, 2025
As Save the Colorado and Denver Water prepare to face off in a federal courtroom Tuesday, water officials across the state are watching the Gross Dam expansion case closely for its environmental impact and its affect on water projects across the West.
Kirk Klancke, a long-time Grand County environmentalist and president of the Colorado River Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited, said a decision that shuts down the $531 million water project, could also shut down 12 years of work on the Fraser River and its tributaries.
Hereโs why: Denver Water owns much of the Fraser with water rights dating back more than 100 years. And it is that water that has historically been piped through the Moffat Tunnel near Rollinsville to fill the existing Gross Reservoir. The new water for the expanded reservoir will come largely from that river as well.
After whatโs known as the 2013 Colorado River Cooperative Agreement was signed, Denver Water agreed to conduct extensive restoration work on the river in exchange for being able to raise Gross Dam and bring more water from the Fraser River over to the Front Range.
Klancke said the heavily diverted, scenic waterway would suffer if the deal falls apart. โTo dissolve that partnership will be the death of the Fraser River,โ he said.
Under the terms of the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement, the work on the Fraser River can only be finalized if the Gross Dam expansion proceeds.
On the upside though, Klancke said, if a new environmental settlement were reached, it could mean more money and more work to restore South Boulder Creek on the other side of the Continental Divide. The creek carries that Fraser River water from the reservoir to Denver Waterโs northern storage system.
โI would love to see Denver put a whole bunch of money into South Boulder Creek,โ Klancke said.
Gary Wockner, the head of Save The Colorado, disputes the notion that the case could harm environmental work already underway in Grand County.
โWe are not causing environmental damage,โ he said. โIf Denver Water chooses to stop, thatโs their choice. Thatโs on their shoulders. Not ours.โ
For its part, Denver says it hopes to continue the Grand County work, but that the terms of the Fraser River agreement are all based on the successful completion of the Gross Dam expansion.
The agency also says it has already set aside $30 million to help offset any environmental harm caused by the massive construction project, including providing 5,000 acre-feet of water to improve streamflows along a 17-mile stretch of South Boulder Creek. An acre-foot of water equals nearly 326,000 gallons, enough water to serve two to four urban households for one year.
Denver Water first moved to raise Gross Dam more than 20 years ago when it began designing the expansion and seeking the necessary federal and state permits.
After years of engineering, studies and federal and state analyses, construction began in 2022. It has involved taking apart a portion of the original dam, built in the 1950s, and raising its height by 131 feet to nearly triple the reservoirโs storage capacity to 119,000 acre-feet from 42,000 acre-feet.
Save The Colorado has launched several unsuccessful challenges to the project, but in 2022 it won an appeal that put the legal battle back in play. Despite months of settlement talks, no agreement was reached.
Then the case took center stage again April 3, when Senior U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello put a temporary halt to construction of the higher dam, at Save The Coloradoโs request.
Almost immediately, Denver Water filed for temporary relief from the order, saying, in part, that it would be unsafe to stop work as the incomplete concrete walls towered above Gross Reservoir.
Arguello granted that request, too, allowing Denver to continue working on the dam.
Gross Dam case spurred $100 million settlement in a different lawsuit
What happens next is anyoneโs guess. Jennifer Gimbel, a water policy scholar at Colorado State University who also serves on Northern Waterโs board of directors, said the case has already had an impact on a $2 billion water project to deliver water to residents of fast-growing northern Colorado. The Northern Integrated Supply Project, as it is known, also faced a legal challenge from Save The Colorado, and ultimately the water agency opted to settle the case for $100 million. The cash will help restore the Cache la Poudre River with new diversion agreements and improved streamflows, among other benefits.
Gimbel said the Gross Reservoir case was a key factor in that settlement. โBecause of Denverโs troubles with Save the Colorado, Northern Water decided to resolve their lawsuit because they were worried about their own permit getting stale and because as you delay construction costs increase.โ
The Gross Dam case is also noteworthy because it has stopped a major construction project already underway and may significantly change it. Judge Arguello has ordered the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the major permitting agency, to redo its original permitting work.
Denver Water General Manager Alan Salazar has said his agency would take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, if they lose in the lower courts.
As both sides prepare for Tuesdayโs hearing, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel has said it will wait to see what information emerges from the Tuesday hearing before it rules on Denver Waterโs appeal before the 10th Circuit, according to Denver Water General Counsel Jessica Brody. That action seeks to permanently protect what Denver believes is its right to raise Gross Dam.
Denver Water has also raised national security concerns in the case because Save The Colorado has asked and been granted the right to review construction documents on the dam project, documents that would normally be kept from public view.
In response, the judge has told participants to expect the court to be closed periodically during the hearing to address those security concerns.
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
Strong thunderstorms and heavy precipitation again affected parts of the central and eastern Contiguous United States, although coverage was spotty in all but a few areas. Heavy to excessive rains (at least 2 inches) doused portions of the Plains, Mississippi Valley, Upper Southeast, and scattered to isolated sections of the northern and western Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, Carolinas, Northeast, and northern Rockies. In several sizeable areas of the Plains where there was relatively solid coverage of heavy precipitation, conditions improved significantly. Meanwhile, rainfall was negligible (several tenths of an inch at best) in most areas from the Rockies westward and in a few areas farther to the east, including much of southern and western Texas, the Oklahoma Panhandle, southeastern Kansas, central and western Nebraska, central and western North Dakota, a band from parts of the middle Mississippi Valley through the southern and eastern Great Lakes region, much of the immediate Gulf Coast, central North Carolina, central and eastern Virginia, and most of Florida and adjacent southeastern Alabama and southern Georgia. This led to another week with significant dryness and drought expansion and deterioration in the latter areas of the Southeast…
High Plains
Precipitation totals varied significantly across this region this week, but more areas were hit by heavy rains and improving conditions than dryness and deterioration. The dry week led to deterioration across southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and much of the central tier of Colorado. Farther north and east, however, widespread heavy rains were noted in several swaths of the Plains and Wyoming, leading to reductions in the intensity and extent of dryness and drought. Improvements were most widespread across central and northwestern Kansas, and most of the state of South Dakota, where heavy rains were most widespread. Still, despite the improvement in many areas, 60-day precipitation totals were under 25 percent of normal in southwestern Kansas and southeastern Colorado, with less than half of normal reported in adjacent areas plus parts of central Kansas, central and northeastern Nebraska, and a few other scattered areas…
West
A band of moderate to heavy precipitation (1 to 3 inches) fell across southeastern and south-central Montana, plus isolated spots in eastern Idaho. The rest of the West Region was dry this past week, outside a narrow corridor of heavy rain in east-central New Mexico. As a result, dryness and drought eased its grip in these areas. In addition, some limited improvement was brought into northern and western Washington, and small parts of northern Montana, based on a re-assessment of conditions. Most observed changes, however, were for the worse. Conditions were broadly downgraded across interior northern Montana, and increasing moisture deficits led to the expansion of D0 (abnormal dryness) into southwestern Washington and much of northwestern Oregon. In addition, surface moisture depletion has become increasingly obvious across several areas in New Mexico, leading to a significant increase in D3 (extreme drought) coverage there. The dryness was more climatologically seasonable across Arizona, Nevada, and California, where conditions were unchanged this week…
South
The heaviest rain in the Contiguous United States fell on a band from central Oklahoma southwestward across the Red River (south) into part of northwestern Texas. An area covering several counties recorded 4 to locally 8 inches of rain. Lesser but still heavy amounts (over 2 inches) fell on many areas across the rest of northern, central, and eastern Texas, portions of Louisiana and Mississippi, part of southern Tennessee, and a few scattered locations across Arkansas. Rainfall during the current and past few weeks led to large areas of improvement across the central, northern, and eastern portions of the Texas dryness and drought coverage, in addition to north-central Oklahoma and the western portions of the state outside the Panhandle. Dryness and drought remains widespread across most of Texas outside the northeast and over western portions of Oklahoma, with some deterioration to D2 (severe drought) noted in the Oklahoma Panhandle, which missed the weekโs heavy rains. A broad area of exceptional drought (D4) remained entrenched across a large swath in central and western Texas, though there was some erosion of its eastward extent. East of this area of solid drought coverage, most areas are free of dryness and drought, and locally heavy rains reduced the coverage even further in part of southeastern Mississippi. Small, isolated areas of abnormal dryness (D0) elsewhere were limited to northwestern Mississippi and eastern Tennessee. Arkansas is entirely free of any dryness or drought…
Looking Ahead
During May 1-5, 2025, heavy rain (2 to locally 5 inches) is forecast for central and northeastern Texas, northern Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. Moderate to locally heavy totals (1 to 2.5 inches) are expected over much of Mississippi and Alabama, the central and southern Appalachians, the middle and upper Ohio Valley, Pennsylvania and adjacent New York and New Jersey, and a small portion of the central Great Lakes. Light to moderate totals (a few tenths to locally over an inch) is expected across the remainder of the eastern Contiguous United States, with the lowest amounts expected across coastal South Carolina, most of Georgia, and the northern and western sections of the Florida Peninsula. Several tenths to an inch are also forecast from the central and southern Plains westward through much of the Rockies, Nevada, and most of California, with locally higher amounts in some higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin. Little or none is forecast across the northern tier from the upper Mississippi Valley westward to the Pacific Coast, and in some climatologically drier parts of the Southwest. Warmer than normal weather is expected from the western Great Lakes through the northern Rockies and Intermountain West, with daily highs averaging 10 to 13 deg. F above normal in the northern Plains and adjacent areas. Meanwhile, cooler than normal conditions are anticipated from central and southern California through the Great Basin, southern Rockies, and central and western Texas. Highs are expected to average 8 to 10 deg. F below normal from western Texas through portions of the Great Basin and central through southern California.
The Climate Prediction Centerโs 6-10 day outlook valid May 6-10, 2025 favors subnormal precipitation across the Great Lakes, middle and upper Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, the interior Southeast, the mid-Atlantic region, the lower Northeast, and western New England. In contrast, enhanced chances for wetter than normal conditions cover Florida and the immediate southern Atlantic Coast, the Gulf Coast, the lower Mississippi Valley, the central and southern Plains and Rockies, most of the Great Basin, the Southwest, southeastern portions of Alaska, and Hawaii. Higher than normal temperatures are favored across roughly the northern two-thirds of the Contiguous United States, with odds exceeding 70 percent in the northern Plains and adjacent Mississippi Valley. Enhanced chances for warmer than normal weather also extend across Hawaii, especially central and western parts of the island chain. Increased odds for subnormal temperatures cover Florida, central and western Texas, the central and southern Four Corners region, and southeastern Alaska. Chances for significantly cooler than normal conditions exceed 50 percent across central and southern New Mexico.
And just for grins guess what Coyote Gulch was doing on April 30, 2019?
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Community Media website (Isabel Guzman). Here’s an excerpt:
April 24, 2025
Whatโs 4-feet deep, 6-feet wide and 26-miles long? The original City Ditch โ one of Coloradoโs earliest and most influential irrigation canals, constructed between 1864 and 1867 by the Capitol Hydraulic Company to bring much-needed water to the dry, dusty lands of the Denver metropolitan area. This hand-dug canal, also known as Smithโs Ditch, was engineered by Richard S. Little and financed by businessman John W. Smith, according toย local historian Larry Borger. It stretched from its headgate near present-day Chatfield Reservoir, above Littleton, and ran roughly 26-to-27 miles northeast to Capitol Hill in Denver, relying solely on a 100-foot drop in elevation to move water without pumps. When it opened in 1867, the ditch enabled the growth of trees, sugar beet crops and neighborhoods, providing Denver with its primary irrigation source for more than 25 years. The ditch also supported a network of more than 1,000 lateral ditches, greening up city parks and supplying water to offshoots that irrigated cropland and street trees. Its construction and operation were so significant that the ditch is often called the โoldest working thingโ in Denver, predating paved streets and railroads. Today, the City Ditch is mostly hidden from view. About 2.5 miles of the ditch remain open-channel, while the rest is mostly piped and buried. In Littleton, the portion of the ditch that runs along Santa Fe Drive from Slaughterhouse Gulch Park to the C-470 highway is owned by the City of Englewood. Englewoodย plansย to convert the remaining open channel between Chatfield Reservoir and the Charles Allen Water Treatment Plant into a buried pipe, a move that would end the historic open flow through the area.
Englewood is giving Littleton a chance to save the historic flume structures โ man-made, open channels designed to carry water, usually sloping downward and with raised sides above the surrounding ground โ at Lee Gulch and Slaughterhouse Gulch Park. Ryan Germeroth and Brent Soderlin, deputy director and director of Public Works & Utilities presented Littleton City Council with options for the Slaughterhouse Gulch Flume โ which Englewood would start construction on first this summer โ at theย study sessionย on April 22.
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Politics website (Kyle Pearce). Here’s an excerpt:
April 28, 2025
Colorado’s fire risk for the upcoming season is average, Gov. Jared Polis said at a news conference Thursday. But average means there will be many wildfires in the state and they will likely be large, fire officials emphasized.
“Today, it’s more a question of when, not if, a fire will affect our community,” Polis said.
In the short term, there’s heightened wildfire risk in southeast Colorado, then later in the summer, heightened risk in southwest Colorado, fire officials said. Stan Hilkey, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety, said the “normal” fire outlook should be taken cautiously.
“I want to be cautious by what I mean by normal,” he said. “That means that we’ve had fires and we’re going to continue to have fires. Some will be big and we’re going to be busy, and that’s what normal looks like in Colorado anymore.”
Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Director Mike Morgan added that fire season in Colorado has changed over the years.
“We used to look at fire season as about a four month period and that’s no longer the case,” Morgan said. “We have fire disasters every month of the year in the state of Colorado and we can’t afford to let our guard down.”
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website. Here’s an excerpt:
April 28, 2025
Mexico and the United States said Monday they had reached an agreement that involves Mexico immediately sending more water from their shared Rio Grande basin to Texas farmers after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs and sanctions earlier this month.
โMexico has committed to make an immediate transfer of water from international reservoirs and increase the U.S. share of the flow in six of Mexicoโs Rio Grande tributaries through the end of the current five-year water cycle,โ U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
Bruce thankedย Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaumย for her involvement in facilitating cross-border cooperation…The countriesโ joint statement Monday, while lacking specific details of the agreement, said both countries had agreed that the 1944 treaty regulating how the water is shared was still beneficial for both countries and not in need of renegotiation. Under the treaty, Mexico must deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet of water to the U.S. from six tributaries every five years, or an average of 350,000 every year. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover 1 acre of land to a depth of 1 foot.
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Community Media website (Nicky Quinby). Here’s an excerpt:
April 29, 2025
The Town of Kiowa has good news to report, including a new Main Street Board and progress towards funding the Water Well Redundancy Project…After some starts and stops, theย Kiowa Water and Wastewater Authorityย is making headway on its Water Well Redundancy Project, thanks in part toย Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. On March 20, Boebert visited with Town of Kiowa staff and town trustees…Boebert pledged to write letters supporting road improvement and parks projects, and also agreed to write Kiowa Water and Wastewater Authority a congressional letter of support for the Well Redundancy Project, [Kim] Boyd said. Boyd further explained that the Town of Kiowa currently relies on a single 66-foot alluvial groundwater well to meet the communityโs water needs.
โThis infrastructure is insufficient for current demands and poses a significant risk in the event of mechanical failure or environmental stress,โ she shared. โIt limits the townโs ability to grow and sustain essential services, including domestic water supply and fire protection.โ
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) mandates that municipal water systems maintain at least two wells to ensure redundancy and protect public health.
Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dan West). Here’s an excerpt:
April 27, 2025
The town of De Beque is seeking Congressionally directed spending to help it secure a secondary water source, as it currently relies solely on the Colorado River to supply water to the community. De Beque Town Treasurer Katherine Boozell said the town is looking at drilling a well near the townโs Water Treatment Plant. According to Boozell, the well could cost in excess of $400,000 to drill.
โAt present, the Town of De Beque relies solely on the Colorado River as its drinking water source,โ Boozell wrote in an email. โThis dependence leaves the community vulnerable during periods of high turbidity, which occur frequently due to mudslides from wildfire burn scars upstream or sediment disruption caused by storms. When turbidity levels spike, we are forced to shut down intake to our treatment plant because the water is too muddy to process.โ
The town does have a tank where it can store treated water, but that is a temporary solution, she said. When the tank is dry, the town is unable to provide treated water until the riverโs water conditions improve. This poses a public health risk, she said, making a secondary water source an urgent need…According to a fact sheet about the proposal, a new well would not only improve reliance for the townโs water but also improve the water quality as well.
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Tom Hesse). Here’s an excerpt:
April 28, 2025
James Heath, division engineer for the Colorado River Basin for the Colorado Division of Water Resources, says [Avi] Stopper most likely witnessed a roughly two-mile stretch where up to 1,400 cubic feet per second of water takes the scenic route through Xcel Energyโs Shoshone Hydro Electric Generating Plant. If that diversion is happening during high-water months like May, passersby would probably miss it entirely. But in the dead of winter, when river flows can be below 1,000 CFS, the difference can be seen by drivers heading east.
โAt certain times of the year, the power plant can divert every single drop of water that’s in the Colorado River and other times a year the stream flow is significant and it’s hardly noticeable what the power plant’s actually diverting off the stream system,โ Heath said.
The water rights are considered โnonconsumptive,โ which means thereโs no water lost in the process. Thatโs also why the river disappeared and reappeared a short time later on Aviโs drive. Water leaves the river at a diversion dam near the Hanging Lake Tunnel and then reenters the river at the Shoshone plant. Heath said itโs about a 2-mile stretch and thereโs little entering the stream during that period.
โThere’s a little bit of gate leakage there at the diversion dam. There are a couple small minor tributaries that come in between the diversion dam and the returns from the powerhouse, but it’s a small trickle at times during the year,โ Heath said.
Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:
April 27, 2025
The town of New Castle has agreed to contribute $100,000 to the Western Slopeโs efforts to buy the historic Shoshone hydroelectric power plant water rights, while the towns of Parachute and De Beque also have agreed to kick in smaller amounts…Parachute will be contributing $25,000 and De Beque, $5,000. The De Beque Plateau Valley Soil Conservation District also is kicking in $5,000…Combined, more than 30 Western Slope local governments, water entities and regional partners have committed over $17 million toward the $99 million purchase. The river district and state of Colorado also have committed $20 million apiece, and the federal Bureau of Reclamation committed $40 million in the final days of the Biden administration. That funding has been frozen by the Trump administration but the river district remains hopeful of eventually receiving it.
From email from the Arkansas River Compact Administration (Kevin Salter):
April 28, 2025
The Arkansas River Compact Administration (โARCAโ) Administration & Legal Committee will meet at the time noted above via virtual and phone conference call to consider a modified Joint Funding Agreement (JFA) between ARCA and United States Geological Survey (USGS) that will cover the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) for cameras to be installed on the Arkansas River at Las Animas, CO USGS gage. USGS will cover the installation costs and the O&M for the remainder of the year in which they are installed. O&M costs beyond the installation year will be ARCAโs responsibility. The O&M costs would have been $4000 for the current year. Attached are three documents from USGS related to modifying the JFA.
ADMINISTRATIVE & LEGAL COMMITTEE AGENDA
1. Approval of agenda………………………………………… Lauren Ris
2. Modified ARCA-USGS JFA…………………………….. Kevin Salter
3. ARCA budget considerations………………………. Andrew Rickert
4. Recommendation on modified ARCA-USGS JFA….. Lauren Ris
5. Adjournment…………………………………………………. Lauren Ris
Following the Administration & Legal Committee meeting, the Arkansas River Compact Administration will have a Special Meeting to consider the same matter.
ARCA SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA
1. Call to order & roll call …………………………………… Jim Rizzuto
2. Approval of agenda……………………………………….. Jim Rizzuto
3. Consider Administration & Legal Committee recommendations
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย on a modified ARCA-USGS JFA…………………… Jim Risotto
4.ย ย Adjournment………………………………………………… Jim Rizzuto
Virtual meeting connection information below
Meetings of the Administration are open to the public and operated in compliance with the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act. If you wish to participate in the Special Meeting you may do so by using the link and/or one of the phone numbers listed below:
1. Use Zoom information below to access both meetings, online via this link (ARCA Special Meeting will be recorded):
https://kansasag.zoom.us/j/84109597210?pwd=vpkOwwSdPEHFuraBBlnpvHzco8r85R.1
Click the link to read the article on the Gunnison Country Times website (George Sibley). Here’s an excerpt:
April 23, 2025
The fickle โchildren of the Pacific Ocean,โ El Niรฑo and La Niรฑa, have again dealt the Gunnison River Basin a bad hand. A weak La Niรฑa winter sent the storm-bearing jet streams over the northwestern United States and southern Canada, leaving the Southwest, and southern half of Colorado, relatively dry for 2025, according to Bob Hurford, Coloradoโs Division 4 (Gunnison Basin) Engineer. Hurford visited Gunnison on April 17 for an annual โState of the Riverโ program, along with Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, known as the โRiver District,โ the programโs sponsor. Sonja Chavez, manager of the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, and Jesse Kruthaupt, Gunnison agent for Trout Unlimitedโs Colorado Restoration Program spoke on the state of the Upper Gunnison River.
Hurford led with a discussion of what is unfolding locally in water year 2025 (Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2025). The Upper Gunnison Basinโs April 1 snowpack (usually at or near the maximum depth for the winter) contains only 59% of the 30-year average water content. It is projected at this point to yield through July about 540,000 acre-feet of runoff or less for the river โ probably not enough to fill Blue Mesa Reservoir after downstream water rights are filled. An acre-foot of water is the amount it would take to cover the playing area of a football field to the depth of one foot. As the changing climate warms the planet, March is becoming the โnew April.โ This yearโs snowpack peaked in mid-March. With the big melt usually beginning sooner nowadays, spring-like weather is causing trees and other plants to also begin โdrinkingโ sooner…Increasing evaporation and plant transpiration also come with the changing climate. According to Mueller, for every additional degree Fahrenheit in the ambient temperatures, another 3-5% of water on the surface and in plants disappears as water vapor. These are changes to be anticipated for as long as we continue to warm the planetโs climate. Hurford concluded his presentation with a chart indicating that the decade beginning with 2020 is on track at this point to be the driest decade on record, including the droughts of the 1930s and 2000s.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
April 25, 2025
๐คฏ Trump Ticker ๐ฑ
For the past three months and change, the Trump administration, in a series of executive orders, has been working to dismantle the administrative state, or the framework of agencies, rules, and regulations designed to protect the nation and its citizens. For the most part, however, the Interior Department โ the sprawling agency that oversees much of the nationโs public lands โ has been relatively (and suspiciously) quiet, refraining from big actions beyond merely repeating some of Trumpโs orders.
That has rapidly changed in recent days as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum โ or perhaps Tyler Hassan, the DOGE minion Elon Musk appointed to reorganize Interior โ set off a figurative bomb that could demolish protections for public lands.
The most alarming move, so far, is the departmentโs implementation of โemergency permitting proceduresโ for oil and gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, and critical mineral projects on federal lands. Under this order, the department will compress the entire environmental review for these projects down to 28 days or less โ even for a full environmental impact statement.
โBy reducing a multi-year permitting process down to just 28 days,โ Burgum said in a press release, โthe Department will lead with urgency, resolve, and a clear focus on strengthening the nationโs energy independence.โ
If youโve ever skimmed through an EIS, you know how insane this concept is.
The Bureau of Land Management will be packing the entire process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, National Historic Preservation Act, and other rules and regulations into an impossibly short timeframe.
By impossibly short, I mean that it is virtually impossible to comply with these laws and requirements โ which include tribal consultation, archaeological surveys and mitigation, environmental and endangered species reviews, socioeconomic impact analyses, and public comment periods โ in four weeks or less. So by radically compressing the timeline, Burgum is essentially telling his staff to skirt the requirements, i.e. violate the law.
Burgum uses President Trumpโs claim that the U.S. is experiencing an โenergy emergency,โ to justify the destructive rubber-stamping, and says fast-tracking project approvals is necessary to address that emergency.
Iโve said it many times, but I will say it again: There is no energy emergency. The U.S. is pumping more crude oil than ever before from the Permian Basin and other fields, it is the largest petroleum producer in the world, it is a net exporter of petroleum products, and liquefied natural gas exports are at an all-time high. The U.S. market is glutted with natural gas and the coal supply has been outpacing demand for nearly two decades. Lithium โ for electric vehicle batteries and grid-scale energy storage โ is so plentiful that prices have plummeted nearly 90% since 2022. Uranium shortage? Nope.
One could certainly argue that the power grid in the West is outdated, its operation balkanized, and that it is not up to the challenges posed by growing data center electricity demand. But aside from geothermal and hydropower (solar, wind, and transmission projects are not included), none of the categories of projects on the fast-track list would do anything to fix the grid. Even if they were, it would not justify truncating environmental reviews so severely โ or at all.
Environmental reviews can take a maddeningly long time, especially for big projects. But the way to speed things up is not to throw the laws and protections in the the trash bin. That will only lead to lawsuits, which likely will delay the projects even more. The only way to truly streamline permitting, while still safeguarding human health and the environment, is to beef up staffing, resources, and expertise. And thatโs exactly the opposite of what Trump and Musk and Burgum are doing.
But wait. It gets worse.
We might take some comfort in the fact that national monuments are off-limits to the extractive industries and Trumpโs energy dominance agenda, right? Maybe not for long.
Earlier this week, the folks at Public Domain acquired a copy of the Interior Departmentโs 2026-2030 Strategic Plan Draft Framework. The plan aims to, among other things: โrestore American prosperity,โ โassess and right-size monuments,โ and โreturn heritage lands and sites to the states.โ
The Washington Post, however, is reporting that Burgum is not necessarily waiting until next year to โright-size,โ or shrink, national monuments. From the Post:
If they go through with the shrinkage of any or all of these national monuments, it would open up additional lands to oil and gas leasing and new mining claims, which would then be subject to the fast-tracked permitting.
Baaj Nwaavjo Iโtah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon is especially rich in high-grade uranium deposits, and the White Canyon area in Bears Ears might also be targeted for uranium if the monument were shrunk. Grand Staircase-Escalante includes a large coal deposit on the Kaipairowitz Plateau, but itโs exceedingly unlikely that anyone would be interested in mining it given the faulty economics of coal.
One thing you can be sure of is that none of this will go unchallenged. The tribal nations that proposed the designation of Bears Ears and other national monuments will sue to keep them intact, and advocacy groups and land and water protectors will support them and take the administration to court over its flouting of environmental laws.
๐ต Public Lands ๐ฒ
For many people, the mention of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area evokes images of Lake Powell and all that entails: boats plying the blue-sky-reflecting waters and the sandstone cliffs and formations that rise up from the murky depths. That makes sense, given that the national park unit was established because the reservoir was there in 1972.
Yet the reservoir makes up just 13% of the 1.25 million-acre recreation area. The remaining 87% contains some of the more remote and spectacular country in the lower 48, shares borders with a half-dozen other national parks and monuments, and makes up the core of the Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor.
So, the manner in which the area is managed matters โ a lot. And for five decades after the recreation areaโs establishment, off-road vehicle travel went virtually unmanaged, allowing for a destructive free-for-all along shorelines and in remote parts of the recreation area. In 2018, the Park Service released a plan that more or less codified the pre-plan anarchy. Environmentalists sued and forced the Park Service back to the drawing board.
This January the Park Service finally issued an amended rule celebrated by conservationists for adding protections to some of GCNRAโs more sensitive areas from motorized vehicle travel (this does not affect boating, by the way). It bars OHV-riding yahoos from roaring around the lakeโs shore unheeded, and restricts motorized travel in the Orange Cliffs area on the north end of the recreation area adjacent to the Maze in Canyonlands.
The off-road vehicle lobby, however, was unhappy with the added restrictions, and they took their victim-complex grievances to the Utah congressional delegation, all of whom appear to have a fetish for fossil-fueled combustion-engines. Now the plan and the recreation area are being put in jeopardy by โ you guessed it โ those same Utah politicians. Sens. John Curtis and Mike Lee, along with Rep. Celeste Maloy, are asking Congress to revoke the rule under the Congressional Review Act and to prohibit the Park Service from implementing similar protections in the future.
๐บ๏ธ Messing with Maps ๐งญ
The National Parks Conservation Association created a nifty map showing active mining claims and mines near national parks and national monuments. It gives a good sense of how vulnerable some areas might be to new mining claims and projects if the Trump administration goes ahead with shrinking the aforementioned national monuments. You can look at the interactive version here.
One note of caution: An active mining claim โ a valid mining claim. An active claim simply means it has been located and filed, and that the claimant has paid their annual maintenance fee. The validity of a claim, on the other hand, depends on the discovery of a valuable mineral deposit there, which must be demonstrated. Rights to mine are only attached to valid claims.
Parting Poem
Hereโs another one from Richard Sheltonโs Selected Poems, 1969-1981.
Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website. Here’s an excerpt:
April 26, 2025
As of Friday, April 25, statewide snowpack measurements stood at 66% of the 30-year median,ย according to data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.ย Thatโs the lowest point for this time of year since the 2014-15 water year. For every major river basin that reports snowpack data, levels are significantly below normal.ย
โIt was a little bit of a warmer year and just not quite the amount of snow and storms youโd like to see for the state as a whole,โ said National Weather Service meteorologist Aldis Strautins.
Unlike the southwestern part of the state, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationโs latest drought projection shows northern and central mountain areas are largelyย expected to be drought-free
ย through the end of July.
Click the link to read the opinion column on the AZCentral.com website (Joanna Allhands). Here’s an excerpt:
April 24, 2025
- The agreements propping up Lake Mead and Lake Powell expire in 2026, and negotiations for new agreements have stalled.
- The Trump administration’s lack of clear direction and delay in appointing a Reclamation commissioner are exacerbating the crisis.
- Arizona will face significant water cuts, potentially deeper than any previous shortages. It needs time to process them.
Many of us have seen this train wreck coming for years, the slow buildup of chronic overuse, coupled with a river that no longer produces as much water as it used to, that is draining Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nationโs two largest water savings accounts. And if things donโt change soon, 40 million people who rely on this river are about to suddenly realize that decisionmakers squandered every dollar spent on buying time to fix this fundamental problem…The mismatch between supply and demand began emerging around 2000, and by 2007, the feds had created the first set of shortage guidelines, hoping those mandatory cuts would be enough to stave off crisis. But we now know that they werenโt nearly enough to reduce the drag on the lakes. Deeper cuts were made. Billions of dollars were set aside to pay people to temporarily not use water. And weโve stabilized Lake Mead and Lake Powell, for now.
But those rules and agreements expire at the end of 2026…The Trump administration hasnโt said anything about those alternatives. And after dropping an executive order toย nix a longstanding review process, itโs unclear how the feds will evaluate or collect public input, presuming that said alternatives are still on the table…Itโs telling that while state negotiators continue to meet (and make no real progress), no one from the Bureau of Reclamation โ the federal agency tasked with operating Lake Mead and Lake Powell โ has attended those negotiation sessions since the Trump administration took office. In fact, Reclamation stillย doesnโt even have a commissioner. The administration has been dragging its feet on getting the leadership in place to finally break this logjam…Now is not the time to be hands-off. The Trump administration must prioritize naming a Reclamation director who can offer firm, clear and fair direction โ and who isnโt afraid to bust a few heads if state negotiators refuse to budge.
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Elizabeth Miller):
April 9, 2025
When Colorado convened a working group on water speculation, its members shared stories of times in which theyโd seen or thought they might have seen investment water speculation occurring โ when water rights are purchased with a primary purpose of profiting from the future sale or lease of that water as demand drives up its price. On the list was the notion that buyers with no real interest in agriculture would buy agricultural land and water rights with the primary intention of enrolling in a program that pays water rights holders not to use that water.
The concern, essentially, was that programs that compensate farmers for fallowing fields like the Upper Colorado River Basinโs System Conservation Pilot Program, and nonprofits that fundraise to keep water in streams werenโt sufficiently guarded against abuse, particularly when it comes to an increasingly constrained Colorado River system.
โThe impacts of drought and the risks that drought causes in the Colorado River Basin, just by way of example, attract money to the concept that money can be made from taking water out of production โ conservation,โ says Peter Fleming, general counsel for the Colorado River District.
โWhere do you draw the line in that?โ Fleming asks. โWhich one is a good, socially recognized benefit that the state as a whole should support versus which one is bad because it encourages speculation in water resources, and it makes things more difficult for others, and it has adverse secondary impacts in the local economies when you take water out of production?โ
A few guardrails exist to make real conservation efforts โ those that serve the common good โ clear. But questions remain on whether those protections can really stop investment water speculation before speculation occurs.
Streamflows for the Public Good
In 1973, Colorado lawmakers legally recognized instream flows, in which water is allocated to the river to maintain flows and habitat as a โbeneficial useโ in parallel with industries, cities and agriculture. That 1973 legislation tried to prevent speculators from prospectively appropriating instream flows and locking up the stateโs water by taking measures like limiting who can operate instream flows to a single state agency, the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
โThere is government oversight for specifically this reason โ to prevent speculation,โ says Josh Boissevain, staff attorney with the Colorado Water Trust, a nonprofit that works to secure water for streams. โInstream flow is a decreed use, so using that water for instream flow is not speculation at all, even though itโs left in the river.โ
When water rights owners work with the water trust to use their water to restore flows, it takes a lot of paperwork and a close look at the web of other users affected. The process can be tedious and time-consuming, and the profits marginal.
โNobody is doing that for the money,โ Boissevain says. โThey do it because they care.โ
Some loopholes have been closed. For example, a 1994 change to Coloradoโs water law prevents conditional water rights holders, who hold onto water rights for unbuilt projects or potential future uses, from transferring those rights to instream flows. That law blocks speculators from selling conditional water rights to the CWCB for a profit.
Having a perfected water right โ one that is fully established and has been put to beneficial use โ converted to instream flows is fine, Fleming says. The Colorado River District participates in those programs and is working to buy a water right currently used to generate 15 megawatts at Xcel Energyโs aging Shoshone hydroelectric power plant. The River District aims to convert that hydropower right to an instream flow right to ensure that this water continues to flow from the headwaters down through boating hotspots in Glenwood Canyon, regardless of the 115-year-old power plantโs future.
But Fleming, who worked on a 2021 report that reviewed Coloradoโs legal sideboards on speculation, remains concerned that the lines are not clearly enough drawn between those recognizable benefits to the state and local economies, and the place where speculators could start counting on those efforts and โconservingโ to make a profit. At a certain scale, the effects of taking water off farm fields could ripple out beyond bare fields to farm supply stores and gas stations, as well as the local job market in rural communities.
Perhaps the most frightening possibility that could result from profiteering is that water rights bought and steered from use in Colorado will somehow be sold to thirsty fields or towns in Arizona or Nevada. But even if both buyer and seller are willing, specific language in interstate compacts and existing law complicates the likelihood of selling water from one state to a buyer in a different state.
Meanwhile, conservation groups are also concerned about speculators cornering them out of the increasingly expensive water rights market, Boissevain says. To adapt to the current water market, the Colorado Water Trust is exploring a new acquisition model with Qualified Ventures, a consulting company based in Washington, D.C. Through this new approach, the water trust would buy land with water rights through financing from lenders. A conservation easement would protect the land as agricultural, and the tax rebate from that status would partially repay the loan. The water trust would reassess how to profitably farm that land while sharing the water rights between agriculture and environmental flows. Then the land could be sold, potentially at a reduced price, perhaps to a first-generation farmer.
โItโs another way to keep ag in production and keep water on the land,โ Boissevain says. โItโs another step up in the competition against people that might try and buy [irrigated farms] for speculation or maybe even development.โ
The results might resemble a project on the Little Cimmaron River near Gunnison, where the Colorado Water Trust purchased 5.8 cubic feet per second of flow in the McKinley Ditch to return water to a river that was nearly dry in late summer months. The water trust partnered with a land trust to buy the water rights and land, put a conservation easement on the land, then sell the land and water rights to a private landowner. In a first-of-its-kind agreement, the water rights can go to irrigation in the spring and summer, and to the CWCB for instream flow in the late summer and fall when the river needs it most. In a very dry year, all of the water can be left in the stream protected, and in a wet year, all of it can be diverted for agriculture.
Environmental groups contend that for the environment to thrive, the entire river system needs this kind of adaptability, particularly as Colorado River Basin states renegotiate operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead ahead of the current guidelinesโ expiration in 2026.
โWe want to see better, more realistic management of the Colorado River that accounts for climate change and โฆ drastic shifts in hydrology,โ says Matt Rice, Southwest regional director with American Rivers. โItโs all about creating, from our perspective, more flexibility in the system to avoid emergency action after emergency action because weโre collectively afraid to make hard decisions when we need to.โ
With an eye on the prospect of a compact call or other crisis, WaterCard, a Colorado-based company, aims to leverage private market dynamics to promote water conservation in the Colorado River system. It also provides an avenue for companies and individuals to offset their water footprint.
It works like this: A person can buy a WaterCard, which gives them conservation credits linked to a quantifiable amount of water conserved on a Colorado farm or ranch. Itโs like an offset. The WaterCard buyer also receives an NFT digital token as proof of purchase.
In the field, WaterCard funds are used to compensate farmers and ranchers who sign up for the program and voluntarily reduce water usage by fallowing fields for a season, decreasing irrigation, or transitioning to drought-resistant crops.
To demonstrate the concept, WaterCard founder James Eklund, who is also a working water attorney and rancher, is fallowing 66 acres of grass-alfalfa hay at his family ranch in western Coloradoโs Plateau Valley. Introducing a market-based mechanism for water conservation in a headwaters state does not equate to speculation, Eklund says, because buyers are only purchasing credits tied to conserved water, not the underlying water rights themselves.
โThis approach aligns fully with the anti-speculation doctrine, which I strongly support. That doctrine prohibits buying a water right, leaving it unused, and flipping it for profit โ thatโs speculation,โ he says.
WaterCardโs model is designed to work within the Upper Colorado River Commissionโs System Conservation Pilot Program (SCPP) and, Eklund hopes, eventually within a demand management framework. SCPP was designed to explore solutions to low flows in the Upper Colorado River Basin by granting funding to irrigators who voluntarily apply to conserve water for the season. If a demand management program is developed, conserved water could serve as a โsavings accountโ in Lake Powell, helping Colorado meet future obligations to send water to downstream states under the Colorado River Compact.
By piggybacking off of the SCPP, WaterCard benefits from the SCPPโs efforts to verify conservation efforts. Therefore, producers enrolled in WaterCard must also have a project enrolled in the SCPP. WaterCard will simply boost the amount of funding those irrigators receive for conservation efforts, making SCPP participation more appealing. As of early 2025, however, itโs unclear whether the SCPP will continue. Eklund argues that this model allows private entities and individuals to play a meaningful role in preventing water crises, one $3.50 WaterCard โ representing 500 gallons of water saved โ at a time.
Farmers and ranchers who participate can diversify revenue sources while continuing to farm and ranch. Eklund contends that current SCPP payments are insufficient and rejects the notion that fair compensation would cause agricultural producers to abandon their livelihoods.
โThat idea is insulting,โ he says. However, if farmers and ranchers can derive a higher dollar value for conserved water through a market-based system, he says, thatโs not speculation, thatโs โmarket-based capitalism.โ
Independent journalist Elizabeth Miller has written about environmental issues around the American West for publications including The Washington Post, Scientific American, Outside, Backpacker and The Drake.
Click the link to read the article on the Arvada Press website (Rylee Dunn). Here’s an excerpt:
April 24, 2025
The discussion will focus on the Juchem Ditch and the Farmers Highline Canal and review how early settlers dug ditches by hand to support mining and agriculture. The event is free to the public and is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. to noon on May 17 at the Arvada Elks Lodge in Olde Town, at 5700 Yukon St. Panelists will include local historians Ed Rothschild, Tom Fletcher and Bob Krugmire. The event will be moderated by Arvada City Councilmember Sharon Davis. Arvada Historical Society President Judith Denham said the idea for the first History Speaks lecture โ which will potentially be part of a larger series of talks โ came when the organization was planning last yearโs Cemetery Tour, which centered on the early pioneers who built the cityโs ditches.
โWe thought it would be a great idea to expand on this story and find a way to talk more about this crucial part of Arvadaโs history,โ Denham said. โI think people are going to really enjoy hearing about this large piece of Arvadaโs history. Itโs a panel and weโve invited water experts and ditch company representatives to talk about how water influenced Arvadaโs early history.
โTheyโre going to tell us the fascinating stories about how early settlers Wadsworth, Swadley and Jochem dug ditches with hand tools and mules so they could provide water for their farms,โ Denham continued. โAnd add in the stories about the early conflicts over water usage and how that whole complicated system of water rights and water law started.โ
Registration for the event can be completed atย historyarvada.org. The Arvada Press and Colorado Community Media are partnering with the Arvada Historical Society for this project.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
April 25, 2025
Already, the two institutes โ theย Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciencesย at the University of Colorado Boulder and theย Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphereย at Colorado State University โ are preparing for potential layoffs should money held up in new federal approval processes not materialize in the coming weeks…Both institutes for decades have partnered with the federalย National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which provides the majority of the budget for both facilities. The federal agencyโs weather prediction and air and ocean monitoring impact nearly every industry and provide critical severe weather tracking,ย including through the National Weather Service. Its work is advanced by research from a network of 16 cooperative institutes, like those in Fort Collins and Boulder.
Aย memo by the White House Office of Management and Budgetย for the 2026 fiscal year โ which begins Oct. 1 โ proposes reducing funding for NOAA by 27%, effectively eliminating the agencyโs research arm and ending support for the cooperative institutes. The budget reductions are part of a wide-ranging effort by the Trump administration to slash the size of government. Project 2025 โ a conservative think tankโs outline for Trumpโs second presidency โ called for the dismantling of NOAA and for its functions to be privatized. The policy document identified the agency as โone of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, (it) is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.โ The White House plan prompted three of Coloradoโs Democratic congressional leaders โ Rep. Joe Neguse and Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet โ on Wednesday to send a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to urge him not to cut cooperative institutesโ funding.
โCIs are home to experienced researchers and long-standing data collection programs with major impacts on human societies, (and) moreover they are instrumental in training future generations of workers who continue to contribute to societal needs,โ the letter states. โIt is our fear that if sweeping cuts are made, the damage will be irreversible. Even short-term interruptions in their research could threaten the safety and economies of the communities that CIs serve across the nation.โ
Congress would have to approve the White Houseโs plan for the next fiscal year, but cooperative institute leaders also worry about more immediate funding problems. The memo directs NOAA to align its spending through fiscal year 2025 with the priorities in the document. The administration could strangle funding to the cooperative institutes even before the 2026 budget is set, said Waleed Abdalati, the director of CIRES at CU Boulder. Already, institutes are struggling to get money previously approved for research projects.
Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Zoรซ Rom):
April 23, 2025
Selling off federal public lands, once a fringe idea, is now gaining traction among Republicans in Congress, the courts and in the White House. President Donald Trump has proposed using the money from such sales to offset the cost of extending his 2017 tax cuts, which would massively increase the federal budget.
In March, the U.S. Senate narrowly voted down an amendment that would have banned selling public land to balance the federal budget. Around the same time, the House adopted new rules that, opponents say, quietly lowered the bar for disposing of such lands.
โRepublicansโ plans to sell off our public lands to pay for tax handouts for their billionaire donors is an outrageous slap in the face to all of us,โ New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, D, who sponsored the amendment blocking those sales, told High Country News in a statement.
Under the revised rules, legislation authorizing the sale of land managed by agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service would no longer require assigning a dollar value to the property first โ a change that would make it much easier for lawmakers to introduce and pass such bills without triggering fiscal scrutiny. All this comes at a time when recent mass layoffs have further destabilized the agencies tasked with managing public lands.
โThe threats have never been higher,โ said Land Tawney, executive director of American Hunters and Anglers, a nonpartisan network of public-lands advocates. โPoliticians are saying things out loud about divesting our public lands with more vigor and publicly. The threats are real.โ
But even as these ideas gain traction in the GOP, most Americans, regardless of their political belief remain largely united in their love for the nationโs public lands, especially in the Western U.S. This has forced some Republicans to break with the national party on the issue, setting the stage for what could become an unusual political alliance.
THE ATTACKS ON public lands began immediately after Trump took office in January. Staffing cuts implemented by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have disproportionately impacted land-management agencies. Critics say these staffing reductions are part of a deliberate strategy to undermine the agenciesโ ability to manage their lands effectively, thereby paving the way for privatization.
โIโm really concerned about what I see as a deliberate effort to set federal land management agencies up to fail. Once they fail, itโs not such a stretch to say, โWell, someone else could do a better job,โโ said Susan Brown, a lawyer at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit legal group that focuses on public lands and environmental governance. [ed. emphasis mine]
The Trump administration โ working with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner โ has launched a joint task force to identify โunderutilizedโ federal lands suitable for residential development, arguing that selling off these acres could help solve the nationwide housing shortage.
Critics argue that this idea is simply an excuse to open the door to privatization, as well as being a poor solution to the housing crisis. A new report from the Center for American Progress found that in the 10 Western states with the most BLM-managed land, less than 1% of that land is located within 10 miles of a population center, and much of it is unlikely to be suitable for sale or development.
Opponents also note thatย the Republican-led effortsย risk alienating a bipartisan base that supports public lands. Recent polling from Colorado College shows that 72% of Westerners prioritize conservation over development regardless of political affiliation. Public opinion has been consistent on this for years.
Over 70% of Republicans and more than 90% of Democrats agree that public lands are essential for their stateโs economy, according to the same poll. Even in conservative-leaning states like Wyoming and Utah, strong majorities oppose the idea of selling public lands or reducing their protections. Another recent poll, this one from YouGov, found that 74% of Americans oppose the sale of public lands, including 61% of the Trump voters polled.
The knowledge that so many of their constituents favor keeping public lands public has put Western Republicans at odds with the administration and the national party. In March, Montanaโs Republican Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy voted with the Democratic minority in the unsuccessful attempt to block sales of federal land. Around the same time, Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, a Republican, introduced the Public Lands in Public Hands Act, a bill that would prevent the Department of the Interior from selling or transferring public lands. His co-sponsors included Montana Republican Ryan Zinke as well as New Mexico Democrat Gabe Vasquezโ.
This isnโt Zinkeโs first defection on the issue. In 2016, the former Interior secretary withdrew as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, citing his objection to the partyโs platform, which proposed transferring federal public lands to state control.
Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert of Colorado told HCN that she is trying to strike a balance on the issue. โI stand with the far majority of Coloradans who see and believe in the value of protecting our public lands,โ she said in a statement provided by her office. At the same time, Boebert added that she rejected โthe idea that these public lands must be completely locked up from reasonable economic development and responsible energy exploration.โ Utah Sen. Mike Lee, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, did not respond to HCNโs requests for comment.
Across the West, Democrats and conservation advocates have used the threat of public land transfers to galvanize support. Protests against potential sales have erupted in various state capitols, including Idaho and Colorado, as well as at Arches National Park. Meanwhile, major outdoor brands are trying to rally recreationists around the issue. Earlier this month, more than 70 businesses launched an initiative called Brands for Public Lands, headlined by Patagonia and Black Diamond. The group is helping people contact their congressional representatives and urge them to oppose public land sales.
โThe overwhelming majority (of Americans) want to keep public lands in public hands. Itโs where we hunt, fish, gather berries, mountain bike, hike, float and just go escape,โ said Tawney. โItโs all of our backyards, and I have confidence that the people will stand united.โโ
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Politics website (Michael Karlik). Here’s an excerpt:
April 23, 2025
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Denver Water to share information with the environmental groups who successfully challenged a reservoir expansion project in Boulder County, as both sides prepare for a hearing to determine how much additional construction is necessary to stabilize the structure…Days later, Arguelloย allowed for necessary constructionย to temporarily resume, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuitย has since extended that windowย while it reviews Arguello’s order. However, last Wednesday, the groups that challenged the project’s legality asked Arguello to intervene on another issue related to the upcoming hearing about how much stabilizing work is warranted…In response to the groups’ questions about risk management plans, spillway capacity and failure modesย โ plus a request for project documentsย โ Denver Water told the petitioners that disclosure “poses Dam security risks.”
“The fact remains that Denver Water is the only party that currently has available to it extensive documentation that bears directly on the specific safety issues that this Court orderedย allย parties to address at the hearing,” the environmental groups added in their court filing.
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
April 23, 2025
Pitkin County on Wednesday joined 29 other Western Slope counties, cities and towns, irrigation districts and water providers in financially backing a plan to buy a critical Colorado River water right.
Pitkin County commissioners unanimously approved a resolution supporting the Shoshone Permanency Project and pledging $1 million toward the campaign to keep the water rights associated with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon on the Western Slope. Pitkin Countyโs Healthy Rivers Board recommended the $1 million contribution from its fund at its regular meeting April 17.
The Colorado River Water Conservation District plans to purchase the water rights from Xcel Energy for nearly $100 million. The water rights are some of the biggest and oldest non-consumptive water rights on the mainstem of the Colorado River, and ensure water keeps flowing west to the benefit of downstream cities, farms, recreation and the environment.
โFrom our perspective we view this as an opportunity to really create and enhance a partnership that should be incredibly functional in the future,โ River District General Manager Andy Mueller told commissioners on Wednesday. โWeโre committed to working with you to keep the upper Roaring Fork healthy and figuring out creating solutions to bring water into the watershed at the right times of year.โ
About 40% of the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River is diverted across the Continental Divide for use in the Arkansas River basin. Itโs long been Pitkin Countyโs goal to mitigate the effects this has on the health of the Roaring Fork.
In exchange for support of the Shoshone project, Pitkin County will be able to use some water from Grizzly Reservoir, owned by the city of Aspen and the River District, to boost flows in the upper Roaring Fork River.
โOne of the most productive things to come out of this, in addition to the benefits youโve already discussed with the Shoshone project itself โฆ is going to be that the River District has agreed that Pitkin County can now have a voice in working with Aspen and the River District on that Grizzly water,โ said Jennifer DiLalla, an attorney with Moses, Wittemyer, Harrison and Woodruff. DiLalla is the countyโs outside counsel who works on water issues. โThat is one of the only sources of water available upstream of you. Itโs not going to be there all that often, but when it is, itโs a really great benefit for the upper Fork.โ
The $1 million pledge may help the county and the River District repair their rocky relationship after years of being at odds over certain water issues. Pitkin County didnโt initially support the Shoshone campaign because of the complex interaction of the water rights with another big set of downstream irrigation water rights in the Grand Valley known as the Cameo call.
โWeโve come a long way because it used to be not too long ago that we were just going to oppose this, period,โ said Pitkin County Commissioner and River District representative Francie Jacober. โI would say that we are on the road to a new era of cooperation with the River District.โ
Pitkin Countyโs concern was that with Shoshone under new ownership โ and the proposed addition of an instream flow use for the water along with hydropower โ the call for the water through Glenwood Canyon might delay or reduce the need for the Cameo call. Aspenites like to see the Cameo call come on because it forces the Twin Lakes diversion to shut off, which means more water flowing down the Roaring Fork, typically during a time of year in late summer and early fall when streamflows are running low and river health is suffering.
Some of the mistrust between the two local governments can be traced to water rights owned by the River District that would have kept alive huge reservoirs on the Crystal River near Redstone. The district eventually abandoned those rights, but not without first being challenged in water court by Pitkin County. Pitkin County also opposed the widely supported River District 2020 tax increase โ ballot measure 7a โ which funds water projects across the districtโs 15-county area.
To secure the Shoshone water rights โ which comprise a 1902 right for 1,250 cubic feet per second and another from 1929 for 158 cfs โ the River District must add an instream flow use to the water rights in addition to their current use for hydropower. That requires working with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which is the only entity in the state allowed to hold instream flow rights which preserve the environment, as well as getting a new water court decree to allow the change in use.
Despite the support and $1 million pledge, Pitkin County still may oppose the change case in water court. The county hired Golden-based engineering firm Martin and Wood Water Consultants to do an analysis of the Shoshone and Cameo call interaction to see if the Roaring Fork could be harmed. According to Tara Meininger, an engineer with Martin and Wood, there could potentially be an annual impact of 26 acre-feet on average to the upper Roaring Fork.
But a final report is still not complete, said Pitkin County Attorney Richard Neiley, which is why the county reserved the right to oppose the River District in water court.
โItโs an important goal to make sure that change does not result in injury to the Roaring Fork forever,โ Neiley said. โWe havenโt given anything away with respect to being able to argue or oppose the change case on that basis.โ
With Pitkin Countyโs $1 million contribution, the River District has now raised $57 million from local and regional partners. In addition, the project was awarded $40 million in the final days of the Biden administration, but that funding has since been frozen, though River District officials are hopeful that the federal funding will still be realized.
The River District plans to present an agreement on the instream flow water rights to the Colorado Water Conservation Board at its regular meeting in May.
โWeโre about to enter into a process with the Colorado Water Conservation Board where your support will be essential to a successful experience there and then on into water court,โ Mueller told commissioners. โSo we just want to say thank you very much.โ
Click the link to read the release on the Colorado River District website (Lindsay DeFrates):
April 24, 2025
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. โ The effort to permanently protect the Shoshone Hydroelectric Power Plantโs water rights gained additional momentum this week as Pitkin County committed $1 million toward the Colorado River Districtโs $99 million purchase agreement with Xcel Energy. This contribution is bolstered by additional funding from middle Colorado River communities, including the Town of New Castle ($100,000), Town of Parachute ($25,000), Town of De Beque ($5,000), and the De Beque Plateau Valley Soil Conservation District ($5,000), which are committed to safeguarding flows vital to the regionโs economy and way of life. Reliable flows in the Colorado River are essential to the health and future of these interconnected communities. By supporting Shoshone, they join a broader coalition of Western Slope entities committed to long-term water security for the region.
โThe Shoshone water rights are essential to the health of our rivers, ecosystems, and communities across the Western Slope,โ said Francie Jacober, Pitkin County Commissioner and Colorado River District Board Member. โThis isnโt just a smart investment, itโs a legacy decision. Pitkin County proudly stands with our neighbors to protect this lifeline for future generations.โ
โThe Town of New Castle recognizes the critical importance of protecting Colorado River water rights on the Western Slope and proudly supports the long-term preservation of non-consumptive flows,โ said New Castle Town Administrator David Reynolds. โThese rights are vital to a strong recreational economy, improved water quality, sustainable agriculture, and consistent stream flows in the upper Colorado River Wild and Scenic Management areas. New Castle fully supports the work of the Colorado River District and the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Coalition to safeguard the riverโs health and sustainability.โ
The Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project, led by the Colorado River District, now includes 30 local governments, water entities, and regional partners across the Western Slope. Together, they have committed over $17 million toward the $99 million purchase price. Along with the $20 million pledged by the State of Colorado through the CWCB Projects Bill (HB24-1435) and $20 million from the River Districtโs Community Funding Partnership, more than $57 million has been committed to date.
โFrom headwaters counties like Pitkin to towns along the Colorado River, the West Slope is demonstrating what true collaboration looks like,โ said Andy Mueller, General Manager of the Colorado River District. โThe momentum behind Shoshone Permanency reflects a powerful and unified vision where agricultural producers, recreation economies, and rural communities stand shoulder to shoulder to protect the water resource that sustains us all. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and our region is rising to meet it.โ
The Shoshone hydroelectric plant, located in Glenwood Canyon, holds nonconsumptive senior water rights that date back to 1902. These rights are essential for supporting flows in the Colorado River, benefiting agriculture, recreation, rural economies, and water users across the West Slope.
In December 2023, the Colorado River District entered a purchase and sale agreement with Xcel Energy to acquire and permanently protect the water rights, with plans to negotiate an instream flow agreement with the Colorado Water Conservation Board. This agreement would safeguard the flows into the future, regardless of the operational status of the Shoshone plant itself.
In January 2025, the Bureau of Reclamation awarded $40 million in federal funding through a program authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. The River District continues to work with the Bureau of Reclamation and remains optimistic that the projectโs broad support and clear public benefit will secure the federal dollars needed to complete this once-in-a-generation investment.
Learn more about the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project & Coalition at KeepShoshoneFlowing.org.
Click the link to read the article on the Utah News Dispatch website (Kyle Dunphey):
April 22, 2025
Researchers at the University of Utah recently published a first-of-its-kind study that measures the impact dust has on melting snow in the Colorado River basin.
Dust has long been credited to accelerating snowmelt in the Intermountain West. Blowing from arid regions and settling in the mountains, the dust darkens the snow, lowering its albedo โ essentially, darker snow doesnโt reflect the sunlight as well, leading to more heat absorption and speeding up the melting process.
Itโs particularly prevalent in the Colorado River basin, with large mountain ranges like the San Juans, La Sals and Maroon Bells pushed up against dry expanses of desert. As drought continues to impact the region, dust events have worsened, depleting the snowpack at faster rates and complicating an already precarious situation for the Colorado River and the 40 million people who get their drinking water from it.
And while previous papers have recorded the impact dust has on snowmelt, University of Utah researchers are the first to study an area as large as the Colorado River headwaters, which spans multiple states. According to the university, there are no snowmelt models โ streamflow forecasts in mountain basins essential for areas that rely on snowpack for water โ that take dust into account.
โThe degree of darkening caused by dust has been related to water forecasting errors. The water comes earlier than expected, and this can have real world impacts โ for example if the ground is still frozen itโs too early for farmers to use. A reservoir manager can store early snowmelt, but they need the information to plan for that,โ said McKenzie Skiles, associate professor at the universityโs School of Environment, Society and Sustainability. โIf we can start to build dust into the snowmelt forecast models, it will make water management decision-making more informed.โ
Stiles is a co-lead author of the study, which was published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters in March.
Stiles and other researchers analyzed 23 years of satellite images, from 2021 to 2023, to observe snow darkened by dust in the spring months. They found that dust accelerated snowmelt in the Colorado River Basin every spring, even during less-dusty years.
During runoff season, typically between April and May, the snowpack melts about 10 to 15 millimeters each day. According to the study, dust deposition can accelerate snowmelt by 1 millimeter per hour during peak sunlight โ during a โhigh-dustโ year, that can factor out to about 10 extra millimeters each day.
โItโs not just how much dust gets deposited over a season, but also the timing of dust deposition that matters,โ said Patrick Naple, doctoral candidate of geography at the University of Utah and lead author of the study. โDust is very effective at speeding up melt because itโs most frequently deposited in the spring when days are getting longer and the sun more intense. Even an extra millimeter per hour can make the snowpack disappear several weeks earlier than without dust deposition.โ
One of the most comprehensive analyses of dust and snowmelt yet, the university says this research could improve water forecasting and allocation for communities that rely on the Colorado River.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
April 22, 2025
โ๏ธ Mining Monitor โ๏ธ
A little while back I wrote about Trumpโs executive order aimed at making it easier to mine on federal lands. Now itโs becoming a little clearer how that might play out on the ground. The U.S. Permitting Council last week released a list of the first wave of mining projects the administration plans to fast track through the permitting process.
The projects include a few that the Land Desk has covered or mentioned in the past, such as:
- Lisbon Valley copper mine expansion.
- Hi-Techโs McDermitt lithium exploration projectย in southern Oregon.
- Resolution Copperโs bid to mine a massive copper deposit underย Chiโchil Biลdagoteel, aka Oak Flat, in central Arizona.
The announcement promised there are โmany more projects on the wayโ to the expedited list, though it does not elaborate on what fast-tracking might look like, exactly. The council says it will publish permitting timetables for the projects by May 2. Stay tuned to the Land Desk for updates.
๐ Good News Corner ๐
Prizes, folks. There are prizes for the winners of the Land Deskโs Predict the (spring) Peak Super Contest! Why super? Because itโs not just for one stream, but for five. And that means there could be five winners, and each gets to choose one of these prizes from our merch selection.
Is that enticing, or what? But there is a bit of a catch: Only paid Land Desk subscribers will be eligible to enter the contest, meaning only they can win the prizes. But donโt fear: Sign up now and get 20% off the regular annual subscription price, and get the privilege of entering the Predict the Peak contest.
The idea is to accurately predict the spring runoff peak streamflow (in cubic feet per second) and the date of the peak for any or all of these five stream gages:
- Animas River in Durango, aka USGS gage 09361500.
- North Fork of the Gunnison River near Lazear, aka USGS gage 09136100.
- Rio Grande at Otowi Bridge, aka USGS gage 08313000.
- San Miguel River at Uravan, (extra credit for uranium readings!) aka USGS gage 09177000.
- Colorado River at the Utah-Colorado state line, aka USGS gage 09163500.
So an entry for the Animas might look like this: Animas River, May 17, 2,950 cubic-feet per-second. The winning entry would be the closest streamflow reading to the actual peak, with the date being a tie-breaker if needed. So if someone gets the cfs right, but the date wrong, they would beat out someone with the right date but wrong flow.
Entries will only be eligible if they are entered into the comment section below this post. Donโt email me your entries! They wonโt count! (If you are a paid subscriber but are having problems commenting, let me know at landdesk@substack.com). And they must be entered before Friday, May 16, to be eligible. Winners will be determined after spring runoff has peaked on all of the rivers, which will likely be in late June or early July (or perhaps earlier if spring remains warm).
Iโve prepared the following graphs to help you out. They show this yearโs April 22 snowpack level, along with the snowpack curve and peak flows and dates for 2021 and 2023. Good luck!
Streamflow readings are for the Colorado River gage at the Utah-Colorado state line. Source: NRCS, USGS.
Click the link to read the article on the Utah News-Dispatch website (Katie McKellar):
April 24, 2025
With Utah facing a drier year, Gov. Spencer Cox issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency in 17 counties due to drought conditions.
The counties covered by the order include southern and rural areas of Washington, Iron, San Juan, Kane, Juab, Emery, Grand, Beaver, Garfield, Piute, Millard, Tooele, Uintah, Carbon, Sevier, Sanpete and Wayne counties.
The governorโs executive order comes after the Drought Response Committee recently recommended he act due to drought conditions.
โWeโve been monitoring drought conditions closely, and unfortunately, our streamflow forecasts are low, particularly in southern Utah,โ Cox said in a prepared statement. โI urge all Utahns to be extremely mindful of their water use and find every possible way to conserve. Water conservation is critical for Utahโs future.โ
Coxโs emergency declaration also comes after he told reporters last week he was working on issuing one due to worsening drought conditions in southern Utah, which has seen a weak snowpack this winter.
Though the governor said last week itโs been a โpretty normal year for most of the state,โ there are some areas that are worse off than others.
Currently, severe drought covers 42% of the state, and 4% is in extreme drought, according to the stateโs website.
This year, Utahโs snowpack peaked at 14.3 inches on March 23, which is equal to the stateโs typical annual peak, according to state officials. However, southwestern Utahโs snowpack was only about 44% of normal. Plus, winter temperatures were 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal.
The stateโs reservoir storage levels are at 84% of capacity, โwhich will help the state weather drought,โ the governorโs office said in a news release. โHowever, drought is unpredictable, and taking proactive measures to prepare is critical.โ
Coxโs order reflects the U.S. Department of Agricultureโs disaster classifications, which are informed by the U.S. Drought Monitor and NRCSโs water supply report.
โThe state partners closely with federal agencies to share critical water supply and drought updates,โ Joel Ferry, executive director for the Utah Department of Natural Resources, said in a statement. โProactive planning is essential. We ask all Utahns across all sectors to use less water to help stretch the water supply.โ
Itโs been almost exactly three years since the governor declared a drought declaration. The last time he did so was April 22, 2022, when 65% of the state was in extreme drought, and more than 99% of the state was experiencing at least severe drought conditions.
As part of his order, Cox urged Utahns to watch their water use, both inside and outside their homes.
Water-saving tips listed by SlowTheFlow.org include:
- Wait to water your lawn until temperatures are in the mid-70s for several consecutive days, and check theย Weekly Lawn Watering Guideย for other tips on how to optimize water use.
- Fix leaks.
- Run full loads for dishwashers and washing machines.
- Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth, shaving, soaping up, doing dishes or rinsing vegetables.
- Shorten your shower time by at least one minute.
- Participate inย water-saving programsย like water-smart landscaping, toilet replacement, and smart sprinkler controllers.
Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Reuben M. Schafir). Here’s an excerpt:
April 9, 2025
Vallecito Reservoir expected to fill, but low snowpack means short irrigation season
[Ken Curtis] expects users will receive no more than 50% of their allocated water and could get as little as 25%. Ken Beck, superintendent of the Pine River Irrigation District, which manages Vallecito Reservoir, said heโs optimistic the reservoir will fill to its 123,500-acre-foot capacity. He needs another 31,000 acre-feet of water to get there. Beck thinks heโll get it โ but probably not much more…Snowpack water supply in the northern part of the state is at or above 30-year median levels, but those numbers decline the farther south one goes. The Upper San Juan Basin, which contains Vallecito and Navajo Lake, has 67% of the median snow-water equivalent for this time of year. The Animas basin sits at 76%; the basin containing the Mancos and La Plata rivers is at 65%; and the Dolores basin, which feeds McPhee Reservoir, is at 72%…Water accumulation in the San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan subbasin, which spans much of the southwest corner of the state, typically peaks around April 2. This year, however, it appeared toย peak more than a week early, on March 23. Snow-water equivalent dipped at the end of March but perked up with early April storms.
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):
April 24, 2025
Denver Water vowed this week to take the high-stakes battle over a partially built dam in Boulder County to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to defend what it sees as its well-established right to continue construction and deliver water to its 1.5 million metro-area customers.
โIt would be irresponsible not to do that,โ Denver Waterโs General Manager Alan Salazar said in an interview Tuesday as a tense month of legal maneuvering continued.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello on April 3 put a halt to construction of the $531 million Gross Reservoir Dam raise nearly four months after Denver Water and the river-defending nonprofit Save the Colorado failed to negotiate a settlement that would add new environmental protections to the project. When settlement talks stalled, Save the Colorado asked for and was granted an injunction.
Almost immediately, Denver Water filed for temporary relief from the injunction, saying, in part, that it would be unsafe to stop work as the incomplete concrete walls towered above Gross Reservoir in western Boulder County.
Arguello granted that request, too.
Now the water agency, the largest utility in the Intermountain West, has filed an emergency request with the federal appeals court, seeking to permanently protect its right to continue construction as the legal battle continues.
A decision could come as early as this week as a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel considers Denver Waterโs emergency request, according to environmental advocate Gary Wockner. Wockner leads Save The Colorado, a group that has financed and led litigation against Denver Water and many other agencies seeking new dams or river diversions. Wockner said he is ready to continue the fight as well.
โWe are prepared to defend the district courtโs decision,โ Wockner said, referring to the construction halt.
The high-profile dispute erupted in Denver just weeks after Northern Water agreed to a $100 million settlement with Save The Colorado and its sister group, Save The Poudre, to allow construction of the Northern Integrated Supply Project, or NISP, to proceed.
The money will be used to help restore the Cache la Poudre River, including moving diversion points and crafting new agreements with diverters that will ultimately leave more water in the river. Northern Water, which operates the federally owned Colorado-Big Thompson Project for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, is overseeing the permitting and construction of NISP.
But two years of talks and negotiations between Save The Colorado and Denver Water failed to yield a similar environmental settlement over the Gross Reservoir Dam expansion project. It was after the talks failed that Federal District Court Judge Arguello agreed to halt construction on the dam.
Whether a new environmental deal will be forthcoming now isnโt clear. Both sides declined to comment on whether settlement talks had resumed.
Salazar also declined to discuss whether a deal similar to the $100 million NISP settlement would emerge over the Gross Reservoir lawsuit.
โI donโt want to get into the cost of a settlement,โ Salazar said. โBut the impact on ratepayers would beย significant.โ
Case sets the stage for future water projects in Colorado
Across the state, water officials are closely watching the case play out.
For fast-growing Parker Water and Sanitation, the preliminary injunction to stop construction, though temporary, is worrisome.
Its general manager, Ron Redd, said he wasnโt sure how his small district, which is planning a major new water project in northeastern Colorado, would cope with a similar injunction or a U.S. Supreme Court battle.
โIn everything permitting-wise you need consistency in how you move projects forward,โ Redd said. โTo have that disrupted causes concern. Is this going to be the new normal going forward? That bothers me.โ
Denver Water first moved to raise Gross Dam more than 20 years ago when it began designing the expansion and seeking the federal and state permits required by most water projects.
After years of engineering, studies and federal and state analyses, construction began in 2022. It has involved taking part of the original dam, built in the 1950s, and raising its height by 131 feet to nearly triple the reservoirโs storage capacity to 119,000 acre-feet from 42,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot of water equals 326,000 gallons, enough to serve up to four urban households each year.
The giant utility has said it needs the additional storage to secure future water supplies as climate change threatens stream flows in its water system, a key part of which lies in the Fraser River, a tributary to the Upper Colorado River in Grand County. The expansion was also necessary to strengthen its ability to distribute water from the northern end of its system, especially if problems emerged elsewhere in the southern part of its distribution area, as occurred during the 2002 drought.
And the judge agreed climate change is a factor but she said itโs not clear the water would ever even materialize as flows shrink. She overturned Denver Waterโs permits because she said the Army Corps had not factored in Colorado River flow losses from climate change, and whether Denver would ever actually see the water it plans to store in an expanded Gross. Arguello also ruled the Army Corps had not spent enough time analyzing alternatives to the Gross Reservoir expansion.
Wockner said forcing Denver Water and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to re-analyze water projections under new climate change scenarios, as his group has asked, is critical to helping protect the broader Colorado River and stopping destructive dam projects.
Whether the questions the case raises about permitting and environmental protections ultimately make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court isnโt clear yet.
But James Eklund, a water attorney and former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the stateโs lead agency on water planning and funding, said Denver Water has the expertise and financial muscle to take it there.
โThey have really sharp people over there,โ he said. โI would say they are not only willing, they would have the facts to present a case they believe would be successful.โ
[…]
Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile.com website (Angus M. Thuermer Jr.):
April 22, 2025
Oilfield executive takes charge of consolidating workforce of 70,000 at national parks, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service.
Five days into the Trump administrationโs DOGE takeover of the Department of Interiorโs policy, management and budget, Yellowstone National Park staffing is โhigher than last year,โ an Interior Department spokesperson in Washington, D.C. said Monday.
โโYellowstone Park confirmed the increase. โGoing into this year, we should have a total of 769 NPS employees,โ park spokeswoman Linda Veress said in an email, up from 748 last year. During the parkโs record year for visitation in 2021, the parkโs workforce numbered 693 permanent and seasonal workers.
โWe had an outstanding opening weekend, and it was great to see everyone enjoying the park,โ Yellowstone Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in an email Monday. โThe plow crews are working hard to clear the remainder of the parkโs roads from snow, and we are on schedule for our normal sequenced opening in the upcoming weeks, including the Beartooth Highway.โ
After personally greeting the seasonโs first visitors at the West Entrance on Friday, Sholly reported the opening weekend drew 8,324 vehicles from there and the North Entrance at Mammoth, the only two entrances that have opened so far. Thatโs an increase of more than 11% from last year and put the weekend rush, unofficially Sholly said, at 21,642.
The staffing and opening weekend updates came as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum put an oilfield executive in charge of โconsolidation, unification and optimization of administrative functionsโ at the 70,000-person agency last week. Burgum, earlier this year, named Tyler Hassen as assistant secretary for policy, management and budget. Now Hassen will oversee Burgumโs consolidation order as the Trump administrationโs DOGE plan to shrink the size of the federal government advances.
Burgumโs appointment of Hassen and the consolidation order sparked worries in the conservation community, including at the Center for Western Priorities. The Denver-based nonpartisan conservation and advocacy organization accused the secretary of abdicating his responsibilities by not reserving any authority over firings or requiring any reporting by Hassen.
โIf Doug Burgum doesnโt want this job, he should quit now,โ said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of Western Priorities. โInstead, it looks like Burgum plans to sit by the fire eating warm cookies while Elon Muskโs lackeys dismantle our national parks and public lands,โ she said in a statement.
โWarm cookiesโ refers to a report in The Atlantic that Burgumโs chief of staff told political appointees to learn to bake cookies for their boss.
But potential visitors to the worldโs first national park need not worry, said J. Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson at Burgumโs office.
โVisitors can expect the same great service they had in years past,โ Peace wrote in an email Monday. โ[I]n some National Parks, like at Yellowstone National Park, staffing numbers are higher than last year.โ
Peace made her reassurances as regional business owners fret over the upcoming tourism season in Yellowstone, at neighboring Grand Teton and across Wyoming. Overseas traveler numbers to the U.S. dropped 11.6% in March after Trump tariffs, tariff threats, indiscriminate DOGE firings, resignations and economic turmoil battered expectations.
Oilman
The order Burgum issued Thursday gives Hassen, now an assistant secretary, authority over the departmentโs Working Capital Fund, an office that in 2023 provided $119 million for department functions. Hassen will be able to rewrite manuals outlining employee responsibilities and may transfer funds, programs, records and property, according to the order.
Burgumโs order described his actions as furthering Trumpโs February initiative for โimplementing the presidentโs โDepartment of Government Efficiencyโ workforce optimization.โ
In addition to great service at national parks, Bureau of Land Management lands in Wyoming remain welcoming, Peace wrote. โVisitors to BLM-managed public lands can expect continued access and service across recreation sites, trails and campgrounds,โ her email reads. โWe are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency and government accountability.โ
Burgum and DOGEโs โunification effortโ will accelerate technology, enhance the mission to preserve parks and historic sites, serve Native American tribes and manage department holdings in Wyoming, Burgumโs order states. All told, the Department of the Interior manages 2.34 million acres of national park system lands, 18.4 million acres of BLM property and 70,000 acres of Fish and Wildlife Service reserves in the state.
In Wyoming, Interior-managed land accounts for a third of the stateโs area or about 21 million acres.
Hassen, a Deerfield Academy prep and Princeton grad, was CEO of Basin Energy, a Houston-based international oilfield services company, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before that, he worked for Wenzel Downhole Tools, Basin Power, and served as chairman of the associate board of the nonprofit Cancer Research Institute in New York. He was an associate involved in global energy investment banking at Morgan Stanley in New York and London from 2005-2008, according to his profile.
He emerged on the DOGE scene after the Los Angeles fires in January when President Trump said California Gov. Gavin Newsom compounded the firefighting problem by not diverting water to southern California. Critics said DOGE conflated agricultural diversions, needs of the endangered Sacramento-San Joaquin Estuary delta smelt and firefighting.
Unqualified?
Western Priorities said DOGE efforts assign inexpert people to inappropriate positions.
โSince Elon Musk is now effectively in charge of Americaโs public lands, itโs up to Congress and the American people to stand up and demand oversight,โ Rokalaโs statement reads. โDOGEโs unelected bureaucrats in Washington have no idea how to staff a park, a wildlife refuge, or a campground. They have no idea how to manage a forest or prepare for fires in the wildland-urban interface. But Doug Burgum just gave DOGE free rein over all of that.โ
Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website (Jay Adams):
April 19, 2025
On a picture perfect, late-March bluebird day in the Colorado mountains, Rob Krueger and Jay Joslyn gear up for a unique job at Denver Water โ venturing into the wilderness to measure snowpack.
Boots? Check. Gloves? Check. Hats? Check. Jackets? Check. Very special metal tube and a scale? Check, check. All of it is loaded into their winter travel vehicle, a snowcat.
โWeโre heading up to Vasquez Creek to one of our snow courses,โ Krueger says as he fires up the Tucker 2000XL and starts rolling. โItโs around 10 miles up to our destination, and it takes about 30-40 minutes in the snowcat.โ
The journey starts at Denver Waterโs Grand County office just west of Fraser and heads into the Arapaho National Forest.
โThe snowcat is kind of like a truck with tank-like tracks on it,โ Krueger said. โWe use it throughout the winter to reach our remote buildings and dams and to get to our snow courses.โ
The journey would be impossible in a regular car or truck. But the snowcat, designed to tackle this type of terrain, easily powers over the snow.
โWeโre a 24/7 operation so we need a vehicle like this in the winter,โ he said. โWhether itโs snowing, sleeting, raining or we have 60-mile-per-hour winds and it’s negative 6 degrees out, we still have to get around. So thatโs what makes the snowcat such an important piece of equipment for us.โ
Krueger drives the snowcat through the trees on a snow-covered U.S. Forest Service road and into Denver Waterโs collection system.
The collection system is the area where Denver Water captures melting snow during the spring runoff. The water then flows through creeks, canals, tunnels and reservoirs to treatment facilities on the Front Range where itโs cleaned for delivery to 1.5 million people in metro Denver.
After reaching their destination, Krueger and Joslyn get ready for their task of measuring the snowpack.
See how scientists take to the skies to measure the snow below.
Snowshoes are strapped on and equipment, including a snow measuring tube, is assembled for the trek across Vasquez Creek to reach a โsnow course.โ
โA snow course is basically a preset path where we take samples to measure the snowpack,โ Joslyn said. โWe do these same courses four times over the winter.โ
The courses are set up across Coloradoโs mountains and managed by the U.S. Department of Agricultureโs National Resources Conservation Service, also known as the NRCS, to monitor snowpack. The data from these courses are used by cities, farmers, ranchers, water utilities and recreationists to help predict the amount of water that will flow down the mountains during the spring runoff.
Denver Water partners with the NRCS to do snow courses in Grand, Park and Summit counties where the utility collects its water.
In Grand County, there are five locations where Denver Water samples snow.
The Vasquez snow course starts a few feet from the creek and is surrounded by a canopy of spruce and fir trees. On this trip, the snow on the course ranged from 4 to 5 feet deep.
Joslyn carries the measuring tube [Federal Snow Sampler], then stabs it into the snow and checks the reading. He calls out โ53,โ which is the depth of the snow in inches. Then he takes a closer look at the slots on the tube and calls out a second number; this one is the length of the snow core captured inside.
Next up, Joslyn uses a handheld scale to weigh the tube with the snow inside. โ42,โ he calls out. This time referring to the weight in ounces.
Krueger records this number, then subtracts the weight of the empty tube from the total, which gives the water content in inches of the snow core sample. They also calculate the density of the snow.
The pair does the same process 10 times at 25-foot intervals on the course. On this trip, the snowpack was in good shape, coming in at 118% of normal for the end of March 2025.
โDenver Water has a long history in this valley, and weโve been doing snow courses in Grand County dating back to 1939,โ Krueger said. โWith decades worth of data, we can get a really good idea of how much water weโll see during the spring runoff.โ
The data is sent to Denver Waterโs planning department and the NRCS. Planners combine the snow course information with data from SNOTEL sites and high-tech flights over the mountains to predict how much water will flow into the utilityโs reservoirs where water is stored for customers.
โThe information from the snow courses is critical to our planning, as it gives us boots-on-the-ground information about the snowpack,โ said Nathan Elder, water supply manager at Denver Water. โOur crews in the mountains often have to brave a lot of harsh weather to get the data we need, so weโre thankful for their hard work.โ
Working for Denver Water in Grand County involves a variety of jobs that change throughout the seasons, with the snow courses being one of the most unique.
โThe snow courses are interesting and of course being out in the snow and driving the snowcat is pretty fun,โ Krueger said. โOur work feels valuable to Denver Water as a whole to understand what kind of water resource we have to send to the city.โ
