Arkansas Valley Conduit awarded an additional $250 million — Chris Woodka (Southeastern #Colorado Water Conservancy District) #ArkansasRiver

Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton greets several members of the Southeastern District Board, from left, Bill Long, Kevin Karney, Howard “Bub” Miller, Andy Colosimo and Justin DiSanti. Photo credit: Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District

January 8, 2025

Camille Calimlim Touton, Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, traveled to Pueblo on Wednesday, January 8, to announce an additional $250 million for construction of the Arkansas Valley Conduit.

“We are proud to see the work underway because of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda,” Commissioner Touton said. “But there’s much more work to be done and we are again investing in this important project to bring safe drinking water to an estimated 50,000 people in 39 rural communities along the Arkansas River.”

The $250 million is funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is part of a $514 package of water infrastructure investments throughout the western United States under the BIL.

The additional funding brings the total federal investment in the AVC to almost $590 million since 2020, along with state funding guarantees of $90 million in loans and $30 million in grants.

“After 25 years, I still almost can’t believe it’s happening, but I drive by and can see it with my own eyes,” Southeastern Water Conservancy District President Bill Long told Commissioner Touton. “There are so many people who have worked so hard who would be so proud to see it being built. This money will get us to the area that has seen the most problems.”

The Southeastern District is the sponsor for the AVC, which is part of the 1962 Fryingpan-Arkansas Project Act. The 130-mile pipeline to Lamar will bring water to 50,000 people being served by 39 water systems when complete.

Several Southeastern Board members attended Wednesday’s announcement.

“You and your team are the ones who have gotten this off the ground,” said Kevin Karney, a La Junta rancher, and at-large Board member.

“People said it would never get built, but now we’re getting it done,” said Howard “Bub” Miller, who represents Otero County on the Board.

The AVC will help 18 water systems that face enforcement action for naturally occurring radionuclides in their groundwater supplies, as well as communities struggling to meet drinking water and wastewater discharge standards.

Construction of the AVC began in 2023, and three major construction contracts have been awarded.

“This money really gets us further down the valley. It is very much appreciated,” Long said.

Here is a link to the Bureau of Reclamation News Release: https://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/news-release/5074.

Below is a news release from Colorado’s Senators: https://www.bennet.senate.gov/2025/01/08/bennet-hickenlooper-welcome-additional-250-million-from-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-for-arkansas-valley-conduit/

Hickenlooper, Bennet Welcome Additional $250 Million for Ark Valley Conduit

Funding awarded from the senators’ Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

In total, Hickenlooper and Bennet have helped secure $500 million in funding for the project

WASHINGTON – Today, Colorado U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet welcomed the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)’s announcement of $250 million in new funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for continued construction of the Arkansas Valley Conduit (AVC).

“We passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to finally deliver on promises to rural communities,” said Hickenlooper. “In Colorado that means finishing the long-awaited Ark Valley Conduit and bringing clean, reliable drinking water to 50,000 people.”

“For decades, I’ve worked to secure investments and pass legislation to ensure the federal government keeps its word and finishes the Arkansas Valley Conduit,” said Bennet. “This major Bipartisan Infrastructure Law investment will be critical to get this project across the finish line to provide safe, clean water to tens of thousands of Coloradans along the Arkansas River.”

John F. Kennedy at Commemoration of Fryingpan Arkansas Project in Pueblo, circa 1962.

The AVC is a planned 130-mile water-delivery system from the Pueblo Reservoir to communities throughout the Arkansas River Valley in Southeast Colorado. This funding will continue ongoing construction. The AVC is the final phase of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, which Congress authorized in 1962.

Hickenlooper and Bennet have consistently and successfully advocated for increased funding for the AVC. Last year, Hickenlooper and Bennet wrote to President Biden to urge him to prioritize funding for the AVC in his fiscal year 2025 budget. The senators also called on Senate Appropriations leaders to provide more funding for the project. In January 2023, Hickenlooper and Bennet urged BOR to allocate additional resources through annual appropriations and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding.

As a result of their efforts, the senators have helped deliver $500 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the AVC, including $90 million in 2024, $100 million in 2023, and $60 million in 2022. They also secured an additional $10.1 million in fiscal year 2024 and $10.1 million in fiscal year 2023 through the annual government funding bills.

More information on the funding is available HERE.

Arkansas Valley Conduit map via the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District (Chris Woodka) June 2021.

Romancing the River: To Halve and Have Naught — George Sibley #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Graphic credit: The Colorado River water crisis its origin and future Jock Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Charles Yackulic.

January 7, 2025

Belated season’s greetings, dear readers! The season being the long dark days as our turning planet slowly tilts our part of the planet again toward the star we circle – moving us into a new year-cycle that will probably again be ‘one of the ten warmest years in recorded climate history’ – if not ‘the warmest’ again.

But we are officially no longer going to be concerned about that, right? The voters have spoken, with the usual one-percent victory taken by the winner to be a landslide mandate. And what the voters decided, by that one-percent margin, is that we, as a nation, the Untied States of America, shall officially cease to believe that we are changing the climate; we’ve given ourselves license to linger in the denial and anger stages – denial that it is happening, and anger at anyone who wants to blame us for that which we can now officially refuse to believe is happening.

And we will not just lie back leisurely, relaxing in our denial, doing nothing about what we believe is not happening. No, we are going to try to break all previous production records of those fossil fuels that we can now officially refuse to believe are changing the climate – yes, even coal too, to shovel into the industrial juggernaut, which will grow as all those factories that moved overseas will sheepishly return home, once the tariffs are working their magic in bending the rest of the world to our will…. We are promised this will be the official national Reality According To Trump (RATT).

Meanwhile, however, back along the Colorado River, it is a little harder to make the RATT logic compute. The sequence of successively warmer years has had an undeniable, measurable, negative impact on our usable water supply: something like a 5-7 percent loss of surface water for every degree of rise in the annual average temperatures. It’s not necessarily that there’s less water; it’s just that more of the water is shifting into the uncontrollable vapor state rather than the manageable liquid state we earthlings need. The bottom line is a measurably diminishing supply, over the past several decades, of the surface water on which 35 million city dwellers and the irrigators of five million acres of desert land depend to some degree.

Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2024. Credit: Brad Udall

Where are we right now with the management planning process for the river? In mid-November 2024, the Bureau of Reclamation issued five mix-and-match alternatives for managing the Colorado River in the future – meaning the decade or so beyond the 2026 expiration of the 2007 Interim Guidelines (and the 2019 Interim Interim Guidelines, and the 2023 Interim Interim Interim Guidelines).

These alternatives are the Bureau’s effort to break the stalemate in the stalled negotiations between the four states of the Upper Colorado River Basin and the three states of the Lower Colorado River Basin. Large cuts in use will be necessary to keep the storage and distribution systems operational, and each Basin wants the other Basin to take a larger share of those cuts proscribed by ‘the river we have, not the river we dream for,’ as Colorado’s chief negotiator Becky Mitchell put it. (See the graphic at the beginning.)

The Bureau’s five alternatives, for which they plan to do the required Environmental Impact analysis this year, all focus primarily on managing the two main reservoirs, Mead and Powell, although other reservoirs in the system may by used to bolster storage in the two big ones. The five alternatives run a gamut from the NEPA mandatory ‘No Action’ alternative (continue business as usual), through two varying levels of federal management if the states are unable to reach a working agreement, to an alternative based primarily on a plan submitted by conservation groups, to a final alternative that is mostly pieced together from the conflicting plans proposed by the two basins, assuming the two basins can find the necessary compromises to make the two plans into one plan that might work.

Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR

All alternatives except the one by conservationists (#4) include notice that ‘there would be explicit accounting of unused/undeveloped quantified Tribal water.’ This means that the settled or decreed water rights of the First Peoples would finally be acknowledged in the river accounting, noting where and by whom their undeveloped water was being used – the first step, as one tribal member observed, in eventually either getting the water back for their own use, or getting paid by others for the continued use of their water. The First People are getting closer to being at the table. (It is worth noting that the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix, is the first user organization to sign a post-2026 contract with the Bureau to leave some of its water in Mead Reservoir, water that will be conserved through projects to be funded with infrastructure money, if that survives the RATT.)

That is the broad overview; if you wish for more specifics, you can find more detailed descriptions of all five alternatives here, but there is probably no real need for us citizens to get down in the weeds of detail just yet, since we are just passive participants at that level anyway.

Instead, I want to encourage us to think on the larger level of considering alternatives not part of the Bureau’s five choices. Why not? There is, after all, a large minority of us who do not drink the small majority’s RATT kool-aid. For those of you who fit that description, my season’s greeting to you are two quotations I encountered recently that kind of rang my bell:

The first is a poet calling for poets to ‘give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster.’ ‘Peace’ is given the negative-space definition of ‘not only the absence of war’: something more, or other, than mere truce. The ‘familiar imagination of disaster,’ on the other hand, is a major element of the RATT: a nation overrun  by immigrant murderers, inflation out of control, an economy gone to hell, cities awash in crime, et cetera – that’s the virulent and violent imaginings that became the principal election strategy of the Repugnicans (as distinguished from the real but very timid Republicans). They call it  ‘flooding the zone with shit,’ so much imagining of fictitious disaster that one wave of lies cannot be seriously addressed and challenged before the next wave rolls over us. This was a successful campaign strategy, with the naive cooperation of the national media serving as their trumpet: when the fact meets the RATT, print the RATT – reserving the last couple paragraphs for quotes citing the facts that contradict the RATT, thus it’s fair and balanced!

But when we come to our river – how are the poets to ‘imagine the peace’? And the call for poets does not necessarily preclude the hydrologists, politicians, water managers and others who manage ‘the river we have.’  Just to say, for example, as Becky Mitchell said, ‘We need to plan for the river we have, not the river we dream for,’ moves the discourse into the poet’s realm of analogy and metaphor, not denying but augmenting the scientist’s world of evidential causation and consequence, en route to testable hypotheses.

The second quote, however, by the author of 1984 –  the book describing the fully devolved RATT worldview that we are flirting with now – cautions us that ‘the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.’ Is that same as saying the realm of the imagination lies in ‘thinking outside the box’? Like we keep saying we need to be doing?

Well, moving forward with that assumption – Orwell seems to be suggesting that the imagination can’t kick into gear if we are, consciously or unconsciously, holding it ‘in captivity’ inside some box of dominant conventional weltanschauung – ‘world view’ in translation, ideology, or just ‘our way of doing things.’ But the word is so much more heavily evocative in German of the mass and weight of the box, the height of the sidewalls that discouraging climbing up to look over and beyond…. Orwell was aware of the flywheel power of the boxes a society builds around itself – and the extent to which that power depends on the unquestioning, often only semi-conscious, acceptance of those who dwell within the box as ‘the way it is and that’s it.’ Even if ‘the way it is’ is not that great.

That would suggest that unleashing our imagination to such tasks as the ‘imagination of peace,’ even just regional peace along a modest and shrinking desert river, has to begin by becoming aware of the box that we need to be trying to think outside of.

What I think we have in the Colorado River region are at least two nested boxes. Whenever we hear someone intone, ‘The foundation of the Law of the River is the Colorado River Compact,’ or, ‘The Colorado River Compact cannot be (tinkered with, changed to fit reality, or discarded as irrelevant),’ we can assume that their imagination is held captive in the Colorado River Compact Box. When Becky Mitchell says, ‘We have to plan for the river we have, not the river we dream for,’ she has at least hiked herself up onto the edge of the Compact Box – a Compact that was written for a mythic river half-again larger than the river we have now. She might even be looking beyond the Compact for resolution (although she can probably not say that out loud yet).

Prior appropriation example via Oregon.gov

If we hike ourselves up onto the edge of Compact Box, we will find ourselves looking at a larger and more intimidating box: the Prior Appropriation Box. This, not the Compact, is clearly the ‘foundation’ of all law regarding the use of the river: first come, first served, and seniority rules. All seven of the Colorado River states had embraced the Appropriation Doctrine as the foundation of their water law by the early 20^th century. (New Mexico and Arizona did not become states until 1912.)

But those of us captive in the Compact Box tend to forget that the Compact Commission came together in 1922 to try to override the appropriation doctrine at the interstate level, among the seven states. California was growing so fast, with Arizona not far behind, that the high desert and mountain states above the river’s canyon region – growing much more slowly due to the erratic ebb and flow of the mining industry – feared there would be no unappropriated water left when they hit their stride. And none of the states really wanted a seven-state horserace of helter-skelter ‘defensive appropriation’ to avoid being left high and dry.

The water managers in the states also knew that the only way to ‘civilize’ the Colorado River was to control and store the annual spring flood of mountain snowmelt, for release as needed throughout the rest of the year. And because it was an interstate river, and because the cost of big mainstream structures was beyond their means, they knew the federal government, through its Bureau of Reclamation, would have to take a lead role in that regional development. But what they did not want was for the feds to take over all the development and operation of ‘their’ river’s water.

Members of the Colorado River Commission, in Santa Fe in 1922, after signing the Colorado River Compact. From left, W. S. Norviel (Arizona), Delph E. Carpenter (Colorado), Herbert Hoover (Secretary of Commerce and Chairman of Commission), R. E. Caldwell (Utah), Clarence C. Stetson (Executive Secretary of Commission), Stephen B. Davis, Jr. (New Mexico), Frank C. Emerson (Wyoming), W. F. McClure (California), and James G. Scrugham (Nevada) CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY WATER RESOURCES ARCHIVE via Aspen Journalism

So the Compact Commission assembled in January of 1922 to develop an interstate compact that would ‘provide for the equitable division and apportionment of the use of the waters of the Colorado River System’ – a seven-way division of the waters to give each state the right to use, in its own good time, the water needed to develop its land and resources. When a state was ready to use it, their share of the river’s water would be there for them, protected from prior appropriation by other faster-growing states.

That was the vision anyway: the ‘Compact Box’ nested in the ‘Prior Appropriation Box’ was to be an interstate refuge from the prior appropriation doctrine. ‘First come, first served’ could by the law within the states – but only up to the quantity allotted for each state.

They failed to realize that vision, however, after several days of trying – mostly for reasons of vagueness about, first, the flow of the river itself, and second, their own over-optimistic estimates of their own futures. Only the persuasive power of the federal representative on the Commission, Herbert Hoover – an engineer by training who really wanted to see the big mainstream structures built – kept them on task until they patched together, ten months later, the two-basin division for the use of the river’s water.

That substitute division was immediately rejected by the State of Arizona, and is now clearly failing at its original intent to transcend the appropriation doctrine between states: California is applying the prior appropriation doctrine against the other states in the Lower River Basin (as Arizona knew they would eventually). And the Lower Basin is threatening ‘Compact calls’ against the Upper Basin states if they do not get their 75 million acre-feet over any ten-year period as defined in Article III(d) of the Compact, as though the division into two basins had given them a big ‘prior appropriation.’

The ‘Compact Box’ is basically just a ‘shadow box,’ a failed effort to do what was really a pretty good idea – an imagination of peace among the states. The question now is: would it be possible to revive that idea of an ‘equitable division’ among the seven states – as something that is already somewhat accomplished? That’s a thread we’ll pluck at next post.

Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Can new sprinklers save the #ColoradoRiver? This #Utah program could be a blueprint for the West — David Condos (KUNC) #COriver #aridification

Rancher Andy Rice picks a handful of plants from one of his pastures in southern Utah on Aug. 21, 2024. His ranch is part of a state program aimed at conserving water that helps cover the cost of modernizing irrigation equipment. David Condos/KUER

Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Dave Condos):

January 3, 2025

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUER in Utah, distributed by KUNC in Colorado, and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. It was also produced as part of the Colorado River Collaborative. KSL TV photographer Mark Wetzel contributed to this story.

Southern Utah is not your typical farm country. At a glance, there appears to be more red rock than green fields.

To make a go of it, farms often huddle around the precious few rivers that snake across the sun-baked landscape. That’s the case for rancher Andy Rice, who raises hundreds of hungry goats and sheep in the town of Boulder — population 227 — just outside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

In a bright green meadow packed with more than a dozen types of grasses, clovers and flowers, Rice reached down to pluck a makeshift bouquet. He has intentionally planted diverse species here over the years to improve the ranch’s sustainability.

“Isn’t that beautiful?,” he said, holding up a handful of flora. “On top of everything else that’s cool about it, it’s just really pretty.”

But this is still the dry Southwest. The edges of his lush pasture give way to a rugged sandstone ridge. So this grazing smorgasbord is dependent upon irrigation.

The ranch draws water from Boulder Creek, which flows to nearby Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir and a pivotal piece of the Colorado River system. Between drought, climate change and competition for that river, however, Rice knows the West faces a precarious future.

“We will have less water. Forever,” Rice said. “We have to accept that and … it’s up to us to be more efficient.”

That’s why he applied for funding from Utah’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program, a $276 million push to help farmers and ranchers modernize their irrigation systems.

Andy Rice holds one of the nozzles on a center pivot sprinkler system his ranch was able to install thanks to state money, on Aug. 21, 2024. Utah’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program has put millions of dollars into helping farmers and ranchers modernize their irrigation systems since 2019. David Condos/KUER

Agriculture uses between 70-80% of the Colorado River’s water, so a lot of ideas about saving the shrinking river rely on getting farmers and ranchers to cut back. The Utah program — which covers half the cost of buying new, more efficient gear — provides a case study that other Western states might look to as they search for solutions. However, it’s not yet clear how big of a dent these types of efforts can make when it comes to saving water on a basin-wide scale.

Rice stood next to the automated center pivot sprinkler system the program helped buy and grabbed one of the dozens of spray nozzles that dangle a few feet above the ground. Compared to the efficiency of the equipment it replaced, he said, the difference is night and day.

“This farm alone has saved millions of gallons of water. We’re using millions less. And we are one tiny farm in one tiny region,” Rice said.

That’s the idea behind the Utah program. If state money lowers the financial barrier for producers to modernize, the water savings might add up to help Utah get more out of the little moisture it has.

Rice is just one example of the state’s approved projects — 551 of them since the initiative began in 2019, said Program Manager Hannah Freeze. The Utah Legislature has set aside $276 million for the effort. As of late 2024, $108 million of that has been assigned to projects. A majority of the money is benefitting the Great Salt Lake, however. Only $23 million has been approved for 112 projects in Utah’s portion of the Colorado River Basin so far.

It’s a good start, Freeze said, but a drop in the bucket compared to what it might take.

“If we were going to make a real dent or reach the majority of the farmers that we have, it’s more like a $2 billion number,” she said.

That would require more time, too — probably around three decades, Freeze said.

Growing the program that much wouldn’t be easy. Some producers are hesitant to change farming practices. For others, equipment cost remains a barrier even with the subsidy.

Many also don’t know that government incentives like the optimization program exist. A 2023 survey of irrigators across the Colorado River Basin by the Western Landowners Alliance and the University of Wyoming found a “stark lack of awareness” about state and federal funding meant to help them conserve water.

Eventually, farmers won’t have much of a choice, noted Freeze.

“There’s going to be water reductions that have to take place,” she said. “So if we can come in first and say, ‘Let us help you get this improved irrigation system,’ then our farmers can stay in business.”

Sprinklers spray water across farm fields in southern Utah on Aug. 22, 2024. Some research has suggested that improving irrigation efficiency ultimately depletes more water from local watersheds. David Condos/KUER

The Utah program offers a glimpse of what a state-funded program to help producers make that transition can look like.

Some science, however, contradicts the idea that installing new, more efficient irrigation systems automatically means saving water in the Colorado River.

New Mexico State University professor Frank Ward and his colleagues found in their research that applying less water is not the same thing as consuming less water.

Higher irrigation efficiency means a larger percentage of the applied water makes it to the roots of the plants, which is good for crop yields. But even if that lets a farmer decrease the total amount of water they apply to a field, it often increases the amount of water depleted from the local watershed.

Ultimately, he said upgrading sprinkler systems typically means less of the water applied as irrigation soaks into groundwater and returns to nearby rivers as run-off, disrupting the local water cycle.

“Drip irrigation and center pivot are good things to do.They promote the goal of lower food prices, higher food production and farm income,” Ward said. “Just don’t call it investments in water conservation.”

To truly assess if a program like Utah’s is saving water for the Colorado River Basin, he said, you’d need to also calculate how much of the water applied to crops is lost to evapotranspiration, a measurement of the water that evaporates and is released into the air from plants.

In Ward’s view, there are more effective ways a state could spend its money to conserve water in agriculture. Government funds could pay farmers to switch to less thirsty crops or water their fields less than what the crops need for optimal growth. Another option would be to pay growers to temporarily leave some land empty or switch sprinkler-fed farmland to a rain-fed ranching pasture.

A lot of these alternatives might not improve the agricultural economy, Ward said, but that’s a trade-off states need to consider if their ultimate goal is to save water.

Andy Rice explains how the irrigation system updates at his southern Utah ranch have changed the way he uses water on Aug. 21, 2024. David Condos/KUER

When it comes to the Utah optimization program, the results remain a bit hazy.

The state is just beginning to quantify how much water it saves, so comprehensive data isn’t available yet. A legislative audit in 2023 criticized the program for not collecting detailed reports on the impact of its projects.

Early examples like Andy Rice’s ranch, however, point to the potential role that irrigation modernization efforts could play across the West.

All told, Rice said the upgrades to the field with a new sprinkler represent a quarter of a million dollars. For family farms that buy irrigation equipment with the same money they use to keep the business afloat or buy their kids’ shoes, he said it can be hard to justify those costs.

If states across the Colorado River Basin help make it easier for farmers to take that leap, however, he believes that could have far-reaching impacts.

“If hundreds of farms can save millions of gallons of water, I mean, we can fix it,” Rice said. “And do I feel like we have a responsibility to do that? Yeah, hell yeah.”

Relentless warming is driving the water cycle to new extremes, the 2024 global water report shows

Albert Van Dijk, Australian National University

Last year, Earth experienced its hottest year on record − for the fourth year in a row. Rising temperatures are changing the way water moves around our planet, wreaking havoc on the water cycle.

The 2024 Global Water Monitor Report released today shows how these changes are driving extreme events around the world. Our international team of researchers used data from thousands of ground stations and satellites to analyse real-time information on weather and water underground, in rivers and in water bodies.

We found rainfall records are being broken with increasing regularity. For example, record-high monthly rainfall totals were achieved 27% more frequently in 2024 than at the start of this century. Record-lows were 38% more frequent.

Water-related disasters caused more than 8,700 deaths and displaced 40 million people in 2024, with associated economic losses topping US$550 billion (A$885 billion). The number and scale of extreme weather events will continue to grow, as we continue pump greenhouse gases into an already overheated atmosphere. The right time to act on climate change was about 40 years ago, but it’s not too late to make a big difference to our future.

Humanity in hot water

Warmer air can hold more moisture; that’s how your clothes dryer works. The paradoxical consequence is that this makes both droughts and floods worse.

When it doesn’t rain, the warmer and drier air dries everything out faster, deepening droughts. When it rains, the fact the atmosphere holds more moisture means that it can rain heavier and for longer, leading to more floods.

Ferocious floods

Torrential downpours and river floods struck around the world in 2024.

In Papua New Guinea in May and India in July, rain-sodden slopes gave way and buried thousands of people alive. Many will never be found.

In southern China in June and July, the Yangtze and Pearl Rivers flooded cities and towns, displacing tens of thousands of people and causing more than US$500 million (A$805 million) in crop damages.

In Bangladesh in August, heavy monsoon rains and dam releases caused river flooding. More than 5.8 million people were affected and at least one million tonnes of rice were destroyed.

Meanwhile, Storm Boris caused major flooding in Central Europe in September, resulting in billions of euros in damage.

Across western and central Africa, riverine floods affected millions of people from June to October, worsening food insecurity in an already vulnerable region.

In Spain, more than 500 millimetres of rain fell within eight hours in late October, causing deadly flash floods.

Devastating droughts

Other parts of the world endured crippling drought last year.

In the Amazon Basin, one of the Earth’s most vital ecosystems, record low river levels cut off transport routes and disrupted hydropower generation. Wildfires driven by the hot and dry weather burned through more than 52,000 square kilometres in September alone, releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases.

In southern Africa, drought reduced maize production by more than 50%, leaving 30 million people facing food shortages. Farmers were forced to cull livestock as pastures dried up. The drought also reduced hydropower output, leading to widespread blackouts.

A rapidly changing climate

Over recent years, we have become used to being told the year just gone was the warmest on record. We will be told the same thing many times more in years to come.

Air temperatures over land in 2024 were 1.2°C warmer than the average between 1995 and 2005, when the temperature was already 1°C higher than at the start of the industrial revolution. About four billion people in 111 countries – half of the global population − experienced their warmest year yet.

The clear and accelerating trend of rising temperatures is speeding up an increasingly intense water cycle.

What can be done?

The Global Water Monitor report adds to a growing pile of evidence that our planet is changing rapidly.

Further change is already locked in. Even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases today, the planet would continue warming for decades. But by acting now we still have time to avoid the worst impacts.

First, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible. Every tonne of greenhouse gas we do not release now will help reduce future heatwaves, floods and droughts.

Second, we need to prepare and adapt to inevitably more severe extreme events. That can mean stronger flood defences, developing more drought-resilient food production and water supplies, and better early warning systems.

Climate change is not a problem for the future. It’s happening right now. It’s changing our landscapes, damaging infrastructure, homes and businesses, and disrupting lives all over the world.

The real question isn’t if we should do something about it — it’s how quickly we still can.

The following people collaborated on the 2024 report: Jiawei Hou and Edison Guo (Australian National University), Hylke Beck (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi-Arabia), Richard de Jeu (Netherlands), Wouter Dorigo and Wolfgang Preimesberger (TU Wien, Austria), Andreas Güntner and Julian Haas (Research Centre For Geosciences, Germany), Ehsan Forootan and Nooshin Mehrnegar (Aalborg University, Denmark), Shaoxing Mo (Nanjing University, China), Pablo Rozas Larraondo and Chamith Edirisinghe (Haizea Analytics, Australia) and Joel Rahman (Flowmatters, Australia).

Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A dam upgrade left one Colorado section of the #RioGrande dry in the winter. What will it take for water to flow again? Local group says state, irrigation district failed to fulfill promises in project — The #Denver Post

Rio Grande Reservoir release. Photo credit: Rio Grande Basin Roundtable

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:

January 5, 2025

The mighty and fabled Rio Grande dwindles to barely a trickle in the winter west of Creede, exposing nearly a mile of rocky riverbed to dry under the weak sun. This section of the river near its headwaters wasn’t supposed to be left dry in the winter, according to environmental groups. A rehabilitation project on the dam that creates the Rio Grande Reservoir was billed as an upgrade that would make the river healthier and improve recreation throughout the year. But even four years after the construction project concluded, those promises haven’t materialized. That’s because the dam’s new valves cannot safely release water during the winter, according to the Committee for a Healthy Rio Grande, a group formed to push for more water releases from the reservoir for fishing, rafting and environmental health. The irrigation district that operates the dam closes the valves from November through March. The lack of water in the winter kills off aquatic insects and vegetation — the base of the river ecosystem’s food cycle…

A solution may be in the works. After four years, the San Luis Valley Irrigation District — which owns and operates the reservoir — on Dec. 1 applied for state grant money to study how the dam’s valves could be modified to work in the winter, said Cole Bedford, the chief operating officer of the Colorado Water Conservation Board

“We are developing a solution that will safely provide low-flow releases during the winter,” San Luis Valley Irrigation District Superintendent Rob Phillips said in an emailed statement. “And, we look forward to continuing our work with those water users and organizations in the San Luis Valley who have a unique and valued history of working together to find constructive solutions.”

The issue is part of a larger challenge: How should Colorado balance the different uses of its water as climate change shrinks supplies and adds volatility to decades-old climate patterns?

Summit County currently has one of the highest snowpack medians in the state — The Summit Daily #snowpack

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map January 6, 2024 via the NRCS.

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

January 5, 2025

Summit and Eagle counties are poised to get a consistent dusting of powder nearly everyday this week heading into next weekend, according to National Weather Service meteorologists. Meteorologist Zach Hiris said there will be a “fairly active pattern across the mountains” on Monday, Jan. 6, and Tuesday, Jan. 7, which is likely bring a few inches of snow to the slopes. He said “a bunch of weak systems” could follow from Wednesday through Saturday and these are slated to bring a couple more inches. Summit’s mountains are anticipated see anywhere from 3-6 inches and its valley areas could see 1-3 inches of snow by Wednesday morning, Hiris said. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday could bring an inch or two each, but it will be more sporadic than the snowfall delivered by Monday and Tuesday’s storms, he said.

Hiris said the Blue River Basin is currently at 129% of its snowpack median.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Colorado Headwaters river basin is currently at 104% of its median snowpack, the Eagle area is at 113% of its median snowpack and the Roaring Fork area is at 109% of its median snowpack.

The #RioGrande cutthroat trout and the Endangered Species Act — John Fleck (InkStain.net)

Rio Grand Cutthroat distribution 2016. Courtesy New Mexico Department of Game and Fish

Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):

December 26, 2024

The US Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this month (December 2024) once again declined to list the Rio Grande cutthroat trout as “endangered.”

It’s a native species endangered (in the colloquial sense, not the legal sense) by both anthropogenic habitat changes (warm temperatures, less water, dams and stuff) and non-native immigrant species.

USFWS identified non-native hybridization and competition as the most significant threat, and concluded that collective action by a collaborative effort including federal, state, and tribal governments, along with NGOs, has successfully stabilized the fish’s population since discussion about possible listing first began a quarter century ago.

“The 119 populations are distributed across a wide geographic area, providing sufficient redundancy to reduce the likelihood of large-scale extirpation due to a single catastrophic event. Furthermore, the Rio Grande cutthroat trout Conservation Team has a demonstrated track record of responding to negative events to protect and even expand populations in the aftermath of large-scale changes to streams. Populations cover the breadth of the historical range, ensuring retention of adaptive capacity (i.e., representation) to promote short-term adaption to environmental change. The SSA report describes the uncertainties associated with potential threats and the subspecies’ response to these potential threats, but the best available information indicates the risk of extinction is low. Therefore, we conclude that the Rio Grande cutthroat trout is not in danger of extinction throughout all of its range and does not meet the definition of an endangered species.”

ESA questions

I’ve not followed the Rio Grande cutthroat trout saga closely. My primary interest is in its value in highlighting broader issues around the ESA that my Utton Center colleagues and I have been discussing of late.

Collective action

Collective action by a broad coalition of stakeholders before ESA listing seems to have been key in protecting what’s left of the species and avoiding listing.

Question: Is this driven by a societal environmental value (We love this fish and the ecosystems on which it depends, and want to protect them!) or a desire to avoid the messiness of ESA listing and the resulting land and water management craziness that would result therefrom?

In the new book, we note a clear distinction between these two types of cases in the history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande: environmental actions growing out of collective community values, and environmental actions driven by statutory (in this case ESA) mandates.

Charisma

We know that charismatic species get more societal love. (Woe is our diminutive Rio Grande silvery minnow.) The Rio Grande cutthroat trout is charismatically beloved. Does this help explain the energetic collective action we’ve seen?

Loper Bright for the “foreseeable future”

Reading the USFW federal register notice in light of the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision, is interesting. IANAL, but my shorthand for the decision is that the courts no longer must defer to an implementing agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutory provisions. Here’s USFWS in the cutthroat trout decision:

Maybe language like that was always included in USFW Federal register notices? I expect a lot more post-Loper Bright debates about what Congress intended.

Cutthroat trout historic range via Western Trout

The #KlamathRiver Dam Removals: A Story of People and Possibility — Ann Willis (@AmericanRivers)

Free flowing Klamath River, California | Swiftwater Films, Shane Anderson

Click the link to read the article on the American Rivers website (Ann Willis):

September 24, 2024

As I stood on a bridge and looked upstream along the Klamath River, I felt confused. For over 15 years, I had stood in the same stop and gazed on the earthen face of Iron Gate Dam. But on this day, I saw…space. Framing the edges of that space, I saw canyon walls, river bed, floodplains and terraces, and miles of vista.

I lost my dad last year, so I understand having the experience of noticing the absence of someone who had been monumental in my life – both physically and metaphorically. I understand the confusion that results from seeing a space where he used to be and being keenly aware of his absence. I noticed the absence of Iron Gate Dam in the same way – the loss of something that had been monumental in my life and in the lives of thousands of others. But unlike the absence of my dad, seeing the absence of Iron Gate Dam stirred feelings of wonder, joy, hope, and gratitude.

Undammed: The KLamath River Story

The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict, greed, and scarcity, but in a remote pocket of Southern Oregon and Northern California, a different Western water story is taking shape. The largest dam removal in history is on the verge of completion on the Klamath River. This moment is the result of a historic decades-long Tribally-led campaign to free the Klamath River and restore salmon and steelhead populations, which are core to Native traditions and foodways. This is undoubtedly a huge triumph.

The first episode of this in-depth podcast dives into the past, present, and future of the world’s largest dam removal project and features Dr. Ann Willis, American Rivers’ California Regional Director.

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Feds to analyze proposed plans for #ColoradoRiver water use — The Las Vegas Sun #COriver #aridification

Carly Jerla speaking at the Colorado River Water User’s Association Conference December 5, 2024. Photo credit: USBR

Click the link to read the article on The Las Vegas Sun website (Ilana Williams). Here’s an excerpt:

December 18, 2024

Federal water officials are expected to provide further details in the coming weeks on four proposals for managing the dwindling Colorado River water supply. The current agreement among states expires next year…A pending analysis will detail the benefits and drawbacks of four different plans, said Carly Jerla, the senior program manager at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The analysis will not include any recommendations. The states must reach an agreement on how to allocate the available water by August 2026…

The proposed alternatives include: protecting infrastructure by monitoring how much river water is delivered and using existing agreements when demand overwhelms the supply; adding delivery and storage for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, along with “federal and non-federal storage” to boost system sustainability and flexibility; and a cooperative conservation approach aimed at managing and gauging water releases from Lake Powell amid “shared contributions to sustain system integrity. The fourth proposal would add delivery and storage for lakes Powell and Mead, encourage conservation and agreements for water use among customers and “afford the tribal and non-tribal entities the same ability to use these mechanisms.”

“The preferred alternative isn’t any single one of these alternatives,” Jerla said. “They were constructed to ensure that these concepts were grouped together to allow for the possibility to mix and match.”

[…]

Whatever management path the states agree on, a team of water officials has one concern: the annual set water releases at Glen Canyon Dam. Eric Kuhn, the retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, partnered with other water leaders to author a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation asking it to stop the practice of determining water release quantities annually for Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. They agree that water releases must continue. However, they don’t want a set release amount, stressing the flexibility helps with maintaining the ecosystem around the river, specifically the ecosystem around the Grand Canyon…The management approach Kuhn’s team prefers would create two pools: a Lower Basin pool in Lake Powell, the reservoir connected to Glen Canyon Dam; and an Upper Basin pool in Lake Mead, the reservoir connected to Hoover Dam. That would allow for changes in annual releases, if necessary, and offer flexibility, he said.

Endangered fish programs extension part of Congress-approved bill — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel

RAZORBACK SUCKER The Maybell ditch is home to four endangered fish species [the Humpback chub (Gila cypha), Bonytail (Gila elegans), Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), and the Razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus)] © Linda Whitham/TNC

Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:

December 18, 2024

The Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins Endangered Fish Recovery Programs Reauthorization Act was included in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. The fish legislation extends programs that protect four threatened and endangered native fish species in the Upper Colorado and San Juan river basins. The defense bill now heads to the president’s desk. The Senate version of the fish bill was sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, both D-Colo., and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, among others. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., carried a House version of the fish bill. A negotiated version of her bill and the Senate bill ended up being included in the defense bill. The Senate passed the defense bill Monday after passage by the House, despite controversy over a provision banning some gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members, according to a Reuters story.

The fish programs provide for studying, monitoring and stocking the four fish species, managing habitat and river flows, and combating invasive species through 2031. That provides certainty for Upper Basin water use and fulfills the federal government’s trust responsibility to tribes, according to a news release from Hickenlooper’s office…The fish bill language authorizes up to $92 million for the Bureau of Reclamation to contribute annual cost-shared funding for program implementation. It also adds up to $50 million to the authorization ceiling for capital projects, which will fund infrastructure improvements to benefit the fish.

Do homebuyers know enough about a property’s water? What to ask the real estate agent — Fresh Water News

The downtown Denver skyline from Arvada. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):

January 2, 2025

Potential property owners are often not asking enough questions about water, experts say — and it can end up being a costly mistake.

When someone buys a property in Colorado, they can find themselves thrust into the complicated world of Western water. People looking in towns and cities might need to learn about providers and rate changes. Those interested in empty lots, unincorporated areas of counties or rural areas of the state might need to study up on water rights, wells and irrigation.

If they’re prepared, buyers will reach out to experts, and even attorneys, to understand the ins-and-outs of their new water supply before signing a deal. If they’re not, they could end up in the middle of a fight or with an expensive liability.

“There have been neighborly confrontations over water,” said John Wells, a broker and owner of the Wells Group in Durango. “I’ve seen people turn other people’s ditches off, locking their headgates, unlocking their headgates. It doesn’t make for a good neighborly situation.”

Western water law is frequently confusing — even for experts and real estate agents. Interested buyers coming from out of state are often used to a completely different system of managing water. Urban residents looking to move into rural Colorado might have little experience with ditches, ponds or water law.

“Most brokers don’t understand it because it’s complicated and confusing, and it doesn’t really impact their client’s ability to purchase a house,” said Aaron Everitt, a Fort Collins-based broker and developer with The Group Real Estate.

But skipping past a thorough review of water assets can leave buyers with frustrating problems. They might face water bill increases, lead pipes, or leaky sprinklers. For more rural properties, a typo or missing signature in a water or land deed can take an extra month to fix. Ponds and reservoirs on a property might actually be illegal water storage — which could take a court process or big dollars to resolve, said Bill Wombacher, an attorney with Nazarenus, Stack & Wombacher, who teaches a water law class for real estate agents.

New property owners might be surprised to see a stranger in their backyard clearing out a ditch — or, as happened in 2022 in Kittredge, dozens of people using private property to access a popular creek running through private property, which prompted a local debate about public access.

It is easier to handle any water questions that come up before a deal is signed, and buyers might want to budget extra time in the purchase process for tasks like well inspections, said Amanda Snitker, chair of the market trends committee for Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

One piece of advice: “Be sure they’re being thorough. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even though they might seem silly,” Wells said. “There’s no silly question when it comes to water.”

So what kind of questions should a buyer ask? [We] asked the experts to break it down.

I want to buy in an urban area. Where do I start?

People interested in buying a home, apartment or townhome in a more populated area — like a town, city, special district or planned development — should start by understanding their water supply and who provides it.

Is the property already connected to a main water system?

If so, it can save money for the buyer. Tap fees, the cost of adding a new connection, can be as low as $1,500 to $8,000, said Wells, who works in small towns and rural areas in southwestern Colorado. Or, the price of tapping into the local water system could be more like $50,000 in areas of the Front Range or $200,000 in some areas of the Western Slope where water supplies are tight, Wombacher said. Some water providers can also freeze adding new connections when their water system or supply is maxed out.

Who is the property’s water provider?

Some areas come with more established networks of pipes, canals, tunnels and reservoirs operated by a water provider. These water districts and utility providers are public entities, and buyers should know how functional or dysfunctional the organization is, Everitt said.

It’s also helpful to understand if the organization is planning to build new water infrastructure or has a backlog of needed repairs, Snitker said. The cost of water and related fees can vary depending on the water provider, and it’s good to know those details up front, she said.

The experts also recommended learning about wastewater systems, water quality and any water-related expenses that could come up for new owners. Here are some questions they recommended asking:

Can the seller provide 12 months of water bills?

Are there any broken sprinklers or leaky pipes?

Can buyers add water-efficiency features, like systems that capture grey water or rain?

Has the property ever had any issues with galvanized pipes? Does it have any lead pipes?

What is the quality of the water, and are there any contaminants?

If there is a septic system, how old is it and where is it located?

Outside of a service area? Here’s how to begin.

Not all properties lie within an established service area for a water provider, like homes in unincorporated areas, rural counties and some new developments.

Homes, ranches and land in rural areas also might come with water rights — a complicated part of how Coloradans access water.

When a buyer tours a property, they should keep an eye out for certain features to know what to ask: Look for wells, ponds, lakes, ditches, streams, irrigation systems and other outdoor water features, experts said.

This Parshall flume on Red Mountain measures the amount of water diverted by the Red Mountain Ditch. Pitkin County commissioners approved a roughly $48,000 grant to pipe the last 3,600 feet of the ditch in the Starwood neighborhood. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

What’s up with ditches

Colorado is covered with a decades-old network of ditches that help transfer water to farmers, ranchers and communities around the state. These are often earthen, straight and clearly human-made, but they can also be easy to miss.

For Wombacher, ditch easements are the single most-frequent source of frustration among his clients, he said.

They are tied to a complicated system of water rights, which means ditch users have legal rights to receive a certain amount of water at specific times and locations during the year.

Ditch managers and users can move up and down the channel, even on private property, to do maintenance and manage water supplies.

That means property owners might see water flowing, but it’s not theirs to use. They cannot disrupt the transfer of water, use ditch water or move the ditches (unless they go to water court). If that does happen? “It’s like an immediate lawsuit every single time,” Wombacher said.

Questions to ask:

Is it actively used?

How might this impact what I can and can’t do with the property?

If I’m not able to move the ditch, do I still want the property?

Who operates the ditch?

See a pond, get the papers

If a buyer sees a pond or lake on the property, they should ask for the water court decrees attached to the stored water.

This pond in Chaffee County near Salida is one of thousands in the Arkansas River Basin that is being evaluated by the Division 2 engineer’s office as part of a new pond management program. Engineers say ponds without decreed water rights could injure senior water rights holders. Photo credit: Colorado Division of Natural Resources via Aspen Journalism

“There are quite a few unlawful uses going on out there, particularly with ponds and reservoirs,” Wombacher said.

Property owners build water storage and sometimes do not go through the water court process to get a legal right to access, store and use the water.

“Just because a seller has been able to get away with something for a long time, doesn’t mean the buyer will,” Wombacher said. “Anytime there’s a water use going on on a property, you want to make sure as a buyer that it’s a lawful use.”

What does it mean if there’s a well?

The state of Colorado regulates wells, and well permits come with specifications about how much water can be used and what it can be used for.

Interested buyers should start by learning about water court decrees and permits related to the well. The state has databases that can provide more information about a well using its permit number.

Adding new wells can be expensive and come with limitations based on the location and characteristics of a property, like whether it is larger or smaller than 35 acres, experts said. Buyers will also want to ask about any water quality, contamination or pressure issues in advance.

Questions to ask:

If there is not a well — and a buyer might want one — what are the options for getting a well?

Can you provide a recent inspection report?

Does the well produce the amount of water stated in the permit? If not, the property might need a cistern.

“Just like you do a home inspection, you call someone and they do a well inspection,” Snitker said.

What do I need to know about water rights?

Many properties, especially in rural areas, come with irrigation water supplies — and therefore, water rights.

Water rights can add value to a property, but they also come with restrictions related to where, when and how much water can be used. These rights are legally tied to certain beneficial purposes, like farming, drinking, snowmaking, fire prevention and more.

“I think a lot of lay people, and it’s not their fault, think they can use water anytime they want,” Wells said.

Some water rights are also more valuable than others: Under Colorado water law, more recently established “junior” rights get cut off first when water is short so older and more valuable “senior” rights get their share.

Don’t need irrigation water? A property owner has to go to water court to change details of a water right. And a new owner can’t just own a water right and plan never to use the water for its intended purpose. If that happens, the state might analyze whether a right has been “abandoned,” which could dissolve the right.

Water rights are often transferred from one owner to another using a deed or a title. New buyers should check to make sure these documents are in good order, Wells said.

“Sometimes it’s prudent to hire a water attorney to make sure that what is in the deed matches what you’ll actually be sold,” he said.

Questions to ask:

How much water can I use, when, where and for what purpose?

What year is the water right, and how senior is it compared with others on the same stream or river?

What is the supply like in periods of drought?

Does the water right match what I’d like to use the water for, or could I have to go to water court to change it?

Are the ditches, canals and other infrastructure that deliver the water well-maintained?

What fees come with the water supply?

More by Shannon Mullane

Northern Water Board Director Leads Panel Discussions at Annual #ColoradoRiver Gathering — @Northern_Water #COriver #aridification #CRWUA2024

Northern Water Board Director Jennifer Gimbel, left, leads a panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association this month in Las Vegas. L to R: Jennifer Gimbel, Gene Shawcroft, Estevan López, and Brandon Gebhart. Photo credit: Northern Water

Click the link to read the release on the Northern Water website:

December 20, 2024

A member of the Northern Water Board of Directors played a large role at the annual gathering of Colorado River water officials this month in Las Vegas.

Jennifer Gimbel, who represents Larimer County on the Northern Water Board of Directors and is a senior water policy scholar at Colorado State University, moderated a pair of panel discussions at the Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) annual conference about the current state of negotiations on new guidelines for the operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Gimbel helped negotiators from the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming outline their concerns, and in a second panel, did the same for negotiators for the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.

For the 1,000-plus attendees of the conference, it was an opportunity to learn more about what will guide future discussions about use of Colorado River water throughout the Southwestern United States.

Northern Water is a member of CRWUA and engages with other Colorado River users throughout the year.

In photo from second left: Gene Shawcroft of Utah, Estevan Lopez of New Mexico, Becky Mitchell of Colorado and Brandon Gebhart of Wyoming.

The new Farm Bill extension provides some relief for #Colorado producers, but leaves much unsettled — Colorado Public Radio

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Caitlyn Kim). Here’s an excerpt:

December 24, 2024

As part of a temporary stopgap government funding measure passed last week, Congress also approved a one-year extension of the Farm Bill. While the Farm Bill is seen as-must pass legislation by all sides in Congress, Congressional leaders still struggled to reach a compromise over the last two years, leaving farmers relying on outdated provisions approved in 2018, well before the COVID pandemic, the increases in operating costs, and a number of natural disasters.

Restoration project on West Fork of #DoloresRiver benefits trout habitat, ecosystem as a whole — The #Durango Herald

Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Cameryn Cass). Here’s an excerpt:

December 28, 2024

An area chapter of Trout Unlimited recently partnered with a landowner to restore a portion of the West Fork of the Dolores River their property borders…Besides the West Fork’s beauty, it’s the largest tributary of the Lower Dolores. It’s also home to all four kinds of trout, including the only one native to Colorado, the cutthroat…

Over time, modern practices and a change of land use along the riverbanks – such as ranching, grazing, or simply cutting out big fields – has resulted in less and less “large woody debris” falling into the river, Rose said. That debris is not only a source of food, it also can be something of an anchor to slow down the water flow, and to offer fish and other critters a refuge.

In effect, the restoration project was in the name of something Rose called “structural complexity.”

“That’s the most important term you’ll pick up in this whole project,” Rose said. “If you don’t have complexity and have homogeneity, you don’t have the richness you need to accommodate all of the aquatic co-evolutions.”

To create this structural complexity – and put simply – the project involved strategically arranging big boulders in different ways and places along the stretch of river.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is asking for public comment on the LaPrele Dam demolition plan — #Wyoming Public Radio

The LaPrele dam is an Ambursen style dam, which makes it unique. CREDIT J. E. STIMSON / WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES

Click the link to read the article on the Wyoming Public Radio website (Jordan Uplinger). Here’s an excerpt:

January 2, 2025

The Army Corps of Engineers and the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality are reviewing aspects of the controlled demolition of the LaPrele Dam near Douglas. On Nov. 1, the state engineer ordered the destruction of the failing 115-year-old dam by April 1. The announcement was made following inspections that found new cracks on the front face of the structure, suggesting near-irreparable damage to the dam’s foundation. State officials, land owners and locals have been in discussion on how best to handle a situation that the state engineer referred to as an “emergency.”

Despite a search for alternatives, the LaPrele Irrigation District is proposing to mechanically breach or blast the 135-foot-tall concrete dam. Some concrete would partially remain within the dam’s footprint, some would be placed in a rubble chute in LaPrele Creek to prevent excessive erosion and some would go in optional disposal areas. The district is also proposing to use fill material within the creek and reservoir bed to build equipment access ramps to the north side of the dam, a structure to capture sediment and debris from demolition and for a southern access road. The blast is scheduled to happen before April in an effort to avoid spring runoff, but the state has considered the possibility of taking action sooner should the dam deteriorate faster than expected. Emergency permitting procedures have been approved, according to the Corps, in the event that expedited action is required.

Safe Drinking Water Act Turns 50: Landmark law encounters new problems, enduring challenges — Brett Walton (@circleofblue)

A water tower in Sacaton, the central town of the Gila River Indian Community. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue

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

December 16, 2024

The American public, newly conditioned to the health dangers of a polluted environment, was worried.

Media reports documented carcinogens in the lower Mississippi River. The federal government, empowered by recent legislation, sued Reserve Mining Company for dumping asbestos-like fibers into Lake Superior, thereby jeopardizing the water supply for Duluth, Minnesota, and at least four other communities. Congress had just approved groundbreaking laws for cleaner air and ecosystems. What about tap water?

Those were the circumstances in 1974 as a receptive Congress and a supportive-but-cost-conscious Ford administration debated first-ever national drinking water standards.

In the previous four years, lawmakers had passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe water,” Russell Train, then-administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, wrote to President Gerald Ford. “The time is overdue for a Safe Drinking Water Act.”

Fifty years ago, on December 16, 1974, Ford clinched a public health victory when he signed a bill that joined the pantheon of federal environmental protection laws enacted that decade.

Today, the country still reaps the benefits. Most Americans are provided high-quality water from their taps.

“At a time when the American public is skeptical of the government’s ability to take positive action and improve their lives, the Safe Drinking Water Act is an example of the essential work that our government can and must do to stand up for our well-being,” Radhika Fox, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2021 to 2024 told a Senate committee last month. “It’s a demonstration of the most basic mission of our government: to safeguard the rights and interests of its people.”

As the Safe Drinking Water Act begins its next half century, it is clear that the law is an essential piece of the country’s project to assure every American access to safe, reliable, affordable water. But there is still much room for improvement. By one estimate, some two million people in the country do not have running water or indoor plumbing at home. Black and Hispanic communities, especially if they are poor, are more likely to have low quality drinking water. The struggles of small water systems that serve dozens or hundreds of people remain problems.

The act was weakened in 2005, following secret meetings between the oil industry and the Bush administration, that advanced oil and gas development by exempting chemical fluids used in fracking from federal oversight.

There are also elements of drinking water provision that the act does not explicitly address. Aging infrastructure, a changing climate, decaying plumbing within buildings, and limited funding for repairs are major impediments. Private well water is not regulated.

Health and environmental groups, seeing the proliferation of chemicals in commerce and their links to cancer, kidney disease, and other chronic ailments, encourage the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate more of these contaminants.

The agency appears to be paying attention. It decided earlier this year to set national standards for six PFAS – the persistent and toxic “forever” chemicals used in non-stick, water-repellent goods and firefighting foams. They were the first additions to the roster of regulated contaminants in decades. Perchlorate, used in explosives and a concern for fetal brain development, is next on the EPA agenda, due to a court order.

A counter argument – offered most passionately by public policy experts and utility leaders – is that the EPA is focusing on the wrong risks. This line of thinking suggests that regulators are targeting new chemical contaminants when they should be more concerned about the reliability of the pipes through which water flows. Utilities and municipalities have limited funds, the argument goes, so the biggest health risks should be addressed first.

Pipe breaks – which occur by the hundreds every day in this country – can pull pathogens into water systems and do immediate harm. Plumbing systems inside buildings, which are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, can harbor Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires’ disease, a respiratory illness that is the country’s deadliest waterborne disease. It kills about one in 10 people it infects. A Legionnaires’ outbreak in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, that began in 2023 sent 11 people to the hospital.

Chad Seidel, president of Corona Environmental Consulting, worries that the failure to invest in basic infrastructure will result in less reliable water systems that are prone to malfunctioning and spreading disease. Backsliding on infrastructure quality would be detrimental, he said.

“I believe the health risks of regressing are higher than the risk of unregulated contaminants,” Seidel said.

The data show that certain water providers have higher risks of failure. In 1970, the EPA’s drinking water division assessed the quality of water from 969 systems. Most failing systems were small.

So it is today. Small water systems, a half century later, are more likely to violate health standards and monitoring requirements.

The country counts about 50,000 public water systems, most of them small. Many lack the financial strength or managerial know-how to successfully operate. There is a growing consensus that small systems will need to be absorbed into larger neighbors, or form regional entities that take advantage of scale to provide better service.

Amendments to the act in 1996 established a revolving loan fund that is the federal government’s primary vehicle for financing local drinking water improvements. Despite tens of billions of dollars added to the fund in the last three decades, state and local governments still account for about 95 percent of water infrastructure spending. Utility leaders fret that Congress is starting to erode the revolving fund by extracting earmarks from its annual appropriation. In time, this will result in less money available to lend.

“You can’t talk about the future of safe drinking water without talking about how to pay for it,” said Rob Greer, who studies public administration at Texas A&M University.

Water utilities are lobbying for a federal program to assist low-income people with their water bills, as the government does for energy bills. During the pandemic, Congress approved a short-term water bill assistance program but it has expired. A federal program would allow utilities to raise rates to pay for needed repairs, while not burdening their poorest customers with large bills.

Even if adequate funding is secured, there are social and cultural headwinds buffeting utilities. An unknown but rising number of people do not drink their tap water. They do not trust it.

Mistrust is highest among Black and Hispanic communities who are also most likely to have tap water that exceeds federal standards or looks and tastes gross. Notorious tap water failures in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, in the last decade highlight the ease by which trust can be lost.

Mistrust is illustrated by soaring sales of bottled water and the growing presence of commercial water kiosks, a trend documented by Samantha Zuhlke of the University of Iowa and Manny Teodoro of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Both bottled water and kiosk water have less regulatory scrutiny than tap water.

Water is an intimate relationship between individuals and their government because water is the “only government service you ingest,” Teodoro said.

New Year #snowpack update: Bold beginning tapers off: But there’s still a lot of snow season left — Jonathan P. Thompson

October snows above Ouray, Colorado. The Red Mountain Pass SNOTEL showed the snowpack to be 103% of normal as of Jan. 2, 2025. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

January 3, 2025

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

Happy New Year! The Land Desk had a very mellow and relaxing couple of weeks off, and I must admit that I’m struggling to get back into the old routine. And I sure as heck haven’t gotten used to writing “2025” yet. Oy.

But no matter what the calendar may say, we’re one-fourth of the way through the 2025 water year, and one-third of the way through meteorological winter. That means it’s time for a little snowpack update.

Snowpack levels in the watersheds that feed Lake Powell are just about normal for this time of year, thanks to some late-December storms across the region. But as you can see from 2023 (the purple line), there’s plenty of time left for it to be a huge snow year — or a downright crappy one if the precipitation suddenly stops. Source: NRCS.

This snow season got off to a rip-roaring start in much of the West, with some substantial high-country snowfall back in October and November. Then, as is often the case, someone turned off the big sky spigot, the clouds cleared, temperatures warmed, and the early season bounty became mid-winter middling to meager. Meanwhile, the high-mountain snow, while not necessarily melting, began “rotting.” That is, it embarked on the metamorphosis from strong, well-bonded snow, to weak, faceted, depth hoar1.

That’s a problem, because when another layer of snow falls on top of it, the weak layer is prone to failure, resulting in an avalanche. Sadly, avalanches have taken the lives of four people so far this season, all during the last couple of weeks in December. Two of the fatalities occurred in Utah and one in Nevada, all following a late December storm atop a deep, weak layer. The other one was in Idaho on Dec. 15. Two of the victims were on motorized snowbikes, one was a solo split-boarder, and another was on foot or snowshoes. Last season there were 16 avalanche-related fatalities across the West, all occurring after the first of the year.

Southwestern Colorado got some good dumps in October and November, pushing the snowpack far above average and into the 90th percentile. But a dry December brought snowpack levels down below “normal” for the 1991-2020 period. Still, this year’s levels almost mirror 2023’s, when snow season didn’t get going until January. Source: NRCS.

Meanwhile, further south, the Sonoran Avalanche Center hasn’t had much action this season, at least not of the snowy kind. Most of the Southwest has been plagued by a dearth of snowfall — and precipitation in general — following a couple good storms in October and November. Temperatures have also been well above average in the southern lowlands. Phoenix set four daily high-temperature records in December, and the average for the month was a whopping seven degrees above normal; Flagstaff was also far warmer than normal and received nary a drop of rain or snow during all of December. And Las Vegas hasn’t received measurable rainfall since it got a bit damp (.08 inches) in mid-July.

The Salt River watershed in central Arizona has received hardly any snow so far this year and continues to lag far behind the 2023 and 2024 water years. The lack of moisture and unusually high temperatures in December don’t bode well for the region’s runoff. Source: NRCS.

The Rio Grande’s headwaters also started out strong, but have dropped below normal.

Things were looking pretty grim in western Wyoming’s Upper Green River watershed until December snows pushed the snowpack almost up to normal for this time of year. The entire state was quite dry last year and it’s looking like the drought will persist there.

This does not bode well for spring streamflows, particularly in the Salt and Gila Rivers. The mountains feeding the Rio Grande also are in need of some good storms to keep that river from going dry this summer.

We can take comfort in the fact that in many places in the West, snow-season doesn’t really arrive until February or March. So this could turn out to be a whopper of a winter yet.

The drought situation a year ago (left) and now (right). While drought has subsided in New Mexico and the Four Corners area, it has intensified dramatically in Wyoming, Montana, parts of Idaho and a swath that follows the lower Colorado River and includes Las Vegas, which has only received .08” of precipitation since April of last year. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor.

For now it looks like there’s no relief in sight for the Southwest or the Northern Rockies.

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

Biden’s getting busy as he prepares to vacate the White House. The Los Angeles Times reports that he plans to designate the Chuckwalla National Monument on 644,000 acres of federal land in southern California, and the Sáttítla National Monument on 200,000 acres in the northern part of the state near the Oregon border. That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Joe! Now do the lower Dolores!

🦫 Wildlife Watch 🦅

The soon-to-be Chuckwalla National Monument lies south of and adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park, an area often targeted by utility-scale solar developers. That’s the sort of development that will now be banned there. Not only will cultural sites be protected, but also wildlife. A new study found that some of the Southwest’s best sites for solar overlap critical habitat for vulnerable species, including in most of southern California.

***

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking any information on the killing of a gray wolf in Grand County, Colorado, in summer of 2024. The wolf, 2309-OR, was part of the Copper Creek pack that was captured by wildlife officials in August, after members of the pack had made a meal out of local ranchers’ livestock. 2309-OR was in bad condition and perished in captivity; a subsequent investigation found that he died of a gunshot wound. It’s illegal to kill wolves in Colorado, not to mention immoral and just a horrible thing to do. The Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation organizations are offering a $65,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter.

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona, in mid-November. They had a bit of snow from earlier storms, but haven’t received much since. The Snowslide Canyon SNOTEL site at 9,744 feet in elevation is recording 65% of normal snow water equivalent. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

1 Andy Gleason, snow nerd extraordinaire, explained it like this after record-high avalanche fatalities during the relatively scant 2021 snow year :

The latest seasonal outlooks through March 31, 2025 are hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center

Jimmy Carter’s overlooked #Colorado nexus: The late president had nuclear training but an interest in renewable energy with impact in Colorado lingering to this day — Allen Best (@BigPivots)

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

January 2, 2024

Jimmy Carter had an underappreciated role in Colorado’s story. It started in May 1978 when he announced that the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden would get $100 million in federal funding.

“Nobody can embargo sunlight,” Carter said. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters. It’s free from stench and smog. The sun’s power needs only to be collected, stored and used.”

It was a rare umbrella day in Golden. Carter’s timing for his proclaimed “Sun Day” was off. But he was on the mark about solar energy in ways that we have yet to fully appreciate.

Carter had advanced schooling in nuclear energy, but by 1975 he was thinking about renewables. He invited Ron Larson, an electrical engineering professor from Georgia Tech, to share lunch and talk about renewable energy.

“At that time there wasn’t much to photovoltaics,” says Larson. “It was over $100 a watt. Now it’s less than $1 a watt.”

Larson moved to Colorado in 1977 to work as SERI’s first principal scientist and stayed in multiple roles in helping pivot our energy use. Since then, thousands have followed.

One component of SERI’s mission to advance use of solar energy was outreach to 300 builders and architects in Colorado to help them learn how to construct houses with lessened need for fossil fuels.

John Avenson, an engineer with AT&T/Bell Labs, was among the beneficiaries. The house in Westminster that he built in 1981 faces south and has large windows coupled with effective shades.

On Facebook the day after Carter’s death, Avenson rued the widespread failure to acknowledge Carter’s early thinking. “Every house built since then should have been this good or better but the program was cancelled by (President Ronald) Reagan,” he wrote.

Avenson’s house near Standley Lake Reservoir was built with a natural gas furnace. He rarely used it, his gas bills never surpassing $180 for a full year. After tweaking and new technology, he was finally satisfied the house would do fine at 20 below without the furnace. In 2016 he had Xcel Energy stub the gas line.

When I visited him on New Year’s Eve, he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “I’m an Arizona kind of person,” he said. He keeps the house at 72 to 78 degrees. It will be featured on a Jan. 25 broadcast on PBS.

I asked Avenson about Carter’s death. “Oh, so sad,” he replied. “He influenced my life and didn’t know it.”

Steve Andrews was also influenced by Carter. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he had used the GI Bill of Rights to take college classes in basic engineering. That led to an internship and then a job at SERI. He wrote the guidebook for the 1981 Denver Homebuilders annual Parade of Homes featuring a dozen passive-solar homes across the Denver metro area.

Then, Andrews got laid off. As president, Reagan had no real use for renewable energy. He famously removed the 32 solar panels that Carter had placed atop the White House. He also halved SERI’s budget. Andrews, a recent hire, was among the first to go. The mission of SERI was also narrowed, pushing outreach to the back burner. The director, Denis Hayes, was fired after accusing his bosses at the U.S. Department of Energy of being “dull gray men in dull gray suits thinking dull gray thoughts.”

Later, under a former oilman, President George H.W. Bush, SERI was resurrected as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL has now expanded to a staff of 3,675 employees and broadened its influence.

Can it be mere coincidence that Colorado, in 2004, had the nation’s first voter-initiated renewable energy portfolio standard? Or that Colorado in recent years has adopted a dozen or more first-in-nation policies and regulations designed to curb greenhouse emissions? We might be guilty of parochial pride, but there can be no doubt that Colorado belongs in any national conversation about the pivot to a new energy economy, to use the title of former Gov. Bill Ritter’s center that is affiliated with Colorado State University.

Ironically, passive-house building has gotten little traction. The economics are unassailable, and the technology just isn’t that difficult. It does take basic site-planning. Andrews, in his post-SERI career, once calculated that 85% of houses in metro Denver face east or west. That results in unwanted summer heat, but little in winter, when it is wanted. Housing should face north and south.

Colorado has decades of work ahead in decarbonizing its buildings. We need to remember what Jimmy Carter understood nearly 50 years ago.

Also worth reading: “Jimmy Carter, Green Energy Visionary,” by Bill McKibben in The New Yorker.

Denver Water’s administration building is powered by solar panels. Photo credit: Denver Water.

#Colorado’s environmental efforts could be in grave peril: 2024 is likely to be hottest year on record. It’s no time for science deniers to be in charge of country’s future — Pete Kolbenschlag (Colorado Newsline) #ActOnClimate

An aerial view of Assignation Ridge in the Thompson Divide area of Colorado. (Courtesy of EcoFlight)

Click the link to read the commentary on the Colorado Newsline website (Pete Kolbenschlag):

December 31, 2024

Some people say that the movement toward renewable energy cannot be stopped by a single regressive administration. But Colorado could be badly harmed if its efforts to transition to clean energy are put on hold. Millions of dollars in investments for rural co-ops, community-based solar, and grid hardening could be in jeopardy, striking a heavy blow to our more resilient future. Worse still, that’s only one piece of what could be coming under a new federal regime.

Colorado’s public lands and water supplies are also in grave peril under the incoming Congress and president. This is despite decades of hard, locally-driven work to secure protections for vital headwaters, hunting lands, forests and habitat, many from a century-long history of extraction. And it’s regardless of rapid warming, persistent drought and an imperiled Colorado River system with no good solutions in sight.

Healthy natural systems guard against ecological collapse. But now various environmental tipping points, that moment in a system where it moves into a new norm and change becomes irreversible, appear at their most precarious moments. During 2024 humans pumped out more climate-choking pollution than ever before. That’s almost 10 years after the acclaimed Paris Agreement, which our president-elect and his cabinet have vowed to abandon.

Global warming presents a clear and present danger to all our livelihoods and well-being. And the United States is already the No. 1 oil and gas producer in the world and a top polluter behind only China. 2024 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded. Without the sufficient response we careen toward calamity. To meet this moment, the incoming administration and Congress have pledged to pollute more and care less.

That is bad news not only for our lands and water supplies, but for the economic future, too. Our ledgers will already never be free of climate risk. Which is why the debate at the global climate summits is now about who ends up with the bill for loss and damages done and coming. That matters here, too: A recent study correlates rising insurance costs with climate vulnerability and puts much of Colorado in the dark red hazard zone.

In a state where housing is increasingly unaffordable, putting science deniers in charge of our future is just a bad idea. Moving federal agency offices or installing Colorado-based cabinet-members won’t matter if the new administration is just rearranging deck chairs to ensure its patrons have the best seats to watch this escalating disaster.

In fact, fossil fuel “dominance” could make a mess of Colorado, as it does most places it asserts itself. This puts at risk our lands and communities with oil trains, backdoor schemes to subsidize legacy polluters, policies that favor extraction over conservation, and more pipelines for more fracked gas exports. The alternative to slamming head on into a worst future is to stop the harm now and to make systems more resilient to coming disruptions. That means less fossil energy and more conservation of natural places. [ed. emphasis mine]

Milkweed, sweet peas, and a plethora of other flora billow from Farmer’s Ditch in the North Fork Valley of western Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Standing up for Colorado’s liveable future means fighting the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and defending places Coloradans have fought for decades to protect – such as Thompson Divide, the Dolores River canyons, or the forests and public lands surrounding critical watersheds and farmlands in places like the North Fork Valley.

That will best limit the extent of further harm and will better secure our natural capital as a hedge against future disruption. By investing in ecological systems through resilient watersheds and healthy lands we guard against uncertainty. By defending these cherished places, we will keep intact critical sources of sustenance and enjoyment for the future and return dividends to those who live, work, and visit here today.

The Dolores River, below Slickrock, and above Bedrock. The Dolores River Canyon is included in a proposed National Conservation Area. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism.

#Colorado #snowpack levels could be on track for revival with continued wave of winter storms — The #GlenwoodSprings Post Independent

Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map January 2, 2024 via the NRCS.

Click the link to read the article on the Glenwood Springs Post Independent website (Robert Tann).Here’s an excerpt:

December 27, 2024

Deflated snowpack levels are beginning to rise again in Colorado after nearly a month of stagnation…A cycle of heavy snow storms in November sent snowpack levels surging well above normal, particularly in the state’s southern regions. But as conditions dried after Thanksgiving, levels flatlined…As of mid-December, statewide snowpack levels have tracked below the 30-year median and even began to approach historical lows for this time of year. But a smattering of storms in the High Country since Christmas have begun to reverse the trend…As of Friday [December 27, 2024], statewide snowpack stood at 87% of the 30-year median, according to data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Arkansas River Basin, which encompasses south-central Colorado, is the only basin in the state with snowpack currently above 100%.

#Utah wants to shore up its #Colorado River share with a water ‘savings account’ — KUER #COriver #aridification

Green River Lakes and the Bridger Wilderness. Forest Service, USDA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Click the link to read the article on the KUER website (David Condos). Here’s an excerpt:

December 18, 2024

Across Utah, farmers are experimenting with ways to tighten their water use as agriculture, drought and population growth collide to put pressure on the state’s limited water resources. Some are installing more efficient irrigation technology. Others are testing unconventional crops. In Hunt’s case, he’s taking some of his farmland out of commission entirely — for a time and for a price…For the past two years, [Coby] Hunt has taken part in a federal program that pays farmers to temporarily leave their fields empty and lease the conserved water to the government. It’s something that has been going on for years across the Colorado River Basin. Now, Utah is launching its version of that effort. The new multimillion-dollar plan incentivizes conservation and aims to do a better job of tracking that saved water in hopes of getting credit for it in future Colorado River dealings. The practice of leaving a field idle for a season is called fallowing, and Hunt conceded it’s not for everyone.

“Some of the farmers don’t like it. In fact, they don’t like me for leasing my water.”

[…]

Many don’t want the feds involved in their business, he said, or worry the government might take their water permanently if they show they can get by without it. For farmers who grow other crops, like Green River’s famed melons, he said it might not make financial sense to sit out a year and lose your customer base…Hunt usually grows feed for the cattle he raises, so he’s still had plenty to do while this 30-acre field sits empty. Fallowing has just meant he needs to buy hay from elsewhere. He feels good about the amount of water it saves, too. His water right would typically allow him to use six acre-feet of water a year, he said — enough to cover Hunt and the acre he’s standing on over his head. Because his fields are some of the last ones upstream from Lake Powell, it’s easy to imagine the water he conserves making it to the reservoir. That’s why farmers like Hunt are vital to Utah’s new effort to conserve more Colorado River water, called the Demand Management Pilot Program. What’s novel about it is how it will track and document the water savings.

Critical water quality permits designed to protect streams remain backlogged, but numbers are improving — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation District Hite plant outfall via South Platte Coalition for Urban River Evaluation

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):

January 2, 2024

Colorado health officials say a massive permit backlog that has left hundreds of water systems in administrative limbo has shrunk in the past year, though more work remains.

Last year, 75% of wastewater discharge permits had expired. This year that figure has dropped to 50%, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), with 1,384 permits classified as expired. The permits regulate and set standards for removing pollutants from wastewater before it is discharged to streams.

The state’s Water Quality Control Division has wrestled with the problem for several years. In the past two years the state has provided several million dollars to help eliminate the backlog. Major dischargers, such as the City of Aurora and Metro Water Recovery, are among those that have been impacted by the problem.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, entities that discharge fluids into streams, including wastewater treatment plants and factories, must get approval from water quality regulators to ensure what they’re putting into the waterways does not harm them.

Though holders of expired permits are legally allowed to continue discharging, the expiration means dischargers face major uncertainty about what future requirements may be and how much it will cost to meet them, according to the CDPHE.

Protecting streams from pollutants is a tough problem and is getting more difficult as populations grow and climate change reduces the amount of water flowing in rivers, intensifying contamination. Emerging toxins, such as PFAS, also now require treatment. PFAS make up a large class of chemicals used in everything from firefighting foam to Teflon. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they last decades in the environment and the human body. The EPA has just begun setting regulatory standards for them.

The agency has hired a consultant to help it examine new ways of managing the permitting process. It expects to have recommendations for new procedures by midyear 2025, CDPHE spokesperson John Michael said.

“We are committed to finding solutions to address more of the backlog,” he said via email.

The agency is under the gun to do so, in part, because its performance lags the standards set by the EPA, which state that 75% of all discharge permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, should be current.

“Timely issuance and reissuance of NPDES permits are important because they can provide greater certainty to the business community and ensure that permits improve environmental protection by reflecting the most recent scientific information,” said Marisa Lubeck, a spokesperson for EPA’s Region 8, which includes Colorado.

“The EPA has encouraged and continues to encourage CDPHE to decrease its NPDES permit backlog, and we are aware the state has acquired additional resources to help with this effort,” Lubeck said via email.

States across the country have wrestled with monitoring and renewing the discharge permits. According to a 2024 EPA analysis, Colorado had the largest permit backlog nationwide, with 81% expired. The average nationwide is 22%. The EPA’s estimate is higher because the state’s method for classifying permits differs from the federal government’s, according to the EPA.

With the new funding, the CDPHE has hired additional staff to address the problem and to shore up long-term finances for the regulatory work by increasing fees the state can charge for the permits.

Colorado State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican from Brighton and a member of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said she remains concerned that the health department hasn’t fully resolved the problems.

“The bottom line is that there are still a lot of permits in that backlog,” Kirkmeyer said.

And she said cities and wastewater utilities continue to complain about the permitting process, calling it cumbersome and time-consuming.

The Colorado Wastewater Utility Council, which represents municipalities and wastewater treatment providers, did not respond to a request for comment.

More by Jerd Smith

The 2024 Water Year summary is hot off the presses from Western Water Assessment: Average temperatures during the 2024 water year were much above average for the entire region

Click the link to read the summary on the Western Water Assessment website:

Water Year 2024 Summary

Regional water year precipitation for 2024 was near normal. In Colorado, statewide 2024 water year precipitation was 101% of median, 99% of median in Utah and 94% of median in Wyoming. The two largest basins in our region also experienced near normal water year precipitation with the Upper Colorado River Basin receiving 99% of median precipitation and the Great Salt Lake receiving 105% of median precipitation. On a smaller geographic scale, 2024 brought near to above normal precipitation to northern Utah, central Colorado and northern Wyoming. Areas that were notably dry in 2024 include northeastern Colorado, southern Utah and eastern Wyoming.

Average temperatures during the 2024 water year were much above average for the entire region. The majority of the region experienced average temperatures that were up to 2ºF above average. Water year average temperature was 2-4ºF above average for several areas including southwestern Utah, eastern Utah, western Colorado and eastern Wyoming. Record high average temperatures during the last 9 months of the water year (January 2024-September 2024 were observed in Fillmore, UT and Laramie, WY. Several other small areas of record hot temperatures were observed throughout the region).

Snowpack in 2024 was near to above average for the entire region except for northeastern Wyoming where snowpack was much below average. Statewide April 1st snow water equivalent (SWE) was near or above average across the region with Colorado receiving 112% of average SWE, Utah with 132% of average SWE and Wyoming with 100% of average SWE. Snowpacks were deepest in the lower San Juan (288% average SWE) and the Dirty Devil River (152% average SWE) Basins and shallowest in the Belle Fouche (38% average SWE) and Cheyenne River (35% average SWE) Basins in northeastern Wyoming. Much of Colorado and Wyoming received near to slightly above average SWE. April 1st SWE was above average for all Utah river basins.

Despite near to above average snowpack throughout most of the region, April-July observed runoff volume ranged from slightly below average in the Wyoming river basins (Big Horn, Upper Green and Powder) and southern river basins (Dirty Devil, Dolores, Rio Grande and San Juan) to above average in the Great Basin (Bear, Great Salt Lake, Jordan and Weber) and Escalante River Basin. Much below average seasonal runoff was observed in northeastern Wyoming’s Cheyenne River Basin. The Weber River Basin observed the highest relative runoff at 132% of average seasonal runoff volume. A rough measure of runoff efficiency, or the proportion of snowpack that makes its way into runoff, was calculated as percent average of observed April-July runoff volume divided by percent average of April 1st SWE. Overall, regional runoff efficiency was relatively high with more than 90% of seasonal snowpack making its way into runoff in the Arkansas, South Platte, Yampa, Bear, Jordan, Price, Weber, Bighorn, Powder, Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers. Low runoff efficiency was observed in the Dolores, Rio Grande and Virgin River Basins. Low runoff efficiency in southwestern Colorado is likely attributed to continued long-term impacts of the drought that began in 2000.

The 2024 water year began with only 9% of the region in drought, largely due to the much above average 2023 water year. By the end of the water year, 36% of the region was in drought. Coverage of drought in Colorado and Utah remained relatively unchanged from the beginning to the end of the 2024 water year. Wyoming, however, experienced a sharp increase in coverage of drought; Wyoming was drought-free at the start of the 2024 water year, but 71% of the state was in drought by October 2024. Development of drought across Wyoming was driven by below normal water year precipitation across most of the state, especially eastern Wyoming, despite average April 1 snowpack conditions. Slightly above average water year temperatures likely exacerbated drought and the water year ended with July-September temperatures that were 2-4 degrees above average.

After a very wet 2023 water year, much of the region began the 2024 water year with soil surface moisture above the 80th percentile of NASA GRACE satellite observations, particularly in Utah, western Wyoming and southern Colorado. Areas with notably dry soil moisture to begin the 2024 water year included most of the Colorado Rockies, northeastern Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, and the Bighorn, Uinta and Wind River Mountains. By the end of the 2024 water year, surface soil moisture across most of the region was very low with most locations in the 5th percentile of all years of observation. Only south-central and northeastern Colorado has near average soil moisture conditions. Observations of near surface soil moisture (2” depth) from the NRCS SCAN network indicate similar patterns of wet soils to begin the 2024 water year, especially in the western portion of the region and very dry soils by September 2024. SCAN soil moisture observations indicated much below average soil moisture at the end of the 2024 water year for all river basins except for the Arkansas, Gunnison, Upper Rio Grande and Upper San Juan River Basins. Particularly troubling for the 2025 water year is extremely low soil moisture in the Upper Colorado (33% of median) and Upper Green River (28% of median) Basins.

Regional reservoir storage declined slightly from the beginning of the 2024 water year, but remains near median capacity. Reservoir storage is greatest in Utah where reservoirs are at 114% of median capacity, only slightly lower than in October 2023. Despite the onset of drought in Wyoming, reservoir storage is currently at 94% of median capacity, down from 103% in October 2023. The greatest declines in reservoir capacity were found in eastern Wyoming, especially in the Belle Fouche, Bighorn and North Platte River Basins. Storage in large Upper Colorado River Basin reservoirs remains near median capacity except for McPhee, Navajo and Lake Powell. Reservoir storage in Lake Powell was relatively stable during 2024 despite remaining at a low 38% of total storage capacity.

#Drought news January 2, 2025: Abnormal dryness was expanded in parts of #California, #Arizona, #Utah, #Colorado and #NewMexico this week

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

US Drought Monitor map December 31, 2024.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Precipitation fell across much of the U.S. this week, with heavier amounts (> 1 inch) falling across large portions of the Northwest U.S. and from south-central U.S. to the Ohio Valley. Coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest, from Washington to northern California, reported weekly rainfall totals between 2 to 15 inches, while precipitation totals of 2 to 10 inches were reported in areas from eastern Texas to Alabama, as well as parts of the Ohio Valley and the Southeast. Above-normal precipitation supported drought improvements across large portions of the South and Midwest, and in parts of the Pacific Northwest, Midwest and Southeast. Conversely, weekly precipitation totals were below normal in areas of the southwestern U.S., Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Drought and abnormal dryness were expanded or intensified in portions of the Southwest and in small pockets of the High Plains. Temperatures were above normal across much of the U.S. this week. Areas along the Northern Tier, from northern portions of the West, to the Midwest observed temperatures 10 to 25 degrees above normal. Below-normal temperatures were reported across northern portions of the Northeast, from northern New Jersey to Maine, where departures were up to 5 degrees F below normal this past week. Below-normal temperatures were also observed in small pockets of the Southeast this week…

High Plains

Warm temperature dominated the High Plains this week, with departures ranging up to 20 degrees F above normal, especially along the northern portions of the region. Precipitation fell across much of the region this week, but amounts were not large enough to justify large improvement across much of the High Plains. Extreme drought was expanded in northern Nebraska, while moderate drought was expanded in southeast Kansas. Abnormal dryness was expanded in southwest Colorado, where weekly rainfall totals are 5% to 20% of normal for the week. Small areas of the region did observe heavy rainfall, where rainfall totals were more than an inch above normal. This above-normal precipitation allowed for improvements to be made in South Dakota and along the Wyoming-Colorado border. Moderate to extreme drought were improved in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, while severe drought was improved in western South Dakota. Abnormal dryness was also improved in areas along the Wyoming-Colorado border this week…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending December 31, 2024.

West

Average temperatures were above normal across nearly the entire region this week, while small pockets of below-normal temperatures were observed in northern California and along the southern coast of California, where temperatures were between 1 to 3 degrees F below normal. Conversely, Montana observed temperatures ranging between 6 to 15 degrees F above normal this week. Precipitation varied across the region this week, with heavy amounts falling in northern portions, while some areas in the southern portions of the region observed no precipitation. In the north, precipitation amounts of 1 inch or greater fell across much of the Pacific Northwest and northern California, with some areas receiving up to 8 inches above normal for the week. Moderate to severe drought were improved in western Montana and eastern Idaho, while moderate drought was removed in southeast Oregon and trimmed in the northeastern part of the state. Abnormal dryness was improved in northeast Oregon and in small parts of eastern Washington and southern Idaho. In the southern part of the region, above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation resulted in expansion of drought in Arizona, California and Nevada. Extreme drought was expanded in southern Arizona, while severe drought was expanded in southern and northwestern parts of the state. Moderate drought was expanded in western and eastern Nevada, southern California and across parts of Arizona, while abnormal dryness was expanded in parts of California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico this week…

South

Heavy rainfall was observed across much of the South this week, with precipitation totals ranging between 1 to 8 inches above normal. Above-normal rainfall, with amounts up to 600% above normal, along with improvements shown in short-term SPI/SPEI, streamflow and soil moisture data, supported widespread improvements to drought made from eastern Texas to Mississippi this week. Severe drought was removed along the Oklahoma-Texas and Louisiana-Arkansas borders, as well as from southern Mississippi, and improved in central Texas. Moderate drought was improved over large portions of Arkansas, eastern Texas, and in parts of Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi. Conversely, western portions of Oklahoma and Texas observed below-normal precipitation this week. Moderate drought and abnormal dryness were expanded in small parts of western Texas. Temperatures were above normal across the entire region this week, with departures ranging between 1 to 15 degrees F above normal…

Looking Ahead

During the next five days (December 31, 2024–January 4, 2025), A low pressure system tracking from the Ohio Valley into the Northeast will spread precipitation across those regions Tuesday-Wednesday. Precipitation should fall as rain for most of the Ohio Valley to the coastal areas/lower elevations of the Northeast. Snow is likely in the higher elevation areas of the Interior Northeast like the Adirondacks and the Green and White Mountains. The Pacific Northwest will see a relative break in precipitation on Tuesday after a steady train of atmospheric rivers into the region. But by Tuesday night or Wednesday moist inflow may get renewed there and rounds of precipitation are likely to continue through late week and at times farther east into the northern Rockies. The eastern U.S. can expect one more day of above average temperatures (by 10-15F) on Tuesday, before upper troughing pushes along a series of cold fronts that gradually cool temperatures to near normal on Wednesday and gradually below normal into late week. High temperatures by Saturday are forecast to be around 10-15F below normal for the Ohio Valley to Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic while lows should be 5-10F below average. Colder than normal temperatures will also impact the north-central U.S., and lows could reach 10-15F below zero over northern North Dakota and Minnesota by Friday and/or Saturday. Meanwhile, the amplifying upper ridge over the West will promote warming, with temperatures generally 5-10F above average increasing in coverage by the second half of the week. Locally higher anomalies are likely in the Southwest and highs could reach well into the 70s. Highs of 5-15F above normal may reach into the southern High Plains by next Saturday.

The Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 day outlook (valid January 5–9, 2025) favors above-normal precipitation across much of the U.S., with below-normal precipitation favored in portions of the Southwest and Northeast, as well as parts of northern Alaska and on southern parts of the Big Island. Increased probabilities for above-normal temperatures are forecast for Hawaii and across much of the West and Alaska, while below-normal temperatures are likely from the northern Rockies to the East Coast, and in northern parts of Alaska.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending December 31, 2024.

Happy New Year! 2024’s biggest conservation wins for the West — @HighCountryNews

A salmon on the Klamath River is captured just downstream from Wards Canyon, California, to have a radio-tag device attached to its fin on its way upstream. This device will transmit location data to scientists in the Upper Basin, demonstrating information about the salmon’s return to its historic reaches in the freed river. Paul Robert Wolf Wilson/High Country News

Click the link to read the article on The High Country News website (Kylie Mohr):

December 25, 2024

Climate change and encroaching development continue to threaten biodiversity. At the same time, Westerners saw dozens of success stories in 2024. Two national monuments were expanded in California, while conservation gained equal footing with mining and drilling under the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule. Alaska saw half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska protected from new oil and gas leases, and the previous approval for the Ambler Road project in the Brooks Range was rescinded. Elsewhere in the region, fish returned to their former habitats and swam off the Endangered Species List, while wolf and gray whale populations continued to grow.

Fall-run Chinook Salmon, Oct. 16, 2024, photo by Mark Hereford, ODFW.

Salmon return to once-dammed reaches of the Klamath River

For over a century, dams blocked salmon from returning to their spawning grounds near the headwaters of the Klamath River. But the removal of four of the river’s six dams was completed this year, and in October, biologists saw several hundred chinook salmon above the dam sites. While scientists had expected salmon to return eventually, the appearance of so many fish so soon surprised and delighted the tribes who had ardently campaigned to remove the dams.

Fences come down

Every year, migrating elk, deer, pronghorn and moose are slowed, injured, and even killed by the West’s thousands of miles of barbed-wire fencing. Groups like the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) are working hard to remove barbed wire or replace it with more permeable barriers. According to the Mountain Journal, since 2021, the NWF and its partners have removed 40 miles of fencing from the High Divide region along the Montana-Idaho border. Sublette County, Wyoming, another leader in the wildlife-friendly fencing movement, has worked with state and federal partners to remove or improve more than 700 miles of fencing since 2017.

Gray whale populations rebound

Between December 2023 and mid-February 2024, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that 19,260 gray whales migrated along the Pacific Coast — a 33% increase from the previous season. “The numbers are trending up,” NOAA spokesman Michael Milstein told the Oregon Capital Chronicle. “The indications are consistent that the whales have gone from a decline to a recovery.”

The fence line separating sagebrush and historic pastureland marks the north end of of the state of Wyoming’s school trust parcel in Grand Teton National Park, a tract known as the Kelly Parcel. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Wyoming parcel approved for sale to Grand Teton National Park

Last year, it looked like an iconic parcel of state trust land outside Jackson, Wyoming, might be sold to a developer, prompting outrage from locals and conservationists. Known as the Kelly parcel, the land offers panoramic views of the Tetons and provides important habitat for migrating pronghorn and other wildlife species. But by law, state trust land must generate revenue for public schools. In November, Wyoming’s top-five state elected officials approved the sale of the parcel to the adjacent Grand Teton National Park for $100 million. The state will likely use the proceeds to purchase oil and gas-rich land in the Powder River Basin.

Wolves part of the pack discovered last summer in Tulare County called the Yowlumni Pack. The pack was found in the Sequoia National Forest near the Tule River Tribe of California’s reservation and ancestral lands. California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Wolf populations boom

An estimated 70 wolves are now living in California, an increase of 26 animals from last year. Two new wolf packs formed in Northern California this year, too. Meanwhile, Colorado saw the formation of its first pack since wolves were reintroduced last year.

Washington river gets legal rights — and other ballot wins

In Everett, Washington, voters approved a ballot initiative that grants the Snohomish River watershed the rights to exist, regenerate and flourish. City residents, agencies and organizations can now sue on behalf of the watershed, and any recovered damages will be used to restore the ecosystem. Also in Washington, voters upheld the 2021 Climate Commitment Act by voting no on Initiative 2117. The act caps and reduces carbon emissions for the state’s largest carbon emitters and raises money for conservation, climate and wildfire resilience statewide. In California, voters passed a $10 billion climate bond that will fund climate resilience projects, protect clean drinking water and help prevent wildfires.

Bear River Massacre site restored

One of the deadliest massacres of Native people in U.S. history happened near what’s now Preston, Idaho, in January 1863. Over 150 years later, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation is reclaiming the site of the massacre, a place their people once lived, celebrated and danced. Along the Bear River, the tribe is replacing thirsty invasive vegetation with native plants and restoring degraded agricultural fields to wetlands. Eventually, they hope to return an estimated 13,000 acre-feet of water to the parched Great Salt Lake annually. “For thousands of years, this wasn’t a massacre site,” Brad Parry, the tribe’s vice chairman, told High Country News. “We want to make this a place to come to again.”

Volunteers plant native vegetation along the banks of Battle Creek at the Bear River Massacre site in Preston, Idaho. Russel Albert Daniels/High Country News

Apache trout removed from Endangered Species List

In September, after 50 years on the federal endangered species list, Arizona’s state fish — the Apache trout — was declared recovered and removed from the list. The first American sportfish to achieve delisting, it owes its recovery to the White Mountain Apache Tribe as well as to federal and state agencies and nonprofits. In a statement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland paid tribute to “the transformational power that collaborative conservation efforts — grounded in Indigenous Knowledge — can have on fish and wildlife.”

Extra wetland habitat created for birds

California’s Central Valley is vital to migrating birds, but its wetlands have been almost destroyed by agricultural and urban development. BirdReturns, a program that started in 2014, pays the valley’s rice farmers to create “pop-up” wetland habitat by flooding fields earlier in the fall and leaving them flooded later in the spring. Since its inception, BirdReturns has created 120,000 acres of temporary bird habitat.

Tribally led projects win big

TheAmerica The Beautiful Challenge funds voluntary conservation and restoration projects around the country, consolidating funding from federal agencies and the private sector. Numerous projects led by tribes in the West received money from the program this year, including the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, which received $2.5 million for fish passage and riparian restoration projects in Nevada; the Pueblo of Jemez, which received $2.1 million for stream and wetland restoration in New Mexico; the Native Village of Tazlina, which received $2 million to incorporate Indigenous knowledge of migratory birds into state and regional meetings and management in Alaska; the Hoopa Valley Tribe, which received $4.5 million to remove invasive barred owls across Northern California; and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, which received $3 million to expand the Yellowstone Bison Conservation Transfer Program.

This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.

A turbulent year on the #ColoradoRiver comes to a close — Alex Hager (KUNC) #COriver #aridification #CRWUA2024

Dusk falls on Lake Powell near Bullfrog Marina on July 15, 2024. The fate of the nation’s two largest reservoirs is still undetermined after a year full of disagreement and uncertainty among the Colorado River’s top policymakers. Photo credit: Alex Hager/KUNC

Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):

December 26, 2024

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.

This year was a bumpy ride for the Colorado River. As 2024 comes to a close, we’re looking at the stories that defined the water supply for 40 million people. Deep divisions between policymakers set the stage for deep uncertainty from Wyoming to Mexico, and those who use Colorado River water are hoping for some more clarity in the years to come. But with an unpredictable new president heading to the White House, they may end up with more questions than answers.

Visit the linked stories below to learn how the year unfolded.

Early disagreement

The biggest headlines of the year came early on the calendar. In March, seven states that use the Colorado River laid bare the deep divisions between them. The rules for sharing its water expire in 2026, and state leaders are under pressure to agree on new guidelines.

Instead of agreeing, they split into two camps and released competing proposals for managing water. The river is shrinking due to climate change, and states need to rein in their demand. Who exactly should cut back on their water use, though, is at the heart of their disagreement.

Shortly after the two state proposals, a group of native tribes released their ownsuggestions for managing the river. A coalition of conservation groups did the same.

Paying for conservation

Discord between the negotiators shaping the river’s future highlighted the need for farm districts and cities to get their own houses in order. Agriculture uses between 70-80% of the river’s water, and much of the pressure to conserve the river falls on farms and ranches.

From the river’s single largest water user in Southern California to tiny family farms in rural Wyoming, the federal government experimented with programs that paid farmers to use less water.

In the Imperial Valley, about two hours inland from San Diego, the farm district inked a deal to take more than $500 million from the Inflation Reduction Act. In exchange, the area’s farmers would leave some water in the nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead.

A ditch runs dry through Leslie Hagenstein’s fields near Pinedale, Wyo. on Mar. 27, 2024. Through the federally-funded System Conservation Pilot Program, she was able to make 13 times more than she would have by leasing her fields out to grow hay. CREDIT: ALEX HAGER/KUNC

Meanwhile, a smaller program in the Colorado River’s Upper Basin states – Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico did something similar. It paid farmers and ranchers to cut back on water use, but some policy analysts say the program lacks a clear plan for the future.

Cities prepare for a drier future

Cities and suburbs, especially in the driest parts of the Colorado River Basin, are taking matters into their own hands. In an effort to buy some certainty against a future that might see their water allocations get smaller, municipal leaders in Arizona chipped away at multibillion-dollar engineering projects to stretch out their existing water supplies.

In the Phoenix area, cities large and small worked towards a dam expansion that would help them capture more snowmelt from mountains to the north. Some made progress on “water recycling” facilities that can clean up sewage and turn it back into drinking water. Similar efforts are underway in other states, too.

Canyons come back

The past few years have seen dramatically low water levels at the nation’s two largest reservoirs – Lake Mead and Lake Powell – which are both filled by the Colorado River. While that has caused concern for the water managers who want to keep taps and crop sprinklers flowing across the region, some environmental advocates are celebrating the return of habitats that had been submerged for decades.

Now that some portions of Lake Powell have been above water for more than 20 years, scientists are able to study the kind of plants and animals that are repopulating the once-underwater canyons. One study found that it’s mostly native vegetation coming back.

Mexico waits for more water

Uncertainty over the river’s future doesn’t stop at America’s border. In the Colorado River Delta, where the river once reached the sea, environmental groups have created islands of green in the middle of an otherwise barren, dusty landscape.

The Colorado River flows through El Chausse, a restoration site in northeastern Mexico, on October 26, 2024. Photo credit: Alex Hager/KUNC/Lighthawk

The future of those oases depends on negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico. In the past, they’ve designated water specifically for ecological restoration. Conservationists hope they’ll do the same again.

Looking into the past and the future

While this year’s tense negotiations generated frequent headlines about the river’s present, 2024 also provided an opportunity to see how today’s talks are influenced by the past.

A major point of contention between the rival groups of states hinged on the language of a 1922 legal agreement about sharing water. Three words written over a century ago are still shaping the nature of discussions over the river’s future.

Meanwhile, some people watching the negotiations are keeping up a steady drumbeat of calls for ambitious new engineering projects that would secure more water for the Colorado River’s future. The tantalizingly simple solution of piping water from the eastern U.S. to the West just won’t seem to go away, but water experts broadly agree that it’s impractical.

Frustration in the basin

In December, after state leaders had been entrenched in disagreement for months, many involved in Colorado River management grew frustrated. Some commentators voiced those feelings to KUNC ahead of the biggest annual occasion on the Colorado River calendar – a series of meetings in Las Vegas where the public can hear directly from top negotiators.

Water policymakers from (left to right) Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming speak on a panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas on December 5, 2024. State leaders are deeply divided on how to share the shrinking water supply, and made little progress to bridge that divide at the annual meetings. Photo credit: Alex Hager/KUNC

“I find it really frustrating to watch them just continue to bicker back and forth rather than coming up with any realistic solutions for the problems that we’re facing,” said Teal Lehto, an environmental activist who goes by WesternWaterGirl on social media.

A Las Vegas showdown

At those meetings in Las Vegas, states made little progress in their negotiations, still mostly sticking to the same points they unveiled in their march proposals. States shared stern words and talked of compromise, but struggled to find common ground.

Awaiting change in the White House

As the year comes to a close, Donald Trump’s return to the White House poses a big question mark for those with a stake in the Colorado River. State negotiators say they do not expect the administration change to shake up their talks, pointing to a pattern of previous presidents leaving water management work mostly to technical experts.

At the same time, some water users worry that Trump may cut spending for water-saving programs that have helped boost the nation’s largest reservoirs during the past few years. Without the federal spending that was set aside by the Inflation Reduction Act, water managers may be forced to come up with new water conservation strategies in 2025.

#Colorado Parks and Wildlife to award $1.1 million to projects that restore wetland habitat for waterfowl and at-risk species: Application deadline February 10, 2025

Photo credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website (Joey Livingston):

December 23, 2024

DENVER — Colorado Parks and Wildlife is seeking applications for wetland and riparian restoration, enhancement and creation projects to support the Wetlands for Wildlife Program.

This year, CPW will award over $1.1 million in funds from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) and Colorado Waterfowl Stamps to projects in Colorado that support the Wetlands Program Strategic Plan’s two main goals:

Improve the distribution and abundance of ducks, and opportunities for public waterfowl hunting. Applications supporting this goal should seek to improve fall/winter habitat on property open for public hunting (or refuge areas within properties open for public hunting) or improve breeding habitat in important production areas (including North Park and the San Luis Valley in Colorado, and other areas contributing ducks to the fall flight in Colorado).

Improve the status of declining or at-risk species. Applications supporting this goal should seek to clearly address habitat needs of these species. See the identified threats, recommended conservation actions, and progress to date for these species in the Colorado State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) Conservation Dashboards.

Wetlands for Wildlife application guidance and instruction is available at: cpw.state.co.us/wetlands-wildlife-grants. The application deadline is Monday, Feb. 10.

About the program
The Colorado Wetlands for Wildlife Program is a voluntary, collaborative and incentive-based program to restore, enhance and create wetlands and riparian areas in Colorado. Funds are allocated annually to the program and projects are recommended for funding by a CPW committee with final approval by the Director.

“Wetlands are so important,” said CPW Wetlands Program Coordinator Brian Sullivan. “They comprise less than two percent of Colorado’s landscape, but provide benefits to over 75 percent of the species in the state, including waterfowl and several declining species. Since the beginning of major settlement activities, Colorado has lost half of its wetlands.”

Since its inception in 1997, the Colorado Wetlands Program and its partners has preserved, restored, enhanced or created more than 220,000 acres of wetlands and adjacent habitat and more than 200 miles of streams. The partnership is responsible for more than $40 million in total funding devoted to wetland and riparian preservation in Colorado.

Swim class on the San Juan River. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Permafrost is thawing across Boreal and Arctic lands, causing old carbon stored in soil or sediment to be released to the atmosphere as CO2 or CH4 — Dr. Merritt Rae Turetsky (‪@queenofpeat.bsky.social‬)

Permafrost is thawing across Boreal and Arctic lands, causing old carbon stored in soil or sediment to be released to the atmosphere as CO2 or CH4. A lot of these emissions occur in winter because post-thaw soils can become too wet to freeze, like this thaw bog in northwestern Canada.
— Dr. Merritt Rae Turetsky (@queenofpeat.bsky.social) 2024-12-30T18:03:39.848Z

2024 – 2025: Look back, look ahead — @AlamosaCitizen

On Sunday, Dec. 29, the daytime high of 57 degrees in Alamosa established a new record for the date, making December 2024 one of the warmest Decembers this century. | Credit: The Citizen

Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website:

December 30. 2024

A mild December caps a year of unusual weather for Alamosa and the greater San Luis Valley. Or maybe it’s just the new normal in a century of changing climates and chaotic weather patterns.

The month of December brought 10 different 50-degree weather days, and an average temperature of 45 degrees – or 10 degrees above what’s been historically normal, according to figures from the National Weather Service.

On Sunday, Dec. 29, the daytime high of 57 degrees in Alamosa established a new record for the date, making December 2024 one of the warmest Decembers this century.

The summer and late fall were strange as well this year. Between May and August, the Valley floor received 6.14 inches of rain, making it one of the wettest four-month periods on record this century.

For perspective, the San Luis Valley typically experiences 7 inches of total precipitation and around 30 inches of measurable snow each year. In 2024, Alamosa experienced 11.36 inches of precipitation and 37 inches of snow.

Those late spring and summer rains came off a record amount of total snow in March when 14.5 inches fell, way above the 4 inches of snow that is typical for the month. Indeed, 2024 was a strange, wet weather year.

Yet, the Upper Rio Grande Basin continues to struggle and local irrigators remain under state pressure to reduce their groundwater pumping and retire more fields. In August alarm bells went off for water managers when readings of the unconfined aquifer storage levels shockingly showed the critical aquifer near its lowest measurable point.

“You’re always under pressure and the sense of urgency is always there,” said Cleave Simpson of the stress farmers and ranchers in the San Luis Valley face to recover the ailing aquifers of the Rio Grande. He works as general manager for the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and represents the Valley and most of southwestern Colorado as a state senator.

In his role as state legislator, Simpson sponsored legislation that resulted in $30 million committed to pay Valley irrigators to retire more groundwater wells to reduce their groundwater pumping. Over the past dozen years, payments made to either temporarily or permanently fallow agricultural fields and reduce the amount of groundwater pumped in the Valley have totaled $100 million, according to figures Simpson cited on this episode of The Valley Pod.

The podcast episode with Simpson looks back on the century and how the new millennium, now 25 years in, has been dominated by the effects of climate change.

“From climate, in particular, 2002 was this critical moment in time for us. That’s when the whole paradigm shifted for the San Luis Valley and Colorado and really the western U.S.,” said Simpson. “That was the worst drought in our recorded history. The Rio Grande had never seen those kinds of diminished flows, ever, since we started recording it.

“It’s basically since 2002 till today, that’s 22 years of this drying, this no snow pack, this change in how runoff occurs, and the timing and the volumes.”

Simpson and others who closely follow the weather patterns of the San Luis Valley say it’s no longer drought but aridification settling into the soil that the Valley will wrestle with as the 21st century proceeds.

We’ll see now what 2025 has in store.

Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868

Our imperiled public lands: President-elect Trump, a Republican-dominated Congress and #Utah launch an all-out assault on environmental protection — Jonathan P. Thompson (High Country News)

*Welcome to the Landline, a monthly newsletter from* High Country News about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States. *Sign up to get it in your inbox.* Screenshot from the High Country News website.

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

December 26, 2024

In mid-November, 10 days after 77 million of our fellow Americans chose Donald J. Trump to be their next president, I found myself at the old Navajo Bridge, which spans Marble Canyon and the Colorado River downstream from Lees Ferry in northern Arizona. I got out of my car, stretched and ambled toward the pedestrian bridge, which mirrors the newer one for automobiles.

As I reached the bridge, I noticed some onlookers looking intently downstream with binoculars. I followed their gaze to see a trio of giant, bald-headed, feathered creatures perched on the steel beams of the automobile bridge, looking a bit like the flying monkeys in the old Wizard of Oz film. They were California condors, maybe 10 in all, apparently waiting for an afternoon carrion snack to float by on the slow-moving emerald waters far below.

I wandered back and forth on the bridge for the next hour or so, stopping frequently to snap another photo, meditate vertiginously on the river and limestone cliffs or to gaze again in awe at the magnificent, uncanny creatures. Politics and the election results became irrelevant, at least for a moment, and it was with a newfound sense of serenity that I finally got back into the car and headed north.

Condors 6Y and 2A (I’m sure they have their own, more interesting names, but …) at the Navajo Bridge. According to condorspotter.com, 6Y is a male born in March 2019 at the Oregon Zoo. And 2A is a female hatched at the World Center for Birds of Prey in May 2021. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

My mental calm was quickly shattered, however, as news trickled out about Trump’s Cabinet picks and plans. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are entering a perilous political era in which the federal government’s role is fundamentally altered. This includes a multi-pronged assault on our public lands and the rules, regulations, laws and agencies designed to protect them. Those condors on the Colorado River could be among the many victims.

Judging from the record of Trump’s first term, his campaign platform, his Cabinet picks so far and Project 2025, the right wing’s “presidential playbook,” it’s clear that he will once again attempt to dismantle the administrative state — and he’ll likely be better at it this time. The destruction will include gutting federal agencies, replacing experienced staffers with Trump loyalists and eviscerating protections for human health and the environment. The goal is to shrink the government, slash spending on safety nets and social programs to fund more tax cuts for the wealthy, and (of course) remove regulatory barriers standing in the way of ever-growing corporate profits. With the likes of Elon Musk buying his way into the administration, it promises to be a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires.

Trump actually summed up this ethos better than I ever could in a social media post, when he vowed to give anyone who invested at least $1 billion “in the United States of America … fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” He seemed to be responding to global mining corporation Rio Tinto, which is behind the proposed Resolution Copper Mine at Oak Flat in Arizona, urging the new administration to weaken environmental laws and expedite permitting for big mines.

During his first term, Trump made his hostility toward public lands clear as he reduced national monuments and rolled back regulations on fossil fuel extraction. This time, he promises a repeat performance, backed by a GOP-dominated Congress, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court and an army of professional ideologues who have been eagerly preparing for this moment for the last four years.

We can expect him to try to shrink or entirely rescind national monuments — particularly Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon — potentially reopening hundreds of thousands of acres of uranium-rich lands to new mining claims during a time when the domestic uranium industry is experiencing a revival.

He will likely reward petroleum companies for donating generously to his campaign by implementing his “drill baby drill” policies. He’ll open up more public land to oil and gas leasing, including in the Alaskan Arctic, and rescind drilling bans on Thompson Divide in western Colorado and around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. He’ll roll back new EPA rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gas and mercury pollution from coal power plants.

If Trump’s hunger for “energy dominance” and corporate freedom don’t come for your public lands, the “Cult of Efficiency” probably will. Musk donated $277 million to Trump’s campaign. In return, he has been chosen to co-chair the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he has vowed to slash some $2 trillion in allegedly “wasteful” spending.

What this will actually mean remains unclear. But Trump’s suggestion that he may try to privatize the U.S. Postal Service because it’s not “profitable” and must be “subsidized” gives a good indication of what Musk’s quasi-department will be targeting. The USPS is designed to provide a public good, not a profit, and its priorities are fulfilling that mission, not maximizing efficiency. After all, how could delivering a letter to some remote rural backwater for some 50 cents ever be efficient?

And if the USPS is a problem, then what about public lands and the agencies that manage them? Sure, they provide ecological benefits, stewardship of and free access to millions of acres of stunning landscapes, wildlife habitat and so much more. And yet, they are “subsidized” to the tune of tens of billions of dollars each year, making them ripe for Musk’s chopping block. Utah, with the support of other conservative states, has offered to make Musk’s job easier with a lawsuit seeking to seize control of the “unappropriated” federal land in its midst. Because those states can’t afford to manage those lands at a loss, they would almost certainly sell them off to private interests.

And what about those condors? For years, industry and conservative politicians have tried to weaken the Endangered Species Act because it stood in the way of development and profits. Project 2025 calls for an escalation of these efforts, which now have more support in Congress — and from the efficiency cult.

The federal government has spent at least $35 million so far on the California condor program. It’s an effort that has so far paid off by helping to bring the species back from the brink of extinction; the wild population is up to almost 600 from an 1980s low of just 22 birds. Public goods such as species restoration simply don’t fit into narrow Musk’s profit-focused vision. And the condor remains fragile, threatened by lead poisoning, power lines, wind turbines and avian influenza, and it is not yet self-sustaining.

In the weeks since the election, I’ve seen a number of pundits, politicians and even advocates calling on land, water and air defenders to take a more conciliatory approach, to forge alliances with oil and gas companies, to abandon calls to “keep it in the ground,” to work with Republicans to speed up permitting reform in order to expedite renewable energy development, even if it does mean more fossil fuel development as well. Yet if ever there was a time not to give in, this is it. America’s public lands are under unprecedented attack from nearly every front. Now we need to be even more vigilant and fierce in our defense of it. [ed. emphasis mine]

Out on that bridge, something compelled me to hang my body a little too far over the rail so I could gaze straight through the empty space toward the river. My vertigo was overcome by the thrill of seeing, just below me on a steel girder, a juvenile condor, its pink beak jutting from a thatch of dark brown feathers. That, I thought, is certainly worth fighting for.

Condors perched on steel girders some 450 feet above the Colorado River. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Youth Climate Activists Get Major Win in #Montana Supreme Court — The New York Times #ActOnClimate

Youth plaintiffs walking and chatting outside the courthouse summer 2023. Photo credit: Robin Loznak via Youth v. Gov

Click the link to read the article on The New York Times website (Karen Zraick). Here’s an excerpt:

December 18, 2024

The court agreed that the state’s energy policies violated Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean environment.

The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a landmark victory for youth climate activists, affirming a decision by a lower court last year that the state’s energy policies violated their constitutional rights to a clean environment. Many of the 16 young people who brought the case, Held v. Montana, testified during the trial about the extreme weather they had witnessed in their home state, which is a major player in oil, gas and coal. They argued that a state law barring consideration of climate in setting energy policy was unconstitutional. The burning of fossil fuels produces the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the world. Rikki Held, 23, the named plaintiff in the case, was among those who testified. On Wednesday, she hailed the court’s decision. “This ruling is a victory not just for us, but for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change,” she said…

The plaintiffs were represented by lawyers from the nonprofits Our Children’s Trust and Western Environmental Law Center. Nate Bellinger, the activists’ lead counsel, said the decision showed that “the future of our children cannot be sacrificed for fossil fuel interests.”

[…]

Patrick Parenteau, professor of law emeritus and senior fellow for climate policy at the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said that Montana was among a handful of states with environmental provisions in its constitution, and perhaps has the strongest of them. He said he expected to see similar lawsuits filed in other states now. Mr. Parenteau said the strong language in the opinion last year by Judge Kathy Seeley of Montana District Court had cleared the path for the decision to be upheld. Because the matter is squarely within the bounds of state law, he added, he did not see a pathway to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

“It’s a landmark because it’s the first court in the U.S. to recognize a constitutional right to a stable climate,” he said. But it could run up against political realities, as the fossil fuel industry continues to receive strong support from state officials.

Genetically unique cutthroat trout rescued from 2016 wildfire are found to be reproducing in new SE Region streams — #Colorado Parks & Wildlife #ArkansasRiver

Hayden Creek cutthroat trout. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Parks & Wildlife website (Bill Vogrin):

December 17, 2024

CPW biologists hopeful as genetically unique cutthroat trout rescued from 2016 wildfire are found to be reproducing in SE Region streams

COALDALE, Colo. – Eight years after wildfire and flashfloods threatened to wipe out a genetically unique cutthroat trout from tiny Hayden Creek, Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists are finding hopeful signs that their efforts to save the fish are succeeding.

Recent surveys of creeks where CPW has reintroduced the unique trout found evidence they are surviving multiple years – a huge milestone in any wildlife restoration project. Even more important, CPW biologists are finding newly hatched Hayden Creek cutthroat (HCC), meaning they are naturally reproducing in some streams and thriving.

“This is very exciting news for these fish and for the agency, considering the odds they faced back in 2016,” said Paul Foutz, senior aquatic biologist for CPW’s Southeast Region.

In July 2016, as a wildfire raged on Hayden Pass south of Coaldale, a small army of CPW aquatic biologists, hatchery staff, and U.S. Forest Service personnel donned fire-resistant suits, strapped on heavy electro-shocking backpacks, carried oxygen bottles, nets and water tanks and headed behind fire lines to pull off a daring rescue of a rare cutthroat trout from the south fork of Hayden Creek.

The dramatic effort was undertaken because massive wildfires like the Hayden Creek Fire, which charred 16,754 acres that summer, often produce ash and debris that wash into creeks and rivers, ruining water quality, choking off aquatic life and destroying habitat.

That day in 2016, CPW biologists found and removed 194 of the rare HCC trout, before the team returned to safety outside the fire zone. And their worst fears about the creek quickly came true when runoff from later rains overwhelmed Hayden Creek with a thick, black sludge that ultimately poured into the Arkansas River, damaging fish and habitat for miles in that waterway.

After the fire, surveys of Hayden Creek found no fish remained.

The only known survivors were 158 of the rare fish rescued by CPW staff and placed in an isolation unit at the Roaring Judy Hatchery near Gunnison. The other 36 had been released in nearby Newlin Creek, in the Wet Mountains about 10 miles southwest of Florence, in hopes they would survive in the wild.

Almost immediately, CPW aquatic biologists began the urgent task of finding new homes out on the landscape for the Hayden Creek cutthroat. The staff at Roaring Judy planned to keep the survivors as a brood stock and spawn new generations each spring. But they couldn’t all live in the hatchery.

So similar sized creeks within the Arkansas River drainage were scouted. Biologists wanted creeks that were comparable in size and habitat characteristics offering year-round flow and that were remote enough to protect the prized HCC trout from human interference.

The first creek deemed suitable was Newlin, where 36 were released during the fire. In October 2017, a team of 20 aquatic biologists, other staff and volunteers from CPW and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) fanned out across the five drainages that make up Newlin Creek, which twists and turns through thick brush and rock in the rugged foothills.

The biologists split into six teams and bushwhacked up and down six miles, give or take, of the remote upper reaches of Newlin Creek, following the creek’s main stem and four branches. They snaked along treacherous cliffs, through jumbles of huge boulders and under fallen trees between Locke and Stull mountains.

The teams hiked for hours as the sun turned the day into short-sleeve weather, taxing some of the crew clad in rubber wading outfits and lugging 30-pound electrofishing units on their backs.

Anywhere that trickles of water pooled enough to offer fish habitat, the CPW/USFS teams stopped and probed the pools with their electrofishing units in hopes of catching a few of the 36 fish that were released during the fire.

They repeated the process dozens of times as they thrashed through the brush, scrambled over rocks, under felled trees and past caves and piles of bones from predator kills. At the end of a 10-hour marathon fish survey, the results were clear: none of the 36 HCC trout had survived.

But that day of scouting convinced the CPW team that Newlin Creek could serve as the new home for HCC trout spawned at Roaring Judy.

Biologists began the painstaking task of reclaiming Newlin of any existing fish that might compete with the HCC trout. Only then could stocking begin.

The work climaxed Oct. 24, 2018, when 900 HCC trout, each about 2 inches long, were carried in bags by CPW staff up Newlin Creek and released.

The restoration effort eventually expanded to 13 other streams across the Arkansas Drainage. Spreading them across the region makes them less vulnerable to extinction due to an isolated catastrophic fire or flood event.

Since that first stocking in 2018, more than 8,000 HCC trout have been released in Newlin along a 1.5-mile stretch of water. After years of observing survival of the HCC trout in Newlin, CPW biologists documented evidence of natural reproduction in surveying the creek in 2024.

On July 20, 2016, a team of Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic biologists and staff assembled and enter an active fire zone during the Hayden Pass Wildlife to rescue genetically unique cutthroat trout from the south prong of Hayden Creek. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife

The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District approves 2025 budget — The #PagosaSprings Sun

The springs for which Pagosa Springs was named, photographed in 1874. By Timothy H. O. Sullivan – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17428006

Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:

December 26, 2024

Drops wastewater rate increase from 30 percent to 10 percent

At a Dec. 20 special meeting, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors approved the district’s 2025 budget…The 2025 budget includes $1,345,822 in revenues for the PAWSD general fund, primarily from property taxes, and $1,647,189 in expenditures, a 20 percent increase from 2024…The budget indicates that legal and professional spending, as well as spending on maintenance and computer support and upgrades, are anticipated to increase in 2025…

The general fund balance at the end of 2025 is projected to be $1,448,928, down 17 percent from the end of 2024…The PAWSD water enterprise fund is projected to receive $33,450,308 in revenues, including $5,609,336 in service charge revenue, $1 million in capital investment fee (CIF) and raw water acquisition fee revenue, and $25.2 million in loan proceeds, which will be used for the continued construction of the Snowball Water Treatment Plant expansion. Overall, revenues for the fund are projected to rise 5 percent from 2024. Expenditures for the fund are budgeted at $35,934,411, an 18 per-cent increase from 2024

Beautiful Bears Ears is at risk, again — Jonathan P. Thompson (High Country News)

Valley of the Gods and Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

November 22, 2024

This story was originally published by The Land Desk and is republished here by permission.

On a mid-November evening I stood on a gravelly plain, shivering in the wind as clouds dangled their wispy fingers of snow onto Cedar Mesa to the north of me. The long sunset finally fizzled into darkness and I watched for the one-day-past-full moon to rise over the Valley of the Gods. But the dark horizon never yielded the anticipated orb. Instead, I was treated to evanescent shards of orangish light escaping through cracks in the clouds.

I was in southeastern Utah on a nearly flat expanse of scrub-covered limestone some 1,200 feet above the winding and silty San Juan River. I was also just barely inside the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument. At least for now. But the national monument protections on my little dispersed campsite, along with a good portion of the landscape I looked out upon, will likely go away shortly after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year.

Last week the New York Times reported that Trump will again shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments back to the diminished boundaries he established in 2017. The 1.36-million-acre Bears Ears — which President Joe Biden restored in 2021 — will become a 200,000 acre national monument divided into two discrete units. Left out will be Valley of the Gods, Cedar Mesa, the Goosenecks of the San Juan, the White Canyon and Dark Canyon regions, and portions of Butler and Cottonwood Washes.

Raplee Ridge in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

The act is likely illegal, since the Antiquities Act only gives presidents the power to establish national monuments, not shrink or eliminate them. And it will revive lawsuits still pending since Trump’s previous shrinkage. But while the legal challenges wend their ways through the courts, Trump’s shrinkage will take hold (barring a court injunction). The draft management plan that federal officials and tribal representatives have worked on for years will be rendered obsolete before it’s even approved, and about 1.2 million acres of public land will be re-opened to new mining claims and oil and gas and coal leasing.

There are the conservation consequences to think of, which I’ll get to, but more importantly is the symbolic significance. Bears Ears was originally proposed and conceived of and pushed by five sovereign tribal nations — with the backing of another two dozen tribes — who were looking to protect lands that had been stolen from them and put into the “public domain.” Representatives from those tribes had a hand in crafting the new management plan, which uniquely incorporates Indigenous knowledge into decision-making.

By overturning the national monument, Trump is thumbing his noses at those same tribal nations, essentially telling them that their efforts and ties to this land are meaningless. As I stood out there dissolving into the darkness, a question arose: Why? Why the hell would a Manhattan real estate developer and reality show personality, who probably had never set foot on the West’s public lands, make such a cruel and thoughtless gesture? What was he hoping to achieve?

I’ve posited potential motives for the initial shrinkage. Trump wanted to curry favor with the powerful Sen. Orrin Hatch, of Utah, so he could gut Obamacare and get tax cuts for the wealthy through Congress. He wanted to help out his friends in the uranium mining and oil and gas industries. He wanted to repay Utah voters for abandoning their principles and voting for him.

Snow virgas over Cedar Mesa. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

But the oil and gas industry isn’t exactly champing at the bit to drill in the Bears Ears area. There are many other more accessible and profitable places to chase hydrocarbons. And in 2017 the domestic uranium mining industry was virtually nonexistent, and its 200 or so employees hardly made for a significant voting bloc. Mark Chalmers and Curtis Moore, the CEO and VP of Energy Fuels, probably the most viable uranium mining and milling company out there, didn’t even donate to any of Trump’s presidential campaigns.

It really seems that Trump diminished Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments for no other reason than to dismantle the environmental legacies of his rivals and predecessors, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And given his cabinet picks so far, Trump is planning on more of the same in his second term. He “governs” out of greed and self-interest, first, followed closely by spite — aimed at liberals, his political rivals, and Republicans who don’t show enough fealty to him.

The expected shrinkage won’t have an immediate impact on the landscape where the protections are lifted, which will simply revert back to federal land managed under the multiple-use mandate. Come Jan. 20, there will not be a battalion of drilling rigs marching upon the weird formations of Valley of the Gods or mines opening up in White Canyon’s cliffs.

Yet there will be longer term consequences. All of the debate and back and forth over the national monument has attracted more visitors to the general area, and that has brought more impacts. Taking away national monument status from most of those lands will not reduce visitation, but it will take away resources for and opportunities to manage their impacts. The Trump-era management plan, which was hardly a plan at all and replaced the tribal commission with a bunch of monument opponents, will remain in place, rendering what’s left of the national monument almost meaningless.

After Trump’s first shrinkage, speculators and would-be mining firms staked a handful of claims in lands that had been taken out of Bears Ears national monument. That was when the uranium industry was moribund. Now, higher prices, a renewed interest in nuclear power, and a ban on enriched reactor fuel from Russia has given the industry new life. While uranium production remains minimal, exploration has kicked up significantly, including in lands just outside the Bears Ears boundary. This time around we’re likely to see not only mining claims being staked soon after the shrinkage in places like White Canyon and Cottonwood Creek, but also exploratory drilling. Even if companies don’t have any short-term interest in mining in the area, the drilling can help them establish the claims’ validity, thereby increasing the likelihood that the right to mine those parcels would be locked in if a future administration or the courts were to restore Bears Ears.

Plus, the shrinkage will make the land removed from the national monument more vulnerable to Utah’s attempt to seize control of all “unappropriated” public lands within the state’s boundaries.

Just as night became complete, the moon emerged from behind the clouds and cast a pale light over everything. At the same time, I saw my friends’ truck’s headlights bouncing up the road, so I trudged through the cold to guide them to the campsite. We laughed and talked and played music. One was still reeling from the shock of the presidential election’s outcome, the other, who works with rural communities across the West, had seen Trump’s victory as almost inevitable.

Eventually, I snuggled up in my sleeping bag in my little tent and emerged more than ten hours later, just as the moon was getting ready to set and the sun prepared to rise over the corner of the Carrizo Mountains along the New Mexico-Arizona border. The landscape around me slowly revealed itself as if awakening from slumber. Later, under the almost harsh blue sky, my friends and I made our way almost aimlessly across the scrub-covered plain, trying to avoid the Russian thistle that had proliferated after more than a century of cattle grazing and following the erratic cow paths when we encountered them.

At one point we heard the report of what sounded like a semi-automatic firearm being shot in the distance. It wasn’t a hunter, I’m sure of that. More likely a recreational shooter looking to waste some ammo before the proposed shooting ban goes into effect — though now it’s not likely to. Maybe they were targeting cans, or petroglyphs, or a desert-varnish-covered boulder or grazing cattle. I involuntarily flinched at each bang.

Sunset in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

I walked with gratitude for the beauty all around and the freedom to wander through it. I walked with sadness, too, and anger at those who would try to reduce this place, this living landscape, to a pawn in their petty and vindictive game, and who would try to open it back up to corporations looking to wring every last particle of profit from it. But I also found hope in the knowledge that powerful tribal nations, land protectors and nonprofits will continue their fight to protect this land and challenge the spiteful attempts to diminish this place.

We came to the edge of the San Juan River gorge and dropped into it, following a path forged by gold prospectors back during the “Bluff Excitement” of the early 1890s, when folks thought they could get rich by scouring the San Juan River’s banks for flakes of gold. The gold rush fizzled before it got started, but the trail endures. After reaching its terminus, we stopped our banter and sat quietly and listened to the silty waters gurgle by slowly and watched a red tail hawk frolic reassuringly in the updrafts far above. The future is uncertain, but this much I know: Beauty will persist regardless of who occupies the White House.

Congress approves 7-year extension of endangered fish recovery programs in #Colorado and other Western states — The #GlenwoodSprings Post Independent

The threatened Humpback Chub is one of four fish species that programs in Colorado and other Western states have been working to recover for nearly three decades. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/ Courtesy Photo

Click the link to read the article on the Glenwood Springs Post Independent website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:

December 20, 2024

For nearly three decades, Colorado and other Western states have been working to recover several species of endangered fish in the Colorado and San Juan river basins. Congress last week approved a bill that will renew the program’s federal funding for seven more years. The bill was included in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which is heading to President Joe Biden’s desk. Sens. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, sponsored the fish recovery program’s reauthorization act. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., sponsored the bill in the House.

“Local communities, Tribes, water users, and Congress — we’re all in to protect our native fish and rivers,” Hickenlooper stated in a news release. “These programs are tried and true. Our extension will help continue them to save our fish and make our rivers healthier.”

Federal authorization for the two fish recovery programs — the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming as well as the San Juan Recovery Implementation Program in Colorado and New Mexico — expired this September. The reauthorization act, however, will extend the programs through 2031, authorizing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to contribute up to $92 million in the next seven years. The bill also adds up to $50 million for capital projects that support infrastructure improvements to recover the threatened and endangered species…The annual operating costs for the programs were historically funded by Colorado River Storage Project hydropower revenues, which have diminished over time due to drought, declining reservoir storage, increased costs and more, according to a September Colorado Water Conservation board memo. This has required the federal and state appropriations and contributions to increase to cover costs, it adds. The fish recovery programs also rely on in-kind contributions and funding from other partners. Both programs have sought to recover populations of four species — the humpback chub, razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow and bonytail fish — in these basins. When the Upper Colorado and San Juan programs were established in 1988 and 1992, all four species faced extinction, but they have seen some success.

Congress passes mining cleanup bill, at last — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

The Gold King Mine’s level 7 adit and waste rock dump, boarding house, and other associated structures, circa 1906. Via the Land Desk

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

December 13, 2024

⛏️Mining Monitor ⛏️

The News: After decades of trying, Congress finally passed a “good samaritan” mine remediation bill that could help nonprofits and other non-governmental organizations clean up abandoned mining sites.

The Context: In 1994, the state of Colorado, with the help of Bill Simon and other volunteers, launched the Animas River Stakeholders Group to study and address abandoned mines in the upper Animas River watershed. It would be a collaborative approach — without heavy-handed regulations or the dreaded Superfund designation. “We figured we could empower the people in the community to do the job without top-down management,” Simon told me back in 2016. “Giving the power to the people develops stewardship for the resource, and that’s particularly useful in this day and age.”

Their task was a monumental one: The US Geological Survey has catalogued some 5,400 mine shafts, adits, tunnels, and prospects in the upper Animas watershed. Nearly 400 of them were found to have some impact on water quality, about 60 of which were major polluters, contributing about 90% of the mining-related heavy metal loading in streams. Dozens of abandoned mine adits collectively oozed more than 436,000 pounds of aluminum, cadmium, copper, iron, and zinc into the watershed each year, with waste rock and tailings piles contributing another 80,000 pounds annually.1

The upper Animas isn’t unusual in this respect. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report estimated that there are more than 500,000 abandoned mining-related sites and features across the Western United States. While most of those are hardly noticeable and have little effect on the environment, at least 100,000 of them were found to pose physical or environmental hazards.

Those hazards range from open mine shafts (that can swallow up an unsuspecting human or animal), to contaminated tailings or waste rock piles, to the big one: mine adits discharging heavy metal-laden acid mine drainage into streams. Federal and state programs exist to address some of these hazards. But the sheer number of problematic sites, and the fact that many are on private lands, makes it impossible for these agencies to remediate every abandoned mining site.

So, for the last few decades, nonprofits and collaborative working groups like the Animas River Stakeholders have taken up some of the slack. With funding from federal and state grants and mining companies, the Stakeholders removed and capped mine waste dumps, diverted runoff around dumps (and in some cases around mines), used passive water treatment methods on acidic streams, and revegetated mining-impacted areas.

This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5, 2015. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]

But the most pernicious polluters — the draining adits — were off limits. The volunteer groups couldn’t touch them, because to do so would require a water discharge permit under the Clean Water Act, and that would make the Stakeholders liable for any water that continues to drain from the mine, and if anything went wrong. In other words, if some volunteers were trying to remediate the drainage from a mine, and it blew out Gold King-style, the volunteers would be responsible for the damage it inflicted — which could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

For the last 25 years, the Animas River Stakeholders2, Trout Unlimited, other advocacy groups, and Western lawmakers have pushed for “good samaritan” legislation that would allow third parties to address draining mines without taking on all of the liability. Despite bipartisan support, however, the bills struggled and ultimately perished.

That’s in part due to concerns that bad actors might use the exemptions to shirk liability for mining a historic site. Or that industry-friendly EPA administrators might consider mining companies to be good samaritans. And back in 2015 Earthworks pointed out that good samaritan legislation wouldn’t address the big problem: A lack of funding to pay the estimated $50 billion cleanup bill. So if a volunteer group did trigger a Gold King-like disaster, the taxpayers would likely end up footing the bill.

But last year, Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, and 39 co-sponsors from both parties introduced the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act, tightened up to alleviate most concerns. It passed the Senate in July of this year, and was sent to the House, where it also received support from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Assuming President Biden signs it into law, the new act will open the door to more cleanups — but in a limited way. To begin with, the bill only authorizes 15 pilot projects nationwide, which will be determined via an application process. The proponents will receive special good samaritan cleanup permits and must follow a rigorous set of criteria. No mining activities will be allowed to occur in concert with a good samaritan cleanup. However, reprocessing of historic waste rock or tailings may be allowed, but only in sites on federal land, and only if all of the proceeds are used to defray remediation costs or are added to a good samaritan fund established by the act.

Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, opposed the bill nonetheless, saying it compromises federal environmental law and “opens the floodgates for bad actors to take advantage of Superfund liability shields and loopholes.” He added that it would give the incoming Trump administration “unilateral power to decide which entities are good samaritans and which are not.”

This isn’t, however, a blanket loophole, it only applies to 15 projects — at least for now. While that limits the damage that could be done by bad actors abusing the liability shields, it also limits the benefits: Fifteen projects isn’t going to go very far in addressing the 100,000 or so hazardous mine sites. The Animas River watershed may not benefit at all, since the 48 sites in the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site are not eligible for good samaritan remediation.

Still, the law will open the door for a handful of projects that could improve water quality in some watersheds. The challenge now is figuring out how to address draining mines in an economically feasible fashion. Simply plugging, or bulkheading, the mine adits often isn’t effective, because the contaminated water ends up coming out somewhere else. And treating the draining water is an expensive, and never-ending, process.

The good news is that some funding was made available via the Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction laws passed during the last four years, and just this week the Biden administration gave mining cleanup a boost this week by offering states $3.7 million in grants to inventory, assess, and remediate abandoned hardrock mines.

The bad news is that the legislation that’s really needed — genuine and substantial mining law reform — probably is on hold for at least the next four years.

Primer: Acid Mine Drainage Jonathan P. Thompson

Dec 13, 2024

Bonita Mine acid mine drainage. Photo via the Animas River Stakeholders Group.

Acid mine drainage may be the perfect poison. It kills fish. It kills bugs. It kills the birds that eat the bugs that live in streams tainted by the drainage. It lasts forever. And to create it, one needs no factory, lab, or added chemicals. One merely needs to dig a hole in the earth. Read full story

Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson

***

In other mining news, the Biden administration this week halted new mining claims and mineral leasing for the next two years on 165,000 acres in the upper Pecos River watershed west of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The “segregation,” as the action is called, is designed to allow the Interior Department to determine whether to ban mining and drilling in the area for the next 20 years.

Included within the acreage are more than 200 active mining claims held by Comexico LLC, a subsidiary of Australia-based New World Resources. For the past several years, Comexico has been working its way through the permitting process to do exploratory drilling at what it calls its Tererro mining project. It has met with stiff resistance from locals and regional advocacy groups, partly because mining has a dark history in the Pecos River watershed. In 1991, a big spring runoff washed contaminated mine and mill waste from a long-defunct mine into the upper Pecos River, killing as many as 100,000 trout. That prompted a multi-year cleanup of various mining sites.

But the withdrawal won’t stop the project outright, because it doesn’t affect existing, active, valid claims. Yet it can keep the company from staking more claims and may make it harder to develop the existing ones (especially if they haven’t established validity).

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

The federal government has started quantifying the economic contributions of outdoor recreation. It should come as no surprise that it is a big one in many Western states, as this map shows:

What was a bit more of a surprise to me is how it broke down into categories.

📸 (Not Quite) Parting Shot 🎞️

The old Buick at Cow Canyon Trading Post and Cafe in Bluff, Utah, my favorite place to stop and get caffeinated and breakfast burrito’d in Canyon Country. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

1 These figures did not include the recently closed Sunnyside Mine/American Tunnel or the Gold King, since both were permitted mines at the time, meaning they weren’t abandoned.

2 The ARSG disbanded after much of the watershed was designated a Superfund site.

#Drought news December 26, 2024: Since the beginning of October, precipitation has generally averaged below normal across the Central Rockies, Great Basin, Southwest, and southern #California

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

US Drought Monitor map December 24, 2024.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

A swath of precipitation (0.5 to 1.5 inches) this past week led to small improvements from parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas northeastward to the Central Appalachians. Since the major drought that affected the Central Appalachians and Upper Ohio Valley peaked in late September, drought has steadily improved across these areas the past two months. Near to above-normal precipitation during the past 30 days supported drought improvement across parts of the Northeast. Farther to the south across the Southeast, Lower Mississippi Valley, and Texas, 30 to 60-day precipitation deficits continue to increase with expanding and intensifying drought during mid to late December. December is typically a drier time of year for the Upper Midwest and Northern to Central Great Plains where little to no weekly drought change was warranted. Since the beginning of October, precipitation has generally averaged below normal across the Central Rockies, Great Basin, Southwest, and southern California. From December 17-23, enhanced onshore flow resulted in wetter-than-normal conditions across coastal northwestern California and much of the Pacific Northwest. 7-day temperatures, ending on December 23, averaged above normal throughout the West and Central to Southern Great Plains with colder-than-normal temperatures limited to the Great Lakes and Northeast…

High Plains

Based on SPIs at various time scales, low snowpack, and the NDMC short-term blend, a 1-category degradation was made to northern Colorado along with southern and northwestern Wyoming. Snow water equivalent amounts are below the 5th percentile where extreme drought (D3) was expanded in Wyoming. These same indicators justified an expansion of abnormal dryness (D0) across southwestern Colorado. Severe drought (D2) was expanded across western Nebraska due to soil moisture percentiles falling below the 10th percentile and support from the 90 to 120-day SPI…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending December 24, 2024.

West

Based on increasing water year to date (WYTD: October 1-December 23) precipitation deficits, a 1-category degradation was warranted for central Nevada. For this same reason, moderate drought (D1) was added to portions of northeastern Nevada. Elsewhere, no other changes were made. WYTD precipitation was at or above-normal for much of the Pacific Northwest and northern California and below-normal for the remainder of the West region. As of December 23, snow water equivalent (SWE) was below-normal across the Northern Rockies of Montana and Wasatch Mountains of Utah. SWE was near average for the Sierra Nevada Mountains and highly variable throughout the Cascades…

South

Based on increasing short-term precipitation deficits and 30 to 90-day SPIs, abnormal dryness (D0) and moderate drought (D1) were expanded across northern Louisiana and portions of south-central Mississippi. These same indicators along with the NDMC short-term blend supported the expansion of D1 to severe drought (D2) across portions of eastern and southern Texas. Around one inch of precipitation supported a 1-category improvement across portions of Arkansas and central to southeastern Oklahoma. Recent precipitation also led to improvement across northern Tennessee to be consistent with bordering areas of southeastern Kentucky…

Looking Ahead

During late December, multiple low pressure systems will bring heavy precipitation (rain and high-elevation snow) to the Pacific Northwest and northern California. On December 27, widespread rain with locally heavy amounts (more than 2 inches) is forecast for eastern Oklahoma, eastern Texas, and Arkansas. A slow-moving low pressure system and trailing front are forecast to bring varying precipitation amounts (0.5 to 1.5 inches) to the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast.

The Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 day outlook (valid December 30, 2024-January 3, 2025) favors above-normal temperatures across the East, Southern Great Plains, and Southwest. Near normal temperatures are favored for the Northern Great Plains, Northern Rockies, and Pacific Northwest as above-normal temperatures are forecast to moderate during this 5-day period. A pattern change is forecast during the first week of the New Year with a transition towards near or below-normal temperatures for much of the lower 48 states. Elevated above-normal precipitation probabilities are forecast for the Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. Below-normal precipitation is more likely for the southern two-thirds of California and the Southwest.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending December 24, 2024.

Cash flows to help update Blue Mesa power plant — The #Montrose Press #GunnisonRiver

Blue Mesa Dam. Photo credit: Reclamation

Click the link to read the article on The Montrose Press website (Katharynn Heidelberg). Here’s an excerpt:

December 7, 2024

Hydropower infrastructure at Blue Mesa Reservoir will see some urgent updates, with the help of money coming through the Interior Department’s Aging Infrastructure Account. The account received more than $3 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. As part of an $849 million disbursement announced by the Interior on Dec. 3, more than $32.03 million will go to replace butterfly valves at the Blue Mesa power plant and to refurbish two ring follower gates at the dam there. This funding will pay for planning, final design and implementation.

“The infrastructure at Blue Mesa dates to the facility’s original construction, with most installations made in 1963,” a Bureau of Reclamation official said via email, in response to questions. “Given a typical service life of 50 years, much of the equipment has exceeded this threshold and requires either refurbishment or replacement. Currently, funding is allocated to priority projects that address these urgent needs.”

The government further is providing $1.3 million to pave the public access road to the power plant and $650,000 to replace the electrical “bus” that transmits power from generator to transformer at the plant…According to Bureau of Reclamation information, Blue Mesa’s power plant is composed of two 30,000-kilowatt generators, driven by 41.55-horsepower turbines; each turbine operates at a maximum head of 360 feet. The plant’s generating capacity is 86,000 kilowatts…The Department of the Interior in its announcement said the money is an investment through President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, and aimed at revitalizing aging water delivery systems. The funding is gong to 77 projects overall, in several Western states, including 14 in the Colorado River Basin, totaling $118.3 million.

Survey: 23 #Colorado cities need to replace at least 20,000 lead pipes that could taint drinking water — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

Denver Water crews replacing a lead service line at 1657 Vine Street. Jan. 12, 2021. Credit: Jerd Smith

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):

December 22, 2024

A new statewide survey shows that 23 Colorado cities have aging lead water delivery pipes, roughly 20,000 of them, that could potentially taint drinking water.

Under federal rules, those cities must identify all contaminated pipes and replace them by 2037, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

But the initial survey, completed in October, also found that 170,000 additional water lines still need to be examined. Cities that have untested water delivery pipes are notifying customers of the risk and have through November of next year to finish the identification process, according to Seth Clayton, executive director of Pueblo Water.

“It took a significant effort to get the initial inventory completed,” Clayton said, “and then we sent out 22,000 letters to customers saying their service line type is unknown and could be lead. That sparks a bit of panic because of the misinformation out there. But call volumes and our customer service time is starting to decrease.”

The City of Lafayette banned lead pipes in 1959, according to Melanie Asquith, the city’s principal utility engineer. As part of the new survey, it has identified just one partial pipe that contains lead. Still, the city is notifying 770 customers who have unknown line types and plans to begin testing them early next year.

The communities on the list are: Sterling, Denver Water, Manitou Springs, Steamboat Springs, Georgetown, Grand Junction, Golden, Ft. Morgan, Englewood, Loveland, Aurora, Yampa, Flager, Lafayette, Limon, Bristol Water and Sanitation District, Pueblo Water, Eckley, Parkville Water District, Silver Plume, Greeley, Morgan County Quality Water District, Lost Valley Ranch Corp.

Lead water lines were commonly used up until the 1980s, when they were banned by the EPA. Though water entering the pipes may be clean, erosion of the aging lines causes lead to seep into the water. No levels of lead are considered safe for children and can cause serious health problems in adults, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

To help finance the testing and replacement work, this year the EPA awarded the state $32.8 million. It is part of a $2.6 billion national replacement initiative funded through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Even before the new mandate to replace all lead lines, the EPA ordered cities such as Denver to begin replacement programs because some lead had been detected in water delivered to homes, violating federal standards at the time. Denver Water has removed 30,000 lines, with another 30,000 to go, according to agency spokesman Todd Hartman.

Other cities that have never had lead levels that exceed federal standards began replacing lead lines years ago as part of routine maintenance and leak repair programs, according to Mark Ritterbush, Grand Junction’s water services manager.

“We’ve been chipping away at it over time because we knew the EPA was going to do this. There’ve been rumblings for at least a decade,” Ritterbush said.

Still, he said, the city has spent $1 million to comply with the lead pipe rules and meet the survey deadline. “We had a good foundation. But because we’re on the clock, it’s a lot to handle.”

More by Jerd Smith

Roman lead pipe — Photo via the Science Museum

The curious case of the cold in #Gunnison — Russ Schumacher (@ColoradoClimate Center)

Click the link to read the post on the Colorado Climate Center blog (Russ Schumacher):

December 22, 2024

Across Colorado, this December has been much warmer than average, a bookend to what will end up as one of the warmest years on record statewide. Except there’s one spot where December hasn’t been warm at all — very much the opposite.

On any climate map of Colorado for December 2024, Gunnison sticks out like a sore thumb. For example, here are the high temperatures from CoAgMET on Friday, December 20. Really warm for late December, including some record highs along the Front Range. But then there’s Gunnison with a high of just 22°F.

High temperatures from CoAgMET on Friday, December 20, 2024. See current data at https://coagmet.colostate.edu.

And here’s the departure from the average temperature for December through the 21st. Most of the state is 3-9°F warmer than average…and then there’s the bulls-eye of purple around Gunnison. For the week of December 15-21 it’s even more stark: almost the entire state in a deep red of warmth, with Gunnison again in a cold purple. Typically when we see maps like these, we get suspicious about problems with the data or a faulty thermometer, but this isn’t an error. Gunnison has truly been an anomaly in the state’s weather and climate this month.

Departure from normal temperature: December 1-21. Credit: High Plains Regional Climate Center

Departure from normal temperature December 15-21. Credit: High Plains Regional Climate Center

Here are a few more remarkable stats. From December 1-20, the climate station outside Gunnison has been 13 degrees colder than average. The highest temperature reported so far in December has been 26°F; there’s never before been a December without a high above freezing. (The average high at Gunnison this time of year is in the upper 20s.) And there were 15 straight nights with low temperatures below -10°F, including record lows of -26 on November 30 and -23 on December 1.

Daily high and low temperatures for late November and December 2024 at Gunnison, Colorado. From https://climate.colostate.edu/temp_graph.html

So why is it not warming up in Gunnison?

Two key factors are causing the remarkable cold, compared to the warmth the rest of the state has seen in December. The first is geography. Gunnison sits in a valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Northeast of town, the Taylor and East Rivers come together to form the Gunnison River, and the confluence with Tomichi Creek is just to the west. Cold air is known to pool in high mountain valleys like this, and the cold can be very persistent.

Elevation map of Gunnison County, from https://www.gunnisoncounty.org/332/Map-Costs-Gallery.

MODIS satellite image on December 20, 2024, showing the snow cover in the Gunnison Valley. From MODIS Today at the University of Wisconsin

If there’s a bunch of snow on the ground, these valley cold pools can become especially stubborn, and that’s exactly what’s happened this month. The storm just before Thanksgiving dropped over a foot of snow in the valley, and over 2 feet in the nearby mountains, among the highest totals from this storm. And even though the larger-scale air masses have been warm through December, the snow has remained in the valley (clearly visible in the satellite image above) and the air hasn’t warmed up. When there’s deep snow cover, it reflects sunlight and keeps the days cool, and also favors cold nights by insulating the air from the warmer land underneath. This creates a feedback loop where it stays cold, which means the snow doesn’t melt, which means it stays cold.

What’s especially unusual is that this has all happened without getting additional snowfall: Gunnison has reported only 0.5″ of snow in December. The mountain snowpack has flatlined through December, and up the hill at Crested Butte they’ve even had several days above freezing. But it’s still snowy and cold in the Gunnison Valley, and will stay that way for the foreseeable future. What looks more likely is that the rest of the state will start to cool down to something resembling winter in early January, so Gunnison won’t look like such an outlier.

Map of the Gunnison River drainage basin in Colorado, USA. Made using public domain USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69257550

Imagine a river more exciting than football — Patricia J. Rettig (Writers on the Range) #SouthPlatteRiver

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Patricia J. Rettig):

December 2, 2024

Imagine a best-selling, 900-page novel using “a sad, bewildered nothing of a river” as its centerpiece, connecting the earth’s geologic origin and dinosaur age to 1970s rural Colorado.

Now imagine that novel becoming a touchstone for its times, yet still relevant today, as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary. The book is James A. Michener’s Centennial, an unlikely novel published a half-century ago. By creating a microcosm of the country, he explained America to itself in anticipation of the 1976 bicentennial.

That the Pulitzer-prize winning Michener chose as his landscape the West—and the little-known South Platte River on Colorado’s northeastern plains—is surprising only in that this was his first epic novel related to the U.S. mainland.

But ever since he briefly lived in Greeley, Colorado, in the late 1930s before his writing career began, the winding South Platte River stuck with him. As a young college professor, Michener recognized the wealth of stories resulting from the hardships of people surviving in an arid area.

After Michener’s service on a national bicentennial committee left him frustrated, he decided to return to the Centennial State, Colorado, which gained statehood in 1876. He hoped to tell a tale of the American experience, and in the opening chapter a character states, “If we can make the Platte comprehensible to Americans, we can inspire them with the meaning of this continent.”

Forgoing stereotypical Western stories of railroad builders and farmers’ daughters, Michener fictionalized selected histories of settlement and created relatable characters.

South Platte at 52 bridge image by Laura Perry, courtesy USGS.

Native Americans, French trappers, Mennonite settlers, farmers of German-Russian descent, English ranchers, Mexican and Japanese laborers—all depended on the South Platte River and its tributaries in the dry, inhospitable land. They also had to depend on each other.

By starting with the land’s formation, Michener depicts every character as an immigrant. He estimates human arrival in the region at about 12,000 years ago, and those Indigenous peoples and their descendants remain present throughout the story. As more people arrived and society evolved, everyone built lives in relationship with the river.

For many, the river provided a pathway to the West. For a few, it revealed golden nuggets, though the real wealth was the water itself.

Yet what Michener presents as progress gradually becomes recognized as unsustainable. The memorable Potato Brumbaugh has not only the innovative idea of irrigating crops but also the radical concept of digging a tunnel under the Rocky Mountains to import water from west of the Continental Divide. When this source is not enough, groundwater pumping increases, with dire consequences.

Such innovation—water-related and otherwise—is important to understand today, but also significant is knowing the history of how communities got built. Michener also shows the conflicts that arose with each wave of newcomers bringing their own ideas about how to live.

He also demonstrates changing attitudes, including acceptance of racial differences and increasing dismay over environmental destruction. His story concludes in the early 1970s, referencing Watergate, international conflict and immigration. Characters face inflationary times and polluted air and water. They know they need to solve the coming water shortages.

Not much is different today.

The key difference is that as Michener’s characters decry the environmental damage caused by their ancestors and neighbors, they also recognize they need to know their history and honor their longstanding connections to the land and water.

This is what modern humanity has forgotten. Through the innovations of pipes, plumbing and chemical treatments, we have relegated our rivers to the background, as if they were merely an unending supply of water at our command. We have lost our connections to natural resources, to history, to each other.

Patricia Rettig, Associate Professor, Libraries, Colorado State University, March 29, 2022

As we now prepare for our 250th anniversary, Centennial, both the novel and the groundbreaking 26-hour television miniseries airing from 1978 to 1980, reminds us of the country’s strengths.

Nearly 900 pages in, a character skips a Colorado-Nebraska college football game to survey the South Platte by plane. As he nears the Nebraska state line, he says, “No one in Colorado will believe it, but this river is more exciting than football.”

Imagine if more people, in all states, felt the same way. Patricia J. Rettig is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is the archivist for the Water Resources Archive at the Colorado State University Libraries

The South Platte River Basin is shaded in yellow. Source: Tom Cech, One World One Water Center, Metropolitan State University of Denver.

A #RepublicanRiver Basin milestone — Allen Best (@BigPivots)

Republican River in Colorado January 2023 near the Nebraska border. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

December 23, 2024

10,000 acres in the basin have now been retired from irrigation. But Colorado must remove 15,000 more acres before 2030.

Colorado has achieved a milestone, retiring 10,000 acres from irrigation in the Republican River Basin of northeastern Colorado.

But a much larger, more difficult challenge lies ahead. The state must retire 25,000 acres before 2030 in order to comply with the compact with Nebraska and Kansas governing water in the basin.

The Colorado Division of Water Resources announced on Dec. 20 that Nebraska and Kansas agreed that Colorado has taken the necessary actions to retire the minimum 10,000 acres based on executed contracts and aerial data collected in the summer of 2024.

The compact between the three states was ratified in 1942. Then came the widespread adoption of high-capacity wells followed by center-pivot sprinklers that permitted exploitation of the Ogallala and other aquifers. The aquifers feed into various forks of the Republic River.

Flows in the river subsequently declined. Kansas and Nebraska complained, rolling out the legal sabers. That resulted in formation of the Republican River Water Conservation District in 2004 to address the over-drafting of the aquifer. A resolution between Colorado and its neighbors in 2016 gave Colorado a specific target. It must figure out how to eliminate irrigation from 25,000 acres in the South Fork of the Republican River by the end of 2029.

Wells in the Republican River Basin in Colorado.

Dick Wolfe, then the state water engineer, was asked in September of 2016 how this would be accomplished. He paused a moment, then pretended to have a scissors in his hands, as if a barber, saying “Bit here, a bit there.” And that is what has been happening.

Irrigators in the district contribute to the district on a per-acre basis. The money is used to induce irrigators to end their diversions via the wells.

State legislators in 2023 allocated $30 million to supplement the district’s self-generated funds to sweeten the pot. The Colorado Water Conservation Board earlier this year added another $6 million.

The map below shows the location of wells in the district. It mostly lies between Interstates 70 and 76.

Some parts of the aquifer, mostly in the southern parts, ceased to have sufficient water for pumping. At a meeting this year in Wray, directors of the conservation district were told that even in the better areas along the North Fork of the River, in the Yuma and Wray areas, water levels have been dropping a foot and a half a year.

There is some agreement among directors that stepped-up action must be taken in order to meet the 2029 deadline for retirement. They will take up that discussion at a February meeting.

See also:

The declining Ogallala Aquifer

Facing hard deadlines in water and in climate, too

The Republican River basin. The North Fork, South Fork and Arikaree all flow through Yuma County before crossing state lines. Credit: USBR/DOI

Lousy start to the #ColoradoRiver/#RioGrande 2024-25 #snowpack season — John Fleck (InkStain.net) #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the post on the InkStain website (John Fleck):

December 21. 2024

I was talking to Eric Kuhn Thursday (write a book together – bonded for life) who pointed out that the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center has started running its models for 2025 runoff. They don’t look good.

It’s way too early to think of this as a “forecast.” But they provide a feel for where we’re at now: Do we have a good head start? Are we already behind? The error bars are still huge, with a lot of upside potential, but we are already behind – 1.4 million acre feet below median for Lake Powell inflow.

The current climate forecast headlights, which can at least dimly illuminate the next month for us, don’t look good. The US Drought Monitor folks publish an experimental forecast tool called the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI).

EDDI uses the federal Climate Forecast System model, an operational model to help gauge conditions over the coming months. CFS is then coupled with tools to estimate evaporative demand – not simply how much snow we’re going to get, but how rain and snow interact with temperature and atmospheric moisture, all of which play roles in the system that sends water from the snowpack in the Rockies to headgates and kitchen taps across the West.

EDDI says that over the next month, we should expect the CBRFC’s runoff forecast to go down, not up. We’re falling behind.

Why this matters

The obvious reason this matters is its direct relationship with this year’s water management. Will Powell and Mead go up or down? What does that mean for near term water supply?

But we’re also all playing multiple games of four-dimensional chess trying to anticipate how the near term runoff scenarios influence long term negotiations over Post-26 river management. One of my little projects right now is to step back from my normative angst (where “normative angst” == John’s super pissed off about the negotiators’ abject failure) to think about the deeper negotiation theory stuff going on.

Here’s a look Westwide.

Westwide SNOTEL basin filled map December 21, 2024 via the NRCS.

Here’s a look at Colorado.

Predicting the chances of a #PolarVortex disruption this winter — NOAA

Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Amy Butler and Laura Ciasto):

December 19, 2024

When we launched this blog last winter, the atmosphere came through for us with not one, but two breakdowns of the stratospheric polar vortex. That was very considerate of it, given that many winters pass without even a single one. With all the excitement that occurs when the stratospheric polar vortex is disrupted during a sudden stratospheric warming, our readers might wonder whether there is any way to predict weeks or even months ahead of time the likelihood that one (or more!) will occur this upcoming winter.

As we discussed last year, there are certain ingredients that need to come together to drive a sudden stratospheric warming. These can be boiled down to two main factors:

persistent weather patterns in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) that can amplify large-scale atmospheric waves vertically into the stratosphere; and

ideal wind conditions in the stratosphere that steer the arriving waves and encourage them to break near the polar vortex, which rapidly slows the polar stratospheric winds.

The exact details of these factors are often not predictable beyond 7-10 days [footnote 1], but that doesn’t mean we can’t say anything about the likelihood of a polar vortex disruption and sudden warming happening in a given season. That’s because there are ocean and atmospheric climate patterns or oscillations that are potentially predictable weeks or months ahead of time, and these predictable climate patterns can influence the ingredients for a sudden stratospheric warming listed above. In other words, while we can’t predict the exact timing of a sudden warming months ahead of time, we might be able to give the odds (make a “probabilistic forecast”) that one is likely (or not) to occur at some point during the winter, based on how we think these other climate patterns will affect our sudden stratospheric warming recipe.

Playing the odds: things that increase or decrease the chances of polar vortex disruptions & sudden stratospheric warmings

We know that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drives “teleconnections” – predictable patterns of high and low pressure that extend from the tropics into the mid-latitudes. These highs and lows represent large-scale atmospheric waves, which can be used to predict remote weather impacts. As Amy wrote about in a guest post on the ENSO blog a few years ago, these ENSO-related atmospheric waves can help to amplify–or dampen–normal high and low pressure patterns in the mid-latitudes, and that interaction affects whether these waves get big enough to travel into the stratosphere. On average, El Niño teleconnections tend to amplify more waves into the stratosphere, and those waves weaken wintertime polar vortex winds on average compared to La Niña (see the image below, left side). There’s a ~30% increase in sudden stratospheric warmings during El Niño winters [footnote 2; Polvani et al. 2017].

Changing the amount of atmospheric waves coming up from the troposphere is one way to change the likelihood of a polar vortex disruption/sudden warming. Another way is to change where the waves break once they get to the stratosphere. If they’re forced to break near the pole, a disruption and sudden warming of the polar vortex becomes more likely. If they’re forced to break farther south, the polar vortex is more likely to remain undisturbed. So what determines where they break?

Remember that large atmospheric waves can only travel in winds that blow from the west. That’s the direction the stratospheric winds blow in most of the polar to middle latitudes during winter, allowing waves to travel freely there. But farther south, the Quasi-biennial Oscillation (or QBO) comes into play.

We know that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drives “teleconnections” – predictable patterns of high and low pressure that extend from the tropics into the mid-latitudes. These highs and lows represent large-scale atmospheric waves, which can be used to predict remote weather impacts. As Amy wrote about in a guest post on the ENSO blog a few years ago, these ENSO-related atmospheric waves can help to amplify–or dampen–normal high and low pressure patterns in the mid-latitudes, and that interaction affects whether these waves get big enough to travel into the stratosphere. On average, El Niño teleconnections tend to amplify more waves into the stratosphere, and those waves weaken wintertime polar vortex winds on average compared to La Niña (see the image below, left side). There’s a ~30% increase in sudden stratospheric warmings during El Niño winters [footnote 2; Polvani et al. 2017].

Changing the amount of atmospheric waves coming up from the troposphere is one way to change the likelihood of a polar vortex disruption/sudden warming. Another way is to change where the waves break once they get to the stratosphere. If they’re forced to break near the pole, a disruption and sudden warming of the polar vortex becomes more likely. If they’re forced to break farther south, the polar vortex is more likely to remain undisturbed. So what determines where they break?

Remember that large atmospheric waves can only travel in winds that blow from the west. That’s the direction the stratospheric winds blow in most of the polar to middle latitudes during winter, allowing waves to travel freely there. But farther south, the Quasi-biennial Oscillation (or QBO) comes into play.

(left) When the Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) is from the west, winter (Dec-Jan) polar stratospheric winds are stronger than average (purple), making sudden stratospheric warming less likely. (right) When the QBO is from the east, the polar vortex is weaker than average (green). The panels above the globes show difference from average east-west winds at altitudes from 100 to 10 hPA across each latitude band from the equator (zero) to the North Pole (90). The dashed line indicates the altitude/pressure level used to define the QBO. Positive values mean westerly winds at a given latitude and altitude were stronger than average; negative values mean weaker-than-average westerlies (or stronger-than-average easterlies). Data is from the ERA5 reanalysis, and the anomalies are defined relative to the 1991-2020 average. NOAA Climate.gov image, adapted from analysis by Amy Butler.

The QBO describes an approximately 2-year (or, “quasi-biennial”) cycle of alternating easterly (from the east) and westerly (from the west) winds in the tropical stratosphere. This flip-flop of tropical winds can either allow waves in the stratosphere to keep traveling into the subtropical regions (if the QBO winds are blowing from the west) or force them to break closer to the pole (if the QBO winds are blowing from the east). [footnote 3]

This is one explanation for why we see weaker polar vortex winds and increased chances of sudden warmings during “easterly QBO” and stronger polar vortex winds and reduced chances of sudden warmings during “westerly QBO”.

Reading tea leaves for the polar vortex in winter 2024-25

So far we’ve talked about the relationships between the polar vortex and the QBO and ENSO separately, but both phenomena are often occurring at the same time [footnote 4]. If we combine these statistical connections, it can help us predict whether a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) [footnote 5] might be more or less likely to occur this winter.

If we sort past winters by their ENSO and QBO status, what we find is that the state of ENSO and QBO in early winter can be used to give some indication of the overall seasonal strength of the polar vortex and the likelihood of a SSW. That’s what you can see in the image below.

The dots in each quadrant of this graph show the strength of the polar vortex in past winters (December-February), based on the phase of the Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) (vertical axis: positive values indicate westerly winds, negative values indicate easterly winds) and tropical sea surface temperatures in the Nino 3.4 region (horizontal axis: positive values indicate El Niño-like conditions, and negative values indicate La Niña-like conditions). The strongest polar vortex years (dark purple dots) cluster in the upper left quadrant of the graph, meaning winters with westerly QBO and La Nina. The weakest polar vortex years (dark green dots) occur in easterly QBO winters. Winters with at least one polar vortex disruption/sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) are marked with a black outline (and years with two have two circles). The red dot indicates where winter 2025 would rank based on November 2024 values only. NOAA Climate.gov image, adapted from original by Amy Butler.

For example, most of the dark purple dots indicating a very strong polar vortex year occur in the upper left quadrant of the image, which are winters with La Niña and westerly QBO conditions. And unsurprisingly, these are also the conditions with the lowest occurrence of SSWs (46% of winters with these conditions have had a SSW). On the other hand, the winters with the highest occurrence of SSWs occur during easterly QBO winters in general (the bottom half of the plot), but during La Niña conditions in particular (the lower left quadrant). This is somewhat surprising, since if we just consider ENSO conditions, La Niña is actually associated with stronger polar vortex winds over a season. This may mean there could be some interactions that occur between ENSO and the QBO that promote SSWs in unexpected ways, or non-linear interactions of ENSO with the polar vortex [footnote 2].

What does this tell about this upcoming winter? Using November 2024 values for the QBO and ENSO, the winter of 2024-2025 looks likely to fall into westerly QBO and La Niña conditions (upper left quadrant). This would suggest that chances for a SSW are somewhat reduced compared to average, and conditions may even be primed for a strong polar vortex. Nonetheless, sudden warmings have occurred in these conditions before (12 times!)- which again re-emphasizes that these sorts of statistics can only tell us probabilities. Even though there’s a 55% chance an SSW won’t happen, there’s still a 45% that a SSW could occur. In other words, don’t bet the farm on this year’s odds for a SSW.

What does the crystal ball say?

So what do the most recent forecasts tell us? Over the last two weeks, polar vortex winds have been extremely strong, with extended range forecasts showing little chance of a slowdown through at least the beginning of January. As for what our quick statistical analysis might tell us if it were a Magic 8 ball, to the question if stronger-than-average polar vortex winds will continue: “Signs point to yes” [footnote 6].

Fig 3. Observed and forecasted (NOAA GEFSv12) wind speed in the polar stratosphere compared to the natural range of variability (faint blue shading). For the GEFSv12 forecast issued on 18 December 2024, the winds at 60 degrees North (the mean location of the polar vortex) are forecast to remain stronger than normal for at least the next 2 weeks (bold red line). By mid-January, the forecasted strength of the polar stratospheric winds becomes very uncertain (light red lines). NOAA Climate.gov image, adapted from original by Laura Ciasto.

Footnotes

If we want to predict the exact timing and details of if and how a sudden stratospheric warming will evolve, it’s likely to be about as successful as a 7-10 day weather forecast- because the ingredients that drive these disruptions are related to and affected by weather patterns that are only predictable that far ahead of time. However, note that once a sudden warming occurs, it has potentially predictable impacts on surface climate for weeks to months afterwards.

The two phases of ENSO, El Niño and La Niña, have roughly opposite-signed high and low pressure teleconnections. For example, over the North Pacific, El Niño teleconnections are typically associated with a deepening of the Aleutian Low, while La Niña teleconnections weaken this low pressure region. This might make you think that the two phases of ENSO should also induce opposite-signed responses in the occurrence of sudden warmings. However, in the ~65 year observational record, sudden warmings occur more often in both El Niño and La Niña winters compared to ENSO-neutral conditions (Butler and Polvani 2011). So, what’s going on? It’s possible that La Niña teleconnections may be able to amplify atmospheric waves in a different way than El Niño (i.e., not over the North Pacific, but in one of the other regions of high/low pressure). Alternatively, it’s possible that 65 years isn’t actually enough to get an accurate measure of this relationship, and so the observed increase in sudden warmings during La Niña is just random luck. When long climate model simulations are performed, in general they see fewer sudden warmings during La Niña than El Niño (Polvani et al 2017). However, these models might also not capture ENSO teleconnections and their effect on the stratosphere correctly.

In a future blog post, we will go into more detail about the QBO and why it occurs, and how it affects the polar vortex. The explanation presented here is the most common one and was described by Holton and Tan (1980). But it’s not clear that this fully explains the connection between the tropical and polar stratospheric winds (Garfinkel et al 2012).

There are also many other persistent climate patterns that have been used to look for these statistical connections and guide seasonal forecasts of the polar vortex and sudden stratospheric warmings, including the Madden-Julian Oscillation, Arctic sea ice, Eurasian snow cover, North Pacific sea surface temperatures, or winds in the upper stratosphere.

After intense negotiation, our editor agreed to allow us to introduce the acronym SSW mid-way through the post, on the assumption that by this point, readers would be as tired of reading it spelled out as we were.

This Magic 8 ball response is likely too confident, but we couldn’t find a Magic 8 ball response that said “More likely yes than no but not by much”.

Data

The ENSO index uses ERSSTv5 sea surface temperature data in the Nino 3.4 region, and can be found on the NOAA Climate Prediction Center website.

The QBO index uses daily zonal winds measured from radiosondes (balloons) at three tropical stations: Canton Island, Gan/Maledive Islands, and Singapore. Since 1975, the data is only based on measurements from Singapore. The data was compiled by the Freie Universitat Berlin. However since this data stopped updating in 2021, here we supplement from 2021-2024 using Singapore station data from the NASA QBO website.

References

Butler, A. H., and L. M. Polvani (2011), El Niño, La Niña, and stratospheric sudden warmings: A reevaluation in light of the observational record, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L13807, doi:10.1029/2011GL048084.

Garfinkel, C. I., T. A. Shaw, D. L. Hartmann, and D. W. Waugh, 2012: Does the Holton–Tan Mechanism Explain How the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation Modulates the Arctic Polar Vortex?. J. Atmos. Sci., 69, 1713–1733, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-11-0209.1.

Holton, J. R., and H. Tan, 1980: The Influence of the Equatorial Quasi-Biennial Oscillation on the Global Circulation at 50 mb. J. Atmos. Sci., 37, 2200–2208, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1980)037<2200:TIOTEQ>2.0.CO;2.

Polvani, L. M., L. Sun, A. H. Butler, J. H. Richter, and C. Deser, 2017: Distinguishing Stratospheric Sudden Warmings from ENSO as Key Drivers of Wintertime Climate Variability over the North Atlantic and Eurasia. J. Climate, 30, 1959–1969, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0277.1.

#Kansas and #Nebraska Agree that #Colorado Has Reached #RepublicanRiver Compact Milestone — Colorado Department of Natural Resources

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado Department of Natural Resources website (Michael Elizabeth Sakas):

December 20, 2024

Colorado has officially reached the milestone of retiring more than 10,000 acres of farmland from irrigation in the southern Republican River basin. These efforts are necessary to stay in compliance with the Republican River Compact with Kansas and Nebraska.

Depleted groundwater in the Republican River Basin has impacted how much surface water flows east. To remedy this, the Republican River Compact Administration (“RRCA”) adopted a resolution in 2016 to retire 10,000 acres in this part of the basin by 2024.

An additional 15,000 acres need to be retired by December 31, 2029. Colorado is already well on its way to meeting this second milestone, with nearly 7,000 additional acres under contract for retirement.

“Agriculture is the economic driver for the northeastern counties of Colorado. This is a difficult situation for the producers,” said Jason Ullmann, State Engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources. “I know this work hasn’t been easy, and more must be done. I applaud the Republican River Water Conservation District for their major efforts to reach this deadline.”

Colorado provided Kansas and Nebraska with the executed contracts and aerial data collected in the summer of 2024. Kansas and Nebraska agreed that Colorado has taken the necessary actions to retire at least 10,000 acres.

“By working together with the State of Colorado, the Republican River Water Conservation District continues to make great strides in complying with the ongoing requirements imposed by the 2016 Republican River Compact Administration Resolution,” said Deb Daniel, general manager of the Republican River Water Conservation District. “The RRWCD continues, with financial support from Colorado, to provide funding to compensate well owners who are willing to voluntarily retire a portion of their irrigated acres to ensure that Colorado and the Republican Basin achieve and maintain compliance with the compact.”

Earlier this year, the Colorado Water Conservation Board approved $6 million to be included in the proposed 2025 CWCB projects bill to support efforts to retire additional acres in the Republican River basin. In 2022, the Colorado state legislature unanimously approved $30 million in the pursuit of retiring the required irrigated acres. The CWCB administers those funds, which were awarded through Senate Bill 22-028.

Kansas River Basin including the Republican River watershed. Map credit: By Kmusser – Self-made, based on USGS data., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4390886

Photocatalytic C–F bond activation in small molecules and polyfluoroalkyl substances — Nature

A whistleblower and watchdog advocacy group used an EPA database of locations that may have handled PFAS materials or products to map the potential impact of PFAS throughout Colorado. They found about 21,000 Colorado locations in the EPA listings, which were uncovered through a freedom of information lawsuit. Locations are listed by industry category. (Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility analysis of EPA database)

Click the link to access the article on the Nature website (Xin Liu, Arindam Sau, Alexander R. Green, Mihai V. Popescu, Nicholas F. Pompetti, Yingzi Li, Yucheng Zhao, Robert S. Paton, Niels H. Damrauer & Garret M. Miyake). Here’s the abstract:

November 20, 2024

Organic halides are highly useful compounds in chemical synthesis, where the halide serves as a versatile functional group for elimination, substitution, and cross-coupling reactions with transition metals or photocatalysis^1-3. However, the activation of carbon-fluorine bonds, the most commercially abundant organohalide and found in PFAS, or “forever chemicals”, are much rarer. Current approaches based on photoredox chemistry for activation of small molecule carbon-fluorine (C–F) bonds are limited by the substrates and transition-metal catalysts needed⁴. A general method for the direct activation of organofluorines would have significant value in organic and environmental chemistry. Here, we report an organic photoredox catalyst system that can efficiently reduce C–F bonds to generate carbon-centered radicals, which can then be intercepted for hydrodefluorination (swapping F for H) and cross-coupling reactions. This system enables the general use of organofluorines as synthons under mild reaction conditions. We extend this method to the defluorination of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and fluorinated polymers, a critical challenge in the breakdown of persistent and environmentally damaging forever chemicals.

Congress approves continued funding for endangered fish recovery programs in #Colorado, Western states — Shannon Mullane (Fresh Water News) #ColoradoRiver #COriver

Students from Palisade High School kissed good-bye to hatchery-raised juvenile razorback suckers before releasing them into the Colorado River May 2023. The fish are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, but populations have recovered enough that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to downlist them to threatened. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):

December 19, 2024

Endangered fish recovery programs in Colorado and three other Western states were given renewed access to federal funds thanks to a bill passed Wednesday by Congress.

Lawmakers gave the go-ahead to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to spend tax dollars on the programs with just days left in a lame-duck session, which adjourns Friday. The news was welcomed in Colorado, where the programs help protect four threatened and endangered species in the Colorado River and San Juan River basins.

“Local communities, Tribes, water users, and Congress — we’re all in to protect our native fish and rivers,” U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat who sponsored the Senate bill, said in a news release. “These programs are tried and true. Our extension will help continue them to save our fish and make our rivers healthier.”

Lawmakers voted to reauthorize the federal funding for seven years for two programs: the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program — which operates in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — and the San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program — which spans Colorado and New Mexico. The total funding amount is yet to be determined. The federal government allocated about $16.6 million, total, for the two programs between October 2023 and September 2024.

The recovery program bill was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets national security policy and recommended spending levels for the Department of Defense. The act still awaited President Joe Biden’s signature as of Wednesday.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican who currently represents the 3rd Congressional District in western Colorado, sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives to reauthorize funding for the programs.

Through the programs, a wide network of federal, local and state agencies work together to try to stabilize and rebuild the populations of certain endangered species, including the razorback suckers, Colorado pikeminnow and bonytail. A fourth species, the humpback chub, has recovered enough that it was downgraded to threatened from endangered.

The fish species have lost vital habitat along the Colorado River and its tributaries, in part because of human uses, like developing former wetland areas, damming rivers, or diverting the flow of water to farms and cities. Dry years, lower flows and higher temperatures have led to warmer water, offering prime habitat for nonnative predator fish, which eat and compete with the threatened and endangered species.

Farmers, reservoir operators, city water managers, and conservationists across Colorado coordinate their water management plans to try to improve conditions for the species.

These plans also help ensure that Colorado River water continues to flow through western Colorado — instead of being used elsewhere — supporting agriculture and communities along the way.

Even students are involved in the effort. Every year, Palisade High School students help the Upper Colorado River program raise razorback suckers until they are old and large enough to be released into the river upstream from Grand Junction. The school released its thousandth sucker in May.

Students from Palisade High School transfer baby razorback suckers from a tank into the Colorado River. The students raised the endangered fish in a hatchery as part of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Pat Steele, a science teacher at the high school who helped found the program, said it is awesome to see lawmakers from both parties work together.

“That’s exactly what our lawmakers should be doing,” he said. “Working together and showing that example of bipartisanship, and showing our young people that this is how you get things done.”

For program managers, the move offers greater clarity going forward.

There was never a question that the programs would fold, but Reclamation is a major source of funding, said Michelle Garrison, a water resources specialist for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, one of the top water agencies in Colorado, and a representative of Colorado water users in the recovery efforts.

Without the legislation, the flow of funding could have been disrupted, potentially requiring cutbacks or making it harder to hire seasonal staff and order equipment, she said.

“Knowing it’s good to go really helps the planning process,” she said. It allows the network of partners to identify and prioritize what they need to focus on in coming years. “When you’re comfortable that you’re doing the best you can for the species, that gives you more certainty that you’re going to make sufficient progress.”

More by Shannon Mullane

Ron Rogers biologist with Bio-West Inc., holds a large razorback sucker captured in Lake Mead near the Colorado River inflow area

Three-quarters of Earth’s land became permanently drier in last three decades — United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification #aridification

Click the link to read the release on the UN website (Fragkiska Megaloudi, Gloria Pallares, Terry Collins):

December 9, 2024

Aridity: The ‘existential crisis’ redefining life on Earth

Five billion people could be affected by 2100

Even as dramatic water-related disasters such as floods and storms intensified in some parts of the world, more than three-quarters of Earth’s land became permanently drier in recent decades, UN scientists warned today in a stark new analysis.

Some 77.6% of Earth’s land experienced drier conditions during the three decades leading up to 2020 compared to the previous 30-year period, according to the landmark report from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Over the same period, drylands expanded by about 4.3 million km2 – an area nearly a third larger than India, the world’s 7th largest country – and now cover 40.6% of all land on Earth (excluding Antarctica).

In recent decades some 7.6% of global lands – an area larger than Canada – were pushed across aridity thresholds (i.e. from non-drylands to drylands, or from less arid dryland classes to more arid classes).

Most of these areas have transitioned from humid landscapes to drylands, with dire implications for agriculture, ecosystems, and the people living there.

And the research warns that, if the world fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions, another 3% of the world’s humid areas will become drylands by the end of this century.

In high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, expanding drylands are forecast across the Midwestern United States, central Mexico, northern Venezuela, north-eastern Brazil, south-eastern Argentina, the entire Mediterranean Region, the Black Sea coast, large parts of southern Africa, and southern Australia.

The report, The Global Threat of Drying Lands: Regional and global aridity trends and future projections, was launched at the 16th conference of UNCCD’s nearly 200 Parties in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (COP16), the largest UN land conference to date, and the first UNCCD COP to be held in the Middle East, a region profoundly affected by impacts from aridity.

“This analysis finally dispels an uncertainty that has long surrounded global drying trends,” says Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary. “For the first time, the aridity crisis has been documented with scientific clarity, revealing an existential threat affecting billions around the globe.”

“Unlike droughts—temporary periods of low rainfall—aridity represents a permanent, unrelenting transformation,” he adds. “Droughts end. When an area’s climate becomes drier, however, the ability to return to previous conditions is lost. The drier climates now affecting vast lands across the globe will not return to how they were and this change is redefining life on Earth.”

The report by UNCCD Science-Policy Interface (SPI) — the UN body for assessing the science of land degradation and drought — points to human-caused climate change as the primary driver of this shift. Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transport, industry and land use changes warm the planet and other human activities warm the planet and affect rainfall, evaporation and plant life, creating the conditions that increase aridity.

Global aridity index (AI) data track these conditions and reveal widespread change over the decades.

For the first time, the aridity crisis has been documented with scientific clarity, revealing an existential threat affecting billions around the globe. The report points to human-caused climate change as the primary driver of this shift. Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transport, industry and land use changes warm the planet and other human activities warm the planet and affect rainfall, evaporation and plant life, creating the conditions that increase aridity. Credit: UN

Aridification hotspots

Areas particularly hard-hit by the drying trend include almost all of Europe (95.9% of its land), parts of the western United States, Brazil, parts of Asia (notably eastern Asia), and central Africa.

Parts of the Western United States and Brazil: Significant drying trends, with water scarcity and wildfires becoming perennial hazards.

Mediterranean and Southern Europe: Once considered agricultural breadbaskets, these areas face a stark future as semi-arid conditions expand.

Central Africa and parts of Asia: Biologically megadiverse areas are experiencing ecosystem degradation and desertification, endangering countless species.

By contrast, less than a quarter of the planet’s land (22.4%) experienced wetter conditions, with areas in the central United States, Angola’s Atlantic coast, and parts of Southeast Asia showing some gains in moisture.

The overarching trend, however, is clear: drylands are expanding, pushing ecosystems and societies to suffer from aridity’s life-threatening impacts.

The report names South Sudan and Tanzania as nations with the largest percentage of land transitioning to drylands, and China as the country experiencing the largest total area shifting from non-drylands into drylands.

For the 2.3 billion people – well over 25% of the world’s population – living in the expanding drylands, this new normal requires lasting, adaptive solutions. Aridity-related land degradation, known as desertification, represents a dire threat to human well-being and ecological stability.

And as the planet continues to warm, report projections in the worst-case scenario suggest up to 5 billion people could live in drylands by the century’s end, grappling with depleted soils, dwindling water resources, and the diminishment or collapse of once-thriving ecosystems.

Forced migration is one of aridity’s most visible consequences. As land becomes uninhabitable, families and entire communities facing water scarcity and agricultural collapse often have no choice but to abandon their homes, leading to social and political challenges worldwide. From the Middle East to Africa and South Asia, millions are already on the move—a trend set to intensify in coming decades.

Aridity’s devastating impact

The effects of rising aridity are cascading and multifaceted, touching nearly every aspect of life and society, the report says.

It warns that one fifth of all land could experience abrupt ecosystem transformations from rising aridity by the end of the century, causing dramatic shifts (such as forests becoming grasslands and other changes) and leading to extinctions among many of the world’s plants, animals and other life.

Aridity is considered the world’s largest single driver behind the degradation of agricultural systems, affecting 40% of Earth’s arable lands

Rising aridity has been blamed for a 12% decline in gross domestic product (GDP) recorded for African countries between 1990–2015

More than two thirds of all land on the planet (excluding Greenland and Antarctica) is projected to store less water by the end of the century, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise even modestly

Aridity is considered one of the world’s five most important causes of land degradation (along with land erosion, salinization, organic carbon loss and vegetation degradation)

Rising aridity in the Middle East has been linked to the region’s more frequent and larger sand and dust storms

Increasing aridity is expected to play a role in larger and more intense wildfires in the climate-altered future—not least because of its impacts on tree deaths in semi-arid forests and the consequent growing availability of dry biomass for burning

Rising aridity’s impacts on poverty, water scarcity, land degradation and insufficient food production have been linked to increasing rates of sickness and death globally —especially among children and women

Rising aridity and drought play a key role in increasing human migration around the world—particularly in the hyper-arid and arid areas of southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and southern Asia.

Report marks a turning point

For years, documenting the rise of aridity proved a challenge, the report states. Its long-term nature and the intricate interplay of factors such as rainfall, evaporation, and plant transpiration made analysis difficult. Early studies produced conflicting results, often muddied by scientific caution.

The new report marks a turning point, leveraging advanced climate models and standardized methodologies to deliver a definitive assessment of global drying trends, confirming the inexorable rise of aridity, while providing critical insights into its underlying drivers and potential future trajectory.

Recommendations

The report offers a comprehensive roadmap for tackling aridity, emphasizing both mitigation and adaptation. Among its recommendations:

Strengthen aridity monitoring
Integrate aridity metrics into existing drought monitoring systems. This approach would enable early detection of changes and help guide interventions before conditions worsen. Platforms like the new Aridity Visual Information Tool provide policymakers and researchers with valuable data, allowing for early warnings and timely interventions. Standardized assessments can enhance global cooperation and inform local adaptation strategies.

Improve land use practices
Incentivizing sustainable land use systems can mitigate the impacts of rising aridity, particularly in vulnerable regions. Innovative, holistic, sustainable approaches to land management are the focus of another new UNCCD SPI report, Sustainable Land Use Systems: The path to collectively achieving Land Degradation Neutrality, available at https://bit.ly/3ZwkLZ3. It considers how land-use at one location affect others elsewhere, makes resilience to climate change or other shocks a priority, and encourages participation and buy-in by Indigenous and local communities as well as all levels of government. Projects like the Great Green Wall—a land restoration initiative spanning Africa—demonstrate the potential for large-scale, holistic efforts to combat aridity and restore ecosystems, while creating jobs and stabilizing economies.

Invest in water efficiency
Technologies such as rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation, and wastewater recycling offer practical solutions for managing scarce water resources in dry regions.

Build resilience in vulnerable communities
Local knowledge, capacity building, social justice and holistic thinking are vital to resilience. Sustainable land use systems encourage decision makers to apply responsible governance, protect human rights (including secure land access) and ensure accountability and transparency. Capacity-building programmes, financial support, education programmes, climate information services and community-driven initiatives empower those most affected by aridity to adapt to changing conditions. Farmers switching to drought-resistant crops or pastoralists adopting more arid-tolerant livestock exemplify incremental adaptation.

Develop international frameworks and cooperation
The UNCCD’s Land Degradation Neutrality framework provides a model for aligning national policies with international goals, ensuring a unified response to the crisis. National Adaptation Plans must incorporate aridity alongside drought planning to create cohesive strategies that address water and land management challenges. Cross-sectoral collaboration at the global level, facilitated by frameworks like the UNCCD, is essential for scaling solutions.

Comments

“For decades, the world’s scientists have signalled that our growing greenhouse gas emissions are behind global warming. Now, for the first time, a UN scientific body is warning that burning fossil fuels is causing permanent drying across much of the world, too—with potentially catastrophic impacts affecting access to water that could push people and nature even closer to disastrous tipping points. As large tracts of the world’s land become more arid, the consequences of inaction grow increasingly dire and adaptation is no longer optional—it is imperative.” – UNCCD Chief Scientist Barron Orr

“Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline. Yet, by embracing innovative solutions and fostering global solidarity, humanity can rise to meet this challenge. The question is not whether we have the tools to respond—it is whether we have the will to act.” – Nichole Barger, Chair, UNCCD Science-Policy Interface

“The report’s clarity is a wake-up call for policymakers: tackling aridity demands more than just science—it requires a diversity of perspectives and knowledge systems. By weaving Indigenous and local knowledge with cutting-edge data, we can craft stronger, smarter strategies to slow aridity’s advance, mitigate its impacts and thrive in a drying world.” – Sergio Vicente-Serrano, co-lead author of the report and an aridity expert with Spain’s Pyrenean Institute of Ecology

“This report underscores the critical need to address aridity as a defining global challenge of our time. By uniting diverse expertise and leveraging breakthrough technologies, we are not just measuring change—we are crafting a roadmap for resilience. Tackling aridity demands a collaborative vision that integrates innovation, adaptive solutions, and a commitment to securing a sustainable future for all.” – Narcisa Pricope, co-lead author, professor of geosciences and associate vice president for research at Mississippi State University, USA.

“The timeliness of this report cannot be overstated. Rising aridity will reshape the global landscape, challenging traditional ways of life and forcing societies to reimagine their relationship with land and water. As with climate change and biodiversity loss, addressing aridity requires coordinated international action and an unwavering commitment to sustainable development.” – Andrea Toreti, co-lead author and senior scientist, European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

By the Numbers:

Key global trends / projections

77.6%: Proportion of Earth’s land that experienced drier climates from 1990–2020 compared to the previous 30 years.

40.6%: Global land mass (excluding Antarctica) classified as drylands, up from 37.5% over the last 30 years.

4.3 million km²: Humid lands transformed into drylands in the last three decades, an area one-third larger than India

40%: Global arable land affected by aridity—the leading driver of agricultural degradation.

30.9%: Global population living in drylands in 2020, up from 22.5% in 1990

2.3 billion: People living in drylands in 2020, a doubling from 1990, projected to more than double again by 2100 under a worst-case climate change scenario.

1.35 billion: Dryland inhabitants in Asia—more than half the global total.

620 million: Dryland inhabitants in Africa—nearly half of the continent’s population.

9.1%: Portion of Earth’s land classified as hyperarid, including the Atacama (Chile), Sahara (Africa), Namib (Africa), and Gobi (China/Mongolia) deserts.

23%: Increase in global land at “moderate” to “very high” desertification risk by 2100 under the worst-case emissions scenario

+8% at “very high” risk

+5% at “high” risk

+10% at “moderate” risk

Environmental degradation

5: Key drivers of land degradation: Rising aridity, land erosion, salinization, organic carbon loss, and vegetation degradation

20%: Global land at risk of abrupt ecosystem transformations by 2100 due to rising aridity

55%: Species (mammals, reptiles, fish, amphibians, and birds) at risk of habitat loss from aridity. Hotspots: (Arid regions): West Africa, Western Australia, Iberian Peninsula; (Humid regions): Southern Mexico, northern Amazon rainforest

Economics

12%: African GDP decline attributed to aridity, 1990–2015

16% / 6.7%: Projected GDP losses in Africa / Asia by 2079 under a moderate emissions scenario

20M tons maize, 21M tons wheat, 19M tons rice: Expected losses in global crop yields by 2040 due to expanding aridity

50%: Projected drop in maize yields in Kenya by 2050 under a high emissions scenario

Los Cedros, the iconic cloud forest reserve in Ecuador’s Western Andes, which is under concession for copper and gold mining to Canadian company Cornerstone and Australian BHP. Photo credit: The Rainforest Project

Water

90%: Rainfall in drylands that evaporates back into the atmosphere, leaving 10% for plant growth

67%: Global land expected to store less water by 2100, even under moderate emission scenarios

75%: Decline in water availability in the Middle East and North Africa since the 1950s

40%: Predicted Andean runoff decline by 2100 under a high emissions scenario, threatening water supplies in South America

Just above the horizon here, a haboob (dust storm) can be seen heading north. This was shot at what remains of the Salton Sea Naval Test Station. Photo credit: slworking2/Flickr

Health

55%: Increase in severe child stunting in sub-Saharan Africa under a medium emissions scenario due to combined effects of aridity and climate warming

Up to 12.5%: Estimated rise in mortality risks during sand and dust storms in China, 2013–2018

57% / 38%: Increases in fine and coarse atmospheric dust levels, respectively, in the southwestern U.S. by 2100 under worst case climate scenarios

220%: Projected increase in premature deaths due to airborne dust in the southwestern United States by 2100 under the high-emissions scenario

160%: Expected rise in hospitalizations linked to airborne dust in the same region

The General Sherman sequoia tree is wrapped in fire-resistant foil to protect it from the KNP Complex fire. (National Park Service)

Wildfires and forests

74%: Expected increase in wildfire-burned areas in California by 2100 under high emission scenarios

40: Additional annual high fire danger days in Greece by 2100 compared to late 20th century levels

Notes to editors:

Aridity versus drought

Highly arid regions are places in which a persistent, long-term climatic condition lacks available moisture to support most forms of life and atmospheric evaporative demand significantly exceeds rainfall.

Drought, on the other hand, is an anomalous, shorter-term period of water shortage affecting ecosystems and people and often attributed to low precipitation, high temperatures, low air humidity and/or anomalies in wind.

While drought is part of natural climate variability and can occur in almost any climatic regime, aridity is a stable condition for which changes occur over extremely long-time scales under significant forcing.

Media contacts: press@unccd.int

Fragkiska Megaloudi, +30 6945547877 (WhatsApp) fmegaloudi@unccd.int

Gloria Pallares, +34 606 93 1460 gpallares@unccd.int

Terry Collins, +1-416-878-8712 tc@tca.tc

#Drought news December 19, 2024: Moderate drought improved in N. #Utah and S.W. #Wyoming. Extreme drought expanded in N.W. Wyoming while N. #Colorado had abnormally dry and moderate drought expand slightly

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

US Drought Monitor map December 17, 2024.

Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Over the last week, precipitation was greatest in portions of the Southeast and coastal areas of northern California. Widespread precipitation was recorded from Arkansas into the Midwest and along much of the eastern seaboard from the Mid-Atlantic up into New England. Much of the Plains, Southwest, and Rocky Mountains were quite dry during this period as well as much of the Florida peninsula. Temperatures were cooler than normal over the northern Plains and much of the Midwest with departures of 5-10 degrees below normal. Above normal temperatures were recorded over the northern Rocky Mountains, the southern Plains and into the South, where departures were 5-10 degrees above normal. Most other locations observed temperatures near normal…

High Plains

It was a dry week for most of the region with only areas of southeastern Nebraska, northeastern Kansas, northern North Dakota and the Plains of eastern Wyoming and Montana showing any above-normal precipitation. Temperatures were cooler than normal over the Dakotas with departures of 3-6 degrees below normal while most of the rest of the region was 3-6 degrees above normal for the week. Abnormally dry conditions improved over southwest and southeast Kansas while severe drought improved in northeast Wyoming and into western South Dakota. The extreme drought in northeast Nebraska was reassessed and removed as the convergence of the indicators at extreme drought levels no longer existed, even with some long-term signals still showing some dryness in the extreme levels…

Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending December 17, 2024.

West

Most of the southern and southwest portions of the region were dry for the week. After an early start to the snow season, many areas have seen it drop off considerably and are below normal for this time of year. The wettest areas were in northern California into the Great Basin and southern Idaho and Montana. Temperatures were mainly 3-6 degrees above normal over the region with only those areas recording the most rains being below normal for the week. Even with the precipitation in areas, changes to the drought status in the region were minimal this week. Moderate drought improved in northern Utah and southwest Wyoming. Extreme drought expanded in northwest Wyoming while northern Colorado had abnormally dry and moderate drought expand slightly…

South

Temperatures were warmer than normal over most of the region with departures of 5-10 degrees above normal for the week. The wettest areas were in eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and northern Mississippi, where most recorded 150-200% of normal precipitation for the week. Moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions improved over much of northern, western, and central Arkansas and in far eastern Oklahoma. Moderate drought improved over extreme southeast Mississippi and in far eastern Tennessee. Portions of eastern Tennessee continued to be dry and a new pocket of extreme drought was added. Exceptional drought was removed from south central Tennessee and some improvements to moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions were made in central Tennessee. Moderate drought expanded in east Texas while severe drought contracted in north Texas and portions of east Texas…

Looking Ahead

Over the next 5-7 days, it is anticipated that the best chances for precipitation will be over the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and the eastern third of the United States. Much of the central and southern Plains, Southwest, and Rocky Mountains will expect little to no precipitation. Temperatures during this period will be above normal over the western half of the country with the greatest departures expected over the Southwest where it could be 10-13 degrees above normal. The coolest temperatures will be along the East Coast where departures of 7-10 degrees below normal can be anticipated from North Carolina up to New York.

The 6-10 day outlooks show that the probability of warmer-than-normal temperatures covers almost the entire country outside of the East Coast from North Carolina to Massachusetts where probabilities lean to near normal conditions. The highest probabilities of above-normal temperatures will be in the northern Plains and upper Midwest. The greatest chances of above-normal precipitation will be in the Pacific Northwest and portions of the South. The best chances of below-normal precipitation are in the Southwest and northern New England.

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Humanity in hot water

Ferocious floods

Devastating droughts

A rapidly changing climate

What can be done?

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ESA questions

Collective action

Charisma

Loper Bright for the “foreseeable future”

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Undammed: The KLamath River Story

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I want to buy in an urban area. Where do I start?

Is the property already connected to a main water system?

Who is the property’s water provider?

Outside of a service area? Here’s how to begin.

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See a pond, get the papers

What does it mean if there’s a well?

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What do I need to know about water rights?

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🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

🦫 Wildlife Watch 🦅

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Water Year 2024 Summary

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This Week’s Drought Summary

Looking Ahead

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Early disagreement