Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: Western Resource Advocates
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Politics website (Marianne Goodland). Here’s an excerpt:
July 31, 2026
Calling it a balanced approach that offers flexibility and predictability, the plan released by the U.S. Department of the Interior cuts the allocation of Arizona, California and Nevada, while sparing Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming for now…Under the plan, the Lower Basin states could face collective cuts up to 3 million acre-feet through 2036, “subject to hydrology,” according to a news release by the Department of the Interior. That’s enough water to serve more than 25 million people a year. The plan would also allow annual releases between 5 and 12 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, the basin’s second-largest reservoir. Under the 10-year federal framework, water management decisions will be made every two years…
Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek said in a statement Friday that the plan, known as a final environmental impact statement, “strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability for the Colorado River system that is vital to the 40 million people who rely on it, given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users.”
Between 2020 and 2024, the average consumptive use in the Colorado River Basin was 13.1 million acre-feet. That is broken down by:
Upper Basin: 3.8 million acre-feet (29%)
Lower Basin: 6.5 million acre-feet (49%)
Mexico use: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%)
Evaporation: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%)
At the time the 1922 compact was signed, the seven states had a combined population of about six million — roughly the size of Colorado’s population today…
She said last month that she “has no idea what that process would look like, constantly negotiating every two years.”
“The basin is experiencing increased aridity due to climate variability, and long-term drought and low-runoff conditions are expected in the future,” wrote the Bureau of Reclamation in the summary. “These conditions will exacerbate the now widely recognized imbalance between water supply and demand in the basin. Robust and flexible guidelines are needed to manage the Colorado River system and its resources under a broad range of potential future hydrologic conditions.”
[…]
The two reservoirs are currently governed by guidelines established in 2007 that are set to expire this year, and many agree the plan has failed to protect the Colorado River system…The final proposal does not provide specifics for how water will be distributed across the basin, with the Bureau of Reclamation describing it as a “framework” that identifies key triggers and ranges for developing future operating guidelines at Lake Powell and Lake Mead. It sets up a plan to negotiate 2-year operating plans for the reservoirs through 2036…The final statement provides a range of alternatives, including the Bureau of Reclamation’s “preferred” option. Each alternative sets guidelines for how it will reduce or increase annual consumptive water use allocations from Lake Mead to the Lower Basin states; store and deliver water saved through conservation efforts; manage and deliver surplus water; manage activities and make cuts above Lake Powell; and more.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
After Utah and six other states along the Colorado River failed to reach a deal on how to share its dwindling water supply, the federal government on Friday released its own 10-year outline.
Colorado River Collaborative
This article is published through the Colorado River Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative supported by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air at Utah State University. See all of our stories about how Utahns are impacted by the Colorado River atgreatsaltlakenews.org/coloradoriver
Under the proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada would share in cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet per year. The framework doesn’t mandate cuts for Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Instead, it identifies a conservation goal for the Upper Basin — 200,000 acre-feet per year — about as much as Utah’s Deer Creek and East Canyon reservoirs together can hold. The plan would also allow for smaller annual releases from Lake Powell of down to 5 million acre-feet, compared to the current 6 million acre-feet, with new operating guidelines every two years.
Utah’s chief Colorado River negotiator, Gene Shawcroft, praised the proposal on Friday, telling reporters it recognizes the reality of the water available, not just the demand. But he emphasized it provides a broad framework, with the details to follow in coming days.
“I would just simply say, this is a bridge, not a destination,” Shawcroft said in a virtual news conference. “It certainly could be a bridge over troubled waters, but perhaps a bridge over no waters. We just aren’t quite sure.”
He and Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, were still reading through the 2,600 pages contained in the bureau’s environmental impact statement released Friday.
Haas said the state will know more about what it’s contending with when it gets a copy of a two-year operations plan for 2027 and 2028 in coming days, though the exact timeline wasn’t clear.
The Colorado River is pictured where if flows near Hite, just beyond the upper reaches of Lake Powell, on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across the U.S. and Mexico, contributing 27% of Utah’s water supply. It’s shrinking because of drought, overuse and hotter temperatures linked to climate change.
This year’s record-high temperatures and lowest snowpack on record aren’t helping. Normally, Colorado River runoff is about 13 million acre-feet, Shawcroft said. Now it’s 3.5 million acre-feet.
He told reporters: “We’re in a dire situation.”
On Friday, Arizona’s Department of Water Resources called the proposal’s cuts for the Lower Basin “unacceptable,” saying such reductions would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy.”
The agency described negotiations over many months as “an exercise in lowering expectations, particularly for a long-term, seven-state agreement on operating this vital river system.”
The disagreement could find its way into a courtroom soon. Arizona and Utah have both taken steps this year to build up litigation funds.
“For Utah, litigation is never our plan A,” Haas told reporters Friday. “Whether it’s a plan B, depending on the context of this document, that remains to be seen. But litigation is not going to get us anywhere on this river. It’s not going to get us more water.”
At issue in the negotiations is who absorbs necessary cuts. Upper Basin states argue they use less water than Lower Basin states, don’t have huge reservoirs to store water in dry years, and lack legal authority to place significant restrictions on water users.
Lake Powell and the Wahweap Marina are pictured near Page, Arizona on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The proposal out Friday is adaptable and allows the states to keep negotiating, said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” Burgum said in a statement.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, in a joint statement with his counterparts in the other upstream states, said they’re encouraged that incoming operating guidelines “will better reflect existing water supply, which must underpin any practicable plan going forward.”
They went on to say that both the upper and lower divisions of the basin “are feeling the pain of severe drought. This is a reality that all states, and the federal government, will need to address practically, which is why a seven-state agreement will provide the best outcome for all water users in the Colorado River Basin.”
Water use is outpacing the river’s flows, and that overconsumption adds up. The combined amount of water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is at its lowest point since before Glen Canyon Dam began to fill up in 1963, the bureau said in its Friday news release.
If water levels dip to critical lows, as forecasts suggest they could by late this year, the nation’s two largest reservoirs could fail to produce power. If their depths continue to slide, they’ll fail to send water downstream.
Conservation and recreation groups have called for an end to the gridlock, saying it’s dragging on in the background while hotter and drier conditions are driving up wildfire risks, air quality concerns and restrictions on the water supply.
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
The federal government on Friday formalized a set of guidelines for managing water use in the Colorado River Basin over the next decade, if Colorado and six other Western states can’t come to an agreement on how to deal with declining flows caused in large part by climate change.
“The Department has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a press release. “This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions.”
Under the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s “preferred alternative” for the management of the river’s reservoir system, outlined in a extensive environmental impact statement, the burden of the most severe cuts would continue to fall on the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, which could face mandatory cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet of water. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming would face only voluntary conservation targets totaling 200,000 acre-feet.
All seven states were parties to the Colorado River Compact, a 1922 agreement governing the use of water from the vital Western watershed. Today, the Colorado River provides water to an area inhabited by 40 million people across the Southwest, though agricultural uses account for the vast majority of consumption.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Since 2000, a megadrought caused largely by global warming — the region’s worst dry spell in at least 1,200 years — has stressed water supplies across the basin and pushed the Colorado River Compact to a breaking point. The last set of federal guidelines to address shortages, issued nearly 20 years ago, will expire Jan. 1, and the seven Colorado River Compact states failed to reach a new agreement before a federally imposed deadline in February.
The combined amount of water stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the Colorado River system’s two key reservoirs, fell this month to its lowest level since May 1957 — before Lake Powell, created by the Glen Canyon Dam, had even begun to fill.
Without a major turnaround in hydrologic conditions in the near future, water levels in Lake Powell are expected to fall by next spring to below “minimum power pool,” at which point the Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric turbines would be unable to operate.
Negotiations over a comprehensive new agreement have led to an increasingly bitter dispute between the Upper Basin states — led by Colorado, the river’s headwaters state and by far the Upper Basin’s largest water user — and the Lower Basin states, especially Arizona, which has borne the brunt of the cuts imposed in recent years. Arizona is widely expected to launch a high-stakes legal challenge as soon as this summer, alleging Colorado and other Upper Basin states are failing to meet an obligation under the original Colorado River Compact to allow enough water to flow downstream.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a joint statement Friday with the governors of the other three Upper Basin states, saying that “both the Upper and Lower divisions of the basin are feeling the pain of severe drought,” and that they were “committed to continued good-faith discussions with our counterparts.”
“Many hours of meetings and negotiations took place between the Colorado River Basin states and these discussions will continue,” the statement said. “Today’s framework does not represent a final solution, but enables the River to be managed in the short-term while the seven states and (the Interior Department) continue to negotiate a consensus solution.”
In the absence of a new agreement among the states, the Bureau of Reclamation says it will continue to update its new guidelines every two years until 2036.
Andrea Travnicek, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said the plan “strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability … given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users.”
In a statement, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said he was “disappointed” by the failure to reach a new long-term agreement among the seven Colorado River Compact states.
“While a two-year operating plan is the bare minimum needed to operate the river, a long-term, consensus agreement that recognizes real hydrologic conditions is the only durable solution to bring certainty to the Colorado River,” Bennet said.
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
You know the Colorado River crisis is serious when the Trump administration is willing to use hundreds of millions of dollars from President Biden’s climate law to help to solve it.
As of Wednesday night, federal officials had yet to release their plan for mandatory water cutbacks along the Colorado — a crucial water source for tens of millions of people and millions of acres of farmland across the American West. But with a plan expected later this week, details were starting to trickle out.
The L.A. Times’ Ian James reported that Trump’s Interior Department would accept a proposal submitted by California, Arizona and Nevada — the Lower Basin states — to slash their water use by 12%, 31% and 28%, respectively, through 2028. They’ll receive $350 million from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to support water conservation.
The Upper Basin states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — will get $100 million in conservation funding. But unlike their downstream neighbors, they won’t face mandatory water cuts. However much water they end up saving, that will be good enough.
It’s always possible the plan will change. I’m eager to see the final details.
While we wait, let’s hear from one of the West’s most thoughtful and well-informed Colorado River chroniclers.
That would be Zak Podmore, author of “Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River.” Earlier this week, he and I talked for an hour and took audience questions on Zoom; it was a great time. Thank you to everyone who joined us. Paid subscribers to Climate-Colored Goggles can scroll up to watch the full video.
Here are five lessons that stood out to me from our conversation — all of which are relevant to the high-stakes conflict playing out among the states.
1. We’re not doomed. Earth is resilient
My favorite thing about “Life After Dead Pool” is its hopeful message.
Most headlines about the Colorado River these days are gloomy. For instance, the last time Lake Mead and Lake Powell held as little water as they do right now was 1956 — before Lake Powell existed, meaning all the water was in Mead. Powell is currently 23% full; Mead is 27% full. These are the largest reservoirs in the United States.
A river returns. Almost 50 miles of the San Juan, once inundated by Powell Reservoir, are flowing free. Photo credit: Morgan Sjogren
But Podmore’s book flips the script, offering a firsthand look the amazing ecological recovery taking place as Lake Powell shrinks.
In and around the reservoir, which was flooded by Glen Canyon Dam more than 60 years ago, native vegetation is returning much faster than scientists thought possible — especially in narrow side canyons inundated by Powell. Exploring these remote, newly accessible places inspired Podmore to write his book.
“Instead of hearing the story that I grew up hearing — which was that Glen Canyon Dam had all these negative environmental consequences, it drowned this beautiful place — I was hearing these conversations from these researchers who were talking about the landscape that was coming back, and how excited they were about the way the ecology was recovering, and the way the endangered fish were expanding their habitat,” Podmore said.
“Instead of a story about being too late, it was a story about realizing that I was right on time, as we all are, to see the rebirth of Glen Canyon,” he added.
The Colorado River flows through Glen Canyon in 1958, before the dam was built. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
2. Those who don’t learn from history…
Podmore starts the book by imagining what Indigenous life might have been like in and around Glen Canyon nearly 1,000 years ago — when the region had a far larger population than it does today.
He wanted to show that the Colorado River Basin’s human history began long before white settlement — and that even environmentalists have often ignored the watershed’s Indigenous past.
“I was definitely indoctrinated into the mainstream environmental school of thought as I was growing up,” he said. “I had a copy of the really famous book about Glen Canyon called, ‘The Place No One Knew,’ which was published by the Sierra Club in the ’60s and talked about how nobody cared enough about Glen Canyon to protect it. And then I realized later on that [the] title was very offensive, and [in fact] there were people who knew Glen Canyon very well and lived there for thousands of years, and who were displaced as the waters of Lake Powell started to fill, in the case of many Navajo families.”
Podmore’s opening scene describes a 10,000-gallon stone water tank built by Ancestral Pueblo farmers, the ruins of which were eventually buried by Lake Powell. The tank’s key feature: a drain at the bottom, so that irrigation could continue no matter how low water levels got.
Diagram showing critical reservoir levels at Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Land Desk diagram with data from the Bureau of Reclamation.
Lake Powell doesn’t have a drain at the bottom. It could certainly use one.
3. The Upper Basin states aren’t doing enough
If Powell’s water levels sink much lower, water won’t be able to pass through the dam’s hydropower turbines, which generate cheap electricity for communities across the West. That wouldn’t be a “dead pool” situation; water could still flow downstream to the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead through bypass tubes lower in the dam. But the bypass tubes are surprisingly frail and could break with sustained use.
Translation: We are frighteningly close to “de facto dead pool.” That’s why the Trump administration is ordering everyone to use less water.
Well, not everyone. California, Arizona and Nevada are willing to cut back dramatically, and federal officials seem happy to make them do it. The Upper Basin states — the ones upstream of Lake Powell — say they shouldn’t have to commit to mandatory reductions, in part because they already consume a lot less.
[ed. It is not possible to measure or marshall water to Lake Powell (lack of infrastructure, gaining and losing reaches, priority, no way to color water in the river). Inflows are calculated values, or the height of the column at the dam. The Upper Basin consumes a lot less than their allocation under the compact, so yes, much less than the Lower Basin. Here’s an AI recap of inflows to Lake Powell.]
In a New York Times opinion piece earlier this year, I argued that the Upper Basin states need to do more. Podmore agreed.
“It’s a tricky situation, because the Lower Basin has always used more water, and that’s a convenient argument for the Upper Basin,” he said. “But also, there’s more people in the Lower Basin. And the most productive agricultural land that’s irrigated with Colorado River water is located in the Lower Basin.”
“Even with the cuts that the Lower Basin has offered, we still have a long way to go to balance the water budget,” he added. “Everyone needs to pitch in.”
Farmland in California’s Imperial Valley, irrigated with Colorado River water. (Photo by Sammy Roth)
4. Alfalfa isn’t (always) the enemy
Farmers are often vilified for sucking up copious amounts of water — and with good reason. Irrigated agriculture consumes more than half the water in the Colorado River Basin, with alfalfa and other cattle feed accounting for a stunning 32% of overall water use. (This is one of several good reasons to eat fewer hamburgers.)
The Colorado River’s largest water user, by far, is California’s Imperial Valley, where farmers grow vegetables, alfalfa and other crops. There’s no sustainable future for the American West that doesn’t involve Imperial using less water.
But easy as it is to hate on Imperial, Podmore pointed out that when the Lower Basin uses water, that water stays in the river for a long time, supporting healthy ecosystems along the way. And because Imperial is very far downstream, water flowing to alfalfa farmers there carries huge environmental benefits.
“The way that water gets from the Rocky Mountains to the Imperial Valley — or to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Phoenix — is through the Grand Canyon. It’s through Glen Canyon. It’s through Canyonlands National Park,” Podmore said. “It’s through all these important and beautiful places.”
“If the Lower Basin agrees to a bunch of cuts — if L.A. builds tons of desalination plants — that would in theory be good, because you have to divert less water from the river,” he added. But at the same time, “that means less water in the river.”
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
The Bureau of Reclamation has released the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which designates a preferred course of action for future management of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The preferred alternative establishes an adaptive decision framework to be used to develop operating guidelines designed to ensure reliable operations in the Colorado River Basin while maintaining the flexibility to respond to changing conditions over a 10-year period through 2036. The framework also preserves the opportunity for the Basin to continue working towards consensus agreements, and if successful, be incorporated into future operations.
The framework will be used to develop operating guidelines for operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead that can be adjusted for shorter and longer term periods.
“The Department has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it,” saidSecretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. “This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions.”
The framework establishes the operational principles, sideboards—key thresholds and ranges for operational elements—and a process that will govern development and issuance of operating guidelines through 2036. Operational sideboards were chosen to ensure that the Department would have flexibility and environmental compliance to operate the system in a way that is responsive to actual hydrologic conditions and allows for the incorporation of Basin-wide innovative water management solutions. The sideboards, which are analyzed in the Final EIS, provide for annual releases from Lake Powell between 5.0 maf and 12.0 maf, Lower Basin shortages of up to 3.0 maf, the ability to store up to 8.0 maf and 3.0 maf of conserved water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead for future use, respectively, and the opportunity for voluntary Upper Basin conservation up to 200 kaf, subject to hydrology.
The Department would issue operating guidelines, within these sideboards, at anticipated 2-year periods, unless consensus-based agreements provide for a longer duration. It also establishes a structure under which operating guidelines will be developed, reviewed and periodically updated. This approach provides certainty regarding a decision process over the next 10 years while preserving the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions.
“This plan strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability for the Colorado River system that is vital to the 40 million people who rely on it given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users,” saidAssistant Secretary for Water and Science Andrea Travnicek. “It also allows a new flexibility to respond to changing conditions and potential consensus.”
The Colorado River provides water for more than 40 million people and fuels hydropower resources in seven states. It serves as a vital resource for 30 tribes and two Mexican states, sustaining 5.5 million acres of farmland and agricultural communities throughout the West, while also supporting critical ecosystems and protecting endangered species.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2025. Note the tiny points on the annual data so that you can flyspeck the individual years. Credit: Brad Udall
Drought conditions over the past 25 years, combined with expectations of continued dry conditions, have made development of future operating guidelines for the Colorado River particularly challenging. The combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead have not been this low since before Glen Canyon Dam began filling in 1963, and since 2000 water use has exceeded total system inflow in most years. The Colorado River Compact apportioned 7.5 million acre-feet to both the Upper and Lower Basins based on the estimated pre-compact average inflow (1906-1921) of approximately 18 million acre-feet. However, inflows from 2000 to 2024 have only averaged 12.9 million acre-feet and the unregulated inflow into Lake Powell this year as of July is estimated to be only 3.5 maf.
Between 2020 and 2024, the average consumptive use in the Colorado River Basin was 13.1 million acre-feet. That is broken down by:
Upper Basin Use: 3.8 million acre-feet (29%).
Lower Basin Use: 6.5 million acre-feet (49%).
Mexico Use: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%).
Evaporation: 1.4 million acre-feet (11%).
This Final EIS is the culmination of a NEPA process that was initiated in June 2023. Over this three-year period Reclamation engaged extensively with Basin stakeholders and that input is reflected in the alternatives analyzed in the Final EIS and the Preferred Alternative.
Reclamation received more than 18,000 comments, including 785 unique submissions from the public, tribes, states, federal agencies and others after releasing the draft EIS in January 2026. Reclamation evaluated substantive comments and updated the final EIS, with public input helping to shape the preferred alternative.
The Final EIS is available on Reclamation’s website.
The final EIS addresses only domestic river operations. A separate binational process addressing water deliveries to Mexico is nearing completion and the Department is committed to continued collaboration with Mexico. The Department will conduct all necessary and appropriate discussions regarding post-2026 operations and implementation of the 1944 Water Treaty with Mexico through the International Boundary and Water Commission in consultation with the Department of State.
Click the link to access the EIS on the Reclamation website. Here’s the abstract:
July 31, 2026
The Secretary of the Department of the Interior, acting through the Bureau of Reclamation, proposes the adoption of new guidelines and coordinated management strategies to address Lake Powell and Lake Mead through their full operating range to take effect when the current agreements expire in 2026. Management strategies will primarily focus on the operation of Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, but may include actions upstream and downstream of these facilities to protect critical reservoir elevations.
This Final EIS has been prepared to inform the Secretary’s timely adoption of a new set of guidelines that would be sufficiently robust and provide improved predictability to all water users and managers in the Colorado River Basin. This Final EIS has been prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act to address the formulation and evaluation of specific interim criteria and to identify the potential environmental impacts of implementing such criteria.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Between the reservoir and the endangered fish in the lower Gunnison sits the Gunnison Tunnel, which diverts water just below Crystal Reservoir at the head of the Black Canyon and carries it to about 80,000 acres in the Uncompahgre Valley. It belongs to the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association (UVWUA), which, as Colorado River District engineer Caleb Foy puts it, “holds a very senior water right” In Colorado, the oldest rights have priority over more junior rights. UVWUA is not untouched. It opened the season at 50% allocation — “just seeing the writing on the wall in regard to the poor hydrologic conditions,” Foy said. This means all UVWUA users receive half as much water as they would in a normal year. UVWUA’s other supply, Ridgway Reservoir, is ~85% full, but by design: the association told shareholders this spring that its “goal is to maintain storage in Ridgway Reservoir until mid-July to help support peak season demands.” And the natural flows in the Uncompahgre and Cow Creek that normally supplements UVWUA through the Spring and summer, delivered nothing — the association “received zero water in regard to direct flow water from the Uncompahgre system this year to date,” Foy said. Blue Mesa, he said, holds “multiple colors of water” — some stored under Aspinall Unit rights, some belonging to the association under a Taylor Park first-fill right. If the reservoir ever fell far enough that only the UVWUA’s water remained, that “would effectively dry up the Black Canyon.” Avoiding that is why the flows in the lower Gunnison are so low. It leaves the basin, in Foy’s words, in “a less risky neighborhood than we would have otherwise been in.”
Ruedi Reservoir was 65% full as of Wednesday. Increased releases out of Ruedi could bump up flows in the Fryingpan River to as high as 700 cfs. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Residents and anglers can expect to see high flows in the Fryingpan River in the month of August as water managers increase releases out of Ruedi Reservoir in an attempt to relieve the worst drought conditions downstream.
The Colorado Water Trust plans to begin releasing from a 4,700-acre-foot pool it leases in Ruedi on Monday. The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District also plans to begin releases from its 10,500-acre-foot Ruedi pool next week. Flows in the Fryingpan River are expected to typically be between 300 and 500 cfs while the releases are happening, though they could climb higher. It’s unclear how long the increased releases will last; it will depend on weather and precipitation over the coming weeks.
Water managers say flooding on the Fryingpan begins to be a concern around 800 cfs; River District officials say water managers will aim to keep the river below 700 cfs.
“We do not want to cause any flooding; we are very aware of that,” said Brendon Langenhuizen, director of technical advocacy for the River District.
Langenhuizen laid out details of the planned releases at a remote Zoom meeting of local leaders and water managers on Wednesday.
Although flooding may not happen until 800 cfs, impacts to the Fryingpan’s famous Gold Medal trout fishery happen long before that. Anglers generally like flows to remain below 300 cfs, the level at which wading becomes difficult and potentially dangerous.
Aspen Mayor Rachel Richards noted the dire conditions downstream, but asked if flows could be kept in the 300 to 350 cfs range when possible.
“Additionally, it’s more about the warning to fishermen if the water releases are changing rapidly,” Richards said. “I think the notification on the Fryingpan is what’s really critical here.”
Rick Lofaro, executive director of the Basalt-based Roaring Fork Conservancy, said his organization has already started getting the word out.
“There is an organization called the Roaring Fork Fishing Guide Alliance, and we are in lockstep with them,” Lofaro said. “We have already started to alert people to these increased flows, and the fishing community will be notified by the Roaring Fork Conservancy, along with the greater community.”
Bill Nein, of Salida, prepares to release a brown trout he caught back into the Fryingpan River. Anglers generally like flows to stay below 300 cfs for easy wading. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
As of Wednesday, Ruedi was about 65% full. Tim Miller, a hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, noted that this year’s reservoir operations are pacing about 10 days ahead of 2002, which was another year where drought conditions increased releases and lowered water levels at the reservoir. When asked by a U.S. Forest Service representative about when the water level would become too low for the boat ramp to operate, Miller said exactly when is unclear but that it would happen in the next month.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map May 31, 2026.
The Ruedi releases are aimed at alleviating the impacts of the worst snow-drought on record in the upper Colorado River basin, which are being felt on local waterways, as well as farther downstream. Pitkin County has issued a mandatory closure of the Roaring Fork River through the North Star Nature Preserve – a popular stretch for paddleboards and kayaks – because of unprecedented low flows. And Colorado Parks and Wildlife has issued voluntary fishing closures on portions of the Roaring Fork, Crystal and Colorado rivers due to low flows and high water temperatures.
The effects of drought are also being felt in the Grand Valley, one of the big agricultural hubs on the Western Slope with some of the most senior water rights on the Colorado River. The water from Ruedi will flow down to be used by irrigators in this area, who are currently about 500 cfs short of the water they need, according to Langenhuizen.
“This has been a tough year for a lot of people from the bottom of the basin all the way to the top, and a lot of people have been pitching in to help us get through and share resources,” he said. “Everybody’s kind of taking a hit this year.”
The River District’s Ruedi releases are part of its 2026 drought response plan. They are meant to cushion the blow of shortages in a pool of water in Green Mountain Reservoir known as the Historic Users Pool. HUP water is released mainly to satisfy farmers and ranchers in the Grand Valley, whose group of senior water rights — known as the Cameo call — are the commanding force on the river.
When Cameo places a call for its water, it can force junior users all the way up to the headwaters to shut off. The HUP also protects other water users, known as HUP beneficiaries, because without the releases from Green Mountain, Cameo would place more frequent calls, forcing these users to cut back.
However, this year, the HUP did not fill, causing repercussions up and down the river.
“This is really driven because we don’t have HUP coverage, which has an impact on a lot of users in the Colorado River basin, both municipal and irrigators,” Langenhuizen told Aspen Journalism in a separate interview. “We really tried to look at this as wholesale, like how can we help as many people in the Colorado River basin as possible?”
Depending on water demands, the 4,700 acre-feet from the Water Trust could be used by irrigators in the Grand Valley, or it could be used for hydropower generation in the Grand Valley and then flow into the 15-mile reach, a chronically water-short stretch of the Colorado River that is critical habitat for endangered fish.
Bicycling the Colorado National Monument, Grand Valley in the distance via Colorado.com
To bolster the Colorado River’s flow downvalley through historic drought, water authorities will be increasing the flow out of the Ruedi Reservoir through August. That water will flow into the Fryingpan River…Water will then flow into the Roaring Fork River, then down the Western Slope, where populations in Grand Valley are in “dire need,” he said…
Green Mountain Reservoir (back in the day) is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and located in Summit County north of Silverthorne along the Blue River. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Traditionally, the Western Slope relies heavily on the Green Mountain Reservoir — about 17 miles south of Kremmling — to sustain a steady Colorado River flow. But due to the state’s dry, warm winter, that reservoir struggled to fill over the spring. The administrators of Green Mountain Reservoir found that low water levels and fast releases were exacerbating a slow-moving landslide on its banks, so they limited how much water could be released out of the reservoir to half a foot a day…
Tim Miller, a hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that manages the levels at Ruedi Reservoir, said the reservoir played a similar supplemental role in 2002, when Colorado saw another historic drought. This year’s use of the reservoir is about 10 days ahead of then, he said.
L to R: Allen Best, Alan Salazar, Siri Roman, Pat Mulroy during the panel discussion “Liquid Courage” at the Museum of Nature & Science, July 21, 2026. Photo credit: Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
July 27, 2026
“We know climate change is real. We know we’re living it, but no one expected it to move this quickly.”
As moderator at last week’s water forum held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, I posed the question to our three panelists about this hot and dry summer after last winter’s exceptional warmth and dearth of snow.
“From where you sit now, is this any different from what we’ve been through before?”
Pat Mulroy, a senior fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Boyd School of Law and the former longtime general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, is an advocate for extensively rethinking how the Colorado River is managed. (Image: University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Boyd School of Law)
Pat Mulroy was quick to answer. She calls herself a “recovering CEO.” For 23 years she oversaw the Southern Nevada Water Authority‘s operations in Las Vegas and its suburbs. Early in her watch, the population of Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, exceeded the population of Manhattan. It now has a population of 2.5 million people.
The metro area there gets 90% of its water from the Colorado River via tunnels into three levels of Lake Mead. The newest — one she championed, despite a cost of $1 billion — comes up from underneath the reservoir. Even when Hoover Dam backs up too little water to be released downstream, Las Vegas will have access to water.
“I always love coming to Denver, now that I no longer come to Denver as the protagonist from the evil lower basin,” she said.
Footnote here: Many who had never heard Mulroy speak before were astonished at her liveliness.
“This summer is different only because the cumulative effect of all the summers that went before has come home to roost,” she continued.
“All the cushion we have (had) is gone. I mean, it’s one thing to have 2002 when you had a bad winter and Lake Powell started going down rapidly, but Lake Mead still had (water to an elevation of) over 1,200 feet. We’re now seeing the very real possibility that Lake Mead is going to go to 900 feet by next year. That would be 10 feet above deadpool.”
Deadpool is the water level that is so low that water can no longer be released from a dam. The level at which electricity can no longer be produced is higher.
Mulroy went on to say that while the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is taking steps to “replenish” Mead — by taking less water than allotted — the problem continues to worsen. That indicates the depth of this problem.
“It’s never ending, and the rate of change is so much faster than any of us expected,” added Mulroy. ” We know climate change is real. We know we’re living it, but no one expected it to move this quickly.”
Siri Roman via her Facebook page.
Siri Roman was next. She manages the Vail-based Eagle River Water and Sanitation District. “I think that 2002 changed water in Colorado, and 2026 is going to change it completely again. A lot of our planning and assumptions are being challenged this year,” she said.
“I mean, it was 80 degrees for two weeks in March. Watching our very little snowpack — the lowest snowpack we had on record — nearly melt out in March was quite alarming to us.”
Eagle River Water and Sanitation District has several small reservoirs. Among them is the reservoir at Vail Pass, another near Camp Hale, and a third near Minturn.
“They weren’t able to fill because the stream flows were so low. There are a lot of things we rely on that we’re not going to be able to rely on moving forward. How do we get creative, looking at demand and other solutions about how to prepare for a drier year?” Roman continued.
“Statistically, they always say you won’t get two years like this in a row. I don’t think we can say that anymore. We can’t rely on the statistics because we’re seeing such abnormal patterns.” [ed. emphasis mine]
Denver Board of Water Commissioners/Courtesy photo.
Alan Salazar, the third panelist, is CEO of Denver Water. The water agency delivers water to about 25% of the 6 million Coloradans. “We use just 2% of the state’s water, and that has been pretty steady going back through the 1970s. That didn’t happen by accident, because we took measures. My predecessor and Denver water employees in the last 20 years use water more efficiently and with conservation in mind.”
Salazar had high-level positions as policy advisor to several elected officials, mostly in Colorado. One of them was the former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, an advocate of protecting natural resources and an early advocate of public awareness around climate change. He recalled what his boss had told him: “Alan, no matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many regulations we implement, Mother Nature bats last. And boy, is she batting.”
As compared to 2002, he said, this year is more extreme. “We had a heat dome that made the spring more difficult, and it’s partly why the response from our customers has lagged, because even though there are water restrictions, the extremes in temperatures have put greater pressure on water use. So, it’s quite a bit different.”
These remarks were delivered early in the 90-minute sessions devoted to water and urban uses in Colorado and somewhat beyond.
The museum’s Institute for Science and Policy will hold another session on Aug. 27 in its two-part Liquid Courage series. This next session will have four panelists:
Robert Sakata, a farmer from Brighton and now a senior adviser at the Colorado Department of Agriculture;
Anne Castle, a former Interior Department undersecretary for water in the Obama administration now affiliated with the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School;
Nathan Coombs, a San Luis Valley farmer and a member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board; and
Sarah Jones, co-founder of Rye Resurgence and co-owner of Jones Farm Organics near Hooper, in the San Luis Valley.
A utility-scale solar facility on BLM land outside Boulder City, Nevada. The proposed Townsite Solar 2 data center would be located near here. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
First they came for your electricity, then they came for your water, then they came for your brains, and now the AI data centers are coming for your public lands.
Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but it is true, at least in one case. This summer, the Bureau of Land Management quietly approved a Texas natural gas and power market-focused hedge fund’s proposal to build a large data center on public land outside Boulder City, Nevada. The agency did not seek public input on the decision, nor did it subject the project to an environmental review, drawing pushback and criticism from Boulder City residents and officials as well as state and federal lawmakers.
This is the only known incidence of the BLM approving a data center on public land. But it may not be for long. Cities, towns, and counties are growing increasingly wary of the facilities, imposing stricter regulations and even outright bans that could push developers to seek cheaper, friendlier places to build. Under the Trump administration, which is looking to win the AI “war,” federal lands may be the cheapest and most regulation-free place to put a server farm. Both the Biden and Trump administrations invited data center developers to look to Department of Energy lands, but there hasn’t been an open call to do the same with BLM lands.
The Boulder City saga started years ago, when Skylar Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Skylar Capital Management, proposed the 19-megawatt Townsite Solar 2 facility on 76 acres of BLM land four miles southwest of Boulder City, the town created in the 1920s to house Hoover Dam construction workers. The project would have been adjacent to the existing Townsite solar facility, which was developed by Skylar but is now owned by Arevon Energy. In 2023 the BLM approved the project, though construction has yet to begin.
Late last year, Skylar — operating as Townsite Solar 2 (TS2) — proposed a 170 MW, “high-density,” AI data center campus on 88.5 acres of land owned by Boulder City that is also near the existing solar facilities. TS2 had previously planned to build a solar-plus-battery-storage installation on this parcel. That proposal was met with strong opposition from Boulder City residents, who worried about the facility’s outsized energy use and its potential water consumption. Following the backlash, developers said they would use a hybrid closed-loop “ultra-low or zero liquid discharge” cooling system, which would use treated effluent rather than potable water (also increasing energy consumption). The lease would generate approximately $1.47 million annually for the city, plus property taxes and permit fees.
At the same time that it applied to the city, however, Skylar also went to the BLM, requesting an amendment to its solar facility right-of-way so that it could build a data center on the public land, instead. In June the BLM granted its approval, sans environmental review or public input, and withdrew its application for the city-owned property.
I’ve written here frequently about the Big Data Center Buildup, as tech firms build bigger and bigger — and more and more water- and energy-intensive — server farms in Phoenix, Tucson, southeastern New Mexico, on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, outside Cheyenne, and even in Page, Arizona, and Alaska. Perhaps inevitably, the Big Buildup is now confronting an even bigger backlash.
People from across the political and demographic spectrum are rising up and opposing these facilities for a variety of reasons. All data centers use a lot of energy, with the newer “hyperscale” facilities gobbling up even more power. Some are purchasing solar, wind, or geothermal energy to power the facilities, but even many of the greenest-leaning ones rely on dirty natural gas generators for backup. Meanwhile, the natural gas and coal industries are licking their chops at the prospect of rising demand for fossil fuel-generated power, since renewables alone can’t keep up with the skyrocketing rise in demand. Also, data centers can exacerbate urban heat islands, which sucks if you happen to live next door to one.
Data centers also use quite a bit of water, but the amount varies depending on what type of cooling system is used. Closed-loop systems need to be filled up only occasionally, and are less water-intensive, while evaporative systems use far more water. The catch is that using less water for cooling often means using more energy for the same; if the energy comes from a thermal plant fired by gas or coal, power-generation can also use a lot of water. Still, the volumes pale compared to some other uses, most notably agriculture.
When a region suffers through a hot and dry winter a quarter century into the worst megadrought to hit the area in 1,200 years, many of us will intuitively link it to climate change and global warming. But intuition is not science, and there may be other plausible explanations.
Most of the West has just experienced the warmest nine-month period during the last 131 years, putting the region on pace to have its hottest water year on record.
But now the science has spoken — in the form of a peer-reviewed paper* out of the Colorado School of Mines — and it has determined that this year’s snow drought was almost certainly the result of human-caused climate change.
The authors used a probabilistic approach to assessing climate change’s role in the West’s 2026 snow drought. And they found that across the West as a whole, the 2026 snow drought was about four times more likely to occur in the current climate than during the 1850-1900 comparison period. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, where the drought was most severe, this year’s dire conditions were about 14 times more likely in our current climate than in pre-industrial times, “with the uncertainty range reaching into conditions so extreme that probabilities are difficult to estimate with confidence.”
This isn’t just confirmation of what may seem obvious to long-time observers. More critically, it indicates that this year’s lack of snow is no longer just a once in a century event, and that if the climate continues to heat up, these dry spells may become more common.
*A.M. Marshall,M. Cowherd,S. Rahimi, & Y. Ye, The 2026 western US snow drought was about four times more likely due to climate change, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (30) e2612961123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2612961123 (2026).
🛢️ Hydrocarbon Hoedown 📈
The Navajo Methane Coalition has released an animated video explaining how methane emissions from oil and gas facilities can harm Diné communities, and detailing ways to tackle the problem. It’s an especially important issue now, as the Trump administration rolls back methane waste prevention rules. Check it out:
⛈️ Wacky Weather Watch⚡️
The monsoon is here and it is causing some serious mayhem in some places, especially in western New Mexico and in Arizona.
The Gallup area received at least two inches of rain in one day, causing the Rio Puerco to go from dry to raging river in a matter of hours. And it wasn’t just the Puerco. Several Gallup streets, including Route 66, turned into virtual rivers that were more than tire-deep in some places, causing hazards for motorists. Zuni Pueblo was also was inundated with water.
The Rio Puerco does not seem to have a working streamflow gage, so I checked out the Little Colorado River near Winslow, downstream from its confluence with the Puerco, and it got really, really big.
📸 Parting Shots 🎞️
The beauty of the monsoon sky. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The beauty of the monsoon sky. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on the Crested Butte News website (Katherine Nettles). Here’s an excerpt:
July 22, 2026
Given the severe drought throughout the past water year, Blue Mesa Reservoir and the dams below it that serve downstream users are all at precariously low levels this summer. This is impacting recreation, power generation and aquatic life. As reservoir levels fall dangerously close to “power pool” level at which point hydroelectric power becomes impossible, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) last week made some adjustments to try and prevent that. The hope is that the new flows will hold up Blue Mesa power production, and protect various other uses and aquatic biology through the end of the year…According to Andrew Limbach with BOR’s Western area office, the release schedule from the Crystal Dam below Blue Mesa changed over a period of three days from 1,465 cubic feet per second (cfs) on July 15 to 1,265 cfs by July 17. Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge were scheduled to decrease from 360 cfs to 250 cfs over the course of those same three days. “In response to the extreme drought conditions, the BOR has collaborated with US Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service to reduce the target flows to 500 cfs at Whitewater and 200 cfs through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison until further notice…
Jennifer Erickson, public affairs officer with the Department of the Interior, shared the latest information available regarding Blue Mesa elevation. “As of our last projections, Blue Mesa Reservoir is expected to fall to elevation 7,412 ft by the end of September. That number is from last month’s 24-Month study projections.” When full, the elevation is at 7,519 feet…
“To maintain safe and operational marina facilities, the NPS has moved the Elk Creek marina infrastructure to deeper water. Approximately half of the Lake Fork Marina has also been moved to deep water. Trailered watercraft can no longer use the Lake Fork boat ramp and will not be able to use the Elk Creek boat ramp when reservoir elevations reach 7435’. Hand-launching of non-trailered watercraft will remain available at both ramps.”
The NPS also advised that on Sunday, July 26remaining Lake Fork marina operations will no longer be operational at 4 p.m., and on Monday, July 27 all boats must be out of Lake Fork Marina slips by noon.
On Friday, July 31, the NPS projected that the Elk Creek boat ramp will no longer be safe for launching or retrieving trailered watercraft. “All trailered watercraft on Blue Mesa reservoir should be retrieved before this elevation is reached. The ramp will remain open for hand-launching,” according to the release.
So while Blue Mesa shouldn’t go to “deadpool” mud or canyon levels, it will be as low as it’s been in decades.
A few miles north of Mt. Sopris, down another dirt road that leads to the Roaring Fork River, Wenning stopped his car at a small brick building near the riverbank: The Roaring Fork Well House. Nearby are three wells that draw from the Roaring Fork River, providing another source of municipal water. After the call on the Crystal in 2018, Carbondale water managers decided to reduce the town’s reliance on Nettle Creek by leaning more heavily on the Roaring Fork River, where the town also has water rights. Carbondale currently has installed three wells — each of which produces roughly the same amount of water as the Nettle Creek plant (around 300 gallons per minute). But, the town has permits for seven more wells. Shifting Carbondale’s focus to the Roaring Fork River makes sense, said Wenning. Since the Roaring Fork is a bigger river, it’s less affected by a low-snow year. The wells are also 40 feet deep, allowing them to access groundwater…
The Roaring Fork Treatment Plant lies at the edge of the Carbondale Nature Park. Inside the barn-like building, a loud whirring sound echoes through the cavernous interior. The town recently installed new cartridge filter technology at the plant, expanding its capacity to treat water from 0.5 million gallons to 1.4 million gallons per day. According to Wenning, the town plans to expand the plant’s capacity further to treat up to 2.3 million gallons per day from the Roaring Fork River alone — more than enough to meet Carbondale’s peak summer demand, even when some of the water treatment equipment needs repair or servicing…
Beyond the shift to a more resilient water source, water experts see more opportunity to boost capacity through conservation. Maggie McHugh, an engineer with Roaring Fork Engineering, helps communities in the Roaring Fork Valley adapt to climate change.
“We can’t put any more water into the system, but we can take less out,” she said. “That will be the ultimate goal, especially in years like this.”
Farmer Randy Friend grows corn in the Olathe area. He left the debris from last year’s crop on the ground as a form of mulch to try to retain moisture in this exceptionally dry year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Fourth-generation Olathe farmer Randy Friend stopped his pickup truck next to a row of corn whose green leaves were limp and curling, with a gray tinge. Friend’s corn was stressed as the valley endured a July heat wave with temperatures nudging close to 100 degrees.
“I hate to see it looking like that with our water situation,” Friend said.
Next was a field of onions, a thirsty crop with a long growing season. The furrows between the dark-green sprouts were still damp, an indication the field was just irrigated that morning.
“Onions are our most expensive crop to grow and the most reward on a good year,” Friend said. “But they can also bankrupt you because they take so much more water.”
Friend farms corn, onions and forage crops for livestock as part of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association, a vast expanse of farmland that extends from just south of Montrose to Delta, on Colorado’s Western Slope. Water from the Gunnison and Uncompahgre rivers, along with miles of tunnels, canals and ditches, transforms about 76,000 acres of high desert into lush green fields of corn, pinto beans, onions and alfalfa.
But this year, Uncompahgre Valley farmers are making tough decisions and developing new tools as they try to adapt to one of the hottest, driest years on record in the Upper Colorado River basin. Many are leaving fields dry, culling their cattle herds, switching to crops that use less water and relying on crop insurance payouts as the association faces a 50% cut to its irrigation water supply.
“I’ve been farming 30 years now, and this is by far the most extreme, biggest cut of water that I’ve ever had to deal with,” Friend said.
Some producers in the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users association have left some fields unplanted due to drought. The association has only about half its normal water supply this year. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
The Uncompahgre water users get about half of their water supply from Taylor Park Reservoir, at the headwaters of the Gunnison River, via the Gunnison Tunnel, a six-mile-long aqueduct that can bring up to about 1,175 cubic feet per second to the valley. The other half comes from the Uncompahgre River, a much smaller river basin that saw an abysmal end-of-season snowpack with just 14% of median April 1. That means the association has only about half its normal water supply for irrigation season.
“We’re limping along right now, but it’s going to be a challenging year,” said association manager Steve Pope. “We got to get our producers through Labor Day; we’re going to need the water then. It’s just a physical supply issue; the water just wasn’t there.”
With its water cut by half, many producers in the Uncompahgre Valley have chosen to irrigate only some of their fields, leaving others unplanted for the season. The district’s northwest area, which is where much of the valley’s row crops are grown, has been the hardest hit. Pope estimates those farmers are fallowing between 30% and 60% of their ground. Driving around the district revealed many fields that were brown and dry.
“There’s just a tremendous amount of land out there that’s just barren, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.
This field in the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association district has been fallowed this season due to a lack of water. The state of Colorado announced Wednesday that it will set up a conservation program using federal dollars, which means more fields on the Western Slope could soon look like this. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Friend, an association board member, said he is fallowing about one-fourth of the land he farms and using about 30% to 40% of his acres to grow forage crops that use less water, such as sorghum-Sudangrass. But switching to drought-resistant plants is a strategy that doesn’t work for every grower. Friend also owns a feedlot so he can mix these drought-tolerant crops with higher-quality feed to make it work. Although some growers on the Western Slope are experimenting with alternative forage crops, such crops have yet to be grown on a large scale. Water-intensive alfalfa, with its high protein content, remains dominant.
Daris Jutten, a fifth-generation rancher in Ouray and Montrose counties, said the lack of water has prompted him to cut his herd back to the fewest cows he has ever had on his ranch. He has also left some of his alfalfa fields fallow.
West Drought Monitor map July 30, 2002.
West Drought Monitor map July 31, 2012.
West Drought Monitor July 31. 2018
West Drought Monitor map July 21, 2026.
“I’ve seen it bad before, but I’ve never seen it this bad,” Jutten said. “2002 was bad. 2018, 2012 were all bad. But they don’t even come close to what this thing is.”
The Uncompahgre River in Olathe was nearly dried up in July due to agricultural diversions and drought. The Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association is the biggest agricultural water user in the Upper Colorado River Basin. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Colorado’s new conservation program adds pressure to cut water use
This year’s lack of water and a management crisis have brought the Colorado River system to the brink of collapse.
As the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, plummet to new lows, water managers are taking emergency steps to keep Lake Powell levels high enough to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. At the same time, federal officials are crafting a plan for how the seven states that share the Colorado River will share shortages and how the reservoirs will be operated for the next two years.
Colorado’s new conservation program adds pressure to cut water use
This year’s lack of water and a management crisis have brought the Colorado River system to the brink of collapse.
As the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, plummet to new lows, water managers are taking emergency steps to keep Lake Powell levels high enough to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. At the same time, federal officials are crafting a plan for how the seven states that share the Colorado River will share shortages and how the reservoirs will be operated for the next two years.
Upper Basin water managers have focused on the fact that their farmers and ranchers are affected first by a warming climate and are already experiencing shortages because the water simply isn’t there. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) suffer because there aren’t major reservoirs from which they can draw in dry years the way that the Lower Basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) do. Both basins are increasingly expected to reduce consumption because supplies are shrinking and the Colorado River system as a whole must be managed within these new limits.
Onions are one of the water-intensive row crops grown in the Uncompahgre Valley. Farmers in the region are adapting to drought by fallowing fields and planting crops that use less water. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
On July 15, state officials announced the creation of a “near-term contribution program” that will pay water users to voluntarily cut back in 2027 and 2028, using $100 million in promised funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The Upper Basin states have a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of September 2028, which marks the end of water year 2028. The saved water will need to have a home in Upper Basin storage buckets — Lake Powell, Navajo, Blue Mesa or Flaming Gorge reservoirs — but precisely how it will be used and how it will fit into broader Colorado River management are still unknown.
The program has been a long time coming, and the concept is not new to Colorado. Officials said they are incorporating the lessons learned from previous demand-management studies beginning in 2019, stakeholder input and recent pilot programs.
As the biggest agricultural user in the Upper Basin, the Uncompahgre Valley — drought-stricken as it is — is ideally located for these types of programs and is considered one of the lowest-hanging fruits when it comes to finding places to save water.
When Colorado’s contribution program is implemented next year, the association will be ready. Knowing that a program was inevitable, Western Slope water managers have been proactive, developing a data-mapping tool that can help the association adapt to drought.
UVWUA Manager Steve Pope stands at the spot where water from the South Canal dumps water from the Gunnison River into the Uncompahgre River. It’s then diverted to the west side of the valley where it irrigates fields and row crops. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Mapping tool helps plan conservation
With 550 miles of interconnected canals and laterals snaking through the valley, downstream irrigators often depend on reusing the water that runs off an upstream neighbor’s fields, and leaving a field dry could have unintended downstream consequences.
Developed by the Colorado River Water Conservation District and The Freshwater Trust, the tool can pinpoint where the greatest opportunities for water savings are, as well as how to avoid the worst consequences of fallowing ground. It can show what happens when efficiency improvements are made to the association’s century-old infrastructure and can show which ditches should be lined to provide the most bang for the buck to reduce seepage loss.
“From our perspective, it’s a great management tool because it allows us to track water through our system,” Pope said. “Let’s say there’s [a conservation] program, well, what would be the best farms to go to a deficit irrigation or fallow that would create the most (water savings), and you can target that.”
The tool is aimed at helping producers adapt to drought and can show which projects would result in the most water savings. Although the River District does not endorse a large-scale conservation program, it has long recognized that one was inevitable and has sought to mitigate the worst impacts to rural agricultural communities.
The intent of the tool is to help create a program that can maximize economic and environmental benefits as well as water conservation, said Raquel Flinker, director of interstate and regional water resources with the River District.
“It was always to provide data and analytics that would make whatever entity [is] creating a program design it in a way that seemed the most sensible,” Flinker said.
Some Uncompahgre Valley producers have participated in experimental programs that pay them to cut their water use, including the federally funded System Conservation Pilot Program, which took place in 2023 and 2024. Friend and a few others in the association enrolled in 2024 and were paid to reduce their water use. The association’s board has allowed their members to participate in conservation programs, but they remain somewhat controversial. An irrigation district in the Western Slope’s other big agricultural area, the Grand Valley, does not allow its members to participate.
Pope said instead of programs that pay farmers not to irrigate, he would rather see federal money pay for more efficiency upgrades to water-delivery systems such as lining ditches and improving headgates. The recently announced state program is meant to include a broad range of water-saving actions, but pilot conservation programs in the Upper Basin have always defaulted to paying irrigators to temporarily stop using water.
“The problem I see with it is if somebody enrolls and they sign off the year before, and then we don’t get any water and they are 50% fallowed anyway, did the program really generate any water?” Pope said. “It’s very difficult to measure the benefits of these types of programs when you have such an unreliable supply to begin with.”
Pope brings up an inherent contradiction about Upper Basin conservation: How can agricultural water users cut back when they already don’t have enough in drought years like this?
Despite the 100,000-acre-foot goal for the Upper Basin, Colorado leaders have long said they can’t commit to saving a specific amount of water. They said that figure can be reached only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow. And for now, the program remains short-term, while the effects of a warmer and drier climate appear likely to continue for the long-term.
“If this is the new normal, it’s going to get way more difficult,” Friend said. “If we have another winter like this last one, a lot of people are pretty worried about it.”
Click the link to read the release on the USDA website:
July 24, 2026
USDA is investing $3 million to support the development of wetland mitigation banks for agricultural producers. through the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program (WMBP).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing $3 million to support the development of wetland mitigation banks for agricultural producers. Through the USDA’s Wetland Mitigation Banking Program (WMBP), wetlands are restored, created or enhanced, generating credits that can be purchased by producers looking to compensate for unavoidable impacts to wetlands at another location.
“Wetland mitigation banks provide farmers and ranchers a clear and efficient compliance pathway, while at the same time helping to restore and protect vital wetlands and all the benefits they provide,” said USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Chief Colton L. Buckley. “Through the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program, we can help ensure the long-term resilience and productivity of American working landscapes.”
WMBP awardees work with NRCS to develop a mitigation banking instrument that provides details for developing, establishing and operating a mitigation banking program. Priority will be given to banks in states with significant numbers of individual wetlands, wetland acres and conservation compliance requests. Based on NRCS data, these states are Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
City and county governments, organizations, tribal governments and other entities are eligible to apply. See the notice of funding on Grants.gov for a full list of eligible entity types.
Applications are due by September 8, 2026. Visit the Grants.gov opportunity for additional details and to apply.
More About WMBP
To participate in most USDA programs, agricultural producers agree to comply with the wetland conservation provisions, meaning producers will not plant agricultural commodities on converted wetlands or convert wetlands to enable agricultural production. In situations where avoidance or on-site mitigation is challenging, the Farm Bill allows for off-site mitigation through the purchase of mitigation banking credits.
Purchasing credits from a wetland mitigation bank provides a legal mechanism for agricultural producers to maintain their eligibility for USDA program benefits if they convert agricultural wetlands.
WMBP award recipients can use the funding to support the costs of developing and establishing a mitigation bank, like costs for site identification, development of a mitigation banking instrument, site restoration, land surveys, permitting and title searches, and market research. WMBP funding cannot be used to purchase land or a conservation easement.
NRCS awarded the first WMBP grants in 2016. Since then, NRCS has awarded 39 projects supporting the creation or expansion of wetland mitigation banks in 14 states.
Awardees can request up to $1 million for a project. Projects may last up to four years.
When a mitigation bank is established, the landowner retains ownership and use of the property, while a conservation easement protects the wetlands from incompatible degrading activities.
To learn more about the Wetland Mitigation Banking Program, and how wetland mitigation banks work, visit the WMBP webpage.
For more than 90 years, NRCS has helped farmers, ranchers and forestland owners make investments in their operations and local communities to improve the quality of our air, water, soil, and wildlife habitat. NRCS uses the latest science and technology to help keep working lands working, boost agricultural economies, and increase the competitiveness of American agriculture. NRCS provides one-on-one, technical advice and financial assistance and works with producers to help them reach their goals through voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs. For more information, visit nrcs.usda.gov.
Wetlands, like these in the Prairie-Pothole Region of North Dakota, may capture and store nutrient runoff from cropland fields. Photo Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (Northern Water), the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Grand County, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG), the Colorado River Water Conservation District (Colorado River District) and the Town of Grand Lake today announced a landmark agreement establishing the Three Lakes CLEAR Initiative, a long-term effort to improve water clarity, watershed health and resilience across Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Granby Reservoir (the Three Lakes).
The Three Lakes System is part of the federal Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) Project, which collects and stores water in Grand County and then diverts it for use by C-BT beneficiaries on the Front Range through a series of reservoirs, ditches and tunnels. The CLEAR Initiative continues the ongoing Grand Lake Adaptive Management framework for managing C-BT Project operations and incorporates additional collaborative initiatives to enhance clarity and provide watershed health benefits within and upstream of the Three Lakes System.
CLEAR stands for Clarity, Legacy, Ecosystem, Adaptation and Resilience, reflecting the shared commitment by partners to protect and improve this important resource.
The agreement marks a major milestone following two decades of coordinated work to improve clarity in Grand Lake and water quality in Shadow Mountain Reservoir and reflects a renewed commitment to sustained action and investment. It also provides a long-term framework to continue and expand this work as the Grand Lake Clarity Stakeholders’ Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), established in 2016, expires in December 2026. Today’s action renews and expands upon that MOU, protecting the Three Lakes and tributary watersheds for the next 30 years.
As part of the agreement, Northern Water, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District Municipal Subdistrict, and the Windy Gap Firming Project Water Activity Enterprise will provide $30 million over 30 years to address both C-BT Project operations and the broader environmental conditions influencing water quality by supporting implementation of projects and initiatives that address watershed and lake conditions. Of that amount, $20 million will be directed toward project funding to accelerate near-term, priority on-the-ground improvements initiatives, while $10 million will build a long-term reserve fund intended to provide sustained, legacy funding and the flexibility to address future needs as conditions evolve beyond the 30-year agreement.
The initiative continues and strengthens the collaborative adaptive management of C-BT Project operations in the Three Lakes that began with the original MOU, using real-time adjustments to improve clarity in Grand Lake while balancing water supply, power generation and environmental needs. At the same time, the initiative establishes a dedicated fund directed by the parties, to invest in watershed and system health projects that improve water quality and ecological conditions across the Three Lakes system and tributary watersheds.
Projects will focus broadly on watershed and forest health, reducing sediment and nutrient inputs, improving lake and reservoir conditions, and strengthening monitoring and adaptive management tools across the interconnected system.
“The foundation for this landmark agreement to improve Grand Lake clarity and create the Three Lakes CLEAR Fund was laid over decades of effort by many, representing all parties, to improve and use our knowledge of the Three Lakes System for actionable projects that can move the needle for better Grand Lake clarity. The parties have differing interests for sure, but we strive to find common ground because we have a spirit of mutual trust and respect,” said Jeff Metzger, Town of Grand Lake.
Northern Water emphasized the enduring framework the agreement creates to support the long-term health and resilience of the Three Lakes System while benefiting communities on both sides of the Continental Divide.
“The Three Lakes CLEAR Initiative demonstrates how shared stewardship of Grand Lake clarity and the health of the broader Three Lakes System and its watersheds can strengthen the long-term resilience of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project for the benefit of Front Range water users while supporting the natural resources and thriving West Slope communities that depend on them. By creating a lasting legacy of collaboration and investment, this agreement helps ensure these shared resources will continue to be protected for generations to come,” said Esther Vincent, Environmental Services Director for Northern Water.
Grand County Board of County Commissioners Chair Edward Raegner highlighted the importance of the agreement for Grand County and the local communities that have stewarded the Three Lakes watershed for generations.
“This 30-year MOU reflects an unprecedented commitment to Grand Lake’s health and the long-term future of the Three Lakes System. Grand County is proud to work alongside our partners to help preserve Grand Lake’s water clarity for generations to come.”
The Colorado River District emphasized the value of continuing the collaborative approach that has guided clarity improvements in the Three Lakes System for the past decade.
“This MOU continues the collaborative approach that has guided clarity work in Grand Lake and water quality throughout the Three Lakes system since 2016. Over the past decade, we’ve gained valuable knowledge about how to effectively use adaptive management in the system, and this agreement will provide a strong foundation to continue that work for the long term. As a signatory to this MOU, the Colorado River District will continue to be a voice for the Western Slope and advocate for solutions that protect our water resources and the communities which depend on them,” said Rebecca Briesmoore, Senior Water Resources Engineer with the Colorado River District.
Former NWCCOG Executive Director Jon Stavney also welcomed the long-term commitment.
“Since the 1970s, our organization has been engaged in multiple efforts to protect and enhance the water quality of Grand Lake. This MOU represents a new beginning backed by a long-term commitment of substantial resources to the clarity of Grand Lake.”
Colorado-Big Thompson Project map. Courtesy of Northern Water.
The different sides each presented closing arguments, but it was the reflections of Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales that had the courtroom thinking as he brought to a close the water trial dealing with the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management.
At times it was a bruising trial Gonzales noted Thursday in his closing remarks, as he encouraged all the parties to move on and to not let the four-week trial wear on them and their own personal relationships.
“We all know that there’s no way this court can fashion an order or an opinion that’s going to satisfy everybody. It’s just not going to happen,” the judge said. “I mean, it can’t because we know that we have mutually exclusive and competing interests. We know that this petition when it was created recognized that, but we still said ‘cooperation’ and all those nice things. And in reality, I think we all knew at some point that was going to come to a head. And I think we’re there, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t move forward.”
San Luis Valley Groundwater
This was the big water trial because it dealt with a plan to recover the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin, Gonzales noted. He pointed to testimony of Mosca-area farmer Lyle Nissen as one he enjoyed the most.
“I just loved his testimony. Someone who’s made some recognition, someone who’s made some changes, someone who didn’t come in here and complain and just said, ‘This is how it is. I recognize it and I move forward.’ And that was great to hear,” Gonzales said.
He also referenced a term he learned during the course of the trial, “deep percolation,” and used it to provide further insight into his thinking.
“I sat in my back yard and I watched the rain come down,” he said of the week’s weather. “I watched puddles form and I thought about my second favorite term from this trial, ‘deep percolation’ and I said, ‘Aha.’ And then I came back 10 minutes later and that puddle was completely gone. I said, ‘Wow.’
“I also sat there and I thought about the testimony I think was from this current state engineer when he said that we need rainstorms of biblical proportion to get us where we need to be, and that hit home. And no matter how wonderful that rain was, there needs to be things that happen.”
The state Division of Water Resources and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District are asking Gonzales to reject the protestors’ arguments and approve the plan. Without it, they argued, the unconfined aquifer won’t recover and broad groundwater well curtailment in the subdistrict becomes inevitable.
The cornerstone of the new plan is the “one-for-one” feature, which limits groundwater pumping to the amount of natural surface water that flows into the subdistrict over a five-year running average. The intent is to put more water into the unconfined aquifer system than is taken out and one-for-one pumping guarantees that, according to the state and subdistrict.
Gonzales noted “the monstrosity of an equation” within the Fourth Amended Plan when he was quizzing Rio Grande Water Conservation District attorney Pete Ampe during his closing remarks.
The one-for-one pumping feature, the equation to determine success, and a new “depletion fee” that sets the value of water in the subdistrict at $500 per acre-foot were all argued over, discussed and debated throughout the month-long trial.
Attorney Mirko Kruse, representing his family’s farming interest, and attorney Andy Jones, representing L Cross Ranch, want Gonzales to refer the plan back to the subdistrict for adjustments they’re requesting but are otherwise good with the plan.
Two other protesting groups, Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, want the plan tossed entirely on grounds it isn’t legal; they asked Gonzales to order the subdistrict to only make changes to the existing third plan of water management.
Gonzales told all the attorneys to address Rule 8.7 of the state groundwater rules governing the Upper Rio Grande Basin. That rule determines how “proportional responsibility for maintaining a sustainable water supply is divided among all the well users within the Response Area.”
It gets to one of the key arguments made by SWAG and its belief that groundwater irrigators like their clients are being illegally targeted and asked to share a disproportionate share of the burden in the unconfined aquifer recovery efforts.
Gonzales provided a timeline that leads to this Thanksgiving for when all the case documents and filings will be completed and he can begin his deliberations.
“I guess if there’s one message that we all need to take to heart is that we need to change the things we’ve been doing,” Gonzales said in completing his comments. “We can’t continue down the path we’ve been because if we think that’s the only way we can go, we’re dooming our children, our children’s children. And I don’t want to be a part of that time.”
Northern Water will pay $30 million over the next 30 years to solve long-standing clarity and water quality problems at one of Colorado’s most treasured natural wonders, Grand Lake.
Under the terms of the agreement, the giant water provider will spend $1 million annually to test and implement new solutions to the problem, including weed control, aeration and sediment removal. The deal is the first time a dedicated source of money has been set aside to help the lake, Northern Water spokesperson Jeff Stahla said.
Grand Lake, located near the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, is Colorado’s deepest natural lake and has been a major tourist destination since the late 1800s. A coalition of federal and state agencies, and local advocacy groups have been working and arguing over how to restore it since at least 2008.
“It has been a long and arduous process to get here,” Stahla said. “We’re hopeful that this is a turning point for being able to work together for the common good.”
Grand Lake is a key element of Northern Water’s Colorado-Big Thompson delivery system, which provides water to more than 1 million people on the northern Front Range and thousands of acres of irrigated farmlands.
Owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and operated by Northern Water, The C-BT gathers water from the Upper Colorado River, and stores it in two holding pools built by the federal government: Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Reservoir. From there it is eventually moved into Grand Lake and delivered via the Adams Tunnel under the Continental Divide to Carter Lake, west of Berthoud, and Horsetooth Reservoir, west of Fort Collins.
Colorado-Big Thompson Project map. Courtesy of Northern Water.
During that process, algae and sediment are carried into Grand Lake, clouding its formerly clear waters and causing algae blooms and weed growth, and harming recreation.
In 2008, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission moved to set a clarity standard, but it has since been replaced with a clarity goal and the aim of achieving “the highest level of clarity attainable.” Since then, Northern Water and others have implemented different management techniques, including changing pumping patterns, to find ways to improve water quality in all three water bodies.
In 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took the first steps required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to do the scientific and engineering studies needed to fix the system and hold public hearings. But Reclamation stopped the process in 2020, saying that it could not definitively establish any structural alternatives that would work, nor could it find a way forward on funding such a major infrastructure redesign.
Frustration among Grand Lake advocates continued to build, however, and in 2024, Colorado lawmakers passed a resolution calling for more work on the issue.
In 1941, before the Colorado-Big Thompson Project began operating, clarity was measured at 9.2 meters in depth, about 32 feet, according to Northern Water. Since 2016, the goal has been to achieve clarity of 3.2 meters, just over 9 feet. “We’ve been hitting the goals much more steadily than we have before, thanks to changes in the way the water is pumped through the system,” Stahla said.
Still the lake is plagued by infusions of warm, murky water during the summer and algae blooms that harm its recreational value, locals say.
Mike Cassio, president of the Three Lakes Watershed Association and a long-time Grand Lake advocate, said the new agreement was the only way the local interests could see to move forward, given what they say is an imbalance of power between the federal government and Northern Water, and the people of Grand County.
“The Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that replumbing and fixing Grand Lake is a $1 billion project and it would take a congressional mandate to fund it,” Cassio said. “Is this agreement the best that we have? Probably. Is anybody up for a fight with Northern and the Bureau? Probably not. So the best thing to do is to work together.”
In addition to the $30 million, the new agreement also expands the governing body overseeing the work to include the town of Grand Lake, which will for the first time have an official role in how the three-lake system is managed, Stahla said.
The Colorado River District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties, signed off on the deal this week, saying via email that the new agreement would provide a strong foundation for future work on the lake.
Other signers to the agreement include Grand County, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, Northern Water, and the town of Grand Lake. It must still be signed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Little doubt was left following the conclusion of Tuesday’s [July 21, 2026] water court session that the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management will ultimately be decided on appeal by the Colorado Supreme Court.
Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales said as much as he ruled, following arguments, to allow testimony from former state engineer Kevin Rein, who is expected to testify as a rebuttal witness on Wednesday morning.
Ryan Donovan, attorney for the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group which are protesting the subdistrict plan, argued that Rein should not be allowed to testify as a “lay witness” to rebut the testimony of SWAG expert witness Ken Knox.
He also told Gonzales that his comments at the conclusion of the court session on Friday, July 17, where the judge made known his interest in hearing from Rein, created the appearance of impropriety which would be grounds for appeal should Gonzales rule against NWUA and SWAG in their bid to have the plan rejected by the water court.
“Now the supporters wish to call the exact witness identified by the court to the stand and are using the court’s statement as a basis for doing so. This tells me that the supporters would not be calling Mr. Rein, but for those statements. The extent the court relies on Mr. Rein’s testimony to fill the gaps in the state’s case and Mr. Rein’s testimony serves as a basis for the court’s ruling, NWUA and SWAG certainly have a colorful issue on appeal because the statements and the proponent’s subsequent action in response to those statements create the appearance of impropriety,” Donovan said.
In making his ruling that Rein could testify and that Rein’s testimony would be part of the court’s deliberations, Gonzales told Donovan and Subdistrict 1 attorney Pete Ampe that from his perspective, it’s felt that all sides have been working toward an appeal rather than to convince him.
“Pretty much all the evidence I’ve heard for the last three weeks has been cumulative, could be considered a waste of time and confusing. The same argument you just made for the evidence that I potentially could hear from Mr. Rein … I’ve let you guys present as much evidence as possible. I think maybe I have sustained two objections the entirety of the trial so that all the evidence comes in so the court has a basis to make what I would call a very ‘unenviable decision’ to quote language used by others and to be able to rely on enough information, sufficient information.
“I’ve let it all come in. I haven’t stopped, really, anybody from presenting any evidence during the course of these proceedings. Quite frankly, I will tell you from my perspective…it’s felt like no one really has been concerned as to what decision this court is going to make because you’ve been setting up an appeal from the very beginning on both sides, on all sides.That’s what it’s felt like,” Gonzales said.
Earlier in the day, Jake Burris, president of the Subdistrict 1 Board of Managers, and Subdistrict 1 farmer Lyle Nissen testified in support of the Fourth Amended Plan as rebuttal witnesses to testimony from farmers SWAG put on the witness stand.
Nissen walked the court through all the ways he has retooled his farming operation in light of the declining unconfined aquifer.
“It is a different day, a different time. We’ve got to have rules. We have to have parameters. We have to get to the point where we’re sustainable,” Nissen told the court.
The water trial resumes Wednesday [July 22, 2026], with final arguments coming as early as Thursday.
Ruedi Reservoir on the Fryingpan River is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Releases for the Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program have boosted late summer and fall river flows in recent years. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Times website (River Stingray). Here’s an excerpt:
July 13, 2026
The city of Aspen’s Ruedi Hydroelectric Facility is anticipated to lose hydroelectric power in early August due to current U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reservoir forecasts and operating conditions. The updated reservoir data indicate that the timing has shifted later than previously anticipated, which the city’s Utilities Resource & Portfolio Manager Joshua Mattson confirmed to The Aspen Times. According to him, earlier planning projections that were provided by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation indicated the reservoir could drop below the hydroelectric power pool threshold in mid- to late July.
“Updated reservoir elevations, inflow and outflow conditions, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operational forecasts now indicate the threshold is more likely to be reached in early to mid-August,” Mattson wrote in an email. “The shift reflects actual reservoir conditions improving relative to earlier projections and ongoing changes in reservoir operations and water demand. This remains a forecast and will continue to be evaluated as conditions evolve.”
The hydroelectric power pool represents the minimum reservoir elevation that is required in order to safely operate the hydroelectric turbine and associated equipment, according to an information update provided to Aspen City Council on Monday. When reservoir levels fall below this threshold, city staff will consequently take the Ruedi Hydroelectric Facility offline in order to protect equipment.
“This outage is not related to dam safety; rather, it is the result of hydrologic limitations associated with drought conditions,” the information update states. “The facility is expected to remain offline until reservoir levels recover above the minimum power pool elevation, which is anticipated to occur in spring 2027 as seasonal inflows increase.”
In the 1950s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built the Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal dams west of Gunnison as part of the massive regional Colorado River Storage Project. The Bureau of Reclamation is currently in the process of replacing all four original valves at Blue Mesa Dam for the first time. (Photos/National Park Service)
The Wayne N. Aspinall Unit, Colorado’s only stake in a federal hydropower system that sells power across the West, is on pace to generate nearly 30% less electricity than its historical average dating to 1978, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. The shortfall is the latest sign of a decades-long decline eroding a system that accounts for about 3% of Colorado’s energy supply.
Aspinall Unit dams
The unit’s three dams on the Gunnison River — including Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal — make up Colorado’s only piece of the Colorado River Storage Project, a Depression-era network of federal dams selling power to municipalities, cooperatives, tribes and irrigation districts across the West. Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water entirely within Colorado, is expected to end the year at just 17% of its live storage capacity.
As the river shrinks under the stresses of climate change, so does the unit’s output. And the electricity that the waterway does not help to generate has to come from somewhere else, usually at a higher price.
Nationwide, residential electricity users have already seen an annual price increase of more than 7% in the year ending in March. Judging by Xcel Energy’s recent effort in Colorado to obtain rate increases that might exceed 50% by the end of the decade, additional hits to consumers’ budgets could become the most obvious consequence of the building crisis in the Colorado River Storage Project’s capacity to generate power.
That economic scenario is unfolding as the West braces for a surge in electricity demand from data centers built to power artificial intelligence. On June 18, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission boosted the effort to hook up those large users when it ordered the nation’s six grid operators to speed transmission connections for AI data centers.
“We are setting the stage for a resilient, reliable, and forward-thinking grid that empowers communities and safeguards consumers by transforming the way large energy users access the grid,” agency chair Laura Swett said.
It’s a lopsided moment, since federal regulators are accelerating new demand onto a grid whose supply side, at least in Colorado, is apparently decaying.
A dangerous threshold
The mechanics of Colorado’s hydroelectricity system are straightforward, even if mostly invisible to consumers. Reclamation operates the dams. The Western Area Power Administration markets the power to “preference customers” at cost-based rates. The Aspinall Unit’s output is pooled with Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge, and other project dams under the Salt Lake City Integrated Projects Area arrangement, so Colorado utilities hold a share of that pool, not an Aspinall-specific allocation.
Less water also means less pressure, or “hydraulic head,” through the turbines: At full pool, one megawatt-hour at Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River takes about 1.9 acre-feet of water and, at today’s lower elevations, roughly 2.9 acre feet, said Jen Pelz of the Flagstaff, Arizona-based Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental organization that advocates for conservation of Colorado Plateau natural resources.
The same mechanism plays out at Blue Mesa. At its current elevation of about 7,446 feet, the reservoir’s generating capacity is approximately 18% below the amount for which it was designed, said Nick Williams, Reclamation’s power manager for the Upper Colorado Basin. Electricity generation stops entirely at 7,393 feet, Blue Mesa’s minimum power pool.
A high desert thunderstorm lights up the sky behind Glen Canyon Dam — Photo USBR
Reclamation moved aggressively this spring to avoid a more dangerous threshold. In April, it projectedinflow at Lake Powell, behind the Glen Canyon Dam, at just 29% of average and warned that without action, the reservoir could fall below its minimum power-pool elevation of 3,490 feet by August. That is the point at which Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines stop generating.
View below Flaming Gorge Dam from the Green River, eastern Utah. Photo credit: USGS
While the agency issued a more optimistic prediction in May, it nevertheless ordered additional emergency releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir through April 2027 and cut Powell’s release to Lake Mead for the year by roughly 1.5 million acre-feet. That protects Glen Canyon’s generators, partly by drawing down Mead, which has in turn already cut Hoover Dam’s generating capacity by an estimated 5% to 8.5%. The Hoover Dam power production decline is already reflected in the agency’s June forecasts, according to Len Schilling, the Reclamation official overseeing dam operations in the Lower Colorado Basin. None of the agency’s moves solve the shortage. Instead, Reclamation decides, reservoir by reservoir, where the pain lands first.
A test of the cost gap
The clearest documented example of that pain in dollars comes from the Western Area Power Administration’s own numbers. From fiscal 2023 through 2025, the agency paid more per megawatt-hour for replacement power than it charges customers every year and roughly tripled its rate in 2023, narrowing to about 35% above it by 2025, according to a Colorado Newsline analysis of WAPA and federal energy data. WAPA also spent $18.9 million in 2024 and $6.5 million in 2025 on replacement power tied to “Cool Mix,” a protocol that bypasses Glen Canyon’s turbines to protect native fish downstream, according to a Colorado River Research Group report drawing on an Argonne National Laboratory analysis and figures from WAPA.
Platte River Power Authority, which supplies Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont and Estes Park and holds a direct WAPA allocation, could be the clearest Front Range-based test of that cost gap. A spokesperson for the utility said it could not respond to questions before publication. A recent organization budget cited reduced federal deliveries and rising WAPA rates as adverse financial factors, but current estimated financial consequences for the power authority, and what it will mean for the utility’s customers, remain unclear. WAPA did not respond to requests for comment.
A smaller utility in the state offers a contrasting situation. La Plata Electric Association, the rural cooperative serving Colorado’s southwest corner, relies mostly on the Southwest Power Pool for its electricity supply after joining that regional transmission organization earlier this year. But the association’s chief executive officer, Chris Hansen, said the cooperative still relies on WAPA for a hydropower allocation tied to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. That WAPA dependence amounts to about 3% of the association’s supply. Hansen said market access and a diversified portfolio buffer the small utility against hydrologic risk.
“Even if that 3% were to double in cost, which is possible, it would have a relatively small impact on our total cost of power purchases,” he said. “So we have low exposure. Other co-ops do not. For us it would be (a) relatively small change.”
Whether joining the Southwest Power Pool can give utilities facing more financial pressure much hedge against rising power costs is not yet clear. Sydney Welter, an energy markets policy advisor at Western Resource Advocates, explained that “with just three months of market operations and without having seen data from Colorado preference customers, I’m not certain what the long-term costs and benefits will be.” While the Brattle Group, an industry watcher, predicted that utilities would save tens of millions of dollars per year by joining power pools, it is not clear whether that is happening.
Rise in demand
Colorado lawmakers considered a bill this year that would have imposed accountability requirements on data centers. Senate Bill 26-102 was killed before the General Assembly adjourned in May, though the issue isn’t likely to fade. Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, expects large industrial customers, mostly data centers, to drive roughly two-thirds of its new demand. Nationally, data centers consumed an estimated 4.7% of U.S. electricity, a figure that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projects could reach nearly 12% by 2030. Increasing data center electricity use in Colorado would add pressure to a system that is already experiencing supply reductions caused by the loss of flows at the Aspinall Unit.
That framework also shapes the deeper risk involving a “compact call” to the Lower Basin states demanding delivery of more water from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. That has never happened in the Colorado River Compact’s history, but it could increase pressure on Western Slope water and power as Front Range cities lease senior water rights across the Continental Divide, according to University of Wyoming law professor Jason Robison.
Dories at rest on a glorious Grand Canyon eve. Photo by Brian Richter
No one is predicting a call soon. But Pelz argues the standoff between electricity costs and environmental protection is a false choice: The Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992 already requires dam operations consistent with the river ecosystem’s long-term sustainability, and Congress could have eased the cost pressure through diversified supply or a dedicated fund, but has not done so in the 30 years since that law was enacted. Reclamation is now studying a broader infrastructure fix at Glen Canyon Dam, with initial findings due in 2027.
That may be too late for the pressures already showing up this year at reservoirs like Blue Mesa.
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and part of Mexico. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
As of July 12, Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison sat only 32% full at 266,000 acre feet of storage water — about 35,000 acre feet less than the historic minimum for that date, down 35%…Severe drought conditions at the reservoir have resulted in critically low storage levels, a limitation on water allocation to the Uncompahgre Valley and its agricultural water users, limited flows for releasing endangered fish species, decreased recreational opportunities on the water that go hand-in-hand with a downturn in the regional recreational economy, and uncertainty over power generation and water usage in the near future. Colorado River District spokeswoman Lindsay DeFrates called it a “crisis”, as the reservoir and the Wayne N. Aspinall Unit — which stores water and generates hydroelectric power through the reservoir as well as the Morrow Point and Crystal Reservoir dams — is one of the upper units that feeds the crucial Lake Powell downstream.
“Everyone’s looking downstream at Lake Powell while we have this happening in our backyard right now,” DeFrates said…
Black Canyon July 2020. Photo credit: Cari Bischoff
When he was the Division 4 assistant engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources (DWR), Jason Ullmann would have never entertained the notion that the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park’s portion of the river could ever dry up. Now, as the DWR director and Colorado state engineer, he said it’s unlikely to happen this year or next — but it’s “not an impossibility.”
“The actual inflow from April to July this year was the lowest on record. Barring a change in the climate conditions that produce this monsoon everybody’s waiting for, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to have a significant increase in inflow. We’re going to have one of the lowest inflow seasons — if not the lowest — on record at Blue Mesa,” Ullmann said. “Blue Mesa started the year approximately 20 feet below the normal level it would start the year on. The water levels are very low and will continue to drop.”
Colorado River District Senior Water Resources Engineer Caleb Foy compared 2026 to some of the region’s driest years — 1977, 2002, 2012 and 2018 — and said 2026 “takes the gold medal in terms of poor hydrological conditions”, impacting water storage at Blue Mesa Reservoir which, in turn, has multiple impacts downstream…
Foy noted that the reservoir’s storage could drop below the power pool level, which is the minimum amount of water needed to produce hydropower from the dam. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s June 2026 24-month study, this drop could happen as soon as February 2027. According to other forecasts, this drop could happen as soon as the end of this summer if the region sees no monsoon conditions and current operations aren’t modified to preserve storage at the reservoir…A reduction in downstream flow would negatively affect downstream diversions, Colorado River flow, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and endangered fish species in both the Gunnison and Colorado rivers. The BOR has worked with Fish and Wildlife to temporarily reduce flow targets while trying to minimize negative impacts to endangered fish species. Ullmann said the minimal target flow for the Endangered Fish Recovery Rights is, in a typical year, no lower than 750 cubic feet per second. This year, the target is at 750 cfs — and last week, the flow was as low as 700 cfs. This has been alarming enough to spark conversations between the state and the BOR.
This field in the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association district has been fallowed this season (2026) due to a lack of water. The state of Colorado announced Wednesday that it will set up a conservation program using federal dollars, which means more fields on the Western Slope could soon look like this. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
In the culmination of a process that has been years in the making, Colorado officials Wednesday announced the creation of a state-run water conservation program.
In what officials are calling a “near-term contribution program,” the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) will pay water users to voluntarily cut back in 2027 and 2028, using $100 million in promised funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Colorado will now join Utah and Wyoming in setting up a conservation program within their respective states.
The noteworthy, long-expected announcement came at the regular July meeting of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, where board members considered the criteria for the program. A draft list says the program must, among other criteria, avoid negative community impacts; encourage contributions from across the state and water-use sectors; incentivize environmental benefits; encourage tribal participation; and build local drought resiliency. The board is scheduled to finalize the program criteria at its September meeting.
These types of conservation programs have traditionally targeted agricultural water users, often seen as the low-hanging fruit for water savings because they use the majority of Colorado River water. But officials are hoping this program will have participation across all water-use sectors, including municipal and industrial.
“I love that it is called a contribution program because that kind of imagines broader participation and engagement,” said board member Taylor Hawes. “So I think that is good. I think the more flexibility we can have, the better in a program like this.”
But details were scant on exactly how much water Colorado will contribute to the program and how the saved water would be used. And although some experts have begun calling for permanent reductions in water use, it remains — for now — a temporary, short-term program.
“We cannot guarantee a certain amount of water will be conserved in a given year because we don’t know how much water our water users are going to get,” said Amy Ostdiek, interstate section chief at the CWCB. “We have been clear that we just can’t do that.”
In a May letter to federal officials, the Upper Colorado River Commission said it has a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of September 2028, which marks the end of water year 2028, but only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow. Colorado’s share of the Upper Basin’s allocation is 51.75%, meaning Colorado could be on the hook for 51,750 acre-feet over the next two years.
But Ostdiek said they are not at this time discussing a specific target that Colorado or the Upper Basin would have to contribute in exchange for the $100 million from the Bureau of Reclamation.
“We have felt confident that we can generate up to 100,000 acre-feet by 2028,” Ostdiek said in a Q&A session with the media after her presentation to the CWCB. “But really, what we’re going to be focused on is getting robust participation.”
It’s also unclear exactly how the saved water will be used. Officials said it’s not meant for use by the Lower Basin (California, Arizona and Nevada); it will be for the benefit of the Upper Basin. The water will need to have a home in Upper Basin storage buckets — Lake Powell, Navajo, Blue Mesa or Flaming Gorge reservoirs — but how it will fit into broader reservoir operations is unknown. [ed. emphasis mine]
“I think that is going to be the subject of ongoing discussion, exactly how this water is used and characterized,” Ostdiek said. “I think what we know is that it needs to be credited to or subject to the discretion of the Upper Division states in some way.”
Missouri Heights resident Cassie Cerise pets her dog Dinah on her ranch outside of Carbondale in summer 2023. Cerise enrolled the field behind her in the Upper Colorado River Commission’s System Conservation Program, getting paid to not irrigate it. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Conservation concept is not new
These types of programs that pay water users to cut back are not new to Colorado, and officials said they are incorporating the lessons learned from previous demand-management studies beginning in 2019, stakeholder input and pilot programs. The state participated in the 2023 and 2024 System Conservation Pilot Program, as well as an earlier version that ran from 2015 to 2018.
But conservation programs remain controversial. The Grand Valley Water Users Association, one of the largest irrigation districts on the mainstem of the Colorado River, did not allow its members to participate in SCPP for fear of negative impacts to other water users in the district.
All of the projects enrolled in SCPP involved agricultural water users on the Western Slope, a potentially risky situation, according to the Colorado River Water Conservation District. The Glenwood Springs-based agency, which represents 15 counties across the Western Slope, had tried to influence the creation of criteria for participation in SCPP to avoid negative impacts to rural agricultural communities.
Ultimately, only the Upper Colorado River Commission determined who got to participate in SCPP. Now, it seems state officials are taking to heart the River District’s recommendations. River District General Counsel Peter Fleming thanked Ostdiek for including some of the criteria that the district had set forth in its principles about how to create a conservation program.
Fleming encouraged the board members to adopt variable pricing to account for the difference in the value of relatively cheap water on the Western Slope versus more-expensive water on the Front Range. Pueblo Water had wanted to participate in SCPP, but the $509 per acre-foot offered in 2024 to Colorado participants was too far below market value.
“You can see the variable economic values of the water assigned there and the need to have variable pricing in order to encourage widespread participation,” Fleming said.
The River District’s position is that the entire burden of a conservation program shouldn’t be borne by the Western Slope, but must also be shouldered by Front Range water providers, who collectively deplete the Colorado River basin by about 500,000 acre-feet a year.
He added that a program should also have a strong element of local control.
“The River District obviously would like to stay involved in this process,” he said.
The creation of a conservation program for Colorado comes at a critical time for the basin, which remains locked in the grip of a historic drought, with combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead at an all-time low since the reservoirs began filling. Although the Upper Basin has argued that it has never used its entire allocation granted by the 1922 Colorado River Compact (and therefore shouldn’t have to cut back), in the face of dwindling flows and calls for conservation from its downstream neighbors, the four states can no longer avoid reducing their water demand.
The Colorado River basin is also in the midst of a management crisis, with the seven states that share the river still unable to find agreement on a new framework after more than two years of failed negotiations. The current guidelines for how shortages are shared and how reservoirs are operated expire this year, and the feds are poised to step in with their own management plan, expected later this month.
The Upper Basin would need separate parallel agreements with Reclamation alongside the federal management plan to account for and get credit for water saved through the contribution program.
In her presentation, Ostdiek gave a preview of Reclamation’s expected plan, which could allow for a pool in Lake Powell to store up to 3 million acre-feet conserved by Upper Basin states. But board chair Barbara Vasquez worried about overestimating the amount of water that could be contributed given the recent historically dry conditions. Farmers and ranchers across Colorado are now experiencing the fallout from the worst snowpack on record in the form of shortages and fallowed fields.
“So prior programs, we spent a lot of money for very little water conserved. I worry that next year may be even worse than this year, and it’s not willingness, but ability,” Vasquez said. Given the water that’s available, she said, “that might disappoint expectations on the part of the negotiators at the table for the Colorado River.”
Aspen Journalism is a nonprofit, investigative news organization covering water, environment, social justice and more. Visit aspenjournalism.org.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
On July 13th, the Colorado River District, in partnership with the Colorado Water Trust and the Yampa River Fund, began releasing water from Elkhead Reservoir to mitigate the impacts of extreme drought and critically low streamflows in the Yampa River Valley. Beginning with a release of 10 cubic feet per second, the releases are part of the Yampa River Reservoir Release Program, a 2,000-acre-foot pool first established in 2021 with funding from the Colorado River District’s Community Funding Partnership. The program is designed to reduce drought-related pressure on agricultural producers while supporting river health and aquatic habitat.
“While we’re experiencing exceptionally difficult drought conditions, the story of 2026 is neighbors and water users working together. No single reservoir, organization or water user can solve this alone,” said Hunter Causey, Chief Engineer for the Colorado River District. “By coordinating releases, operations and water use across the basin, we can stretch a limited supply further and provide meaningful benefits for agricultural producers, local communities and the river.”
Below-average snowfall and persistent summer drought have reduced streamflows and increased water temperatures throughout the Yampa River Basin. Releases through the Yampa River Reservoir Release Program are intended to support agricultural water users, help delay or prevent a call on the river during periods of critically low flow, and benefit designated critical habitat for four endangered fish species. Releases are expected to increase in the coming weeks and continue through July.
“The Colorado Water Trust is an environmental nonprofit, and our work is keeping water in rivers,” said Blake Mamich, Programs Director for the Colorado Water Trust. “In a drought this deep, that same mission means showing up for agriculture. Coordinating closely with the River District and the Division of Water Resources, we can time these releases so a single pool of water helps irrigators extend a tough season and keeps water in Yampa for habitat and fish.”
“This is a difficult year for producers throughout the Yampa Valley, and we wanted to be part of a practical solution that helps the broader community,” said Yampa Basin rancher Matt Boeddeker of Lily Park Land & Cattle. “Water users across Colorado are making hard choices and working together to stretch limited supplies, and like them, we hope to help our neighbors complete critical irrigation and reduce the immediate impacts of drought.”
The Yampa River is primarily supplied by snowmelt from the Flat Tops and Gore Range and flows through agricultural areas of northwest Colorado before joining the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. During dry years, coordinated releases from Stagecoach and Elkhead reservoirs supplement streamflows for agricultural water users, river habitat and endangered fish. The Colorado River District and its partners will continue to monitor streamflow, water temperature, irrigation demand, and habitat needs, and will adjust releases as conditions warrant.
The Colorado Division 3 water trial that virtually every farmer and rancher who operates in the Upper Rio Grande Basin is paying attention to is on track to wrap up this week, with former State Engineer Kevin Rein scheduled to testify before final arguments are made, Judge Michael Gonzales signaled Monday.
San Luis Valley Groundwater
The trial in Alamosa water court deals with the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, which outlines a new approach to the aquifer recovery by limiting the subdistrict’s groundwater withdrawals to the amount of surface water that naturally comes into the lands annually. It is the subdistrict with the largest cash crop receipts in the Valley’s growing fields, the subdistrict with the largest volume of groundwater pumping, and the subdistrict under orders from the state to recover the basin’s shallow unconfined aquifer.
The new plan, approved by Rein before he retired as state engineer in 2023, has been dissected by farming operations protesting the plan in water court by arguing groundwater irrigators will be driven out of business because of the plan’s limits on groundwater pumping and a hefty $500 per-acre-foot pumping fee.
“It will be a hard nut to crack,” Dee Greeman, who works the L Cross Ranch, testified Monday.
L Cross is among the operations protesting the plan. Given the multi-decade drought conditions, the overpumping fee and the fact L Cross would no longer be allowed under the new plan to offset its pumping with its own surface water as credits to its groundwater withdrawals, the value of the ranch would be affected long term, Greeman told the court.
“It’s a gamestopper,” he said, if wells can’t pump because it is from its groundwater pumping that L Cross finds profit in producing hay.
Greeman’s testimony on Monday wrapped up presentations by the different protestors to the plan. The state Division of Water Resources, which is defending the plan, will bring back witnesses to rebut different testimony and key to it all will be Rein.
It was the testimony of former state Division of Water Resources engineer Ken Knox at the conclusion of week 3 of the trial that prompted Gonzales to tell the state that it is only common sense for Rein to testify. Knox trashed Rein’s review, saying it didn’t take all the proper steps and didn’t include all the critical information for a state engineer to conduct a review of a water management plan.
Following a motion Monday by Preston Hartman, the state assistant attorney general defending the Fourth Amended Plan in water court, to dismiss the protestors case, Gonzales ruled that the protestors have provided sufficient evidence to keep going and scheduled closing arguments for the end of week after Rein testifies on Wednesday.
Once the final arguments are made, Gonzales will set a timeline for his review and decision.
“This is not something we want to push out too far,” the judge said at the conclusion of Monday’s session.
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
July 15, 2026
Even in the driest of years — like this one — powerful Western Slope water rights on the mainstem of the Colorado River draw water downstream, making boating on the state’s major water artery possible.
“For mainstem floating, we should still have pretty darn good flows for the rest of the season for as long as people want to be boating,” said Sam Calahan, a water resources specialist for the Colorado River District. The taxpayer-funded agency is based in Glenwood Springs and works to protect Western Slope water…
On Wednesday, Browns Canyon — a popular section of the Arkansas River near Buena Vista — was flowing at the lowest level in 55 years of data and at 16% of its median flow for that date. Clear Creek near Idaho Springs was flowing at 61 cubic feet per second on Wednesday, also a record low for the date in 72 years of data. The median flow for the date is 347 cfs, or more than five times as much water…But flows on much of the Colorado River were high enough for rafts and kayaks this week. Flows on a popular section near Kremmling were near normal, as were water levels farther downstream in Glenwood Canyon. Two major factors keep water flowing down the Colorado River during drought: large senior water rights owned by farmers in Mesa County’s Grand Valley and the water rights connected to the Shoshone Power Plant, a hydroelectric facility in Glenwood Canyon owned by Xcel Energy. Irrigators and power plant operators can call water to their facilities from upstream reservoirs, like Green Mountain Reservoir, which is on the Blue River — a tributary of the Colorado River — north of Silverthorne. This year, the irrigators began calling down water on July 1, boosting flows in the Colorado River.
Colorado Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales said from the bench Friday that he wants to hear from former State Engineer Kevin Rein and without his testimony it will be “very hard for this court” and its decision on whether to allow the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management in Subdistrict 1 to go into effect.
And that’s how Week 3 of the most important water trial in the past 25 years affecting the Upper Rio Grande Basin ended in Alamosa water court – the judge telling the state Division of Water Resources as it defends the plan that he would like to hear from the state engineer who approved the plan.
“Without hearing from Mr. Rein, it’s a concern,” Gonzales said.
Earlier during Friday’s afternoon session, he cautioned attorneys on their tone and their questioning of witnesses in a week when emotions inside the courtroom ran high.
“Let’s everybody cool their jets,” the judge said before he added an extra 10 minutes to the afternoon courtroom break.
The week opened with State Engineer Jason Ullman telling Gonzales that without the Fourth Amended Plan in action, Subdistrict 1 faces widespread curtailment since it will not meet the “sustainable” level of the unconfined aquifer by 2031 when the current plan of water management expires.
In 2018 Rein first alerted the Rio Grande Water Conservation District that broad curtailment could be on the table given the lack of progress in restoring the unconfined aquifer. It was then the subdistrict began working on a fourth amendment to its water management plan, which was ultimately adopted by the Subdistrict 1 board and then the Rio Grande Water Conservation District before Rein gave his sign off.
Ullman, who succeeded Rein as state engineer, told the court as he wrapped up his testimony that in his view the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management, which features a one-for-one pumping mechanism, is the “most reasonable I can think of that would be likely to cause the aquifer to increase in level.”
The one-for-one features means the subdistrict would offset its groundwater withdrawals by returning an acre-foot of water for every acre-foot pumped during the irrigation season. The new plan also contains an overpumping fee of $500 per acre-foot which groundwater irrigators would pay if they cannot offset their groundwater withdrawals with their own surface water or surface water credits.
“Like I said, I understand that that decision has consequences, but there’s pretty significant consequences to doing something. And at some point as the policy decision makers, we have to make a decision to do something to meet these goals the General Assembly has set out. And I feel like that’s what we’ve done here. The consequences of doing nothing are much more drastic and draconian than the consequences of this plan,” Ullman told the court.
It was Rein’s review and sign off on the Fourth Amended Plan that has come under scrutiny by opponents to the plan. Rein retired at the end of 2023 after approving the plan and conducted this exit interview with Alamosa Citizen. During the conversation for an episode of The Valley Pod, he was reluctant to dive into the details of the plan because it was headed to water court and Judge Gonzales for a legal review.
“Without saying too much about that and the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict, from my perspective as a state engineer, there’s one critical aspect of that for both cases and that is the sustainability of the unconfined aquifer. As we know, that’s a difficult component of groundwater management in the Valley because we have a statutorily required sustainability objective. And that has found its way into the rules and into the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict,” he said at the time.
He added that under the existing plan of water management for Subdistrict 1, “it’s going to be very difficult to meet that sustainability objective … And I know that the subdistrict has worked hard toward an alternative in this current plan that I approved and is before the court, and the way that plays out is going to be so important to the irrigators in the Valley.”
Ken Knox, a former employee of state Division of Water Resources who at one point served as acting state engineer for approximately 18 months, criticized Rein during his testimony Friday for not conducting a thorough review and that the plan in sections was “devoid of necessary information” to approve the plan by the state engineer.
Rein’s review was a “dramatic step backwards for professionalism of agency standards,” Knox told the court. He was the final expert witness for the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, who are asking Gonzales to throw the plan out on legal grounds.
Rein’s review was a “dramatic step backwards for professionalism of agency standards,” Knox told the court. He was the final expert witness for the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group, who are asking Gonzales to throw the plan out on legal grounds.
The farmers opposing the plan are trying to thread a few legal arguments to persuade Judge Gonzales to reject the plan. Their contention is the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group are being asked to bear a disproportionate share of the burden in the aquifer recovery efforts because they are groundwater irrigators. They contend Rein didn’t conduct a full legal review of the sustainability and proportionality rules contained in state statutes governing recovery of the unconfined aquifer and the $500 fee makes the plan beyond the economic means of all the irrigators who hold water rights in the subdistrict.
“My land would have no value,” groundwater farmer Asier Artaechevarria testified, acknowledging that his operations rely 100 percent on groundwater withdrawals.
Ernie Myers, another farmer opposing the plan and who served on the Subdistrict 1 board for a several years, said it was after 2002, when the Upper Rio Grande Basin first experienced historic low flows from a lack of snow runoff, that he first began to feel targeted as a groundwater irrigator and had the feeling that surface water farmers were trying to put him out of business.
“I was pumping their water. I had no right to pump their water. I had a few farmers telling me, ‘I’m third, fourth generation. You’re a newcomer. You came in ’73 with your father. You have no right to do what you’re doing,’” Myers testified.
“And were there actually people saying that they intended to put you out of business?” a SWAG attorney asked.
“Yes, yes,” testified Myers.
Myers was the first to testify on behalf of SWAG and the Northeast Water Users Association. Knox was their final witness, and it was after his testimony that Gonzales made his interest in Rein testifying known.
“Common sense means a great deal to me,” the judge said.
Common sense tells the judge he should hear from the person who approved the plan he’s being asked to give legal approval to.
The trial resumes Monday with the L Cross Ranch, another legal opponent to the plan, making its arguments before Gonzales.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
This week, rain returned to Pagosa Country, bringing some relief from the dry heat that dominated June and early July and heralding the start of the summer monsoon season. Weather modeling by the National Integrated Drought Information Center (NIDIS) suggests that the summer monsoon season is likely to bring average or above average precipitation to the region — a bounty compared to the approximately 25 to 50 percent of average precipitation Archuleta County received in last month. The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecasts that drought conditions in the area will improve by Sept. 30, although it suggests that current severe and extreme drought levels calculated by the U.S. Drought Monitor will persist through July.
The Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation District is currently in drought stage two, which includes a number of restrictions on outdoor irrigation, as well as additional fees for high water use. In stage two, irrigation is allowed only between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. every other weekday, with even-numbered addresses able to irrigate on even-numbered days and odd-numbered addresses on odd-numbered days. Weekend irrigation is prohibited. However, drip irrigation and hand watering edible or ornamental gardens is allowed at all times. Residential water use above 4,000 gallons per month is subject to a two times rate multiplier. PAWSD District Manager Andrew Connor explained that, while the rains associated with the monsoons might eventually impact the district’s drought restrictions, changes would require a large amount of rain and would not be immediate. In the summer, the drought stage is primarily driven by the water level in Hatcher Reservoir, flows in the San Juan River and the date…
PAWSD District Engineer Justin Ramsey explained that the district’s drought management plan focuses on irrigation since it composes a large portion of the district’s water use in the summer and because losing green lawn grass or other plants has a smaller impact on people’s lives than restrictions on showering, dish washing or other indoor water uses…The drought stages in the district’s drought management plan align with this goal, imposing progressively tightening restrictions on when irrigation can occur while placing no restrictions on indoor water use except increasing fees for high water consumption. However, for all but the most severe drought stage, these restrictions only cover irrigation done with sprinklers and other automated devices, with the use of drip irrigation devices and hand watering allowed at all times…Manual and drip irrigation encourage people to be more conscious about how they use water by involving them more deeply in the process and requiring more hands-on time, he added. Another way to increase the water available for gardens and landscaping without paying more fees is to reduce water waste in your home, Connor and Ramsey highlighted.
Looking down at the Colorado River, Lees Ferry, and the Paria River. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
July 16, 2026
Sara Porterfield, Colorado River program director with the conservation nonprofit Trout Unlimited, stood on a narrow, rocky river beach, about as close to Glen Canyon Dam as a boat can go.
“This is not a zero sum game,” she said. “Investing in watershed health is not an either-or. We need the system to be healthy from an ecological perspective in order for the rest of it to function.”
The river, Porterfield said, cannot deliver big volumes of clean water if it does not, at least partially, function like a normal, healthy river. For example, if the river’s upper reaches are dried out, they’ll be susceptible to wildfires and wetland degradation, which make it harder for them to hold on to water and release it slowly into the streams where humans have been able to reliably divert and collect it for generations.
“It’s not just plumbing, but it’s also not just water in a river,” Porterfield said as the dam’s hydroelectric generators emitted a whining hum in the background. “We’re not separate from the natural world, we’re part of it. When we recognize that, and we take help to take care of it, we get a lot further than when we’re just thinking about a plumbing system.”
Glen Canyon downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Porterfield, who has a Ph.D. in Colorado River history, said calling the river a “plumbing system” is a useful way to think about one of its jobs, but not the whole picture. Environmental advocates say the river can be protected while still flowing through the dams and canals that keep the West wet for humans. Those protections can even be part of the wonky and rigid legal policies that dictate where water goes. John Berggren, a water policy manager at the conservation nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, had some recommendations for the next set of river-sharing rules. An important one, he said, is to get the river out of “crisis mode.”
[…]
“You can be much more proactive and thoughtful and careful and intentional about how you manage the river and include river health,” he said.
Another way to help protect the river’s ecosystems, creatures and flows, Berggren said, is by carefully timing the release of water from reservoirs. For example, policymakers can write flexible rules about where and when water is stored, so water that is flowing downstream to cities and farms can also help make life better for native fish. The water can be used to help the environment without being taken away from humans downstream.
“They’re going to move the water anyway,” he said. “Let’s do it in a way that actually benefits ecological conditions.”
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Retired farmer Ernie Myers spoke Tuesday to the threats and hostilities he faced as a groundwater irrigator and how he felt like a “whipping boy” for surface water farmers who complained “that I was pumping their water.”
Myers was the first to testify in protest of the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management as part of the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group opposition to the plan.
He served on the Subdistrict 1 board of managers from 2012 to 2016 and told Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales that “I was exhausted,” when he stepped down. “They beat me up mentally and financially.”
Myers and his family, along with Asier Artaechevarria, are asking Gonzales to reject the plan, which is designed to recover the unconfined aquifer through a one-for-one pumping mechanism — for every acre-foot of water pumped, an acre-foot of water must be returned to the aquifer — that limits pumping to the amount of natural surface water that comes into the subdistrict.
Groundwater irrigators with little or no natural surface water coming into their fields will have to offset their pumping either by purchasing surface water credits or paying a $500 per acre-foot fee, which Myers and Artaechevarria told the judge would put them out of business.
The plan has been approved by the Subdistrict 1 board of managers, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District board of directors, and the state engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
Artaechevarria told the court that he didn’t think enough had been done under the current plan of water management to try to make it work. Both Artaechevarria and Myers said they were willing to retire more acreage under the current plan and that the $500 acre-foot fee is beyond the economic means of groundwater irrigators.
“My land would have no value,” Artaechevarria testified, because he wouldn’t be able to market it for sale and wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage as a result.
“You can see the issue there,” he told the court.
Myers said it was after 2002, when the Upper Rio Grande Basin first experienced historic low flows from a lack of snow runoff, that he first began to feel targeted as a groundwater irrigator and had the feeling that surface water farmers were trying to put him out of business.
“I was pumping their water. I had no right to pump their water. I had a few farmers telling me, ‘I’m third, fourth generation. You’re a newcomer. You came in ’73 with your father. You have no right to do what you’re doing.’”
“And were there actually people saying that they intended to put you out of business?” SWAG’s attorney asked.
“Yes, yes,” testified Myers.
The Division 3 water trial is in its third week at the Alamosa Judicial Center.
Rumors of data centers have local government agencies in the San Luis Valley preparing for the inevitable – an application for a data center.
Costilla County and the town of South Fork are the latest local governments to place moratoriums on artificial intelligence data centers. Though no applications or projects are being proposed, local governments want to give themselves time to create land use codes to address data centers.
A packed room and a packed Zoom at the Costilla County Planning Commission meeting Wednesday morning saw tensions high as the public continues to express opposition to data centers. The commission approved a year-long moratorium. The moratorium will now go to county commissioners for approval.
The town of South Fork’s planning and zoning board is poised to do the same thing during a public hearing Wednesday night’s planning and zoning commission meeting as the town does not have specific zoning regulations that address data centers. The board will use the public hearing for feedback as members begin their work over the next year to devise specific codes.
At Wednesday morning’s Costilla County meeting, planning commissioner Joseph Quintana dispelled rumors and reassured the public that a data center application has not been submitted to the county and that “nobody’s approved anything.”
He said that when the planning commission was first formed the commission came up with a mission plan with a set of goals that were aimed at protecting the environment and the way of life.
“A data center is the antithesis, the complete opposite of what we would want in this community,” he said.
He went on to say, “Our job here is to follow that mission that was established 30 years ago with public comment. So I just want to make sure everybody understands, nobody’s approved a data center that I’m aware of. Nobody’s even applied for a data center here. There’s nobody that’s asked to build one or tried to get a permit or anything like that.”
In June, the Costilla County Commissioners asked the planning commission to address data centers “and get ahead before a problem develops,” Quintana said.
Commissioner Frank Vigil said they wanted the year to create a “thoughtful” ordinance that “reflects the feelings of the general public.”
“Our code doesn’t even have the two words ‘data center’ in it anywhere at all,” said county attorney Carle Turnetzer-Decker. “We were just concerned, I think, the board of county commissioners and the commission here, that if someone did approach us we have absolutely no way to handle it, restrict it, regulate it, do any of that.”
South Fork made a public statement on Tuesday that said, “To dispel rumors that are circulating within the community. The Town instituted a moratorium on Data Centers within the Town of South Fork last month which will last one year. The Town has not had any companies approach the town about data centers. We are simply trying to get ahead of any that may approach the Town. Obviously, there are concerns with them and rest assured your Board of Trustees share your concerns. Please come share your thoughts so we know how best to represent the community in making policy on this.”
Saguache County was the first local government in the Valley to place a moratorium on data centers while it figures out how its land use codes would address any data center application.
Earlier in June, the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable heard from Lindsay Rogers of Western Resources Advocates, who noted how rural markets are becoming targets for data center applications because of the assumption of “less red tape.”
Western Resources Advocates, Rogers said, has a particular interest working in the San Luis Valley as part of a grant process for local policy decision-making around large water users.
“One concern that we have which we’ve seen playing out in other states in our region, is that developers may target rural communities where they feel there may be less red tape to developing these data centers. Our communities may not have the time or resources needed to ensure the proposal fits within their own goals and their own resource availability. So we think it’s really important to think about these policy options proactively before developers come to town instead of responding to them once they’ve arrived.”
Solar panels San Luis Valley. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Richard Hubler, planning director for Alamosa County, said at the roundtable, “There’s a very real possibility, as we move forward, that because of our fiber networks here and our broadband capacity, our cheap land and what may end up being a glut of solar production that we could be a target in the Valley for somebody who says, ‘Hey, there’s more power than the Valley could use there.
“I could take a circle next to that 600 megawatt project and use the other 400 megawatts they may have.’ And we don’t know how to handle that now as a county or as a Valley. I think that this is timely because we really do want to get ahead of it before we have to deal with an application.”
In May, SLV Rural Electric Cooperative CEO Eric Eriksen said the Valley has underutilized energy capacity and that “rural data centers” are the “most relevant for us.” Rural data centers are described as smaller, more efficient facilities that are often housed within buildings no larger than small commercial buildings and operate anywhere from 50 kilowatts up to 50 megawatts.
These centers commonly use air-cooling or closed-loop refrigeration instead of consuming water.
In May, SLV Rural Electric Cooperative CEO Eric Eriksen said the Valley has underutilized energy capacity and that “rural data centers” are the “most relevant for us.” Rural data centers are described as smaller, more efficient facilities that are often housed within buildings no larger than small commercial buildings and operate anywhere from 50 kilowatts up to 50 megawatts.
These centers commonly use air-cooling or closed-loop refrigeration instead of consuming water.
In SLVREC’s position, the agriculture’s energy demand is declining and that company sees “the underutilized capacity” as an opportunity “to serve five, 10, 20, 50 megawatts or more of rural data centers.”
According to SLVREC, there are seven long-haul fiber routes into and out of the Valley, “with terabytes of unused capacity that is ideal for data centers.”
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
Black Canyon National Park July 2020. Photo credit: Claire Codling/The Department of Interior
From email from Reclamation (Andrew Limbach):
July 14, 2026
Aspinall Unit Operations Update – Release scheduled change to 1,390 cfs on Wednesday, July 15th.
On Wednesday, July 15th, the adjusted scheduled releases from Crystal Dam will decrease to 1,390 cfs from 1,465 cfs.
Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge will decrease to 360 cfs.
On Thursday, July 16th, the adjusted scheduled releases from Crystal Dam will decrease to 1,315 cfs from 1,390 cfs.
Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge will decrease to 290 cfs.
Reclamation will continue to monitor flows in the Gunnison River, and on Friday, July 17th, the scheduled releases from Crystal Dam may decrease to 1,265 cfs from 1,315 cfs.
Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge would decrease to 250 cfs. An additional notification will be sent out confirming any change after Wednesday.
In response to the extreme drought conditions, the BOR has collaborated with US Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service to reduce the target flows to 500 cfs at Whitewater and 200 cfs through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison until further notice. These releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Aspinall Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the Gunnison while preserving critical storage in Blue Mesa Reservoir.
Contact Andrew Limbach (alimbach@usbr.gov or 970-248-0644) for more information regarding Aspinall operations or the Operation Group meeting.
Colorado’s Roan Plateau, a favorite backcountry zone for hunters, anglers and hikers because of its high-quality wildlife habitat, is once being proposed for oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management, in accordance with direction from the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to hold lease sales in Colorado every quarter, has listed four leases on top of the plateau in its proposed December sale, with two additional leases nearby.
The wildlands of the Roan Plateau and animals that rely on them draw hikers, hunters and anglers to the area. The potential for oil and natural gas below the surface draws attention from industry, too, and sets the stage for a confrontation over how to fulfill the multiple-use mandate that governs federal lands.
Hunters, anglers and conservationists are also raising the alarm that implementation of federal law and proposed changes to BLM rules are stripping the public of its voice in public lands management.
The BLM has identified 114 parcels across Colorado available for oil and gas leasing in its December sale. Four of those parcels, totaling 4,645 acres, are on top of the Roan Plateau near Rifle, on the site of two undeveloped leases that were not canceled as part of a 2014 settlement between leaseholders and 10 conservation, trade and wildlife organizations.
*NCAs include a landscape area that encompasses Potential Conservation Areas (PCAs) that share similar species or natural communities and ecological processes; or a mostly intact, lightly fragmented landscape that supports wide- ranging species and large scale disturbances. Sources: BLM, CPW, Colorado Natural Heritage Program, CDPHE. Credit: Laurine Lassalle – Aspen Journalism. Click to enlarge.
In that settlement, the BLM canceled 17 of 19 leases that had been issued in 2008 on top of the Roan Plateau and refunded leaseholders; the agency updated its resource management plan, which guides land use, and closed about 34,000 acres, roughly 54 square miles, to future leasing.
But two leases, whose holders did not agree to cancellation as part of the settlement, remained open for future development, although the leaseholders were meant to contribute to a conservation fund that would be used for restoration and conservation efforts. Although the fund was established, no money was invested. The leases changed hands and were eventually relinquished, but their existence during the land-use planning process meant that that area remained available for future development, and conservation groups have foreseen this moment.
“We had unleased, unprotected land on top of the plateau, and that was very concerning to us,” said Juli Slivka, senior director of policy and programs at Carbondale-based nonprofit Wilderness Workshop, which was one of 10 plaintiffs in the lawsuit that lead to the 2014 settlement. “We immediately began urging BLM Colorado to close that area to new leasing.”
Slivka and other conservationists have argued that the BLM could have removed the potential for new leases because Colorado Parks and Wildlife has found that the area is home to high-priority habitat for a range of species, including an endemic species of Colorado cutthroat trout, elk, deer and greater sage grouse.
Brittany Parker grew up in Rifle, hiking and camping on the plateau. As an adult, she hunts there nearly every year, she said. Parker works for the trade group Backcountry Hunters and Anglers — which advocates for protections for the Roan — as the field operations coordinator for seven states, including Colorado. She said she’s passionate about protecting the Roan Plateau after watching it “change drastically” under development pressures in her lifetime.
The area has seen significant oil and gas development on private lands atop the plateau.
“It’s already pretty developed with oil and gas, so to imagine even more up in that region, it just seems like there would be nothing left,” Parker said. “It would so significantly fragment the habitat that the sense of refuge would be seriously diminished for our wildlife.”
There is heavy natural gas production at the base of the Roan Plateau. The BLM has proposed new leases on public lands at the top plateau in a December sale. CREDIT: COURTESY OF ECOFLIGHT
A recent flight over the Roan Plateau by Aspen-based conservation organization EcoFlight showed the extent of the development from above; there’s a sharp contrast between the development below the top of the plateau and on private lands compared with the untouched public lands. The flight path followed Parachute Creek, to the west of which is highly developed private land.
“You forget how heavily drilled it is up there. It’s just nonstop, roads and wellpads” on the private lands, said Jane Pargiter, executive director of EcoFlight, who has been working to protect the Roan since 2008. (Pargiter is an Aspen Journalism board member.)
The view changes quickly to the east side of the creek.
“It instantly transitions into this pristine landscape, which is where they have proposed these lease parcels for the December lease sale,” Pargiter said. “It’s just beautiful, pristine, and it’s green still.”
Parker and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers are quick to point out that they are not against energy development on public lands but are, rather, focused on ensuring that leasing happens in appropriate places.
“We’re advocating for protections on specific landscapes that have exceptional habitat and watershed values that are worth protecting,” Parker said.
The state wildlife agency, conservation groups and recreationalists have argued for nearly two decades that the Roan Plateau is not the right place for oil and gas development, which has been shown to lead to declines in wildlife populations. The Roan has prime habitat for elk calving, which is a particularly sensitive time, and is a migration corridor for elk and mule deer. It also provides habitat and breeding grounds, known as lek sites, for the greater sage grouse, which are particularly sensitive to industrial disturbance.
Dean Riggs retired in 2020 as the deputy regional manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and spent years working with the BLM and leaseholders to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts to wildlife when there is industrial development, including on the Roan Plateau. He says he has hunted, including elk and grouse on the Roan Plateau, since he was big enough to pick up a rifle.
In his time at CPW, Riggs advocated for science-based, species-specific protections, which in some cases means avoiding development in certain areas altogether, such as breeding sites for grouse.
“If a company wants to pluck a five-acre site right down on top of a lek, you’re going to lose the lek,” Riggs said. “With that being a really sensitive species, every lek counts. Every lek keeps us from the endangered species list.”
Some kind of “biblical flood” would have to occur over the next few years for the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin to recover, given the current downward measurements and the anticipated negative trajectory of the shallow aquifer’s storage area. That according to State Engineer Jason Ullman, whose testimony Friday wrapped up week 2 of the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management trial underway in Alamosa state Division 3 Water Court.
Ullman followed by telling the water court that without such a historical climate event, the current Subdistrict 1 Plan of Water Management is unlikely to meet its goal of reaching a sustainable aquifer by 2031, or five years from now and 20 years since the plan was first approved.
His option over the next five years without a new plan of water management, he told Division 3 Water Court Judge Michael Gonzales, would be to not approve annual replacement plans, which is the mechanism groundwater well pumpers use for irrigation.
If annual replacement plans don’t get approved, wells cannot pump.
San Luis Valley Groundwater
“I think I would say that it’s nearly impossible outside of some kind of biblical flood,” he testified of the current state of the unconfined storage area. “And even if that was to happen, there’s a limit to how much water can infiltrate into the aquifer on an annual basis or a monthly basis. So I don’t know that you can infiltrate enough water into the aquifer to reach that level by the 2031 deadline.”
According to monthly readings by Davis Engineering, the unconfined storage study area is measuring as low as it ever has since measurements by the consultant firm began in 1976, the court heard.
“In your opinion, will the current plan’s method of dry-up be able to achieve aquifer sustainability?” Rio Grande Water Conservation District lawyer Pete Ampe followed up with Ullman.
“No,” the state engineer told the water court. “I think it’s clear that based upon previous testimony that the goal in the previous plan was to reach 40,000 acres of dry-up that would’ve resulted or estimated to result in 80,000 acre-feet of reduction in use from the aquifer. And I think previous graphs showed that that has occurred, and yet we still see this precipitous decline.
“I mean, I think some folks have talked about how it’s maybe leveled out some, but if you look here at the graph, if I was to plot a longer term or a longer than five-year average, I think you could agree that the trend is downward. It’s not upward, which is problematic when we have very limited time, five years to reach the sustainable water supply level defined in the current plan.”
The sustainable measurement definition is a five-year running average of water storage at negative-400,000 to negative-200,000 below surface and toward the 1976 readings.The current measurement, according to court exhibits, is 1.2 million acre-feet below and declining.
The state engineer’s office approved the fourth amended plan in June 20203, and it is the state engineer who would order widespread groundwater well curtailment. Gonzales must approve the new plan for it to move forward and Ullman to take that option off the table.
During testimony throughout week 2 of the subdistrict plan of water management trial, state Division 3 engineer Craig Cotten and state engineer Ullman testified to the limited amount of time left, without court approval of the updated plan, before wells are shut off.
“We have other impacts because of the lower aquifer supply that are occurring to other water users, to well owners,” Cotten told the water court. “As I’ve discussed, the amount of electricity costs that it takes to pump water out from a lower aquifer, the lowered efficiency of getting flood irrigation across a field, the impact to the environment from not having a water table at the near surface and potentially some ponds around. So lots of impacts. And I do think that we do need to recover the aquifer in a reasonable time period.”
The water trial is moving along speedier than anticipated during pre-trial conferences when Gonzales set the case to be over five weeks. William Schreüder, who created and maintains the Rio Grande Decision Support System Groundwater Model which is a key exhibit in the case, faced limited cross examination to his testimony, and Clinton Phillips, who maintains the unconfined aquifer storage area study for Davis Engineering and whose monthly storage graph provides key data for the state Division of Water Resources decisions, faced no cross examination.
One attorney, Mirko Kruse who is arguing his family’s specific concern around ditch decrees but overall supports to new plan, told the judge that in trying to be efficient with the court’s time he was prepared to make the very specific legal points to his client’s objections next week, if the judge wanted to hear those early.
The judge declined and said he preferred to hear all the expert witness testimony first.
There is little argument to the problem that the unconfined aquifer storage is declining due to groundwater withdrawals and the warming climate of the era, which is hugely problematic for any natural recovery through high elevation snow melt.
After two weeks, the arguments before Judge Gonzales center around surface and groundwater water rights, recharge decrees, and whether the fourth amended plan was crafted legally and openly and creates an economically fair playing field for all the irrigators in the subdistrict.
“Dr. Schreüder, what in your opinion does this all just come down to?” came the question from RGWCD attorney Pete Ampe toward the end of Friday.
“Well, your Honor, the basic premise of the fourth plan is that they will do one-for-one (pumping) which means we’re going to put more water into the aquifer than we’re going to take out and it’s common sense that under those conditions the aquifer should recover.”
The trial moves into week 3 on Monday, July 13, with State Engineer Ullmann still on the witness stand.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
The Northern Water Board of Directors has unanimously approved a change to Colorado-Big Thompson Project accounting procedures concerning C-BT water tracking.
During a rule-making hearing at the June 11 Board meeting, Directors heard about the changes to the rules surrounding the tracking of water from the Project. The new accounting procedures will require accounting of tracking data to be provided in a manner to allow for the administration of C-BT Project water return flows, which will help Northern Water protect them as described in the District’s Repayment Contract with the Bureau of Reclamation, the Water Conservancy Act and contracts with allottees.
The modifications affect only domestic and municipal users, and Northern Water staff met or contacted 26 municipalities, water districts and treatment plants in the months before the rule change was approved.
Map of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project via Northern Water
The Colorado River, from one viewpoint, is a mess.
The iconic waterway, fundamental to the region’s modern existence – its desert metropolises, its high-tech industries, its agriculture, and its recreation economy – is on the verge of crashing. A two-decade drying trend, aided by carbon pollution in the atmosphere and water use that exceeds supply have nearly drained the basin’s liquid savings accounts.
Nature is now threatening to overwhelm human interventions. Lake Powell is 28 percent of its capacity. Lake Mead, just 24 percent. Climate pressures abound in these hot, dry times. A March heat dome obliterated temperature records. Snowpack was the worst on record. At least five fires larger than 25,000 acres are currently burning in the parched basin.
The basin’s seven states, unable to find consensus on how to live with a shrinking supply, are deadlocked after four years of attempting to negotiate the river’s management rules. State and federal authorities are deciding how much less Colorado River water will be available, anticipating that the reductions will hurt. Knowing that water enables economic growth, they don’t want to be viewed as selling out their constituents.
Look closer, however, and the narrative of warring factions fades a bit. At the local level, water managers are collaborating to ensure residents and businesses have adequate water supplies. They are signing multiparty deals and pursuing joint projects to share resources and keep water flowing to homes and businesses. Such dealmaking is not a remedy to all that ails the basin. But it is viewed as essential in a time of deep climate uncertainty and anxiety.
In June, six water suppliers in Arizona, California, and Nevada signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency, to facilitate interstate exchanges of desalinated and recycled water for Colorado River water. The exchanges, taking advantage of spare treatment capacity on the California coast, would introduce new water into a depleting basin.
Earlier this spring, Phoenix, Tucson, and other Arizona water users announced a venture to create an emergency reserve of water for cities facing shortages and to simplify voluntary water transfers in the state – “an easy button” to move water to where it is needed, said Max Wilson, Phoenix’s water resources management adviser.
The Grand River Diversion Dam, also known as the “Roller Dam”, was built in 1913 to divert water from the Colorado River to the Government Highline Canal, which farmers use to irrigate their lands in the Grand Valley. Photo credit: Bethany Blitz/Aspen Journalism
And in New Mexico, Santa Fe’s water utility is in early talks with neighboring pueblos about joint infrastructure for storing water underground, recycling water, and sharing water between systems in case wildfire pollutes a water source and renders it unusable.
“Cities have the ultimate responsibility to make sure there’s tap water,” said Kathryn Sorensen of Arizona State University and the former director of the Phoenix water utility. “And that means they have to be constantly vigilant and constantly innovate and constantly find new arrangements and new supplies.”
These arrangements, while not a new development, have taken on greater significance as the American West struggles through record heat and aridity this year that is an indicator of worsening water supply challenges in the drying region. Based on a decades-long track record, these arrangements also illustrate that neighbors helping neighbors can be a cost-effective form of climate adaptation.
“It makes sense to me that this happens at the local level because that’s where the risk is,” Sorensen said. She cited the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, as another example. CAP delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix, Tucson and other customers in the state’s populous midsection.
“The risk to the CAP of there not being water in the canal is that the CAP doesn’t deliver water to its contractors and subcontractors,” she said. In other words, a contractual failure.
But for the cities who hold those contracts? A failure to deliver water would hasten a public health and economic crisis. “The risk to a city is there’s no tap water,” Sorensen said. “And that’s just a totally different level of risk. So you see these types of innovations happen at the level where the risk exists.”
Collective Action
Partnerships do not happen spontaneously. They are the product of months and years of discussion, negotiation, and relationship building.
“The biggest challenge is communication, understanding the needs of your partners and clearly their sensitivities,” said Bill Schneider, the Santa Fe water resources manager.
Schneider is part of discussions with four pueblos in the Santa Fe area on joint water infrastructure projects, including water recycling and underground storage.
One clear possibility is that Santa Fe could connect its water system to the Pojoaque Regional Water System, which will serve Pojoaque, Nambé, San Ildefonso, and Tesuque pueblos with Rio Grande water.
Connecting neighboring systems is a form of insurance, Schneider explained. Wildfires are a perpetual risk in the watersheds of northern New Mexico. If a severe wildfire sends ash and debris into the Rio Grande, the polluted water could force water systems to shut off their river intakes. It has happened before on the Rio Grande. The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority had to close its intake for two months in 2011 after the Las Conchas fire. With an interconnected system, water could be delivered to the pueblos from Santa Fe’s other sources, which include the Santa Fe River and groundwater.
Due to the high cost of building infrastructure, system interties and similar partnerships make financial sense, Schneider said. “It means you don’t have to go out and build an entirely new system.”
These infrastructure arrangements already exist in many places, but especially in Arizona. Nevada, for instance, has banked part of its Colorado River allocation underground in Arizona for more than two decades.
A decade ago, when Sorensen was the director of Phoenix Water Services, Phoenix and Tucson signed a trailblazing water deal. It allowed Phoenix to bank some of its Colorado River water underground in Tucson. When the water is needed, Tucson will be able to pump the groundwater and, in exchange, Phoenix will take some of Tucson’s share of Colorado River water. The deal, which has not yet had to be exercised, makes the most efficient use of the water treatment capabilities and infrastructure in the two cities.
That agreement, Sorensen said, paved the way for other exchange partnerships in central Arizona. Mesa, in a project completed this year, provides treated wastewater to the Gila River Indian Community in exchange for 8,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water. (An acre-foot – 326,000 gallons – can supply about 3.5 households in urban Arizona for a year.)
In Sorensen’s view, dealmaking is fundamental for utility leaders.
“They’re good horse traders, right?” she said. “That’s part of the job. ‘How can we make a win-win exchange or trade here that makes everyone happy and maximizes the resource?’ The water managers are really good at that.”
The latest iteration is the Secure Water Arizona Program, or SWAP, that Phoenix and Tucson are developing with other central Arizona cities.
Details are still being finalized, but the program will have three components. One is an emergency reserve of water that cities can tap as a last resort. A second piece is facilitating water exchanges between willing sellers and willing buyers. The third element is what Wilson calls “the sandbox” – a forum for collaboration on the next generation of central Arizona water projects.
The idea, said Max Wilson, the Phoenix water adviser, is a form of mutual aid. “At its core, the assumption of the SWAP is that water users shouldn’t be letting other water users go dry.”
Even with the benefits, Wilson acknowledged that collaboration needs to be carefully calibrated.
“People don’t want to see water being forcibly reallocated, for sure,” he said. “People don’t want to see their water going to uses that they necessarily wouldn’t see as beneficial. But when people have legitimate needs, I’ve been really impressed by how the water user community has come together and been willing to say, ‘Let’s talk and let’s figure out what a potentially mutually beneficial solution to those needs could be.’”
Attorney: ‘In order to evaluate the current state of the aquifer in context, you would need to know how much the aquifer holds, wouldn’t you?’
Engineer: ‘I don’t believe so’
How much water is in the storage area of the unconfined aquifer? That was a question SWAG attorney Brad Grasmick posed to state Division 3 Water Engineer Craig Cotten and left the Alamosa water court hanging on at the conclusion of Wednesday’s day in water court.
In his first full day of cross examining Cotten, Grasmick covered a variety of territory from surface water credits to the one-to-one pumping feature of the new plan to Cotten’s responsibility to administer the plan. At times he got so deep into the proverbial weeds in grilling Cotten that Gonzales spoke of his own frustration in trying to follow along.
“You’re losing me on focus,” Gonzales told Grasmick as he called for a lunch break.
The question Grasmick posed at the end of his nearly six hours of cross examination offered a unique exchange. Grasmick started by saying he hasn’t seen a figure on how much water the unconfined storage area can hold. It’s been well-established in the testimony of Cotten and HRS hydrologist Matt Seitz that the unconfined aquifer functions as an underground reservoir and was built up initially through early subirrigation practices and then canal diversions.
Storage readings of the unconfined aquifer that go back to 1976 show it responsive to strong spring runoff seasons but now transitioning through the process of aridification to the San Luis Valley floor as it adapts to 25 years of drought and the lack of consistent snow melt.
“Nor have I seen how much water is presently in storage in the unconfined aquifer. Do you agree with that?” Grasmick asked.
Cotten: “Well, we have the Davis Engineering service change in storage, so we know the change in storage from 1976. The total amount of water in storage at the present time, I’m not aware of that number.”
Grasmick: “OK. In order to evaluate the current state of the aquifer in context, you would need to know how much the aquifer holds, wouldn’t you?”
Cotten: “I don’t believe so.”
Grasmick: “Well, and you would also need to know how much is in the aquifer in order to evaluate this decline in context, correct?”
Cotten: “No, I don’t believe so.”
Grasmick: “Well, as an example, if there was a one million acre-foot decline in storage, that’s very different if the reservoir holds one and a half million acre-feet than if it holds say four million acre-feet, isn’t it?”
Cotten: “There again, I don’t believe so if you’re shooting for an actual storage amount, change in storage amount as your goal.”
In the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management under consideration, Subdistrict 1 is charged with recovering the unconfined aquifer to a “sustainable” level of negative-200,000 to negative-400,000 acre-feet of water storage.
Grasmick continued his questioning: “So you disagree that contextual analysis of data is necessary to ensure that it’s not misinterpreted?”
Cotten: “I don’t agree that we need to know the total storage or the actual storage right now in developing this plan.”
The exchange continued for about another three minutes before Grasmick began to shift to another subject and Gonzales intervened.
“I apologize. I think it’s been a long day, so I think it’s probably a good place to stop,” the judge said.
The water trial on the Subdistrict 1 Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management resumes Thursday [July 9. 2026].
The Roaring Fork River in Aspen on July 8. Pitkin County Commissioners gave initial approval to buying more shares of Twin Lakes water to boost low flows on the Fork. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Against the recommendation of an advisory board, Pitkin County commissioners on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to buy more water to boost flows in the often-depleted Roaring Fork River.
Commissioners approved on first reading a resolution and ordinance to spend $442,500 to buy 4.68 shares from the Twin Lakes Reservoir & Canal Co., which is about 3.5 acre-feet of water, according to a staff memo. The deal is in addition to the $6.5 million Pitkin County already agreed to spend earlier this year for about 71 acre-feet from Twin Lakes and another ditch company.
Twin Lakes collection system
The water is currently taken across the Continental Divide to the Arkansas River basin to be used by entities on the Front Range. The deal would allow the water to be released out of Grizzly Reservoir to Lincoln Creek and could help boost the Roaring Fork through Aspen and upstream, which suffers from low flows in dry years.
“I think it’s really critical that we purchase water rights when we can, and this is an opportunity that we can, and we should,” District 1 Commissioner Patti Clapper said.
Pitkin County has long had a goal of increasing the amount of water in the Roaring Fork, a river that has about 40% of its headwaters diverted to the eastern side of the state through the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System to be used by Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Aurora. These diversions can often contribute to the depletion of the Roaring Fork through Aspen, and purchasing Twin Lakes water represents a rare opportunity to return water to the Western Slope.
Commissioner Greg Poschman said he supports acquiring the water shares.
“I think it’s great that we are doing this,” he said. “I know it’s expensive; there are some raised eyebrows about that, but I think this is something we have to do.”
Poschman added that he was concerned that the Healthy Rivers board members recommended against buying more water and said he would like to fully understand their reasons. County staff said they were trying to schedule a joint meeting with the Board of County Commissioners and the Healthy Rivers board in August.
Members of the county’s Healthy Rivers board, which advises the BOCC, are concerned that the water will have a small impact on river health but a big impact on the program’s budget. The board held a special meeting June 25 to consider acquiring the shares and approved a motion saying the water yield would potentially be only 1 additional cubic feet per second for two days.
“Additionally, the deleterious effects of the purchase price on the long-term fund balance of the Healthy Rivers Fund will reduce the Healthy Rivers Program’s ability to support programs to address other ballot measure mandates, including water quality, ecological health, recreation opportunities, wildlife and riparian habitat, and promoting water conservation,” the motion reads.
The motion goes on to say that in the future, the county should implement a framework for evaluating the true value of water shares to the Roaring Fork.
At Wednesday’s meeting, County Budget Director Connie Baker told the BOCC that the Healthy Rivers board will have to trim or reallocate about $500,000 from next year’s budget to account for the combined impact of this year’s two water purchases.
Healthy Rivers board member Ned Andrews said he is against the purchase, citing the impact that it will have on the program’s budget.
“None of the analysis or details that would justify such a purchase or a strategy going forward has been done,” Andrews told Aspen Journalism. “I think before you commit essentially a quarter of your budget for the next 15 years, you’d want to have an analysis that shows you what could be accomplished. My gut feeling is that it wouldn’t really accomplish much.”
Andrews also opposed the earlier, larger water share purchase, although the rest of the Healthy Rivers board was supportive.
At their regular June meeting, Healthy Rivers board members went through the budget line by line and considered where they could trim, although those cuts have not yet been finalized.
Spending big bucks in an effort to rescue rivers is not new for Pitkin County, which has spent at least $3.5 million on the Roaring Fork River Park in Basalt, including a water court battle to secure the water right for recreation, several redesigns of problematic waves, and improvements to the riverbank and boat launch.
Grizzly Reservoir, a forebay that collects water to send through the Twin Lakes Tunnel to the Front Range, sits in the middle of the Lincoln Creek watershed and connects water users on both sides of the Continental Divide. Pitkin County commissioners gave initial approval to a deal that would allow more water to be released from Grizzly for the benefit of the Roaring Fork. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Bond for original purchase approved
The BOCC at Wednesday’s meeting also approved issuing a bond for the original purchase of Twin Lakes shares. That deal cost the county $6.5 million, although only 45 of those acre-feet represent Western Slope water that is currently diverted to the Front Range. The county plans to sell or trade the other 26 acre-feet, which is owned by the Fountain Mutual Ditch Co. in El Paso County and decreed for use on the east side of the divide.
The 45 acre-feet of water can be released down the Roaring Fork during the irrigation season when flows are low, and it must be used by a downstream water user on the Colorado River before the town of DeBeque. Instream flow for the benefit of the environment is not a decreed use of the water.
This year, according to Colorado Water Resources Division 5 Engineer Tyler Benton, at least some of Pitkin County’s Twin Lakes water was released as part of the Colorado River Water Conservation District’s emergency substitute water supply plan, which the district enacted in response to this year’s historic drought. Benton said he expects the River District to provide a full accounting of how much Pitkin County water has been released Friday.
Grizzly Reservoir is currently drained for dam maintenance, which may have affected how much water could be released under the River District’s plan.
At a time when drought impacts are being acutely felt across the state and climate change continues to rob rivers of their flows, for some, the unique opportunity to put water back into a depleted stream is worth the cost.
“This is expensive water, but it’s the only water you can get up at the headwaters of the Roaring Fork,” said Pitkin County Deputy Attorney Anne Marie McPhee. “So that scarcity makes it more valuable.”
The issue is scheduled for a public hearing and second reading July 22.
The fire situation in the Four Corners area is not improving. The weather remains hot, dry, and windy, and this week’s forecast calls for more of the same. Next week may even be hotter, if longer-range models hold. Meanwhile, air quality has deteriorated in some places that previously seemed to avoid the worst of the smoke. The good news is that the Fourth of July weekend came and went without any new major fire starts in the region.
So far this year some 37,209 fires have burned through about 3.3 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s the second highest acreage for the first half of the year in the last decade.
Here’s a rundown of some of the Four Corners area fires. By no means is this a complete list.
The Babylon Fire, burning in the higher elevation parts of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, had grown to over 96,000 acres by Monday night, making it the nation’s largest active blaze (the Cottonwood Fire in the western part of the state has gone through about the same amount of acreage, according to Watch Duty). The two are also tied for the fourth largest fires in the state’s recorded history. The Babylon Fire is at 0% containment, with the most active area moving up the west slope of the Abajo Mountains, between Shay Mountain and Mount Linnaeus. Air tankers are pulling water from Lake Powell, and officials are asking boaters to avoid the area between Dangling Rope and Rainbow Bridge.
Closed public lands include: The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Manti-La Sal National Forest lands within the Monticello Ranger District, and BLM lands in the Indian Creek Corridor, Beef Basin, Dark Canyon, and the Sweet Alice Wilderness Study Area. Still Open: Natural Bridges National Monument, Cedar Mesa, Grand Gulch, and other lower elevation areas in the southern reaches of Bears Ears National Monument.
The Ferris Fire along the Dolores-Montezuma County line in southwestern Colorado initially burned in a northeasterly direction toward the Disappointment Valley. Then the winds shifted and the most active front of the fire curved back to the northwest, crossing the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River, and is within about 12 miles of the town of Dove Creek. As of Monday night the fire was at 51,622 acres and 22% containment.
The Gold Mountain Fire north of Ouray, Colorado, has burned across almost 29,300 acres of San Juan Mountain high country and was 2% contained as of Monday night. Firefighters on Monday conducted strategic backfiring operationseast of Ridgway to provide more protection for structures in that area. There is a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, which could bring dry lightning along with gusty and erratic winds, with high temperatures reaching the high 80s and low 90s.
The Pocket Fire north of Sedona, Arizona, has reached 26,442 acres and was at 48% containment as of Monday night. Forecasters are predicting more hot and dry weather today, with the mercury topping out around 100° F and sub-20% relative humidity.
On July 6, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality approved Energy Fuels’ request to amend its aquifer quality permit for a groundwater monitoring well at its Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon. The change raises the allowable concentration of arsenic from .050 milligrams per liter to .055 milligrams per liter and the associated alert level from .040 to .050 mg/l.
The Havasupai Tribe strongly condemned the change in a written statement, calling the approval a “profound attack on the Tribe’s inherent responsibility to guard and protect the waters of the Grand Canyon.”
Energy Fuels asked for the revision — and ADEQ granted it — after finding that construction of the mine’s shaft had created a hydraulic sink that allowed naturally occurring arsenic — a known toxic substance — to move toward the facility’s perimeter wells, putting them in violation of their permit.
So, regulators simply altered the permit’s limits and, according to the tribal nation’s statement, “chosen to weaken environmental protections instead of strengthening them.”
Dr. Bradley K. Esser, a retired Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientist, submitted technical comments on the proposed revision last year. He cast doubt on Energy Fuels’ hydraulic sink explanation, and demonstrated that the arsenic concentrations detected in the monitoring wells are far higher than regional natural background levels. He posited that it was far more likely the elevated arsenic concentrations came from sump water from the mine’s workings contaminating the groundwater.
Uranium, arsenic, and lead concentrations shot up in the Pinyon Plain Mine’s “sump water,” or groundwater that had flowed into the mine shaft, after active mining began in 2023. While an independent scientist acknowledges that it’s possible elevated arsenic levels in perimeter monitoring wells are the result of a mining-related hydraulic sink pulling naturally occurring arsenic to the wells, he posited that it’s more likely that sump water made its way into the groundwater in the wells. Source: Grand Canyon Trust.
Esser also writes:
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Monsoon season officially kicked off in the Southwest in the middle of last month, but it has yet to bring significant amounts of moisture. Earlier forecasts predicting higher than average precipitation beginning later this month are still in place for some parts of the West, but they likely will be accompanied by above-normal temperatures just about everywhere.
Next week isn’t looking so hot for fire-dousing moisture in the Southwest, but after that the chances of above-normal precipitation start climbing.
Smoky skies and three-digit heat? Ick.
The drought situation has grown worse over the last year in most of the Interior West, though there has been improvement in the deep Southwest. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor.
‘As you might expect, the hot, dry weather is taking a toll on streams around the region. The Animas River through Durango is running at 190 cubic feet per-second; the median flow for this date is over 1,000 cfs.
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
Red rocks and crazy clouds in Utah before fire season had arrived and sullied up the skies. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
A man fills his water tank at a well a few miles from the Hopi village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation.
Click the link to read the article on the Pro-Publica website (Mark Olalde and Alex Hager):
June 29, 2026
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with KJZZ News-Phoenix.
Reporting Highlights
Certainty on the River: Tribes have negotiated a settlement to resolve the largest outstanding claim to the Colorado River, while providing billions of dollars for water infrastructure.
Upper Hand: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — the Upper Basin states — are resisting the deal because it allows the Navajo and Hopi to lease water outside their reservations.
Unfulfilled Promise: It has been 118 years since the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government owes tribes water, but many are still fighting to resolve their rights.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river.
The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history — the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe — was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being codified by Congress.
Those four states, known collectively as the Upper Basin, are at a stalemate with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada over new rules governing how they share the Colorado River, a key water source for nearly 40 million people. Congress and the White House, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, have declined to approve the settlement until all parties reach an agreement.
For 83-year-old Marilyn Tewa, the stalemate means her family will continue to go without running water. Tewa serves on the Hopi Tribal Council, where her duties include working on the water rights agreement, but her village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation, lacks indoor plumbing.
Every other day, she loads 5-gallon buckets into her pickup and drives 5 miles to a windmill originally built for livestock that draws untreated water from underground.
“That’s what keeps us alive,” Tewa said, tapping the spigot on a May afternoon.
Back home, Tewa bustled about her kitchen while her daughter kneaded dough for dinner. There’s no faucet in the kitchen, which is decorated with a framed American flag and a painting of a katsina, a figure with spiritual significance in Hopi culture. Instead, the family stores water in large plastic containers. Because of the lack of indoor plumbing, the Tewa family and its neighbors use portable toilets that stand among the houses.
If passed into law, the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Actwould resolve the largest outstanding claim on the Colorado River while providing about $5 billion in federal funding to build infrastructure to transport the water across the reservations. The legislation would also go beyond water rights, creating a reservation for the San Juan Southern Paiute. The tribe’s effort to secure a permanent homeland was added to the settlement due to their difficulty getting it through Congress independently.
“That’s my prayer,” Tewa said, “that we get this settlement through for all three tribes.”
Marilyn Tewamain sits in her chair inside her home Saturday afternoon. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
The tribes need pipes, pumps and treatment plants to use the water secured through the settlement. To defray the cost beyond the federal government’s expected contribution, the Navajo and Hopi plan to lease some of their water rights, almost certainly to growing towns around Phoenix. The towns would pay to use the tribes’ water for a set number of years.
While the Lower Basin states support the settlement, the Upper Basin states have latched onto this provision in particular as they stand in the way of the settlement.
The Colorado River’s upper and lower basins don’t precisely follow state borders. Some states have portions in both sections, and the line dividing the two basins cuts across northeastern Arizona and directly through the Navajo reservation. If water moves across that line, they argue, the rules governing the river give them veto power over the settlement. (It’s an open legal question whether approval from all seven states is necessary.)
The Upper Basin states fear that, in the future, water they currently control might be leased on an open market. They view any monetary transaction that moves water downstream as setting a precedent that could allow the highest bidder — possibly thirsty cities with money such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas — to buy vast quantities of their water.
In an effort to assuage that concern and close the deal, the Navajo and Hopi made major concessions over the volume of water and length of time they could lease. The tribes also offered to leave some of their water in one of the river’s drought-depleted reservoirs to help keep water levels high enough that it could continue flowing downstream. But the Upper Basin has not wavered in its opposition.
Tewa’s family travels 5 miles each way to haul water in 5-gallon plastic buckets from a well initially drilled for livestock. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix reached out to the governor, senators and lead negotiator from every Upper Basin state for comment. Utah’s and Wyoming’s lead negotiators deferred to the letter they co-signed. A spokesperson for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that the tribes addressed most of the state’s concerns but that questions remain as to whether the water that the tribes would lease to Arizona cities could be counted as part of what the Upper Basin states are legally required to send to the Lower Basin. “New Mexico remains committed to finding a workable solution,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also said the state is “committed to finding a path forward” and pointed to the letter that Becky Mitchell, the state’s lead river negotiator, submitted to Congress. Mitchell wrote that the settlement’s leasing provisions violate laws governing the river and that the state was concerned about what the sale of water across the basin would mean for “the security and certainty” of Colorado’s share of the river.
Heather Tanana is an assistant professor at the University of Denver’s law school, where she focuses on federal Indian law. She is also a citizen of the Navajo Nation and said the Upper Basin is “trying to hide behind” how the river has traditionally been managed rather than find a way to give the tribes access to a resource that is rightfully theirs and one that they need to survive.
“It’s a fundamental human rights issue,” she said.
While negotiations drag on, the three tribes continue waiting for water they say will help them to build more housing, grow sustainable economies, better protect public health and preserve cultural practices.
The Hopi believe their ancestors return as clouds to bring the rain that nourishes their corn, but drought is wracking the region. An overreliance on groundwater has dried up springs that have been used for ceremonies and agriculture for centuries. When the settlement brings more water to the reservation, Tewa said, aquifers will have a chance to recharge, restoring the springs.
“I’m speaking on behalf of my children, my grandchildren and their children that haven’t come yet,” she said. “I hope, in the future, that they will have water.”
The village of Mishongnovi, which Tewa represents on the Hopi Tribal Council, sits atop a rocky mesa. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
Tewa washes her hands with untreated water she hauled from a well. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
Fighting for Water Since Elvis Was on TV
That the settlement even reached Congress seemed like a small miracle to those involved.
If the tribes were to use every drop to which they are entitled, the system of sharing the river that supports more than $1 trillion in annual economic output would collapse.
“Everybody’s getting free Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute water right now. The seven basin states are all benefiting in the absence of a settlement,” said Ethel Branch, a former Navajo attorney general who was involved in the negotiations, adding that the water had been “stolen for over a century.”
In 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that, if the federal government confined tribes to reservations, then it owed them enough water to sustain an agrarian economy on that land. But securing that promised water, referred to as “Winters rights,”has proven arduous.
Tribes were excluded from the compacts that apportioned the river. The Navajo in particular were barred from joining a seminal case quantifying other users’ rights, and members of the tribe themselves rejected a proposed settlement in 2012 when they viewed the deal as unfair. So the tribe went back to the Supreme Court, asking that the justices force the federal government to quickly settle the claims. The Navajo once again lost, with the court’s majority deciding that their treaty with the U.S. didn’t require the government to take any “affirmative steps” to deliver the water it owed the tribe.
“At each turn, they have received the same answer: ‘Try again,’” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote of the Navajo in his dissent. “When this routine first began in earnest, Elvis was still making his rounds on The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Arizona politicians and tribal leaders have since concluded that they needed to combine all three tribes’ claims to finally settle their rights.
That was no simple feat. The Navajo and Hopi have long had a contentious relationship. Underlining their thorny partnership, leaders of various tribes around the region have accused Navajo, the largest tribal nation in the U.S., of flexing their political strength to the detriment of other tribes.
About a third of homes on the Navajo Nation lack the pipes and other infrastructure necessary to deliver running water, including near Page, Arizona, close to a large reservoir on the Colorado River. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
But Navajo and Hopi struck a deal, and Arizona moved off its bargaining position. Now in lockstep, the settlement’s supporters turned to Congress, only to hit more roadblocks: The House of Representatives balked at the spiraling price tag to fund the deals; presidential administrations were unwilling to expend political capital on such settlements; and more than a dozen settlements are in the works, clogging the system. (No settlement has been enacted since 2022.)
“Partisanship has gone to a new low in this country, and Indian water settlements have gotten swept up into that,” said Pam Williams, who spent about two decades as director of the Secretary’s Indian Water Rights Office in the Department of the Interior before she retired last year.
In November 2024, as President Donald Trump prepared for his return to the White House, the tribes believed they had an opening to get their settlement through Congress while President Joe Biden was still in office.
Navajo leadership had supported the Democratic presidential ticket and feared the incoming administration would be vindictive toward them.
Every basin state’s lead negotiator, tribes’ staff and a federal representative descended upon the Arizona Department of Water Resources’ offices in Phoenix for what several attendees described as a “Hail Mary.” At the meeting, the Navajo offered a major compromise: limiting how much water they could lease and for how long they could lease it.
But the Upper Basin states showed up with a list of grievances, multiple attendees told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix, and weren’t interested in negotiating over the Navajo leasing concessions.
“It’s difficult for the Upper Basin to wrap their heads around this settlement,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s Colorado River lead.
Navajo President Buu Nygren says the fact that his tribe’s reservation straddles the upper and lower divisions of the Colorado River Basin should not be held against the tribe as it negotiates for water. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
In March 2026, leaders from the tribes traveled to Washington for a Senate hearing where they made an impassioned plea for Congress to pass a version of the bill that now included the concessions they had offered in the Hail Mary meeting. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who ran the hearing, expressed support for the settlement but worried its $5 billion price tag was too high, a concern echoed by an Interior Department official who testified. (The tribes and department are currently negotiating to shrink that cost.)
All four Upper Basin states submitted comments opposing the settlement. Their main concerns were about the ability to lease across the basin and whether the water for the settlement would be counted against the upper or lower division of the river.
Leasing would last only as long as it’s needed to pay for infrastructure to distribute their newly acquired water, said Navajo President Buu Nygren. It would not set a precedent, he said, because no other tribe straddles both basins.
“We shouldn’t be punished for being in two basins,” Nygren said, “because other tribal nations, other settlements have been able to lease water.”
A construction crew installs pipes at the new LeChee Water Treatment Plant near Lake Powell, along the Arizona-Utah border. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
The former Navajo Generating Station’s intakes, which drew water from Lake Powell to cool the coal power plant, sit unused, awaiting funding from the stalled settlement. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
“How Precious Water Is to Us”
During the decades that the tribes fought to access their water, they helped quench the thirst of growing cities in the Colorado River Basin.
A water intake plant on Navajo land drew from Lake Powell to cool the nearby Navajo Generating Station. The coal plant powered pumps for the Central Arizona Project, the 336-mile series of canals that sends Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson.
The power station shut down in 2019, and the intake plant was handed over to the Navajo for the iiná bá-paa tuwaqat’si pipeline, which means “for life” in Diné and “water is life” in Hopi, to deliver water to the three tribes. But for now, the massive pumps remain mothballed, the building sitting musty and dark like a tomb, and the pipeline remains an engineering schematic, waiting for funding from the stalled settlement.
The irony is not lost on tribal leaders, they told ProPublica and KJZZ News-Phoenix: After helping deliver water beyond their lands, they are now blocked from using that same water and infrastructure to sustain their communities. The insult is compounded, they said, by the fact that water use is drastically lower on reservations.
“It’s not about green-grass lawns or golf courses or swimming pools,” said Crystalyne Curley, speaker of the Navajo Nation Council. “It’s just basically turning on the faucet and getting water to boil eggs for your children or turning on a faucet to wipe and clean the table or washing your hands after butchering a sheep.”
San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr. is fighting for the settlement because it would finally ratify a treaty with the Navajo that would create a reservation for his tribe. Photo credit: Sharon Chischilly
For the San Juan Southern Paiute, the settlement is also about having a permanent homeland. They have no reservation but struck a deal with Navajo in 2000 to transfer some of its land. Since the tribes already reached an agreement, it’s an uncontroversial proposition. But, without political clout to get Congress to take it up, the land transfer was pulled into the water settlement.
“During the COVID era, it took a lot of the tribal elders, and there are only a handful that saw the treaty signed and are really wanting to see this before their time is up,” said San Juan Southern Paiute Vice President Johnny Lehi Jr., whose father signed the 2000 agreement. Finally securing a reservation, he said, means the ability to build housing and develop an economy for a tribe that currently rents its government building.
Nearby, on the Hopi reservation, Councilmember Marilyn Fredericks grabbed a pair of hiking poles, donned a hat with a roadrunner pin on it and set out from her village on a recent spring afternoon. To stay fit as she grows older, she walks up and down the hand-carved steps of a terraced garden that used to produce food for her community.
Seven natural springs once fed the garden, but only two still flow. Ponds that stored their excess sit dry, stains on the rock now just a memory of the water. It’s been six years since there was enough to plant.
The settlement would fund a pipeline that would be “our umbilical cord,” Fredericks said. Future generations of Hopi have a right to clean, reliable water, she said. “This is evidence of how precious water is to us.”
Native America in the Colorado River Basin. Credit: USBR
The Colorado State Engineer’s office opened its defense this week of Subdistrict 1’s approved Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management with a history lesson on the origins of the San Luis Valley and the development of irrigated agriculture over the past 174 years when the first water right was issued to the San Luis People’s Ditch.
Featured in the state engineer’s defense was testimony by Matt Seitz of HRS Water Consultants, who took the state Division 3 Water Court through ancient history and into the era of early irrigation and storage practices of farmers in the Valley.
“Yeah, so we covered 25 million years pretty quickly, see how long the rest of it takes here,” he said from the witness stand Tuesday. Seitz stayed on the witness stand for the better part of the week, working to bolster to the state engineer’s defense of the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management and then under cross-examination from a Sustainable Water Augmentation Group attorney, who worked to show faults in Seitz’ testimony and undermine the case of the state engineer in the eyes of Division 3 Water Court judge Michael Gonzales.
It is Gonzales who will decide this case. He will take in all the testimony around the various takes on the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management to rule on whether the plan will be implemented.
Plan of Water Management Equation
The subdistrict itself is charged with recovering the shallow unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and its Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management is the latest attempt to do so. The complexity of the basin’s hydrology has been an early theme.
“I think there’s been a lot of great research over the years,” Seitz said in speaking to the state’s modeling of groundwater in the Upper Rio Grande Basin and other studies on the Valley’s hydrology. “So I think we’ve made some good progress, but there’s a lot of complexity. Again, I’ve been saying that word a lot, but there certainly is and I think we’re on our way, but it’s never going to be fully understood.”
Week 1 of the trial ended with Craig Cotten taking the witness stand. He is witness number three for the state engineer’s defense of the plan, following Cleave Simpson, the general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District who was the lead witness, and then Seitz, the hydrologist consultant who endured four days on the witness stand.
“Wonderful way to start the Fourth of July weekend,” quipped Gonzales as Cotten, the state water division engineer for the San Luis Valley area, stepped into the witness box at 1:50 p.m. on Thursday. He spent the initial two hours testifying to his background and his credentials before Gonzales broke for the Fourth of July weekend.
Cotten is the enforcer of the state’s groundwater management rules in the San Luis Valley. His testimony will reignite the trial when it resumes on Monday for week two of the water trial.
Map of the Rio Grande watershed. Graphic credit: WikiMedia
A new Colorado law requires water users that buy water tied to farms in the Arkansas Valley to revegetate land before using water elsewhere…
“When that water leaves, the impacts of the dry-up don’t leave with it. They stay with the land and the people who live here,” said Jack Goble, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Water Conservation District, which advocated for the legislation.Revegetation involves restoring native plant cover to the land to reduce erosion, maintain soil moisture and manage noxious weeds…
In Crowley County, where productive farmland has declined by more than 90% since the 1970s because of water transfers, so-called “buy-and-dry” transactions have spawned a sea of dirt that supports little more than weeds. According to a recent report from ProPublica, these water transfers have caused an “environmental catastrophe,” in Crowley County, in which birds, bees and wildlife have fled. A 2026 report from Colorado State University estimates that every acre of irrigated land taken out of production leads to an annual economic loss of $1,400 to $1,600. Governor Jared Polis (D) signed House Bill 26-1340 into law June 1. The new law, sponsored by representative Ty Winter (R), gained broad support in the House and Senate. The law takes effect January 1, 2027.
“If you look at other natural resources — coal, gravel, oil and gas — when that’s mined from the land the requirement is on the entity that profits off of, and mines that, to go and reclaim that land. We think water should be no different,” Goble said.
Maybell Irrigation District’s headgate on the Yampa River, September 2022. Photo credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Noelle Phillips). Here’s an excerpt:
June 18, 2026
For the 18 ranchers who rely on the Maybell Irrigation District’s canal to funnel water to their fields, the 127-year-old headgate that diverted flow from the Yampa River meant a two-hour round trip through a rocky canyon whenever they needed water. The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal. Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways. The district received a $750,000 grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said Diana Lane, sustainable food and water program director for The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said. In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control. The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.
“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,’” Lane said of that initial state grant.
Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.
Green Mountain Reservoir is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and located in Summit County north of Silverthorne along the Blue River. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Historic water shortages are drying out the scenic mountains that lie at the heart of Colorado’s tourist economy, prompting the state to issue emergency orders earlier this month allowing water to be shifted to the towns and ranches most likely to run dry.
The Colorado River District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties, is running the emergency response effort and with financial support from the Colorado Water Conservation Board has anted up nearly $1 million to make sure even towns that can’t afford it, will have access to drinking water should it be needed.
To make the plan work, the river district opted not to lease portions of the water it normally holds in two high country reservoirs, Ruedi in the Roaring Fork Basin and Wolford Mountain, near Kremmling, on a first-come, first-served basis, as it normally does. Instead, the water is being doled out based on community need, with people and food production getting the water first, according to Andy Mueller, manager of the river district.
“We had a number of requests to lease that water out, but a lot of it would have gone to wealthy gentlemen rancher … but it wouldn’t have been for the common good,” he said.
Under Colorado law, water can only be diverted, stored and used for a designated purpose, such as city drinking water, farm irrigation, environmental streamflows, and industrial uses. Water rights are also tied to seasons, with some available only in the winter or summer.
But this spring, the river district, seeking more flexibility than the laws typically allow, went to Colorado State Engineer Jason Ullmann and asked for emergency authorization to use its water supplies differently. The state agreed, giving the district until the end of August to conduct emergency releases.
At the same time, large agricultural water users in the Grand Valley agreed to cut their water use in an effort to lessen strain on the Colorado River, and protect some of the small towns and ranchers who would have been cut off otherwise.
At issue is a special pool of water that lies within Green Mountain Reservoir, near Heeney, known as the historic users pool, or the HUP. The water is meant as a backup source that allows towns to pump wells and divert from streams even when their water rights are not in priority on the giant mainstem of the Colorado River.
But this year, because of the drought, Green Mountain’s HUP isn’t projected to fill, something that hasn’t occurred since the 1960s when the pool was created to protect mountain water users who had junior water rights, according to Ullmann. The emergency order means that even without the backup from Green Mountain, these communities and ranches will be unlikely to have their water supplies cut off.
The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, which serves Vail and other small towns in Eagle County, has water in the HUP.
Working in the shadow of a nearly snowless winter, the Eagle River District moved early to enact watering restrictions, limiting outdoor use to just two days a week back in April, after March saw temperatures soar to 80 degrees and the patchy snow cover evaporate months earlier than normal.
“The writing was on the wall,” said Siri Roman, CEO of the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District. “This is a benefit of being in the headwaters and being a resort,” she said referring to the headwaters of the Colorado River. “Our whole community is so connected to snowpack and snow-water equivalencies and what that means. By February we knew there wasn’t enough snow to change the picture for us. We wanted to get to the decision-makers early and say the red lights are flashing. We need to prepare for a water shortage this summer.”
Eagle residents took conservation messages seriously
In Eagle, Tom Gosiorowski, the utilities manager, was standing in Brush Creek shooting videos for the town’s Facebook page, letting its 10,000 water customers know that the stream was the community’s only source of water and it wasn’t looking good. Eagle also relies on the HUP for some of its backup supplies.
“We are really wholly dependent on the streamflow and the water that is in the creek. It’s different from the big Front Range utilities” that have reservoirs, he said.
The district is limiting outdoor water use to two days a week and is sharply limiting the filling of hot tubs and swimming pools. Gosiorowski said he expects golf courses to be restricted as well as the summer wears on.
“We could get to a point where they can only irrigate tees and greens on the golf course,” he said. “We’ve never had to reduce use, but this is so extreme that I think there will be some.”
Gosiorowski said the town was still working on worst-case scenario planning for the end of summer, when streams are normally at their driest. “It’s hard to know exactly what’s going to happen. We’ve never experienced a drought to this degree in recorded history.”
Aspen has also enacted two-day-a-week watering and is prohibiting the filling of pools and hot tubs.
Grand Lake, another community that could be impacted by the shortages at Green Mountain, is not showing signs of strain yet, though officials there are concerned about lake levels.
Grand Lake, the deepest natural lake in Colorado, is linked to two other reservoirs, Shadow Mountain and Lake Granby. All three are part of Northern Water’s Colorado-Big Thompson Project. The C-BT delivers water from the Colorado River to 1 million customers and hundreds of farms on the northern Front Range.
Mike Cassio is a citizen activist who tracks Grand Lake’s health and works with a coalition of community groups and water agencies to help manage the system. Cassio said he’s worried about late summer water levels falling.
“We know Mother Nature controls everything,” Cassio said. If levels in Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain fall too low, water quality will suffer and that “will be the biggest issue.”
Kathy Chandler-Henry sits on the river district’s board and is a former Eagle County commissioner. She said the brown hillsides and dusty streambeds are unnerving.
“Before it was never a question,” she said. “There was always snowfall, there was always water. … Nothing like this year, when it was 80 degrees in March in Vail.”
Back in the 1980s, she said she participated in some regional planning efforts to help the Western Slope learn how to manage its growth. That there could be a winter without snow was unthinkable, if not downright funny.
“One planning consultant in the workshop asked folks what it would be like without snow,” she said. “And everyone just laughed.”
Despite this summer’s deep dry spell, water users say they are encouraged by recent light rains and cool weather. Just weeks ago, the HUP was projected to barely fill at all, but now the 66,000 acre-foot pool is rising again. It recently topped 33,000 acre-feet and is expected to move higher, providing some relief.
But Mueller, of the river district, said this summer is a dress rehearsal for what lies ahead as climate change and warmer temperatures continue to hamper mountain snows and spring stream levels.
“We are just beginning to grapple with the impacts of climate change. Science indicates that 30 years from now, this year may be on the wetter side.”
Last month, leaders from across Colorado’s Western Slope celebrated the release of $40 million in federal funding for the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project. At a time when Colorado is celebrating its 150th anniversary and our nation approaches its 250th birthday, this investment represents more than a funding milestone; it marks one of the most significant water preservation achievements our state has seen in generations. It also would not have happened without the determination of our congressional representative, Jeff Hurd, who made this project a priority and worked tirelessly to deliver results for the communities he serves. What Rep. Hurd understands is the same thing that has united more than 100 local, state, and federal elected officials and leaders in support of preserving these critical senior water rights: the future of the Western Slope is inseparable from the future of the Shoshone water rights. Protecting these rights protects the flows of the Colorado River, sustains our agricultural heritage, strengthens our recreation- and tourism-based economies, and helps preserve the rural communities that make this part of Colorado unique…
I believe that 150 years from now, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will look back on the Shoshone Water Rights project as a turning point. They will see a generation of leaders who understood what was at stake and chose to act. They will see communities that put aside differences, came together, and made a long-term investment in the future of the Colorado River. History will remember the Shoshone project as a major milestone in the stewardship of our most precious resources. From Western Slope ditch companies and water conservancy districts to local governments, state leaders, and members of Congress, countless individuals are still working together to turn this vision into reality. The lesson is an important one. On the Western Slope, progress happens when we pull in the same direction. It takes communities working in harness together to move mountains and sometimes to move water. And it takes elected leaders like Jeff Hurd who are willing to put their shoulders into that work. The Shoshone project demonstrates what is possible when rural Colorado speaks with one voice about protecting its water, its economy, and its future.
The main boat ramp at Wahweap Marina was unusable due to low water levels in Lake Powell in December 2021. Water levels are projected to soon fall even lower than this at the nation’s second-largest reservoir. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Western Slope lawmakers had harsh words for water managers at a state committee hearing last week, questioning whether Colorado has done enough to avoid a lawsuit with its downstream neighbors.
Colorado Sen. Dylan Roberts, a District 8 Democrat who represents several Western Slope counties, including Eagle, Grand, Garfield, Routt and Summit, asked Colorado’s lead negotiator, Becky Mitchell, whether the people of Colorado should have confidence that negotiations among the seven states that share the Colorado River have put the state in the best possible position. The states have been at an impasse for more than two years without a deal for future management as reservoirs continue to decline to record-low levels.
“My constituents just see fighting and intransigence,” Roberts said. “And it’s concerning to me, especially as a Western Slope lawmaker … that the strategy is just ‘Let’s hire more lawyers; we’re going to court no matter what.’ That doesn’t give me confidence, because I don’t think Colorado fares well when we go to court against Arizona and California and Nevada, throwing our fate to the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The remarks came at Thursday’s meeting of the state Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee in Denver. Along with Mitchell, in the hot seat were state engineer Jason Ullmann and Amy Ostdiek, interstate section chief at the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The three are employees of the state Department of Natural Resources and have the backing of the Attorney General’s office in negotiations.
Roberts’ line of questioning seemed prompted by recent projections that show river flows dipping below a threshold that could trigger litigation. The Lower Basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada) believe that the Upper Basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) are bound by the 1922 Colorado River Compact to deliver 82.5 million acre-feet of water over a 10-year rolling average. According to the Upper Colorado River Commission, the 10-year average will dip later this year to about 81.3 million acre-feet because of persistent drought.
Some experts believe that this amounts to a “tripwire” that could trigger a lawsuit from the Lower Basin states (Arizona, in particular, has been openly preparing for litigation) that could result in mandatory cuts in water use for the Upper Basin. Upper Basin water managers don’t subscribe to this interpretation, saying their states are only required not to deplete the river’s flows by more than 75 million acre-feet over 10 years.
Mitchell was reluctant to share details of Colorado’s legal strategy in a public forum, but she answered “absolutely” that her team’s work was putting Colorado in the best position. She said cutting back prematurely just to satisfy the Lower Basin’s interpretation of the century-old agreement would be bad for the state.
“If we initiate curtailment now, that is worse for Coloradans,” Mitchell said. “I think that is an important thing to remember.”
Wracked by drought, climate change and a management crisis, the situation on the river has never been more dire. The current management guidelines expire this year, and in the absence of a seven-state deal to share shortages and operate the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the feds are poised to step in. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to release a more detailed, short-term plan to manage the river for the next two years by mid-to-late summer.
State Rep. Julie McCluskie, a District 13 Democrat, said communities in her district have been living with the incredible angst, anxiety and pain of no snow and low reservoirs.
“The frustration I hear in my community is that we have missed multiple deadlines; they are becoming a funny joke,” McCluskie said. “There is such a fear about the lengthy litigation process, the fear of an outcome that is far worse for Colorado than a compromise that we have some control over.”
Lake Powell is formed by Glen Canyon Dam. In a concept pitched by a conservation organization, a flexible pool of water could be moved between Upper Basin reservoirs to wherever it’s needed most. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Conservation conversation is the ‘bare minimum’
Lawmakers also had strong words for state officials regarding conservation, saying legislators must be involved in the creation of any program.
Colorado has dabbled with pilot conservation programs in the past, but traditional programs that pay farmers and ranchers to temporarily cut back on water use remain controversial. This is especially true on the Western Slope, which has long been the target for these types of programs, and where some worry that they could harm rural communities if not done carefully. After two years of exploring how the state could set up a temporary, voluntary and compensated conservation program, officials shelved the idea in favor of focusing on drought-resilience initiatives.
“Other states out of the seven have very clear and actionable roles for their general assemblies, their legislatures,” McCluskie said. “We have less so, and yet the stakes are so high. So I beg of you, decision-makers, that it is essential that we be a part of those next steps.”
Julie McCluskie. Photo credit: Colorado General Assembly
Ostdiek said that any program would need to start slow and make sure it incorporates input from people throughout the state.
“I think that we can continue to assess as we go what we might need from you all, and what a program like that might look like,” Ostdiek said. “I think what we can certainly commit to is continuing this dialogue and continuing the discussion about what we might need to make this a success.”
In 2023, Colorado lawmakers tried to force stakeholders to come up with recommendations on conservation programs by creating a statewide task force, which met 10 times over six months. But the group failed to find a consensus, with some saying it was “premature” to create a conservation program.
As part of a post-2026 framework, the Upper Basin states plan to create a “contribution” pool in Lake Powell, which could be used to help stabilize the system, keeping water levels above critical thresholds to protect hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam and acting as an insurance pool against forced cutbacks. In a May 22 letter to federal officials, the Upper Basin states said they have a goal of saving 100,000 acre-feet by the end of water year 2028, but only if sufficient federal funding is available and hydrologic conditions allow.
Three Upper Basin states have different methods for contributing to this pool: Utah has its own demand management program; Wyoming lawmakers passed a law this year allowing for a conservation program; and New Mexico plans to release water from Navajo Reservoir.
But precisely how — and how much — Colorado would contribute to this pool is unclear. The state’s share of the Upper Basin’s allocation is 51.75%, meaning Colorado could be on the hook for 51,750 acre-feet.
And ensuring that saved water actually gets into a pool in Lake Powell remains part of the problem. Currently, conserved water that stays in the river can just be picked up by a downstream user, with no net gain to Lake Powell. Colorado officials say they do not have the authority to “shepherd” water past other water users to the state line unless it is specifically for compact compliance. [ed. emphasis mine]
Last year, some Delta County ranchers asked lawmakers to take up the issue and pass a law that would address this issue, allowing water users to conserve and get credit for contributing water to a Lake Powell pool. But legislators did not take up a bill in the 2026 session.
Colorado officials told lawmakers they were continuing to explore what a program might look like and whether legislation would be needed.
Roberts said conversations with the legislature should be the bare minimum if Colorado is going to have a conservation program.
“If the department or any agency of the state were to pursue a conserved consumptive use program or demand management program that used state tax dollars to pay for it and did not go through the legislature in a formal process, I imagine that all of us on this panel and many of our colleagues would raise holy hell about the unilateral decision-making coming from Denver about programs impacting all parts of the state,” Roberts said. “So, please, let’s just cut that off at my recommendation. Let’s work together on this.”
Officials opened the hearing by highlighting the impacts of this year’s severe drought on Colorado’s farmers and ranchers, noting how even some of the most senior water users will experience shortages as streamflows dwindle. Orchards in the North Fork Valley and row crops in the Uncompahgre River Valley already have unprecedented shortages.
In response to Roberts’ concerns about the failure to find a compromise among the seven states, Mitchell posed a high-stakes rhetorical question: “I would ask, ‘What else do you think we can give?’”
The Colorado River Basin spans seven U.S. states and is divided into Upper and Lower Basins. Lake Powell, upstream from the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are the two principal reservoirs in the Colorado River water-supply system. (Bureau of Reclamation)
While the Trump administration 2.0 has so far rexfrained from trying to shrink or eliminate national monuments, its non-executive-branch proxies just keep on trying.This week the 10th Circuit federal appeals court issued a decision keeping alive Utah’s lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s 2021 re-establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments following Trump 1.0’s shrinkage of the same.
The state and Garfield and Kane counties filed one lawsuit in 2022, with the Blue Ribbon Coalition and other parties filing their own suit. In 2023, a federal court dismissed both lawsuits; that ruling was appealed.
This week’s decision confirmed the dismissal of the Blue Ribbon suit. But it also determined that presidential national monument designations under the Antiquities Act are subject to federal judicial review, and sent Utah’s case back to the district court.
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Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with three travel management plans in Utah that will determine which roads, trails, and areas of the respective field offices’ jurisdiction are open to motorized vehicles. Given that the stated aim is to bring the plans in line with Trump’s recent executive order rescinding restrictions on motorized vehicles on public lands, we can assume that the idea here is to expand motorized access to some remote areas. The plans include:
The Moab Field Office has released preliminary alternatives for the Dolores River Travel Management Plan on about 127,000 acres in Grand County, Utah, east of Moab and abutting the Colorado border. This would include roads along the Utah section of the Lower Dolores River, and on mesas and in canyons on either side of it. Maps of the alternatives can be found here. This one is not yet open to public comment.
The Kanab Field Office has released a draft environmental assessment for its Trail Canyon Travel Management Plan on nearly 330,000 acres in Kane County. It is open to public input.
And the Vernal Field Office has also released a draft review for the Dinosaur North Travel Management Plan. The public comment period is open.
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I typically stay away from electoral politics, especially the horse-race part of it and polls and such. But sometimes a particular contest or candidate can provide a lens on bigger trends or phenomena, and so are worth looking into.
The latest race that has caught my interest is the one to replace Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who is retiring at the end of this term. Since it’s Wyoming in 2026, it’s safe to assume the winner will be a Republican (though this wasn’t always the case), meaning the primary is the contest that matters. The front-runner, I suppose, is Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump sycophant and MAGA extremist who unseated Liz Cheney back in 2022 after Cheney failed to show adequate fealty to Trump.
But it’s one of her challengers that I’m interested in: Sam Mead. Mead is a fifth-generation Wyoming rancher, comes from a long line of Republican Wyoming politicians, and is the nephew of former governor Matt Mead. Mead is young (36), charismatic, has strong conservative credentials on fiscal issues and gun-rights, and a background in engineering and business, having run a whiskey distillery in Kirby. But what really distinguishes him from his opponents is his willingness to speak out against some of Trump’s policies, and his priority on protecting public lands and keeping them in the public’s hands.
Mead, in other words, appears to be an old-school, pre-MAGA Western Republican. He reminds me a bit of Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, back before extreme polarization pulled him more and more rightward and into MAGA land. Wyoming’s primary is on Aug. 18.
Meanwhile, Utah just held its primaries, with some surprising results. Utah State Senate President Stuart Adams, a Republican, was defeated by challenger Stephanie Hollist. Adams was a strong supporter of the controversial proposed Stratos Project data center complex on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake. Also, incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy trounced challenger Phil Lyman in the GOP primary for the 3rd Congressional District, with about 70% of the vote.
While Maloy was endorsed by Trump, and has plenty of extreme views, Lyman is the more MAGA of the two. And Trump pardoned Lyman after his conviction for leading an OHV rally down Recapture Canyon in the southeastern part of the state. Political consultant Taylor Morgan told the Utah News Dispatch that Lyman’s resounding defeat showed that his “very angry, very conspiracy-based, populist, toxic form of Republicanism (is) frankly wearing very thin, especially here in Utah.” Let’s hope he’s right!
Pumpjack in the Aneth oil field. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
I wrote Tuesday about how the Trump administration is eviscerating Biden-era oil and gas rules aimed at reducing methane emissions and ensuring companies clean up their own messes rather than foisting them onto the taxpayers. Now the changes are open for public comment.
Here are a few of the changes Trump and co. are proposing:
Bring back pre-Biden reclamation bond rates, which amount to just over $2,000 per well, which is insane, since the cost to reclaim and plug a single well easily can exceed $100,000. These numbers incentivized petroleum companies to walk away, forsake the bond, and abandon the well, leaving the tab for the taxpayers.
Reduce the current $10 minimum per-acre bid for leasing public land to $2, restore noncompetitive leasing, and slash royalties and filing fees for oil and gas companies.
Implement a new fee for protesting leases. And they plan to cut the 90-day public input period to just 10 days. In other words, they’re trying to cut out the public from decisions regarding public lands.
Gut the waste prevention rule (they wanted to roll it back altogether, but chose to revise it instead because it wasn’t clear which rule would replace it) by removing limits on royalty-free flaring and killing requirements that companies develop leak detection and repair plans.
Trump’s changes to the waste prevention rule will turn back the regulatory clock to the days when oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land vented and flared an average of 44.2 billion cubic feet annually of methane, which is usually accompanied by nasty volatile organic compounds and other dangerous compounds. That’s as bad for the climate as burning around 9 million tons of coal. But it also amounts to lighting money — your money — on fire and throwing it away. That vented methane is basically the same stuff you pay for to run your furnace, or to generate much of the electricity running through the grid. And since operators don’t pay royalties on gas they throw away, that cost American taxpayers some $166 million in lost revenue over a decade.
The result of all of this (and more) will be to rob taxpayers and sacrifice public lands and the climate to subsidize the same energy corporations that are raking in obscene profits thanks to Trump’s disastrous war on Iran. The administration argues that their proposed changes will save petroleum corporations operating on federal lands $17 million annually in compliance costs.
That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that high oil prices have driven corporation’s profits to absurd highs. During the first quarter of 2026 alone, ExxonMobil raked in $8.8 billion in underlying, adjusted profits. Somehow, I don’t think several million in compliance costs is going to deter them from drilling.
🐟 Colorado River Chronicles 💧
Many of the West’s streams have entered their summer low-flow phase, a period that falls between the end of snowmelt and the beginning of the monsoon, while irrigation diversions are in full-swing. One of the most dramatic cases of this is, perhaps, the Colorado River itself as it flows through Grand Junction. This morning, the river was running at just 366 cubic feet per second near Palisade, which as reader Dave Grossman pointed out is low enough to allow someone to walk across the sprawling river bed.
Some other notably low flows:
Animas River in Farmington, NM: 104 cfs.
Dolores River at Bedrock, CO: .76 cfs (effectively dry)
White River near Watson, UT: 76.4 cfs
Green River above Flaming Gorge: 551 cfs
Green River below Flaming Gorge: 1,590 cfs
San Juan River near Caracas, CO (above Navajo Reservoir): 85 cfs
Colorado River near Hite, UT: 4,300 cfs
This has reduced daily average inflows into Lake Powell to about 4,800 cfs and dropping. It would be much lower than that, except that flows are being bolstered by upstream reservoir releases. Either way, inflows are far less than Glen Canyon Dam releases, which are averaging about 8,500 cfs daily (approx. 6,500 cfs at night and 10,600 cfs during the day). This disparity, exacerbated by reservoir evaporation, is lowering Lake Powell’s surface level, which currently sits at about 3,526.75 feet. Without substantial upstream rain, it will likely drop to 3,520 feet by early August.
📖 Reading (and watching) Room 🧐
Matt Jenkins wrote an excellent overview for the Water Education Foundation of the potential “Grand Bargain” on the Colorado River, which would require both the Upper and Lower basins to give up some of their Colorado River Compact claims not only to keep the system from collapsing, but also to avoid litigation.
The piece lays out the fact that the Compact is not only outdated, but also internally conflicted, in that it apportions the Upper Basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year, while also obligating it to allow the same amount of water to flow to the Lower Basin annually. That’s just not possible these days, given that there’s far less than 15 MAF in the river.
Southeastern Utah is known mostly as a mining hotspot for uranium, copper, with lithium emerging more recently. But it also hosts a potash extraction industry, and at least one company is looking to expand the potash footprint. Sage Potash says it has secured permits from Utah and San Juan County to begin drilling at is Sage Plain Potash project.
While this is only exploratory drilling, it’s notable in that it’s not occurring in the Lisbon Valley or near existing potash sites near Moab. Rather it is on the Great Sage Plain southeast of Monticello, in the archaeologically rich zone north of Hovenweep National Monument.
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Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Yet another reason to worry about spewing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere via fossil fuel burning: It can exacerbate acid mine drainage, the phenomenon that leads to toxic heavy metal loading in streams and other waterways. That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study published in Communications Earth & Environment this April.
Acid mine drainage occurs when a mine excavation exposes once-buried sulfide-bearing rocks such as iron pyrite (FeS2) to oxygen and water. The hydrogen, sulfide, and oxygen come together to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Thus, the water becomes acidic, or its pH drops. The acidity dissolves heavy metals and the water picks them up. As the pH level of the water drops below 4.8, acidophilic bacteria begin feeding off the metals, releasing more acid into the solution and causing metal loading to occur up to 1 million times faster than in water with higher pH. Metal loading is bad for fish and other aquatic life.
The study found that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enhance the acidophilic bacterial activity, which accelerates iron and sulfur oxidation, acid formation, and metal loading. Zinc and cadmium, both of which are harmful to aquatic life, are more sensitive than other metals to rising carbon dioxide levels. Zinc loading is especially problematic in the Upper Animas watershed in southwestern Colorado.
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Okay, I really don’t care that Anfield bought its first underground haul truck for its Velvet-Wood uranium mine in the Lisbon Valley of southeastern Utah. But I found this press release interesting for another tidbit: The haul truck was built by Young’s Machine Company, located in Monticello, Utah. I never knew Monticello had this sort of manufacturing industry. I gotta say, it’s kind of cool.
The Hoback River joins the Snake River following a landslide upstream on June 18, 2026. Robert Frodeman photo.
🚣🏽 Water Watch 🌊
Water Quality in the Greater Yellowstone
A Guest Post by Robert Frodeman
Four million people visit Teton County, Wyoming, each year. They come to hike, float, and ski, snap pictures under the elk antler arches, and to partake in the myths of the American West. As the sign at the top of Teton Pass says, “Welcome Stranger. Yonder is Jackson Hole, the Last of the Old West.” Visitors expect to find a pristine environment. They don’t expect water quality problems reminiscent of a developing nation.
Teton County has some of the best drinking water in the country. Or most of Teton County does: Hoback, in the southern part of the County, has a nitrate problem. Nitrate is a health risk — most acutely to infants under six months, in whom nitrate is converted to nitrite by gut bacteria, interfering with oxygen transport in the blood and causing methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome). Many of the water systems in Hoback are on their last legs: two weeks ago, I had no running water and then a boil order at my home.
Jackson is the town, Jackson Hole is the valley that runs north of town in front of the Tetons. (‘Hole’ was what mountain men called a valley.) If you drill 20,000 feet into the valley floor you will hit the same sandstone layer that sits on top of the Tetons. This implies that the Tetons have risen some 25,000 feet over the last 10 million years.
Of course, mountains come down as they go up: the Tetons have been shedding sediment across all that time, piling up thousands of feet of gravel on the valley floor. Still more gravel was brought by the glaciers that flowed down from the Yellowstone Plateau. The Snake River meanders in front of the Tetons, but much of the river passes unseen below the surface, forming what is known as the Snake River Aquifer.
In effect, Jackson and Jackson Hole sit on top of a huge bathtub filled with gravel and water. This provides an abundant source of high-quality water for the town. But the bathtub only extends so far. The southern rim of the tub comes up at Munger Mountain five miles south of town. This is where the Yellowstone glacier stopped, and where the Snake River Canyon begins, which runs for 30 miles to Alpine and the Mormon communities of Star Valley.
Hoback lies four miles south of Munger Mountain — beyond the reach of the aquifer. Local residents must drill for their water. Local wells reach 200 feet down to the Bear River Formation. The water isn’t ideal – it’s brackish and can have a distinct sulfur smell (as do some of the local hot springs). The groundwater is also contaminated from horse farms and pig farms and (mainly) septic tanks and leach fields. Septic tanks can leak, and there is not enough biotic activity at this elevation and latitude for leach fields to function well. The result is nitrate levels in our drinking water which sometimes exceed EPA daily maximums.
Hoback is distinctive not only because of its geology. The billionaires live elsewhere in the County. There are two trailer parks nearby. Historically, local politicians have directed their attention to the Town of Jackson, Wilson, and the ski resort of Teton Village. But this has changed in recent years. Carlin Gerard of the Teton Conservation District formed a Hoback Stakeholders Group in 2019 to highlight drinking water problems. Covid disrupted that effort, but then a local non-profit called Protect Our Water Jackson Hole brought its energy and resources to southern Teton County.
In 2023 Hoback residents formed a water and sewer district. The district has now raised $7 million from the County and the State to build a municipal drinking water system. Water will be drawn from the Snake River just above the confluence with the Hoback. Construction should begin this fall and be done in a year or two depending on the weather.
At first it will only serve 125 residents: the district was made small out of fear of opposition. Teton County is solid blue, but past attempts had failed because of Hoback’s history of Red State, don’t-tread-on-me politics. In any case, it turned out that the demographic transition had already occurred: when the election was held the vote was 36-0 in favor. And there are now plans to annex a new affordable housing development that Teton County hopes will help address the local housing shortage.
Of course, the new system will only isolate residents from the nitrate problem. The environment will remain polluted, and people outside the district will still be on wells. The district has begun to price out a wastewater system, which is liable to be quite expensive. But you’d hope for nothing less for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem – and officials would hate to see an article in the New York Times about Teton County’s leaky septic systems.
Map of Greys River in Wyoming, United States. By Feydey – Nasa World Wind 1.3.5 public domain NLT Landsat 7 satellite photo, layered with PD vmap0 vector data. Image:Map_of_USA_highlighting_Wyoming.png was used for the smaller image., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1589723
Rio Grande Water Conservation District General Manager Cleave Simpson outside the courtroom as the water trial over the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 opened Monday at the Alamosa County Judicial Center. Credit: The Citizen
Rio Grande Water Conservation District General Manager Cleave Simpson testified it’s not a foregone conclusion that groundwater irrigators would pay the $500 per acre-foot fee for overpumping but have other options under the Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1.
Simpson was the first to take the witness stand Monday in a state water trial that will determine if the Subdistrict 1 plan will go into effect. The plan, which calls for Subdistrict 1’s groundwater withdrawals not to exceed the amount of natural surface water that comes into the Upper Rio Grande Basin, has been approved by the state engineer and now is being tested in state water court.
Opponents to the plan argue the state engineer’s review was not thorough, did not follow Colorado water law and should not be allowed to go into effect. Other opponents have more nuanced arguments around surface water credits.
The linchpin to the subdistrict’s Fourth Amended Plan of Water Management is the overpumping fee, which some farmers and ranchers argue will put them out of business. Simpson testified that groundwater irrigators can purchase surface water credits from neighboring operations or submit their own plan of augmentation for approval from the state without incurring the subdistrict’s overpumping fee.
A 2018 letter sent by then-State Engineer Kevin Rein that warned of mass groundwater curtailment without progress on the unconfined aquifer “created a heightened sense of urgency,” within the Rio Grande Water Conservation District and Subdistrict 1, Simpson testified.
The federal government’s voluntary Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program became one program the water conservation district shifted into to reduce the amount of productive acres farmed. A Fourth Plan of Water Management for Subdistrict 1 became another, Simpson said.
The water trial comes three and a half years after the subdistrict water management plan was adopted by Simpson’s Rio Grande Water Conservation District board. The effort is tied to recovering the unconfined aquifer of the Upper Rio Grande Basin and restoring it to sustainable levels.
A group of subdistrict irrigators organized under the Northeast Water Users Association and Sustainable Water Augmentation Group are opposing the plan. They irrigate on 11,000 acres in the Center area. Also in opposition are owners of the L Cross Ranch, who rely on La Garita Creek and Carnero Creek as water sources in addition to their own groundwater pumping.
The trial will continue through July.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
