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Category: Colorado Water
Reclamation says new #ColoradoRiver plan will be short-term: Operating plan may be based on latest Lower Basin proposal — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
June 5, 2026
Federal officials announced on Thursday that they plan on using a shorter-term framework for future Colorado River management so they can be more responsive to changing conditions and reservoir levels.
Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Scott Cameron said at an annual conference on water policy that the agency will be using a 10-year framework, issuing new operational guidelines every two years. In the absence of a seven-state deal for sharing shortages and managing reservoirs, river management now falls to the federal government — an outcome nearly everyone had hoped to avoid.
“We would love to have a 20-year deal or a 30-year deal but, frankly, we haven’t even been able to get the seven states to agree on what a two-year deal would look like,” Cameron said. “Given the highly unusual hydrological situation in the basin … we think it makes sense to take a second look at decision making every couple of years.”
As part of the required process under the National Environmental Policy Act, Cameron said Reclamation will release a final Environmental Impact Statement with its “preferred alternative,” in mid-to-late summer. It will lay out a more detailed 10-year operations plan for the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and will include short-term operational guidelines for 2027 and 2028. He said the plan provides a stable, transparent and adaptable framework for river management.
“We want to pay more attention to what’s actually happening in the river and what’s happening in terms of the elevation of the reservoirs,” Cameron said. “We want to manage conservatively during low inflow periods and hopefully be able to transition to recovery as conditions improve across the basin to keep the system stable and resilient.”
Cameron left the door open for a return to future management by the states and added that if they eventually come to an agreement, it could supplant the federal plan.
Cameron’s update came at the Colorado Law Conference on Natural Resources at the University of Colorado Boulder, hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center and the Water & Tribes Initiative. Water managers from around the basin gathered at the Wolf Law School in the midst of one of the worst droughts on record that threatens the water supply for about 40 million people in the American Southwest. Record hot temperatures and one of the worst snowpacks since measuring began resulted in streamflows that peaked much lower than normal and, in some reaches, a month early. Reclamation’s most recent projections put spring runoff into Lake Powell at just 800,000 acre-feet, which would be 13% percent of normal and the lowest on record.
On top of the abysmal hydrologic conditions, the basin is also in the midst of a management crisis. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and Lower Basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) after two years of negotiating have failed to reach a consensus on how they will share future cuts and have blown past deadlines to come up with a plan. The current guidelines, which have determined shortages and releases since 2007, expire at the end of the year. But for all intents and purposes, water managers need a new plan in place by the start of the new water year on Oct. 1.
Some of the problem still centers around the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allocated half of the river’s flows (7.5 million acre-feet a year) to each basin. But this framework no longer applies under 21st century conditions, which has seen flows decline by 20% due to climate change. Despite indications a year ago that the states were moving to a supply-driven model based on each year’s snowpack and available water — rather than a fixed allocation of water — a new management framework the states can agree on has remained out of reach.
Beyond the band-aid
The feds’ operating plan for the first two years may be based on a proposal submitted by the Lower Basin states in early May, in which they propose to cut another 700,000 acre-feet of water per year through 2028, on top of the 1.5 million acre-feet they had already promised. California and Arizona will each take another 300,000 acre-feet of cuts and Nevada will take a cut of 100,000 acre-feet. The proposal does not include any mandatory conservation from the Upper Basin.
Federal officials responded in a May 28 letter with adjustments to make the proposal feasible, including the requirement that the Lower Basin states help pay for the 700,000 acre-feet of conservation. In the past, conservation programs have depended heavily on federal funding.
Becky Mitchell, who represents Colorado in the negotiations among the states, said during a Friday panel that the feds’ plan was a starting point but raises some concerns. Constantly renegotiating an operating plan every two years would be hard to fathom, she said.
“How do we fund and finance if we’re constantly renegotiating?” Mitchell said. “And how do we create the certainty that the 40 million people deserve?”
The feds have already stepped in this spring to prevent the worst consequences of the exceptionally dry winter and keep water levels at Lake Powell from falling below the threshold for making hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. They are releasing up to 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to prop up Powell and holding back Powell releases by about 1.5 million acre-feet. Cameron conceded, however, that these are temporary, stop-gap measures meant to address a critical situation.
“I think we succeeded in making everybody unhappy and everybody mad, which maybe means we’re doing the right thing in terms of Lake Powell,” Cameron said.
The Upper Basin states, including Colorado, are exploring ways to contribute water to a pool in Lake Powell as a means of maintaining higher water levels and an insurance policy against drastic cuts. But officials have not budged from their position that the Upper Basin is limited in what it can do and that cutting Lower Basin overuse is the primary solution to the Colorado River crisis.
Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University whose presentation kicked off the conference, asked water managers not to waste this unique opportunity to redo 100 years of law and policy around how to manage a critical resource. And he directed a plea at the Upper Basin, saying that they, too, are part of the problem.
“We need everybody with a shoulder to this wheel,” Udall said. “We understand that the Upper Basin is different. We understand that they don’t have (large upstream) reservoirs and that every year people suffer. But we need you to help. Please help us.”
#ColoradoRiver Basin – new report from my colleagues on the implications of running on empty — John Fleck (InkStain.net) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
June 1, 2026
I’ve been on a “Colorado River sabbatical” of late, but I took a peek last week at Reclamation’s latest 24-month study. Holy moly things have gotten bad since the last time I looked!
Those not on sabbatical already know all of this, but to keep Lake Powell above a surface elevation of 3,500 feet, Reclamation is:
- increasing releases out of Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border
- dropping releases out of Lake Powell to 6 million acre feet this year
Even with those two “hail Mary” moves, Lake Mead is projected in the “most probable” scenario to drop to elevation 1,020 by summer 2027. Under the “minimum probable” forecast, Mead drops all the way to elevation 1,008 in 2027.
We are on the brink, as a group of my colleagues explains in a new analysis out this morning (Monday June 1, 2026), of a system crash:
That’s from the latest report from the team of Castle-Schmidt-Kuhn-Sorensen-Tara, the Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River. I’ve been on “sabbatical”, so I didn’t work on this one with my friends. (The joke is that I’m busy catching up on old movies, which is at least partly true, did you know Billy Wilder made, like, 50 movies?)
Even a wet year, my friends conclude, would only provide a short reprieve from the need to significantly reduce consumptive use.
Building on a similar analysis done last September (I was a co-author on that one), the authors attempt to overcome one of the shortcomings of the traditional Colorado River accounting systems, which is to treat any water above “dead pool” as usable storage. This is not the case, with clear do-not-cross lines in the reservoirs that are maintained for technical reasons well above the bottom, defined by my colleagues as…
One of the reasons for my “sabbatical” is, frankly, an agonized frustration with the abject failure of Colorado River governance at the basin scale, and a desire to turn my attention to the local level, which is where the problem solving responsibility seems to rest right now. Each community needs to be having a serious conversation right now about the specifics of its Colorado River water supply, and how it intends to go about using less. Blaming other people for using too much isn’t particularly useful at this point, we seem to have chosen to hand that set of questions (the rule-based part of “who is entitled to how much”) over to the courts, and who knows what that process holds. We know the answer for everyone is “use less water”, and each community needs to be getting on with that conversation.
President Trump’s border wall is ‘blowing up’ sacred sites in 4 US states — AZCentral.com
Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Debra Utacia Krol). Here’s an excerpt:
June 7, 2026
Key Points
- Border wall construction is damaging or threatening sacred Indigenous, cultural, and environmentally sensitive sites in four states along the U.S.-Mexico border.
- The Department of Homeland Security has waived environmental and historic protection laws to expedite construction of a two-layered structure.
- Sites affected include a 1,000-year-old O’odham geoglyph in Arizona and Kuuchamaa, a sacred mountain to Kumeyaay tribes in California.
The recent destruction of a 1,000-year-old sacred O’odham geoglyph in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge is only the latest example of damage and desecration to religious, cultural and environmentally sensitive sites caused by construction of the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. At least one Catholic shrine, two mountains held sacred by Kumeyaay bands in California and Catholics on the New Mexico-Texas state line, and wetlands prized as life-giving water sources for wildlife and humans have all suffered damage or are in the work zone. The Las Playas Intaglio holds great cultural and historical importance to O’odham and other Indigenous peoples in the Southwest. The intaglio, or geoglyph, was created by scraping the top darker layer of earth from the desert floor, resulting in a 200-foot-long rendition of a fish with its nose pointing south. Some tribes say it served as a directional marker along a trail that led to the Gulf of California and its marine resources, including salt deposits…
The Department of Homeland Security is filling in the gaps in the border wall not completed during President Donald Trump’s first term. The agency is also building a second wall parallel to the first in areas deemed to be at higher risk of smuggling and human trafficking. The Trump administration has moved to waive environmental and historic protection laws and regulations in its rush to build the walls. In April 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued waivers to expedite construction in Arizona and New Mexico, based on a 2005 law that gave the agency the authority to waive laws to expedite barriers and roads at the U.S. border…The agency has also ignored directives such as sites being included in the National Register of Historic Places, the United States’ official list of historic and archaeological resources deemed worthy of protection…
Members of the 16 Kumeyaay tribal communities in Southern California and Baja California sounded alarms when the government began blasting chunks off Kuuchamaa, also known as Mount Cuchuma or Tecate Peak. The 3,885-foot-high mountain straddles the U.S.-Mexico border and is about 4 miles west of Tecate, Baja California. Kumeyaay people consider Kuuchamaa their most sacred mountain. According to the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit founded in 2005 to protect areas important to the Kumeyaay peoples, the peak is the namesake of a powerful Kuseyaay, or religious leader…Like other cultural and sacred places, the government has waived environmental laws and disregarded Kuuchamaa’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The 1992 listing, which Bergueno said was led by her elders, was the first-ever Native religious site to be listed…
Quitobaquito Springs was heavily damaged as the first border wall was built in 2020. At least two endangered species, the Sonoyta pupfish and Sonoyta mud turtles, are endemic to the springs and found nowhere else on the planet. Their survival was on the line as construction crews pumped water and damaged wetlands. The spring is also a lifeline for other wildlife in one of the hottest, driest parts of the Sonoran Desert. Biologists and environmentalists are already mapping strategies to rescue Sonoyta mud turtles from the pond should CBP damage it again. A small population of the Sonoyta pupfish was brought to a new desert stream habitat at Biosphere 2 in October 2025 to provide a backup to the critically endangered species.
Once underwater, #ColoradoRiver canyon country reemerges as drought-stricken #LakePowell’s levels drop — The #Denver Post #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
June 7, 2026
The tops of trees, dead since Lake Powell’s levels rose decades ago, poked through mud and ooze at the silent mouth of Davis Gulch, where the side canyon met the reservoir’s still waters. But just around a few bends in the sandstone walls, life began to appear. First, a fuzz of inch-tall greenery. Then, knee-high cattails and primrose, followed shortly by small cottonwoods and willows, then by towering gambel oaks. The silence of the canyon mouth was replaced by the soft rush of a creek, bird songs, and the constant cacophony of dragonflies and gnats. Scattered throughout the canyon, an ecologist, bug scientists, birders and advocates for Glen Canyon were working to document the ecosystems emerging as Lake Powell’s water levels have dropped after decades of drought and water overuse.
“Hiking the side canyons is like going through ecological time travel,” said Eric Balken, the executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring the canyons inundated by Lake Powell, as he hiked up Davis Gulch…
The falling water levels have also steadily revealed long-submerged canyonlands: red slot canyons, sandstone amphitheaters, waterfalls that tumble over slickrock cliffs. The reemerging landscapes provide a new opportunity to study life in Glen Canyon, which sits just upstream of the iconic Grand Canyon. Little scientific work was completed in Glen Canyon before the federal government flooded it — an event seen by environmentalists then, and now, as an unmitigated ecological disaster, a paradise lost…But for a new generation of advocates, regaining paradise seems possible as the reservoir’s shorelines recede, bringing more than 100,000 acres of rugged terrain out of the water. The Glen Canyon Institute and canyon activists for years have argued that Lake Powell should be drained and the Colorado River allowed to again flow freely through Glen Canyon. Now, their argument is also bolstered by the fact that Lake Powell is emptying — whether Colorado River managers like it or not. For those advocates, recent years have provided a rare chance to study life in the emerging canyonlands and to make their case to basin leaders who are contemplating the long-term future of Colorado River management…
It’s not all doom and gloom, and 4 other things we learned at CU Boulder, Getches-Wilkinson Center’s, #ColoradoRiver gathering — Scott Franz (KUNC.org) #COriver #aridification
June 5, 2026
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.
Water negotiators, river enthusiasts, Native tribes and lots of lawyers convened at the University of Colorado Law School on Thursday to take stock of the future of the dwindling Colorado River.
Here are five things KUNC’s water and environment reporter learned on the first day of the gathering.
There’s a thirst for treating the river as more than something to be consumed, and monetized and stretched out
Dale Sinquah, a tribal council member for Arizona’s Hopi tribe, is among a growing number of people who view the Colorado as a living being that should have the same rights as a person.
“If you look at it at that level and you allow it to, then it starts changing the ways in which you think about it, and maybe your actions,” he said.
Late last year, the Colorado River Indian Tribes of Arizona and California voted to give their namesake waterway the same legal rights as a person, saying the ‘living being’ deserves more protection while it’s being threatened by overuse and drought.
Sinquah said he had mixed reviews of the discussions at the water conference halfway through the first day.
“I’m kind of wondering if we’re stuck in that mode where you know personal interest (is winning) instead of how do we fix this as a whole, as a group,” he said. “It works better when you work together as a group.”
There’s still no finalized federal plan for the river yet, and the White House could have the final say…
Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation overseeing the operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, said the Interior Department is expecting to publish a short term operating plan for the reservoirs by “mid-summer.”
He said the plan would have to be renegotiated every two years and could be replaced at any time with one that the seven states can agree on.
“The good news is that the White House is very interested in what’s going on with the Colorado, so we’ll probably have to brief the White House on the (Secretary of the Interior’s) decision before it’s final,” Cameron said.
River negotiations are ongoing, but details are scarce…
First governors from all seven states in the river basin were summoned to Washington, DC, ahead of the Feb. 14 deal deadline they missed.
Then, after that didn’t work, came the Microsoft Teams meeting.
Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently talked with the seven governors again on the virtual meeting platform.
“The fact that he is trying to wrangle his gubernatorial colleagues twice, I think, indicates how seriously Secretary Burgum takes what’s happening in the Colorado River,” Cameron said.
However, no deal has yet to materialize as the states remain at an impasse, and some in the upper basin have called for a different mediator to intervene.
One thing is clear.
Forecasts for the river have gotten worse in recent months. And there was an acknowledgement that the status quo is not sustainable.
Could the feds get more involved in the management of upper basin reservoirs like Flaming Gorge? The answer is murky…
The audience asked Cameron, the Bureau of Reclamation official, about his thinking on how Interior should manage four large reservoirs in the upper basin that are collectively known as the upper initial units (they include Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border).
Flaming Gorge is currently being partially drained so water can be sent down to Lake Powell so it doesn’t get so low that it stops producing hydropower.
Cameron said the Interior Secretary could exert more control over the reservoirs in the future in the event of an “emergency.”
“And what an emergency is, I think, is probably in the eyes of the beholder,” he said. “Now, you put four or five lawyers in a room. You’ll probably get nine answers on how much discretion the secretary has or doesn’t have in the upper initial units.”
It’s not all doom and gloom…
Author Zak Podmore, known for his recent book Life After Deadpool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River, wowed the audience with a photo slideshow of what’s happening in Glen Canyon as drought takes water levels lower and lower in Lake Powell.
Parts of the lake that have only recently been uncovered are full of old beer cans and other relics of boating escapades, including sunken boats.
But deeper down, Podmore shared photos of Native artifacts that have survived decades of being submerged.
New ecosystems are also taking shape.
Behind-the-curtain politics of a #ColoradoRiver conference — Allen Best (BigPivots.com) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
June 7, 2026
Doug Kenney, principal organizer of annual gathering in Boulder, talks about how the growing tensions among basin states pose challenges in setting the agenda
The Colorado River has always had a magnetic appeal to the public consciousness. John Wesley Powell and his crew were instant national heroes after they emerged from the Grand Canyon in 1869.
That interest continues to this day. Bathtub rings are an absorbing visual, an easy way to communicate declines in the two biggest reservoirs in the basin, Mead and Powell. The river is being hammered by a warming climate and archaic governance of the shared resource.
This provides much to chew on, and that discussion continued again on June 4-5 at the Colorado River Conference hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School. Organizers reported 373 people were registered to attend in person and another 132 remotely, a record for both. This surpasses a record set last year.
Afterward, Big Pivots sat down with Doug Kenney, the principal organizer of the conference, to take stock of what had just transpired. He directs the Western Water Policy Program and chairs the Colorado River Research Group.
What year did this conference begin? What was the thinking that gave birth to it?
I believe 1983 was the first one. This was mostly a creation of Larry MacDonnell, (the first director of the Natural Resources Law Center, a position he held from 1983 to 1994).
Larry pursued a dual mandate of researching key issues but also of trying to involve the public and other constituencies. A conference was a natural thing to do. We are an educational institution.
I’ve done the last 30 or so of them, but Larry got it started,
It seems like two or three, maybe three years ago, the tribes became a major presence in attendance and on the agenda. How did this come about?
Mostly through our professional networks. We knew people who were associated with the (Colorado River Basin) Water and Tribes Initiative. They wanted to broaden their reach and their influence. At the same time, we’ve here always wanted to involve tribal interests in what we do, going back to the work of David Getches and Charles Wilkinson.
We decided we’d try co-hosting a conference. It’s a partnership, and like all partnerships, it grows over time. But it’s working pretty well, I think.
Am I wrong? Was I missing something? I didn’t notice much of tribal presence in the agenda or participation until just a few years ago.
We’d usually maybe have one tribal speaker sprinkled in the program somewhere, but it was pretty hit and miss, in part I think because you kind of need a critical mass of involvement from the tribal community for other tribes to feel like this is a place that they’d be taken seriously and that they’d be welcomed. It wasn’t a slow linear growth to where we’re at today. There was a pretty dramatic shift four or five years ago.
How new is the Water Tribal Initiative?
They’ve been around I think for about a decade. They’re co-managed by Matt McKinney, who wasn’t here, and Daryl Vigil.
It’s not a national thing, but the Colorado Basin has 30 different tribes. That’s a pretty big number of tribes to keep track of. It’s a network as much as it is anything, and every so often they try to get together. They consider this conference their big convening. They also get to get together at CRWUA (Colorado River Water Users Association, which holds an annual conference during December in Las Vegas).
They have also produced a few research reports. This week they talked about their report on tribal sovereignty. And they have particular initiatives within the Water and Tribes Initiative, such as universal access to clean water. They are pushing, mostly through federal legislation, to provide assurances that all tribes have access to clean water.
Do they have a strong benefactor?
I don’t think so, but they have a very broad base of funders and supporters. A lot of water agencies, a lot of people, and a lot of organizations that know tribes have been treated poorly and that tribes have legitimate interests in the basin but (know) that many tribes just don’t have the resources to do this without some assistance.
As I’ve attended most years since 2002, I have noticed some ebbs and flows. There were some empty seats this afternoon, but the seats were mostly occupied through the first day and a half, and that’s somewhat different than, say, 10 years ago. What explains the ebb and flow?
I attribute that mostly to two things: one is this partnership with the Water and Tribes Initiative. The other thing is the fact that we’re talking about the Colorado River, which by every measure is in a crisis. It’s easier to get people’s attention when you’re talking about a crisis than when you’re talking about something that’s still not that serious. That’s part of it.
We used to be in another building. This is clearly a better facility for audience and speakers alike. That helps us attract a larger audience. We’ve had good foundation support, good funders. It takes a lot of money to do this, but we’ve had funders that see value in it. That has allowed us to make this a bigger event.
The conference is always the first week of June, so when do you begin rough-drafting the agenda?
Usually January. In some years it’s easier than others. This year was the most difficult. It was the easiest year in terms of attracting an audience. The hardest year in terms of putting the program together.
Everyone’s mad at each other, and everyone is — I can’t tell you all the back stories. Becky Mitchell said something today about how it’s hard to negotiate and prepare for litigation at the same time. She’s right. And I was thinking to myself, it’s hard to bring people together to talk at a conference while acknowledging the fact that they’re all mad at each other, and some of them are about to sue each other, and some can’t be in the same room with each other because they’re that angry, and some will be deeply offended if someone else is there.
It’s one of these years that there’s just so many delicate issues and angry folks — and angry for legitimate reasons; I’m not discounting that. But it’s been a really challenging year.
Your answer anticipates my next question, but I’ll ask it nonetheless. If memory serves me, a few years ago you had representatives of all seven basin states at the same table. This year you had two. I guess it’s fair to say that agenda setting has become more politically sensitive.
Every year for the last four or five years we’ve given all seven principals, all seven states, an opportunity to sit at the same table and have a discussion. In every passing year it becomes more difficult to do that.
You have seen this at CRWUA as well. Some years they had to divide into two sessions, upper and lower basin sessions. For awhile we were thinking of just having a lower basin session. The lower basin folks were happy to do that, but the upper basin folks weren’t as comfortable. We (also) thought about a different part of the session or a different location.
Ultimately we came to the conclusion that everyone could agree if it would be a conversation, not a posturing or confrontational thing. (Having) one upper basin person and one lower basin person, that was a format that could work. That’s what we did (with Becky Mitchell from Colorado and John Entsminger of Nevada). Anything more elaborate than that I don’t think was viable this year. It’s a really delicate time.
In terms of conferences devoted to the Colorado River do you have rivals for what you’re doing? Are there other places in Arizona or California, for example, that are kind of like must-go sessions?
There are two must-attend Colorado River conferences each year, and this is one of them. CRWUA (in Las Vegas) is the other one.
We specifically try to be different than CRWUA. We’re the opposite end of the calendar, roughly six months away. CRWUA is in many respects much more of a social event. We try to be more academic and about policy, with serious talk about serious issues. CRWUA, just like us, ebbs and flows from year to year in terms of what it looks like. But we try to be a little more hard-hitting and less of a, you know, take-the-family-and-have-a-vacation sort of event. I don’t mean to sound like I’m negative on CRWUA. I think we’re the perfect compliment.
Aside from that, there are some meetings such as CLE, Continuing Legal Education. It always has a Colorado River event. This year was quite good. Many other years, it’s not as strong. For practicing attorneys, that’s something that they want to go to every year, because they can get some credits there.
Still another one in New Mexico that’s held each year kind of commemorates the signing of the compact.
How do you measure success? I’m sure you constantly ask that question of yourself.
You understand the challenge of it all. We can measure success by the size of the crowd and that they mostly seemed to have a good time. In that sense, that’s success.
The other side of that is that we’ve been focused just on the Colorado River issues for the last five or six of these, and things have only gotten worse on the river. Obviously, we don’t think we’re to blame for that. But clearly, there’s no great success story that we can lay credit to either.
So I think we’re successful in that we promote conversation and the exchange of ideas, and we shine a light on new and innovative ideas, and we give a voice to people who sometimes don’t have a voice. This is where the tribes come into play again.
Some elements I think are successful, but in the very big scope of things, the issues that we’ve been addressing in our conference aren’t getting any better. It does force me to think about (and question) whether there is a better way for us to make a difference. I don’t know what that would be, but I do think about that a lot.
For June–August 2026, the World Meteorological Organization forecasts indicate significant shifts in rainfall patterns—a classic atmospheric response to the developing Pacific #ElNiño
President Trump’s administration revokes OHV restrictions for public lands: Plus: #ColoradoRiver slides towards “system crash” — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
June 2, 2026
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
The Trump administration is attacking public lands again, this time in an apparent effort to open more special places to off-road vehicles. Late last Friday, Trump issued an executive order revoking a Nixon-era policy aimed at ensuring “that the use of off-road vehicles on public lands will be controlled and directed so as to protect the resources of those lands, to promote the safety of all users of those lands, and to minimize conflicts among the various uses of those lands.”
No, this does not mean unfettered swarms of ATVs will be kicking up dust on your favorite public lands next week. But it does bolster the off-road vehicle lobby’s effort to open up motorized access to federal lands, and takes away one of the long-term planning tools used by land management agencies to protect those places from off-road vehicle use and abuse.
In the nearer-term, Trump’s order could end or diminish the ban on OHVs in national parks, allowing the vehicles to travel backroads in, say, Capitol Reef National Park. This might not sound so bad: If a three-ton SUV can drive there, why not let a smaller side-by-side or four-wheeler on the same road?
The answer lies in the nature of the newer OHVs, namely “side-by-sides” or razors, which more closely resemble souped-up dune buggies than conventional SUVs. While some people use OHVs as mere modes of transportation, the vehicles are more commonly treated and utilized like recreational playthings — very powerful, fast, and noisy toys that tend to travel in herds. They therefore bring their own type of impacts.
Anyone who has traveled on or hiked around the Alpine Loop in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado on a busy summer day has likely experienced these particular impacts first-hand. Those roads were first opened up to OHVs in the early 2000s. Since then Alpine Loop traffic numbers have exploded, with at least half of the motorized traffic made up of OHVs.
Law enforcement officers now spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy trying to keep the OHV drivers on designated routes and in compliance with traffic laws. OHV crashes, often resulting in serious injury, are not uncommon. And each summer several riders surrender to the temptation to illegally leave the road — these are off-road vehicles, after all — and rip across the tundra, causing irreversible damage. Unlike regular vehicles, OHVs tend to travel in herds, spewing exhaust and kicking up dust, their collective buzzing reaching far beyond the roads on which they travel. It has become almost impossible during the high season to completely escape the incessant din of OHVs on the Alpine Loop, even in wilderness study areas.
This same phenomenon could now be coming to a national park near you.
The administration claims it eliminated the policy because it was outdated, vague, and redundant, because Congress has since passed a host of other laws protecting public lands from OHVs and other uses. The order goes on to say:
This makes very little sense. Sure, the restrictions on OHVs could hamper energy or timber development if it required destructive off-road vehicle use, but you’re not going to haul a drill rig into the backcountry on a side-by-side. And the idea that a hiker might feel “banned” from a trail because they couldn’t ride get there on an OHV is just silly.
The dubious statement reeks of the rhetoric of the crowd that claims that motorized vehicle restrictions are locking folks out of public lands, and therefore are discriminating against the type of people who drive these vehicles. But the discrimination claim simply does not fly. Mountain bikes are banned from wilderness areas, from a majority of trails in national parks, from some trails on BLM land, and are not allowed to ride off-trail on all federal land. This has nothing to do with the people who ride the bikes, or even the funny clothes they tend to wear, and everything to do with the vehicles’ potential impacts.
Trump probably did this at the behest of the Blue Ribbon Coalition and the likes of Sen. Mike Lee, who has pushed legislation that would open up national parks to OHVs. Maybe he’s trying to garner support from somewhere, given his terrible favorability ratings. Or perhaps he’s trying to appease the motorized crowd, which is probably a bit miffed that their drug of choice — gasoline — is so damned expensive thanks to Donny’s dumb war. Maybe he’s even trying to increase national park entry fee revenues so he can funnel it to his ballroom/drone-port or his White House UFC fight.
The arrogance of the off-road vehicle lobby — Jonathan P. Thompson
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
It pretty much goes without saying that if next winter is as bad as this past winter, in terms of mountain snowpack, then the collective users of the Colorado River and its infrastructure will be toast — at least figuratively (maybe literally, too?). Now, my favorite team of Colorado River wonks1 [Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara] have crunched the latest water numbers, and they’ve found that even a nearly “normal” winter won’t stop depletion of “reasonably accessible storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, leading to “devastating consequences.”
Back in 1999, the Colorado River’s storage system, which consists of Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and several other smaller reservoirs in the Upper and Lower basins, was almost full, holding about 60 million acre-feet of active, or available, storage. This provided a robust savings account that could be tapped during the inevitable dry spells on the notoriously fluctuating river system.
The reserve, however, was not adequate for the megadrought — or long-term aridification — that started in 2000 and continues today. Instead of following the usual up-down cycle, the Colorado River’s flows began a downward trend that is on track to hit its lowest point so far this water year, while consumptive use stayed more or less steady. Demand exceeded supply more years than not, drawing the savings account down significantly. That has forced the Bureau of Reclamation to take extraordinary measures, such as reducing downstream releases and tapping upstream reservoirs, to keep Lake Powell’s surface level from dropping below 3,500 feet, or what I call de facto dead pool 2.
Thanks in part to extra releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in May, Lake Powell’s surface level climbed slightly to 3,528 feet last month. Given that spring runoff in the Upper Basin has peaked and most tributary flows are decreasing, we can expect that number to start dropping, perhaps precipitously, at least until the monsoon arrives.
The wonks wanted an idea of how things might play out in the slightly longer-term, so they modeled two scenarios:
In the first scenario, they assume that the Colorado River’s natural flow, or the estimated amount of water in the river without human consumption or interference, will be similar to water year 2025, when the mountain snowpack was below average but not nearly as slim as this year. They also assume that consumptive uses will remain at the lowest levels in recent years.
Natural flow: 8.5 MAF at Lees Ferry + .70 MAF from Grand Canyon and Virgin River = 9.20 MAF
Consumptive use: 3.56 MAF Upper Basin (includes evaporation and other losses) + 8.23 MAF Lower Basin + Mexico (incl. evap and other losses) = 11.79 MAF
Deficit and resulting reservoir drawdown: 2.59 MAF
Realistically accessible storage (RAS) remaining in Mead, Powell, and Flaming Gorge: 3.63 MAFFor the second, they plug in snowpack/flow numbers similar to those from water year 2023, which was a huge winter. Consumptive use would be about the same as in 2023.
Natural flow: 18.55 MAF
Consumptive use: 13.10 MAF
Surplus: 4.83 MAF
RAS: 11.05 MAFUnder the first scenario, the BoR will almost certainly have to go to a run-of-the-river situation on Glen Canyon Dam to defend 3,500 feet. That would mean releases would be approximately equal to inflows minus evaporation and seepage from the reservoir, and might drop to 3,000 to 4,000 cubic feet per-second or even lower. In the summer of 2002 inflows at times dropped below 1,000 cfs. This would turn the river through the Grand Canyon into a relative trickle, and cause a significant drawdown of Lake Mead.
The second scenario would be far better, but is far from an enduring solution. At best it would buy a little time, perhaps enough for the feds to build bypass tunnels around Glen Canyon Dam to allow for sustained releases below 3,500 feet. If it were followed by another three or four 2023-like winters, then things would start to look pretty darned good.
But if it were followed by just one more dry year it would bring everything back to today’s rather dire situation.
Since there’s no way to bolster supplies, the only way out of this mess is to continue to slash demand. The paper’s authors write:
Oof.
As long as we’re on the topic, the BoR recently released its Lower Basin accounting report for 2025, which tallies up consumptive uses in the basin. As you can see from the following graphs, which the Land Desk whipped up using the BoR data, the Lower Basin uses significantly less water now than it did in 1999, just before the current megadrought began. Upper Basin consumptive use figures for 2025 are not yet available. The following figures do not include reservoir evaporation, conveyance losses, or Mexico’s use.
🤖 Data Center Watch 👾
Has Enchant Energy finally found a raison d’être? The Farmington-based company was created in 2019 to try to save the San Juan coal-fired power plant from retirement by retrofitting it with carbon capture equipment. Enchant would then sell the carbon to oil producers in the Permian Basin, while also receiving generous federal tax credits. Basically they wanted to turn the power plant into a taxpayer subsidized carbon dioxide factory. It flopped for various reasons. Now the San Juan plant — and all of its pollution — are no more. We suspected Enchant Energy had met a similar fate.
But then I received a press release letting me know the not-so-up upstart is not dead, but has instead signed a letter of intent with Creekstone Energy to capture carbon from the tech firm’s proposed hyperscale Delta Gigasite data center in Delta, Utah. As is often the case, Creekstone touts all of the renewable energy it plans on building for its center, but the first phase will be powered by natural gas, which emits carbon dioxide.
Enchant hopes to capture the carbon from the gas plant and convert it into marketable fuel. The company has apparently given up on trying to give coal-burning a slightly more climate-friendly veneer (after all, Trump has declared coal to be “clean” and “beautiful”). Instead, it looks like they’re jumping on the data center bandwagon, along with wannabe nuclear reactor developers and the like.
Who knows, maybe this is the thing that finally gives Enchant some meaning. But we’re not holding our breath. After spending gobs of money on lobbying, pulling in some hefty federal grants, then failing spectacularly with the San Juan generating bid, Enchant partnered with another firm and tried to buy the Intermountain coal plant in Delta to use it to power its own data center. That didn’t work, either.
🔋Notes from the Energy Transition 🔌
Yes, the energy transition may have run into some stumbling blocks, i.e. the Trump administration’s hatred for anything that might compete with coal and oil and gas, but it’s still quietly underway. For example, out by the aforementioned, defunct San Juan coal plant, DESRI recently broke ground on two utility-scale solar installations: the 170-megawatt Foxtail Flats solar-plus-battery storage array; and the 100-MW Four Mile Mesa solar-plus-storage project.
That’s some pretty serious generating capacity and adds to the existing San Juan solar facility nearby. Los Alamos County has signed on to purchase power from Foxtail Flats, and Meta will be drawing electricity Four Mile Mesa via PNM to power its data centers.
Both of the new facilities are under development on Ute Mountain Ute tribal land.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
In last week’s comments, ncoffey94 asked what kind of bike I ride. It’s a 2023 Niner RLT, with an aluminum frame, carbon fork, and SRAM Apex parts. It’s nothing fancy and isn’t super light. But I dig it for riding on the roads, dirt, and even singletrack. It’s got 40 mm tires, so isn’t so great in the sand, and with no suspension I don’t do big drops or super-cobbly stuff. But it sure is nice having just one bike for all uses.
1 Anne Castle, Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen, and Katherine Tara.
2 Water can no longer be released through the penstocks and hydropower turbine below 3,500 feet, forcing dam operators to rely on the lower river outlets for all downstream water releases. Those outlets are not engineered for sustained, long-term use, however, and could be damaged. The feared scenario looks kind of like this: The penstocks are closed; the river outlets release water faster than reservoir inflows; the reservoir surface level drops down to, say, 3,450 feet; the river outlets get damaged so must be shut down altogether, trapping the remaining water behind the dam and halting all releases until the water climbs back up to 3,500 feet. This would effectively dry up the Grand Canyon and cause Lake Mead to start plummeting as well. Of course, no one wants this to happen, so BoR is doing all it can to defend 3,500 feet, making that level the effective dead pool, even though technically 3,370 feet (the river outlet elevation) is the actual dead pool.
The June 1, 2026 #Colorado Water Supply Outlook Report is hot off the presses from the NRCS
Click the link to read the report (and drill down to the individual major basin stats) on the NRCS website. Here’s an excerpt:
Colorado experienced an unusual volatile winter this year. In October 2025 at the start of the water year; the southern basins received record amounts of rainfall, while the rest of the state saw minimal early-season accumulation. November brought intermittent storms but not enough to build a meaningful base and the snowpack remained well below normal. Early December finally delivered a measurable amount of snow for the northern basins but record high temperatures and lack of moisture in the middle of the month raised concerns heading into 2026. January continued the trend of minimal snow accumulations, and many basins began falling into single-digit percentiles. The first half of February remained dry, and although the second half brought some moisture it was not nearly enough to recover from the early-season deficit. Statewide snowpack entered March at 60 percent of median. March delivered a combination of record high temperatures and record low precipitation, causing some basins to reach peak snow-water-equivalent (SWE) almost a month early. The rate at which the snowpack began to melt was unprecedented, with soil moisture sensors and streamflow gages showing an immediate response. Thankfully, April brought cooler temperatures and above normal precipitation, allowing the remaining snowpack to linger a bit longer. With increased storm activity, the majority of hydrographs receded as runoff slowed down. However, by May 1st statewide snowpack had fallen to the zeroth percentile and the remaining snowpack continued to melt. Melt in May is common, but the combination of extremely low snow conditions and warm temperature triggered a second peak in the hydrographs – a peak that normally would represent the first rise of the season. At nearly all streamflow forecast points the runoff duration was significantly shortened, as much of the volume had already been observed in March. By June 1st 91% of SNOTEL stations were fully melted out – compared to the typical 56% for this time of year, highlighting the exceptionally early and accelerated melt season.
Statewide snowpack was 14 percent of the historical median as of June 1, with an average of 0.4 inches of snow water equivalent (SWE) in the state. This is the third-lowest June snowpack in the NRCS Snow Survey period of record, surpassed only by 2002 and 2012—years which both contained a higher seasonal SWE peak in mid-March but experienced rapid meltout in early April and May. Comparatively, 2026 experienced a record-breaking early initiation o snowpack melt in mid-March, reducing the total snowpack by half before cooler conditions and late-season snowfall hastened the decline throughout April. Snowpack melting returned to a predictable bell-curve pattern in May and at the end of the month all river basins currently exhibit far lower-than-median SWE in the state. The San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan, Upper Rio Grande, Gunnison, Colorado Headwaters, and South Platte exhibit the most extreme deviations from the 1991-2020 historical median, reporting 0, 1, 2, 3, and 7 percent of median snowpack SWE respectively. Meanwhile the Laramie-North Platte, Arkansas, and Yampa-White-Little Snake have low but less extreme deviations from median snowpack levels, reporting 17, 18, and 30 percent of median SWE.
The statewide water year-to-date precipitation remains below normal at 77 percent of median. May brought some improvements, with statewide precipitation at 104 percent of median, but the spatial distribution varied greatly. The front range and northern part of the state received above median precipitation with the South Platte River basin at 138 percent and the Laramie-North Platte basin at 128 percent for the month of May; an encouraging shift that helped boost soil moisture and short-term streamflow potential. In contrast, the southwestern basins received below median with the combined San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan River basin and Gunnison River basin at 53 percent and 60 percent of median, respectively. A shift from last month, where those two basins received the most precipitation in April at 155 percent and 116 percent of median. Tower SNOTEL located in the Yampa-White-Little Snake River basin received the most precipitation in the month of May with 5.8 inches total; 2.2 inches falling in a single day (May 5th, 2026).
The current U.S. Drought Monitor Map shows drought conditions are still prevalent across the state, with slight improvements in some northern basins and slight degradations in the southern front range basins since last month. Spring moisture has brought some much-needed precipitation after a well-below normal winter. The monthly precipitation outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts above to near normal precipitation for the month of June.
Reservoir storage is currently 75 percent of the 1991-2020 median on a state-wide scale, down from 85 percent last month. Mean water storage decreased in all river basins in the state compared to last month. As of June 1, storage remains relatively close to median in the Arkansas and South Platte*, reporting 91 and 90 percent median storage, respectively. The Upper Rio Grande, which had been an outlier with above-average reservoir storage since October 2025, is now down to 86 percent of median storage. Five additional basins are reporting reservoir storage levels somewhat below the 30-year median, with the Colorado Headwaters, Eastern South Platte, Yampa-White-Little Snake, Gunnison, and San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan reporting 80, 79, 78, 70, and 69 percent, respectively. The Eastern Arkansas remains the basin with the lowest overall percent of median storage, decreasing from 56 percent down to 41 percent of median storage this month. Overall, Colorado is currently utilizing 54 percent of total reservoir capacity statewide compared to 61 percent storage this time last year (see June 1 2026 Reservoir Storage Capacity chart).
*At the time of publishing, end-of-month reservoir water storage data had not yet been reported for 8 out of 23 reservoirs in the South Platte basin. These reservoirs were excluded (rather than reported zero) in the statistics above, and the data will be updated on our website as soon as it is available.
June through July forecasts at the 50 percent exceedance probability are at 24 percent of median statewide. Observed streamflow from March through May is 50 percent of median statewide. April and May alone are 41 percent as March runoff occurred outside the normal primary period. Record March temperatures drove an early rise in streamflow statewide weeks ahead of typical spring melt timing. Cooler April temperatures and increased April and early May storms placed a pause on snowmelt. A second rise in streamflow followed in mid-May consistent with normal sun angle-driven melt onset. May observed flows averaged 34 percent at a median percentile of 2. Those runoff conditions are observed downstream at Lake Powell where March through May observed inflow is 1,104,000 acre-feet at 28 percent of the period of record median ranking 3rd lowest in the 117-year record behind 2002 and 1977. June and July typically deliver 54 percent of the April through July volume at Powell. The June through July combined forecast is 300,000 acre-feet at 9 percent of median and is near 21 percent of projected total seasonal volume remaining. The forward-looking period 63 of 70 points rank at or below the 10th percentile with a median percentile of 3. Statewide remaining period volume at the 50 percent exceedance probability represents one third of projected total seasonal volume. May storm activity shaped a distribution where eastern basins retain comparatively more remaining volume. The South Platte is at 51 percent and Arkansas at 38 percent of median. Remaining snowpack is limited to the highest elevations and will contribute modestly to late-season flows. Above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation are both favored through the remaining period.
Remaining Period Forecasts Reduced Following Early Snowmelt — NRCS #snowpack #runoff
Click the link to read the release on the NRCS website:
June 5, 2026
An early runoff season shifted a substantial portion of annual runoff into March through May. At Lake Powell, where June and July normally account for about half of seasonal inflow, only about 21 percent of projected seasonal volume remains. Similar conditions are forecast throughout Colorado.
June through July runoff forecasts remain well below normal statewide at the 50 percent exceedance probability at 24 percent of median (Figure 1). Outlooks in the Front Range Mountains remain the exception. May storm activity helped to sustain comparatively higher forecasts in the Front Range and boosted precipitation in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and in the northern Park Range. The South Platte is forecast at 51 percent of median and the Arkansas at 38 percent. In the Upper Rio Grande River basin the most probable outlook is 28 percent of median. Western slope remaining period forecasts range from 19 to 23 percent in the combined Yampa-White-Little Snake and San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan (SMDASJ) basin, respectively. May precipitation ranged from 54 to 59 percent in southwest basins while the South Platte received 140 percent of median.
Record March temperatures initiated an early rise in streamflow weeks ahead of the typical spring melt period. A second rise followed in mid-May consistent with normal sun angle-driven melt timing. In some rivers the May peak became the seasonal maximum. Statewide observed flows from March through May are 50 percent of median. April and May alone are 41 percent, as March runoff occurred outside the normal primary period and skews the seasonal comparison.
Statewide reservoir storage is 75 percent of median and largely reflects October precipitation and carry-over storage from the previous water year. Some of the state’s larger reservoirs are well below the statewide median particularly in southwest basins. Blue Mesa and McPhee reservoirs are both at 59 and 57 percent of median respectively and rank at the 10th percentile in their period of record. Navajo Reservoir is 69 percent of median at the 20th percentile. Colorado Headwaters basin storage is 80 percent of median, and the Upper Rio Grande is 86 percent. Eastern basins are the highest in the state. Pueblo Reservoir is 93 percent of median and aggregate South Platte basin storage is 90 percent. Remaining period inflow forecasts are considerably lower than current storage levels. McPhee inflow is forecast at 24 percent and Navajo at 18 percent. Dillon Reservoir inflow is forecast at 25 percent ranking lowest in the 75-year period of record. Pueblo inflow is forecast at 44 percent of median.
As of June 1, statewide snowpack is averaging 14 percent. Median melt-out timing across the Colorado SNOTEL network is running 36 days ahead of normal. Remaining snowpack is limited to the highest elevations and will contribute modestly to late-season flows. Above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation are both favored through the remaining period.
For more details see the June 1, 2026 Water Supply Outlook Report.
Colorado Basin River Forecast Center June 1, 2026 Water Supply Discussion is hot off the presses #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the discussion on the CBRFC website:
The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) geographic forecast area includes the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB), and Eastern Great Basin (GB).
Water Supply Forecasts
April-July volume forecasts are well below normal and rank in the driest five on record at many locations. Record low snowpack and poor soil moisture conditions are the primary hydrologic conditions impacting the water supply outlook, while future weather is a primary source of forecast uncertainty. June 1 water supply forecasts are summarized in the figure and table below.
Observed Streamflow (April-May)
Poor soil moisture and snowpack conditions have led to well below normal April-May observed unregulated streamflow volumes, which are summarized in the below table.
Water Year Weather
Much of the CBRFC area experienced its warmest and least snowy winter on record. Following this, an unprecedented heatwave in March initiated significant snowmelt in areas that would usually still be building a snowpack. April brought cooler and wetter weather, and May generally continued this trend, with temperatures remaining mostly near normal across the CBRFC area. Portions of the GB and UCRB experienced periods of snowfall accumulation through May, but above normal precipitation was limited to small areas within the Green River Basin and Colorado River headwaters. In the LCRB, central/eastern AZ into western NM ended the month with significantly above normal precipitation, but this is a function of the very dry climatology as most of the LCRB routinely receives near zero precipitation in the month of May.
Snowpack Conditions
Snow water equivalent (SWE) has been at or below record low for most of the snow accumulation season. The significant heatwave during the last half of March led to historically low April 1 snow water equivalent conditions across the region. UCRB and GB SNOTEL SWE peaked around March 8, which is 3-4 weeks earlier than the 1991-2020 normal peak date. June 1 SWE across the UCRB and GB is generally less than 25% of normal, with more favorable conditions in the Upper Green River Basin. SWE conditions are summarized in the figures and table below.
Soil Moisture
CBRFC hydrologic model soil moisture conditions impact water supply forecasts. Basins with above average soil moisture conditions can be expected to experience more efficient runoff from rainfall or snowmelt while basins with below average soil moisture conditions can be expected to have lower runoff efficiency until soil moisture deficits are fulfilled. The timing and magnitude of spring runoff is impacted by snowpack conditions, spring weather, and soil moisture conditions.
Mid-November 2025 soil moisture conditions were below average across most areas as a result of warmer and drier than normal weather during the 2025 water year. Early June soil moisture conditions are generally well below average across the region due to the lack of snow. CBRFC hydrologic model soil moisture conditions are shown in the figures below.
Upcoming Weather
Temperatures are heating up across the CBRFC area as June begins. Precipitation chances in the near-term are limited to warm, convective showers and storms, mainly over eastern areas. The 7-day precipitation forecast and the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) 8–14 day temperature and precipitation outlooks are shown in the figures below.
#Drought news June 4, 2026: Beneficial precipitation brought some relief to portions of the #Colorado Plains and a few spots in #Wyoming, while drier conditions resulted in deterioration in S.W. Colorado
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
The mid-level height anomaly pattern during the week exhibited an omega-block type pattern, with mean troughing over Alaska and both the West and East, with the western trough cutting off over California, and strong ridging between the troughs across the central contiguous US. This pattern promoted below-normal temperatures across the Southwest for much of the period, with colder air pushing eastward towards the end of the week followed by warming temperatures. Across the East, cooler air overspread New England and the mid-Atlantic, keeping evapotranspiration rates a bit lower than normal. In contrast, much above-normal temperatures were observed throughout the week across the northern Plains and upper-Midwest, though colder weather and storminess overspread the northern Rockies and adjacent High Plains at the end of the week.
An active pattern was noted across the Plains, South, and Southeast as a mean frontal boundary provided a focus for stormy weather. These rains, in conjunction with a wetter pattern overall during May, prompted widespread additional drought relief for the South and Southeast regions, as well as portions of the High Plains. In contrast, hot, dry weather across the northern Plains and upper-Midwest caused expansion of drought and abnormal dryness, with widespread degradation occurring in western portions of the Midwest region. Towards the end of the week, a storm system brought heavy precipitation to western and central Montana, bringing some drought relief following a period of hot, windy weather. Across the Northeast, additional rainfall benefitted portions of New England, while drier weather overspread the mid-Atlantic and southern New England following a wet week previously…
High Plains
Stormy weather brought soaking rains across much of the High Plains, with the highest coverage and accumulations over Kansas and Nebraska. While beneficial, this precipitation competed during the week with much above-normal temperatures, which maintained high evapotranspirative demands. Accordingly, areas that missed out on significant rainfall, including portions of the Dakotas and far northern Nebraska, experienced some degradation, while reductions were noted across much of Kansas and eastern Nebraska. Further west, beneficial precipitation brought some relief to portions of the Colorado Plains and a few spots in Wyoming, while drier conditions resulted in deterioration in southwestern Colorado…
West
A late season storm system brought heavy rainfall to southern Oregon and northern California, sparking a few modest improvements but overall doing little to change the current drought depiction. Some degradations were noted across portions of California, Oregon, and the Great Basin, where impacts from a lack of snowmelt recharge – especially low streamflows – are beginning to be felt. Temperatures during the week were near to above-average across the Northwest, but below average across California, helping to keep evapotranspiration demands lower than average…
South
Soaking rains overspread most of Texas during the week, promoting additional drought reductions, primarily across southern Texas and the Big Bend country. Rainfall also overspread eastern Oklahoma, but conditions worsened across the western half of the state which fared drier during the week. Along the lower Mississippi Valley, heavy rains, exceeding 6 inches in some locations, fell across northern Arkansas, promoting drought reduction. Soaking rains were less intense across Louisiana and Mississippi, but were still sufficient to promote substantial drought reduction at the tail end of a wet May. Although conditions have improved overall across the Southern Region, widespread D3 to D4 continues across northern Texas and western Oklahoma, and long term drought impacts to groundwater remain a concern heading into the summer months across the whole region…
Looking Ahead
At the start of the next 7 days, drier conditions are favored across much of the East, with daily temperatures quickly warming to above-normal. A storm system now over the Plains will progress slowly eastward, bringing a potential for much needed rainfall across the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region. Current QPF forecasts from the Weather Prediction Center show amounts potentially exceeding 1.5 inches across much of Iowa and far southwestern Wisconsin, but lighter amounts elsewhere will likely be insufficient to overcome the high demands coming from much above-normal temperatures and summer agriculture, especially across Illinois, Indiana, and northern Minnesota. A gradual return to a summer convective regime is favored across the Southeast during the week, but accumulations are forecast to be less than what fell over the past few weeks, especially across northern Florida and east of the Appalachians. Seabreeze-driven convection is favored to remain active across South Florida. Mostly dry conditions are favored across the West, with a storm system bringing some precipitation to the Pacific Northwest. Meager precipitation is forecast for the Northeast region, raising concerns for a return of short term drought impacts.
During Week-2, weak troughing over Alaska is favored to maintain below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation for another week. Downstream, positive height anomalies are forecast for most of the contiguous United States, leading to coast-to-coast enhanced chances for above-normal temperatures. The highest probabilities for above-normal temperatures extend across both the West and the Northeast. Enhanced low-level southerly flow in this pattern favors a wide open Gulf, with moist air penetrating far to the north across the central US. Any interactions with shortwave troughs or other synoptic features could trigger periods of organized convection. Therefore, a broad signal slightly favoring above-normal precipitation extends from the Gulf Coast through much of the CONUS east of the Rockies. Near normal precipitation is the most likely outcome across the Northeast with weak troughing just offshore, and a slight tilt towards below-normal precipitation is forecast for the Pacific Northwest. Across Hawaii, both above-normal temperatures and precipitation are favored, based on a consensus of dynamical model guidance.
Just for grins here’s a slideshow of early June US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending June 2, 2026. 
US Drought Monitor map June 3, 2025. 
US Drought Monitor map June 4, 2024. 
US Drought Monitor map June 6, 2023. 
US Drought Monitor map June 7, 2022. 
US Drought Monitor map June 1, 2021. 
US Drought Monitor June 2, 2020. 
US Drought Monitor June 4, 2019. 
US Drought Monitor June 5, 2018. 
US Drought Monitor June 6, 2017. 
US Drought Monitor June 7, 2016. 
US Drought Monitor June 6, 2015. 
US Drought Monitor June 3, 2014 
US Drought Monitor June 4, 2013. 
US Drought Monitor June 5, 2012. 
US Drought Monitor June 14, 2011. 
Green River nuke’s back on the table; Hole-in-the-Rock road paved; Plus: Notes from the Road and a recipe — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
May 29, 2026
Blue Castle Holdings is proposing to build a nuclear power plant in Green River, Utah. You have not gone through a time warp, nor is this a “this date in history” sorta thing, though it could be. The same company tried to build a reactor in Green River a couple of decades ago, during the last “nuclear renaissance,” but the project fizzled amid fierce opposition, uncertainty over water rights, and as the nuke boom busted before it ever really got going.
This week, Blue Castle announced that the concept had only been dormant, not dead, and that it was coming out of hibernation in a spiffed up form in hopes of serving rapidly growing data center-driven electricity demand. Instead of constructing two, 1,500 MW reactors, the company — in partnership with Fulcrum Point Holdings — looks to install small modular reactors. It has not specified what the nameplate capacity will be, but says the units can be air-cooled, meaning they wouldn’t use as much water as conventional reactors.
Blue Castle has a bit of a head start on the project, since they’ve already done most of the site characterization work (on private land about five miles west of Green River). But they’ll still have to jump through the nuclear reactor licensing hoops, which can be arduous. That said, it should be a lot easier with both the Trump administration and the Cox administration champing at the bit to get more nukes up and running. Meanwhile, opposition to the idea is not likely to be any less fervent now than it was 20 years ago, and they’ll still have to secure water in an increasingly aridified region.
The melon-farming town along the banks of the Green River has become a magnet for proposed and actual industrial projects lately. The prospective nuclear plant joins Anson Resources’ lithium extraction project, Western Uranium & Vanadium’s proposed uranium mill, a 400-megawatt solar-plus-storage installation, and various uranium, lithium, and potash extraction proposals in the surrounding areas.
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
Well, they’ve gone and done it now. Garfield County has paved the Hole-in-the-Rock Road, or at least the first 10 miles of it. To folks who are unfamiliar with the road situation in Utah, paving — chip-sealing, actually — a notoriously washboarded, suspension-blasting, teeth-rattling dead-end dirt road may not seem like such a big deal. But this little maintenance action could have real consequences for the public land it runs through, i.e. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and sets a dangerous legal precedent when it comes to roads on public lands. It is also a symbolic move for both the opponents and proponents of the asphalt-laying project.
The Hole-in-the-Rock (HITR) road roughly follows the first segment of the Hole-in-the-Rock trail, which is the route Church of Latter Day Saints colonists forged in 1879 to get from Escalante to what would become Bluff City on the banks of the San Juan River in the southeastern corner of Utah. When the early Mormon travelers reached the seemingly-impassable, 2,000-foot-deep Glen Canyon on the Colorado River, they blasted and built a passage for their wagons, horses, and cattle through a natural opening in the cliff and called it Hole in the Rock.
It may have been this experience, in part, that led the descendants of those folks to develop a kind of fetish for roads, especially ones that cross federal land. By building the path across an especially rugged chunk of country and even crossing the mighty Colorado, they were able to assert a certain amount of control over what they saw as a hostile and wild landscape. Now county commissioners in Utah fight for control over backcountry roads* as a sort of proxy for dominating the lands they pass through. Garfield County has long looked to take ownership of the HITR road so that they can improve and pave it and be sure the Bureau of Land Management never closes it.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have pushed back against county control. While the feds almost never close roads, they are more likely than counties to do so if necessary to protect cultural or ecological resources**. Counties are more likely to improve the roads, which leads to more people and attendant impacts in the backcountry.
Today’s HITR road runs 62 miles, from just outside Escalante to Hole in the Rock, where the canyon below is now mostly inundated by Lake Powell. It snakes its way on a rough parallel path to the Escalante River and passes near the heads of many of its tributary canyons that are popular with backcountry adventurers.
As visitation to the national monument and its surroundings has increased, so has the HITRR’s traffic: Garfield County’s road crew says some 600 vehicles per day travel the washboard-plagued road, with as many as 1,500 each day on weekends. All those cars wreak havoc on the road, and the county says it has been spending $150,000 annually on maintenance, some of which it claims could be avoided if it were allowed to pave the road.
Last July, a federal court ruled in favor of Garfield County and granted it quiet title to the section of the HITR Road in the county (the lower section is in Kane County, which also won quiet title to that portion of the road). In February, the county began preparing the route for chip-sealing. It informed the BLM of the work, but did not apply for a permit, and the BLM did nothing to stop the work. That was two victories in a row for the local-control over the public’s land crowd.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance sued both the BLM and the county, saying the work required federal approval, since it occurred on federal land. It also sought an emergency injunction on further work while the case is pending.
Earlier this month, a judge denied the injunction request, clearing the way for Garfield County to proceed. A few days later, the machines were out there laying asphalt, while county officials and their backers crowed triumphantly and public land lovers cried foul. The courts may eventually rule against the county, but the chip seal is there to stay.
“Paving will lead to more, faster, and louder traffic,” said SUWA attorneys in a written statement, “changing the remote, serene backcountry experience the monument was created to protect, and that draws visitors from around the world.”
The HITR Road battle is an echo of an almost identical fight over the Burr Trail, another backcountry road between Boulder, Utah, which lies within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Ticaboo/Bullfrog on the shores of Lake Powell. The sections on BLM land on either side of the route have been paved and/or chip-sealed after years of conflict. But the National Park Service has blocked Garfield County from paving the middle segment, which passes through Capitol Reef National Park.
I drive the Burr Trail any chance I get, simply because I love the country it travels through and because the slower pace the road requires allows me to see more, and facilitates frequent stops to get out of the car and look around.
I’m sure that traffic has increased since the paving. Just based on my observations, however, I would say that the added number of vehicles is not necessarily increasing the number of folks going into the surrounding backcountry. What I’ve seen are more RVs and low-slung sedans heading down the road from Boulder, going beyond the end of the pavement, stopping at the top of the switchbacks through the Waterpocket Fold (where the road is steep, loose gravel, and washboarded), then turning around and heading back up to Boulder. The eastern paved section, towards Bullfrog, has very little traffic. (On my most recent trip I did see a few vehicles drive up the Burr Trail switchbacks, then come back down before heading north on the Notom Road back toward Capitol Reef, a phenomenon that was also evident at the Moqui Dugway road in San Juan County.)
So while paving HITRR is a sort of symbolic and even spiritual defeat for those public lands and the folks looking to protect them, I’m also not sure that it will necessarily lead to more impacts to the surrounding backcountry. Garfield County’s vehicle count numbers, if correct, indicate that the automobile-driving masses are already driving the road. How could you cram more than 1,500 vehicles a day onto that little section?
In any event, it’s certainly the end of an era, and driving the first ten miles of the HITRR will be a completely different experience than it was pre-blacktop. Whether the phenomenon will be limited to those ten miles (and the Burr Trail), or spread throughout the rutted byways of Utah may depend on the outcome of SUWA’s lawsuit.
The Donald Trump Burr Trail? Oy! — Jonathan P. Thompson
🛻 Notes from the Road 🏕️
The hummingbirds have come back to southern Utah for the spring. Are they earlier than usual? Later? Maybe all that really matters is the penstemon are blooming, scarlet red.
***
One of my non-Land Desk gigs is compiling and summarizing Western energy news for a Canary Media newsletter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. This requires early morning internet, so when I’m out and about it means staying in a hotel on those nights or camping in a site where I know there is a strong and steady cell signal.
But on Tuesdays and Thursdays and weekends, I’m free to wander as far off grid as I can get. This is not difficult in southern Utah, which may have the highest proportion of out-of-cell-signal-range lands in the continental U.S.
Liberated from the digital shackles, I meander impulsively, by car, by bike, on foot, in search of the perfect campsite, a cool pool of desert water, a viewpoint from which the landscape unfurls before me, the post-storm light playing among the red rock crevices and spires far below. The sense of time slips away and I quickly forget what day it is. The lack of destination or deadline allows me to wander down whatever road, canyon, or trail looks appetizing. More often than not, they are dead ends, which is just fine.
Recently I set off on such an amble from Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell. A storm had blown through the night before, leaving a few inches of wet snow on the steep slopes of the Henry Mountains and clearing the haze and smoke and dust from the air. Remnants of the storm lingered over the mountains and high mesas, defying the weather forecasts.
Following a bike ride up the paved part of the Burr Trail, I headed in el Burro Blanco onto the eastern slope of the Henries, and followed a back road that traversed the incline.
The soil was rocky enough to naturally gravel the road, or rather, to cobblestone it. While it wasn’t a smooth ride, it did keep the surface solid despite a couple of inches of moisture that fell the previous night and morning, at least for a while. Then, after topping a little rise, and as I descended a north-facing slope into a small drainage, the cobbles vanished, giving way to classic southern Utah clay. Goopy nasty stuff, that is, the kind of mud that steals your shoes, builds up on your tiles, and turns a motorized vehicle into a slip-sliding, uncontrollable, wheeled sled and that inspires signs warning “Impassible When Wet.”
Luckily, the fall line followed the line of travel, meaning I landed safely on a more solid patch of road at the trough of the drainage. I got out and surveyed the path ahead on foot, only to find that conditions worsened. I could either camp there and wait for the road to dry, or try to make it back up the hill I had just slid down in my rear-wheel drive pickup.
The former was the more intelligent choice, of course. But the campsite was far from ideal, and the clouds were still pretty thick, meaning it might rain or snow even more, and I don’t always make the smartest choices. Then I remembered: I had bought chains for the truck soon after inheriting it. I broke them out, chained up the rear wheels, did a thirty-point turnaround, and barreled back up the way I came, no problemo.
A couple of hours later, after venturing down another backroad, albeit one on more stable soil and at a considerably lower elevation, I landed in a delightful campsite. The rain had flushed away the gnats, settled the dust, sculpted the sand in the arroyos that flowed past the camp, summoned the wildflowers to bloom, and filled the tinajas and potholes to the brim with murky, cool water.
***
I’ve included a lot of different types of content in the Land Desk, from Messing with Maps, to Data Dumps, to movie reviews, but I don’t believe I’ve ever included a recipe here. That all changes today. I would recommend that you not try this recipe at home; it’s refined nature can only be fully appreciated when prepared on a camp stove and eaten in the outdoors, preferably while watching the evening light slide slowly across the desert.
I grew up going camping, usually in the Utah desert, with my family. It’s just what we did on many a weekend and on just about every school break. We didn’t have enough money for “real” family vacations, and we wouldn’t have wanted to do the Disneyland thing, anyway. This means I also grew up eating my father’s distinctive camp cooking, almost always made over a campfire because we didn’t have a camp stove.
I remember liking the food back then, but looking back I do have to wonder whether it wasn’t a form of child abuse. Delicacies included Dinty Moore beef stew on top of a bed of those canned deep-fried chow mein noodles; corned beef hash from a can; Vienna sausages — my dad’s friend called them cows lips in order to get us to hand them over; generic grape, orange, or black-cherry soda-pop; and, my personal favorite, those Pillsbury biscuits in a can cooked in a skillet over the fire in a sizzling reservoir of Country Crock squeeze-bottle margarine.
I’ve spent years trying to heal the taste-bud trauma, partially by sprinkling my food with truffle oil whenever someone else is paying for it, and have come quite a ways in my recovery. But it all went to hell in a hand basket when I went camping with a friend, who originally hails from the Midwest, and let him assume dinner duties one night. To my horror and dismay, he prepared something called Chili-Mac, which consists of a can of Hormel canned beef chili dumped into a batch of Krafts instant macaroni and cheese. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t do his other specialty, which involves hot dogs and mac-and-cheese — entirely too reminiscent of those damned jelly-coated cows’ lips, er, Vienna sausages.
Anyway, I learned my lesson, and I vet all of his dinner choices beforehand, and bring backup food just in case he tries to pull a fast one. Meanwhile, I’ve developed a more regionally and taste-bud appropriate alternative to his Chili-Mac. I call it Mac-n-Chile. Here’s the recipe (serves one hungry person):
- One box of Annie’s macaroni and cheese. I prefer the aged cheddar stuff, but any flavor will do.
- One can of hot Hatch green chiles. Yes, you can bring fresh roasted chiles if you want, but that adds to the work and complexity and who wants all of that? The canned stuff is fine.
- A liberal sprinkling of Cobblestone farm’s garlic powder. Oh, you want to buy the cheap grocery store stuff that has no flavor and is filled with anti-caking agents like silicon dioxide? Suit yourself! But if you want the best, you gotta go with Cobblestone Farms.
- A touch of salt and olive oil or butter.
Follow the instructions on the box, but salt the pasta water (they don’t put enough salt in those cheese packets), and add some olive oil or butter when mixing in the dried cheese. Dump in the green chiles and a liberal sprinkling of garlic powder — more is better. Pour yourself a beverage of your choice, sit down on your camp chair, truck’s tailgate, or a slab of sandstone, and devour it.
Oh, and keep your eyes open for those hummingbirds. I hear they’re buzzing about the canyon country these days.
Uranium problem could keep #Colorado’s newest reservoir in limbo for months after initial fill — KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Scott Franz). Here’s an excerpt:
May 31, 2026
A reservoir built to serve nearly a million Northern Coloradans started filling this spring. But Chimney Hollow’s future is still murky weeks after the initial fill. Chimney Hollow will eventually pull water from the Colorado River near its headwaters in Grand County to serve a dozen fast growing cities on the Front Range from Broomfield to Greeley…Chimney Hollow is holding just 2% of its total volume today because there’s a problem. Northern Water discovered that some of the rocks it used to build the massive dam at the reservoir contained radioactive uranium. It was naturally occurring, but it set the project back at least a year. Northern Water is still coming up with a mitigation plan.
“Really, the best way to kind of move that uranium out is to draw down the water and force that out,” spokesperson Rachel Stevens said. “But before we make any of those decisions, we really want to see what the levels of uranium are.”
So every week, crews are taking water samples from the small pool and sending it to a lab to see how much radioactive material is really in the water. The results are expected soon. Northern Water has only been able to test how uranium leaches out of the rocks in a laboratory setting. Filling the reservoir just slightly will help reveal the extent of the problem.
Tapped: As fire risk climbs, Colorado faces threat to drinking water — #Colorado Politics
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Politics website (Thelma Grimes). Here’s an excerpt:
May 26, 2026
Specialists surveying Colorado’s forests know this year will be challenging. Snow melted too quickly, strong winds dried out the trees, and the early signs of danger are already settling across the landscape. Wildfire season is no longer confined to a few months — it’s a year‑round reality, they said…And this year, the risk is even higher. Snowpack peaked at just 58% of normal — and weeks earlier than usual. An unusually warm March accelerated the melt, and parched soils absorbed much of the runoff before it reached streams and reservoirs, leaving less water to flow downstream. While much of the public conversation focuses on drought, dry fuels, and wildfire danger, another worry runs deeper — what happens to the state’s water supply if a major fire strikes?
[…]
When a large fire burns, the flames strip hillsides of vegetation, said Weston Toll, a watershed program specialist for the Colorado Forest Service. Once rainstorms arrive, there’s nothing left to hold the soil in place.
“When we have a storm event, all the sediment that is now exposed typically runs downhill and … will fill up reservoirs, which is bad from a water quality and quantity standpoint,” Toll said…
A 2023 report by the U.S. Geological Survey echoes that warning.
The agency found that wildfires pose a significant risk to water supplies by triggering severe flooding, erosion, and the delivery of sediment, nutrients, and metals into rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
According to the USGS, these changes can degrade water quality, reduce reservoir storage, harm stream habitats, and drive up treatment costs for drinking‑water providers. The effects can vary widely — from barely noticeable shifts to 100‑fold increases in sediment, nutrients, and other contaminants. In the worst cases, experts said the water can resemble “chocolate milk.”
US Supreme Court settles long-running water dispute over dwindling #RioGrande — The Associated Press
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website (Susan Montoya Bryan). Here’s an excerpt:
May 27, 2026
In a brief order Tuesday, the court accepted the recommendation of a special master to move forward with agreements first proposed last year by New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. The settlement calls for reducing groundwater pumping along the dwindling river and retiring water rights from irrigated farmland in southern New Mexico. The states held up the proposal as a promise to restore order to an elaborate system of storing and sharing water between two vast irrigation districts in southern New Mexico and western Texas.
“We’re very excited to be redirecting resources from costly and lengthy litigation to solutions on the ground,” Hanna Riseley-White, director of the Interstate Stream Commission, said Wednesday…
Those solutions will include everything from long-term fallowing programs and more efficient irrigation infrastructure to developing new sources of water, like tapping brackish supplies or importing water, and improving stormwater management so more runoff can be captured and stored.
#Snowpack news June 1, 2026
On misleading public lands coverage: Plus: Mining (Hype) Monitor — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
May 26, 2026
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
One good thing the Trump administration’s and the GOP’s attack on public lands has brought about is more attention to public lands and the sometimes arcane policies governing them. When I started the Land Desk back in 2021, it was one of the only Substack-like outlets focusing on public lands issues; now there are more than a dozen of them, put out by journalists, quasi-journalists, and advocacy groups — with a fair amount of overlap. Meanwhile, more conventional media outlets have also beefed up their public lands coverage since Trump took office.
I’m all for it — a well informed public makes for a stronger democracy — but it does have a major downside. There has been a noticeable increase in disinformation and misinformation and simply erroneous coverage of the issues and, especially, of the potential effects of the administration’s actions. The motives are surely mixed, ranging from honest misunderstandings to the writer trying to simplify complex issues for the average reader. Maybe they feel that the nuanced reality won’t rally the troops as effectively as hyperbolic alarmism. Maybe they know that outrage is more likely than mere concern to garner clicks, subscriptions, and donations.
While I understand the need to get people fired up about these issues and actions — most of which should indeed be stopped — I also worry that writing one’s congress member or commenting to the federal agencies based on erroneous information will be ineffective or even counterproductive. The truth in most of these cases is bad enough. Let’s just stick with it. Please?
Here are a few examples of what’s got my goat:
The claim: Revoking Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s management plan will open up nearly 900,000 acres of the monument to oil and gas drilling, coal extraction, and uranium mining.
The messier reality: MAGA Sen. Mike Lee’s and Rep. Celeste Maloy’s attempts to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s management plan is abhorrent, stupid, and is done out of spite rather than for any pragmatic reasons. If they succeed, the monument’s management will revert back to the far weaker 2020 plan that allowed more grazing, more damaging “vegetation management,” and more off-road vehicle use. Plus the 2020 plan only covered the 1 million acres left in the national monument after Trump removed about 900,000 acres from its boundaries, meaning there would be a sort of management limbo on those 900,000 acres.
However, rescinding the plan will not eliminate or shrink the national monument or its basic protections, nor will it allow drilling or mining or other development anywhere within the 1.9 million acre national monument. The boundaries will remain the same, which means that the terms set in the 2021 proclamation restoring them also remain in effect1, and that includes no new oil and gas or coal leases or mining claims within the national monument.
Furthermore, the claims about grazing have been exaggerated as well. The 2020 plan allowed grazing in all but 125,800 acres of the national monument, but did not allow it right along the Escalante River or in Lower Calf Canyon, and it would have allowed suspended allotments to be reissued (if a rancher wanted them). The 2024 plan put 314,700 acres off-limits to grazing — including bigger buffers around the Escalante River — and would have permanently retired suspended allotments.
Feds seek public input on Grand Staircase-Escalante management plan — Jonathan P. Thompson
The claim:Moving the U.S. Forest Service headquarters to Salt Lake City, “the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America,” will lead to a mass selloff of public lands and is part of an “execution” of the agency.
The messy reality: Look, I know that Utah politicians are kooky and that they don’t like the idea of federal land management. I wrote a whole damned book about it. But that doesn’t mean that once you cross the border into Utah you become a raving sagebrush rebel. There are pros and cons to moving a federal agency to the West, but it’s not like Phil Lyman, Mike Lee, Celeste Maloy, Ken Ivory, and the ghost of Cal Black are going to have more influence over the agency’s HQ in SLC than they would in D.C. Nor is the relocation, alone, going to lead to public land sales. Utah happens to be home to strong public lands advocacy and environmental groups, including SUWA, Grow the Flow, Utah Rivers Council, HEAL Utah, Uranium Watch, Torrey House Press, and others. Salt Lake City is more progressive politically than many cities in blue states. Over the last three decades it has elected liberal mayors and other city leaders, including climate, human rights, and air quality activists.
Instead of fear-mongering over Utah, maybe we should be focused on the severe budget cuts plaguing the Forest Service, the loss of thousands of staffers and their deep well of institutional knowledge, its growing inability to manage lands under its purview regardless of where it’s headquartered, along with policies aimed at increasing logging and grazing on the nation’s forests. That’s the real danger.
Chaco protections in the crosshairs; USFS HQ to SLC — Jonathan P. Thompson
The mislead: Almost every story or blog post or call to action regarding the administration’s move to rescind the oil and gas leasing moratorium in the area around Chaco Culture National Historical Park is accompanied by a photo of Pueblo Bonito, Casa Rinconada, or another site inside the park itself.
The messy reality: This is misleading because it gives the impression that those structures will now be open to drilling. That’s not the case. The park and the pueblos in it retain their protections no matter what happens with the moratorium. The leasing ban is for a ten mile radius outside the park boundaries, which is, indeed, a very significant cultural landscape, replete with Chacoan “roads,” outlier pueblos and great houses, shrines, and other sites — and absolutely should be protected from energy development. This is an innocent mistake: The sites in “downtown Chaco” are not only photogenic, but most outlets probably can’t find stock images of the sites that could be wrecked by drilling if the moratorium is lifted. Still, they could ask me …
Indigenous leaders call for oil and gas leasing reform — Jonatha P. Thompson
So yes, write to your congress member, protest, write letters to the editor, and send your two cents to your public lands agencies. But please, base your protests and suggestions and recommendations on facts, not on outrage-inciting hyperbole or speculation.
⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️
If nuclear reactors could run on hype, alone, then we’d have plenty of power for all of those hyperscale data centers in the pipeline. The optimistic, gold-rushesque press releases about new uranium mining claims, acquisitions, and exploration just keep coming, giving the impression that there is a nuclear renaissance underway in the West. Maybe there is, sort of, but it hasn’t made it to the uranium mining space yet.
The one substantial move forward was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granting a construction license to Bill Gates-backed Terra Power, allowing it to begin building its Natrium advanced reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It’s a big deal, but the company doesn’t expect to bring the plant online until 2030, at least, and will still need an operating license to do so.
It will take more than one reactor to bring the western Colorado and eastern Utah uranium mining industry back to anywhere near its Cold War-era glory days, though that’s not stopping mining firms from courting investors.
Some of the latest hype includes:
- American Atomics’ website banner is an image of Monument Valley, where Diné miners worked Cold War-era uranium mines with virtually no safety measures or protective equipment, despite industry and government knowledge of the occupational hazards. Many of those workers eventually fell sick and died from exposure to radon and other substances in the mine. Now the company hopes to “reshape how nations fuel their power grids and defend their energy sovereignty” by building a “fully American-controlled nuclear fuel cycle, from exploration and extraction to enrichment and supply.” They hope to seed the effort with the 217-claim Big Indian project in the Lisbon Valley in cooperation with a company run by Mark Steen, the son of Charles Steen. American Atomics also has a block of mining claims in the Uravan uranium belt in western Colorado.
- After abandoning its proposal to use high-pressure slurry ablation, or HPSA, to extract uranium from the October waste rock pile near Gateway, Colorado, Disa applied to do the same on the smaller Mary Ann pile in Montrose County. On April 22, the NRC replied to Disa with a request for more information. Disa filed an amendment to its application on May 14.
- Anfield Energy submitted a permit to restart its long-idle JD-8 mine located on a mesa south of the Paradox Valley in western Colorado. This is part of an effort to restart its entire Monogram Mesa Complex, which consists of five inactive facilities. The company claims it plans on being permitted and starting production in mid-2026. If it hits its target, however, it doesn’t appear to have a place to mill the ore. While it says it plans to restart the Shootaring Mill near Ticaboo, Utah, the state hasn’t issued a permit for it to do so. However, Anfield did apparently drill monitoring wells at the Shootaring Mill and at its Slick Rock project near the western Colorado hamlet of the same name.
- Anfield, as you may remember, is the company behind the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley. The same one the Trump administration dramatically fast-tracked permitting for to help solve the so-called “energy emergency.” Well, Anfield did do some work at the mine, but they still don’t have state air quality, ventilation shaft, or groundwater remediation permits, meaning actual production is a long ways off. That must be some emergency, eh?
1 It’s worth remembering that restored GSENM was managed by the Trump-era plan for the three years between when Biden restored the monument in 2021, and when the new management plan went into effect in 2024.
Shift to #ElNiño could mean more rain for Four Corners, but long-term outlooks show above-average temperatures — The #Durango Herald
Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Scout Edmondson). Here’s an excerpt:
May 29, 2026
The National Weather Service’s Central Region Climate Outlook issued Sunday [May 24, 2026] said there is an 82% chance that an El Niño weather pattern will develop between May and July, which could bring a higher chance of above-average precipitation this summer…
Additionally, the U.S. Drought Monitor said drought conditions, which have been persistent across the Western United States for the past several months, are expected improve in Colorado over the next three months. But, even with such a hopeful outlook, NWS Meteorologist Kate Abbot said a slightly rainier pattern should start to appear the first week of June in Southwest Colorado.
“As we move into next week, we start to set up into more of a southwesterly flow pattern,” Abbot said. “We start to see some chances for afternoon showers in the San Juan Mountains, with probabilities increasing as the week progresses.”
#Colorado mountains are forecast to see above-normal precipitation throughout the summer, though wetter conditions will likely overlap with hotter temperatures — The Summit Daily #ElNiño
Click the link to read the article on The Summit Daily website (Andrea Teres-Martinez). Here’s an excerpt:
May 29, 2026
Colorado is headed toward a potentially wetter-than-normal summer, with promises of an active monsoon season and growing confidence in developing El Nino conditions. However, with hotter temperatures likely, this summer could look different from the mountains’ last El Nino visit. The Climate Prediction Center’s seasonal precipitation outlook shows above-normal chances for rainfall in Colorado from June through September, with the Western Slope and Utah border seeing the highest likelihood of above-average rainfall. Forecasts also show a strong possibility that Colorado will see an active monsoon season, according to Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center…
The forecasts for summer showers coincide with those predicting the fast arrival of El Nino conditions, though Goble said he doesn’t currently see a strong tie between El Nino and stronger summer precipitation…A release published by the center on May 14 predicted that El Nino is likely to emerge during what’s left of spring, with an 82% chance that it will materialize between May and July and continue through the Northern Hemisphere for the upcoming winter. The center predicts a 96% chance that El Nino will remain from December through February 2027…Historically, El Nino conditions have brought wetter summers and falls
, but drier than normal winters to the Northern Rockies. The last time Colorado saw El Nino conditions in the summer was in 2023, which created “a really wet late spring and summer east of the Continental Divide,” Goble said.
New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste — Luke Auburn (University of Rochester)
Click the link to read the release on the University of Rochester website (Luke Auburn):
May 27, 2026
The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials.
Big takeaways
- A new desalination method produces drinking water from seawater without chemical additives.
- The solar-powered system uses specially engineered black metal to absorb sunlight.
- Its self-cleaning surface separates and collects salts, instead of dumping them as harmful brine waste.
- From the salts, the system can extract lithium, a key material for rechargeable batteries.
- The approach could help address global water shortages and growing mineral demand.
The United Nations estimates that 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water, and communities from California to the Middle East rely on desalination plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. Common desalination techniques, such as reverse osmosis and thermal distillation, are energy-intensive, require pre- and post-water treatment, and leave behind a concentrated saltwater byproduct called brine. The brine byproduct wreaks havoc on sea life when it’s deposited back into the ocean by raising the salt level and lowering oxygen in the water.
But a novel approach developed at the University of Rochester offers a way to overcome these drawbacks. Researchers at URochester’s Institute of Optics developed a new solar-thermal desalination process to produce fresh water in an energy-efficient way that does not leave behind brine and requires no chemical additives to pre-treat the water. A team led by Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and of physics and a senior scientist at URochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, describes their method in a paper published in Light: Science & Applications.
The technology uses solar panels made of black metal etched with femtosecond lasers to make the surface super light-absorbing and superwicking—or extremely attractive to water. The panels have a laser-treated active region that pulls a thin layer of water across the surface, absorbs nearly all solar radiation, distills the water, and deposits the leftover salts and minerals into the panel’s untreated sides or “passive” region so that the salt does not clog the active region and disrupt continuous desalination.
Leveraging the ‘coffee ring’ effect
Guo says other researchers have developed solar-thermal desalination techniques that work well in lab experiments using simulated seawater made of only water and sodium chloride. As the water evaporates, the sodium chloride crystallizes in a grainy and porous fashion allowing water to pass through to dissolve the salt. The solar panels, meanwhile, can be easily cleaned.
But real ocean has a much more complex composition, and these systems tend to encounter issues when tested in the field. Unlike sodium chloride, many other components in seawater, such as magnesium- and calcium-based materials, crystallize in a crusty and non-porous fashion on the solar panel’s surface, clogging it. Eventually, water can no longer seep through. This is the same phenomenon as your shower head clogging over time or your teapot lined with scales, except that seawater contains hundreds of times more salts than your tap water.
To keep their solar panel surface from gumming up similarly, Guo’s team precisely etched the black metal’s grooves so the various salts and minerals in ocean water would simply slough off. They also leveraged a physical phenomenon that has plagued clumsy javaphiles for centuries: the coffee ring effect.
“If you drop coffee on a surface, eventually the water evaporates, and there’s a ring left at the outer edge that is the concentrated coffee particles,” says Guo. “We use that same principle to advance the salts to the passive region.”
Testing their solar-thermal desalination technique using samples of water from the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, Guo and his team were able to make the surface self-cleaning. In other words, it extracted freshwater and directed the remaining salts to the passive region where they could be later collected without reducing the panel’s efficiency.
Turning waste into resources
One of the new desalination method’s distinct advantages is that instead of leaving behind brine that must be disposed of or processed, it extracts nearly 100 percent of the salts in solid form. This could not only produce an abundant supply of table salt, but it could also be used to extract more precious minerals, including lithium, which is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and other electronics.
In a related paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Guo and his colleagues show how they can use the same superwicking solar panels to separate lithium from the rest of other salts in desalination. Embedding nanoparticles made of hydrogen titanate in the tiny grooves of the black metal surface isolates the lithium from other salts and minerals.
“Mining lithium from the earth has proven to be very taxing from an energy and environmental standpoint, so pulling lithium directly from saltwater could be a very important future route,” says Guo.
Using water samples from Great Salt Lake, the researchers extracted about 50 percent of the lithium from the salts left behind by the desalination process.
Guo says now that the superwicking desalination technology has been demonstrated in proofs of concept on small-scale devices, he sees the technology inherently scalable, capable of improving global access to drinking water and building more sustainable supply chains for precious minerals.
The National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Worldwide Universities Network supported this research. Guo’s colleagues from the Institute of Optics who contributed to the research include Senior Scientist Subash Singh, alumnus Ran Wei ’24 (PhD), PhD students Luheng Tang and Tainshu Xu, and Mingjiang Ma.
Historic intergovernmental agreement to protect the #CrystalRiver includes Pitkin County — The #Aspen Times
May 27, 2026
Five Colorado governments, including Pitkin County, and water entities have officially entered into a landmark intergovernmental agreement to protect the Crystal River from mainstem dams and out-of-basin water diversions.
The official commitment of all five entities comes after Pitkin County gave its signature April 22.
The agreement comes at the recommendation of the Crystal River Wild and Scenic and Other Alternatives Steering Committee from March 2024, suggested as one of three potential long-term preservation measures, according to a press release. Along with Pitkin County, the Colorado River Water Conservation District, Gunnison County, town of Marble and West Divide Water Conservancy District formalized their shared commitment to oppose any new on-channel reservoirs on the mainstem of the Crystal River and any trans-basin diversions that would export water out of the watershed.
Push to the top at Gross Dam, in two parts: Major 2026 construction brings new challenges — Jay Adams (DenverWater.org) #FraserRiver #SouthBoulderCreek
Click the link to read the article on the Denver Water website (Jay Adams):
May 22, 2026
Each stage of a big construction project has its own challenges and puzzles to solve along the way. Raising Gross Dam is no different.
Denver Water is raising the height of the dam by 131 feet, with the final 22 feet going up this spring in two sections that are separated by a giant gap. The Gross Reservoir Expansion Project, which began construction in 2022, is designed to nearly triple the reservoir’s storage capacity. Major construction work resumed in April following a winter break.
And this year’s construction puzzles included:
- How to move concrete across a 160-foot gap between where the concrete is made and where it’s placed?
- And, how do you move construction vehicles across that same gap when work on the first section is finished?
“We are building the top of the dam in two sections because we need to leave a 160-foot gap in the middle of the dam for the spillway channel,” said Casey Dick, Denver Water’s deputy program manager for the Gross Reservoir Expansion Project.
Spillway channels are safety features on dams that allow water to safely flow out of a reservoir if needed due to flooding rains or exceptionally high and rapid snowmelt.
Raising the dam’s last two major sections, while leaving a 160-foot gap between them, meant coming up with a new way to move concrete across the construction site.
On the lower portion of the dam, crews worked on one continuous structure, which allowed trucks and equipment to easily move from one side of the dam to the other, and to move concrete from the batch plant down a large chute to where it was put into place.
However, with the final 22 feet going up in two sections, construction crews had to find a way to deliver concrete from the batch plant and across the 160-foot spillway gap as the first section went up.
The solution to this puzzle? A series of conveyors positioned in the middle of the dam that tilted higher as the first section rose higher.
“Building the new conveyor system is just another example of all the ingenuity we go through out here to build the dam,” Dick said. “With each new phase, there are new challenges that our team has to figure out.”
Construction crews finished placing roller-compacted concrete on the dam’s left side on May 12.
But once that was done, crews faced the second challenge: How do you move the equipment off the finished, 22-foot higher section of the dam, across the spillway gap, down to where they are needed to complete the second section?
Short answer: If you can’t go over, go around.
Cranes lifted equipment off the higher section of the dam to the road, where the machines convoyed about 4.5 miles around to the other side using the dam’s access road.
Construction on the final 22 feet of the second side of the dam began at the end of May and is expected to be completed in June.
Once the second section is done this summer, a year’s worth of remaining work includes: finishing the top of the dam, building safety walls; constructing the actual spillway; building a bridge over the spillway and completing the stilling basin at the bottom of the dam.
Full construction on the dam raising project is expected to wrap up in mid-2027.
“There are hundreds of logistical challenges throughout this project, but our team has been able to meet every one of them along the way,” Dick said. “We’re making good progress so far in 2026 and are looking forward to getting a lot of work done in the coming months.”
#Clifton Water District implements drought rates — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website. Here’s an excerpt:
May 27, 2026
The Clifton Water District announced Wednesday that it would join the list of utility providers implementing temporary drought rates, with a press release about the change calling for community members to take action with other drought mitigation efforts.
“The Clifton Water District urges all customers to take immediate steps to reduce water usage wherever possible,” the press release said. “Small changes — such as limiting outdoor watering, repairing leaks, and using water-efficient appliances — can collectively make a significant impact … By working together, Clifton residents can help ensure that safe and reliable water remains available for essential needs now and in the future.”
The change won’t alter billing for those using less than 3,000 gallons of water per month, much like similar rate restrictions recently announced by other providers. Clifton Water said it hoped to encourage prudent water usage with the higher rates. The district said the rates would remain in place “only until watershed conditions show meaningful improvement,” a stipulation that could mean Clifton Water customers are in for a long summer, with forecasts suggesting a historically dry year and winter snowpack widely observed at record-low levels.
Colorado River District launches emergency water plan to protect Western Slope communities during #drought — #Colorado Public Radio
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Tegan Wendland). Here’s an excerpt:
May 22, 2026
The state and the Colorado River Water Conservation District, a public water policy and planning agency on the Western Slope, have a new plan to protect mountain towns from losing their water supply during an unprecedented drought this summer. The District’s proposed emergency water supply plan was approved at the Colorado Water Conservation Board meeting on Wednesday, May 20, 2026…The emergency plan would protect certain water users on the main stem of the Colorado River by replacing water that would have historically come from Green Mountain Reservoir. This year forecasts say it won’t fill up for the first time in history…A portion of the reservoir is reserved for what’s called the “historic users pool,” which holds 66,000 acre-feet of water…It’s an important emergency water supply plan that protects approximately 250 municipal and domestic water entities across the Colorado River Basin from being called out due to senior water rights claims. It was created as part of the Colorado Big Thompson project, a massive water engineering project that created reservoirs and redirected Colorado River water to Front Range cities…After a drought in 1977, water managers set aside the historic user pool for agricultural and domestic users. It’s historically always been filled and available to protect those water rights from being usurped by more senior users…Every year, a group of agricultural and utility entities in the Grand Valley near Grand Junction makes what’s called the “Cameo call” to use water from it. It’s the largest and most senior call on the main stem of the river and demands that they get enough water for their needs. That includes the Grand Valley Water Users Association, Grand Valley Irrigation Company, Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, Palisade Irrigation District, and Mesa County Irrigation District. The call is made annually, generally between June and August. This year, the fear is that if that water demand is called early, there won’t be enough water for upstream towns and municipalities, including Silverthorne, Eagle River, and Grand, Garfield and Mesa counties…
The River District plans to borrow water from other reservoirs — the nearby Wolford Mountain and Ruedi reservoirs — to replace the water that would have come from Green Mountain and to prevent the Cameo call from being made…At the meeting, the board committed to support the move with $585,000, in addition to $342,000 the District committed last month.
“Instead of having to turn off all of these cities’ water rights up here and the farms and ranches up above the Grand Valley, the Green Mountain historic user pool would release water to meet the Cameo call and protect the West Slope users. It is a really appropriate use of that water,” Mueller told CPR News.
#Colorado’s race to cut water use off to a slow start — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News) #conservation
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):
May 28, 2026
Denver Water customers have yet to embrace a strict water diet this year, cutting water use just 5% this month as the outdoor watering season begins.
The utility, which serves 1.5 million customers, has asked residents and businesses to slash water use by 20% this summer to combat extreme drought.
At the same time, reservoirs, unable to refill after melting snows evaporated early due to a surprising March heatwave, are dropping. The utility said its storage system is just 79% full, down from the 89% mark normally seen at this time of year.
Denver Water officials said they’re not disappointed with their customers, in part because they’re asking homeowners and businesses to adopt habits they haven’t had to use in years.
“We didn’t expect them to be saving 20% right away,” said Greg Fisher, Denver’s manager of water supply planning. “It’s been 13 years since we were under mandatory drought restrictions. It takes a few months to get up and running on this.”
Aurora homeowners and businesses have cut use 6.5%, Aurora Water spokesperson Shonnie Cline said. And the city’s reservoirs are similarly low, standing at just 56% full. This time last year they were 66% full.
At issue is Colorado’s drought emergency. Mountain snows, which provide the majority of the state’s water supplies, hit critical lows this year and then melted off in a March heat wave that also set records, with temperatures soaring into the 80-degree to 90-degree range.
In response, cities across the state imposed strict watering restrictions, pleading with customers to sharply limit water use so that water stored in reservoirs can be preserved as long as possible.
That reservoir levels are dropping in May is unprecedented, Fisher said. “Levels usually would be rising now,” he said. “But ours are dropping.”
Rains this month have helped. The most recent forecasts indicate that summer monsoons may be wetter than normal and a developing El Niño weather pattern later this year could deliver more liquid relief, according to Russ Schumacher, director of Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center.
Rains won’t necessarily help refill reservoirs, but they will help reduce the summer demand for water, meaning less needs to be released from the giant storage pools.
Utilities hope their customers will use the rains that may come as a good reason to turn off their sprinklers.
“We need to use Mother Nature as much as we can,” Fisher said. “You can literally just take a week off.”
Colorado Springs is one of the few cities that hasn’t imposed special water restrictions because its reservoirs, at the start of the watering season, were fairly full. Its normal watering schedule limits sprinkler use to three days a week, according to Colorado Springs Utilities spokesperson Jennifer Johnson. The utility actually saw water use rise slightly in May.
On Colorado’s Western Slope, the situation is also dire. This month the Colorado River District and the Colorado Water Conservation Board agreed to use water from special conservation pools in Ruedi and Wolford Mountain reservoirs to help small towns that are in danger of running out of water, and to provide some help to Western Slope farmers and the fish trying to survive in streams that are drying out.
Roughly half of the water that serves Denver and other Front Range communities comes from the Western Slope and the Colorado River. It is transferred through tunnels to the Front Range. Reductions in water use by Denver and other cities will take some of the stress off the Colorado River.
Lindsay DeFrates, deputy communications director for the Colorado River District, said the district is asking Western Slope towns to water just one day a week.
The district manages the Colorado River and represents 15 Western Slope counties. It has no authority to impose restrictions on mountain communities, but it is still pushing hard for a broad-based commitment to turn off the sprinklers.
“And obviously,” DeFrates said, “we’re hoping Front Range cities will do the same.”
Climate change comes for a #LakePowell marina: Will Bullfrog survive the shrinking #ColoradoRiver? — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
May 22, 2026
Maybe sitting next to the wall of plate glass windows was not the smartest move, I thought, as a sienna-colored cloud of sand lifted up from the lakeside and made its way in my direction. I had just tucked into my $16 grilled chicken sandwich at the Anasazi Restaurant at Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell when the wind kicked up, sandblasting the windows and causing a sizable milk crate to slide back and forth along the railings of the patio outside. It was an eerie scene. Had this been an apocalyptic cli-fi film set in a calamitously aridified West, this would have been the moment when a pterodactyl-like creature smashed through the window and plopped down all bloody and sandy in my plate of fries, an omen of the horrors to come.
It was not, however, a film. The dystopian scene was real as was the aridification, though it did not include any prehistoric creatures — only a handful of staff and other diners who, much to my dismay, seemed utterly unperturbed by the sandstorm and the havoc it was wreaking on a set of outdoor furniture. And, outside, a few ravens who seemed delighted to frolic in the gusts’ updrafts.
When we think of climate change’s effects, we might imagine communities inundated by rising seas, unhoused folks exposed to ever more severe heat waves, or entire towns wiped out by megafires. I was here at Bullfrog to see how a warmer and drier climate is affecting the communities, infrastructure, and economies that rose up around and depend upon Lake Powell-based recreation.
Bullfrog is the largest and most extensive marina on Lake Powell’s northern end. It has a 48-room hotel, the aforementioned restaurant, a gas station and convenience store, an RV park, and other lodging, along with its own school, which this year had four students in grades K-6. The population of some 50 to 100 consists mostly of employees of the National Park Service and Aramark, the private concessionaire that runs the reservoir’s marinas and other facilities. Nearby Ticaboo, which lies outside Glen Canyon National Recreation Area but also relies on Lake Powell recreation, has another 50 to 100 residents. The nearest incorporated town is Hanksville, some 67 miles to the north.
Bullfrog lies at the end of the road on a bay at the mouth of Bullfrog Creek, where the water is shallower than on the main channel of the Colorado River, making the marina and its facilities more vulnerable to dropping water levels. While the main boat ramp is still being used, it will likely become unusable later this summer as the reservoir’s surface levels falls toward 3,500 feet. In coming weeks, the entire floating marina will be towed across the reservoir to deeper water adjacent to Halls Crossing Marina; Bullfrog’s fuel and boat rental docks have already been moved. The ferry between Bullfrog and Halls Crossing isn’t functional at low water levels, so is expected to be out of commission for the rest of this year, making for a 145-mile car trip between the facilities at Bullfrog and the boat ramps and marina at Halls Crossing.
I visited Bullfrog on a Sunday in mid-May. Because I needed to do some internet-related work early on Monday morning, I stayed in the hotel. I initially regretted not staying in the campground, since it was mostly empty and had a strong cell phone signal, but when the tent-shredding winds and skin blasting sands kicked up I was happy to be ensconced in more secure lodging, especially given the relatively reasonable price.
It was the high tourist season elsewhere in Canyon Country. The trailhead parking lots at Capitol Reef National Park were all full or overflowing that morning as I drove through, and Torrey had been busy during my stay there for a writing conference. As I slowly made my way down the Notom Road and Burr Trail, stopping frequently to gaze at the curves and crevices in the Waterpocket Fold and for a quick bike ride, I saw maybe a half-dozen other vehicles.
Bullfrog, meanwhile, was decidedly quiet. The hotel was nearly empty. Only a few sites in the RV park were occupied, and I later saw that most of the sites were out of order and closed. A couple of dozen cars, at the very most, were parked on the only operable boat ramp. The shelves on the little convenience store were sparsely stocked, and a box of Triscuits was going for $7.50 — though there was no cheese to accompany them — and gas was selling for $5.17. In May of 2000, the Bullfrog District received 33,000 visits, according to National Park Service statistics; in May 2025 only 10,886 visitors passed through the entrance gate. Current numbers aren’t yet available, but I imagine this year’s visitation will be far lower. And once the boat ramp ceases to function, I imagine the numbers will plummet further.
The National Park Service is planning to build a new, deeper-water boat launch at Stanton Creek, a couple of miles from central Bullfrog, where the marina can be moved permanently. The project is expected to cost some $73 million, and won’t be completed this year. It’s a type of climate adaptation, I suppose, though one can’t help wonder how long the fix will last if the reservoir’s levels keep dropping.
Meanwhile, Bullfrog’s future is in doubt. A series of especially snowy winters in the high country might be enough to bring Bullfrog back from the edge of obsolescence. Maybe they won’t even need the Stanton Creek site. On the other hand, just one more below-average snowpack year could doom Lake Powell altogether. If Colorado River flows don’t increase substantially in the next year or two, the Bureau of Reclamation will have little choice but to build tunnels to bypass Glen Canyon Dam and effectively drain the reservoir in order to keep water running into the Grand Canyon and on to Lake Mead.
The question then would be whether Bullfrog could (or would even want to) adapt to a different sort of tourism.
The place might try to cater to hikers and small-watercraft users looking to check out newly revealed parts of Glen Canyon that have been inundated for the last several decades. And it could lure travelers exploring the greater region’s backcountry, though it’s not clear that type of visitor is going to be interested in the type of accommodations and services Bullfrog currently offers. Maybe it will just become a destination for disaster-tourist voyeurs looking to see the effects of climate change in real-time. Or, perhaps Bullfrog will become another Hite Marina, which the shrinking reservoir has left high and dry, its boat ramp separated from the lake by some six miles, the store and campground permanently shuttered and gated off.
The last time I visited Bullfrog was in the late 1980s. My dad, my brother, and I camped at Halls Crossing, then woke up and rode the ferry across the lake. From there we made an epic loop around and over the Henry Mountains along the then-unimproved Burr Trail and another gnarly road in our 1967 Pontiac Catalina. It took at least eight hours and involved some extensive road-building to keep the boat-like vehicle from bottoming out. Anyway, I remember Bullfrog as being a bustling resort with a sort of spring break party vibe, relative to the more bare-bones Halls Crossing. Of course, those were the glory days for Lake Powell, when the reservoir was full, and at the end of a bone-jarring drive across the desert one could stop at the Hite Marina for refreshments.
That night I listened to the sand batter the sliding glass door of my hotel room. The next morning, the reservoir’s placid waters reflected dawn’s first light, and the distant sandstone dunes seemed to glow from within. And to the north, a fresh coating of snow covered the craggy slopes of the Henry Mountains, promising a little bit of relief from these dry and trying times.
📸 Parting Shots 🎞️
#Drought news May 29, 2026: Precipitation was sufficient to bring some drought reduction across northern and northeastern #Colorado, but drier conditions across southeastern Colorado and #Kansas
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
During the week, a highly variable weather pattern brought wide temperature swings to much of the contiguous United States. An unusually cold airmass that had settled over the Plains at the start of the week pushed eastward, bringing a rapid and stormy end to the early season heat wave across the Eastern Seaboard. In contrast, the West baked under much above normal temperatures. By mid-week, much above-normal temperatures had returned to the Plains, with daily maximum temperatures climbing into the upper 90s in some locations. As temperatures began to rebound across the East, cooler air overspread the Pacific states by the end of the week.
The strong temperature gradients that set up across the Nation, coupled with ample Gulf moisture streaming northward resulted in widespread heavy and persistent precipitation, with many locations exceeding two inches from eastern Texas and Oklahoma northeastward to the mid-Atlantic states, and isolated instances of 6 or more inches in some spots. Widespread rainfall, albeit with lighter accumulations, fell across the north-central Plains as daily temperatures warmed, but mostly dry weather prevailed across the upper Mississippi Valley and western Corn Belt. West of the Rockies, mostly dry weather prevailed for most of the week, but showers associated with a strong cold front overspread the Northwest at the very end of the period…
High Plains
As below-normal temperatures transitioned back to a hot pattern across the High Plains, widespread precipitation moved through the region. Areas of convection brought up to 2 inches of rain to portions of eastern Nebraska and eastern Colorado, while amounts were generally an inch or less elsewhere. This precipitation was sufficient to bring some drought reduction across northern and northeastern Colorado, but drier conditions across southeastern Colorado and Kansas, coupled with hot temperatures, resulted in degradation. A sharp cutoff in precipitation was also noted across the far western Dakotas, where small areas of degradation were noted along the borders with Wyoming and Montana…
West
Mostly dry weather and above-normal temperatures dominated the Western Region during the week sparking some small-scale degradation across Montana, Idaho, and New Mexico, where the effects of the meager winter snow cover are beginning to be felt in falling streamflow values. Status quo was maintained west of the Rockies for the most part, as reservoir conditions remain good across California during a climatologically dry time of year. At the end of the week, a strong cold front brought abnormal moisture to the Northwest and northern Rockies. While not sufficient to substantively alter the drought depiction, a modest reduction in abnormal dryness was noted in far northwestern Washington…
South
Widespread heavy rainfall overspread the Southern Region, with amounts increasing from west to east. Accumulations of 2 to locally more than 5 inches fell across most of Tennessee, engendering widespread drought reduction. Rainfall was locally heavy but a bit spottier across Louisiana and Arkansas, which also saw widespread drought reduction but with less coverage. Across Texas, heavy rainfall across the eastern half of the state yielded drought improvements and also localized flooding. Across North Texas, localized convection brought relief to some areas, but hot conditions resulted in degradation where precipitation did not occur…
Looking Ahead
During the upcoming week, a late season storm system across the West is forecast to bring abnormal moisture to California, Oregon, and Washington, with precipitation spreading eastward to the northern Rockies by mid-week. The heaviest accumulations are forecast across the southern Cascades. Periods of convection are favored across the Plains states throughout the week, with the WPC 7-day quantitative precipitation outlook showing a potential for 1 inch or locally more across portions of Nebraska and Kansas, where Gulf moisture advection is most pronounced. Across the eastern third of the CONUS, unsettled weather is favored to continue across the Southeast, with the focus of heaviest precipitation shifting towards Florida and the south Atlantic coastal plain. A slow moving cold front is forecast to push east during the period, maintaining showery weather across the Deep South while cooler and drier conditions overspread the Corn Belt and Northeast.
During Week-2, the trough over the East is favored to rapidly de-amplify, with temperatures quickly moderating. Above-normal temperatures are favored across the West and northern tier of the CONUS on the latest CPC 8-14 day outlook, with mostly near-normal temperatures the most likely outcome across the South and Southeast regions. Unsettled weather and continued precipitation may play a role in keeping hot weather at bay across the southern tier. The CPC 8-14 day precipitation outlook favors above-normal precipitation across the Four Corners states eastward along the southern tier to the Atlantic coastline as far north as Virginia. Near normal precipitation is favored elsewhere, except for a small wet signal over the Pacific Northwest. Above-normal precipitation is favored for eastern Alaska, while above-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation are both favored for Hawaii.
The #ColoradoRiver and reckoning time for the Front Range — Allen Best (BigPivots.com) #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
May 26, 2026
Dissonance exists between life-close-to-normal policies regarding urban water use and the growing crisis on the river
Casually surveying the urban landscapes in much of Colorado’s Front Range, you’d never know that the Colorado River — the source for roughly half the water of the cities — has deteriorated to its most pitiful shape of perhaps the last century.
Oh, yes, some utilities — notably Denver Water and Aurora Water, which together serve 1.9 million residents — have imposed rigorous stage-one drought watering restrictions. Outdoor irrigation is allowed twice per week and never during the heat of day. Other water utilities that tap Colorado River water, however, have asked only for voluntary cutbacks, if any at all.
Jeff Lukas, a water consultant with several decades invested in climate change work, says this seeming aloofness of some cities will not persist indefinitely. That is certainly true if the record heat and abnormal dryness of the past winter continues into 2027. They may have no choice.
“I think Front Range cities will be asked, whether nicely or not, to reduce their Colorado River diversions,” said Lukas in a May 11 webinar. “The mechanism for that is unclear, but I think it’s going to happen.”
Water rights of the Front Range cities — and many of those on the Western Slope, too — are junior to the Colorado River Compact. It was negotiated in 1922, making diversions more recent than that junior.
Problems in the basin were becoming apparent in the 1990s. The warming climate in this century has provoked changes. By all accounts, they have not been enough.
Lukas, as a dendrochronologist at the Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research in Boulder 20 years ago, was teasing out evidence from tree rings to understand the climates of the Colorado River Basin during the last 1,200 years.
Later, as a scientist with the Western Water Assessment, Lukas co-authored (with Liz Peyton) a 2020 report called Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology: State of the Science. That 500-page report integrated more than 800peer-reviewed studies to help water managers understand physical processes, climate risks, and forecasting tools across the basin.
In 2024, with the state climatologist, Russ Schumacher, and several others, Lukas turned out the 100-page volume called “Climate Change in Colorado.”
Based in Lafayette, Lukas now works as a consultant. At Lukas Climate Research and Consulting, he specializes in the overlapping areas of climate hazards, water resources, and ecosystems.
Lukas, in a presentation he titled “Running dry on the Colorado River: The roots of the crisis & its implications for the Front Range,” explained the big picture and Colorado’s Front Range part in it.
Defined by the Continental Divide, Colorado has an inverse relationship between its eastern and western slopes. About 90% of the state’s residents live to the east, nearly all at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, whereas 80% of the state’s precipitation originates on the west side, in the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries.
Colorado itself provides 50% to 60% of the water in the entire Colorado River, depending upon the year. This year has been a terrible year everywhere in the basin, Colorado included.
Lukas explained that “islands of moisture” provide nearly all the water in this 244,000-square-mile basin. The high mountains constitute these islands. Some places deliver more than others. Buffalo Pass, near Steamboat, famously has had prodigious volumes of snow. This snow, when melted, can produce 50 inches of water.
It takes 20 inches or more of precipitation in these mountain islands to produce meaningful runoff. Even then, it doesn’t all end up in the Colorado River. In Colorado and the three upper-basin states, he said, 16% of the rain and snow that falls becomes water in the Colorado River. In the hotter lower basin, the figure is 3%.
“The atmosphere takes back most of what it giveth, even in the wetter upper basin,” he said.
Evaporation and transpiration are the pickpockets of this water. Heat produces evaporation, and we’ve had plenty of that this year.
Temperatures during November through April were the warmest on record in Colorado for that span of months. March heat was exceptional. This produced runoff in the rivers that in most cases may surpass that of May or June, the traditional times for peak runoff. Peak runoff has been trending earlier by several weeks during the last few decades, but this was a leap of about two months.
Runoff for April through July — a time that normally accounts for 70% to 80% of annual streamflows — this year will likely deliver no better than 20% to 40%. In its May report, the Bureau of Reclamation said April flows into Lake Powell were 40% of the average during the last 30 years and it expects flows in May to sink to 9% of that average.
Can it get any worse? Count on it, said Lukas.
“We should expect not every year to look like 2026 from here on out, but more years in the future will look like 2026. And somewhere down the pipe, not as far in the future as we would like, there will be a year worse than 2026 for the Colorado River.”
CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY WATER RESOURCES ARCHIVE via Aspen Journalism
This is so very different from what was assumed by the delegates from the seven basin states who gathered in 1922 in Santa Fe to apportion the Colorado River.
The role of reservoirs
Taking the big, long-term view, Lukas pointed out that the overall story of the Colorado River is one of modifications needed to suit human uses. “It’s all about smoothing out the natural variability in the availability of water over space and over time.”
Reservoirs are the primary means by which humans have been able to “smooth out the natural variability.”
The Colorado River Basin has 60 million acre-feet of storage. That’s four times the annual flow. Five-sixths of the storage capacity is found in the desert in two vessels: lakes Mead and Powell. The headwaters have many reservoirs but they are relatively small. The total storage capacity is 2,000 times more than the volume of Dillon Reservoir.
Glen Canyon Institute and the Great Basin Water Network. Courtesy of Utah Rivers Council
Since 2000, stored water in those two big buckets, Mead and Powell, has declined from 49 million acre-feet to 16 million acre-feet as of May. Of that, 9 million lies at elevations below the lowest outlets. These are called dead pools.
Those delegates in 1922 who crafted the Colorado River Compact, the legal document that provided the basis for nearly all these dams and aqueducts subsequently built, assumed annual flows of 17 million to 18 million acre-feet. They were overly optimistic. The 20th century average was 15.2 million acre-feet.
Now comes the 21st century, and the average at Lee Ferry has dipped to 12.2 million acre-feet. This has implications for the Front Range cities but also farms. If Colorado must reduce its diversions to accord with the compact, those rights dated before 1922 will be exempt from reductions. The giant transmountain diversions have come more recently, as have many of the diversions for towns and cities on the Western Slope.
Accumulating evidence fingers human-caused climate change with large amounts of responsibility for declined flows. Lukas said his rule of thumb is that the role of greenhouse gases overall are responsible for two-thirds of lower flows.
As for the mechanics of this shift, rising heat is one important “knob,” said Lukas. As the atmosphere warms, it reduces “runoff efficiency” even more, sending water into the atmosphere instead of into streams and then rivers. Accumulating evidence fingers human-caused climate change with responsibility for most and possibly all of increased temperatures.
Precipitation has declined about 5% since 2000, with a larger reduction in spring, an important time of year to get moisture. Here, the link to the warming climate is less clear. “It seems increasingly likely that climate change is changing the dynamics of storm tracks and the persistence of, say, high-pressure systems over the interior West,” said Lukas. “That is, at least in part, responsible for why we’ve had less precipitation since 2000.”
The Colorado River, though, had problems even before the warming climate began throwing sharp elbows in water volumes. The reservoirs of the Colorado River Basin were 92% full in 1999, a wet decade overall. Even then, however, the Colorado River had ceased to reach the Pacific Ocean. There were too many straws inserted.
Less than 12% of the river’s flow goes to urbanized and industrial uses. Lukas pointed out that cities have become more efficient in their use of water. The rule of thumb for Denver and other Western cities is that one acre-feet of water meets the needs of a three households on an annual basis. That compares with two households a few decades ago.
Mining of fossil fuels and minerals uses a small amount. Evaporation from reservoirs and rivers and other “system losses” accounts for about 15%.
That takes us to agriculture. It uses 75% of the river’s water in the Colorado River for irrigation on 5 million acres. Some of that land lies outside the basin itself. That includes the South Platte and Arkansas River valleys of eastern Colorado.
Over half of that water — about 9 million acre-feet — gets used to grow feed for livestock, mainly alfalfa and pasture grass.
Might cities want to cut deals with farmers to “share” the water? This discussion has been underway for at least 15 to 20 years. Some pilot projects in Colorado and elsewhere have been launched to see what this might look like. A strong proponent has been James Eklund, a water attorney in Denver. Others question how this is done and, for that matter, whether we want to do it. But certainly, water for urban uses has higher monetary value than growing hay to feed cattle.
Why the restraint of cities?
As for the Front Range cities, the big question is whether they are planning for a river that produces even less than it does now.
In 2024, Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, suggested the need to start planning for a river that may deliver less than 10 million acre-feet in coming decades. Some thought then that the state engineer, Jason Ullman, needed to start sorting through this matter of junior vs. senior rights. Jim Lochhead, a former water attorney on the Western Slope and later CEO of Denver Water, pushed back, saying it was premature given the huge amount of work that would be required. See: “Heading for the Colorado River Cliff,” Big Pivots, Oct. 20, 2024.
At the Zoom session on May 11, I asked Lukas about the modest watering restrictions by Front Range water providers. He had previously described mixed signals from the water utilities. If 2027 is dry again, expect more uniformity around drought restrictions. “But it’s pretty weird right now,” he said.
With the attention to the Colorado River in the news media, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for the water utilities to mount more aggressive campaigns. Any idea why they had not, I wondered.
The utilities, he said, are reluctant to deliver regulations that produce discomfort around outdoor water-use restrictions. They don’t want to do this unless absolutely necessary.
Part of this is because of experiences during the covid epidemic. A lesson to public servants during that time made them more reluctant to push the public to do things they don’t want to do. “You only want to exercise that authority, that public legal authority, sparingly and only when it’s clear that is what is really necessary.”
Revenue was another consideration. Water infrastructure is expensive, and the money to pay for it comes from charges for water use. By imposing limits, you reduce revenue and hence must charge more for water. The conundrum is that reducing use doesn’t necessarily mean you pay less. In some cases, less water may require more infrastructure. This is a hard message to convey.
“What you’re seeing is a dissonance between the circumstances and what’s happening, at least this year,” he said.
Or at least right now. We have had rainy weather in May. Some meteorologists think we may end up with healthy rainfall this summer. If instead the summer is like the winter, very hot and dry, I expect the utilities might pick up their game.
Jeff Lukas presented in a session called Zoom at Noon. You can see the hour-long presentation here. The passcode is %ACg9*XU
Federal Water Tap, May 26, 2026: EPA Proposes to Repeal Standards for Four #PFAS in Drinking Water — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org)
Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton):
The Rundown
- EPA aims to end federal regulation of four PFAS in drinking water and give utilities more time to comply with existing rules.
- FEMA reopens applications for a climate-resilient infrastructure grant program that the agency had cancelled.
- Bureau of Reclamation announces $52 million for three new Hoover Dam turbines that will generate hydropower at lower Lake Mead levels.
- A House FY27 budget bill will cut the federal government’s primary water infrastructure funds by 24 percent.
- NOAA forecasts fewer Atlantic hurricanes this season.
- EPA water office leader commits to investigate groundwater pollution in Georgia from Meta data center construction.
- The Trump administration recommends that the U.S. Supreme Court take up Nebraska’s claim that Colorado has violated a river-sharing compact.
And lastly, the Bureau of Reclamation’s acting commissioner informs a House subcommittee about the status of Colorado River negotiations.
“Several weeks ago, I met with the 14 senators from the Colorado River basin and on a bipartisan basis, several of them said, ‘Look, we have a real crisis on the Colorado and we need to get things done and if there are any environmental statutes that are slowing things down, tell us what they are and maybe we can legislate to clear out some of the unhelpful bureaucratic paperwork.’” – Scott Cameron, acting Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, speaking at a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing. Cameron said his office has not yet followed up on the offer but “looked forward” to conferring with the senators about “waiving or streamlining certain environmental statutes on the Colorado.”
As for the status of Colorado River negotiations, Cameron said, “Frankly, the seven states are not in a position where they could agree today, right now, to a four-year deal, let alone a 20-year deal, because of the uncertainties we’re dealing with.”
By the Numbers
$1 Billion: Funding now available from FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, a grant opportunity to reduce risk from climate and weather hazards. A federal judge ordered the agency to reinstate the program, which the Trump administration had cancelled. Applications are due July 23.
$52 Million: Funding announced by the Bureau of Reclamation for three new low-head turbines at Hoover Dam. Only five of the dam’s 17 turbines are designed to operate when Lake Mead drops below elevation 1,035 feet, a threshold that the shrinking reservoir is fast approaching and could breach in the next 12 months, if not sooner.
In context: Hoover Dam Faces New Power Generation Declines
News Briefs
Not So PFAS
The EPA is proposing to repeal federal regulation of four PFAS in drinking water, partially undoing a Biden-era rule that set first-ever limits on six of the “forever chemicals.”Three of the chemicals – PFHxS, PFNA, and Gen X – were regulated individually. Together with PFBS, they were also regulated as a mixture.
The EPA will retain standards for PFOA and PFOS, the two most-studied of the chemicals. However, in a separate rule-making, the agency is proposing to give water utilities more time to comply, extending the deadline by two years, until 2031. The agency says the move will “ease the implementation burden” financially and administratively for water systems and might allow for cheaper treatment technologies to come to market.
Water utilities must apply for an extension. One of the considerations is whether an extension would pose an “unreasonable risk to health.” The EPA is proposing that PFOA and PFOS levels below 12 parts per trillion would not be unreasonable. (The federal standard for both is 4 ppt.)
The EPA wants public comment on whether interim utility actions during a compliance extension – point-of-use treatment, filtration pitchers, education, alternative water sources – can mitigate health risks above 12 ppt.
Submit comments by July 20 via http://www.regulations.gov using docket number EPA-HQ-OW-2025-1742.
Water Infrastructure Funding Cuts
A House spending bill cuts the two main federal sources of water infrastructure funding by about 24 percent in fiscal year 2027. The bill passed out of subcommittee last week.The bill provides $1.2 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (27 percent cut) and $911 million for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (19 percent cut).
Following a recent trend, about half of the appropriation comes in the form of earmarks. This money will go directly to specific projects and will not enter the revolving fund. Water industry advocates argue that continuing to take earmarks out of the revolving fund appropriation threatens the viability of the program.
Studies and Reports
Great Plains Water Fight
The federal government’s top lawyer recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court take up one of Nebraska’s claims that Colorado is violating the South Platte River Compact, which divides the river’s water between the two states.Nebraska argues that Colorado is breaking three articles of the compact. The U.S. solicitor general says that the high court, through a special master, should pursue only one of them: that Colorado is allowing irrigators to take too much water.
“A claim that one State has deprived another of water to which it is entitled under an interstate compact is a quintessential case for this Court’s original jurisdiction,” the brief states.
Atlantic Hurricanes
NOAA is forecasting a less active Atlantic hurricane season. The agency estimates that one to three major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher) will form.The category ratings can be misleading. They measure wind speed, not precipitation. Tropical storms and minor hurricanes can still inflict serious flood damage.
Air Conditioning Estimates
The U.S. Census Bureau published data estimating how many homes use air conditioning.States with the lowest air conditioning use are in New England and the West.
On the Radar
EPA on Data Centers and Household Wells
Under oath at a House subcommittee oversight hearing, Jessica Kramer, head of the EPA Office of Water, committed to investigate impacts to drinking water quality from data center construction.“Whatever type of construction it is, it’s a priority to ensure that water quality standards established by EPA are being met. So we’ll be looking into that certainly,” Kramer said.
Kramer’s commitment at the House Energy and Commerce hearing was prompted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who asked about water pollution from data center construction.
Ocasio-Cortez visited Morgan County, Georgia, a few weeks ago. She returned with jars of brown water from household wells near the construction site of a Meta data center. She displayed those at the hearing.
“This is what the drinking water now looks like, next to that data center,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“As soon as I get back to the office, I will be looking into exactly what you just talked about,” Kramer replied.
Army Corps Deauthorized Projects
The Army Corps published a list of water projects that it intends to deauthorize.These are projects that were authorized years ago but either haven’t ever received funding or haven’t recently received funding.
Public comment on the proposal runs through August 19. Submit comments at http://www.regulations.gov using docket number COE-2026-0034.
Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.
Trump administration releases critical federal money for major #ColoradoRiver water rights purchase: $40 million contribution toward Shoshone water rights deal had been frozen for more than a year — The #Denver Post #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
May 22, 2026
For more than a year, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has withheld $40 million awarded to the Colorado River District for the purchase of the water rights attached to Xcel Energy’s aging Shoshone Power Plant in Glenwood Canyon. The release of the federal funding brings the total amount secured for the purchase to $97 million — just shy of the $99 million needed for the project. For years, the river district — a taxpayer-funded agency based in Glenwood Springs that works to protect Western Slope water — has worked to purchase the rights from the utility. Its leaders want to ensure that, even in dry years, the billions of gallons of water the rights command continue to flow west through the canyon and to the communities, wildlife habitats and farms downstream. The district and other Western Slope entities feared the certainty of the flows would be threatened if another purchaser — like a Front Range utility — were able to snag the rights first. The purchase is a “once-in-a-generation” investment in securing Western Slope water supplies, said Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River District, in a news release Friday. The federal dollars will add to the $20 million contributed by the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the $37 million raised by the district from Western Slope governments, organizations and irrigators.
“This award is a major breakthrough in our coalition’s effort to permanently secure historic flows on the Colorado River,” he said…
The federal funding brings the Shoshone water rights deal — originally inked in 2023 — one step closer to completion. Xcel Energy still needs approval for the sale from Colorado’s public utility regulators, and the river district m
US Winter wheat conditions now have the lowest good/excellent rating since at least 1985 — Andrew Whitelaw
Advertisement for My Self + Romancing the River – Elephants in the River — George Sibley (SibleysRivers.com) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):
May 26, 2026
This is the cover of a new book I’ve just published, Storm in My Head, a collection of poetry written over the 60 years I’ve been living in the headwaters of the Colorado River, since 1966. My 60-year celebration. Those of you who prefer your literature in sprints and strolls over the marathon essays I impose on you might enjoy this book. I’m in the process of getting it distributed, and it may eventually be in a bookstore near you or on Amazon; but for the time being, if you are interested, an email to me, george@gard-sibley.org, will initiate a response on how to get a little money to me (10 bucks plus shipping) to get an inscribed copy wending its way to you.
End of advertisement – back to the river….
Romancing the River – Elephants in the River
The Colorado River situation is moving toward replacing the existing ‘Interim Guidelines’ for managing the river system with a new set of interim guidelines for managing the river system. This new set is devised mostly by the Bureau of Reclamation, which is growing a little desperate to avoid the embarrassment of having its river system cause the flow of the river to stop – ‘dead pool’ – behind one or another of its big dams, in a river management system built for a considerably larger Colorado River – now as mythic a river as the biblical four that flowed out of the Garden of Eden.
All this makes me think I’ll briefly abandon my historical update of Frederick Dellenbaugh’s Romance of the Colorado River, and try to sort through what has been happening recently in the present, most of which we’ve been reading or hearing about in the media.
Reports on the river’s flow after the Weirdest Winter Ever (at least in recorded time) have just gotten worse and worse; now the anticipated inflow to Powell Reservoir is 13 percent of the thirty-year average, from tributary runoffs that peaked as much as two months earlier than the usual early June. The Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month projection indicates that, if last year’s releases from Powell were replicated this year, they might have to stop generating power by late summer to protect the power turbines – which in effect declares the remaining quarter of the reservoir’s potential storage ‘dead pool,’ since the only other way past Glen Canyon Dam is through four outflow tubes of questionable viability that the Bureau would like to use as little as possible.
The Bureau will address this with two emergency measures: first, by bringing a large quantity of stored water down the Green River from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and second, by cutting releases from Powell Reservoir by close to two million acre-feet (maf) – which in turn will leave Mead Reservoir lower and diminish its power generation. This is an emergency plan that can nowise be considered long-range planning.
The Lower Basin states in turn have bumped up their willingness to take more shortages for the next couple years by roughly doubling shortages they have already agreed to accept – if the feds will pay them something for not using water that is not there. Their earlier cuts were basically just enough to finally start taking out of their individual allotments the system losses (mostly evaporation) they have been dismissing, with Bureau cooperation, as being met through ‘surplus flows’ that effectively disappeared when the Central Arizona Project came online in the 1990s.
The four Upper Basin states have responded by suggested that it might be time to bring in a facilitator or mediator to conduct the seven-state negotiations on future management planning. This launched an episode of fussing between the Lower and Upper Basins as to who first had that idea, with the other basin objecting to it. But no one seems to be totally opposed to the idea at this point, and it might happen.
But basically it all seems to be in reaction to an ‘emergency’ water year, with no advance on more long-range planning – and there is no reason to believe that this year in just a one-shot emergency like the 1977 water year. It is just the most extreme year in an extreme period – the past quarter century – that is probably the shape of the future in the Colorado River region, and there are no more Flaming Gorge reservoirs to draw down for the next emergency year….
It’s probably important to remember a distinction: there is a river, the Colorado River, and we have overlaid on that river a management systemfor managing the river’s water for its human uses, a system whose parts either store water or distribute stored water to users. But we do not directly ‘manage’ the river itself, which runs according larger ‘operators’ – to global climate factors that we can inadvertently change but do not directly control, to what is happening to precipitation that falls in the river’s watersheds, and to how much what lives on the land (including us) interacts with the flow both on and below the land surface.
That last point – the water ‘on and below the land surface’ – strikes me as very important but largely ignored in the stalemated negotiations. You remember the metaphor of ‘the elephant in the room’: a big thing that everyone in the room is trying to ignore because to acknowledge it is to open a can of worms? (Sorry, mixing metaphors here.)
Well, we have ‘elephants in the river’ – or rather maybe in the ‘box’ containing the sacred Law of the River, through which we try to manage to the river. That’s the box that we’re all supposed to be ‘thinking outside of.’ Beginning to work ‘outside the box’ on anything will open a can of worms, but… are we going to have any choice, further down the road when it will be even harder if the elephants in the river continue to be ignored?
Trying to think in an integrated way of the water under the land as well as that on the land is one of our elephants in the river. We need to keep in mind the distribution of the freshwater all land-based life depends on (basically a solar-distilled three percent of the ocean’s water). In our times more than half of the freshwater on the planet is ‘banked’ in mountain glaciers and the ice sheets of the polar regions and Greenland – although this fraction is gradually diminishing under the changing climate. Of the remaining 35-40 percent, most of it is groundwater – water that soaks into the land, nurturing nearly all of the plant life that is the foundational food, fuel and housing supply for the animal kingdom (including us). This leaves only a small fraction of the water on the surface – lakes, wetlands, streams and rivers – and this is also a diminishing fraction, as the warming climate increases sublimation and evaporation from all waters exposed to the sun’s increasing power.
Yet that is also the fraction of freshwater over which nearly all the human squabbling is happening. For a long time, until the last century-plus, that was all the water that most of the animal kingdom could access, but now we have – and use, not wisely – pumps that make the groundwater accessible too.
We also know that most of that small fraction of surface water is pretty intimately connected to the groundwater. A river is not just a drain for water that failed to soak into the ground; as a river runs through its low-elevation course in a watershed, it constantly interacts with the groundwater, gaining water when the land is wet and the ground is full of water, and giving water to the land, as gravity permits, when the land is dry.
This knowledge ought to drive us toward thinking of groundwater and surface water as a single water source – not just our awareness that pumping the land dry will also diminish the river, but also our awareness that irrigating the chronically dry lands from the streams and rivers not only grows more plants and animal foods that the dry land could – but some of that irrigation water also sinks below the root zone to recharge the groundwater. The city of Gunnison, where I live, bought a ranch adjacent to the city because the city leaders knew enough about alluvial water to know that their groundwater supply (several relatively shallow wells) depended on keeping that ranch under irrigation from the river — water mostly cleaned by the ground it passes through.
But back to the Colorado River, the fraction of the water that does not soak into the land is a larger fraction than you would find in gentler lands primarily because most of the water falls on mountains in winter as snow, which melts in a relatively short time period as the weather warms, too fast for all of it to sink into land that is often too steep or too rocky for absorbing it anyway. But even in that ‘runoff period,’ scientists are learning that a lot of the water in the stream in the ‘spring flood’ season is groundwater flowing in from saturated lands.
Despite knowing all this, however, we persist in fighting over the fraction of freshwater that flows in the river’s watersheds through the year in the Colorado River region (natural basin plus out-of-basin extensions), and pay little in a basin-wide way to the use and abuse of groundwater. Only Colorado – to the best of my knowledge – has tried statewide to legally integrate the use of surface waters and groundwater: since 1969 all groundwater users had to acquire water rights, in the same priority system with surface water users. And – before there was easy access to computers and spreadsheets – all groundwater uses going back almost a century were also integrated into that priority system, a massive ‘can of worms’ to negotiate.
What’s been happening in Colorado for 35 years then is the beginning of the intelligent management of an integrated surface-and-groundwater supply – apparently far too intelligent for the Trumpish agri-industrialists of the two largest Colorado River water users, Southern California and Arizona. Arizona was forced to develop a groundwater management plan (1970) for the areas of Arizona that would be served by the federal Central Arizona Project, in order to get Congress to pass the project; but the rest of the state has been pumping groundwater at prodigious rates, with surface subsidence as evidence of collapsing emptied aquifers that are lost forever. Most of California’s groundwater overpumping is up in the Central Valley, not ‘served’ by the Colorado River, but as Colorado River flows inexorably diminish in a warming world, there will be growing temptations to pump in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys.
I have not found figures for the amount of unregulated groundwater ‘mining’ that goes on in the Colorado river region, but the number and volume of aquifers that have collapsed and been lost due to water-mining would probably go a long way toward filling Mead and Powell Reservoirs. And if you pause for a second and think about it, storing water underground is probably better than storing it in open reservoirs under a desert sun.
That is not the only elephant in the Colorado River – and most of them lead back, one way or another to the Colorado River Compact. The ‘temporary’ two-basin division that has clearly become toxic. Acknowledgement that the compact commission’s original goal of a seven-state division is not just possible now, but has been realized, to everyone’s discontent, making the two-basin division nothing but a battleground. Acceptance of the fact that the diminished river will continue to diminish so long as we continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than the planet can absorb them. Acknowledgment of the fact that as the planet warms, surface storage in big desert reservoirs is a bad idea that will get worse. Acceptance of the fact that the reconvening of a compact commission is overdue, to formalize the seven-state division and its appropriative consequences. And maybe the biggest worm-can of all: are some reasonable, even moral, limits on the appropriation doctrine possible?
We’ll look at some of these other elephants in future posts here – which I think is where the ‘romance of the Colorado River’ is today. I also think we will never have a workable resolution to our current river-system problems until we take on the elephants and bump our own consciousness of water in the arid regions up a notch from the naive ‘conquest of the desert.’
Article: Restoring dryland water cycles for precipitation feedback and climate stability; a review — Laura M. Norman, Michael M. Pollock, Francina Dominguez, Michael A. Crimmins, David Lawrence5 and Michael Dettinger (Frontiers in Environmental Science)
Click the link to access the report on the Frontiers in Environmental Science website (Laura M. Norman, Michael M. Pollock, Francina Dominguez, Michael A. Crimmins, David Lawrence5 and Michael Dettinger). Here’s the abstract:
Drylands across the globe are experiencing intensifying water scarcity, land degradation, and hydroclimatic extremes. This review integrates evidence from multidecadal field studies, hydrologic monitoring, geomorphic and ecological assessments, remote sensing, and land–atmosphere science to evaluate how restoration influences key components of the terrestrial water cycle. Low-tech natural infrastructure in dryland streams (NIDS)—including check dams, leaky weirs, one-rock dams, and gabions—has emerged as a promising but under-synthesized nature-based solution for restoring hydrologic function in these environments. We describe the mechanisms through which these interventions modify runoff detention, infiltration, sediment and alluvial storage, shallow-groundwater recharge, vegetation recovery, and surface-energy partitioning, and we summarize outcomes across diverse dryland settings. Findings consistently show increased water residence time, enhanced soil-moisture storage, expanded riparian vegetation, extended flow duration, and shifts toward greater latent-heat flux—producing localized cooling and strengthened ecohydrological feedbacks. Building on these localized effects, we articulate a hypothesis that links the spatial extent of restoration, the density of NIDS per unit drainage area, and the magnitude of the latent-to-sensible-heat contrast generated by wetter post-rainfall conditions. Specifically, we hypothesize that when NIDS are implemented at densities permitted by topography and across areas large enough to maintain elevated soil moisture after storm events, the resulting increases in latent heat flux, surface cooling, and boundary-layer moistening may enhance moisture convergence and boundary-layer development, potentially increasing the likelihood or stability of convective precipitation, analogous to how reductions in these processes have contributed to regional drought intensification. These land–atmosphere feedbacks remain untested at scale but represent an important research Frontier. By integrating hydrologic, geomorphic, ecological, and atmospheric perspectives, this review provides a comprehensive framework for considering how low-tech, landscape-scale interventions can strengthen watershed resilience and contribute to climate-relevant nature-based solutions.
The latest seasonal outlooks, through August 31, 2026, are hot off the presses from the Climate Prediction Center
‘We can’t control the weather, but we can control the tap’: Governor Cox declares statewide emergency as Utah drought worsens — The Salt Lake Tribune
Click the link to read the article on The Salt Lake Tribune website (Leia Larsen). Here’s an excerpt:
May 21, 2026
Enforcement actions will be left up to local water providers, who urge Utahns to cut back on outdoor irrigation.
Following Utah’s winter of “no-pack,” Gov. Spencer Cox has declared a state of emergency over drought conditions. The governor and Utah water managers stood near the shores of Little Dell Reservoir in Salt Lake County to outline how dire conditions have become: the worst snowfall seen in generations. Record-breaking spring heat. Rural towns that will have practically no irrigation season this summer. Forestry managers bracing for a rough fire season. And the continued decline of the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River.
“We can’t bank on what Mother Nature might deliver next winter,” Cox said at a news conference Thursday [May 22, 2026]. “Precipitation isn’t promised, and conservation is a choice that we can all make, and must make at this time.”
Utah’s April 1 snowpack averaged 2.7 inches of snow water equivalent, the amount of water the snow releases when it melts. That’s the lowest since 1930, the governor said. The normal snow water equivalent is around 14 inches at the start of April. In 2023, which saw record snowfall, the state had an average of 28 inches in April. Snowmelt provides almost all of the water supplies across the state, and runoff is what helps the Great Salt Lake and reservoirs rise each spring. The governor’s emergency declaration does not contain any mandatory actions, though. It calls on Utahns to voluntarily take water-saving measures like fixing irrigation leaks, installing low-flow toilets and replacing unused grass with water-wise plants…The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food said the declaration opens up the Emergency Disaster Relief Loan program for farmers and ranchers across the state. The program offers seven-year loans of up to $100,000 at 0% interest for the first 2 years, and 2.75% interest thereafter. Those funds can only be used for declared disaster-related losses not covered by insurance, the department said.
“I Am Not Optimistic”: Western Slope Leaders Gather as #ColoradoRiver Crisis Deepens — KVNF #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the KVNF website (Brody Wilson). Here’s an excerpt:
May 19, 2026
A special mid-year West Slope Water Summit brought together water managers and community leaders to address a dire water year. Projected inflows into Lake Powell are expected to be well below half of normal — and negotiations over the river’s future remain unresolved.
A special mid-year West Slope Water Summit convened this week in Montrose — called early because the situation couldn’t wait until November. Montrose County Commissioner Sue Hansen organized the gathering after attending the Colorado River District’s State of the River address. She told attendees it was time to step up the urgency.
“This year is the first year that I am not optimistic,” Hansen said. “This is unprecedented and perhaps sobering for all of us.”
[…]
“The Lower Basin has put out, maybe you guys have heard of this, bridge proposal a couple weeks ago that in my opinion is a joke,” she said.
Her frustration centers on the math. The proposal calls for reducing water use by 3 million acre-feet over two years. But Flinker says that’s nowhere near enough — the river needs cuts of at least that much every single year. At the heart of the standoff is a hard reality. There is currently much less water in the river than we have been using, and no one anticipates that changing any time soon.
As Flinker puts it, “Well, I can speak for myself and you probably have the same opinion. Who wants to reduce their water usage? Right? No one. And the Lower Basin has used over 10 million, close to 11 million, acre-feet out of this river every year, much above their allocation. They don’t want to use less – especially when it’s not a little less – it’s like half, right?”
The #Colorado Legislature okays tougher rules for managing farmlands dried out by urban water transfers — Michael Booth (Fresh Water News)
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Michael Booth):
May 21, 2026
Southeastern Colorado’s farmers and farming communities say they’ve won valuable protections against the historic worst practices of cities’ “buy and dry” of agricultural water, after final passage of revegetation requirements along the Lower Arkansas River that may spread to other basins of the state.
Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign the measure, House Bill 1340 (Revegetate or Dry Farm Formerly Irrigated Agricultural Land), after officials from his Department of Natural Resources testified favorably for the bill.
“For the first time in Colorado, this new law establishes that when irrigation water is permanently removed from farmland for other uses, the responsibility to properly revegetate and reclaim that land belongs to the entity removing the water,” said Jack Goble, general manager of the bill’s primary advocate, the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District.
“It also strengthens the role of local counties by requiring the water court to incorporate their revegetation criteria and enforcement mechanisms into change-of-use decrees. At its core, this law sets clear expectations, creates accountability and helps protect the land, neighboring landowners and rural communities that are left behind when water leaves,” Goble said.
Southeastern Colorado advocates conceded some measures after the bill’s introduction.
- The original bill limited a water use transfer to 50% of the purchased water until 50% of the affected farmland had been successfully revegetated against erosion and deterioration. The bill as passed removes the hard percentage, and gives city water agencies more flexibility when they buy, such as posting a bond or negotiating conditions during local permit applications.
- The initial bill language had a hard requirement for a five-year water court oversight of revegetation after a rights transfer to guarantee reclamation. The bill as passed gives water courts the ability to create an oversight period, but only when there is “a substantial risk that reclamation could regress,” Goble said.
- The final bill gives assurances to Arkansas Valley communities by requiring any reclamation agreements with cities to be written into change-of-use decrees, after the details have been negotiated by an intergovernmental agreement in a permit.
“Colorado agricultural lands are vital to our economy and way of life in Colorado, and protecting Colorado lands from the impacts of drought, erosion and invasive weeds is important to protecting our natural resources and our communities. The governor will review the final version of the bill,” spokesperson Ally Sullivan said.
Aurora Water officials, from one of the Front Range water agencies that has traveled far for decades to acquire river rights and agricultural water rights, said they support concepts in the legislation, but have reservations about how it might be executed.
“Aurora Water has actively worked in the Lower Arkansas Valley for decades, including opening an office in Rocky Ford in 1988 with full-time staff dedicated to supporting long-term revegetation and land stewardship efforts after water has been removed from agricultural production,” said Aurora Water spokesperson Shonnie Cline. “In many respects, House Bill 1340 was largely modeled after practices Aurora Water has implemented in the region, and we strongly support the overall intent of the legislation.”
Cline said Aurora Water backs responsible reclamation, and “at this time, we do not anticipate the bill significantly changing Aurora Water’s current operations in the region.”
Aurora Water is much less enthusiastic about potential future legislation applying the new southeastern Colorado protections to other river basins in the state.
“Aurora Water would have concerns with any future expansion of this type of legislation into other regions of the state as it could unintentionally harm existing dryland farming operations or create disincentives for farmers who are successfully operating under dryland agricultural practices on converted lands,” Cline said.
“Additionally, Aurora Water believes it is important for water courts to retain the authority to independently evaluate whether revegetation or dryland farming standards to be incorporated into a court decree are technically appropriate, scientifically supported and feasible under the specific facts of each case, regardless of where the standards originate.”
Controversy over what happens to former farm and pasture land when a distant city dries it up has hit other parts of Colorado beyond the Lower Arkansas River, including Thornton’s purchase of thousands of acres of water rights in Weld and Larimer counties. Thornton has tried to placate the counties with commitments to revegetate or promote responsible dryland farming when it starts taking water off the acreage and putting it into an under-construction pipeline.
Aurora and Colorado Springs have faced decades of criticism from southeastern Colorado counties for past purchases and dry-ups that left areas like Crowley County looking like Dust Bowl victims. More recent farm water purchase agreements in places like Bent County limit the number of years in a row a city could take farm water, and make other concessions to try to support local economies.
Colorado Springs Utilities said after the bill’s final passage, “We recognize that revegetation of formerly irrigated lands is a fundamental requirement for any water transfer.”
“We strive to forge mutually beneficial partnerships in the Arkansas River Basin, which is why our team spent over three years negotiating terms and conditions for our water projects in Bent County,” Colorado Springs officials said, in a statement.
Colorado Springs officials said they appreciated the negotiations over House Bill 1340 for “taking these concerns seriously so that we could reach a compromise on the introduced bill that upholds our local agreements. … We believe that reliance on science and collaboration with local governments allows projects to be tailored to unique community and regional needs.”
#Snowpack news May 25, 2026
West SNOTEL map (May 23, 2026): “changed colour scale and set range 0-100%, so that not it’s not all red, allows you to see where the problem is most severe”– Daniel A. Walker
Click the link to view the interactive map from the NRCS.
Event Announcement: June 3rd film screening of “The American Southwest” and, director Len Necefer (Diné) Q&A #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to register on the University of Colorado website:
Campus Partner Spotlight:
On June 3rd, join us for a film screening and filmmaker Q&A of the critically-acclaimed documentary film The American Southwest to kick off the 2026 Colorado River Conference.We are excited to welcome indigenous scholar, filmmaker and founder of NativesOutdoors Len Necefer (Diné) to accompany the screening of the film in co-sponsorship with the Getches-Wilkinson Center and the American Indian Law Program at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Law, as well as with our colleagues at the Center for the Humanities and The Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences at CU Boulder.
Advance registration is encouraged. You can register HERE
#ElNiño is likely to emerge soon (82% chance in May-July 2026) — NOAA
New Paper Shows Surges of Concentrated Precipitation Can Lead to Dryer Landscapes — Jake Bolster (InsideClimateNews.org)
Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Jake Bolster):
May 13, 2026
Snow and rain in the American West is concentrating at one of the highest rates in the world, researchers found, with implications for ecosystems, water management and this year’s El Niño.
Scientists have uncovered a new driver of aridification, potentially reshaping how drought across the globe is understood.
A new study published Wednesday in Nature by a pair of researchers from Dartmouth College and the Université du Québec à Montréal shows that changing precipitation concentrations exert an important influence over landscape moisture retention. When an area receives its annual moisture in a small number of large, wet storms, it can overwhelm the soils, creating pools of water on the land surface. These exposed pools are more prone to evaporation, meaning water that would otherwise reach streams, rivers and dams drifts back into the atmosphere.
When paired with long dry spells, these storms dry out landscapes, even though total precipitation hasn’t necessarily changed, the researchers found.
“If you’re asking the land to drink from a fire hose, whether that’s through highly concentrated precipitation falling from the sky or rapid snowmelt, you’re going to lose water,” said Justin Mankin, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth and the study’s senior author. “It is just a feature of the world that as you concentrate rainfall, less of it goes into the land.”
Using several precipitation datasets, Mankin and his co-author, Corey Lesk, a professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal, determined where on Earth annual moisture was concentrating, and where yearly rain and snow totals were spreading out across the calendar.
“There’s really maybe two hotspots that have the strongest consolidation trends since 1980,” Lesk said. “One is the Amazon and adjacent regions, too, it’s a huge hotspot.”
“But the other hotspot is pretty much right over Wyoming [and] Colorado,” he added.
River basins across the American West have been drying out under a “megadrought” that has gripped the region for the better part of the 21st century, forcing Western states to cut back their water use and renegotiate—with considerable acrimony—the dwindling resource. Mankin and Lesk’s new paper adds to a growing body of science laying out the perils changing moisture cycles pose to river basins, where users are accustomed to receiving a set amount of water at a predictable time.
“The methods represent a strong combination of direct observations and tests of the relationships using computer simulations,” said Bryan Shuman, a paleoclimatology professor at the University of Wyoming who was not involved with the study. “These are not patterns that can be dismissed as untrustworthy computer predictions. They show that this pattern has been happening and can be observed.”
Shuman, who has previously studied precipitation concentration, said the dynamics outlined in Mankin and Lesk’s paper paint a sobering picture for the West’s climate.
“The challenges raised here highlight how the future could involve both dangerous flooding but that that can come along with much worse droughts than in the past,” he said. “Simply put, we could receive the same amount of rain and still experience drought.”
As the American West staggers out from its worst winter on record, there is a chance the coming El Niño cycle, where warmer water in the Pacific Ocean can increase temperatures and precipitation in the West, brings concentrated levels of precipitation, along with the potential drying Mankin and Lesk describe in their research.
Since the early 20th century, the American West has blossomed on the vines of federal and state dams and canals meant to impound and transport water from where it flowed naturally to where it is useful for cities, farms and industries.
But this century-old infrastructure and the economies it enables could be “potentially maladapted to this rapidly changing climate,” Mankin said, in which the same amount of moisture packed into in a few heavy storms yields less water.
Moisture consolidation, which Mankin and Lesk believe is a logical result of a warming atmosphere, is “actually a new mode of volatility, a new way in which precipitation and the water cycle in a warmer climate is harder to predict and harder to manage,” Lesk added.
“It’s not just more of the same that the West has always dealt with.”
We’re excited to invite you to view a screening of The American Southwest — WaterEducationColorado.org
Aspinall Unit Operations Update May 22, 2026 #GunnisonRiver
From email from Reclamation (Andrew Limbach):
The Aspinall Unit spring peak operation has been scheduled for Wednesday, May 27th. The schedule for the ramped increase and decrease in releases is as follows:
The purpose of this release is to satisfy the Black Canyon Decree spring release. Due to the maintenance outage ending on May 20th and unseasonably early peak runoff of the North Fork, this spring peak release timing was chosen to coincide with equal or greater inflows to Blue Mesa Reservoir.
Contact Andrew Limbach (alimbach@usbr.gov or 970-248-0644) for more information regarding Aspinall operations or the Operation Group meeting.
Drought Status Update — Snow #Drought Current Conditions and Impacts in the West: This year’s peak snowpack will be the new benchmark low for #Wyoming, #Utah, #Colorado, and #NewMexico — NOAA
Click the link to access the update on the NOAA website:
May 14, 2026
West Braces for Critical Water Shortages After Unprecedented Snow Drought
Key Points
- Snowpack, the western U.S.’s largest non-man made reservoir, is already gone in many places. Significant hydrological drought impacts (low water supply) are already occurring and will continue through summer across much of the West. Compounding these impacts, the West continues to experience long-term drought. Drought conditions can be expected to deteriorate, and impacts to become more pronounced.
- April and May snowfall in some areas did not offset seasonal snow deficits, but increased soil moisture and slowed high-elevation snowmelt, which may slow drought deterioration and temporarily mitigate early season wildfire risk. Snow did not fall in all states.
- This year’s peak snowpack will be the new benchmark low for Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico; there are no comparable years. [ed. emphasis mine] In these states, snow water equivalent (SWE) around April 1, the usual peak date, was 32- 53% lower than the previous record low during the SNOTEL era. In Idaho, record warm temperatures pushed snow to only the high elevations, leaving the state with no historical comparison.
- Earlier-than-normal meltout (snow no longer present) occurred across the Western U.S., with many SNOTEL locations setting a new earliest or second earliest meltout date on record. Water supply forecasts in many watersheds are still forecasted to approach historic lows or at historic lows.
- In Oregon, 62 of 73 forecast points are approaching or at historic lows.
- In Utah, peak flows occurred and concluded in many streams before the spring runoff season even started.
- As the West enters summer, evaporative demand (thirst of the atmosphere) and water demands will increase. This will further strain and reduce water supplies. Current outlooks favor-warmer-than-normal normal temperatures. Any relief will depend on late spring storms, along with the level of activity and geographic extent of the monsoon season.
Snow Drought Conditions Summary
This update is based on data available as of Monday, May 11, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. PT. We acknowledge conditions are evolving.
Quantifying snow drought values is an ongoing research effort. Here, we define snow drought as snow water equivalent (SWE) at or below the 20th percentile, which is a baseline guided by partner expertise and research. Note that reporting of SWE by Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) stations may be unavailable or delayed due to technical, weather or other issues, which may affect snow drought depiction in this update.
Current Conditions
The unprecedented heat wave and rapid snowmelt in March made recovery from the snow drought nearly impossible, despite the April and May snow for some. The April and May storms slowed snowmelt in the high elevations where little snowpack remains and brought rain to the lower elevations, increasing soil moisture. These conditions will likely slow further drought deterioration and mitigate immediate wildfire risk. However, not all states saw this precipitation. Outlooks continue to favor an early start to the wildfire season in some areas of the West.
This water year continues to be the warmest on record (since 1895) in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana; the second warmest in Oregon and Idaho; and the fourth warmest in Washington. The average temperature over the last 5 years was the warmest on record in Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Washington. In California and Oregon, the last 5 years were the third warmest 5-year period on record. Many states are experiencing long-term drought, compounding the impacts from this year’s snow drought. Record low water supply are forecasted in many locations, reflecting the impacts of this year’s snow drought, long term drought, and record warmth.
This year’s western snow drought is considerably worse than significant snow droughts of the past for many states. Even for states where there is precedence, anticipating impacts or drawing comparisons to previous significant snow droughts is challenging given increasing demands on western water supply and multiyear droughts. In Washington, snowpack in 2026 was greater than its record low, 2015, and similar to that in 2001. However, Washington is in its fourth consecutive year of drought, and a drought emergency was declared in all previous years with similarly low snowpack. This year’s peak snowpack will be the lowest on record for Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. This year will represent the new benchmark low. In these states, snowpack around April 1, the usual peak date, was 32- 53% lower than the previous record low in the SNOTEL record. Idaho also experienced a new record low snow season. In Idaho, warm temperatures melted snow at middle and lower elevations, and no previous years compare to this condition for the state.
Given that snow droughts often precede hydrological drought (when low water supply becomes evident in the water system), significant hydrological drought impacts are already and will continue to impact much of the West.
Jump to conditions for your region:
- Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming (Rocky Mountains) Snow Conditions
- Arizona and New Mexico Snow Conditions
- Oregon and Washington Snow Conditions
- California and Nevada Snow Conditions
- Alaska Snow Conditions
Widespread Early Snowmelt Across West
Central Rocky Mountains
Much of the snow is gone at SNOTEL stations in Utah and Colorado, with snow remaining at only 12% and 37% of stations in the two states, respectively. At stations where snow has disappeared, the melt out occurred an average of 40 days early. Snow water equivalent (SWE) at most of the remaining stations is at 20% of median or less. Storms in April slowed high elevation snowmelt, but were far from sufficient for the region to recover from considerable seasonal SWE deficits. An early May snowstorm in Colorado brought beneficial moisture to parts of the state, but again, did not alleviate the SWE deficits and water supply concerns. Record low streamflow volumes are forecast for the Yampa River (28% of average) and the Colorado River at Lake Powell (13% of average). Temperatures in October-April in Utah and Colorado were the highest on record, but, in contrast to the northern Rocky Mountains, seasonal precipitation across the region was generally much below normal. Water year precipitation totals were below the 15th percentile for many SNOTEL stations in central Utah and central and northern Colorado.
Utah
On May 7, 2026, the Utah Drought Response Committee formally recommended Utah Governor Spencer Cox issue a drought emergency declaration for all 29 counties in the state. The recommendation cited record low snowpack, water supply concerns, and statewide drought. Formal drought declarations also were issued for parts or all of the state in 2021, 2022, and 2025. Drought has impacted southern Utah for 8 of the last 10 years. A formal drought emergency declaration allows the state to activate resources, support agriculture, and coordinate water restrictions.
Colorado
On March 16, 2026, acting on recommendations from the state’s Water Conditions Monitoring Committee, Governor Jared Polis activated Phase 2 of the state’s Drought Response Plan and the state’s Drought Task Force. The actions followed the warmest start to the water year in the Colorado Climate Center’s 131-year record, and statewide snow water equivalent among the lowest in more than four decades of records. The last time the Drought Task Force was activated was in 2020. During every year since 2020, portions of the South Platte River and Rio Grande River have required priority calls to curtail water use to ensure that senior water rights holders receive their legal share. The Drought Task Force identifies critical impact areas to coordinate state-level support and resources for affected Colorado communities.
Arizona
In 2025, Arizona operated under Tier 1 reductions in Colorado River Water Supply and is still operating under this structure. These reductions are a result of less available water in the Colorado River, impacting central Arizona agricultural users. These reductions represent a 512,000 acre-foot reduction in water, with most reductions being taken by the Central Arizona Project water users.
New Mexico
Several years of extreme drought and the earliest snowmelt on record are challenging water users of the Rio Grande River. The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District began staggered irrigation operations in late March with natural flow of the Rio Grande. The Carlsbad Irrigation District began releases for irrigation on March 22 and has allocated only 2.5 acre-feet per acre to farmers.
For More Information, Contact:
Dan McEvoy
Desert Research Institute, Western Regional Climate Center
daniel.mcevoy@dri.eduJason Gerlich
University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences / NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System
jason.gerlich@noaa.govTony Bergantino
Wyoming State Climate Office, University of Wyoming
antonius@uwyo.eduAmanda Sheffield
University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences / NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System
amanda.sheffield@noaa.gov
Department of Interior releases $40 million award for the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project — Lindsay DeFrates (Colorado River District) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the release on the Colorado River District website (Lindsay DeFrates):
May 22, 2026
On Friday, May 22, 2026, Congressman Jeff Hurd announced the release of a $40 million award to the Colorado River District for the purchase and permanent protection of the Shoshone Water Rights. The final approval of $40 million award brings the total amount of funding secured to $97 million of the $99 million needed for the purchase. The process now moves into the contracting phase during which the River District will work with the Bureau of Reclamation to finalize the terms of the award.
Colorado River District General Manager Andy Mueller offered the following remarks regarding the broad, bi-partisan support of this project from our federal, state and local representatives:
“This award is a major breakthrough in our coalition’s effort to permanently secure historic flows on the Colorado River. This funding would not have been possible without the leadership of Representative Jeff Hurd. His unwavering advocacy within the Administration helped secure this once-in-a-generation investment in a project that is vital to the prosperity of rural communities, farmers and ranchers on the Western Slope.
Senator Michael Bennet demonstrated valuable foresight appropriating Inflation Reduction Act funding to address the growing water challenges facing the Colorado River Basin. His leadership helped deliver this historic investment in long-term water security and protect our state’s namesake river for generations to come.
As founders of the Colorado River Caucuses in both the Senate and House, Senator Hickenlooper and Representative Neguse fought for these dollars by developing and strengthening coalitions across divides – both geographical and political. By advocating for the Shoshone Water Rights Project in Colorado and Washington, they helped deliver a durable and permanent solution for the entire Colorado River system.
#Drought news May 21, 2026: Extreme (D3) drought expanded in southwestern #Kansas and southern #Colorado. Severe (D2) in parts of Colorado and northeast #Wyoming
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
During the week, the contiguous United States exhibited significant regional temperature anomalies driven by a highly amplified synoptic pattern. Early in the period, a pronounced unseasonable cold air mass influenced the Northern Plains, Upper Midwest, and Northeast, depressing temperatures 5°F to 15°F below normal across the Dakotas, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania. Conversely, the Southwest and South Texas experienced anomalous warmth, with maximum temperatures exceeding 90°F and averaging up to 15°F above normal. By the latter half of the week, this warm air mass expanded eastward into the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic, initiating an early-season heatwave with observed maximum temperatures climbing into the mid-80s to low 90s.
Precipitation regimes during this period were characterized by severe convective outbreaks and pronounced moisture disparities. In the early portion of the week, persistent onshore moisture transport resulted in heavy rainfall totals of 4 to 6 inches across the central Gulf Coast, specifically affecting Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Between May 17 and 18, a powerful frontal system traversing the central United States triggered widespread severe weather across the Great Plains and Midwest. This system produced damaging winds up to 80 mph, large hail, and multiple tornadoes across South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, alongside localized flash flooding. In contrast, extreme moisture deficits persisted west of the Rocky Mountains, where weekly precipitation totals generally remained under 0.10 inches, further elevating wildfire risk across the southern High Plains…
High Plains
Temperatures were above normal across much of the region this week, with average readings ranging from the low 40s along the Canadian border and in the mountains to the mid-70s across southern Kansas. Highly anomalous early-season warmth gripped the southern half of the region. The core of this heat anomaly was centered over Kansas and Colorado, where weekly temperatures soared 6°F to 12°F above historical averages, with localized spots in southern Kansas peaking more than 12°F above normal. This unseasonable warmth extended moderately northward into Nebraska, yielding departures of 3°F to 6°F above average. Conversely, the northern High Plains remained under a more seasonal air mass; North Dakota, South Dakota, and northern Wyoming experienced below-normal conditions, fluctuating within 3°F to 6°F of historical baseline temperatures. Precipitation amounts varied across the region, with extreme dryness across the much of the region and a highly concentrated deluge along the southeastern boundary. Large portions of Wyoming, Colorado, and western parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, reported weekly totals below 0.50 inches, with extensive areas receiving less than 0.10 inches. This lack of moisture resulted in departures of 0.5 to 1.5 inches below average, causing conditions to deteriorate. Extreme (D3) drought expanded in southwestern Kansas and southern Colorado. Severe (D2) in parts of Colorado and northeast Wyoming, while moderate (D1) drought expanded in parts of South Dakota. In powerful contrast, intense convective activity generated a sharp corridor of heavy rainfall across eastern portions of Kansas and Nebraska. Totals in this localized zone rapidly climbed between 2.5 and 5.5 inches, with departures ranging between 1.5 to over 4.5 inches above normal, resulting in improvements to moderate (D1) to exceptional (D4) drought in Nebraska and moderate (D1) to extreme (D3) drought in Kansas. Heavy rainfall also brought improvements to severe (D2) to exceptional (D4) drought in northern Colorado and a reduction of exceptional (D4) drought in southern Wyoming this week…
West
Temperatures varied across the region this week, with average readings ranging from the mid-30s and 40s across the northern tier and high elevations to the low 80s in the desert Southwest. In terms of departures from normal, unseasonably cold conditions dominated the northern half of the region, with departures ranging between 3°F and 9°F below normal. In sharp contrast, the southern tier experienced unseasonable warmth. A building ridge over the Southwest drove temperatures in southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico 3°F to 9°F above normal, with eastern New Mexico seeing the greatest extremes. Precipitation across the Western region was characterized by an extreme contrast between a highly active storm track in the Pacific Northwest and aridity across the remainder of the region. Above-normal precipitation was confined to much of Washington, and parts of Oregon and Montana, where weekly rainfall totals ranged between 1.5 to 3.5 inches, with localized totals in the Cascade Range exceeding 4.5 inches. This activity generated substantial departures of 0.75 to over 3.0 inches above normal, justifying moderate (D1) to severe (D2) drought and abnormal dryness (D0) improvements in Washington and northern Idaho, and improvements to abnormal dryness (D0) to northwestern Oregon and western Montana. Conversely, dry conditions persisted across nearly the entire remaining geographic footprint. Widespread areas across California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Idaho, Montana, Utah recorded negligible rainfall totals of less than 0.10 inches. Due to the climatological onset of the dry season in parts of the West, this lack of rainfall translated into modest negative departures ranging from near-normal to 0.75 inches below seasonal averages. Nonetheless, deteriorating conditions led to the expansion of exceptional (D4) drought in southern Idaho, and extreme (D3) drought in parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana, and southern Idaho. In addition, severe (D2) drought was expanded in Oregon, Montana, and Arizona, while moderate (D1) drought expanded in parts of Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona…
South
Below-normal precipitation dominated the South this week. The vast majority of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee received less than 0.10 to 0.50 inches of total rainfall, leaving nearly the entire geographic footprint under exceptionally dry conditions. This lack of rainfall translated into widespread departures ranging from 0.75 to 1.50 inches below normal. Below-normal rainfall totals resulted in the introduction of exceptional (D4) drought in the Oklahoma Panhandle and D4 expansion in parts of Arkansas and Mississippi. Extreme (D3) to severe (D2) drought were expanded in parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
The major exception to this dry regime was concentrated in southern portions of the region, specifically southern Texas, where localized convective storms delivered 1.0 to 3.0 inches of rainfall, resulting in the improvement of extreme (D3) drought in southern portions of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Temperatures were above normal across much of the region, ranging from the upper 50s and low 60s in Tennessee to the upper 80s in parts of Texas. Looking at departures from normal, a highly anomalous zone of intense warmth gripped the western half of the region, where temperatures averaged 6°F to 15°F above historical norms. Conversely, the eastern tier of the region bucked the western warming trend entirely; Mississippi and Tennessee experienced unseasonably cool conditions, with temperatures suppressing to 3°F to 6°F below normal…
Looking Ahead
Over the next five days (May 19–23, 2026), the United States can expect a highly dynamic weather pattern characterized by contrasting temperature extremes and widespread storm activity. An early-season heatwave will make headlines across much of the eastern U.S. through midweek, with interior portions of the Mid-Atlantic and the Carolinas seeing highs climb into the lower to middle 90s—warm enough to potentially establish new daily records before a cold front brings cooler relief by Thursday. In stark contrast, the Intermountain West and Rockies will experience below-normal temperatures to start the week, alongside late-season accumulating snow in the higher elevations of Colorado and Wyoming. Meanwhile, a strong cold front tracking across the Plains and Midwest will spark widespread showers and severe thunderstorms. Multiple rounds of heavy rainfall will bring a risk of scattered flash flooding, focusing heavily on Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas on Tuesday before an expanded risk of heavy precipitation stretches from western Texas to the central Appalachians on Wednesday.
Further out, the Climate Prediction Center’s 6–10 day outlook (valid May 24–28, 2026) favors above-normal temperatures across most of the United States—stretching from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the East Coast, with the highest confidence for this unseasonable warmth concentrated in the Upper Midwest. Hawaii is also leaning toward warmer conditions. In contrast, temperatures are expected to be colder than average across the state of Alaska, and in a pocket of northwestern Washington state. Meanwhile, near-normal temperatures are forecast in parts of the South and along the West Coast. Probabilities for wetter-than-average conditions favor the vast majority of the country, including Hawaii and portions of Alaska. In the contiguous U.S., this wet weather pattern extends from the Southwest to the East Coast, with the greatest probability of above-normal precipitation expected to be in the south-central U.S., specifically across southern Texas. The West Coast, portions of the Pacific Northwest, the northern Rockies, northern parts of the Midwest, and northern Alaska are favored to receive near-normal precipitation during this time. No areas are favored to be drier than normal.
#Colorado to receive $44.3 million to address “forever chemicals” in drinking water as EPA cuts regulations — KKTV.com #PFAS
Click the link to read the article on the KKTV website (Bryce Patterson). Here’s an excerpt:
May 19, 2026
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $44.3 million in new grant funding for “Small or Disadvantaged Communities” to address polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in Colorado water. That funding comes as the agency rolls back some regulations on those chemicals…The funding for Colorado water is part of a billion dollar investment across the country. The money can be allocated to testing, planning, and infrastructure projects. According to a press release from the EPA, “small, rural, and disadvantaged water systems often have fewer resources.“ The program is ”specifically designed to ensure these communities are not left behind.” […] New rules announced Monday would rescind some Biden-era regulations on PFAS chemicals and extend the deadline for water to meet federal standards by two additional years, to 2031.