Category: San Juan Basin

Navajo Unit operations update July 28, 2024 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #aridification

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

July 26, 2024

Reclamation will be fulfilling a request to release the first block of the Jicarilla Apache Nation (JAN) subcontracted water that has been leased to the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (NMISC) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) for calendar year 2024.

The subcontracted water released from the Navajo Unit will augment the current release of 700 cfs by 250 cfs (for a total of 10 days) and 500 cfs (for a total of 5 days) as requested by the NMISC and TNC. The table below shows the release schedule. Any changes to this schedule will be sent out in subsequent notices. The total volume of JAN subcontracted water for this release is 10,000 acre-feet. An additional 10,000 acre-feet will be released later this calendar year with the same augmentation pattern.

Date Day4:00 AM Release (cfs)
7/31/2024Wed950
8/1/2024Thu950
8/2/2024Fri950
8/3/2024Sat950
8/4/2024Sun950
8/5/2024Mon1200
8/6/2024Tue1200
8/7/2024Wed1200
8/8/2024Thu1200
8/9/2024Fri1200
8/10/2024Sat950
8/11/2024Sun950
8/12/2024Mon950
8/13/2024Tue950
8/14/2024Wed950

Following this operation, the release will return to 700 cfs, or whatever is required to maintain the target baseflow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.

The #ColoradoRiver: Strategies from lower and upper basin states to reduce water consumption — The Deseret News #COriver #aridification

“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall

Click the link to read the article on The Deseret News website (Emma Pitts). Here’s an excerpt:

July 9, 2024

In 2022, Lake Powell was at its lowest since it was originally filled in the 1960s. [Amy] Haas noted an ongoing concern that there is currently no mechanism to ensure the conserved water from the upper basin states is flowing down to Lake Powell and staying there.

The relationship between the upper and lower basin states is not always pleasant, but [Gene] Shawcroft noted that recently, agreements and understandings have been made between the entities…In their post-2026 operations proposal, the lower basin states said they would cut water use by 1.5 million acre-feet per year as long as Lake Powell and Lake Mead’s combined storage remains at a certain level. Shawcroft added that the question now is, at what point, do these cuts in water use begin?

“The upper division states feel very strongly that we need to improve our storage (and) that we need additional storage. And so our concept would be that we would have that one-and-a-half reduction occur at an elevation that was higher than what they would propose. Their position, or their thought process is, if there’s water in the system, we ought to put it to use,” he said.

Haas added, “The lower basin is proposing actions based on total system contents as they define it, which includes not only Lake Powell and Lake Mead but also the upstream initial units, right? So this would be Flaming Gorge, the Aspinall unit in Colorado and Navajo.”

Map credit: AGU

Navajo Dam operations update July 16, 2024 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Aerial image of entrenched meanders of the San Juan River within Goosenecks State Park. Located in San Juan County, southeastern Utah (U.S.). Credits Constructed from county topographic map DRG mosaic for San Juan County from USDA/NRCS – National Cartography & Geospatial Center using Global Mapper 12.0 and Adobe Illustrator. Latitude 33° 31′ 49.52″ N., Longitude 111° 37′ 48.02″ W. USDA/FSA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

July 15, 2024

Due to falling flows in the critical habitat reach, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 600 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 700 cfs for Wednesday, July 17th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.

Albuquerque made itself drought-proof. Then its dam started leaking — Grist #RioGrande

El Vado Dam and Reservoir back in the day. Photo credit: USBR

Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Jake Bittle):

July 6, 2024

Mark Garcia can see that there’s no shortage of water in the Rio Grande this year. The river flows past his farm in central New Mexico, about 50 miles south of Albuquerque. The rush of springtime water is a welcome change after years of drought, but he knows the good times won’t last.

As the summer continues, the river will diminish, leaving Garcia with a strict ration. He’ll be allowed irrigation water for his 300 acres just once every 30 days, which is nowhere near enough to sustain his crop of oats and alfalfa.

For decades, Garcia and other farmers on the Rio Grande have relied on water released from a dam called El Vado, which collects billions of gallons of river water to store and eventually release to help farmers during times when the river runs dry. More significantly for most New Mexico residents, the dam system also allows the city of Albuquerque to import river water from long distances for household use.

New Mexico water projects map via Reclamation

But El Vado has been out of commission for the past three summers, its structure bulging and disfigured after decades in operation — and the government doesn’t have a plan to fix it. 

“We need some sort of storage,” said Garcia. “If we don’t get a big monsoon this summer, if you don’t have a well, you won’t be able to water.”

The failure of the dam has shaken up the water supply for the entire region surrounding Albuquerque, forcing the city and many of the farmers nearby to rely on finite groundwater and threatening an endangered fish species along the river. It’s a surprising twist of fate for a region that in recent years emerged as a model for sustainable water management in the West.

“Having El Vado out of the picture has been really tough,” said Paul Tashjian, the director of freshwater conservation at the Southwest regional office of the nonprofit National Audubon Society. “We’ve been really eking by every year the past few years.” 

Surface water imports from the El Vado system have generally allowed public officials in Albuquerque to limit groundwater shortages. This echoes the strategies of other large Western cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles, which have enabled population growth by tapping diverse sources of water for metropolitan regions and the farms that sit outside of them. The Biden administration is seeking to replicate this strategy in water-stressed rural areas across the region, doling out more than $8 billion in grants to support pipelines and reservoirs. 

“New plot using the nClimGrid data, which is a better source than PRISM for long-term trends. Of course, the combined reservoir contents increase from last year, but the increase is less than 2011 and looks puny compared to the ‘hole’ in the reservoirs. The blue Loess lines subtly change. Last year those lines ended pointing downwards. This year they end flat-ish. 2023 temps were still above the 20th century average, although close. Another interesting aspect is that the 20C Mean and 21C Mean lines on the individual plots really don’t change much. Finally, the 2023 Natural Flows are almost exactly equal to 2019. (17.678 maf vs 17.672 maf). For all the hoopla about how this was record-setting year, the fact is that this year was significantly less than 2011 (20.159 maf) and no different than 2019” — Brad Udall

But the last decade has shown that this strategy isn’t foolproof — at least not while climate change fuels an ongoing megadrought across the West. Los Angeles has lost water from both the Colorado River and from a series of reservoirs in Northern California, and Phoenix has seen declines not only from the Colorado but also from the groundwater aquifers that fuel the state’s cotton and alfalfa farming. Now, as Albuquerque’s decrepit El Vado dam goes out of commission, the city is trying to balance multiple fragile resources.

El Vado is an odd dam: It’s one of only four in the United States that uses a steel faceplate to hold back water, rather than a mass of rock or concrete. The dam has been collecting irrigation water for Rio Grande farmers for close to a century, but decades of studies have shown that water is seeping through the faceplate and undermining the dam’s foundations. When engineers tried to use grout to fill in the cracks behind the faceplate, they accidentally caused the faceplate to bulge out of shape, threatening the stability of the entire structure. The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the dam, paused construction and is now back at the drawing board.

Without the ability to collect irrigation water for the farmers, the Bureau has had no choice but to let the Rio Grande’s natural flow move downstream to Albuquerque. There’s plenty of water in the spring, when snow melts off the mountains and rain rushes toward the ocean. But when the rains peter out by the start of the summer, the river’s flow reduces to a trickle. 

“We run really fast and happy in the spring, and then you’re off pretty precipitously,” said Casey Ish, the conservation program supervisor at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, the irrigation district that supplies water to farmers like Garcia. “It just creates a lot of stress on the system late in the summer.” The uncertainty about water rationing causes many farmers to forego planting crops they aren’t sure they’ll be able to see to maturity, Ish added.

Construction crews attempt to repair the El Vado dam along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. The federal government has been unable to find a way to stop seepage behind the steel faceplate dam. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

The beleaguered dam also plays a critical role in providing water to the fast-growing Albuquerque metropolitan area, which is home to almost a million people. As the city grew over the past 100 years, it drained local groundwater, lowering aquifer levels by dozens of feet until the city got a reputation as “one of the biggest water-wasters in the West.” Cities across the region were mining their groundwater in the same way, but Albuquerque managed to turn its bad habits around. In 2008, it built a $160 million water treatment plant that allowed it to clean water from the distant Colorado River, giving officials a new water source to reduce their groundwater reliance.

The loss of El Vado is jeopardizing this achievement. In order for Colorado River water to reach the Albuquerque treatment plant, it needs to travel through the same set of canals and pipelines that deliver Rio Grande water to the city and farmers, “riding” with the Rio Grande water through the pipes. Without a steady flow of Rio Grande water out of El Vado, the Colorado River water can’t make it to the city. This means that in the summer months, when the Rio Grande dries out, Albuquerque now has to turn back to groundwater to supply its thirsty residential subdivisions.

This renewed reliance on groundwater has halted the recovery of local aquifers. The water level in these aquifers was rising from 2008 through 2020, but it slumped out around 2020 and hasn’t budged since. 

“We have had to shut down our surface water plant the last three summers because of low flows in Albuquerque,” said Diane Agnew, a senior official at the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, which manages the region’s water. Agnew stresses that aquifer levels are only flattening out, not falling. Still, losing El Vado storage for the long run would be detrimental to the city’s overall water resilience.

“We have more than enough supply to meet demand, but it does change our equation,” she added.

The Bureau of Reclamation is looking for a way to fix the dam and restore Rio Grande water to Albuquerque, but right now its engineers are stumped. In a recent meeting with local farmers, a senior Reclamation official offered a frank assessment of the dam’s future. 

“We were not able to find technical solutions to the challenges that we were seeing,” said Jennifer Faler, the Bureau’s Albuquerque area manager, in remarks at the meeting. 

The next-best option is to find somewhere else to store water for farmers. There are other reservoirs along the Rio Grande, including one large dam owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, but repurposing them for irrigation water will involve a lengthy bureaucratic process. 

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Reclamation told Grist that the agency “is working diligently with our partners to develop a plan and finalize agreements to help alleviate the lost storage capacity” and that it “may have the ability to safely store some water” for farms and cities next year.

In the meantime, farmers like Garcia are getting impatient. When a senior Bureau official broke the bad news at an irrigation district meeting last month, more than a dozen farmers who grow crops in the district stood up to express their frustration with the delays in the repair process, calling Reclamation’s announcement “frustrating” and “a shock.”

“If we don’t have any water for the long term, I have to let my employees go, and I guess start looking for ramen noodles someplace,” Garcia told Grist.

Even though there are only a handful of other steel faceplate dams like El Vado in the United States, more communities across the West are likely to experience similar infrastructure issues that affect their water supply, according to John Fleck, a professor of water policy at the University of New Mexico.

“We’ve optimized entire human and natural communities around the way this aging infrastructure allows us to manipulate the flow of rivers, and we’re likely to see more and more examples where infrastructure we’ve come to depend on no longer functions the way we planned or intended,” he said.

As the West gets drier and its dams and canals continue to age, more communities may find themselves forced to strike a balance between groundwater, which is easy to access but finite, and surface water, which is renewable but challenging to obtain. The loss of El Vado shows that neither one of these resources can be relied upon solely and consistently — and in an era of higher temperatures and aging infrastructure, even having both may not be enough.

The headwaters of the Rio Grande River in Colorado. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Navajo Dam operations update: Releases bumped to 500 cfs July 3, 2024 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The outflow at the bottom of Navajo Dam in New Mexico. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

As the forecast weather becomes warmer and drier again, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 350 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 500 cfs for tonight, July 3rd, at 9:00 PM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.  

This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions.  If you have any questions, please contact Susan Behery (sbehery@usbr.gov or 970-385-6560), or visit Reclamation’s Navajo Dam website athttps://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html

Winter #snowpack recedes earlier than usual in southern #Colorado after rare, sudden and large melt — Fresh Water News

Sneffels Range Ridgeway in foreground. Photo credit: SkiVillage – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15028209 via Wikiemedia

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

May 30, 2024

Southwestern Colorado is left with 6% of its peak snowpack earlier than usual this season in part because of a rare, sudden and large melt in late April.

Snow that gathers in Colorado’s mountains is a key water source for the state, and a fast, early spring runoff can mean less water for farmers, ranchers, ecosystems and others in late summer. While the snow in northern Colorado is just starting to melt, southern river basins saw their largest, early snowpack drop-off this season, compared to historical data.

For Ken Curtis, the only reason irrigators in Dolores and Montezuma counties haven’t been short on water for their farms and ranches is because the area’s reservoir, McPhee Reservoir, had water supplies left over from the above-average year in 2023.

“Because of the carryover, the impacts aren’t quite that crazy bad,” said Curtis, general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District. “If we hadn’t had that carryover, it would have been a terrible year.”

A terrible year like 2021, he added, when many irrigators who depend on water from McPhee only received 10% of their normal water supply.

The snowpack in the southwestern San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan combined basin peaked at about 18 inches April 2, then plummeted by 8 inches during the last half of April. It was the largest 14-day loss of snowpack before the end of April in this basin since the start of data collection in the 1980s, according to the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University.

The basin still held onto 1.1 inches of snow-water equivalent, the amount of liquid water in snow, as of Wednesday. Typically, the snowpack is about twice as high in late May, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“The Rio Grande and the southwest basins, the snow is pretty much gone, and it’s going to be gone within days to a week at this point,” said Russ Schumacher, the state climatologist and CSU professor.

The Upper Rio Grande Basin, which spans the central-southern part of the state including the San Luis Valley, had 0.1 inch of snow-water equivalent as of Wednesday, much less than its norm for late May, which is about 1.5 inches.

Eastern and northern basins, like the South Platte Basin which includes parts of Denver, have held onto their snowpack for slightly longer than usual. These basins have above-average snowpack for late May, ranging from 119% to 162% of the historic norm, as of Wednesday [May 29, 2024].

The April decline in the southwest was caused by warm and dry conditions and sublimation, when snow and ice change into water vapor in the atmosphere without first melting into liquid water. Dust that darkens snow and speeds snowmelt also played a role, Schumacher said.

The spring runoff is a little faster than usual in the southern basins, but it’s within the realm of normal, said Brian Domonkos, snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which manages snow-measurement stations around the state.

“What we’re seeing right now is not something that I would be alarmed about,” Domonkos said.

Spring snowfall, storms and cooler temperatures have slowed the speed of snowmelt in some areas as well, he said.

In Durango, the Animas River’s flows were around 2,000 cubic feet per second Wednesday, lower than the late-May norm of 2,990 cfs.

When it comes to recreation, the lower flows might actually be a boon, said Ashleigh Tucker, who is planning a river sports event, Animas River Days, scheduled for June 1 and 2. Some races require participants to pass through hanging gates, moving both upstream and downstream through a whitewater park, she said.

“If the water’s super high, it makes it a lot harder to do. So as far as our events go, it’s a good level,” she said. “But there’s not much snow left, so that means we won’t really have much left for the rest of the year, which is kind of a bummer.”

She doesn’t expect the river’s slightly lower flows to impact attendance either: Only years with really low flows, about 1,000 cfs, have discouraged people from floating the Animas, she said.

Warm and dry conditions are likely to continue through June, then weather watchers will turn their gaze to the sky in July to watch for the monsoon season.

In the meantime, Curtis is watching inflow forecasts for McPhee Reservoir. The runoff has been lower than average so far, even after an average snowpack season, he said.

That means there might not be as much water left to carry over into 2025.

“The monsoons will have the next impact,” he said. “If you see everyone going on fire restrictions, you know the monsoons haven’t shown up.”

More by Shannon Mullane

To’Hajiilee water line groundbreaking: “an impossible project” — John Fleck (InkStain.net)

An impossibility. Photo credit: John Fleck/InkStain.net

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

May 15, 2024

With the obligatory shovels in pre-softened dirt, a group of political leaders from the Navajo Nation, New Mexico state and local government, and water agencies this morning (Wed. 5/15/2024) formally inaugurated a new pipeline being built to connect the Navajo community of To’Hajiilee to the 3.5 million gallon reservoir in the picture – clean, piped water to a community that now has one working well and water so bad no one drinks it.

One of the oldtimers who’d been working on it for more than two decades walked up to me and said, “This is an impossible project.”

What he meant was that the project had overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles in the interactions between a welter of government agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and sometimes incompatible responsibilities.

I went to the event wearing two hats – as a member of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority’s Technical Customer Advisory Committee, and on behalf of the Utton Center, which has a long history of working on Native American water stuff. (I was literally wearing my ABCWUA gimme cap, I don’t have an Utton one.)

To’Hajiilee, 35-ish miles west of Albuquerque, has six water wells. Five have already failed. The sixth is regularly off line. When it’s down, they have to shut down school and the clinic. When it’s working, the water is awful.

The vision statement from the Universal Access to Clean Water For Tribal Communities project is simple: “Every Native American has the right to clean, safe, affordable water in the home ensuring a minimum quality of life.”

In this 1999 book Development as Freedom, the Nobel laureate economist and moral philosopher Amartya Sen explains freedoms as “the capabilities that a person has, that is, the substantive freedoms he or she enjoys to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value.”

“Rights” are tricky political terrain, because they’re often framed in negative terms – the absence of coercion or interference from others, particularly the state. But Sen’s making an affirmative argument here. It is not enough for the collective to simply get out of the individual’s way. The collective has an affirmative moral obligation to create the conditions under which the individual can flourish – to pursue that which they “have reason to value,” to repeat Sen. That’s sorta what my friends at the Universal Access project are saying with their vision statement.

At the urging of a colleague, I’ve been reading Sen lately in an effort to make sense of the moral underpinnings of the collective choices we face as we cope with the reality of less water. (For those familiar with Sen, know that I am not reading the mathy parts – they’re impenetrable!)

THE PLUMBING – PHYSICAL AND FINANCIAL

The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility’s 7W reservoir, the tan thing in the picture, sits on high ground midway between Albuquerque and To’Hajiilee, a perfect water source for the community. In eighteen months under the current construction schedule, we’ll have a 7 mile pipe from here to there.

If the tally in my notes is correct (don’t hold me to this, I’m not a real journalist any more), it’s a ~$20 million project, with a mix of federal, state, and Navajo Nation funding.

The actual water in the pipes is the result of a fascinating agreement between the Navajo Nation and the Jicarilla Apache Nation in norther New Mexico. The Navajo Nation will lease Jicarailla water, which will be wheeled down the San Juan River, into the Rio Grande, and then diverted by the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, treated, and pumped up to 7W.

THE STRUGGLES TO GET THIS DONE

Former Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley, speaking at the groundbreaking, told the story of the bare-knuckle politics it took to overcome the intransigence of a landowner that stood in the way of the project – Western Albuquerque Land Holdings. And for sure, O’Malley and the group she worked with deserve a ton of credit for the use of their knuckles at a critical point in the struggle to get the pipeline built.

But more important is the community of To’Hajiilee itself, people like Mark Begay, my colleague on the Albuquerque water utility’s Technical Customer Advisory Committee. For decades, Begay and the other leaders in To’Hajiilee acted on behalf of their community to pursue “that which they had reason to value” – water!

This is about the community’s own collective agency, “the result of collective processes and collective actions in which people’s interactions shape their common destiny.” (Oscar Garza-Vázquez)

It was a joy to share the celebration of their success. I’ll be back in 18 months when they open the taps.

U.S. Senator Bennet announces $2.3 million for Southern Ute water infrastructure — The #Durango Herald

Vallecito Lake via Vallecito Chamber

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

Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton visited the Pine River Indian Irrigation Project on Monday and announced $147.6 million in investments to 42 projects in 10 states facing water reliability challenges. The announcement included a $2.3 million grant to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe to address the PRIIP’s crumbling infrastructure. The funding is a part of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Watersmart Drought Resiliency program.

“For too long, the United States has failed to live up to its responsibility to adequately fund and maintain the Pine River Indian Irrigation Project,” Bennet said in a news release. “I was grateful to travel to Ignacio (Monday) with Commissioner Touton to welcome this investment to ensure the Southern Ute Indian Tribe can access the water it needs. There is much more work to be done, but this is a great start.”

The project uses water from Vallecito Reservoir, managed by the Pine River Irrigation District, to irrigate about 12,000 acres of land via 170 miles of ditches and raised flumes. Tribal officials have called the degradation of the infrastructure a “ticking time bomb,” and farmers and rancher dependent on the system are routinely shorted the water they need. According to a 2024 estimate reported by the Colorado Sun, PRIIP needs $35.3 million in repairs.

Another fast, early melt in the southern mountains — Russ Schumacher (@ColoradoClimate Center)

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

May 8, 2024

As we’ve covered in previous posts, the peak snowpack in Colorado’s mountains generally looked pretty decent this year, with the amount of water stored in the snow peaking pretty close to the long-term average in most areas. However, in the southern mountains, it’s been another year where the melt has happened a lot faster than it typically has in the past.

Snow water equivalent in Colorado’s mountains with respect to the 1991-2020 median value, on (left) April 6, 2024, and (right) May 6, 2024. Source: USDA NRCS Interactive Map.

As of early April (left image above), all basins in Colorado had above average snow water equivalent, as measured by the SNOTEL network. But a month later (right image), the picture is quite different. The northern basins still look good, with a string of April snowstorms adding to the snowpack there. But southern Colorado largely missed those storms, and warm, sunny conditions, assisted by layers of dust on snow, really accelerated the melt. Cooler conditions this week will slow down the melt a bit, and a storm this weekend will add some much-needed moisture. But once the snow itself gets warmer than 32°F, it’s hard to slow the melt too much. The Rio Grande basin now only has half of the snowpack it typically does on May 6.

The time series graph for the combined San Miguel, Dolores, Animas, and San Juan river basins in the southwest corner of Colorado illustrates this nicely:

Time series of snow water equivalent in the combined San Miguel, Dolores, Animas, and San Juan basins, through May 6, 2024, as measured by the SNOTEL network. Source: NRCS Colorado Snow Survey.

The trace for 2024 reached essentially an average peak, and right on time: the peak was 18.1″ of SWE on April 2, compared to an average peak of 18.6″ on April 1. It also stayed near that peak for about another 10 days, but then the melting progressed extremely quickly. In fact, it was the largest 14-day loss of SWE before the end of April in this basin since the start of SNOTEL data in the 1980s.

Before going into those numbers, a quick note on snowpack melt rates. In absolute terms, the fastest melts come in years when there are big snowpacks that linger late into May or early June, like 2019. Eventually that snow can’t stand up to the summer sun, and SWE goes away at a very fast rate. But in years like 2024, what we’re interested in is the snow melting quickly, and early.

So here, we’ll look at the largest two-week declines in SWE prior to the end of April, and we see that the combined southwest river basins lost over 8″ of snowpack from April 12-26 this year. That much melt so early hasn’t been observed before. The Upper Rio Grande and Arkansas basins also saw their largest 14-day SWE declines prior to April 30.

Table showing the largest 14-day declines in SWE prior to April 30 at the SNOTEL stations in the San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan; Upper Rio Grande; and Arkansas basins. Data source: NRCS Snow Survey.

If you look on the bright side, you can’t get rapid melts like this without a good snowpack to begin with. At least, unlike some really bad drought years, the water was there in the first place! But early melts have big implications for the timing of water availability. It means higher-than-normal streamflows in May, but then much lower streamflows later during the heat of summer, when the water is really needed, especially by those who don’t have access to water stored in reservoirs. And the overall water availability situation for this spring and summer isn’t looking great in southern Colorado, with the latest CBRFC forecast projecting only 90% of average flow into Blue Mesa Reservoir, 74% of average on the Animas, and 80% of average into Lake Powell.

And unfortunately, years like this have been getting more common, and that trend is expected to continue as the climate warms. These changes are addressed in detail in the water chapter of Climate Change in Colorado, so dive in to that for more details. But in general, the changes observed up to this point have been toward modest declines in peak snowpack, but robust trends toward earlier melting, and these changes have been most acute in southern Colorado. For the future, there is still considerable uncertainty about what will happen to winter precipitation: some climate projections show more winter snow, others less. But every one of them shows a shift toward earlier snowmelt, and earlier peak streamflow on the Colorado River, meaning changes to when and where our water supply is available. In other words, we might need to get used to the snowpack looking pretty good in the southern mountains in March, but being disappointed in the numbers when May comes around.

Middle school students raise, release trout — #PagosaSprings Sun

One of Pagosa Springs’ oldest parks, Town Park straddles the San Juan River in the heart of downtown Pagosa Springs. The site of many events, Town Park is by far one of the most popular parks in Pagosa Springs. Photo credit: Town of Pagosa Springs

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

Ons Thursday, May 2, 2024 sixth- graders in Terri Lindstrom’s Pirate Time advisory class rolled a cooler down to Town Park, then carried it to the edge of the river. There, the students used river water to acclimate the temperature of the water in the cooler — the transport for 75 rainbow trout fin- gerlings who were being taken to be released in the San Juan River.

As they waited for the fish to acclimate, the students read messages they wrote after spending the school year helping and watching the fish grow.

Lindstrom’s class raised and released the fingerlings through a partnership with the Trout in the Classroom program and Trout Unlimited…

“The purpose of the program is to give students the opportunity to ex- plore water quality,” Lindstrom wrote, explaining the students kept track of the water temperature, count and weight of the fish.

Four to five fish were pulled from the tank each week and weighed be- fore being returned, she notes. That allowed students to calculate the average weight per fish, which then allowed them to calculate 2 percent body weight of all the fish in order to know how much to feed them.

Navajo Dam operations update: Bumping releases down to 350 cfs May 13, 2024

SAN JUAN RIVER The San Juan River at the hwy 64 bridge in Shiprock, NM. June 18, 2021. © Jason Houston

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

As the forecast weather warms up again and tributary flows are forecast to increase, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 500 cubic feet per second (cfs) back down to 350 cfs for Monday, May 13th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell. 

#Snowpack, river levels below median despite ‘good’ March — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Colorado Drought Monitor map April 30, 2024.

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

May 2, 2024

On April 30, the National Weather Service (NWS) released its drought outlook for May, which states “the last 4 weeks brought improvement to areas of drought in most of the Rock- ies and Intermountain West.” The outlook depicts much of New Mexico still with areas of persistent drought along with small portions of southern Colorado, including Archuleta County…According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as of noon on April 30, all of Archuleta County is in an abnormally dry stage, with southwestern parts of the county in a D1 Level Moderate drought. For more information and current drought information, visit https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?fips_08007…

The state’s snowpack was at 114 percent of median on April 9, but, as of April 30, the state’s snowpack had fallen to 91 percent of median…

As of 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 30, the Wolf Creek summit, at 11,000 feet of elevation, had 21.8 inches of snow water equivalent, according to NRCS. The Wolf Creek summit was at 63 percent of the April 30 snowpack median. The San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan river basins were at 64 percent of median, according to the NRCS. The median snowpack peak date is April 2…

The South Platte basin had the highest snow water equivalent in the state at 104 percent of median as of Tuesday, April 30…

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the San Juan River was flowing at a rate of 538 cubic feet per second (cfs) in Pagosa Springs at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 30. Based on 88 years of water records, the median flow for that date is 712 cfs, with a record high flow of 2,090 cfs in 2019. The lowest recorded flow for that date is 127 cfs in 2002…

As of April 30 at 11 a.m., the Piedra River was flowing at a rate of 577 cfs, which is below the median flow rate of 813 cfs for that date, according to the USGS. The record high flow rate for that date was set in 1973 at 3,270 cfs, while the record low was set in 2002 at 97.7 cfs.

San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.

Pagosa Paddle #whitewater races to be held May 11, 2024 — Friends of the Upper #SanJuanRiver

Near Pagosa Springs. Photo credit: Greg Hobbs

Click the link for all the inside skinny on the Friends of tthe Upper San Juan River website:

Saturday May 11, 2024

Pagosa Springs/San Juan River

 On Saturday May 11, the San Juan River will have a surge of boaters competing for cash and prizes during the annual Pagosa Paddle whitewater races.   Not up for paddling? Come out to cheer on these athletes as they go through the downtown water features that make up the whitewater park on the San Juan River through downtown Pagosa Springs.   Spectators can watch the action from above at the Overlook viewing point, alongside the almost famous river walk or from the healing waters at The Springs Resort.  We are collaborating again with  The Springs Resort during their Pints, Pools and Paddles event. All Pagosa Paddle participants will receive a FREE soaking pass and a tshirt. Even better, the first 25 athletes to register will receive  a full access pass to Pints, Pools and Paddles which means soaking and beer tasting after the race!!

RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Navajo Unit April Operations Meeting Minutes and Slides — Reclamation #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Aerial view of Navajo Dam and Reservoir. Photo credit: USBR

From email from the Western Colorado Area Office:

April 26, 2024

Please see the links below for the Meeting Summary and Slides from the April Operations Meeting of the Navajo Unit. 

Meeting Summary: https://www.usbr.gov/uc/wcao/water/rsvrs/mtgs/pdfs/archives/nm2024_04.pdf

Meeting Slides: https://www.usbr.gov/uc/wcao/water/rsvrs/mtgs/pdfs/archives/nmho2024_01.pdf

Court sides with Forest Service in Purgatory Resort water rights dispute — The #Durango Herald #Hermosa Creek

A view of Hermosa Creek in Hermosa, Colorado. The view is from a bridge on U.S. Highway 550 and shows a Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad trestle. By Jeffrey Beall – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89863900

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

April 21, 2024

Purgatory is seeking to access federal land so that it may capture water from Hermosa Creek for snowmaking and other municipal purposes. San Juan Nation Forest has objected to the access on the basis that the diversion could detrimentally impact the native cutthroat trout population. The ruling, issued Monday by Senior Judge William Martinez in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, passed judgment on the application of the Quiet Title Act and found that the statue of limitations had expired years before the lawsuit was filed on Oct. 27, 2022. The decision did not address the substantive questions around the resort’s access to Hermosa Creek water, and it does not put the entire issue to bed, San Juan National Forest Supervisor Dave Neely said.

For over two decades, SJNF officials have expressed concern about Purgatory’s attempts to divert 4.54 cubic feet per second of water from Hermosa Creek via an in-stream diversion and ground wells. A water court decreed two water rights in 1972 and 1982, respectively. The water is to be diverted from the East Fork of Hermosa Creek and its alluvial groundwater on land on the back side of the resort area. In a 1991 agreement, the SJNF made a trade with Purgatory’s corporate predecessors and acquired that land. In exchange, the resort acquired land on the front of the mountain.

The core of the case is whether Purgatory retained a right to an easement on the backside on National Forest land – a necessity to access and divert the water in question – when it conveyed the land in an agreement stating it was “free from all encumbrances.” Purgatory sought a quiet claims action that would have definitively affirmed its rights to the water and an easement or right of way necessary to access it under the federal Quiet Title Act.

Navajo Unit Coordination Meeting April 23, 2024 — Reclamation

Navajo Dam operations update: Bumping releases down to 350 cfs April 16, 2024 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The outflow at the bottom of Navajo Dam in New Mexico. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

April 15, 2024

In response to increasing flows in the critical habitat reach, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 500 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 350 cfs for tomorrow, April 16th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.

Birdwatchers, boaters and families visit #LakeNighthorse on opening day — The #Durango Herald #AnimasRiver #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Lake Nighthorse and Durango March 2016 photo via Greg Hobbs.

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

April 13, 2024

Kayakers, bird watchers, trail hikers and parents with energetic toddlers were some of the first to visit Lake Nighthorse on opening day of the spring season Friday. The waters of Lake Nighthorse reflected pleasant, blue skies, although the reflection was elusive because there was hardly a trace of clouds above. Lake Operations Supervisor Sean Willis said six or seven vehicles were lined up at the entrance when the lake opened at 9 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., between 30 and 35 people had crossed the entrance.

Amanda White, co-vice president of Durango Bird Club, stood by a pier near the designated swim beach with her weighted tripod and spotting scope. She looked over the lake through the lenses with narrowed eyes with her dog Josie by her side.

She said the lake is a “spectacular” resource for migratory birds.

The inlet works to fill Lake Nighthorse under construction along the Animas River March 2014. Water is pumped to the reservoir from the Animas River. Photo credit: Greg Hobbs

Navajo Dam operations update April 5, 2024: Bumping up releases to 500 CFS in the #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

In response to falling flows in the critical habitat reach, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 400 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 500 cfs for tomorrow, April 5th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.  

Wastewater districts approve agreement to research new plant and potential consolidation — The #PagosaSprings Sun

Wastewater Treatment Process

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

On March 21, the board of the Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSSGID), which also sits as the Pagosa Springs Town Council, voted to approve a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD)…The PAWSD board approved the MOU at its March 14 meeting…

The new MOU establishes a framework for a potential merger of the two entities, exploring the idea of a new regional wastewater treatment plant at the southern end of Yamaguchi Park, which would eliminate PSSGID’s reliance on pumping its wastewater 7 miles uphill to the PAWSD-run Vista Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The agreement explains that the PSSGID has faced significant challenges maintaining its uphill wastewater conveyance system, including more than $1 million in pump replacement costs.  Additionally, there remains serious concern about the long-term viability of this system, which has significant problems with root intrusions, pipe deterioration and clogging that result in significant inflow and infiltration (I and I) of water into the system, the MOU states.

The new agreement comes on the heels of a town-commissioned 2023 study by Roaring Fork Engineering that examined the town’s options, including consolidation with PAWSD. The study concludes that, if a merger occurred, the community might be better served by a single wastewater treatment plant, which would likely be located in the southern portion of Yamaguchi Park, than by the current pumping arrangement, the MOU states.

2024 #COleg: Wolves, water and wildlife: How will this year’s state budget impact the Western Slope? — Steamboat Pilot & Today

State Capitol May 12, 2018 via Aspen Journalism

Click the link to read the article on the Steamboat Pilot & Today website (Elliot Wenzler). Here’s an excerpt:

March 29, 2024

The budget, which is not yet finalized, includes funding for non-lethal wolf deterrence, water litigation and wildlife management. The six-member Joint Budget Committee, which writes the state budget, settled on a $40.6 billion budget that would take effect July 1…

Water

The proposed budget also includes about $300,000 for two additional full-time employees in the Department of Law to help secure the state’s water interests…Colorado is part of nine interstate water compacts, one international treaty, two U.S. Supreme Court decrees and one interstate agreement. 

“As climate change and population growth continue to impact Colorado’s water obligations, the DOL’s defense of Colorado’s water rights is more critical than ever,” according to the document. 

One of the new employees, a policy analyst, will monitor government regulations and neighboring states’ activities on water policy. The other position will “bolster the representation and litigation support of the DOL across the various river basins,” support the state’s efforts to negotiate Colorado’s water and compact positions and communicate with the state’s significant water interests. 

EPA officials pledge to clean up old uranium mines at the first Navajo Superfund site — AZCentral.com

Graphic credit: Environmental Protection Agency

Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Arlyssa D. Becenti). Here’s an excerpt:

March 23, 2024

Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency met with Cove community members last week to discuss the agency’s decision to place the Lukachukai Mountains Mining District on the National Priorities List. Although the meeting was intended to be informational, tribal, Navajo EPA and community leaders expressed their uncertainty about whether the federal government will actually start addressing the cleanup of the abandoned uranium mines that landed the site on the EPA list, also known as the Superfund program. The mining district encompasses Navajo Nation communities of Cove, Round Rock and Lukachukai in the far northeastern corner of Arizona. 

“We are looking at what happened in the past and how the federal government could have prevented a lot of this contamination,” said Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty, “could’ve prevented our community from getting sick. What I don’t want them (children) to have to deal with is another three or four decades before actual action happens.”

[…]

Phil Harrison remembers when his childhood community of Cove was alive with family gatherings, ceremonies, rodeos, farming and ranching, but after decades of uranium contamination, those days are a thing of the past…Harrison’s father was a miner in the uranium mines of Cove, which was where uranium was first discovered on the Navajo Nation. Uranium production in the northern and western Carrizo Mountains of the Navajo Nation began in 1948, peaked in 1955 and 1956 and declined to zero again by 1967. 

Becoming Beavers, a Story About Low Tech Process Based Restoration — Fresh Water News

Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Alex Handloff):

March 18, 2024

When confronted with a challenge, whether it be in the natural world or even in a virtual one, we at Mountain Studies Institute (MSI) like to ask, “What would nature do?” This is not asking what we want nature to do, but rather what it already does, what it is perfectly suited to do. A good example is leap year which occurred this year. As humans, we count our journey around the sun in days so imperfectly that we have to add a day every four years. You may think that that’s pretty darn good, pretty darn accurate. However, does the moon not tell time perfectly? Or the seasons? Or the equinoxes? They never need to catch up with an extra day.

The reason I bring this up is that environmental challenges often arise from this misalignment, from doing things that aren’t in harmony with the way the natural world works. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that streams degrade, for example, when we extirpate beavers, channelize the stream, and divert water for irrigation. Too often, though, it does seem to hit us as a surprise, and our response is to collect information so that we can make adjustments. But we need to dig deeper than that and ask ourselves what the root problem is instead of constantly making leap year-like adjustments ad infinitum. We need to do what nature does.

That is the elusive idea of sustainability when it comes to stream restoration which asks us to make changes to ourselves, not to change the world around us.

We often don’t know the consequences of our actions or inactions on the more-than-human world until a critical piece of nature no longer functions, and we have to restore it, not replace it. Such is the case for a degraded stream that is no longer connected to the floodplain, cannot support wildlife habitat, whose streambanks erode, and often runs dry. If we want that restoration to last — and I mean last in a harmonious way, not in a concrete immovable way — it must align with the way nature already works. Nature is not a machine with replaceable parts, but rather an ecosystem of emergence, of dynamic balance. Sometimes that restoration means embodying the missing pieces themselves, where people must become beavers.

Want to know how healthy a stream is? Ask the beavers! If they aren’t there, ask the fish! If they aren’t there, ask the bugs! If they aren’t there, ask the plants! If they aren’t there, well you’ve got a pretty good answer about the stream’s health — not good. A healthy stream has all those features and more. Restoring it isn’t as simple as plopping fish in a stream, planting willows on the streambanks, and parachuting in some beavers — though those can certainly help.

There are quantitative ways to measure stream health, and those measurable pieces need to be paired with unmeasurable but equally important pieces. As we look at the presence or lack of things, the condition of things that exist, and the amount conditions that need to change to have a particular thing come back, we must look at the context in which those measurements are being made, the connections that are subtle and nuanced, and the system as a whole.

At Mountain Studies Institute, we explore a myriad of strategies, monitoring their effectiveness, and exploring questions and interventions that address our environmental challenges. In the case of stream restoration, we’ve adopted a strategy based on nature itself and its beautiful complexity, something called low tech process based restoration (Utah State University has exceptional resources on the subject). That includes beaver dam analogues (BDAs) and post assisted log structures (PALS) which create pools, eddies, riffles, log jams and turns. Those features help promote conditions that help plants establish, reduce erosion, raise water tables, provide wildfire refugia, and establish wildlife habitat.

We at MSI are intimately involved in several stream restoration projects across the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and in northern New Mexico in partnership with incredible organizations and collaboratives, an example of which has already been highlighted by Water Education Colorado in Headwaters Magazine article, Busy as a Beaver, discussing stream restoration on the Mancos River. Mancos River restoration is a long-term project at multiple sites for MSI and collaborative partners, including Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Mancos Conservation District, Mesa Verde National Park, and private landowners along the river.

Claire Caldwell of Mountain Studies Institute stands atop a finished post assisted log structure in the Mancos River. Photo credit: Mountain Studies Institute

Additionally, MSI helps coordinate the 2 Watersheds – 3 Rivers – 2 States Cohesive Strategy Partnership, which works across 5 million acres in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico to make forests, watersheds, and communities more resilient. We went to the site of a project on the Rito Penas Negras to tell the story of restoration, beavers, and our relationship with nature.

Overhead view of 2-3-2 Partnership volunteers constructing a beaver dam analog in the Rito Penas Negras. Photo credit: Mountain Studies Institute

We encourage you to listen to that story — the story of stream restoration — in our podcast, The Dirt and Dust, in an episode entitled, Becoming Beavers, which explores the idea of imitating nature to help restore a stream system all in the hopes that beavers come back and do the work themselves, that the dynamism and complexity of the natural system is restored.

I don’t think we’ll be changing leap year anytime soon, but we can change the way we think about the natural world and the role we play as humans. We can strive to work alongside nature, not against it, and hope that someday waterways like the Rito Penas Negras and Mancos River have fish, bugs, plants and beavers.

The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District votes to increase rates, capital investment fees: New rages and fees take effect March 1, 2024 — The #PagosaSprings Sun

Wastewater Treatment Process

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

At its Feb. 15 meeting, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors voted to raise fees and rates for 2024 in accordance with the rate study by Stantec that the board approved at its Dec. 14, 2023, meeting. The board voted to increase the monthly service charge per equivalent unit (EU) by 3 percent, going from $31.44 in 2023 to $32.38 in 2024. The monthly service charge per EU for wastewater was voted to increase by 30 percent from $32.80 in 2023 to $42.64 in 2024. Short-term rentals (STRs) will be charged 140 percent of the wastewater rate, according to the fee schedule approved by the board.

The capital investment fee (CIF) for water increased from $5,352.37 in 2023 to $8,958, and the wastewater CIF increased from $1,178.98 in 2023 to $15,697 in 2024, according to the fee schedule.

Other fees, such as availability fees, dumping fees for septic haulers and water fill station fees also increased, with the increases matching the percentage increase in water rates for water-related fees and the percentage increase in wastewater rates for wastewater-related fees.

The new rates and fees will take effect March 1.

Cheatgrass and other stuff that gets my goat — Jonathan P. Thompson

Cattle grazing in southeastern Utah in early spring. I think I see some cheatgrass in there, but maybe not. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

🐮 Cheatgrass Chronicles

“Today the honey-colored hills that flank the northwestern mountains derive their hue not from the rich and useful bunchgrass and wheatgrass which once covered them, but from the inferior cheat which has replaced these native grasses. … The cause of the substitution is overgrazing. When the too-great herds and flocks chewed and trampled the hide off the foothills, something had to cover the raw eroding earth. Cheat did.”—Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac

For a couple years when I was a teenager, my dad lived in a house near Lebanon, a tiny settlement about ten miles north of Cortez, Colorado. The front porch afforded an expansive view of much of the Montezuma Valley, a quilt of pastures and hayfields and residential development amid patches of sagebrush and piñon-juniper set against the backdrop of Ute Mountain and Mesa Verde. 

La Plata Mountains from the Great Sage Plain with historical Montezuma County apple orchard in the foreground.

On hot, dry summer afternoons I liked to sit on the porch and gaze upon the valley, waiting for the inevitable plume of smoke. It always started as a white-gray wisp wafting into the cloudless blue sky, and sometimes would quickly die down. More often than not, however, the wisp grew into a thick, billowing, dark cloud with glowing orange flames at its base. And then, maybe ten minutes later, the faint sound of sirens would ring out as the volunteer fire fighters raced to the scene hoping to save houses and barns from the expanding inferno. 

Almost every one of these fires was sparked intentionally — a landowner burning their fields against better judgment. And the target of the blaze was almost always the same, an innocent-looking species that is so nasty and pernicious that it can drive folks to risk burning down their own property to get rid of it: cheatgrass, aka Bromus tectorum, a Eurasian annual that invaded North America in the 1800s and has since become one of the continent’s most detested, ubiquitous, and stubborn invasive species. 

The news hook, unfortunately, is not the discovery of a foolproof method to eradicate cheatgrass (burning it doesn’t work, by the way). Rather it’s a new paper on cheatgrass that compiles a collection of scientific studies into a comprehensive, extensive yet digestible, volume: “Cheatgrass invasions: History, causes, consequences, and solutions,” by Erik M. Molvar et al. and put out by the Western Watersheds Project.

Cheatgrass’s invasion of North America echoed Euro-American settler-colonization. The first continent’s earliest record of the grass was made in Pennsylvania in 1790. It popped up in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming in the 1800s, in the wake of mining rushes and subsequent influxes of cattle and sheep to feed the burgeoning settler population. Cheatgrass was carried westward by wagons and railroads where it quickly took over land disturbed by farming and, especially, livestock grazing. Sometimes livestock operators would burn sagebrush and then encourage cheatgrass to replace it since in early spring the green grass makes for nutritious forage. By early summer, though, it’s unpalatable, and the dry seeds drive folks to arson.

By the 1930s cheatgrass, aided by a massive ground invasion of livestock grazing, had invaded much of the West. And further land disturbance in later decades facilitated the spread of the invasive species, which competes with and often displaces native bunch-grasses. In what’s known as the livestock-cheatgrass-fire cycle, grazing facilitates an initial cheatgrass invasion. The flammable grass then burns, taking out native shrubs such as sagebrush, leaving a cheatgrass mono-crop in their place. This destroys the sagebrush ecosystem and harms all the species that depend upon it, making cheatgrass “one of the most significant ecological crises facing land managers in the arid West,” according to the paper. Climate change is expected to make it worse.

It’s all rather depressing, to be honest. And even worse is that there’s no easy way to rid the West of this malignant grass. Various methods have been tried, from burning the stuff to chemical herbicides to amending the soil to even hand-pulling it. None have been successful in the long-term. Some researchers have suggested inoculating cheatgrass with fungi and bacterium, such as black-fingers-of-death. But they could have dire unintended effects. 

Yet it’s not all hopeless. Reducing livestock grazing in areas that have yet to be overrun by cheatgrass has kept a full-invasion at bay, and ceasing grazing altogether in cheatgrass-dominant places has allowed native grasses to recover. Avoiding soil disturbance of any form and preserving the cryptobiotic crusts can help fend off new cheatgrass invasions. The authors of the paper sum it up nicely: 

“The key to combating weed invasions is to prevent the types of conditions and land uses that confer advantages to weed species over native plants, and to restore native plant associations that are resilient and resistant to future weed invasion.”

Dust, snow, and diminishing albedo, JONATHAN P. THOMPSON MAY 7, 2021

“Most of us are poor now, like I am. Many of them blame John Collier, who made us reduce our flocks and herds because there was not enough grass for all. But I think the true reason is a change in the climate. When I was a young man this whole country was covered with tall grass. We had rains enough in summer to keep it alive and growing. Now the rains d…“
Read full story

🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑 

Year-end real estate market reports are rolling in and, generally, it looks like more of the same: Homes are getting more expensive and further out of reach of the average income earner. And relatively high interest rates don’t seem to be dimming the trend, at least in most places. 

Take La Plata County in southwestern Colorado, home of Durango and of an alarming increase in home prices across the entirety of its 1,700 square miles over the last several years. In 2023, median sales prices shot up once again — by as much as 26.7% in one area — relative to 2022. The typical in-town Durango home will now cost you about $780,000, with the median priced condo/townhome selling for $529,000. The high high-end is even scarier: Homes in Purgatory resort area were selling for about $1.1 million in 2021; now they’re fetching $2.1 million. 

Perhaps most alarming is the way once-affordable areas have also become overpriced. As recently as 2018 the lowest priced house in the county sold for $48,000; last year it was three times that much. While the $150k or so sale would be within the price range of, say, a Durango school teacher, it is an outlier: I look at the listings constantly and rarely see anything under $200,000. The exception might be a trailer in a park, which is great, except that you need to add a $600-$1,200/month lot fee to the mortgage payment, which can easily push affordable housing into the unaffordable zone. 

Sigh… More stats here. 

🐐 Things that get my Goat 🐐

The once lofty institution known as National Geographic recently weighed in on the growing visitation to national parks issue by dispensing some advice to its 9.5 million readers: “National parks overcrowded?” asks the headline. “Visit a national forest.”  

Ugh.

Some national parks clearly are overflowing with visitors. And these crowds may diminish the experience for some of these visitors (others may be just fine with it). And the more people you have, presumably the more impacts they will bring. 

But shuffling them onto nearby public lands isn’t the answer. All that’s doing is moving the people from places that have infrastructure, roads, and rangers designed to handle the crowds and limit their impacts, to places that lack this sort of infrastructure. Instead of being confined to paved roads, paths, viewpoints, visitors centers, and bathrooms, the masses will scatter themselves across fragile terrain with no rangers to guide them back to the trails. 

I’m not saying folks shouldn’t go to the national forests or that they should be kept secret — as if that were even possible. It’s just that National Geographic should think about the potential impacts of these sorts of articles and who is benefiting from them. The parks won’t be better off, nor will the crowds be noticeably smaller. The forests won’t be better off. And probably the would-be national park visitor that headed to the forest to escape the crowds won’t benefit either. There is, after all, a reason so many people go to national parks (they have iconic landforms and infrastructure and interpretive signs and clean toilets and gift shops). They’d only be disappointed by the forests. So let them go to the parks — crowded or not — and leave the forests alone.

📖 Reading Room … 🧐

… or Listening Room in this case. If you liked Tuesday’s Messing with Maps dispatch, you’ll probably also like The Magic City’s podcast delving into the mysteries of Durango’s founding. Even those most versed in Colorado history will learn something and it’s a captivating listen, besides. Check it out on Spotify or at The Magic City. 

Parting Shot

Henry Mountains. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

Navajo Dam operations update February 10, 2024: Bumping releases to 400 cfs to the #SanJuanRiver #aridification

San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

In response to falling flows in the critical habitat reach, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 350 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 400 cfs for tomorrow, February 10th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell. 

Atmospheric rivers boosting #snowpack (February 7, 2024) — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel

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

February 7, 2024

A second atmospheric river of moisture in a matter of days is further bolstering Colorado snowpack levels that have continued to lag a bit behind normal…An initial atmospheric river storm system that wound down over the weekend dumped as much as three feet of snow in parts of the mountains, with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center saying the Ruby and Ragged ranges west of Crested Butte and south of Marble were particularly hard-hit. The Mesa Lakes area on Grand Mesa got about 15 inches of snow in that storm and Park Reservoir saw about a foot of snow fall, while another measuring site on Grand Mesa got only about 4 inches, said Dennis Phillips, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction. The second atmospheric river that arrived this week is expected to be a stronger system, he said…

The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service on Tuesday said that statewide snowpack in Colorado stood at 93% of normal for Feb. 6. It has seen little growth since the middle of last month or so, after increasingly sharply from below 70% of normal at the start of January.

Snowpack in the Colorado headwaters basin on Tuesday stood at 96% of normal for Feb. 6. The Yampa-White-Little Snake basins were at 95% of normal, as was the Gunnison River Basin, and the Arkansas River Basin was at 91%.

Southwest Colorado is drier, with the combined San Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan basins at 84% of normal and Upper Rio Grande River Basin at 80%. On Grand Mesa, snowpack levels at NRCS sites Tuesday ranged from 93% at Mesa Lakes to 74% at Overland Reservoir. Mountain snowpack is relied upon to bolster streamflows, reservoirs and agricultural and municipal supplies when that snow melts and runs off.

Colorado Drought Monitor map February 6, 2024.

Most of Southwest Colorado is in varying levels of drought, with moderate drought stretching into western and southern Mesa County, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Navajo Dam operations update January 19, 2024 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Bluff UT – aerial with San Juan River and Comb Ridge. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6995171

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

January 17, 2024

At 3:00 PM on January 29th (Monday), the release at Navajo Dam will be transferred to the 4×4 Auxiliary outlet, where the release will be reduced to 250 cfs.  The minimum release will accommodate instream work for the Turley Manzanares Ditch Company Diversion Dam Rehabilitation Project.  The release will be transferred back to the power plant and increased back to its current level of 350 cfs at 8:00 AM the following morning, January 30th, 2024 (Tuesday). You may expect some silt and discoloration downstream in the river during this time due to the location of the intake of the 4×4.

This scheduled operation is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions.  If you have any questions, please contact Susan Behery (sbehery@usbr.gov or 970-385-6560), or visit Reclamation’s Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html

#Colorado #Climate Center: Expect a drier, warmer state: Report predicts higher temperatures and lower precipitation, especially in the Southwest and #SanLuisValley — @AlomosaCitizen #RioGrande #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Owen Woods):

January 13, 2024

The Colorado Climate Center’s report on the 2023 climate year and its outlook on the future of our climate and our snowpack, is full of data that shows a trend we all saw coming: the seasons are getting warmer, the melt-off is happening sooner, and most of all, the snowpack is decreasing year after year. 

Colorado’s average temperature, season after season, since 1980 has increased by an average of 2.3 degrees. The winter has seen a 1.0 degree increase; spring has increased by 1.7 degrees; summer at 2.5 degrees; and autumn has seen an increase in temperature by 3.1 degrees.

“Annually,” the report says, “the greatest warming has been observed over the Southwest and San Luis Valley climate regions.”

The seven of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2010. The rise in temperature means a reduced snowpack. Nothing is more of a key indicator for the health and wellness of Colorado than its snowpack. 

Snowpack serves as a seasonal reservoir that stores upwards of 15 million acre-feet, on average, across the state. Colorado is a “headwaters state,” which means that four major rivers have their headwaters right here: the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, the Arkansas River and the Platte River. 

Precipitation from snow is more likely to end up as runoff than precipitation from rain. 

Credit: Climate Change in Colorado: A Report for the Water Conservation Board, Executive Summary

The 21st century record, which ranges from 2001 to 2022, showed an average of three percentto 23 percent lower snow water equivalent on April 1 than the 1951 to 2000 average. 

Snow water equivalent (SWE) is the amount of water you get if you melted the snow down and were able to measure what was left. These measurements are more accurate than snowfall or snow depth, because those measurements don’t always account for a wide array of snow densities. 

“The largest decreases occurred in the southwestern portion of the state, specifically in the San Juan and Rio Grande basins.”

Credit: Climate Change in Colorado: A Report for the Water Conservation Board, Executive Summary

Projections show a negative five percent to negative thirty percent measure of snow water equivalent by the year 2050. April 1 to May 15 is historically when true mountain runoff starts to occur with a change in temperature, but projections show that by 2050 that date will shift earlier by a few days then to a few weeks. 

The 114 SNOTEL sites that give us this information are mostly situated between 8,500 feet and 11,000 feet elevation, and report data every hour. They are all monitored by the National Resource Conservation Service. 

Studies showed that snowpack has decreased in many of Colorado’s major river basins; however the percentage of decline when compared to other Mountain West regions was “generally smaller” due to Colorado’s higher elevations and colder winters.

“These studies also found that warming temperatures were an important cause of the observed SWE declines, while below-normal fall and spring precipitation in the past few decades has also played a role.”

Credit: Climate Change in Colorado: A Report for the Water Conservation Board, Executive Summary

Although larger snowpacks have become less common, big snowfall years like 2019 can and will occur. 

Severe droughts are projected to increase, as well. “Regardless of changes in precipitation, it is likely that warmer temperatures will contribute to more frequent and severe droughts. Warmer temperatures will also decrease the benefit of wetter years.”

“Southwestern and South-central Colorado have experienced the largest magnitude

of warming.  The observed warming trend in Colorado is strongly linked to the overall human influence on climate and recent global warming.”

Over the next several decades, the report suggests, further and significant warming is expected in all parts of Colorado, in all seasons. 

KEY REPORT FINDINGS

Temperature

  • Statewide annual average temperatures warmed by 2.3°F from 1980 to 2022.
  • Only one year in the 21st century has been cooler than the 1971-2000 average. 2012 remains the state’s warmest year in the 128-year record, at 48.3°F (3.2°F warmer than the 1971-2000 average).
  • The greatest amount of warming has occurred in the fall, with statewide temperatures increasing by 3.1°F from 1980-2022.
  • Southwestern and South-central Colorado have experienced the largest magnitude of warming.
  • The observed warming trend in Colorado is strongly linked to the overall human influence on climate and recent global warming. The observed warming over the last 20 years is comparable to what was projected by earlier climate models run in the 2000s.
  • Further and significant warming is expected in all parts of Colorado, in all seasons, over the next several decades.
  • By 2050 (the 2035-2064 period average), Colorado statewide annual temperatures are projected to warm by +2.5°F to +5.5°F compared to a 1971-2000 baseline, and +1.0°F to +4.0°F compared to today, under a medium-low emissions scenario (RCP4.5).
  • By 2070 (the 2055-2084 period average), Colorado statewide annual temperatures are projected to warm by +3.0°F to +6.5°F compared to the late 20th century, and +1.5°F to +5.0°F compared to today, under RCP4.5.
  • By 2050, the average year is likely to be as warm as the very warmest years on record through 2022. By 2070, the average year is likely to be warmer than the very warmest years through 2022.
  • Summer and fall are projected to warm slightly more than winter and spring.

Precipitation

  • Colorado has observed persistent dry conditions in the 21st century. According to water year precipitation accumulations, October 1 – September 30, four of the five driest years in the 128-year record have occurred since 2000.
  • Drying trends have been observed across the majority of the state during the spring, summer, and fall seasons.
  • Northwest Colorado summer precipitation has decreased 20% since the 1951-2000 period.
  • Southwest Colorado spring precipitation has decreased 22% since the 1951-2000 period.
  • Precipitation is slightly more favorable over the northern mountains during a La Niña winter. For most regions and the remaining seasons, wetter conditions are slightly enhanced during an El Niño.
  • The direction of future change in annual statewide precipitation for Colorado is much less clear than for temperature. The climate model projections for 2050 range from -7% to +7% compared to the late 20th century average, under a medium-low (RCP4.5) emissions scenario.
  • The model projections for precipitation change by 2070 are very similar to those for 2050.
  • Most climate models project an increase in winter (Dec-Feb) statewide precipitation; the model consensus is weaker for the other seasons. The models do suggest enhanced potential for large decreases (-10% to -25%) in summer precipitation.

Storm brings needed snowfall — The #PagosaSprings Sun #snowpack #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRIver #COriver #aridification

Upper San Juan Basin SWE January 14, 2024 via the NRCS.

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

January 11, 2024

Sites in Archuleta County received more than a foot of snow from the weekend’s storm. As of Thursday, Jan. 4, Archuleta County had received around 2 inches of snow and Wolf Creek Ski Area had received 3 inches. Saturday night and Sunday brought the biggest snowstorm of the season, accumulating between 7 and 14 inches in areas of Archuleta County, according to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) website. Wolf Creek Ski Area reported 29 inches in a report on Jan. 8…

According to snoflo.org, the Wolf Creek summit, at an elevation of 11,000 feet, had a 48-inch snowpack (84 percent of normal), up from 56 percent of normal on Jan. 3. The website reports that it is low for this time of year. According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, on Jan. 4, the Wolf Creek summit had 28 inches of snow and 7.8 inches of snow water equivalent. As of Jan. 9, the agency reports 51 inches of snow and a snow water equivalent of 9.6 inches.

Hot Takes on a warming world — Jonathan P. Thompson (@Land_Desk)

North of Dove Creek, Abajo Mountains in the distance. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk

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

January 12, 2024

According to the myriad press releases I receive from the industrial self-care complex, we are in the thick of January Blues season — the downtime that follows the month of consumerism, er, the holidays. I don’t know about that, but I do know that ol’ Mother Snow must be feeling a little blue about the news these days. 

Sure, it finally snowed a fair amount in the Four Corners region, blanketing high and even lowlands with white, slicking up the roads, and freshening up the slopes.

In Durango, enough snow accumulated to allow nordic skiing at the Hillcrest golf course, my favorite winter health indicator. And, because the new snow fell on a weak, faceted base layer, it elevated avalanche hazard in some areas, including at the Palisades Tahoe ski resort in eastern California.

Placer County Sheriff’s Office on Instagram: “OLYMPIC VALLEY, Calif. — At approximately 9:30 a.m. today at Palisades Tahoe, an avalanche occurred on the Palisades side of the ski resort, specifically above the GS bowl area of KT-22. Olympic Valley Fire Department responded to Palisades Tahoe for word of an avalanche in the ski area. OVFD contacted ski patrol, who confirmed an avalanche in the GS Bowl of KT 22. OVFD began recruiting allied agencies and pooling resources in support of Palisades Ski Patrol efforts: OVFD, PCSO, and Palisades Tahoe. Placer County Sheriff’s Office assisted Olympic Valley Fire and Palisades Tahoe with the search and rescue operation. Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue was activated along with allied agency partners and assets from the west side. PCSO is investigating the coroner’s case. The avalanche caused one fatality and one injury. Our thoughts and prayers are with their family members at this difficult time. No further missing persons have been reported. More than 100 Palisades personnel participated in a beacon search, and two probe lines have been completed. The mountain is closed for the remainder of the day. The avalanche debris field is approximately 150 feet wide, 450 feet long and 10 feet deep. We will update with more information as it becomes available. A press conference will be scheduled at 2:30 p.m. at Basecamp at Palisades Tahoe. WHAT: Palisades Tahoe avalanche incident press conference WHO: Olympic Valley Fire Department Chief Brad Chisholm, Placer County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Dave Smith, Placer County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Don Nevins, Placer County District 5 Supervisor Cindy Gustafson WHERE: Palisades Tahoe, Basecamp Conference Room, 1960 Olympic Vly Rd, Olympic Valley, CA 96146 WHEN: Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2:30 p.m. #palisadestahoe #olympicvalley” JANUARY 12, 2024

And yet, it will take a constant barrage of such storms to pull much of the West out of the snow drought. Even if that does happen (and it’s still possible), the science is indicating that the winters we once knew are a thing of the past, and the snowpack — and water supplies — will keep getting thinner, on average, with each passing decade. So here are the hot takes on the hot world:

It’s now official: 2023 was the planet’s hottest year on record (going back to 1850). That’s according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which keeps tracks of this sort of thing. It was also the “first time on record that every day within a year has exceeded 1°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level.” Some days in November were even 2 °C above the pre-industrial level. Yikes.

Earth was record warm in 2023.

The U.S. didn’t experience its hottest year ever, but it was warmer than average(especially from July onward). The Western side of the country actually had it a bit better than Texas and the East; we were merely “above average” for the year. Balancing it out, much of the West also got above average precipitation. Unfortunately the Four Corners, after a bountiful winter, got robbed of the big monsoon come summer, bringing levels down to average and even below that in New Mexico, where the drought persists. December was especially warm and dry across most of the West and was even the hottest December ever in the Upper Midwest and Northern Rockies.

Overnight, minimum temperatures keep getting warmer, even more so than the maximum daytime highs. Source: NOAA

And a warm and dry December brings the January snowpack blues to the mountains that feed the Colorado River. The 130 SNOTEL stations in the Upper Colorado River Basin are recording a snowpack on a par with the dismally dry 2021 winter, which brought Lake Powell down to crisis levels. The snowpack is even thinner than it was on this date in 2002. Ack! Still, check out the trajectory for 2023: After an average beginning, winter really took off from January into about mid-April. So there’s still time for a recovery. Really.

Overnight, minimum temperatures keep getting warmer, even more so than the maximum daytime highs. Source: NOAA

That aligns with the findings of a new peer-reviewed study recently published in Nature, showing that human-caused warming has been shrinking mountain snowpacks globally since at least 1981. The findings are nuanced: The shrinkage isn’t happening everywhere (colder areas are less vulnerable to the rising temperatures, so far), it’s happening at different rates in different places, and it isn’t always attributable to human-caused global warming. In fact, while the Rio Grande has “suffered large historical snowpack declines of over 10% per decade … there is little agreement that forced temperature and precipitation changes have caused those declines, reinforcing the notion that low-frequency variability can overwhelm forced signals in snow and hydroclimate, even on multidecadal timescales.” The Colorado River Basin’s snowpack has also shrunk at a rapid rate, and in that case the authors did find a link to anthropogenic global warming. And because of the nonlinear sensitivity of snow to warming, the future may be even less snowy. I’ll let the authors explain:

“Under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 2–4.5, a ‘middle-of-the-road’ emissions scenario, the most highly populated basins are expected to see strong declines in spring runoff as a result of nonlinear snow loss, even in the face of relatively modest warming projected in those regions. The western USA, for example, is poised to see particularly sharp spring runoff declines in the upper Mississippi (84 million people, 30.2% spring runoff decline), Colorado (14 million, 42.2%), Columbia (8.8 million, 32.7%) and San Joaquin (6.8 million, 40.9%) river basins.“

And, yes, Colorado’s snows and streamflows will be a victim of this same phenomenon, according to the latest climate change report for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The report finds:

  • Statewide annual average temperatures warmed by 2.3°F from 1980-2022 — with a strong link to human influence on climate — with the greatest warming occurring in the south-central and southwestern parts of the state, and during the fall.
  • By 2050 statewide temperatures are projected to warm by 2.5°F to 5.5°F compared to the 1971 baseline, making the average year in the 2050s and beyond warmer than the hottest years on record now. 
  • Precipitation has decreased 22% in southwestern Colorado and 20% in northwestern Colorado since the 1951-2000 period, but the future trends are less clear than temperatures — precipitation may even increase by as much as 7%, with the largest gains during winter, though more of it is likely to fall as rain. 
  • Snowpack has also decreased and future warming likely will lead to further reductions, even if precipitation increases, and the seasonal snowpack peak is projected to shift earlier by as much as several weeks by 2050, which could be accelerated by increased dust-on-snow events.
April 1st snowpack by major river basin. Credit: The Land Desk
  • A shrinking snowpack and earlier runoff will further diminish streamflows. 
  • Soil moisture has generally been on the decline in high-elevations since 1980 and future warming is expected to lead to future decreases in summer soil moisture, which can, in turn, exacerbate warming. 
  • Warming has driven greater evaporative demand — or atmospheric thirst — over the last four decades, this means crops will need more irrigation to thrive, increasing water consumption even as water supplies dwindle.
Potentail Evapotraspiration (PET) 1980-2022. Credit: The Land Desk

Well, if you didn’t already have the January Blues (or didn’t even know such a malady existed), you just might have them now. I’m sorry, but it will help to go up to the golf course and do some nordic skiing, I promise. And for more on the Colorado climate report read Heather Sackett’s excellent piece for Aspen Journalism.

Navajo Unit Coordination Meeting January 16, 2024 — Reclamation #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

The next coordination meeting for the operation of the Navajo Unit is scheduled for Tuesday, January 16th 2024, at 1:00 pm. This meeting is open to the public and will be held as a hybrid meeting with the following attendance options: 

  • In-person: Farmington Civic Center, 200 West Arrington, in Farmington, New Mexico.  
  • Virtual attendance: For those who wish to remain remote, there is a Teams video option below. This link should open in any smartphone, tablet, or computer browser, and does not require a Microsoft account You will be able to view and hear the presentation as it is presented.   

We hope the options provided make it possible for all interested parties to participate as they are able and comfortable.  If you are using a virtual option, please try to log on at least 5-10 minutes before the meeting start time. For technical issues, feel free to call the number below.   

A copy of the presentation and meeting summary will be distributed to this email list and posted to our website following the meeting. If you are unable to connect to the video meeting, feel free to contact me (information below) following the meeting for any comments or questions.  

The meeting agenda will include a review of operations and hydrology since August, current soil and snowpack conditions, a discussion of hydrologic forecasts and planned operations for remainder of this water year, updates on maintenance activities, drought operations, and the Recovery Program on the San Juan River.   

If you have any suggestions for the agenda or have questions about the meeting, please call Susan Behery at 970-385-6560, or email sbehery@usbr.gov.  Visit the Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html for operational updates.

Native tribes are getting a slice of their land back — under the condition that they preserve it — The Los Angeles Times

A spring-fed pond near the existing trail on the Cottonwood Wash property. (Frazier Haney / Wildlands Conservancy)

Click the link to read the article on The Los Angeles Times website (Jack Herrera). Here’s an excerpt:

January 3, 2024

In February 2020, Dave Herrero drove into the canyon country here in southeastern Utah to visit a slice of land that was up for sale — a 320-acre ranch that stretched deep into the red-rock canyon near the small town of Bluff…In July, his California-based employer, the nonprofit Wildlands Conservancy, purchased the ranch for $2.5 million from the family that owned it and began writing a deed that it hopes will become a model for working with tribes to protect wilderness in the American West from real estate developers, mining companies and oil drillers. In what would be a novel arrangement, the deed is expected to include a coalition of five tribes as co-owners and managers with Wildlands — an effort to acknowledge the history of the land, which the conservation group named Cottonwood Wash.

“There are once tribes that lived in these areas that were forcibly removed,” said Davina Smith, a member of the Diné, or Navajo, who has worked with different organizations to protect land in the Four Corners region. “We have to recognize that.”

[…]

The traditional model of conservation in the West has long followed the lead of environmentalists such as John Muir— the “father of the national parks” — who saw untracked wilderness as a sort of Eden that would fall to corruption under man’s influence. His model of conservation was simple: Keep people out…That school of thought feels foreign to Natives such as [Davina] Smith, 49. 

“You have all these prominent writers writing about the West, but they focus on the landscape,” she said. “They don’t think about the Native tribes who have always actually been living in this landscape.”

[…]

In 2015, a coalition of five tribes — Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni — sent a letter to then-President Obama proposing the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah on land known as the Colorado Plateau. Under a novel co-management scheme, the tribes would have direct say in ecological stewardship and how to regulate economic activity and recreation…Less than a year after Obama issued a presidential proclamation creating the monument on Dec. 28, 2016, then-President Trump undid it at the urging of the Utah state government, which wanted to leave the land open to uranium mining, oil drilling and cattle grazing. When President Biden took office in 2021, one of his first acts was reestablishing Bears Ears…The Cottonwood Wash lies within the boundaries of the Bears Ears Monument, but because it’s private property, it wasn’t included as part of the monument. That gave Wildlands a playbook. In 2022, its leaders approached the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, the official alliance of the five tribes, to say they were considering buying the Cottonwood Wash and were interested in joint ownership and management. As part of their push, Herrero and Haney drove to four reservations to meet with tribal leaders. Some were suspicious at first. Anthony Sanchez, the head councilman for the Pueblo of Zuni, explained that non-Native groups will sometimes use supposed ties to tribes to boost their own PR.

Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. By Bob Wick – By the Bureau of Land Management published on Flickr under a CC licence., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52982968

#PagosaSprings to explore agreement with The Springs Resort over use of #geothermal water — The Pagosa Springs Sun

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

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

At a Dec. 21 meeting, the Pagosa Springs Town Council voted to change the language of an amend- ment to its tap agreement with The Springs Resort and Spa. Since 2009, the agreement has provided a certain amount of “raw geothermal water” to The Springs Resort for commercial uses. The town currently obtains water rights to two geothermal wells down- town. The new language adopted by the council will leave open the possibility of raising the rate that the town charges The Springs Resort for municipal geothermal water to even higher than the $12,000 per-year rate in the current drafted amendment.

At the meeting, Town Manager David Harris said, “The existing rates are set to expire in this calendar year,” which prompted the town and The Springs Resort to draft this amendment for the council to consider.

Harris explained that this new amendment was the product of discussions with the owners of The Springs and that both parties believe it is a “fair” agreement.

Messing with Maps: #ColoradoRiver edition — Jonathan P. Thompson (@LandDesk) #COriver #aridification

The Imperial Irrigation District in southern California uses more Colorado River water than the entire state of Colorado. The Southern Nevada Water system’s consumptive use (shown here) is the difference between total withdrawals from Lake Mead (404,065 af) and Las Vegas Wash return flows (227,809 af). Source: USBR. Credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk

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

December 12, 2023

The lopsided ways of Western water law

Back in 1996, the town of Silverton, Colorado had a rude water awakening. It had been a sparse winter and spring, snow-wise, in the San Juan Mountains, though nothing compared to what would come over the next couple of decades. By mid-summer the streams were running fairly low, and downstream irrigators began to worry that they might not be able to divert enough water for their uses. That prompted rumblings of a possible “call” on the river, in which senior water rights holders force junior rights holders — including Silverton — to shut off their spigots.

Silverton, Colo., lies an at elevation of 9,300 feet in San Juan County, and the Gold King Mine is more than 1,000 feet higher in the valley at the left side of the photo. Photo/Allen Best

Silverton, which sits near the headwaters of the Animas River, gets its municipal water from Boulder and Bear Creeks, two small streams that have remained mostly unsullied by acid mine drainage and heavy metal loading, natural or otherwise. The creeks weren’t in danger of running dry that year, and continued to carry plenty of water to supply the town and then some. But a call could very well force the town to shut off its pumps and to watch all of that water flow by. Why? Because under Colorado water law, usually summed up as “first in time, first in right,” Silverton’s right to pull water from the streams are inferior — or junior — to many downstream users.

Silverton was founded in 1874 and settler-colonial miners had been diverting water for a few years by then. That, theoretically, would have put them near the top of the “first in time” list for beneficial users of Animas River water (behind the Ute, Navajo, and Pueblo people who preceded them by centuries, of course). The earliest appropriation dates on the Animas River (and southwestern Colorado, in general) are in 1868, which is probably tied to the Ute Treaty of that same year. The Animas Ditch, diverted from the river south of Durango, has an 1868 date, while the Animas Consolidated, Reid, and Wallace Ditches north of Durango have mid-1870s dates. 

But Silverton’s founders — perhaps believing their proximity to so many streams’ headwaters would guarantee unfettered access to all the water they’d need in perpetuity — failed to secure their water rights. As a result, their earliest appropriation date, for the Boulder Creek diversion, is 1883, and the Bear Creek diversion is in 1904. That puts both of Silverton’s main water sources way down the priority line (number 123, in fact), meaning if downstream senior rights holders were not getting their allocated water, they could put Silverton into a pickle.

This 1916 map shows how the Upper Basin provides all of the water. I added a few red arrows showing the river’s largest users, all in the Lower Basin. The arrows in southern Nevada show the 404,065 acre-feet withdrawn from Lake Mead along with the 227,809 acre-feet of return flows via Las Vegas Wash (which is credited against their total withdrawals). So they end up with a consumptive use of 177,276 acre-feet. If the map is blurry, go to LandDesk.org and click on this post to see the larger photo. Source: USGS.

This small town’s woes came to mind recently when I stumbled upon this 1916 map of the Colorado River, which shows the approximate amount of water each tributary contributes to its total flow. The takeaway? Nearly every drop of water in the river originates in the Upper Basin States, or Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. (This isn’t a surprise, but seeing it laid out so simply on a map really drives the point home.) And yet the river’s largest users and most senior water rights holders are in the Lower Basin States, namely California. So basically it’s a macro version of the Silverton situation: The Upper Basin produces the water, and the Lower Basin uses it and controls it. 

Okay, that’s a rather crude way of explaining a rather complicated situation, but it’s really not that far off. For example, in 2023, the Imperial Irrigation District in Southern California consumed 2.3 million acre-feet of Colorado River water; the entire state of Colorado used just 2.1 million acre-feet (MAF).2

And what about the downstreamers controlling the water?

Upper Basin States vs. Lower Basin circa 1925 via CSU Water Resources Archives

The Colorado River Compact divided the presumed 15 MAF in the river equally, with 7.5 MAF going to the Lower Basin and 7.5 MAF going to the Upper Basin. That sounds fair, right? Thing is, the Compact doesn’t just cut the total annual flow of the river in half, which would be fair. Nor does it allow the Upper Basin to withdraw its 7.5 MAF, leaving the remainder to flow downstream. Nope. It requires that the Upper Basin leave enough water in the river to ensure that 7.5 MAF flows past the Lee (or Lee’s or Lees) Ferry gage into the Lower Basin each year.3 That mandate holds regardless of how much water is actually in the river, meaning that if there is anything less than 16.5 MAF, the Upper Basin’s gotta eat it (and it also forces the Upper Basin to include evaporative losses into its total water use, since it leaves that much less water to send downstream). That potentially puts the entire Upper Basin into the same boat as Silverton, just on a much larger level. 

That’s where reservoirs, especially Lake Powell, come in. The Upper Basin can save surplus water during wet years and release it during dry years to comply with the Compact’s downstream delivery mandate. And it also explains why Lake Powell is in danger of hitting dead pool: The Upper Basin has been burning up its savings to make its annual payment to the Lower Basin.

And that brings us to today’s second map: a profile of the entire Colorado River Basin with existing and proposed dams, circa 1946. I’m including this here for a couple of reasons. First off, I think it’s a really cool way to map a river system in quasi-3D without a bunch of technology. Second, the number of dams that might have been built if the mid-century water buffaloes had their way is mind-blowing.

This is from 1946, more than a decade after Hoover Dam had been completed but before construction had begun on Glen Canyon Dam. It may have been the peak for potential dam Viewing the picture works best on the website at LandDesk.org. Source: USBR

Zoom in on the profile and you’ll see that Glen Canyon Dam was still only an itch in Floyd Dominy’s proverbial pants. It got built not long afterward, though. Also proposed: The Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon Dams in the upper and lower Grand Canyon, respectively; a whole series of dams on the lower San Juan River; the Echo Park Dam on the Green and Yampa; the Dark Canyon, Moab, Dewey, and Whitewater Dams on the Colorado River between Grand Junction and Glen Canyon; and the Desolation and Rattlesnake Dams on the Green River. 

Had all those structures been built, there’d only be a handful of stretches of actual river remaining. Yikes! 

General view of the Sunnyside Mine and Lake Emma, southwestern Colorado photo via the Denver Public Library

Silverton’s 1996 water scare died down after the rains came that year. Had the call actually gone through, though, the town would have had an interesting way of keeping its water taps from going dry. The Sunnyside Mine would open up the valve on its American Tunnel bulkhead and release the required volume of water from the mine pool — a 1,200-foot-deep underground reservoir of water backed up inside the byzantine workings of the Sunnyside Mine. 

It just goes to show you that water in the West is important and that Western water law is weird.

#PagosaSprings considers raising santitation rates — The Pagosa Springs Sun

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

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

After a Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSS- GID) Board of Directors special meet- ing on Dec. 5, it appears that the board is poised to raise its fee rates to $66.50 — the rate recommended by the hired consultant Roaring Fork Engineering, who analyzed the town’s wastewater system and conducted a rate study analysis for the district.

The rate for the district’s customers is currently set at $53.50, but after problems with a wastewater conveyance system that sends wastewater several miles uphill to the Vista wastewater treatment plant (run by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District, or PAWSD), as well as confronting the reality of aging infrastructure, the board is “seeing increased operational costs and mounting costs for capital projects tomaintainandplanforfutureneeds,” states agenda documentation.

Interim Town Manager Greg Schulte explained that the board is faced with three choices, and that all of them include raising rates. The board could choose to raise rates to the $57.25 number that’s in the 2024 budget draft; it could raise them to the level recommended by Roaring Fork, $66.50; or it could arrive at a number somewhere in the middle.

#Mancos Conservation District to receive $2.48 million federal grant — The #Cortez Journal #MancosRiver #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #aridification

Thanks to a federal grant through the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Mancos Conservation District will build three permanent diversion structures on the Mancos River that will better facilitate irrigation and fish passage. The improved structures, seen here, are tiered so that fish can still swim upstream. (Courtesy of the Mancos Conservation District)

Click the link to read the article on The Cortez Journal website (Reuben M. Schafir). Here’s an excerpt:

The grant, part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is a ‘game-changer’ for the small district.

The funding will be used for infrastructure improvements, such as permanent diversion and water monitoring structures, and 650 acres of wildfire mitigation in the Mancos River watershed…

“We’re so grateful and thankful for this opportunity,” said MCD Executive Director Gretchen Rank. “We are really looking forward to working with our team at the Bureau of Reclamation and our private landowners here.”

The Mancos River headwaters meet north of its namesake community, pass east of Mesa Verde before cutting southwest and ultimately converging with the San Juan River.

The grant will fund the conservation district’s work to benefit irrigators, as well as the ecosystem. The MCD will build three permanent diversion structures, replacing the push-up dams currently in place. The existing dams are made of stream bed material and are washed away regularly and tend to block fish passage. Instead, the push-up dams will be replaced by permanent tiered structures that create a consistent flow of water for irrigators and allow fish to pass…The project is part of an ongoing effort to enhance fish passage in the Mancos River. In addition to the three diversion installations, 10 existing diversion points will be upgraded with advanced metering technology…There are over 50 irrigation ditches in the Mancos River watershed, Wolcott said. Federal funding will also support wildfire mitigation work on 650 acres of forested private land and riparian zone invasive plant removal.

San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.

The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District receives $1 million grant for Snowball water treatment plant expansion — The #PagosaSprings Sun

The water treatment process

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

At the Nov. 14 Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors meeting, District Engineer/Manager Justin Ramsey announced that PAWSD received a $1 million grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) Energy/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund (EIAF) for construction on the Snowball Water Treatment Plant expansion. In an interview with The SUN, Ramsey explained that the grant funding will support the installation of “floating slabs” of concrete as part of the foundation for the expanded plant. He explained that the grant funding will help make up the gap be- tween the $38 million loan PAWSD acquired for the project and the final project cost of just over $40 million. PAWSD obtained “well over $6 million” in grants and principal forgiveness for the project in the last year, Ramsey highlighted.

Biden-Harris Administration Announces $51 Million from Investing in America Agenda for Water Resources and Ecosystem Health — Department of Interior

Click the link to read the release on the Department of Interior website:

President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law investing in environmental projects to increase water availability

11/15/2023 WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior today announced $51 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda for 30 new Environmental Water Resource Projects in 11 states through the Bureau of Reclamation. The collaborative projects focus on water conservation, water management and restoration efforts that will result in significant benefits to ecosystem or watershed health.

“Adequate, resilient and safe water supplies are fundamental to the health, economy and security of every community in our nation,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “The Interior Department is focused on ensuring that funding through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is going to collaborative projects throughout the West that will benefit the American people.”

As part of the Biden-Harris administration’s commemoration of the two-year anniversary of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Michael Brain announced the selections during a visit to Grand Junction, Colorado, where eight of the selected projects are located.

“These locally led initiatives utilize the investments from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to demonstrate quantifiable and sustained water savings, all while providing a direct benefit to the surrounding ecosystems,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael Brain. “These types of projects and robust cooperation with stakeholders are helping to improve watershed health and increase water reliability and access for families, farmers, and Tribes.”

President Biden’s Investing in America agenda represents the largest investment in climate resilience in the nation’s history and is providing much-needed resources to enhance Western communities’ resilience to drought and climate change. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Reclamation is investing a total of $8.3 billion over five years for water infrastructure projects, including rural water, water storage, conservation and conveyance, nature-based solutions, dam safety, water purification and reuse, and desalination. Over the first two years of its implementation, Reclamation selected 372 projects to receive almost $2.8 billion.

The WaterSMART program also advances the Justice40 Initiative, part of the Biden-Harris administration’s historic commitment to environmental justice, which aims to ensure 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain climate, clean energy and other federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that have been marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

Arizona

Altar Valley Conservation Alliance, Surface Water Conservation for Drought and Climate Resilience in the Altar Valley Watershed

Reclamation Funding: $1,213,809         

The Altar Valley Conservation Alliance, in partnership with the Pima County Regional Flood Control District, will use a series of nature-based features in the Altar Wash watershed, southwest of Tucson, Arizona, to slow flows, improve groundwater infiltration, and create surface water habitat for wildlife. The Alliance will install low-tech natural infrastructure in dryland streams facilities across 8,985 acres of the wash, which will slow the runoff, reducing erosion and retaining water in the wash for longer periods. The project will enhance drought and climate change resilience, reduce downstream flood impacts and increase the sustainability of agricultural operations.

California

San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, Hidden Valley Creek Aquatic and Riparian Habitat Restoration Project

Reclamation Funding: $3,000,000

San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District will implement the Hidden Valley Creek Aquatic and Riparian Habitat Restoration Project within the Upper Santa Ana River Watershed, a tributary of the Santa Ana River, in southern California. The project will restore and improve the condition of 21.7 acres of degraded aquatic and riparian habitat, including habitat for the threatened Santa Ana Sucker. The district will construct new and restored stream channel, establish a buffer of native riparian vegetation on each side of the stream, and enhance a 1.2 acre floodplain bench. The project will include non-native plant removal and site revegetation efforts. This restoration will improve water quality, increase habitat connectivity, and provide crucial support for recovering endangered and sensitive species.

Uncompahgre River

Colorado

American Rivers, Inc, Uncompahgre River Multi-Benefit Project

Reclamation Funding: $ 1,198,376        

American Rivers, in partnership with the Ward Water Group and local landowners, will upgrade irrigation infrastructure and enhance aquatic and riparian habitats along one mile of the Uncompahgre River in western, Colorado. The current push-up diversion dam structure has caused channel widening, reduction of aquatic habitat diversity, and a decrease in floodplain connectivity. American Rivers will improve the Ward Irrigation Ditch infrastructure by constructing 2 cross-vane weirs, installing a new concrete stoplog bypass at the headgate, and piping 5,600 linear feet of open irrigation ditches. The project will improve aquatic and riparian habitat within the channel by constructing cross-vane weirs, J-hook vanes, rock vanes, and boulder clusters; revegetating the banks and meanders using willow pole clusters and riparian plant species plugs; and removing invasive vegetation.

Rio Grande through the eastern edge of Alamosa July 5, 2022. Photo credit: Chris Lopez/Alamosa Citizen

Colorado Rio Grande Restoration Foundation, Farmers Union Multi-Benefit Diversion Infrastructure Improvement Project

Reclamation Funding: $1,274,625

The Colorado Rio Grande Restoration Foundation, in partnership with the San Luis Valley Irrigation District, will upgrade the diversion infrastructure for the Farmers Union Canal and Rio Grande #1 Ditch, in southwestern Colorado, to meet agricultural, ecological, recreational, and community needs. The current diversion infrastructure creates a barrier to fish passage, is hazardous for boaters, and requires frequent maintenance. The partners will construct a new diversion structure, incorporating fish passage that will allow fish to access an additional 1.42 river miles of habitat. The project also includes restoration of streambank through the installation of rock and root wad structures and streambed and aquatic habitat through improved sediment transport at the diversion structure. The diversion upgrade will provide safe boat passage and more efficiently deliver water to the Farmers Union Canal and Rio Grande #1 Ditch.

Mancos River in Montezuma County

Mancos Conservation District, Riparian Restoration and Infrastructure Improvements to Better the Ecological Processes of the Mancos Watershed

Reclamation Funding: $2,482,686    

The Mancos Conservation District, in partnership with the Town of Mancos, will implement a multi-benefit project consisting of a suite of infrastructure improvements and nature-based solutions along the Mancos River, a tributary of the San Juan River, in southwestern, Colorado. The partners will upgrade three agricultural diversion structures, install remote metering and telemetry equipment on 10 agricultural pipeline headgates, complete fire mitigation work on 650 upland acres and replace invasive riparian plants with native species adjacent to the Mancos River. The project is downstream of Reclamation’s Jackson Gulch Reservoir and will mitigate wildfire risk to the reservoir and water supplies in the Mancos River Watershed. 

Roan Cliffs Aerial via Rocky Mountain Wild

Middle Colorado Watershed Council, Roan Creek Fish Barrier and Diversion Infrastructure Upgrade

Reclamation Funding: $746,423

The Middle Colorado Watershed Council, working in partnership with Garfield County, will install a fish barrier to prevent non-native fish migration, and upgrade a diversion structure on Roan Creek, in western Colorado. The upper portion of Roan Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River, contains a unique native fish assemblage comprised of Colorado River cutthroat trout, bluehead sucker, Paiute sculpin, and speckled dace. Non-native fish in the Roan Creek watershed harm the river system’s ecology by predating on or hybridizing with the unique native species. Construction of a fish barrier will effectively eliminate the upstream movement of non-native fish to improve Roan Creek’s aquatic and riparian habitat and protect the native fish.

Purgatoire River in Picketwire Canyon. By cm195902 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/79666107@N00/4120780342/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12792476

Purgatoire Watershed Partnership, Purgatoire River Fish Passage

Reclamation Funding: $2,403,748

The Purgatoire Watershed Partnership will improve fish passage at the Baca-Picketwire diversion dam on the Purgatoire River in downtown Trinidad, Colorado. The Purgatoire River supports a robust assemblage of fish species and is of local and regional interest for conservation. Currently, ecological function is impaired because the existing concrete diversion dam is not passable to fish. This project will restore fish habitat connectivity and enhance recreation opportunities by adding a low-gradient engineered riffle feature that mimics a natural channel. The upgrade will allow fish access to 3.3 miles of main river, wetlands, 20 miles of Raton Creek, and many stream miles within ephemeral drainages, including approximately 4 miles of Moore’s Canyon and 9 miles of Colorado Canyon. The project is also expected to have flood mitigation, sediment transport, and bank stabilization co-benefits.

Los Pinos River

Southern Ute Tribe, Nannice Canal Diversion and Fish Passage Project

Reclamation Funding: $651,920

The Southern Ute Tribe, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and The Nature Conservancy, will implement the Nannice Canal Diversion and Fish Passage project on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in southwestern, Colorado. Part of the BIA-owned and operated Pine River Indian Irrigation project that receives water from Reclamation’s Vallecito Dam, the Nannice Canal Diversion is a low-head dam that sweeps across the Los Pinos River and creates a significant fish barrier. Fish get entrained in the Nannice Canal during low flows and during irrigation season. The Southern Ute Water Resources Division will upgrade the diversion structure and install a fish screen and fish ladder. The project will restore river connectivity, improve fish passage, and eliminate fish entrainment during low flows, while continuing to allow the diversion of Nannice Canal’s decreed water.

August, in the Elk Creek valley. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Trout Unlimited, Inc, Middle Colorado River Agriculture Collaborative: 4 Fish Passage/ Irrigation Diversion Upgrade Projects on Elk Creek-a tributary to the Colorado River

Reclamation Funding: $2,999,595

Trout Unlimited and the Middle Colorado Agriculture Collaborative will upgrade, relocate, or combine six diversion structures to remove instream barriers to fish passage in the Elk Creek west of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. These upgrades will open approximately five miles of aquatic habitat in Elk Creek to fish passage. The project is anticipated to improve stream morphology, increase instream flows, and benefit irrigators by increasing the operational capabilities of the diversions and reducing transmission losses of vital irrigation water.

Agriculture in the U.S. Southwest is at high risk from the impacts of climate change. EcoFlight photo of the North Fork Valley by the Western Slope Conservation Center.

Western Slope Conservation Center, Farmer’s Ditch Improvement Project

Reclamation Funding: $ 1,594,799

The Western Slope Conservation Center, in partnership with North Fork Farmer’s Ditch Association, located in west-central Colorado, will modernize the Farmers ditch diversion and headgate structures to improve upstream fish passage, increase diversion efficiency, and improve safety for boaters. The project will upgrade the existing concrete headgate structure with a long-lasting alternative headgate that is equipped with remote automation technology, enabling more efficient water deliveries to irrigators while maximizing water that remains in the river. In addition, the Center will install graded riffle and small pools and drops to mimic the natural morphology of the river for approximately 200 feet below the diversion to promote upstream fish passage and allow for safe recreational boating.

Hawaii

Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Protecting Forests for Water Supply Sustainability in Molokai, Hawai’i

Reclamation Funding: $936,892

The state of Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Wildlife, will expand protection of native landscapes in the north-eastern portion of Molokai, one of the five Hawaiian Islands. Invasive hooved animals, including feral pigs, deer, and goats, are the main threat to Hawai’i’s original forests, negatively impacting water supply, increasing flood risk and land erosion, and threatening several listed species. The project will reduce populations and associated damage to the forest due to these invasive animals through animal control and installation of fencing to exclude them from 3,340 acres within the Pelekunu Valley. The project will also remove hooved animals from an additional 12,000 acres along the north shore of Molokai in an area with steep terrain that is not possible to fence. The island of Molokai relies on ground water for all fresh water needs and is designated as a groundwater management area by Hawai’i’s Commission of Water Resources Management. The forest provides increased water infiltration into the aquifer and reduces soil erosion and associated water quality issues.

Idaho

City of Pocatello, Rainey Park Stream Restoration and Wetland Creation

Reclamation Funding: $1,635,276

The city of Pocatello, Idaho, will implement a river restoration project on the Portneuf River in downtown Pocatello. The health of the Portneuf River has been severely compromised by flood protection levees and the construction of a concrete channel, which removed hundreds of acres of wetlands when installed. Restoration will be accomplished by moving the river’s existing riprapped levee to an area of city-owned property. A wetland and side channel will be installed adjacent to the levee, along with accessible river access for anglers and floaters. Additionally, a stormwater pond will be installed to capture the first flush of sediment-laden waters from city streets. This project builds on the concepts developed in the 2016 Portneuf River Vision Study and addresses a wide range of environmental goals, including improving hydrologic functions by increasing floodplain, wetland, and riparian habitat areas, and improving water quality.

The Nature Conservancy, Loving Creek Tributaries Restoration and Water Conservation Project

Reclamation Funding: $1,900,217

The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with Idaho Department of Fish and Game and landowners, will complete a suite of nature-based features on four reaches of Loving Creek, located in Blaine County in south central Idaho. The four project locations span the full extent of Loving Creek from its headwaters to the outlet at Silver Creek. Through a combination of in-stream restoration work, sediment removal, and riparian habitat creation, the project will restore 2.75 miles of active stream channel, regenerate riparian and wetland habitat, and remove one fish passage barrier to holistically restore connectivity to 5.72 miles of upstream habitat. The project also will revive upland and agricultural buffer habitat and pipe 1,200 linear feet of open water delivery canal to conserve 9 acre-feet of water, which will remain in Loving Creek as instream flow. Despite improvements in agricultural management and land use practices over the past several decades, water quality and habitat conditions in Silver Creek and its tributaries remain degraded. This project will restore more natural channel morphology, increase habitat complexity, and improve water quality in Loving Creek.

Nez Perce Soil and Water Conservation District, White Road Passage Project

Reclamation Funding: $367,091

The Nez Perce Soil and Water Conservation District will improve anadromous fish habitat for Federally listed Steelhead Trout in the Tom Beall Creek watershed, a tributary to Lapwai Creek, located in northern Idaho. The project will improve watershed health within the boundaries of the Reclamation’s Lewiston Orchard Project. The district will replace an existing culvert with a fish passable structure to support the migration of the Steelhead Trout and additional species including Coho and Chinook Salmon. When completed, the project will provide access to approximately two miles of habitat and reduce area flood risk. The project also will improve water quality to downstream recreational and agricultural water users. The project is supported by the Lapwai Creek Ecological Restoration Strategy developed collaboratively with the Nez Perce Tribe, National Marine Fisheries Service, Idaho Department of Transportation, Nez Perce County, city of Lapwai, city of Culdesac, Lewiston Orchards Irrigation District, a landowner advisory group, and several Idaho state government divisions.

Nez Perce Soil and Water Conservation District, Lower Clearwater Snake Rivers Phase I

Reclamation Funding: $451,889

The Nez Perce Soil and Water Conservation District will undertake the Lower Clearwater Snake Rivers Phase I Project in Culdesac, Nez Perce, and Lewis Counties, in northwest Idaho. The project will improve watershed health within the boundaries of the Reclamation’s Lewiston Orchard Project. The district will enhance anadromous fish habitat for Federally listed Steelhead Trout and improve overall water quality in the Lower Clearwater River Basin. The district will upgrade a culvert for aquatic organism passage, thin approximately 129 acres of forest to mitigate wildfire risk and install over 100 instream wood structures to enhance over 10,000 feet of stream for juvenile steelhead habitat. The project will yield ecological benefits including improved habitat function, optimized flow timing, increased groundwater recharge, and reduced sedimentation.

Trout Unlimited, Inc, Completion of the Alta Harris Creek Boise River Side Channel and Fish Passage Project Along the Boise River

Reclamation Funding: $734,103

Trout Unlimited, together with the city of Boise, Idaho, will improve aquatic ecology in the Boise River by restoring spawning and rearing habitat for salmonid fishes, and providing fish passage connection between the lower Boise River and Barber Pool, downstream of Reclamation’s Arrowrock Dam. The project will enhance 3,800 feet of existing side channel and include construction of 1,600 feet of new side channel, complete riparian revegetation with native plants, and construct of a fish passage facility at Barber Dam. The fishway design will better accommodate fluctuating river flows and variable water surface elevation. Completion of this project will reconnect 2.5 miles of the main-channel Boise River with 5 acres of adjacent riparian habitat and over a mile of side channel for spawning and rearing of juvenile fish. The project also will allow fish to bypass a half mile of the Boise River with a risk for fish entrainment in water delivery canals.

Wood River Land Trust, Warm Springs Preserve Stream Restoration and Irrigation Improvement Project

Reclamation Funding: $1,733,154

Wood River Land Trust, in partnership with the city of Ketchum, Idaho, will enhance and improve the ecological function of the 65 acre Warm Spring Preserve along the Warms Springs Creek in Blaine County, in central Idaho. Warm Springs Creek in the project area has been artificially confined, concentrating flow, and creating incision and floodplain abandonment. There is virtually no floodplain connectivity within the northern half of the project reach. The project will restore 1.3 miles of Warm Springs Creek through instream earthwork to create pools, point bars, and constructed riffles, and installation of woody debris structures to promote in-channel complexity. The project will also create nine acres of adjacent floodplain habitat by lowering the floodplain. The floodplain restoration will be complemented by revegetation with low-water native plant species along the riparian zones and throughout the preserve, which will collectively aid in improvement of water quality and temperature of Warm Springs Creek.

New Mexico

Chama Peak Land Alliance, Increasing Resiliency in the San Juan-Chama Project Headwaters

Reclamation Funding: $3,000,000

The Chama Peak Land Alliance will conduct ecological forest thinning on approximately 2,150 acres to protect source watersheds for Reclamation’s San Juan-Chama Project, the Rio Chama headwaters, and the Rio Brazos headwaters from the impacts of future wildfires. Forests in these headwaters are unnaturally dense and homogenous, putting them at risk of severe wildfires and deterioration of watershed function. These watersheds supply crucial drinking water to the cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and numerous tribes, Pueblos, and rural communities throughout New Mexico. In addition to threatening water supply infrastructure, a severe wildfire could cause water quality impairments, flooding erosion and significant degradation of habitat for fish and wildlife.

Pueblo of Isleta, Restoring Watershed Function and Protecting Sacred Ancestral Sites on the lower Rio Puerco, a tributary of the Rio Grande

Reclamation Funding: $2,487,942

The Pueblo of Isleta will build resilience in the lower Rio Puerco watershed by implementing nature-based watershed restoration techniques to restore natural watershed function on an approximately 30,000 acre parcel of the Comanche Ranch and neighboring lands, in central New Mexico. Forming a part of the Pueblo of Isleta lands, the Comanche Ranch comprises over 90,000 acres of public and private lands and is home to upwards of one hundred sacred ancestral sites, including an important cultural site, the Pottery Mound. The ranch forms an integral part of the Rio Puerco lower watershed, the primary source of sediment to the middle Rio Grande and Reclamation’s Elephant Butte Reservoir. The Pueblo and stakeholders have identified that loss of vegetation and increasingly higher energy monsoonal storms that have resulted in erosion and soil loss throughout the uplands in this region and threaten the cultural sites downstream. The Pueblo will utilize a series of watershed restoration practices that spread and slow runoff flows, increase groundwater infiltration, and reduce erosion, including contour plowing with native seed imprinting, contour stone line and brush weir installation to protect plantings and slow runoff, and riparian restoration and revegetation on a section of the Rio Puerco adjacent to Pottery Mound, including the planting of wild medicinal and traditionally gathered edible plants.

Nevada

Southern Nevada Water Authority, Muddy River Riparian Corridor Improvements at Warm Springs Natural Area

Reclamation Funding: $743,329

The Southern Nevada Water Authority will protect the Warm Springs Natural Area, a 1,250 acre property located in southern Nevada, and downstream habitat from drought impacts. The property is regionally significant as it contains more than 20 perennial springs that form the headwaters of the Muddy River and numerous habitat types. These resources provide habitat for several protected and sensitive species, including the endangered Moapa dace, endangered southwestern willow flycatcher, and threatened yellow-billed cuckoo. The project will widen the riparian corridors along 0.3 miles of the mainstem of the Muddy River and establish mesquite bosques along the corridor, resulting in the creation of 12 acres of new habitat. These actions will increase habitat for listed species, improve hydrologic conditions, lessen wildfire risk, and reduce erosion and sedimentation during flood events. Non-native vegetation will be removed and replaced with native vegetation to restore the area to the natural habitat that existed before the area was converted for agricultural purposes.

Oregon

Crooked River Watershed Council, Lower Crooked River Riparian, Floodplain, and Habitat Restoration Project

Reclamation Funding: $1,400,000         

The Crooked River Watershed Council, working in partnership with the Ochoco Irrigation District, will restore habitat and enhance ecological features on two project sites just downstream from Prineville, Oregon. Hydrology in the Crooked River watershed is impacted by upstream Dams, including Reclamation’s Bowman Dam, leading to loss of floodplain continuity, degraded channel structures, and water quality impairments, impacting native Spring Chinook Salmon and Columbia River Steelhead populations that inhabit the watershed. To address these impairments, the Council will strategically place approximately 130 large wood structures to promote habitat complexity, stabilize eroding streambanks on 3,285 linear feet of stream channel, restore approximately 19 acres of floodplain and upland habitat, improve 0.22 acres of alcove habitat, and create 0.42 acres of wetland.

Deschutes Land Trust, Ochoco Preserve Restoration – Phases 2 and 3

Reclamation Funding: $3,000,000         

The Deschutes Land Trust, with support from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, will restore aquatic, floodplain, and upland habitat across 124 acres on the Ochoco Preserve, located in Crook County, Oregon, adjacent to the city of Prineville. The Crooked River and Ochoco Creek support reintroduced spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead, as well as a host of other native aquatic species. The waterways frequently experience low flows, elevated summer stream temperatures, and poor water quality. These issues are compounded by a lack of suitable habitats for both fish and terrestrial wildlife, and the impacts to river ecology of Reclamation’s Crooked River Project, including Bowman and Ochoco Dams. The Deschutes Land Trust will lead efforts to create over 2 miles of new main baseflow stream channels, 1.5 miles of side channels, over 11 acres of wetland, and restore 37 acres of floodplain and 75 acres of upland habitat, significantly increasing available habitat for native species.

Texas

Menard County Water Control and Improvement District #1, Pipe a 2.5 mile section of the Menard Canal and dedicate 1,100 acre-feet instream

Reclamation Funding: $1,891,500         

Menard County Control and Improvements District #1, in central Texas, will upgrade the Menard Canal irrigation water conveyance system to reduce losses so that more water is kept in the San Saba River for fish and wildlife benefit. A water loss study conducted by U.S. Geological Survey in the summer of 2014 showed that the 6-mile long canal experiences an approximately 50% loss over the first 2.5 miles. The project involves replacing the first 4,000 feet of the unlined Menard Canal with pipe, and re-sloping, reshaping and partially filling the next mile of unlined canal to create a narrower channel profile. Following that narrowed span of canal, the district will pipe an additional 2,000 feet of the canal and install gates to control flow. The district has committed to leaving the majority of the conserved water, 1,100 acre-feet per year instream for a 30 year term. The additional instream flows will contribute significantly to baseflow of the San Saba River and create a more reliable supply of water for downstream aquatic habitat. Sections of the San Saba River downstream from the project that will benefit from the increased flows include critical habitat for the Texas fatmucket and Texas pimpleback mussel species.

Washington

The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Lower Yakima River: Anadromous Fish Survival

Reclamation Funding: $2,248,677

The Yakama Nation, in partnership with the Benton County Conservation District, will improve conditions for anadromous fish species in the Prosser, Snively, and Confluence reaches of the lower Yakima River, in central Washington. The project will address two key elements of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan: fish passage and habitat protection and enhancement. The Yakima Nation will complete instream restoration work to expand a cold-water refuge within the Yakima River mainstem at the confluence of Amon Creek, including construction of 1,400 linear feet of cool water channel habitat and restoration of 20 acres of riparian zone through invasive vegetation removal and revegetation with native species. The Yakima Nation will also complete electrofishing and install a fish trap on the Wanawish Dam to remove and prevent reintroduction of invasive predatory fish species that impede the migration of endangered fish species. These improvements will benefit the federally threatened Middle Columbia River steelhead; spring and fall/summer run Chinook, Coho, and Sockeye salmon; and the Yakima population of Pacific lamprey. The project area is downstream of Reclamation’s Yakima Project, which impacts river flows, temperatures, and habitat conditions in this area.

The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, Yakima River Mile 89.5 Side Channel and Floodplain Restoration

Reclamation Funding: $600,000

The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation will reconnect approximately 9 miles of side channel along the Yakima River within the Yakama Reservation, in south central Washington. Upstream flow regulations tied to Reclamation’s Yakima Project have constricted historical floodplain processes and cut-off side channel access for native fish species, leading to degradation of riparian and wetland habitat areas. The Yakama Nation will excavate five historic side channel sections connecting to the mainstem of the Yakima River, install two constructed logjam inlet structures to ensure fish access to the mainstem of the river, and install three stream ford crossings to access the project site. The excavation of side channels will increase winter and spring off-channel habitat utilized by Middle Columbia River Steelhead and restore hydrologic connectivity to a total of 135 acres of floodplain and wetland habitat. The project is supported by the Yakima Basin Integrated 10-Year Action Plan developed by water and land management stakeholders.

The County of Chelan, Camas Meadows Streamflow and Ecosystem Restoration Project

Reclamation Funding: $468,903

The Chelan County Natural Resource Department, in coordination with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, will restore wet meadow hydrology in Camas Meadows, a unique meadow ecosystem within the steep canyon drainages of north-central Cascade Mountains in Washington. The 1,300 acre meadow flows into Camas Creek, a tributary of Peshastin Creek, in the Wenatchee Watershed. Due to widespread floodplain disconnection and irrigation withdrawals, the Peshastin sub-basin is among the top three flow-limited sub- basins in the Wenatchee Watershed, with chronic low flows and high stream temperatures limiting recovery of ESA-listed steelhead and spring Chinook that reside throughout Peshastin Creek and in the lower reaches of Camas creek. Historic land use practices have resulted in Camas Meadows being confined into ditch-like channels with incision ranging from 4 feet to 8 feet, causing rapid and early drying of the meadow. This projectwill restore the natural hydrology of the meadow by replacing the meadow outlet culvert, re-grading the channel and meadow elevations, installing channel-spanning habitat log structures, and re-planting with native shrubs and plants. The project will restore floodplain connectivity and wet meadow hydrology for a modeled additional water storage of 180 acre-feet and an anticipated year-round baseflow contribution of 0.2 cfs.

Kittitas Conservation Trust, Gold Creek Restoration Phase 2 RM 2-3 Implementation

Reclamation Funding: $2,475,000

Kittitas Conservation Trust will implement an in-stream restoration project on river mile 2-3 of Gold Creek, in Kittitas County, Washington. Located just east of Snoqualmie Pass in Kittitas County, Washington, Gold Creek is the headwaters of the upper Yakima River and flows for approximately 8 miles from the Alpine Lakes Wilderness into Keechelus Reservoir in the Central Cascade Mountains. Upstream fish passage is blocked at Reclamation’s Keechelus Dam on the downstream end of the reservoir. Prolonged dewatering conditions and a century’s worth of anthropogenic channel widening have dramatically impacted the habitat and health of the creek’s Federally threatened Bull Trout. The Trust will install a total of 28 large woody debris structures along the river mile. The instream wood replenishment will create habitat complexity, including deeper pools with shaded cover, provide relief from high velocity flood flows, and ensure optimal habitat for both the successful rearing of juvenile Bull Trout and migration of mature fish. The project also will provide floodplain reconnection, which will improve groundwater recharge from flood flows, and reduce the likelihood of future flood events further harming the channel morphology.

Kittitas Reclamation District, Kittitas Reclamation District – South Branch Piping

Reclamation Funding: $3,000,000         

The Kittitas Reclamation District, located in central Washington, will restore in-stream flows and provide benefits to fish and wildlife in Mantash Creek, an over-appropriated tributary of the Yakima River. The project will involve the piping of a 2,656 linear feet section of the currently unlined South Branch Canal, which is part of Reclamation’s Yakima Project. Once piped, the district anticipates conserving approximately 385 acre-feet per year currently lost to seepage. The district will designate this otherwise lost water through an allocation, management, and protection agreement, that involves careful monitoring of stream flow on Mantash Creek to maintain optimal conditions for Yakima Basin fish species, including Coho and Chinook Salmon, Mid-Columbia Steelhead, and Bull Trout. The Washington State Department of Ecology is responsible for water protection and enforcement and will ensure that conserved water stays instream.

Wyoming

City of Casper, North Platte River Restoration — Izaak Walton Reach

Reclamation Funding: $3,000,000

The city of Casper, in collaboration with members of the Platte River Revival Committee, will complete a river and riparian restoration project on the Izaak Walton reach of the North Platte River in Natrona County, Wyoming. The North Platte River is a Blue Ribbon trout fishery, but this reach suffers from significant bank erosion, tight riverbend geometry, a lack of riffle-pool complex development, poor bedform complexity, meager floodplain connectivity, and is characterized by a low quality riparian vegetation community. These conditions have resulted in degraded habitat for trout as well as native aquatic and terrestrial species. These characteristics have also contributed to reduced ecological function, adversely affected the regional municipal water supply, degraded aesthetic values, and impaired river recreation. The city of Casper will restore over 5,150 linear feet of the North Platte River that will involve regrading of the riverbed, banks, and floodplain to create appropriate geometry and bedform complexity, reduce riverbank degradation, and improve instream and riparian habitats.

Trout Unlimited, Inc, Sage Creek Watershed Restoration for Drought Resilience and Sediment Control

Reclamation Funding: $1,513,538

Trout Unlimited, working in partnership with Wyoming Game and Fish, will complete a multi-part restoration project, including nature-based features, in the Sage Creek Watershed, located in southwestern Wyoming. The project will involve the installation of 50 beaver dam analogs, 160 aggradation structures, and an aquatic invasive species barrier along a 5.6 mile stretch of Sage Creek. These installations will be complemented by a robust invasive plant removal and native riparian reseeding along 7.6 miles of both the Sage and Trout Creeks. Together, these actions are estimated to restore 453 acres of valley floor habitat and protect 79.5 linear miles of aquatic habitat from invasive trout that inhabit Reclamation’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir just downstream of the project site. The project is additionally expected to reduce channel incision and erosion to reduce sediment and nutrient delivery to Flaming Gorge Reservoir, protect native trout from hybridization, and increase groundwater recharge and surface water availability.

Archuleta County considers taking over #waterquality plan reviews — The #PagosaSprings Sun

Septic system

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

The Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) heard a proposal from Planning Manager Owen O’Dell and Water Quality Manager Kevin Torrez for the county Water Quality Department to take over plan reviews from San Juan Basin Public Health (SJBPH) at its Oct. 24 work session…[Kevin Torrez] explained that the Water Quality Department would oversee licensing of local septic system installers…Development Director Pamela Flowers stated that the cost for licensing would be approximately $50, which would cover administering a test created by the state and providing a certification document. [Torrez] highlighted that the Archuleta County Board of Health would ap- prove OWTS variances and that OWTS inspections would also occur upon transfer of title for a property with an OWTS…

Torrez briefly covered inspection and maintenance of high-level treatment systems before moving on to discussing lagoons, noting that lagoons are allowed if they were permitted before 1967. He indicated that there is an after- the-fact permitting system for unpermitted lagoons, but new lagoons are not allowed…Torrez explained that the Water Quality Department would inspect these lagoons and determine if they are functional and can receive a permit or if they need to be abandoned…

In response to a request for legal advice from [Verionica] Medina, [Todd] Weaver stated that this would be possible, noting that the laws governing the dissolution of health districts are limited. He added that he did not foresee a legal challenge to this change.

The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District board hears draft 2024 budget — The #PagosaSprings Sun

Near Pagosa Springs. Photo credit: Greg Hobbs

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

Discussion of the budget opened with PAWSD Business Manager Aaron Burns stating that the budget presentation was planned to include explanations of debt service coverage and projections — that PAWSD would have approximately $2,622,985 in excess debt service coverage in 2024 — a budget summary, a detailed examination of budget line items and discussion of 2024 capital projects. Burns noted that PAWSD’s actual expenses in a year are often lower than the budgeted expenses, which he partially attributed to difficulties in finding contractors or employees to complete the projects…

The board and District Engineer/ Manager Justin Ramsey then discussed the decision by the board at the September meeting to move forward with constructing workforce housing on a parcel adjacent to Running Iron Ranch. Ramsey noted that the funding in the budget would support initial work on creating such housing. PAWSD board member Glenn Walsh suggested that the board had not decided on the exact format for this housing, but that he believed the board was committed to “doing something really smart that helps our employees.”

[…]

Burns then reviewed the operating budget considerations, noting that the district is budgeting for 38 full- time equivalents — up one from last year — and the budget includes a 6 percent “across-the-board” wage increase. He stated that the workers’ compensation experience modification for the district decreased from 1.42 to 0.78 in 2024 and that the health insurance expenses are projected to increase by 5 percent, which he noted is less than expected…

Burns explained that the district’s annual debt service coverage ratio in the water fund dipped to a low of 0.86 in 2023 due to payments on loans for the Snowball plant expansion unex- pectedly beginning in 2023, but that the district would correct the coverage ratios in 2024 due to the ongoing rate study for the district.

Navajo Dam operations update October 31, 2023: Bumping releases down to 400 cfs #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Map credit: USBR

From email from Reclamation (Susan Behery):

In response to reduced irrigation demand and sufficient forecast flows in the San Juan River Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 450 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 400 cfs for tomorrow, October 31st, at 8:00 AM.  

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell. 

Navajo Dam operations update: Bumping down to 450 cfs October 24, 2023 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

SAN JUAN RIVER The San Juan River at the hwy 64 bridge in Shiprock, NM. June 18, 2021. © Jason Houston

From email from Reclamation (Susan Behery)

In response to sufficient forecast flows in the San Juan River Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 500 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 450 cfs for tomorrow, October 24th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell. 

Water Year 2023 ends: #Aridification Watch — Jonathan P. Thompson @Land_Desk

Credit: US Drought Monitor via Jonathan P. Thompson/Land Desk

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

The 2023 water year ended Sept. 30, and wow was it a weird one. It was snowy, then wet, then warm, then dry. It was La Niña acting like El Niño, then El Niño acting a bit like La Niña (there’s a gender-bending quip in there somewhere, but I’ll refrain). When the whopper of a winter ended, it really looked like we’d have a near-record water year. 

But in the Southwest, after a relatively cool June, someone cranked up the regional thermostat and turned off those waterspouts — bringing the drought back into regions that had been saturated at the end of the winter. In most places hopes for a strong — if late — monsoon were dashed. Phoenix experienced its driest monsoon on record (.15” precipitation compared to the 2.43” average), during a record-breaking summer for heat (56 110+ F days so far, breaking the 2020 record of 53 days). Tucson fared better, with a slightly below-average-precipitation monsoon, but it was also its hottest monsoon on record, with an average high of 103.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Arizona was almost drought-free in early July; now nearly the whole state is plagued by abnormal dryness.

Further north, things are looking better. The precipitation graphs for the water year in southwestern Colorado show the bountiful winter followed by the dry summer. But most high-country weather stations still ended the year with above normal precipitation amounts.

Credit: NRCS/Jonathan Thompson

Public Lands Monitor

Something interesting has been happening over the last several months at the field office level of the Bureau of Land Management. The agency — often referred to as the Bureau of Mining and Livestock — has released long-term plans that actually prioritize conservation and land stewardship over extraction. It’s an indication that even as the Biden administration approves a few big oil and gas projects, like ConocoPhillips’ Willow in Alaska, it is also taking enduring action to reduce extractive industries’ impacts on public lands. For example:

  • The Grand Junction and Colorado River Valley field offices’ resource management plan’s preferred alternative would block future oil and gas leasing on nearly 1.6 million acres in Western Colorado. The land in question isn’t in the oil and gas hotspots such as the Piceance Basin; it’s designated as merely low to medium oil and gas potential, meaning maybe it wouldn’t have been drilled anyway. Still, it’s big enough to rile the industry and, of course, Rep. Lauren Boebert, who took time off from vaping and groping her fellow theatre-goer in public to condemn the “land grab” because, well, she’s outraged about all that groping and grabbing, apparently. And, you know, because she’s Boebert. You’ve got a few more weeks to comment and maybe offset some of that lunacy.
  • Up in Wyoming, the Rock Springs field office issued its own plan for about 3.6 million acres in the southern part of the state, including the Red Desert. There’s a lot here, but just to distill it down to a couple of eye-poppers, the preferred alternative includes:
    • 1.6 million acres of ACECs, or areas of critical environmental concern, which are given an extra layer of protections and restrictions on development;
    • 2.19 million acres closed to oil and gas development);
    • 1.99 million acres withdrawn from hardrock mining claims;
    • 2.48 million acres closed to wind and solar.
    • 225,537 acres closed to all off-highway vehicles, with OHVs limited to designated roads and trails on 3.37 million acres, leaving about 13,000 acres open to OHVs.
    • 3.58 million acres open to livestock grazing, following in the Biden administration’s pattern of favoring livestock operations over other extractive uses.
  • Environmental groups generally lauded the plan, with the Wyoming Outdoor Council calling it “extremely favorable to conservation,” especially of the treasured Red Desert. And then there was the response from the Dipsh%* Society …. errr certain extremist Wyoming lawmakers. State Rep. John Bear, for example, said the plan would “take away the livelihood of hundreds of ranchers.” Bear apparently didn’t make it past the cover photo of the document to see that 99.9% of the area in question would remain open to grazing. Meanwhile, Rep. Bill Allemand, not wanting to lose his seat as Mayor of Crazytown, called the RMP (along with Biden’s other environmental policies) “probably the biggest disaster in the history of the United States,” and said it would affect more people than “the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 combined.” Seriously? Where do they find these people? Weigh in by sending your thoughts to the BLM.
  • And, finally, on a related (but slightly different) note, the BLM’s Moab field office released its final 🏍️ motorized travel management plan 🛻 for the 300,000-acre Labyrinth Canyon and Gemini Bridges area. Previously there were more than 1,000 miles of routes open to off-highway vehicles in the planning area, which lies between Green River (the town) and Dead Horse Point (on the north and south ends) and the Green River and Hwy. 191. Under the new plan there are about 800 miles open to OHVs, about 100 miles of which are limited.
Miles of routes open and closed to OHVs under the BLM’s new Labyrinth Canyon/Gemini Bridges travel management plan. “Alt. A” was the existing situation. “Selected Network” is the new situation under the record of decision. Source: BLM.

Utah environmentalists generally are pleased. “Visitors will finally be able to experience stunning Labyrinth Canyon without the noise, dust, and damage that accompanies motorized recreation,” said Laura Peterson, staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “For too long, the BLM has prioritized off-road vehicle use at the expense of Utah’s incredible natural and cultural resources. The Labyrinth Canyon plan represents an important step forward to guide the management of Utah’s public lands and reduce the impacts of off-road vehicle routes in this area.”

Oil and Gas Tracker

Some 163 barrels of crude and 6,430 barrels of oil and gas wastewater spilled from a tank battery into Alvey Wash outside Escalante, Utah, in September. The material then flowed 17 miles down the drainage, crossing a portion of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in the process. Citation Oil and Gas, the operator of the facility, apparently has a slimy history in the region, racking up at least 20 spills in the last 25 years. Erica Walz got the scoop on the story for The Insider, and the Deseret News’ Kyle Dunphey followed up with Citation’s sordid track record.

***

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon just turned down $5 million in federal funds aimed at helping oil and gas operators plug and reclaim low-producing “stripper” wells. This program, which is purely voluntary, would reduce emissions of methane and volatile organic compounds and other nasty stuff now, and prevent these wells from being abandoned and orphaned in the future, as stripper wells often are. And it wouldn’t affect production all that much because, well, these are low producing wells. But nope, Gordon — who used to be far more reasonable than he is now — doesn’t want it because it might harm the industry and might marginally reduce oil and gas tax revenues. Such is the state of petro-politics today (i.e. positively nutty).

#AnimasRiver: The 1911 Flood: Could it happen again? — @Land_Desk (Jonathan P. Thompson) #SanJuanRiver #RioGrande #DoloresRiver #GreenRiver #ColoradoRiver

Flood damage wrought by Junction Creek in October 1911. This is looking south down Main Avenue from around the current location of Durango High School.

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

At around four a.m. on October 6, 1911, Navajo Methodist Mission Superintendent J.N. Simmons woke up to find himself and the mission near Farmington, New Mexico, surrounded by water. It wasn’t a total surprise. He and two other staffers—Frank B. Tice and Walter Weston—had received the flood alarm the previous day, but had chosen to stay, certain that the San Juan River’s waters would never reach them, and if they did, the brand new, three-story cement-block mission building, watched over by God, would provide an unsinkable refuge. They were wrong.1.

The rain began in the San Juan Mountains late on the morning of October 4, 1911. It came down gently at first, slowly gaining intensity over the course of the day. By evening the tropical storm was a torrent, dropping two inches of precipitation on Durango in just 12 hours, nearly twice what the town normally gets during all of October. Weather watchers in Gladstone, above Silverton, recorded eight inches of rain on October 5—a virtual high country hurricane.

Design for the whitewater park at Smelter Rapids via the City of Durango

Once-gurgling streams jumped from their banks and twisted steel railroad tracks into contorted sculpture, decimated roads and bridges, and demolished barns. Junction Creek tore out the Main Avenue and railroad bridges before adding its load to the Animas, which carried an estimated 25,000 cubic feet per second of water as it ran through town. It’s an almost incomprehensible volume. A good spring runoff these days might lift the waters to 6,000 cfs, high enough for the river to leave its banks and spread across the floor of the Animas Valley, and to turn Smelter Rapid into a churning hellhole for rafters.

The water unmoored the railroad bridge near Durango’s fish hatchery and carried it downstream, despite the fact that two full coal cars had been parked on the bridge to provide ballast. The river jumped its channel and headed onto 15th street, creating a five-foot-deep river that today would go right through a Burger King. further downriver the waters washed away 100 tons of toxic slag from the Durango smelter, and carried away several homes from Santa Rita, on the opposite shore.

The Animas River rushing beneath the Main Avenue bridge in Durango, Oct. 1911. Note the partially submerged house located about where the VFW is now and the water crossing Main near where Burger King is currently located. Photo credit Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College.

Sixty miles east of Durango, in Pagosa Springs, the upper San Juan River swept away more than 20 structures and destroyed the town water plant, hospital, and jail. Its power plant “was wiped out of existence, nothing left but the water wheel.” The Bayfield Blade called Arboles, a village near the junction of the San Juan and Piedra Rivers, “a thing of the past.” That was a bit of hyperbole, but maybe also prophetic: the community survived that flood, but was later buried under the waters of Navajo Reservoir. Further east the Rio Grande grew even grander and threatened to carry parts of Española, Bernalillo, and Albuquerque down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Over in Dolores, Colorado, the river peaked out at 10,000 cfs, more than 20% greater than the second highest peak hit in 1949. The raging river of sorrow ripped out railroad tracks, washed out roads, and inundated the town under four feet of water and four inches of mud, carrying away houses and the boardwalk. My great grandfather, John Malcolm Nelson, had come down from Ouray in early October to look at buying land in the Ute Strip — and he did, down at Sunnyside Mesa. But his trip back north was delayed by the fact that every bridge and road in the region was washed out.

In Farmington the seething monsters of the upper San Juan and the Animas joined forces, spilling over the banks and onto the flats on either side of the river, where the Navajo mission sat. Simmons and his fellow staffers sent the children to higher ground at about midnight as a precaution, equipping each with a blanket and loaf of bread. Then they went to bed, not realizing their own mistake until they awoke four hours later.

Somehow, Weston was able to quickly escape on horseback (he may have snuck out earlier). Tice chose to stick around, heading for the top floor of the structure. Simmons ran out and climbed atop an outhouse, apparently in order to launch himself onto a horse. Simmons missed the horse and ended up in the water, instead, carried rapidly downstream alongside dead animals, haystacks, and pieces of people’s homes.

Tice, it seemed, was the only survivor, and as the sun came up, onlookers gathered on the opposite shore. They watched Tice climb from the second story to the third, finally climbing onto the roof with his dog. It seemed safe enough; the water stopped rising after it inundated the third story. Little did he know, the waters were slowly dissolving the building underneath him, and it, the roof, the dog, and finally Tice were all swallowed up by the current.

The Shiprock Indian School campus was covered with water five feet deep, washing away several adobe buildings, and the fairgrounds, prettied up for the annual fair, were covered with a torrent of muddy water. Every bridge in San Juan County, Utah, where a miniature oil boom was on, was torn loose and carried away by the angry torrent; 150,000 cubic feet of water shot past the little town of Mexican Hat every second, according to a 2001 USGS paleo-flood hydrology investigation. That’s about 100 times the volume of water in the river during a typical March or April, a popular time to raft that section. It took out the then-new Goodridge bridge — some 39 feet above the river’s normal surface — tore through the Goosenecks, backed up in Grand Gulch, deposited trees on sandstone benches high above where the river normally flows, and finally combined with the raging Colorado River to create a liquid leviathan of unknown volume that wreaked more havoc through the Grand Canyon and beyond.

***

The 1911 event is typically considered to be the Four Corners Country’s biggest flood, based on streamflow estimates, anecdotal accounts, and the damage wrought. Since then it has been rivaled only by the June 1927 flood, when the Animas River in Durango reached 20,000 cubic feet per second; and in 1949 and 1970 when the high-water mark was about 12,000 cfs and 11,600 cfs, respectively. That might make 1911 seem like a freak event — a once-in-a-millennium confluence of factors. Combine that with the fact that the river’s annual peak streamflows have trended downward over the last century or so, and a 1911 repeat seems less and less likely.

But these waters are muddied, so to speak, by the relatively short timeline and limited geographical scope we’re working with. Many streams didn’t have gages on them at the time, and even those that were present weren’t always accurate (most of the 1911 figures are estimates, not actual measurements). Even though most of the “old-timers” said it was the biggest flood they’d ever seen or heard of in these parts, we have to remember that they tended to be white guys, and white settler-colonists had only been in the area for four decades or so. Not that memories of weather events are ever all that reliable.

A swollen San Juan River nearly wiped Montezuma Creek and Bluff City, Utah, off the map back in 1884 (the 1911 flood wreaked less destruction). Yet there were virtually no stream gages, so the magnitude of that earlier event is hard to quantify and, besides, maybe the later flood was less destructive because there were fewer homes and infrastructure in the flood’s path by then.

Also, when one looks beyond the San Juan Basin watershed, one finds streamflows that far exceed those of October 1911. On the USGS stream gage on the Green River in Green River, Utah, the 1911 flood (which was at the beginning of the 1912 water year, by the way) ranks as just the 5th largest flow since 1895. And 1911 places fourth overall on the Rio Grande at Otowi Bridge, outdone by 1920, 1941, and 1904.

We can extend the timeline dramatically by turning to paleoflood hydrology, which is sort of like dendrochronology, except instead of looking at tree rings to understand past climate, it uses geological evidence — slackwater lines, debris — to reconstruct the magnitude and frequency of past floods. I skimmed the available literature, including this Bureau of Reclamation survey of studies, and here’s what stood out:

  • The 1911 flood was likely the largest on the Animas River over the last several hundred years or more. On the San Juan River near Bluff, researchers found no evidence of floods higher than the 1911 debris, indicating it “may represent the largest flood on the San Juan River for a much longer time period than 1880-2001.” In any event, 1911 was larger than the 1884 flood, even in Bluff.
  • On the Colorado River at Lees Ferry the 1884 flood was most likely the largest during white settler-colonial times, with an estimated flow of about 300,000 cubic feet per second (there were no gages there, yet), which would have provided quite the ride through the Grand Canyon. Some researchers believe an 1862 flood had a flow of about 400,000 cfs. Holy big water, Batman!
  • Extend the timeline further and the ride gets even wilder: A 1994 USGS paleoflood study found evidence of a 500,000 cfs flood at Lees Ferry between 350 and 750 A.D.; and a 2018 reconnaissance found slackwater deposits indicating a flow of 700,000 cfs. I’m sure it provided quite the scene for Puebloan observers looking down from the canyon rim. If you happened to be in the canyon at that time? Yikes.
From: “A 4500 Year Record of Large Floods on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, Arizona,” by Jim O’Connor et al.
  • A study of floods on the Colorado near Moab found that, as is the case on the Animas River, there were a lot of large floods between the 1880s and 1930s, but peak streamflows have followed a decreasing trend ever since. One study suggested this resulted from: land-use changes, particularly a severe reduction in grazing after 1932; greater regulation of the river by upstream dams and so forth; greater upstream water consumption; and a decrease in intense, large flood-producing storms.
  • The Colorado River near Moab has experienced 44 floods during the last two millennia with flows ranging from 63,500 cfs to 325,000 cfs. (For context, the 1983 runoff, which threatened Glen Canyon Dam, reached 62,000 cfs on this stretch of river and in 1984 it hit 70,300). Most of those floods occurred during the last 500 years.
From “A 2000 year natural record of magnitudes and frequencies for the largest Upper Colorado River floods near Moab, Utah” by Greenbaum et al.

Warming temperatures, like those resulting from human-wreaked, fossil fuel burning-exacerbated climate change, can increase the intensity of storms and the amount of precipitation. That could, potentially, lead to bigger floods. So even though climate change has mostly manifested as drought in the Four Corners Country, it could also have the effect of putting a 1911-like storm on steroids. And with El Niño brewing in the Pacific, we might see some whopper storms sooner rather than later. Or not. Either way, though, it seems silly to assume the 1911 flood won’t repeat someday. Maybe next time it will be even worse.

That 1911 storm dissipated over the next couple of days, leaving a bright sun to illuminate the river valleys, newly scoured of the roads, houses, bridges, railroad tracks, and other detritus that humans had littered the valleys with over the previous decades. But the folks of the San Juan Basin soon went to work rebuilding — quite often in exactly the same spots that had flooded so catastrophically.

I used to see that as a combination of foolishness, hubris, obliviousness, and stubbornness all woven into a tapestry of denial. Surely they couldn’t have believed a flood of that magnitude would never occur again.

Looking from Main Avenue in Durango (or thereabouts) toward the Day House. The Animas Brewing Co. now stands about where the right, foreground house is.

And yet, now that I’ve fallen victim to a flood, or at least my home has, I finally get it. What do I know about their circumstances? Maybe they had invested everything they owned into this little plot of land and a home, and they have nowhere else to go. Maybe they are just so wedded to this particular place that they figure it’s worth the risk to build in a 100-year flood plain. Maybe they were just tenacious bastards shaking their fist at the sky in defiance.

What I do know is that if and when there is a repeat of the 1911 flood, or that whopper that sent 700,000 cfs into the Grand Canyon, it will leave some serious destruction in its wake.

The 1911 flood wrecked a lot of infrastructure, but the human death toll was much smaller than one might have expected. Among the handful of fatalities was Frank B. Tice, of the Navajo Methodist Mission, whose body was found 20 miles downstream from where he was swept away.

But there was something else, too. On an island in the San Juan River, somewhere between Farmington and Shiprock, a man huddled next to a small fire, cooking apples that he had snagged as they bobbed past. After falling in the water he had grabbed ahold of some debris, and it had carried him for miles until he finally reached the island, cold, wet and hungry but, maybe miraculously, alive. It was J.N. Simmons, of the Navajo mission.1

A 1998 paleo-flood investigation determined the measurement was in error and it was more likely that about four inches fell across a wider area. In any event, the author of the report does not dispute the magnitude of the flood that resulted.

San Juan River Basin. Graphic credit Wikipedia.
Dolores River watershed
Green River Basin
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Navajo Dam operations update September 22, 2023 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The San Juan River, below Navajo Reservoir. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

September 21, 2023

Due to forecast sufficient flows in the critical habitat reach of the San Juan River, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 850 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 800 cfs for Friday September 22nd, at 4:00 AM.

Reclamation continues to release project water to fulfill a project water release request by the Jicarilla Apache Nation’s subcontractors, The Nature Conservancy and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, in addition to the normally scheduled release required to maintain the minimum downstream target baseflow.  

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell. 

Navajo Dam operations update: Bumping down to 850 cfs #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The San Juan River near Navajo Dam, New Mexico, Aug. 23, 2015. Photo credit: Phil Slattery Wikimedia Commons

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

September 19, 2023

Due to the forecast for the coming week indicating sufficient flows in the critical habitat reach of the San Juan River, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 900 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 850 cfs for Wednesday September 20th, at 4:00 AM.

Reclamation continues to release project water to fulfill a project water release request by the Jicarilla Apache Nation’s subcontractors, The Nature Conservancy and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, in addition to the normally scheduled release required to maintain the minimum downstream target baseflow.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.  

Navajo Dam operations update: Bumping up to 900 cfs September 16, 2023 #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

Aerial view of Navajo Dam and Reservoir. Photo credit: USBR

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

Reclamation will be releasing additional water over the next two weeks to fulfill a request by the Jicarilla Apache Nation’s subcontractors, The Nature Conservancy and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. 

The release will be increased to 900 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Saturday, September 16th , at 4:00 AM.  The release may vary slightly as weather and river flows dry out next week, but should remain near this elevated level through 4:00 AM on September 27th.

Navajo Dam operations update: Bumping down to 700 cfs on September 14th #SanJuanRiver #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The outflow at the bottom of Navajo Dam in New Mexico. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):

With the current rainfall pattern adding sufficient hydrology to the river system, flows downstream in the critical habitat have increased and are forecast to remain high. For this reason, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 800 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 700 cfs for tomorrow, September 14th, at 4:00 AM.

Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell).  The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area.  The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell. 

Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District rate study update — The #PagosaSprings Sun

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

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

At its Aug. 24 meeting, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors heard a presentation from Carol Malesky of Stantec on the rate study Stantec is performing for the district. Malesky explained that the rate study being presented to the board is the first part of the study Stantec is working on and that the study aims to evaluate what the district’s water and wastewater funding needs will be over the next 10 years…

She stated that the water and wastewater funds were analyzed as separate utilities, which she noted is a “sound” management practice, and that the study attempts to mini- mize impacts on PAWSD customers…

Following further discussion of the details of the CIF calculation, Malesky explained that, if PAWSD does nothing, water rate revenue will increase at the speed of growth from just below $5 million in 2024 to approximately $5.95 million in 2032. She noted that this growth in revenues would be eclipsed by the revenue demands for the district, with the water fund projected to fall below the reserve requirement in 2027 and to go into the negative in 2028…

Malesky then presented the pro-

posed water rate changes, with a 6 percent increase for 2023, 3 percent annual increases between 2024 and 2027, 3.5 percent annual increases between 2028 and 2030, and no increases between 2031 and 2032. She stated that these increases would take an average monthly water bill for 6,000 gallons of water from $54 in 2023 to $60.74 in 2027 to $67.35 in 2030.