Federal Water Tap, October 13, 2025: Underwater Dam again Built across #MississippiRiver in #Louisiana — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org)

Map of the Mississippi River Basin. Made using USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47308146

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

October 13, 2025

The Rundown

Army Corps, for fourth consecutive year, authorizes an underwater dam to keep salt water from moving up the Mississippi River in Louisiana.

A cold-water flow experiment at Glen Canyon Dam to disrupt non-native fish downstream will end within a week.

Senate passes a defense spending authorization bill with water-related provisions.

And lastly, EPA sits on a “forever chemical” toxicity assessment, ProPublica finds.

“Do not make American families pay the price for Trump’s war on affordable American energy.” – Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) speaking on the Senate floor to rally votes to end President Trump’s national energy emergency. Heinrich and his Democratic colleagues faulted the White House for increasing electricity prices by cancelling wind and solar projects and fully supporting data center developments, which consume large quantities of electricity. Yet, the Democrats’ effort to repeal the emergency declaration failed.

In context: Data Center Energy Demand Is Putting Pressure on U.S. Water Supplies

By the Numbers

River Mile 53.1: Approximate location of the front of the saltwater “wedge” that is pushing up the Mississippi River, in southern Louisiana, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. If the wedge moves far enough upriver it will endanger drinking water supplies for communities that draw from the river. Chloride concentrations are higher in the trailing sections of the wedge. The Corps estimates that the point at which they exceed EPA drinking water standards is 15 to 25 miles behind the wedge front.

News Briefs

Saltwater Barrier
The Army Corps of Engineers, for the fourth consecutive year, has authorized the construction of an underwater dam across the bottom Mississippi River as a way of keeping salt water from the Gulf of Mexico from moving upriver and spoiling municipal water supplies.

A contractor is building the dam at river mile 64. As of October 10, the front of the saltwater wedge was estimated at river mile 53.1.

Salt water intrudes when river flows are too feeble to push it out. These low-flow conditions have happened in the late summer or early fall every year since 2022.

Because salt water is heavier than fresh, the intrusion happens along the bottom of the river, which is why the temporary earthen dam is placed across the river bed.

If salt water moves too far upstream, it will contaminate the water supply for communities whose intake pipes extend into the river. In 2023, the Army Corps barged 153 million gallons of fresh water to communities in southern Louisiana that were affected by the saltwater intrusion.

Senate Passes Defense Spending Bill
The Senate passed a bill that authorizes defense spending for fiscal year 2026. The bill also has a number of water-related provisions.

It requires the Defense Department to conduct a pilot wastewater surveillance study at four or more military installations. The goal is to test wastewater for substances that would identify drug use among service members or the presence of infectious disease. (Wastewater surveillance grew in prominence as a testing tool during the Covid pandemic.)

It establishes a working group on “advanced nuclear” technologies that could power desalination facilities.

It requires a report on energy and water use for any data center built or expanded on military property.

It repeals a moratorium on the burning of PFAS substances, including firefighting foam.

The bill includes an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) that requires NASA to pay for new drinking water wells for the Eastern Shore town of Chincoteague. The town’s existing wells were contaminated with PFAS when the land was owned by the Navy. That land has since been transferred to NASA.

Studies and Reports

EPA Sits on ‘Forever Chemical’ Report
An EPA report on the toxicity of PFNA – one of the thousands of PFAS in circulation – was ready to be published in mid-April, ProPublica reports. But the agency has not yet released it.

PFNA is one of six PFAS that the Biden administration decided to regulate in drinking water. The Trump administration announced in May that it would attempt to reverse that decision for four of the chemicals – including PFNA.

On the Radar

Glen Canyon Dam Flow Experiment
The Bureau of Reclamation began releasing cool water from the depths of Lake Powell in mid-August.

The cold water is meant to disrupt smallmouth bass spawning downstream of Glen Canyon Dam. Smallmouth bass are a non-native species that federal agencies and their partners are attempting to rein in to protect threatened native species like the humpback chub.

The cold-water flow experiment is set to end by October 20.

Because the cold-water flows bypass Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines, the dam has been producing less power. That means more power purchased on the market. According to the Western Area Power Administration, which markets federal hydropower, purchased power expenses are “significant.” WAPA opposed the cold-water release plan, arguing the end date should be October 1, which would reduce purchased power costs.

Sales of hydropower fund the operation and maintenance of Glen Canyon Dam.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

In Lower Arkansas River Valley, a $1.39B pipeline is the Holy Grail of clean water — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

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

October 2, 2025

Rick Jones strides quickly into the offices of the May Valley Water Association. He’s running late after a morning of checking leaks in a pipeline that is one of several delivering well water to his 1,500 customers.

Jones has lived in Wiley, nearly 200 miles southeast of Denver, most of his life and has served as superintendent of the association for 38 years.

Outside the front door of his office in a small, well-kept brick building on Main Street, a dispenser delivers radium-free water for 25 cents a gallon to anyone who walks up with a container. It helps the small water company offer clean water because its own groundwater-based system struggles with radium contamination. Having the dispenser helps it meet its state obligations to deliver some clean water to the public.

Last year, the machine dispensed 24,000 gallons.

“It’s usually pretty busy,” Jones says.

But this may be changing. With construction of the long-awaited Arkansas Valley Conduit finally underway, the May Valley Water Association is in line to get clean water from Pueblo Reservoir, more than 100 miles to the west. Then contamination notices from the state health department will stop and the cloud that lies over these small towns in the Lower Arkansas River Basin due to their historically bad water will begin to lift.

The long-awaited conduit, he says, “is what everyone is hanging their hopes on.”

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

A dark water history

The need for clean water in the Lower Arkansas Valley became apparent long before the conduit was initially approved more than 60 years ago. In the 1950s and earlier, by some accounts, wells drilled near the river were showing a range of toxic elements, including naturally occurring radium and selenium. Both can cause severe health problems, including bone cancer, with long-term exposure to radium, and heart attacks and lung issues with selenium, if high amounts are consumed.

In 1962, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation prepared to build the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, an ambitious plan to capture clean water from the Arkansas and Colorado rivers and store it in Pueblo Reservoir. The conduit, or AVC, was a component of the project that never got built.

Source: Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District

Why? No one could figure out how to provide clean water to so few people living in a remote area of the state, let alone how to pay for it, according to Chris Woodka, a senior policy manager with the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District. The district operates the sprawling Fryingpan-Arkansas Project for the federal government and is overseeing the conduit’s construction.

But everything changed in 2023, when decades of lobbying Congress produced some $500 million in cash toward the $1.39 billion pipeline. That equals $30,888 per person, a cost many people say is extraordinary in a region whose household income of $47,000 is roughly half of the state average of $89,000.

“It’s a very expensive project for 45,000 people,” said Keith McLaughlin, executive director of the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, which has set aside $30 million in federal grant money to help cover the cost. “It’s an enormous project for that number of people.”

Still he said it’s important for the state, despite the state’s own budget challenges. “You have very low-income communities down there and it’s a really critical project. That makes this very high on our priority list,” McLaughlin said.

To date, 39 communities have signed onto the project. Towns at the far western end of the conduit, such as Avondale and Boone just outside Pueblo, could see water as soon as 2027, while others farther east will wait another 10 years or so as each segment of pipeline is laid and spurs to each community are built, Woodka said.

Alarm as costs rise

La Junta is the largest customer so far, according to Tom Seaba, who manages the historic town’s water and sewer department. He can’t remember a time when the much-delayed conduit and water quality problems didn’t hang darkly over the region.

La Junta residents are among the most critical of the pipeline largely because it’s not clear exactly when it will reach the town, and costs are expected to continue rising, Seaba said..

In the valley these are not idle concerns. The federal government’s first construction estimate in 2016 put the price of the pipeline at $600 million. Nearly 10 years later it has more than doubled, to $1.39 billion, according to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.

Seaba won’t say whether he supports or opposes the giant pipe, but he will say that the final cost is likely to be breathtaking.

“Could people’s water bills double? Absolutely,” he said.

To address those staggering costs, Colorado’s congressional delegation, in a bipartisan effort, has pushed hard to make sure the cash comes through and that repayment terms are affordable. The delegation is proposing, right now, to cut interest rates in half and extend the life of the loans to 75 years. The bill has passed the U.S. House, where it was sponsored by Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd, whose congressional districts span the valley. It is pending in the U.S. Senate, where it is being sponsored by Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet.

The State of Colorado has also stepped in to help. The Colorado Water Conservation Board is offering $30 million in grants, and a $90 million loan. The Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority can provide up to another $30 million in federal grants if application deadlines can be met.

A plan to share costs

Right now, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is slated to pick up 65% of the project’s $1.39 billion cost, or $903.5 million. The Southeastern Conservancy District will cover its 35% share, or $486.5 million.

At the same time, there are also plans to ask the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to declare the project a hardship due to the region’s low income, and its shrinking population and economy, Woodka said. Should that occur, the valley’s remaining costs could be picked up by the federal government.

Sources: Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, Colorado Water Conservation Board

Still financial pressures are rising. The Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority received millions in federal funding after the pandemic, but it must spend all the cash by 2028. And that means that small towns and water districts hoping to connect to the pipeline must move quickly to design new delivery systems, get cost estimates, and submit applications to the state.

McLaughlin, the water and power authority director, is worried these communities, some with just 200 or 300 people, won’t be able to get their loan applications for the spur lines done in time to meet his agency’s deadlines with the federal government. Only a handful have been received to date.

“While we want to fund as many of the spur lines coming in as possible, there are lots of projects competing for the same dollar,” McLaughlin said. “And the money is awarded first-come, first-served.”

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is also watching the clock as the valley’s water woes continue.

Seventeen of the 39 districts and towns that plan to tap the conduit’s clean water, are under state enforcement orders to permanently remove contaminants, according to the CDPHE. Some of those orders have been in place for decades, and the state has, so far, allowed them to continue delivering flawed water as the long-awaited pipeline comes together.

“As part of this regulatory process, the public drinking water systems are required to do public notice, and certainly they are aware of the health risk associated with their drinking water so they can decide whether they want to make another choice,” said Ron Falco, safe drinking water program manager for the state health department.

Several communities have done just that, spending millions of dollars to install reverse osmosis systems. These remove contaminants and make the drinking water safe to consume.

Las Animas is one of them, according to Bill Long, a resident who also serves as president of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District.

“In Las Animas, we built a reverse osmosis plant. Now our drinking water is perfect, but we have a problem with the reject water from the RO plant,” Long said, referring to the contaminated wastewater that is a byproduct of treatment. “We can discharge that back to the river, but we can’t do that in perpetuity. We solved one problem but we created a new one. … The state won’t allow us to discharge that forever.”

To Long, the pipeline is the only way to ensure long-term, clean drinking water for the Lower Valley and to provide a chance to rebuild its economy.

“Better water creates new opportunities,” Long said. “If we try to do anything in Las Animas that requires a new water supply, we can’t do it. We would have to build a new RO plant, and apply for a new discharge permit, which the state would likely not give us.” Long was referring to the Arkansas River’s own water quality problems, which can be worsened by the discharges.

Back in Wiley, Jones said the May Valley Water Association plans to start saving to pay for the $5.1 million he expects to spend to repair aging pipes, and install the new lines and pumps that will allow him to connect to the conduit and get off the state’s list of drinking water safety violators.

Does his community feel shortchanged that it has taken so long to have what most communities take for granted?

“Yes. There are people who say ‘Yeah, we got shorted.’ But the good thing is they’ve started it. I guess I’m hopeful. It will bring better water quality, and for some places like us, we will finally get out of trouble with the state.”

More by Jerd Smith

Bacteria attached to charcoal could help keep an infamous ‘forever chemical’ out of waterways — The Conversation

Biochar, which can be made from corn, is a versatile material. Tom Fisk/pexels.com, CC BY

David Ramotowski, University of Iowa

Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a class of fire-resistant industrial chemicals, were widely used in electrical transformers, oils, paints and even building materials throughout the 20th century. However, once scientists learned PCBs were accumulating in the environment and posed a cancer risk to humans, new PCB production was banned in the late 1970s, although so-called legacy PCBs remain in use.

Unfortunately, banned isn’t the same as gone, which is where scientists like me come in. PCBs remain in the environment to this day, as they are considered a class of “forever chemicals” that attach to soil and sediment particles that settle at the bottom of bodies of water. They do not easily break down once in the environment because they are inert and do not typically bind or react with other molecules and chemicals.

An image showing how polychlorinated biphenyls in the environment are able to cycle through land, water, and air around the world. — PCBs can enter the environment through landfill runoff and cycle through land, air and water. David Ramotowski

Some sediments can release PCBs into water and air. As a result, they have spread all over the world, even to the Arctic and the bottom of the ocean, thousands of miles from any known source.

Airborne PCBs particularly affect people living near contaminated sites. Current cleanup methods involve either transferring contaminated sediment to a chemical waste landfill or incinerating it, which is expensive and could unintentionally release more PCBs into the air.

I’m a Ph.D. candidate in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa. My research seeks to prevent PCBs from getting into the air by using bacteria to break down the PCBs directly at contaminated sites – without needing to remove and dispose of the sediment.

Introducing bacteria to the environment

I work with a bacteria species called Paraburkholderia xenovorans LB400, or LB400 for short. First discovered in 1985 in a New York chemical waste landfill, LB400 has since become one of the most well-known aerobic, or oxygen-using, PCB-degrading bacteria, able to work in both freshwater and saltwater sediments. LB400 can effectively break down the lighter PCBs that are more likely to end up in the air and pose a threat to nearby communities.

Two images showing Petri dishes with teal-colored bacteria on the left and a bottle filled with teal-colored bacterial solution on the right. — The bacteria *Paraburkholderia xenovorans LB400* on a petri dish, left, and in its liquid state, right. David Ramotowski

LB400 degrades PCBs by adding oxygen atoms to one side of a PCB molecule. This ultimately results in the PCB splitting in half and producing compounds called chlorobenzoates, along with other organic acids. Other bacteria can degrade these compounds or turn them into carbon dioxide. My colleagues and I plan to measure them in our future work to ensure that these byproducts do not pose a threat to LB400 and other life forms.

However, LB400 cannot survive for very long in most PCB-polluted environments, so it can’t yet clean up these chemicals at a larger scale. For example, in some places with historically high levels of contamination, such as the harbor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, strong currents can wash the bacteria out to sea as soon as they’re introduced. Additionally, changing oxygen levels at high and low tide and salinity in the harbor may harm them.

Where biochar comes in

A jar containing biochar (charcoal) made from corn kernels. — The corn-kernel biochar prior to being used in the lab. I grind the kernels to increase the surface area for the bacteria to attach, similar to the principle of grinding coffee beans before brewing. David Ramotowski

Because it is difficult to introduce bacteria on its own into the environment, I am working on a delivery mechanism that involves attaching the bacteria to the surface of biochar.

Biochar is a charcoallike material made from heating plant materials at very high temperatures in low-oxygen conditions in a process called pyrolysis.

Combined with bacteria, biochar could become an effective one-two punch to keep PCBs out of our air. The biochar provides a safe habitat for the bacteria, and it can attract PCBs from sediment through adsorption, bringing the PCBs into contact with the bacteria on the surface, which will break down the PCBs.

My colleagues and I still need to figure out the specifics of adding the bacteria-coated biochar into the environment. Right now, the idea is that the biochar will sink to the bottom where sediments are. But if the biochar doesn’t travel on its own to where we need it to be, we may need to look into other delivery methods, such as injecting it directly into the sediment.

An image of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) moving from sediment to air on the top left. The bottom left shows bacteria being attached to corn-kernel biochar, and the right side of the image shows a magnet attracting a polychlorinated biphenyl — Scientists may be able to use two unlikely heroes – corn and bacteria – to protect communities from airborne PCBs. David Ramotowski

In addition, my research group has tested different types of biochar materials and found that biochar made from corn kernels worked best with the bacteria. For the 2025-2026 market year, the United States is projected to produce over 400 million tons of corn, making it a stable, abundant, homegrown resource for this research.

Before any federal, state or city-level agencies can use this PCB cleanup method on a large scale, I need to solve two important problems. First, I must determine the correct amount of biochar to use. Too little would have no significant effect because there would not be enough biochar to attract PCBs and not enough bacteria to break them down. But too much would be too expensive and impractical.

Additionally, my colleagues and I are working to further protect the bacteria attached to biochar by surrounding it with a protective “sol-gel” material, which we are working to patent. Due to its high porosity and ideal pore size, this gel allows pollutants such as PCBs in while keeping out toxins that could pose a threat to LB400. The sol-gel also helps prevent strong currents from detaching the bacteria.

An image showing two pieces of biochar with bacteria attached. One piece of biochar is also surrounded with a glass-like — This diagram shows how applying a glasslike ‘sol-gel’ coating can further protect the bacteria in the environment by allowing in PCBs while keeping other harmful toxins out. The sol-gel also helps prevent bacteria from being detached from the biochar. David Ramotowski

This sol-gel could further extend the bacteria’s useful life, which will make the treatment more cost-effective and practical for communities affected by airborne PCBs.

While our methods have not yet been used at a large scale, my research group and I are currently working on testing this hypothesis in the lab. If successful, we could then begin to conduct field trials and work toward scaling up this method for use at PCB-contaminated sites nationwide.

My research team hopes the combined forces of bacteria and corn-kernel biochar can potentially one day give communities the freedom to flourish in a world free from PCBs.

David Ramotowski, Ph.D. Candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iowa

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

Orange rivers signal toxic shift in Arctic wilderness: Warming soil unleashes metals deadly to fish and food chains — University of #California, Riverside

Salmon River Brooks Range Alaska: Photo credit: Taylor Rhoades/University of California, Riverside

Click the link to read the release on the University of California website (Jules Bernstein):

September 8, 2025

In Alaska’s Brooks Range, rivers once clear enough to drink from now run orange and hazy with toxic metals. As warming thaws formerly frozen ground, it sets off a chemical chain reaction that is poisoning fish and wreaking havoc on ecosystems.

Researcher testing murky waters in Alaska’s Brooks Range. (Photo: Taylor Rhoades)

As the planet warms, a layer of permafrost — permanently frozen Arctic soil that locked away minerals for millennia — is beginning to thaw. Water and oxygen creep into the newly exposed soil, triggering the breakdown of sulfide-rich rocks, and creating sulfuric acid that leaches naturally occurring metals like iron, cadmium, and aluminum from rocks into the river.

Often times, geochemical reactions like these are triggered by mining operations. But that is not the case this time.

“This is what acid mine drainage looks like,” said Tim Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside. “But here, there’s no mine. The permafrost is thawing and changing the chemistry of the landscape.”

How the Salmon River looked prior to the permafrost thawing. (Patrick Sullivan/University of Alaska)

A new paper detailing the severity of the contamination has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Though the study focuses on the Salmon River, researchers warn that similar transformations are already underway across dozens of other Arctic watersheds.

“I have worked and traveled in the Brooks Range since 1976, and the recent changes in landforms and water chemistry are truly astounding,” said David Cooper, Colorado State University research scientist and study co-author.

Ecologist Paddy Sullivan of the University of Alaska first noticed the dramatic changes in 2019 while conducting fieldwork on Arctic forests shifting northward — another consequence of climate change. A pilot flying Sullivan into the field warned him the Salmon River hadn’t cleared up after the snowmelt and looked “like sewage.” Alarmed by what he saw, Sullivan joined forces with Lyons, Roman Dial from Alaska Pacific University, and others to investigate the causes and ecological consequences.

The research team on site in the Alaska wilderness. (Photo: Taylor Rhoades)

Their analysis confirmed that thawing permafrost was unleashing geochemical reactions that oxidize sulfide-rich rocks like pyrite, generating acidity and mobilizing a wide suite of metals, including cadmium, which accumulates in fish organs and could affect animals like bears and birds that eat fish.

In small amounts, metals aren’t necessarily toxic. However, the study shows that levels of metals in the river’s waters exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toxicity thresholds for aquatic life. In addition, the iron-clouded waters reduce the amount of light reaching the bottom of the river and smother insect larvae eaten by the salmon and other fish.

While current metal concentrations in edible fish tissue are not considered hazardous to humans, the changes to the rivers pose indirect but serious threats. Chum salmon, a key subsistence species for many Indigenous communities, might struggle to spawn in gravel beds choked with fine sediment. Other species, such as grayling and Dolly Varden, may also be affected.

Hoof prints serve as reminders that river contamination affects more than fish. There are implications for whole ecosystems. (Photo: Taylor Rhoades)

“It’s not just a Salmon River story,” Lyons said. “This is happening across the Arctic. Wherever you have the right kind of rock and thawing permafrost, this process can start.”

Unlike mine sites, where acid drainage can be mitigated with buffers or containment systems, these remote watersheds might have hundreds of contamination sources and no such infrastructure. Once the chemical process begins, the only thing that can stop it is recovery of the permafrost.

“There’s no fixing this once it starts,” Lyons said. “It’s another irreversible shift driven by a warming planet.” [ed. emphasis mine]

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Rapid Response program, highlights the potential danger for other Arctic regions. The researchers would like to help communities and land managers anticipate future impacts and, when possible, prepare for them.

“There are few places left on Earth as untouched as these rivers,” Lyons said. “But even here, far from cities and highways, the fingerprint of global warming is unmistakable. No place is spared.”

Federal Water Tap, September 29, 2025: Federal Judge Allows Flint Residents to Continue Lawsuit against EPA — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org)

Pesticides sprayed on agricultural fields and on urban landscaping can run off into nearby streams and rivers. Here, pesticides are being sprayed on a soybean field in Iowa. (Credit: Eric Hawbaker, Blue Collar Ag, Riceville, IA)

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

The Rundown

EPA finalizes new water quality standards for a 38-mile urbanized section of the Delaware River.

EPA internal watchdog will begin assessments of wildfire and inland flood risk to Superfund sites.

USGS studies long-term trends for pesticide concentrations in groundwater, finding them declining.

GAO recommends that the Department of Energy hasten its reviews of historical PFAS use at its sites.

Defense Department delays PFAS cleanup at some of its contaminated sites.

And lastly, a federal judge allows a lawsuit against the EPA over the Flint water crisis to continue.

“The EPA failed to keep children and families safe during the water crisis. It is outrageous that a decade has passed without the EPA admitting its mistake and paying the citizens of Flint what they are owed. The EPA administrator should settle this lawsuit right now.” – Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-MI), in a statement about a lawsuit against the EPA for its role in the Flint water crisis. A federal district judge denied the EPA’s petition to dismiss the lawsuit, which was brought by city residents and alleges that the agency was negligent in its duties under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

By the Numbers

57: Department of Energy sites that are slated for an assessment of historical PFAS use. According to the Government Accountability Office, only 20 of the sites have completed an initial review. Twenty-one sites have a review in progress, and 16 have not started. More than 100 other DOE sites are not being reviewed.

News Briefs

PFAS Cleanup Delay
The Defense Department is delaying PFAS cleanup at some of its contaminated sites, the New York Times reports. New timelines are in place for about 140 sites, the Times found when comparing a Trump administration update to a Biden-era plan.

Delaware River
To protect two endangered fish species, the EPA strengthened water quality standards for a 38-mile urbanized section of the Delaware River.

The standards, which originated during the Biden administration and seek to increase dissolved oxygen levels, apply to parts of the river between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. Two species of endangered sturgeon live in these waters.

The standards will result in lower polluted discharges from industrial and municipal sewage and stormwater systems.

Studies and Reports

Pesticides in Groundwater
A U.S. Geological Survey analysis found long-term declines in pesticide concentrations in groundwater in the nation’s major aquifer systems.

Across three decades of groundwater testing, the researchers found decreasing levels of most pesticides. That includes atrazine, one of the most broadly used chemicals. Twenty-one pesticides were analyzed.

Why the declines? Several factors are at play: less pesticide use, chemical degradation of pesticides in soils, and variable rainfall patterns and soil management, which can influence movement of pesticides after they are sprayed.

Some pesticides leave enduring legacies. DBCP, which was banned for agricultural use in the U.S. in 1979, was still the only pesticide in the study that exceeded human health standards in groundwater. (Though sampling for it took place only in California.)

The declines “can be viewed as encouraging results,” the authors write.

But they also urge caution: “many negative human-health effects have been linked to pesticide exposure, and these negative effects can occur when pesticide concentrations are below the human health benchmarks used in this study.”

The study results come from sampling 59 regional well networks and comparing pesticide concentrations to health standards. These networks represent agricultural and urban land uses, as well as areas in which groundwater is a drinking water source.

On the Radar

Superfund Environmental Risks
The EPA’s internal watchdog will begin two investigations into environmental risks for Superfund sites.

One assessment will look at risks from inland flooding and whether remediation plans take into account potential flood disruptions. The other will do the same analysis but for wildfire risk.

Texas Desalination
The Army Corps of Engineers issued permits for a proposed 100-million gallon per day desalination facility near Corpus Christi, Texas.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

U.S. Representative Paul Gosar looks to eliminate two #Arizona national monuments: Plus — Mining Monitor, Hydrocarbon Hoedown, Messing with Maps — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Rock fins jutting up at the south foot of the Henry Mountains laccolith in southern Utah. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

September 19, 2025

🌵 Public Lands 🌲

For the most part, President Donald Trump has done everything we feared the candidate would do and then some: following Project 2025 to a T, gutting environmental and public health protections, shredding the First Amendment (to the point of even losing Tucker Carlson), threatening political opponents, and generally embracing authoritarianism.

But when it comes to public lands, there is actually one act we expected the administration to do shortly after the inauguration, but that it hasn’t yet attempted: Shrinking or eliminating national monuments, especially those designated during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations. Even after Trump’s Justice Department opined (wrongly, I’d say) that the Antiquities Act authorizes a president to shrink or revoke national monuments, the administration didn’t actually do it.

I suspect this is because they realize how deeply unpopular that would be. Sure, Trump’s first-term shrinkage of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments may have garnered some support from a handful of Utah right-wingers, but they’d be behind him regardless. Meanwhile, it pissed off a lot of Americans who value public lands but might otherwise support Trump’s policies.

That’s not to say the national monuments are safe. It’s just that the administration seems to be intent, for now, to outsource their destruction to their friends in Congress. The House Republicans’ proposed budget, for example, would zero out funding for GSENM’s new management plan — a de facto shrinkage.

And now, Rep. Paul Gosar, a MAGA Republican from Arizona, has introduced bills that would nullify Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and the Ironwood Forest National Monument northwest of Tucson. The former blocks new mining claims in an area that has been targeted for uranium extraction. And the latter, established by Bill Clinton in 2000, covers a 189,713-acre swath of ecologically rich Sonoran Desert near the gaping wound known as the Asarco Silver Bell copper mine. The national monument designation blocked new mining claims.

Ironwood Forest is immensely popular with locals, and the Marana town council in August voted unanimously to oppose efforts to reduce or revoke the monument designation.

Interestingly enough, neither of the national monuments are in Gosar’s district, which covers the heavily Republican western edge of the state, so he won’t suffer from voter blowback if the legislation succeeds.

⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️

Congressional Republicans, with some Democratic support, are again trying to pass legislation that would allow mining companies to dump their waste on public lands.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2025, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, made it through the House Natural Resources Committee this week on a 25-17 vote. It would tweak the 1872 Mining Law to ensure that mining companies can store tailings and other mining-related waste on public land mining claims that aren’t valid, meaning the claimant has not proven that the parcels contain valuable minerals. This was actually the norm for decades until 2022, when a federal judge ruled that the proposed Rosemont copper mine in Arizona could not store its tailings and waste rock on public land. That ruling was followed by a similar one in 2023, leading mining state politicians from both parties to try to restore the pre-Rosemont Decision rules.

The bill would supplement Trump’s executive order from March invoking the Defense Production Act to expedite mining on public lands, and his “emergency” order that fast-tracks mining and energy permitting on public lands.

***

Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk

IsoEnergy, the company that owns the controversial Daneros Mine just outside Bears Ears National Monument and the Tony M Mine, plans to begin exploratory drilling at its Flatiron claims in Utah’s Henry Mountain uranium district. Last year, the Canada-based company staked a whopping 370 lode claims on federal land. Along with two Utah state leases, this adds up to about 8,800 acres south-southwest of Mt. Hillers.

🛢️ Hydrocarbon Hoedown

A peer-reviewed study out of UCLA recently found that pregnant women living near the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Los Angeles during the sustained blowout of 2015 experienced more adverse birth outcomes than expected. Specifically, the prevalence of low birthweight was 45% to 100% higher than those living outside the affected area. This should concern not only folks living near Aliso Canyon (which is still operational), but also anyone who lives near an oil and gas well or other facility.

Aliso Canyon is a depleted oil field in the hills of the Santa Susana Mountains in northern LA. Southern California Gas pipes in natural gas, pumps it into the oil field, and stores up to 84 billion cubic feet of the fuel there. In October 2015, one of the wells blew out and for the next 112 days spewed a total of about 109,000 metric tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and the main ingredient of natural gas.

That’s bad. But also mixed into the toxic soup that erupted from the field were other compounds such as mercaptans including tetrahydrothiophene and t-butyl mercaptan, sulfides, n-hexane, styrene, toluene, and benzene. All really nasty stuff that you don’t want in your air, and that is often emitted by oil and gas wells. The authors write:

“The emissions of BTEX and other HAP compounds are of particular concern as even at levels below health benchmarks they have been linked to health effects, including neurological, respiratory, and developmental effects.”

That appears to have been the case with the Aliso Canyon blowout, where “low birth weight and term low birth weight was higher than expected among women living in the affected area whose late pregnancy overlapped with the disaster.”

It’s simply more confirmation that fossil fuel development and consumption can take a big toll on the environment, the climate, and the people who live in or near the oil and gas patch or associated infrastructure. And that limits on methane emissions are important, even if you don’t care about climate change.

***

Long-time Land Desk readers might remember my story about the Horseshoe Gallup oil and gas field and sacrifice zone in northwestern New Mexico. I wrote about how the area had been ravaged by years of drilling and largely unfettered development, how the wells had been sold or handed off to increasingly irresponsible and slipshod companies as they were depleted, and how that had left dozens of abandoned facilities, oozing and seeping nasty stuff, but were not cleaned up because state and federal regulators still considered them to be “active.”

A trip through a sacrifice zone: The Horseshoe Gallup oilfield — Jonathan P. Thompson

Saga of an Oil Well (The Horseshoe Gallup Field Sacrifice Zone Part II) — Jonathan P. Thompson

The field is still there, along with most of the abandoned wells. But Capital & Main’s Jerry Redfern reports that some of the worst sites, including the NE Hogback 53, are being cleaned up. Well, sort of. The extensive reclamation of the well and the tank battery was started, only to be halted in May at the end of the state’s fiscal year. It resumed in July, and is expected to cost about $650,000.

This highlights the need for stronger enforcement and, most importantly, adequate reclamation bond requirements. At prices like that, cleaning up just the Horseshoe Gallup could cost tens of millions of dollars, and the taxpayer will be left to shoulder most of the bill.

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

Clarification: In Tuesday’s dispatch on the Colorado River and Lake Powell, I wrote that another dry winter would put “… the elevation of Lake Powell at 3,500 feet by this time next year. And, due to the infrastructure’s limitations, Glen Canyon Dam would have to be operated as a ‘run of the river’ facility.” That probably needs a bit more explanation.

One smart reader pointed out that even after the surface level of Lake Powell drops below minimum power pool, or 3,490 feet in elevation, the dam can still release up to 15,000 cfs from its river outlets. Technically, managers would not be forced to go to run of the river until the surface level dropped below 3,370 feet, which is known as “dead pool.”

However, the Bureau of Reclamation is very wary of relying on the river outlets, because they weren’t designed for long-term use and could fail under those circumstances. So, BoR is intent on keeping the water levels above minimum power pool so that all releases can go through the penstocks and the hydroelectric turbines. “In effect,” the authors of the paper wrote, “at least for the short term, the engineering and safety issues associated with the ability to release water through Glen Canyon Dam mean that the amount of water actually available for release from Lake Powell is only that which exists above elevation 3500 feet.”

So, as long as this is the case, the BoR will need to go to run of the river as soon as the elevation drops to 3,500 feet. I hope that helps clear things up!

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

Today’s map is less about the map than it is about the publication it comes from, the USGS’s Guidebook of the Western United States Part E. the Denver & Rio Grande Western Route, published in 1922. This thing is super cool, and super detailed (it’s 384 pages long). It’s got some great photos and maps, like this one (click on the image to see it in larger size on the website).

Besides having a cool, hand drawn style, this map struck me because it was made prior to the reservoirs on the Gunnison River. And it shows how the railroad tracks used to go into the Black Canyon at Cimarron and continue along the river all the way to Gunnison (most of that section is now under water). I suppose I should have known that was where the tracks went, but it never really occurred to me before. Credit: USGS

Related to that map were these two photos illustrating the miracle of irrigation.

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

#Colorado poised to join lawsuit over alleged endangered species violations linked to oil trains — David O. Williams (ColoradoNewsline.com) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

A Union Pacific train travels along the Colorado River near Cameo on May 16, 2023. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Newsline website (David O. Williams):

September 21, 2025

Projects in Utah’s Uinta Basin could significantly increase hazardous oil shipments through Colorado

Colorado, along with 15 other states, is poised to sue the federal government for ignoring endangered species regulations in a wide range of infrastructure projects on public lands. One of those projects, a controversial proposal to expand an oil shipping facility in Utah, would significantly increase hazardous rail shipments through Colorado.

Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, and the attorneys general of the other states provided in a July 18 letter to Trump administration officials a 60-day notice of their intent to sue. The notice expired last week.

The letter cites violations of the Endangered Species Act it says have occurred in pursuit of an executive order, called “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” which President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office in January.

“The ESA and implementing regulations do not allow agencies to routinely avoid and delay implementation of the ESA’s protections of endangered species and their critical habitats in the manner you have directed and which your agencies are carrying out,” the letter says.

The letter was addressed to Trump, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the directors of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The letter lists pipeline, cable and mining projects in states from Washington to Illinois — including the Wildcat Loadout Facility Right-of-Way Amendment on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land near Price, Utah — that it says pose risks to listed endangered species or critical habitat for fish and aquatic mammals from rainbow trout to salmon to sturgeon to whales.

The letter says Trump’s executive order declaring an energy emergency to fast-track fossil fuel production, despite record oil production in the United States, “unlawfully directs the (Army) Corps and Interior to bypass legal requirements, including those provided in the ESA. Congress did not authorize agencies to routinely bypass the ESA’s requirements to develop the President’s preferred energy sources.”

Asked if by signing onto the pending endangered species lawsuit, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is signaling he intends to join a separate lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s “energy emergency” executive order, a spokesperson for Weiser said that has yet to be determined.

“The notice of intent to sue to enforce the ESA could be a basis for joining the lawsuit challenging the White House energy emergency executive order,” Weiser spokesman Lawrence Pacheco wrote in an email this month. “The attorney general, however, has not made a decision on joining the EO lawsuit.”

Pacheco did not provide additional information on when the endangered species litigation will be filed or how it will be announced.

“We announce all lawsuits that we join or file ourselves,” Pacheco said. “I don’t have any idea on timing.”

Sued by environmental groups

The Wildcat Loadout expansion, as first reported by Newsline in 2023, has been plagued by air quality violations and other matters related to Native American antiquities. It would allow crude oil producers in the Uinta Basin to vastly expand drilling and transportation, including by rail through Colorado. Another proposed project in the basin, the bitterly opposed Uinta Basin Railway, would allow for even greater oil shipments. When the U.S. Supreme Court in late May cleared the way for the 88-mile rail link project, proponents said their next step was “completion of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) process.“

The BLM in early July invoked Trump’s emergency declaration to complete an accelerated environmental review of the permit for the Wildcat facility, which could increase oil capacity on the main rail line through Colorado by up to 80,000 barrels a day. Combined with the expansion of other nearby facilities, it will allow for the trucking and transfer to rail of up to 75% of the oil proposed for the Uinta Basin Railway project.

The railway project, estimated to cost at least $2.4 billion to build, would allow for up to 350,000 barrels of oil per day — more than doubling U.S. oil-by-rail transport — to move in heated oil tankers for 100 miles along the headwaters of the Colorado River, under the Continental Divide at Winter Park and through Denver on their way to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Backers of the project are seeking low-interest U.S. Department of Transportation private activity bonds.

Eagle County and five environmental groups sued to overturn U.S. Surface Transportation Board approval of the railway in 2022. They were initially successfully, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a favorable 2023 federal appellate court decision. Eagle County has long sought more direct state involvement in litigation opposing the project.

In a press release following the Supreme Court ruling, Keith Heaton, director of Utah’s Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, which has been using taxpayer dollars to pursue the railway project, said, “It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability. We look forward to continuing our work with all stakeholders to deliver this transformative project.”

The coalition is not a sponsor of the Wildcat Loadout project.

Asked for project updates and comment on the pending endangered species litigation, Melissa Cano, director of communications for the Uinta Basin Railway and the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, replied in an email: “At this time, the coalition does not have additional information or updates to provide beyond what has already been made publicly available. What I do wish to stress is that the Uinta Basin Railway Project is moving forward.”

Uinta Basin Railway project proposed routes.Credit:Surface Transportation Board

#NewMexico’s billion-dollar orphaned oilfield problem: After oil companies go bust, the state is left paying to clean up abandoned wells, tanks, machinery and sludge pits — Jerry Redfern (High Country News)

*Dave Fosdeck climbs a hill of dirt surrounding an excavation at the site of a Chuza t*ank battery outside Farmington, New Mexico, in June. The orange staining in the hole is the result of years of leaking oil waste from the tanks and equipment that once sat here. **Jerry Redfern**

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jerry Redfern):

September 17, 2025

This story was originally published by Capital & Main and is republished here by permission.

Dave Fosdeck crested a dirt berm on the Hogback, a ridge of hills west of Farmington, New Mexico, when the scent hit him. “Whoa! It stinks!” he yelped. It was June, and he was there with two others to look at the cleanup operations around a battery of massive oil tanks that sat abandoned for years in this rolling, high-desert corner of New Mexico.

The berm surrounds a hole where a semi-buried tank the size of a backyard swimming pool once sat, collecting and leaking waste sludge from surrounding oil wells. Nearby is an even bigger but much newer hole where a cleanup crew had removed contaminated soil. The void wasn’t fully excavated but already was big enough to drop a small house in. The pit’s sides were stained orange and an even stronger petroleum smell rose from it.

For years, a separator, a semi-trailer-sized machine that split valuable oil from wastewater and other contaminants, sat here. And for years, that separator leaked those toxic compounds onto the ground, where they soaked in, leading to the orange, contaminated soil and foul air.

The two holes, the stink and a few massive piles of dirt were about all that remained of a facility — known as a tank battery — that treated oil from 30 nearby wells for decades. In addition to the separator and sludge pit, the site was home to seven cylindrical green tanks the size of small grain silos, a decades-old tanker truck with flat tires, several plastic barrels and dozens of ruptured, unlabeled, cube-shaped tanks leaking mystery chemicals. That’s mostly gone now, except for the white and yellow chemical staining on the ground where those cubical tanks leaked.

“I can’t believe they didn’t dig that all out,” Fosdeck said.

For a few years, all of this belonged to Chuza Oil, which went bust in 2018, leaving the wells, tank battery and other equipment to bake in the high desert sun. In 2022, Fosdeck, Mike Eisenfeld of the San Juan Citizens Alliance and local rancher Don Schreiber identified the remote site covered in abandoned wells and leaking equipment and began nagging federal and state officials to do something about it.

A view of the Chuza tank battery in 2023. It had been abandoned for years at this point and several unmarked plastic containers were clearly leaking. Jerry Redfern

This spot in the Hogback exemplifies a worrying, expensive trend in New Mexico’s changing oilfield remediation landscape, where well operators declare bankruptcy and abandon highly contaminated and dilapidated facilities for state and federal agencies to clean up. It’s a national trend that sweeps from the country’s first oilfields in Pennsylvania to the California coast.

Currently, New Mexico pays contractors as much as $165,000 to plug an old oil well, according to the Oil Conservation Division, the state’s primary oil and gas regulator. That’s $65,000 more than the Division reported paying just three years ago. A recent report by the state’s Legislative Finance Committee warns that New Mexico could be on the hook for up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs in coming years from bankrupt oil and gas companies and rising plugging costs. (The report also gave the Oil Conservation Division a tongue lashing over “inconsistent cost control” in its oilfield remediation contracts.)

And while the report does talk about cleaning up tank batteries — and describes three very expensive examples — it doesn’t mention how many more may be lurking in the state’s oilfields, or what they could cost the state in the future.

Well plugging involves pulling old equipment out of the ground and scraping and flushing the wellbore before sealing it. So when a contractor arrives on site, often, “Nobody knows what they’re dealing with because it’s subsurface,” said Jason Sandel, the president of Aztec Well Servicing. Pipes rust. Pipes break. Wells might be shallower or deeper than recorded. After the pipe comes out, the contractor injects a series of cement plugs underground to keep oil, gas and other contaminants from migrating to water-bearing formations.

A tank battery has none of that, so at first glance cleaning one up looks like the easier task. But that’s not necessarily the case. The Chuza Oil tank battery site covers only about half an acre, and according to the Oil Conservation Division, the cleanup operation is on track to cost more than $650,000, much of that incurred because it was necessary to dig out and truck away the contaminated soil where the separator leaked at the remote location.

In mid-June, the cleanup clearly wasn’t finished. Orange barrier netting flapped in the wind around the pits, and the orange staining and gassy reek indicated more contaminated soil awaited removal. (Sidney Hill, public information officer for the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said that work stopped in May due to the end of the state’s 2025 fiscal year and resumed in July with the new fiscal year.)

Fosdeck, Eisenfeld and Schreiber have spent years tracking and highlighting problems in the oilfields around Farmington. Fosdeck, on his own, follows the paper trails of abandoned wells and other fossil fuel ventures. Schreiber and Eisenfeld rattle the cages of state and federal government officials to get oil, gas and coal sites cleaned up.

“This whole part of the equation — the cleanup part — has been neglected,” Eisenfeld said. That’s one of many reasons why he thinks digging for oil, gas and coal shouldn’t be done in the first place.

Randy Pacheco retired recently from a company that plugs and cleans up old well sites like Chuza’s, and before that he was dean of the School of Energy at San Juan College in Farmington, the state’s oilfield trade school. He visited the Hogback field with Fosdeck, Eisenfeld and Schreiber before the cleanup began. It wasn’t the worst thing he had ever seen, but, still, it was a mess.

“I think there’s people who have big aspirations to make a lot of money in the oil and gas industry and they end up purchasing these assets and then they don’t know what to do,” he said.

Even so, the site confounded him. “How would you get yourself in this kind of a mess?” he wondered about the abandoned equipment and dilapidated tank battery he saw. “Who’s selling them those dreams?”

Mike Eisenfeld, the energy and climate program manager at the San Juan Citizens Alliance, checks out a piece of abandoned equipment in the remains of the Chuza oilfield in June. Jerry Redfern

SOMETIMES THE DREAM sells itself.

Bobby Goldstein is best known for producing Cheaters, a COPS-style reality TV show of hidden cameras, secret lovers, slapped faces and shattered dreams.

“I’ve got a thousand episodes that run wild all over the world, every day, all day,” Goldstein said. Those episodes made him wealthy. In July, over a long, free-wheeling phone call, Goldstein explained in his smooth Texas patter how he, a Dallas lawyer and TV impresario, followed a dream to become an oil man and how that venture completely collapsed.

“I’ll never forget all this shit,” he said.

In 2010, Goldstein persuaded a couple of acquaintances to go into the oil business with him. They formed Chuza Oil — the name behind the Hogback mess — and, for a little less than $3 million, they bought Parowan Oil, a small company with some old wells and a tank battery near Farmington.

“[I] grew up around a bunch of rich brats whose families were big oil people,” he said. “They made the earth shake and I always thought, ‘Man, I wish I had some sense to do that.’ That opportunity came about, and I went on it.”

He continued, “I never was an oil man. I was a speculator, and for a minute there I looked real smart. … You see, I bought the land cheap, [and] oil rose and rose and rose.”

Goldstein said Chuza spent about $2 million redeveloping the oilfield infrastructure. “We made a vast improvement to the field so that it would be more efficient and more likely to be operational. So, over time, most all of those wells were working … I even moved to Santa Fe where I could be closer,” he said. “Shit, I bought a jet so I could fly out there direct in an hour and a half and be on that field. I was out there a lot.”

What happened next set the stage for the collapse of Chuza Oil and what became of the Hogback Field.

Goldstein said the company spent millions drilling two fracked wells, which involved ramming huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals into long, horizontal branches of a main wellbore to fracture the surrounding rock and loosen oil and gas trapped within.

Those wells produced for two months, but the oil was laden with paraffin. The naturally occurring, waxy hydrocarbon can slowly clog wells, in much the same way that cholesterol blocks arteries. In addition, the fracking loosened paraffin in Chuza’s other wells, fouling them as well, Goldstein said.

Then, a financial catastrophe: “The son of a bitch [partner] that was supposed to pay for the wells left us a $3 million unpaid bill with various creditors,” Goldstein said. “So not only did we have a fiscal issue going on, but we also had production issues and the company wound up into a Chapter 11,” he said.

“If everybody had listened to me on that field, we’d probably already sold it for $200 or $300 million. But people that have a little money think they know something, especially when they inherited it and never worked for it,” Goldstein said. “Those are the worst kind of idiots to have to deal with.”

After spending around $15 million to buy and expand the operation, Goldstein said Chuza Oil collapsed into years of bankruptcy litigation, foreclosure, 30 abandoned, paraffin-clogged wells and one messy tank battery.

“It was my Tom Sawyer experience,” Goldstein said. “I did something that I never had any background in, training for, education. And it was just a Wild West venture capital gamble.”

And if he made a show about the experience? “I would call it ‘Pricks and Jackasses Gone Wild,’” he said.

As for his former oilfield in New Mexico, Goldstein said, “I don’t really know what’s going on.” He was unaware that the wells had been plugged and the tank battery removed. In part, that’s because he’s no longer responsible.

One reason to set up a corporation is to protect its principals from fiscal fallout should the company fail. And in that, Chuza Oil succeeded: Bankruptcy protected Goldstein and the other partners from paying for the cleanup.

Chuza’s assets were on Navajo tribal trust land, managed by the U.S. government for the benefit of the tribe. The Bureau of Land Management managed those operations, making it responsible for the overall cleanup that began late last year.

Fosdeck, left, and Schreiber talk while standing next to an abandoned Chuza oil well west of Farmington, New Mexico, in 2023. The site is on tribal trust land and the warning sign is written in Navajo. Jerry Redfern

Federal regulations give the Bureau the ability to go after earlier but still extant owners to clean up well sites abandoned by recent owners. In this case, Chuza Oil was the last in a string of owners stretching back to the 1940s for some of the oldest wells. In the end, a Bureau spokesperson said Marathon Petroleum, BP America, Woodside Energy/BHP and Enerdyne plugged 23 Chuza wells they sold years ago. BLM asked the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division to plug five wells and deal with the tank battery — none of which had extant previous owners. The Bureau plugged the remaining two wells. The cost of the cleanup bypassed Goldstein and the bankrupt Chuza Oil entirely.

Goldstein wasn’t too wistful about his wells getting torn out and smoothed over. “I’m sure the Navajo are glad that all that shit’s gone. I don’t think they ever liked all that going on there and it’s a beautiful piece of land. It was really nice to be out there,” he said.

“Special experience for me,” he concluded.

THE CLEANUP OF Chuza Oil’s wells and tanks represents a nominal victory after years of work by Fosdeck, Eisenfeld, Schreiber and others to expunge the legacy of neglect from the northwest corner of the state. But the victory is small.

According to Oil Conservation Division numbers from the beginning of September, New Mexico has 70,000 oil and gas wells and 6,717 registered tank batteries. About 100 new wells are drilled each month. Eventually, all of those will have to be plugged, and the land returned to something resembling its natural state.

The Legislative Finance Committee report notes that over the past 20 years, operators themselves plugged 95% of nonproducing wells in New Mexico, as the law requires. The remaining 5% were declared orphaned wells and plugged by the Oil Conservation Division.

The report says there are around 700 orphan wells awaiting state plugging with another 3,400 inactive or low-producing wells that could be added to the list in the near future. Extrapolating forward, the report suggests New Mexico could be on the hook for up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs over the coming years as more small companies declare bankruptcy before fulfilling their obligations to plug their wells and remove equipment.

New Mexico’s Oil and Gas Reclamation Fund — filled by a fraction of a tax paid by oil and gas producers — covers the costs of implementing the Oil and Gas Act, which defines how the industry can operate in the state. The fund also pays for plugging and reclamation costs of abandoned wells and facilities. Earlier this year, the fund had $66 million, its highest balance ever. The state has kept that much in the fund by paying for plugging operations with $55.5 million in recent federal grants, as well as forfeited financial assurances that well owners are required to carry but rarely cover the actual costs of cleanup. The Finance Committee report says that the state is eligible for another $111 million from the feds.

All told, it’s a long way from $1.6 billion.

“That is why the Reclamation Fund is not a substitute for adequate bonding and financial assurance from operators,” state Rep. Matthew McQueen (D – Galisteo) said. He thinks that the report’s $1.6 billion estimate is “scary enough,” but could be low. He said the report seems to expect a stable future for an industry with a notorious boom-and-bust cycle. “In a significant downturn, the State’s liability could skyrocket rapidly” as weak companies fold and abandon wells, he said.

Smaller companies are often the first to feel economic shocks, and the state has a lot of smaller oil and gas producers. In 2024, 326 companies reported producing 740 million barrels of oil to New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division. Just 25 companies produced 92% of that total. The numbers are similar for natural gas production.

Fosdeck holds a methane detector as it lights up from a leak at an abandoned Chuza oil well in 2023. Schreiber shields the detector from the wind with his hat. Jerry Redfern

In the last legislative session, McQueen proposed a bill that would have kept well owners on the hook for remediation costs into the future if they sell wells to owners that go bankrupt — similar to what the federal government does. “It would cause the industry to self-police and make sure that any future operators had the wherewithal to properly remediate well sites,” he said. It didn’t pass.

McQueen also proposed legislation to weed out potential buyers without the money or know-how to run an oil production business, as well as so-called bad actors with histories of negligence or bankruptcy. That, too, didn’t pass.

The Finance Committee report recommends several procedural and definition changes, as well as creating a law allowing the Oil Conservation Division to disallow well sales if “the purchaser is unlikely to be able to fulfill its asset retirement obligations” — much like McQueen proposed. It also called for increasing the required financial assurances paid by oilfield operators for cleanup costs on low-producing wells, which are more likely to be orphaned.

However, the Chuza Oil assets wouldn’t have been subject to these proposed laws, because the wells and tank battery were on federal land not subject to state jurisdiction, despite the fact that the state ended up paying for the cleanup.

Ben Shelton, deputy cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department — the mothership to the Oil Conservation Division — said, “The report got a lot right, including identifying a need for [the Division] to be able to scrutinize transfers more closely in order to reduce the likely incidences of orphaned wells.”

Shelton said that the Division didn’t have an estimate for either the number of orphaned tank batteries or their average cleanup costs, but the oilfield cleanups of a trio of tank batteries were some of the most expensive the state paid for in the last couple of years, at $623,000, $5.1 million and $7.6 million. The estimated $650,000 Chuza Oil tank battery cleanup will eventually join the list.

As of publication, that months-long process wasn’t finished. And in the end, the cleanup around the Chuza Oil tank battery, while expensive and time-consuming, isn’t necessarily uncommon, according to Sandel at Aztec Well Servicing, which is cleaning up the site.

“There were many more yards of contaminated soil than expected. … But I don’t think that’s abnormal,” Sandel said. “I wouldn’t characterize it as outside the bounds at all.”

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

Federal Water Tap, September 15, 2025: EPA Says It Won’t Regulate Four #PFAS in Drinking Water — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org)

Unprotected farm fields yield topsoil as well as farm fertilizers and other potential pollutants when heavy rains occur.

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

The Rundown

EPA intends to retract a Biden-era regulation for four PFAS in drinking water.

Report on children’s health highlights MAHA concern with fluoride in drinking water.

GAO finds that the outcomes from Biden-era environmental justice focus are unknown.

Defense spending and harmful algal bloom bills move through Congress.

And lastly, Reclamation will do more analysis on an ag-to-urban Colorado River water transfer in Arizona.

“Following the completion of studies on fluoride, CDC and USDA will educate Americans on the appropriate levels of fluoride, clarify the role of EPA in drinking water standards for fluoride under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and increase awareness of the ability to obtain fluoride topically through toothpaste.” – Excerpt from the MAHA Commission strategy for improving children’s health.

By the Numbers

$1 Billion: Federal aid to livestock producers who were affected by wildfire and flooding in 2023 and 2024. The funds, announced by USDA, are intended to offset higher feed costs.

News Briefs

PFAS Regulation…And Others
The EPA says it will attempt to retract its regulation of four PFAS in drinking water, a rule that was established during the Biden administration.

The agency will keep federal drinking water limits on two forever chemicals: PFOA and PFOS. But it wants to drop federal regulation of four others: PFHxS, PFNA, PFBS, and Gen X.

The EPA is also not defending the rule in court, asking judges to invalidate it, Bloomberg Law reports.

Utilities are challenging the rule on procedural grounds as well as objecting to its cost for small systems. Public health groups point out that federal law has “anti-backsliding” provisions to prevent existing drinking water limits from being weakened.

The agency signaled its intention to scrap limits on the four PFAS in the Unified Agenda, a semiannual listing of the federal government’s regulatory plans.

Other water-related regulatory actions mentioned in the agenda: perchlorate in drinking water, a definition of the “waters of the United States” that are subject to Clean Water Act permitting, and expanding the area in which oil and gas wastewater (a.k.a “produced water”) can be reused.

Water Bills in Congress
The House passed a defense spending authorization bill that includes several water provisions.

It instructs the department to provide clean drinking water from an alternative source to any household on a private well that is contaminated with PFAS due to military activities.

The bill also directs the military secretaries to assess water-supply risk at their bases. Each secretary will identify the three most at-risk bases under their command and develop a strategy to reduce water-supply risk.

The Senate, meanwhile, passed a bill that reauthorizes a federal program for harmful algal bloom research and monitoring.

Arizona Injection Well Management
The EPA granted Arizona’s application to oversee permitting for wells that inject fluids and waste underground in the state.

Studies and Reports

Water and Children’s Health
The Make America Healthy Again Commission released its strategy for improving children’s health.

The 20-page document refers to drinking water as a pathway for contaminants. But it provides vague direction on solutions. Federal agencies “will assess ongoing evaluations of water contaminants and update guidance and prioritizations of certain contaminants appropriately,” it states.

Several contaminants are called out. Fluoride, a favored enemy for the MAHA movement, is one. Others are pharmaceuticals and PFAS. Farm chemicals are indirectly cited, in a sentence that asks the USDA to research water quality and farm conservation practices. At the same time, EPA is directed to reduce permitting requirements to “strengthen regional meat infrastructure.”

The report is undermined by actions other federal agencies are taking – approving new chemicals for commercial use, cutting research and enforcement budgets, not defending PFAS regulations.

Evaluating Environmental Justice Push
To help poor and disadvantaged communities overcome histories of pollution, racism, and poverty, the Biden administration ordered that they receive 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal spending. Donald Trump ended this Justice40 initiative in his first month in office.

What did the program achieve?

That’s hard to say, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.

Looking at three agencies that were key players in the program – EPA, Interior, and USDA – the audit concluded that, though they modified grant programs, provided assistance, and began to track outcomes, “overall results of agency actions are unknown.”

On the Radar

Arizona Water Transfer
Following a court order for a more-thorough analysis, the Bureau of Reclamation will conduct an environmental impact assessment of an ag-to-urban transfer of Colorado River water that it already approved.

Queen Creek, a fast-growing Phoenix exurb, purchased water from GSC Farm, in La Paz County, on the opposite side of the state. The assessment will also consider the effects of moving the water to Queen Creek via the Central Arizona Project canal.

Cities and counties in western Arizona sued to block the water transfer.

Two virtual public meetings will be held on October 1 to gather comments. Log-in details are found here.

Senate Hearing
On September 17, the Environmental and Public Works Committee will hold an oversight hearing on the Army Corps of Engineers.

House Hearings
On September 16, an Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee will hold a hearing on weather modification. The subcommittee is led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who incorrectly blamed Hurricane Helene on a “they” who control the weather. She introduced a bill in July to ban geoengineering, cloud seeding, aerosol injection, and other methods of altering the weather. Carbon emissions, however, are not explicitly mentioned.

Another Oversight subcommittee will hold a hearing that same day on EPA enforcement during the Biden administration.

Also on September 16, an Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on appliance efficiency standards, which Republicans and the president have criticized as limiting customer choice, even though they reduce water and energy consumption.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Two hundred fish died in Grizzly Reservoir from toxic metals. Climate change is to blame — #Aspen Public Radio

Lincoln Creek, just above its confluence with the Roaring Fork River, on June 14, 2017. Passersby had left rock piles in the clear, warm, and shallow stream.

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Public Radio website (Michael Fanelli). Here’s an excerpt:

September 9, 2025

About 200 fish were found dead on Aug. 18 on the banks of Grizzly Reservoir, a popular fishing and camping site near Aspen. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials determined that naturally occurring metals had become toxic for rainbow trout the agency had stocked in the reservoir. Kendall Bakich, an aquatic biologist with CPW, is part of a team measuring the concentration of metals in the reservoir. She said this new metal toxicity is part of a growing trend.

“I would probably say across the world, but certainly across North America, there’s rivers that are becoming more impacted by heavy metals from natural sources, due to climate change,” Bakich said.

Human-caused climate change has led to warming temperatures and drought, increasing the concentration of naturally occurring metals in bodies of water and creating deadly conditions for fish. Bakich said the main culprit in this case was copper, to which fish are especially sensitive. That copper comes from a body of heavy metals at the top of Lincoln Creek, which feeds into Grizzly Reservoir and eventually into the Roaring Fork River.

Map of the Roaring Fork River drainage basin in western Colorado, USA. Made using USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69290878

Where are the anti-tyranny, federal overreach folks when you need them? — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Looking up Recapture Canyon in the Lands Between. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

September 9, 2025

🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡

Please forgive me for being confused about the state of our nation, about the actions of our president, and about the reaction to it.

See, a decade ago, Western state politicians — particularly conservative Republicans and, if you will, Sagebrush Rebels — were up in arms, sometimes literally, about something they called “federal overreach.” In most cases, it referred to actions by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service that ranged from closing roads or prohibiting motorized vehicles in sensitive areas to attempting to round up cattle that had been grazing illegally on public land to arresting suspected pothunters to enforcing laws on federal land.

When a herd of assault-weapon toting self-proclaimed militia showed up at Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville ranch in 2014, they were resisting federal overreach; when Phil Lyman led a flock of ATV riders down Recapture Canyon in Utah, he was protesting federal overreach; when Ammon and Ryan Bundy led the siege of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, they were protesting federal overreach.

In 2014, congressional Republicans even held a hearing on what they called “Threats, Intimidation, and Bullying by Federal Land Managing Agencies.” In this case, according to witnesses, “bullying” included enforcing the Endangered Species Act and failing to coordinate with the local sheriff.

Indeed, in 2011 Dennis Spruell, then-sheriff of Montezuma County, Colorado, threatened to arrest land management officials who dared to close roads across federal lands. He continued: “The sheriff is the ultimate law enforcement authority. I have an obligation to protect my county from enemies, both foreign and domestic. So if the federal government comes in and violates the law, it’s my responsibility to make sure it stops.”

A couple of years later, 28 Utah sheriffs wrote a letter to President Obama threatening violent revolt if he were to enact gun control. “No federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights — in particular Amendment II — has given them,” they wrote. “We, like you, swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation.”

All of which is a very wordy lead in to a question: Where the hell is the concern about federal overreach now?

The Trump administration is figuratively shredding the U.S. Constitution on an almost daily basis; masked federal ICE agents are terrorizing immigrants and citizens, alike; the administration is forcing utilities to keep operating coal plants; and not only has it sent the National Guard and even the Marines into Democratic-led cities unbidden in clear violation of states rights, but Trump himself declared “war” on an American city in a social media post. This makes a bit of BLM “overreach” look like child’s play.

If anything would warrant a response from the so-called militia, or the folks who oppose gun control because it would hamper their ability to resist tyranny, it would be this. Or so it seems. After all, sending the Marines to Los Angeles appears to have violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which makes it illegal “to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws.” This Reconstruction-era law is often used by “constitutional” sheriffs and federal overreach crowd to bolster their positions.

So where’s Ryan Bundy and his pocket Constitution? Where are Richard Mack and the “constitutional sheriffs” and the folks that used to rail about posse comitatus? Where’s Phil Lyman, who repeatedly called the Obama administration and the BLM “despotic” for daring to increase protections on public lands and for sending in law enforcement officers to arrest folks who violated the Antiquities Act?

They are, it turns out, nowhere to be found. The reason is obvious: All of the “federal overreach” grievance was performative. An act based not on principle, but on false victimhood, on a sense of entitlement, on a selfish desire the liberty to do what they please, not for Liberty as a principle or creed. So long as ICE doesn’t come after them, their cattle, their guns, they don’t have any beef with federal overreach, no matter how egregious or harmful — especially if it’s done in the name of retribution and “owning the libs.”

But there is an exception, and a surprising one to me. Ammon Bundy, who led the armed takeover of the wildlife refuge in Oregon, told Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer that he actually finds the military occupation of cities “very concerning.” I’ll admit I didn’t catch Mencimer’s story, which was published a month ago, until I was writing this piece, and was looking for possible Bundy reactions. Ammon told her he has been relatively subdued (he hasn’t occupied any federal facilities yet) in response to Trump because he’s got enough legal troubles as it is ¹.

While I’m no supporter of Ammon Bundy, you got to hand it to him for his consistency. He rightly considers the ICE raids as an affront to the founding principles of the United States. And he points out — apparently referring to his one-time allies — “It has been my sad experience that most people will set principles, justice, and good aside to spite those whom they despise.” You got that one right. [ed. emphasis mine]

Wise Use Echoes: The rhetoric and ideology of today’s right-wing extremism mirrors that of a lesser-known anti-public lands movement of the 1990s — Jonathan P. Thompson

Sage Brush Rebellion folks, Recapture Canyon, Utah Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

Like millions of people from around the globe, I watched the images of coup-pawns invading the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with shock, rage, and sadness. But, like many others, I wasn’t surprised. After all, almost exactly five years earlier we had been transfixed and alarmed by another violent attack on an American institution, the occupation of the Malheur…

1 *Ammon Bundy was one of the few people to speak out against the Trump administration and FBI head Kash Patel for honoring the FBI agents who shot and killed LaVoy Finicum amid the Malheur occupation, and for fabricating the circumstances surrounding the incident.

‘You need to have a fair bit of data’: Officials expand testing in search for answers on #LincolnCreek contamination — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org) #RoaringForkRiver

From left, Bryan Daugherty with Pitkin County Environmental Health, Matthew Anderson and Chad Rudow, both with the Roaring Fork Conservancy. The three spent Wednesday, Aug. 13 taking water quality samples at 14 sites from Lincoln Creek, the Ruby Mine outflow and the mineralized tributary. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):

August 15, 2025

High above Aspen at 11,400 feet, past the ghost town of Ruby, at the end of a rough dirt road surrounded by willows and ramshackle cabins, Lincoln Creek runs clean and clear.

The mountain stream is barely more than a trickle at its headwaters, but it still supports fish that dart and hide in the cool shadows. But just a few hundred yards downstream, the creek begins to turn foul.

First by what appears to be a small tributary or groundwater that flows into the creek and leaves a white residue on the rocks, an indication of aluminum. Then comes the runoff from the abandoned Ruby Mine, which leaves a hardened orange crust on the ground where it joins the creek. Just downstream of the mine is the site where experts say the majority of the aluminum, copper, zinc and iron contamination is entering Lincoln Creek: the “mineralized tributary.”

Although it’s hard to pinpoint the exact source — the entire mountainside above the creek on the east side is stained orange, suggesting the widespread presence of metals — a group of scientists, government officials and local nonprofits are ramping up efforts to better understand the workings of the Lincoln Creek watershed and what can be done to improve its water quality.

On Wednesday [August 13, 2025], a team from the Roaring Fork Conservancy and Pitkin County spent the day collecting water quality samples from Lincoln Creek, the Ruby Mine discharge, the mineralized tributary and points downstream. It was the third time this summer scientists have collected water samples from the creek, and it is part of an overall effort with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and University of Colorado Boulder to test and monitor the area.

“I think one of our big goals is really to continue to fill in the data,” said Chad Rudow, water quality program manager with the Roaring Fork Conservancy. “As I like to tell people, science takes time. To even apply statistical analysis to it, you need to have a fair bit of data.”

Matthew Anderson, left, a water quality technician with the Roaring Fork Conservancy, and Bryan Daugherty with Pitkin County Environmental Health take samples from Lincoln Creek on Aug. 13, 2025. The creek has such high concentrations of some metals that it is toxic to aquatic life. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Local residents, government agencies and environmental groups have long been concerned about Lincoln Creek, which, according to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency, is toxic to aquatic life. The tributary of the Roaring Fork River has been under increased scrutiny in recent years as fish kills and discoloration of the water downstream of Grizzly Reservoir have become more frequent.

“We’re worried about the aquatic health of the river,” said Bryan Daugherty, environmental health specialist with Pitkin County. “There certainly could be human impacts if it got really bad, but at this point it’s really the aquatic life that we’re concerned with.”

Since early 2024, the ad hoc Lincoln Creek Workgroup has been meeting to figure out what to do about the contaminated creek. Bolstered by a state grant of $100,000, the group is increasing water quality testing. The team of scientists has grown the number of testing sites this year from seven to 14 and are focusing current efforts on what’s happening above Grizzly Reservoir.

Pitkin County Healthy Rivers, whose mission is to maintain and improve water quality and quantity in the Roaring Fork River basin, is playing a crucial role by securing grant money and working with consultant LRE Water on phase II of the data collection and modeling project, which will cost $207,000. Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff have also set up conductivity loggers, which measure how well water conducts electricity, and trail cameras to take photos of Lincoln Creek.

“It’s definitely a team effort with a lot of different groups playing an important role in adding different pieces to the overall puzzle,” Rudow said.

The uppermost reaches of Lincoln Creek run clean and clear, and support aquatic life. Just a few hundred yards downstream, metals contamination begins to enter the creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

The outflow from the Ruby Mine produces an orange crust on the ground. The mine drainage flows into Lincoln Creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Highly acidic concentrations

The process of metals leaching into streams can be both naturally occurring and caused by mining activities. In both cases, sulfide minerals in rock come into contact with oxygen and water, producing sulfuric acid. The acid can then leach the metals out of the rock and into a stream, a process known as acid rock drainage, which is happening in other mountainous regions of Colorado and around the West.

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

The metals concentrations from acid rock drainage seems to be increasing in recent years and may be exacerbated by climate change as temperatures rise. But because the vast majority — 98.5% of the copper, according to the EPA report — of the contamination is from natural sources and not related to the Ruby Mine, the EPA is not authorized to clean it up. That leaves local and state agencies, and nonprofit organizations to fill the gap.

Wednesday’s testing revealed a pH of 7.29 on the upper reaches of Lincoln Creek (7 is considered neutral); 6.4 below the Ruby Mine and 3.2 below the confluence of the mineralized tributary. The pH scale is logarithmic, meaning a decrease of one whole number equals a 10-fold increase in acidity.

“The highly acidic concentrations that we’re seeing up here is part of the process that’s speeding up mobilizing the metals from the rock into the stream system,” Rudow said.

Scientists also collected data about dissolved oxygen, water temperature and salinity. The water samples are then shipped to a lab in Fort Collins, which tests for metals concentrations.

Rudow and others also used Wednesday’s trip to the high alpine as a chance to scout spots for an upcoming synoptic survey. At the request of LRE, scientists will pick a day this fall to take water quality samples and flow measurements at points along the entire length of the creek to better understand the sources of contamination. But only year-round tributaries — not seasonal snow-fed seeps — will be included.

“We’re pushing that into September because what we really want to focus on for that project is those year-round streams that are coming into Lincoln Creek,” Rudow said. “(LRE) is going to take all of this data and ultimately build a model to show what’s going on in the creek and how these different inputs are influencing the creek.”

Water quality sampling in 2024 focused on Grizzly Reservoir and points downstream to better understand the impacts of a dam repair project. Last summer the reservoir was drained for work on the dam, and a slug of sediment-laden, orange-colored water was released downstream, alarming Aspen residents.

Matthew Anderson, a water quality technician with the Roaring Fork Conservancy, takes a sample of water from the mineralized tributary on Aug. 13, 2025. Experts have determined this is a major source of the metals contamination on Lincoln Creek. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

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. The reservoir was drained during the summer of 2024 so the dam could get a new face. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Both sides of the divide

The water quality issues on Lincoln Creek bind together water users on both sides of the Continental Divide. Lincoln Creek feeds into the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company’s transmountain diversion system, in which Grizzly Reservoir is used as a collection pond before sending water through the Twin Lakes Tunnel to the Front Range, where it is used primarily in cities, including for drinking water. Colorado Springs Utilities owns about 55% of the water in the Twin Lakes system, while about 35% goes to the Pueblo area.

A map of the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System, as submitted to Div. 5 Water Court by Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.

Twin Lakes President Alan Ward, who also works as a water resources manager for Pueblo Water, is a member of the Lincoln Creek workgroup. Each organization contributed $5,000 toward the LRE Phase II work.

Ward said next summer Grizzly Reservoir will be drained again so Twin Lakes can work on the damaged outlet works that release water downstream to Lincoln Creek. To avoid another sediment release, the company will create a small basin with cofferdams where the last 10-12 acre-feet at the bottom of the reservoir can settle out before sending it downstream or through the Twin Lakes Tunnel.

Ward said impacts to drinking water aren’t much of a concern for the east side of the divide because the water from Lincoln Creek is diluted by the 141,000-acre-foot Twin Lakes Reservoir, which stores water from multiple sources.

“I think for us the concerns are more on Lincoln Creek itself because Grizzly Reservoir is right in the middle of it,” Ward said. “We just want to stay really engaged on this to figure out the water quality issues and how they impact Grizzly Reservoir itself and if there are ways to mitigate the problem.”

Officials talk irrigation and how to keep salt out of the #ColoradoRiver — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel #COriver

Colorado River in Grand Junction. Photo credit: Allen Best

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

August 15, 2025

Every year, millions of tons of salt flows down the Colorado River. The Colorado Department of Agriculture works with local irrigation companies and agricultural producers to limit the amount drawn from Colorado’s farming industry. On Thursday [August 14, 2025], members of the Department of Agriculture and others toured different areas around Palisade from a lined canal to a peach orchard to see what methods are being used to limit how much salt the Grand Valley washes into the river. Colorado Department of Agriculture Salinity Program Coordinator Paul Kehmeier explained that the soils around the Grand Valley contain salt that can be washed into the river by irrigating fields too deeply.

“It doesn’t really feel like it this morning, but we’re actually standing on the bottom of an ocean right now,” Kehmeier said. “The water’s gone, but all the salt from the ocean is still here. When the water from the Colorado River gets in contact with it, it dissolves the salt and the salt gets into the water and it’s carried down on the river.”

Kehmeier said the salt content in the river in Colorado is still low, but more gets dissolved along the river’s course and there is a large amount by the time it reaches the Lower Colorado Basin states. In the 1970s, the federal government passed legislation to reduce the salt level in the river…Cindy Lair, the Colorado Department of Agriculture deputy director for conservation services division and climate resilience specialist, said over time the federal government shifted to allow states to take the lead in reducing salt levels in the river by providing grant funding. The types of projects that can reduce salinity include things like lining canals and helping farmers use more efficient irrigation systems that don’t soak down below the root level of the crops.

Laying pipe near Crawford, Colorado. Photo credit: USBR

Uranium Company Receives #Wyoming’s First Fast-Tracked Mining Permits — Jake Bolster (InsideClimateNews.org)

Inside Uranium Energy Corp.’s Irigaray Central Processing Plant located in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. Credit: Uranium Energy Corp.

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Jake Bolster):

August 6, 2025

The state could eventually host the nation’s largest uranium production facility to use two different mining methods. Environmentalists worry that expedited permitting in the nuclear sector could threaten “safety, environmental quality and public trust.”

Uranium Energy Corp.’s Sweetwater uranium project has become the first mining proposal in Wyoming to be fast-tracked under President Donald Trump’s March executive order to increase U.S. mineral production.

The company announced Aug. 5 that it planned to expand its uranium mining operations in Wyoming’s Red Desert as a result of the expedited permitting process. The federal government expects to post a permitting timetable for the project by Aug. 15.

Through other executive orders, the dismantling of environmental regulations and the spending bill congressional Republicans passed in July, the second Trump administration has made it easier for extractive industries to receive permits for mining on public lands. Trump has classified uranium as a “critical mineral” for the U.S., which imported 99 percent of its fuel for nuclear energy in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

John Burrows, energy and climate policy director at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, saw the fast-tracking news as evidence of a pattern in the state’s nascent nuclear industry.

“Across the nuclear supply chain we’re seeing permits getting expedited and we’re having concerns around safety, environmental quality and public trust,” he said.

Last month, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accelerated its review of an advanced nuclear reactor being built in Kemmerer, Wyoming, with an end-of-year completion goal. TerraPower, the company behind the new technology, was co-founded by billionaire Bill Gates.

Uranium Energy’s Sweetwater permits were fast-tracked by the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council. Trump’s March executive order required the executive director of the council to publish such projects on a special dashboard.

“I am excited to welcome the Sweetwater Complex to the FAST-41 transparency dashboard in support of President Trump’s goal of unlocking America’s mineral resources,” said Emily Domenech, the council’s executive director, in a statement accompanying Uranium Energy’s announcement. “The uranium that this project can produce would be game-changing for our nation as we work to reduce our reliance on Russia and China, strengthen our national and economic security, and reestablish a robust domestic supply chain of nuclear fuel.”

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council was established in 2015 under President Barack Obama and made permanent by President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021.

Pictorial representation of the In situ uranium mining process. Graphic credit: (source: Heathgate Resources)

If approved, Uranium Energy expects to begin “in-situ” uranium mining within its permit boundaries. The process involves leaching uranium from underground rock and does less surface disturbance than conventional strip-mining methods. The company already operates conventional uranium mines in Wyoming but wants to expand its claim to include nearby areas it says are suitable for in-situ retrieval methods.

“This will provide the Company unrivaled flexibility to scale production across the Great Divide Basin,” Amir Adnani, Uranium Energy’s president and CEO, said in an email.

If Uranium Energy receives its permits, which could still take years, the company said its Sweetwater facility will become the largest in the United States capable of processing both conventionally and in-situ-mined uranium. Its current licensed production capacity at the Sweetwater facility is 4.1 million pounds of uranium annually, the company said.

Toxicity: The Invisible Tsunami — Deep Science Ventures

Click the link to access the report on the Deep Science Ventures website:

How pervasive toxicity threatens human and planetary survival

What if one of the biggest threats to our health and planet is invisible, yet found in our air, food, and water?

Our latest report is the first time that a single report has attempted to analyse the broader collective problem and solution spaces of chemical toxicity answering the questions: how and why are toxic chemicals produced, how do they get into our bodies and the environment, and how do they affect the health of humans and other organisms?

Over eight months, we conducted an extensive analysis, including reviewing countless peer-reviewed studies and 50+ interviews with global experts. This research shows that the impacts of chemical toxicity are largely underestimated, contributing to increasing cancer rates, declining fertility, and a surge in chronic diseases, alongside ecosystem damage.

The overarching conclusion is that chemical toxicity is an underestimated risk to society and deserves significantly more attention and resources.

But this report isn’t just about the problem; it’s a call to action for solutions. We highlight critical industry, regulatory gaps and, most importantly, identify key areas for innovation and urgent funding that can put us on the right path to increase our understanding and make positive changes where it’s most needed.

We identified three opportunity areas that demand solutions: pesticides (herbicides and insecticide), food contact materials, personal care products.

Key takeaways include:

Over 3,600 synthetic chemicals from food contact materials are found within human bodies globally.

PFAS have contaminated the entire world, with levels in rainwater often exceeding safe drinking water limits.

Over 90% of the global population is exposed to air pollution exceeding World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.

The impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may rival that of smoking and is linked to leukaemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bladder, colon, and liver cancer. Prenatal pesticide exposure increases the odds of childhood leukemia and lymphoma by over 50%.

To learn more, you can download both the executive summary and the full report below. If you’re curious about how to create an impactful and commercially viable company in this space, we’d love to hear from you!

Download the report.

#LakePowell forecasts show hydropower generation is at risk next year as water levels drop — Shannon Mullane (Water Education Colorado) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

This 2023 diagram shows the tubes through which Lake Powell’s fish can pass through to the section of the Colorado River that flows through the Grand Canyon. Credit: USGS and Reclamation 2023

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

July 17, 2025

Federal officials reported Tuesday that the water level in Lake Powell, one of the main water storage reservoirs for the Colorado River Basin, could fall low enough to stop hydropower generation at the reservoir by December 2026.

The reservoir’s water levels have fallen as the Colorado River Basin, the water supply for 40 million people, has been overstressed by rising temperatures, prolonged drought and relentless demand. Upper Basin officials sounded the alarm in June, saying this year’s conditions echo the extreme conditions of 2021 and 2022, when Lake Powell and its sister reservoir, Lake Mead, dropped to historic lows.

The basin needs a different management approach, specifically one that is more closely tied to the actual water supply each year, the Upper Colorado River Commission’s statement said.

The seven basin states, including Colorado, are in high-stakes negotiations over how to manage the basin’s water after 2026. One of the biggest impasses has been how to cut water use in the basin’s driest years.

“You can’t reduce what doesn’t come down the stream. And that’s the reality we’re faced with,” Commissioner Gene Shawcroft of Utah said in the statement. “The only way we’re going to achieve a successful outcome is if we’re willing to work together — and not just protect our own interests.”

Lake Powell is seen in a November 2019 aerial photo from the nonprofit EcoFlight. The Upper Basin states are proposing two pools of stored water in Lake Powell: A Lake Powell protection account and a Lake Powell conservation account. Credit: EcoFlight

Lake Powell, located on the Utah-Arizona border, collects water from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, part of Arizona and tribal reservations in the Colorado River’s Upper Basin. Glen Canyon Dam releases the reservoir’s water downstream to Lake Mead, Native American tribes, Mexico, and Lower Basin states, including Arizona, California and Nevada.

Lake Powell and Lake Mead make up about 92% of the reservoir storage capacity in the entire Colorado River Basin.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s July report, called a 24-month study, shows the potential for Lake Powell to decline below two critical elevations: 3,525 feet and 3,490 feet.

It could drop below 3,525 feet in April 2026, which would prompt emergency drought response actions. That’s in the most probable scenario, but the federal agency also considers drier and wetter forecast scenarios. The dry forecast shows that the reservoir’s water levels would fall below this elevation as soon as January.

Lake Powell would have to fall below 3,490 feet in order to halt power generation.

Planning for emergency water releases

In 2021 and 2022, officials leapt into crisis management mode and released water from upstream reservoirs — including Blue Mesa, Colorado’s largest reservoir — to stabilize Lake Powell’s water levels.

The emergency releases prompted some concerns about recreation at Blue Mesa.

The July 24-month study triggered planning for potential emergency releases, called drought response operations, at Lake Powell, and Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs, said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.

“The Upper Division States and Reclamation have been monitoring the risks to Lake Powell since January 2025 due to the declining snowpack and runoff, and are prepared to take appropriate actions as conditions evolve through 2025 and spring of 2026,” he said in an email to The Colorado Sun.

The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson

At-risk hydropower

Hydroelectric power generation takes a hit with lower water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Reclamation’s dry conditions forecast says Lake Powell could fall below 3,490 feet by December 2026, and Lake Mead’s water level could fall below a key elevation, 1,035 feet, by May 2027. At that point, Hoover Dam would have to turn off several turbines and its power production would be significantly reduced, said Eric Kuhn, a Colorado water expert.

In more typical or unusually wet forecasts, neither reservoir would fall below these critical elevations in the next two years, according to the report.

Lake Powell and other federal reservoirs provide a cheap and consistent source of renewable energy. Without that, electricity providers would have to look to other, more expensive sources of energy or nonrenewable supplies. Some of those costs can get handed down to customers in their monthly utility bills.

Output capacity of the dam’s turbines decreases in direct proportion to the reservoir’s surface elevation. As Lake Powell Shrinks, the dam generates less power. Source: Argonne National Laboratory.

Glen Canyon’s hydropower is normally pooled with other power sources to serve customers in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Utah. Its power generation has already been impacted: Fourteen of the lowest generation years at the dam have occurred since 2000.

A strong monsoon season this summer could help elevate the water levels in the major reservoirs, as could a heavy winter snowpack in the mountains this coming winter.

“If next year is below average, then we’re setting ourselves up for some very difficult decisions in the basin,” said Kuhn, former general manager of the Colorado River District and author of “Science Be Dammed,” a book about the perils of ignoring science in Western water management.

Arizona power house at Hoover Dam December 2019. Each of the 17 hydroelectric generators at Hoover Dam can produced electricity sufficient for 1,000 houses. Photo credit: Allen Best/The Mountain Town News

An interstate legal mire

Kuhn has also been tracking the releases from Lake Powell with big, interstate legal questions in mind.

If the river’s flow falls below a 10-year total of about 82.5 million acre-feet, it could trigger a legal mire. In that scenario, the Lower Basin could argue that the Upper Basin would be required to send more water downstream in compliance with the foundational agreement, the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

Some Upper Basin lawyers disagree about the terms of when states, like Colorado, would be required to send more water downstream. That’s a big concern for water users, including farmers and ranchers, who say they already don’t have enough water in dry years.

From 2017 to 2026, the 10-year cumulative flow is expected to be about 83 million acre-feet, Kuhn said.

“We’re OK through 2026,” Kuhn said. “But under the most probable and minimum probable [forecasts], it’s almost a certainty that the flow will drop below 82.5.”

Lake Powell’s ecosystems feel the strain

Bridget Deemer, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, keeps her eye on how lower water levels impact ecosystems in Lake Powell.

In a recent study, she found that low dissolved oxygen zones grow larger as water levels fall and more sediment gets backed up in the reservoir over time. This sediment can spur more decomposition, which uses up oxygen in the water.

The zones can cut down on fish habitat. Fish don’t want to be in the warm surface waters of the lake, but as they search for their preferred temperature and food source, they can end up in an area with low oxygen, Deemer said.

The effect is greatest right below Glen Canyon Dam. In 2023, there were 116 days when the oxygen was below 5 milligrams per liter, which is the threshold for trout. At 2 to 3 milligrams per liter, the fish can die.

Deemer also studies how these zones are impacted by algae blooms.

Lake Powell researchers noted toxic algae blooms around the Fourth of July and last fall. They don’t know definitively what caused either bloom event, but research does show that warming water temperatures and increased nutrients are two leading causes of harmful algae blooms.

These blooms can impact fish, people, pets or anything that ingests the algae.

“In general, Lake Powell is doing well,” she said. “Its waters are really clear without a lot of nutrients and algal growth. These blooms are smaller scale and localized.”

More by Shannon Mullane

Dismantling of EPA’s Scientific Research Arm Fulfills Key Chemical Industry Goal — Marianne Lavelle (InsideClimateNews.com)

EPA-estimated cancer risk in the region (Cancer Alley). By MiseDominic – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147151609

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Marianne Lavelle):

July 21, 2025

Companies feared rules and lawsuits based on the Office of Research and Development’s assessments of the dangers of formaldehyde, ethylene oxide and other substances.

Soon after President Donald Trump took office in January, a wide array of petrochemical, mining and farm industry coalitions ramped up what has been a long campaign to limit use of the Environmental Protection Agency’s assessments of the health risks of chemicals.

That effort scored a significant victory Friday when EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced his decision to dismantle the agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD).

The industry lobbyists didn’t ask for hundreds of ORD staff members to be laid off or reassigned. But the elimination of the agency’s scientific research arm goes a long way toward achieving the goal they sought.

In a January 27 letter to Zeldin organized by the American Chemistry Council, more than 80 industry groups—including leading oil, refining and mining associations—asked him to end regulators’ reliance on ORD assessments of the risks that chemicals pose for human health. The future of that research, conducted under EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System program, or IRIS, is now uncertain.

“EPA’s IRIS program within ORD has a troubling history of being out of step with the best available science and methods, lacking transparency, and being unresponsive to peer review and stakeholder recommendations,” said an American Chemistry Council spokesperson in an email when asked about the decision to eliminate ORD. “This results in IRIS assessments that jeopardize access to critical chemistries, undercut national priorities, and harm American competitiveness.”

The spokesperson said the organization supports EPA evaluating its resources to ensure tax dollars are being used efficiently and effectively.

H. Christopher Frey, an associate dean at North Carolina State University who served as EPA assistant administrator in charge of ORD during the Biden administration, defended the quality of the science done by the office, which he said is “the poster case study of what it means to do science that’s subject to intense scrutiny.”

“There’s industry with a tremendous vested interest in the policy decisions that might occur later on,” based on the assessments made by ORD. “What the industry does is try to engage in a proxy war over the policy by attacking the science.”

Among the IRIS assessments that stirred the most industry concern were those outlining the dangers of formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, arsenic and hexavalent chromium. Regulatory actions had begun or were looming on all during the Biden administration.

The Biden administration also launched a lawsuit against a LaPlace, Louisiana, plant that had been the only U.S. manufacturer of neoprene, Denka Performance Elastomer, based in part on the IRIS assessment of one of its air pollutants, chloroprene, as a likely human carcinogen. Denka, a spinoff of DuPont, announced it was ceasing production in May because of the cost of pollution controls.

Public health advocates charge that eliminating the IRIS program, or shifting its functions to other offices in the agency, will rob the EPA of the independent expertise to inform its mission of protection.

“They’ve been trying for years to shut down IRIS,” said Darya Minovi, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists and lead author of a new study on Trump administration actions that the group says undermine science. “The reason why is because when IRIS conducts its independent scientific assessments using a great amount of rigor … you get stronger regulations, and that is not in the best interest of the big business polluters and those who have a financial stake in the EPA’s demise.”

The UCS report tallied more than 400 firings, funding cuts and other attacks on science in the first six months of the Trump administration, resulting in 54 percent fewer grants for research on topics including cancer, infectious disease and environmental health.

EPA’s press office did not respond to a query on whether the IRIS controversy helped inform Zeldin’s decision to eliminate ORD, which had been anticipated since staff were informed of the potential plan at a meeting in March. In the agency’s official announcement Friday afternoon, Zeldin said the elimination of the office was part of “organizational improvements” that would deliver $748.8 million in savings to taxpayers. The reduction in force, combined with previous departures and layoffs, have reduced the agency’s workforce by 23 percent, to 12,448, the EPA said.

With the cuts, the EPA’s workforce will be at its lowest level since fiscal year 1986.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, EPA has taken a close look at our operations to ensure the agency is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback,” Zeldin said in the prepared statement. “This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars.”

The agency will be creating a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions; a report by E&E News said an internal memo indicated the new office would be much smaller than ORD, and would focus on coastal areas, drinking water safety and methodologies for assessing environmental contamination.

Zeldin’s announcement also said that scientific expertise and research efforts will be moved to “program offices”—for example, those concerned with air pollution, water pollution or waste—to tackle “statutory obligations and mission essential functions.” That phrase has a particular meaning: The chemical industry has long complained that Congress never passed a law creating IRIS. Congress did, however, pass many laws requiring that the agency carry out its actions based on the best available science, and the IRIS program, established during President Ronald Reagan’s administration, was how the agency has carried out the task of assessing the science on chemicals since 1985.

Justin Chen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, the union representing 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said the organizational structure of ORD put barriers between the agency’s researchers and the agency’s political decision-making, enforcement and regulatory teams—even though they all used ORD’s work.

“For them to function properly, they have to have a fair amount of distance away from political interference, in order to let the science guide and develop the kind of things that they do,” Chen said.

“They’re a particular bugbear for a lot of the industries which are heavy donors to the Trump administration and to the right wing,” Chen said. “They’re the ones, I believe, who do all the testing that actually factors into the calculation of risk.”

ORD also was responsible for regularly doing assessments that the Clean Air Act requires on pollutants like ozone and particulate matter, which result from the combustion of fossil fuels.

Frey said a tremendous amount of ORD work has gone into ozone, which is the result of complex interactions of precursor pollutants in the atmosphere. The open source computer modeling on ozone transport, developed by ORD researchers, helps inform decision-makers grappling with how to address smog around the country. The Biden administration finalized stricter standards for particulate matter in its final year based on ORD’s risk assessment, and the Trump administration is now undoing those rules.

Aidan Hughes contributed to this report.

Federal Water Tap, July 21, 2025: Draft House Budget Would Cut Key Water Infrastructure Funds — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org)

December 22, 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash retention pond failure via the Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Valley Authority

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

The Rundown

The House budget, though not as severe as the White House’s, proposes a 25 percent cut to the main source of federal funding for local water systems.

Senate approves Trump’s $9.4 billion in cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid.

Other water bills in Congress include tribal water infrastructure funding, sinkhole monitoring, microplastics, and Great Lakes fisheries.

Bureau of Reclamation announces $200 million for water recycling projects in two western states.

EPA delays requirements to monitor groundwater at coal ash dumps.

Before taking summer break, Congress will hold hearings this week on fossil fuel pipeline safety, rising electricity demand, FEMA improvement, and NEPA reviews.

And lastly, Congress’s watchdog finds NRCS could improve its dam safety approach.

“While requests greatly exceeded the funding available for projects, we did our best to provide some funding for all eligible projects given the impact these dollars will have in communities across the country.” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), speaking about water infrastructure earmarks in his committee’s 2026 budget proposal.

By the Numbers

$200 Million: Bureau of Reclamation funding announced for two water reuse projects in the western states. Phoenix will receive $179 million for its North Gateway project, which will produce 8 million gallons of recycled water a day. Washington County Water Conservancy District, which encompasses high-growth St. George in southwest Utah, will see more than $20 million for its regional recycled water system. The final cost for that system is expected at more than $1 billion.

News Briefs

House Proposes Water Cuts
In its draft fiscal year 2026 budget, a House Appropriations subcommittee proposes a 25 percent combined cut to the state revolving funds, the main source of federal funding for local water systems.

The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund would be funded at $895 million, down from $1.1 billion. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which is for sewer and stormwater projects, would be funded at $1.2 billion, compared to $1.6 billion in 2025.

Though not as deep as President Trump’s proposal of a 90 percent cut, the budget proposal still drew criticism from water utility groups, who would prefer federal assistance be maintained or increased.

Combined, half of the appropriated funds would be redirected as earmarks to specific projects. This action pulls money out of circulation in the revolving funds, which grow as utilities repay interest. Water groups worry that if Congress continues down this path of carving out earmarks from the revolving funds the viability of the funds will be at risk.

In context: Will Congress Defy Trump on Water Infrastructure Spending?

Delaying Coal Ash Compliance
The EPA granted states and utilities more time to meet federal rules for cleaning up waste pits at coal-fired power plants that pollute groundwater and rivers.

Groundwater monitoring requirements will not be mandatory until August 2029, according to the new timeline. It is a 15-month extension.

In context: President Trump Wants Coal Ash in State Hands

Senate Approves Foreign Aid, Public Broadcasting Cuts
Joining the House, the Senate endorsed the president’s desire to cut $9.4 billion in already approved spending on public broadcasting and foreign aid.

Reuters details the on-the-ground fallout from U.S. foreign aid cuts, documenting 21 water projects that were abandoned before completion.

Other Water Bills in Congress
Besides the budget, members introduced bills on microplastics, tribal water access, and sinkholes.

Representatives from Florida and Oregon introduced a bipartisan bill in both chambers that would require a federal study on the damage to human health from microplastics in food and water.

The House Natural Resources Committee approved a bill to reauthorize a federal research program for Great Lakes fisheries.

The House passed a bill to establish within the U.S. Geological Survey a sinkhole mapping and risk assessment program.

Democrats in the House and Senate introduced the Tribal Access to Clean Water Act, a bill that would increase funding authorizations for a number of federal programs that invest in water infrastructure and technical assistance on tribal lands. The largest chunk would be directed to the Indian Health Service, authorized at $500 million annually through 2030 for sanitation facilities. Even if the bill were to pass, Congress would still need to appropriate the money.

Studies and Reports

Dam Safety
The Government Accountability Office reviewed the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s approach to dam safety.

The report found that NRCS could improve in several areas. For one, the agency does not monitor completion of dam inspections with its local project sponsors.

Also, the agency is missing data on the condition of the dams, even those that are rated high-hazard and threaten lives and property downstream if they fail.

NRCS helped to plan, design, and construct nearly 12,000 dams.

On the Radar

Congressional Hearings
A few hearings on tap this week before the representatives take summer break.

On July 22, the House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on NEPA reviews, which agencies are beginning to shorten.

That same day, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on fossil fuel pipeline safety. This week marks the 15th anniversary of one of the nation’s largest inland oil spills. In July 2010, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan, spilling more than 843,000 gallons of oil into local waterways.

Also on July 22, the House Appropriations Committee will vote on the fiscal year 2026 budget bill for EPA and Interior.

On July 23, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will discuss challenges to meeting rising electricity demand. Data center growth is causing energy demand to soar.

Also on July 23, a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee will discuss ways to improve FEMA’s disaster response.

Cybersecurity Webinar for Water Utilities
The EPA and the federal government’s cybersecurity agency will hold a free webinar for water utilities on cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

The webinar is July 24 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

As the #ColoradoRiver shrinks, desert towns grow: Kanab gets a bunch of new development, Imperial Irrigation District scoffs at farmland #solar — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org) #COriver #aridification

A houseboat docks on the mudflats near Wahweap Marina during the summer of 2021, when reservoir levels dropped perilously low. Jonathan P. Thompson photo

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

July 8, 2025

🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫

If Lake Powell is like a big thermometer gauging the hydrologic health of the Upper Colorado River Basin, then it’s running a high fever.

In one case, the fever analogy is a bit too literal: The National Park Service has detected high concentrations of cyanotoxins in the reservoir around the mouth of Antelope Canyon, and is warning folks to limit their exposure to the water. Warm water is one of the drivers of cyanotoxin growth.

The surface level peaked out on June 19 at 3,562 feet above sea level, with about 7.8 million acre-feet of storage (or about one-third of its capacity). That means the big, white “bathtub” ring on the sandstone cliffs has grown by about 27 feet in the past year, re-revealing some landforms and rendering some boat ramps unusable. Levels will continue to drop throughout the summer.

This is because more water is leaving the reservoir via downstream releases and evaporation than is flowing into it. Reservoir inflows during June were a mere 883,000 acre feet, or about 41% of the median inflows. That’s far lower than the last two years and is only marginally higher than in 2002, 2018, and 2021, some of the worst years on record. And with the water year three-fourths of the way done, only 4.2 million acre-feet has flowed from the Colorado River and its upstream tributaries into the reservoir, setting the stage for a water year total of just about 5.5 million acre-feet — or 2 million acre-feet less than the minimum release from Glen Canyon Dam.

The only good news is that temperatures at the reservoir mostly have been in the 80s or 90s for the past several weeks, which is about normal for this time of year. Oh, and another sorta-kinda silver lining: As the reservoir levels drop, the surface area decreases, reducing the rate of evaporation. Yay?

Inflow volumes at Lake Powell have been pretty skimpy this water year, with June of 2025 delivering just 41% of the median flows for that month. 1983 was the biggest water year on record since Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1963, and 2002 was the lowest inflows.

Meanwhile, many of the Colorado River’s users continue under the illusion that the Colorado River Compact and the Law of the River will trump nature and the reality of diminishing flows.

Take the Imperial Valley in southern California. The Imperial Irrigation District is the single largest water user on the river, consuming some 2.3 million acre-feet during the 2024 calendar year to grow various food crops and a lot of alfalfa. That’s about seven times more Colorado River water than all of southern Nevada’s casinos, hotels, golf courses, and homes consume.

Bales of alfalfa in the Imperial Irrigation District of southern Calfornia, grown with Colorado River water. Photo by Brian Richter

But it’s also about 200,000 acre-feet less than the irrigation district consumed in 2013. That’s in part because some farmers are being paid to not irrigate or to irrigate less, often meaning they must fallow their fields, at least temporarily. And some of those farmers have chosen to lease their land — about 13,000 acres — to solar companies for utility-scale energy installations, allowing them to continue to make money off the land without further depleting the Colorado River.

Thanks to Dustin Mulvaney for tipping us off to this resolution on Bluesky.

That irks the Imperial Irrigation District’s board, which recently passed a resolution“opposing the continued expansion of utility-scale solar projects on active or historically farmed agricultural land” in the district. “Our identity and economy in the Imperial Valley are rooted in agriculture,” said IID Board Chairwoman Gina Dockstader, in a written statement. “Solar energy has a role in our region’s future, but it cannot come at the cost of our farmland, food supply, or the families who depend on agriculture. This resolution is about protecting our way of life.”

The resolution doesn’t carry any legal weight, but the IID has a lot of influence, and could easily push the county to ban or heavily restrict solar installations on farmland as dozens of other counties across the nation have done.

Meditations on solar, Joshua trees, and the movement to kill clean energy — Jonathan P. Thompson

Granted, taking land out of agriculture and irrigation has consequences. It can become a weed-choked, dust-spawning expanse. In the Imperial Valley, irrigation runoff feeds the Salton Sea. And, of course, you lose food production and farmworker jobs.

Nevertheless, the resolution seems somewhat short-sighted. It is based on the assumption that the IID will be able to flex its senior water rights in perpetuity, and never have to give up significant amounts of irrigation. It robs farmers of their private property rights, their ability to diversify their income sources, and an opportunity to conserve increasingly scarce water.

And, if the solar installations aren’t built there, they are likely to end up on public land in desert tortoise and other wildlife habitat that could require the removal of hundreds or even thousands of Joshua trees. Worse, it might result in new natural gas or even coal plants to meet the burgeoning demand for power driven by the proliferation of energy- and water-intensive data centers.

A Dog Day Diatribe on AI, cryptocurrency, energy consumption, and capitalism — Jonathan P. Thompson

🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑

And on that note, there’s Kanab, in south central Utah. I’ve driven through Kanab many a time, but usually I just roll on through, finding more of interest in Ordervilleor Fredonia or even Colorado City and Hildale. I mean, Orderville does have “Ho-Made Pies,” or so the sign declares, and was founded as a bastion of the United Order, the tenets of which were communalism, cooperation, and equal distribution of wealth.

Kanab, meanwhile, was notable to me only as the home of former Utah state representative Mike Noel, who was a Wise Use/Sagebrush Rebel leader of the early 2000s, and I wasn’t going to stop in for a cup of coffee — er, a soda — with the guy. So I failed to notice that the little community was not only growing, but sprawling into the surrounding red-rock desert in the form of upscale resorts and housing communities and even a brand new town. A friend sent me this video, which enthusiastically offers details:

There is, for example, Catori Canyon “a premium housing development & luxury gated community” that “redefines modern indoor-outdoor living.” Prices start at $450,000 — for a bare lot. It also predictably has a pickleball court, which is what I think they mean when they say it “isn’t just home — it’s a lifestyle.” I call that real estate propaganda.

And Ventana Resort, which is on state trust lands and is described by the Utah Trust Lands Administration as an “ambitious project that includes townhomes, affordable housing, nightly rentals, single-family homes, and even a hotel.” The Kane County Water Conservancy District, headed by the aforementioned Mike Noel, had hoped to build a golf course on the land, but pickleball — yes, the development has courts — and four swimming pools won out, apparently. The townhomes are expected to begin at $650,000, according to the Southern Utah News.

The new town? It was originally just a huge subdivision called Willow Preserve Estates, which received county approval (after the county had denied its proposed public infrastructure district). But apparently the developers weren’t content with the limits of the subdivision approval, so they petitioned the state to incorporate their own municipality called Willow, which would allow them to approve their own PID with higher housing density. Kane County commissioners are miffed. If the state approves the municipality, it will include 1,200 to 1,400 home sites along with commercial areas on a big parcel of land east of Kanab and just south of Hwy 89.

That’s a lot of homes; Kanab has about 2,000 households, and that doesn’t count Catori Canyon or Ventana Resorts, let alone Willow. And, if you’re like me, you’re wondering where these folks — along with the other developments with their swimming pools and lawns — are going to get their water.

It appears the answer is: wells. Kanab currently supplies its 5,000 residents with several groundwater wells and springs. Willow will likely get its water from Kane County Water Conservancy District’s Johnson Canyon system, which is also fed primarily by groundwater. Which is to say, they aren’t taking it directly out of the Colorado River system, but they are taking it indirectly from the system, since groundwater and surface water is all connected. Plus, aquifers all over the Colorado River Basin are being depleted by over-pumping. Pulling more out of them is not sustainable.

But that’s not all. Kanab is also about to be home to two new ultra-exclusive resorts in a similar vein as Amangiri, the posh place frequented by the Kardashians and located just outside the (past and possibly present) polygamist community of Big Water, Arizona.

Canyon Country, my friends, is rapidly being gentrified.

Kaia, by Outdoor Citizen, bills itself as a “new ultra-luxury RURAL EB-5 investment opportunity.” That is, if you’d like to migrate to America, just fork out a million or so bucks for one of the 40 planned residences in Johnson Canyon outside Kanab and, voila!, you have permanent U.S. residency. In Europe they call that a “golden passport.” The project’s developer is FirstPathway Partners, whose sole purpose is to facilitate these EB-5 visas.

Kaia, by Outdoor Citizen, bills itself as a “new ultra-luxury RURAL EB-5 investment opportunity.” That is, if you’d like to migrate to America, just fork out a million or so bucks for one of the 40 planned residences in Johnson Canyon outside Kanab and, voila!, you have permanent U.S. residency. In Europe they call that a “golden passport.” The project’s developer is FirstPathway Partners, whose sole purpose is to facilitate these EB-5 visas.

Kaia’s website says the development …

Yeah, the BLM land might be protected for now. But a warning to the rich folks that might want to invest: Utah politicians are leading the charge to turn that lovely “Greenbelt” of public land over to housing developers. So instead of those fetching red rocks, you might one day have a view of a subdivision out your giant front window. And if Sen. Mike Lee and his ilk can’t sell the public land straight out, the Trump administration might just fast-track a uranium or coal mine, AI-crunching data center, or oil and gas development in that greenbelt just a few hundred meters from your luxury home.

Late light on Glen Canyon rock formations. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

President Trump’s First EPA Promised to Crack Down on Forever Chemicals. His Second EPA Is Pulling Back — Anna Clark (Propublica.org)

Lock and Dam No. 1 on the Cape Fear River in Bladen County, North Carolina. By Bud Davis, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual LibraryImage pageImage description pageDigital Visual Library home page, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2000782

Click the link to read the article on the Propublica website (Anna Clark):

July 2, 2025

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claims to prioritize combatting long-lasting chemicals called PFAS. Despite this, the agency has delayed enforcement of standards and terminated over $15 million in funding for “forever chemicals” research.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

One summer day in 2017, a front-page story in the StarNews of Wilmington, North Carolina, shook up the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The drinking water system, it said, was polluted with a contaminant commonly known as GenX, part of the family of “forever” PFAS chemicals.

It came from a Chemours plant in Fayetteville, near the winding Cape Fear River. Few knew about the contaminated water until the article described the discoveries of scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency and a state university. Given that certain types of PFAS have been linked to cancer, there was widespread anxiety over its potential danger.

In the onslaught of legal action and activism that followed, the EPA during President Donald Trump’s first term took an assertive stance, vowing to combat the spread of PFAS nationwide.

In its big-picture PFAS action plan from 2019, the agency said it would attack this complex problem on multiple fronts. It would, for example, consider limiting the presence of two of the best-known compounds — PFOA and PFOS — in drinking water. And, it said, it would find out more about the potential harm of GenX, which was virtually unregulated.

By the time Trump was sworn in for his second term, many of the plan’s suggestions had been put in place. After his first administration said PFOA and PFOS in drinking water should be regulated, standards were finalized under President Joe Biden. Four other types of PFAS, including GenX, were also tagged with limits.

But now, the second Trump administration is pulling back. The EPA said in May that it will delay enforcement on the drinking water limits for PFOA and PFOS until 2031, and it will rescind and reconsider the limits on the other four. Among those who challenged the standards in court is Chemours, which has argued that the EPA, under Biden, “used flawed science and didn’t follow proper rulemaking procedures” for GenX.

These EPA decisions under Trump are part of a slew of delays and course changes to PFAS policies that had been supported in his first term. Even though his earlier EPA pursued a measure that would help hold polluters accountable for cleaning up PFAS, the EPA of his second term has not yet committed to it. The agency also slowed down a process for finding out how industries have used the chemicals, a step prompted by a law signed by Trump in 2019.

At the same time, the EPA is hampering its ability to research pollutants — the kind of research that made it possible for its own scientists to investigate GenX. As the Trump administration seeks severe reductions in the EPA’s budget, the agency has terminated grants for PFAS studies and paralyzed its scientists with spending restrictions.

Pointing to earlier announcements on its approach to the chemicals, the EPA told ProPublica that it’s “committed to addressing PFAS in drinking water and ensuring that regulations issued under the Safe Drinking Water Act follow the law, follow the science, and can be implemented by water systems to strengthen public health protections.”

“If anything,” the agency added, “the Trump administration’s historic PFAS plan in 2019 laid the groundwork for the first steps to comprehensively address this contamination across media and we will continue to do so this term.”

In public appearances, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has pushed back on the suggestion that his agency weakened the drinking water limits on GenX and similar compounds. Future regulations imposed by his agency, he said, could be more or less stringent.

“What we want to do is follow the science, period,” he has said.

That sentiment perplexes scientists and environmental advocates, who say there is already persuasive evidence on the dangers of these chemicals that linger in the environment. The EPA reviewed GenX, for example, during both the first Trump and Biden administrations. In both 2018 and 2021, the agency pointed to animal studies linking it to cancer, as well as problems with kidneys, immune systems and, especially, livers. (Chemours has argued that certain animal studies have limited relevance to humans.)

Scientists and advocates also said it’s unclear what it means for the EPA to follow the science while diminishing its own ability to conduct research.

“I don’t understand why we would want to hamstring the agency that is designed to make sure we have clean air and clean water,” said Jamie DeWitt, a toxicologist in Oregon who worked with other scientists on Cape Fear River research. “I don’t understand it.”

Delays, Confusion Over PFAS

Favored for their nonstick and liquid-resistant qualities, synthetic PFAS chemicals are widely used in products like raincoats, cookware and fast food wrappers. Manufacturers made the chemicals for decades without disclosing how certain types are toxic at extremely low levels, can accumulate in the body and will scarcely break down over time — hence the nickname “forever chemicals.”

The chemicals persist in soil and water too, making them complicated and costly to clean up, leading to a yearslong push to get such sites covered by the EPA’s Superfund program, which is designed to handle toxic swaths of land. During the first Trump administration, the EPA said it was taking steps toward designating the two legacy compounds, PFOA and PFOS, as “hazardous substances” under the Superfund program. Its liability provisions would help hold polluters responsible for the cost of cleaning up.

Moving forward with this designation process was a priority, according to the PFAS plan from Trump’s first term. Zeldin’s EPA describes that plan as “historic.” And, when he represented a Long Island district with PFAS problems in Congress, Zeldin voted for a bill that would have directed the EPA to take this step.

The designation became official under Biden. But business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and organizations representing the construction, recycling and chemical industries, sued. Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s playbook for the new administration, also questioned it.

Zeldin has said repeatedly that he wants to hold polluters accountable for PFAS, but his EPA requested three delays in the court case challenging the Superfund designation that helps make it possible.

The agency said in a recent motion it needed the latest pause because new leadership is still reviewing the issues and evaluating the designation in context of its “comprehensive strategy to address PFOA and PFOS.”

The EPA also delayed a rule requiring manufacturers and importers to report details about their PFAS use between 2011 and 2022. An annual bill that sets defense policy and spending, signed by Trump in his first term, had charged the EPA with developing such a process.

When Biden’s EPA finalized it, the agency said the rule would provide the largest-ever dataset of PFAS manufactured and used in the United States. It would help authorities understand their spread and determine what protections might be warranted.

Businesses were supposed to start reporting this month. But in a May 2 letter, a coalition of chemical companies petitioned the EPA to withdraw the deadline, reconsider the rule and issue a revised one with narrowed scope.

When the EPA delayed the rule less than two weeks later, it said it needed time to prepare for data collection and to consider changes to aspects of the rule.

In an email to ProPublica, the agency said it will address PFAS in many ways. Its approach, the agency said, is to give more time for compliance and to work with water systems to reduce PFAS exposure as quickly as feasible, “rather than issue violations and collect fees that don’t benefit public health.”

The court expects an update from the EPA in the Superfund designation case by Wednesday, and in the legal challenges to the drinking water standards by July 21. The EPA could continue defending the rules. It could ask the court for permission to reverse its position or to send the rules back to the agency for reconsideration. Or it could also ask for further pauses.

“It’s just a big unanswered question whether this administration and this EPA is going to be serious about enforcing anything,” said Robert Sussman, a former EPA official from the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As a lawyer, he now represents environmental groups that filed an amicus brief in PFAS cases.

Back in North Carolina, problems caused by the chemicals continue to play out.

A consent order between the state and Chemours required the manufacturer to drastically reduce the release of GenX and other PFAS into the environment. (The chemicals commonly called GenX refer to HFPO-DA and its ammonium salt, which are involved in the GenX processing aid technology owned by Chemours.)

Chemours told ProPublica that it invested more than $400 million to remediate and reduce PFAS emissions. It also noted that there are hundreds of PFAS users in North Carolina, “as evidenced by PFAS seen upstream and hundreds of miles away” from its Fayetteville plant “that cannot be traced back to the site.”

PFAS-riddled sea foam continues to wash up on the coastal beaches. Chemours and water utilities, meanwhile, are battling in court about who should cover the cost of upgrades to remove the chemicals from drinking water.

Community forums about PFAS draw triple-digit crowds, even when they’re held on a weeknight, said Emily Donovan, co-founder of the volunteer group Clean Cape Fear, which has intervened in federal litigation. In the fast-growing region, new residents are just learning about the chemicals, she said, and they’re angry.

“I feel like we’re walking backwards,” Donovan said. Pulling back from the drinking water standards, in particular, is “disrespectful to this community.”

“It’s one thing to say you’re going to focus on PFAS,” she added. “It’s another thing to never let it cross the finish line and become any meaningful regulation.”

A letter dated April 29, 2025, notifying Michigan State University about the termination of a grant for research into PFAS, one day after the EPA said in a press release that it was committed to combating PFAS contamination by, in part, “strengthening the science.” Credit: Obtained by ProPublica

Research Under Fire

The EPA of Trump’s first term didn’t just call for more regulation of PFAS, it also stressed the importance of better understanding the forever chemicals through research and testing.

In a 2020 update to its PFAS action plan, the EPA highlighted its support for North Carolina’s investigation of GenX in the Cape Fear River. And it described its efforts to develop the science on PFAS issues affecting rural economies with “first-of-its-kind funding for the agriculture sector.”

Zeldin, too, has boasted about advancing PFAS research in an April news release. “This is just a start of the work we will do on PFAS to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water,” he said.

At about the same time, though, the agency terminated a host of congressionally appropriated grants for PFAS research, including over $15 million for projects focused on food and farmlands in places like Utah, Texas and Illinois.

Scientists at Michigan State University, for example, were investigating how PFAS interacts with water, soil, crops, livestock and biosolids, which are used for fertilizer. They timed their latest study to this year’s growing season, hired staff and partnered with a farm. Then the EPA canceled two grants.

In virtually identical letters, the agency said that each grant “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”

The contrast between the agency’s words and actions raises questions about the process behind its decisions, said Cheryl Murphy, head of Michigan State’s Center for PFAS Research and co-lead of one of the projects.

“If you halt it right now,” she said, “what we’re doing is we’re undermining our ability to translate the science that we’re developing into some policy and guidance to help people minimize their exposure to PFAS.”

At least some of the researchers are appealing the terminations.

About a month after PFAS grants to research teams in Maine and Virginia were terminated for not being aligned with agency priorities, the agency reinstated them. The EPA told ProPublica that “there will be more updates on research-related grants in the future.”

Even if the Michigan State grants are reinstated, there could be lasting consequences, said Hui Li, the soil scientist who led both projects. “We will miss the season for this year,” he said in an email, “and could lose the livestock on the farm for the research.”

Federal researchers are also in limbo. Uncertainty, lost capacity and spending restrictions have stunted the work at an EPA lab in Duluth, Minnesota, that investigates PFAS and other potential hazards, according to several sources connected to it. As one source who works at the lab put it, “We don’t know how much longer we will be operating as is.”

The EPA told ProPublica that it’s “continuing to invest in research and labs, including Duluth, to advance the mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

Meanwhile, the agency is asking Congress to eliminate more than half of its own budget. That includes massive staffing cuts, and it would slash nearly all the money for two major programs that help states fund water and wastewater infrastructure. One dates back to President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The other was spotlighted in a paper by Trump’s first-term EPA, which said communities could use these funds to protect public health from PFAS. It trumpeted examples from places like Michigan and New Jersey.

The EPA lost 727 employees in voluntary separations between Jan. 1 and late June, according to numbers the agency provided to ProPublica. It said it received more than 2,600 applications for the second round of deferred resignations and voluntary early retirements.

“These are really technical, difficult jobs,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “And the EPA, by encouraging so many employees to leave, is also losing a lot of institutional knowledge and a lot of technical expertise.”

The shake-up also worries DeWitt, who was one of the scientists who helped investigate the Cape Fear River contamination and who has served on an EPA science advisory board. Her voice shook as she reflected on the EPA’s workforce, “some of the finest scientists I know,” and what their loss means for public well-being.

“Taking away this talent from our federal sector,” she said, will have “profound effects on the agency’s ability to protect people in the United States from hazardous chemicals in air, in water, in soil and potentially in food.”

Map showing the Cape Fear River drainage basin. By Kmusser – Self-made, based on USGS data., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5506415

Can fracking #wastewater be reused?: #NewMexico’s legislators are eager to repurpose “produced water,” but environmental organizations say that there is no safe way to do that — Shi En Kim (High Country News)

A DEQ worker collects samples from Alkali Creek below where produced water from the Moneta Divide Field is discharged. (Wyoming DEQ)

Click the link to read the article on the High County News website (Shi En Kim):

June 9, 2025

On Oct. 2, 2024, a geyser erupted in Toyah, a town in west Texas 50 miles from the New Mexico border. This was not a case of water miraculously appearing in the desert, a deliverance from the area’s long-standing drought. Rather, it was an environmental disaster: a blowout from an orphaned oil and gas well.

What gushed from the ground wasn’t actually water, but rather a vile brine of heavy metals, radioactive substances, chemical additives and noxious organics — the by-product of fracking.

The Toyah incident is the latest of at least eight leaks over the preceding 12 months in the Permian Basin, a fracking hub across west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. It highlights the increasingly urgent challenge of what to do with fracking’s wastewater — what fossil fuel companies euphemistically call “produced water.” But some New Mexico legislators have a solution in mind: For the last few years, they’ve proposed reusing the wastewater off the oil field for industrial purposes, such as data center cooling and hydrogen production.

Part of their argument is that New Mexico desperately needs water. More than 90% of its residents live in areas facing drought. In the next 50 years, the already-arid state will see its ground- and fresh water sources shrink by 25%.

Political pressure is mounting on New Mexico’s lawmakers to tap into fracking wastewater as a new resource. Environmental groups, however, strongly oppose the idea, arguing that there is still no way to make the wastewater safe for off-field use. Year after year, the New Mexico Legislature finds itself at a crossroads.

“We are, as a state, very beholden to oil and gas,” said Carlos Matutes, the New Mexico director at the advocacy group GreenLatinos that’s part of the coalition opposing produced water reuse. Any bill that sanctions produced water, he said, “is almost guaranteed to come back.”

PRODUCED WATER is an existential dilemma for the oil and gas industry. Fracking involves blasting underground rock with water to free up trapped oil and gas, but when that water returns to the surface, it is laden with contaminants it picks up from the earth. Every barrel of hydrocarbons reaped also generates up to 10 barrels of contaminated water. In 2021 alone, New Mexico was spewing 147 million gallons of toxic wastewater daily.

Drilling companies usually dispose of wastewater in dedicated injection wells. Water, however, does what water always does: It flows where it wishes, heedless of human-drawn boundaries. And it can travel for miles underground, then burst forth from improperly sealed oil wells, as it did with Toyah. (So far, no company has claimed ownership of the well, though its use dates back to 1961.) Even wastewater that stays underground finds ways to revolt — by triggering earthquakes. As fracking operations have ramped up over the last decade, so too has the tally of tremors. In the past year alone, New Mexico experienced over 2,500 quakes, most of them concentrated in the southeastern corner of the state, where fracking is most flagrant. In comparison, only 45 tremors rumbled the state in 2017.

Currently, most of New Mexico’s produced water is either injected underground or transported across state lines for disposal elsewhere. By contrast, neighboring Texas permits repurposing treated wastewater for other uses or discharging it into the environment.

Produced water. Graphic credit: U.S. Department of Energy

In late 2023, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham floated a strategic water supply proposal to follow in the footsteps of its neighbor. Initially, she proposed investing $500 million of state funds in treating produced water. But that measure dried up in legislative budget negotiations. In subsequent revisions, Lujan Grisham has watered down the funding allocation, from $250 million in 2024 to $75 millionin 2025. Each time, pushback from environmental groups helped flush produced water treatment from the proposals altogether.

Even if the plan had sailed through, though, it would not have recouped a significant amount of water, said Rachel Conn, the deputy director of the water conservation organization Amigos Bravos. Removing contaminants from fracking wastewater requires copious energy to boil off and squeeze fresh water from dissolved toxins. Her team estimates that it costs at least $2 to treat a barrel, twice as much as it costs to send it down an injection well. The total amount could easily top $1 billion a year. (In Texas, oil companies pay more, as much as $10 per barrel for treatment.) Given the high costs, Conn said that the amount of water the strategic water supply could afford to treat would meet no more than 1% of New Mexico’s water needs — a literal drop in the bucket.

Additionally, environmental organizations like Amigos Bravos have raised concerns about the safety of fracking wastewater, whether it’s treated or untreated. Radioactivity levels around several injection wells in Ohio and West Virginiaexceed the federal safety limit by several hundred-fold; and in one Pennsylvanian river, radium still persists among mussels even five years after the last discharge of produced water.

The complex cocktail of chemicals found in produced water makes it hard to characterize, said Bonnie McDevitt, a research physical scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Companies usually guard the chemical additives in their fracking fluid as a trade secret. Toxicity requirements cannot cover every contaminant present, essentially leaving some questionable compounds completely unregulated. That means that even if the treated wastewater technically meets drinking water standards, it may not necessarily be safe to drink. Environmental advocates are calling for testing limits on 600 compounds potentially found in fracking wastewater before it can be used off fracking fields.

But the fossil fuel industry insists that the treatment technology is ready; Ryan Hall, the director of technical operations at NGL Energy Partners, said, “We can treat to any spec.” As one of the nation’s largest handlers of the industry’s wastewater, his company manages 2.5 million barrels from the Permian Basin, mainly by disposing of it in injection wells. NGL Energy has also explored wastewater treatment in some states, and Hall said it is eager to start in New Mexico once authorities give the legislative greenlight.

The New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium, which is partially funded by oil and gas companies, is currently leading the effort to develop purportedly safe and affordable treatment methods. T he institute’s recent projects include advancing various separation technologies and studying the health impacts of produced water on indicator species, like aquatic microbes and plants. “I’m with the environmental groups,” said Pei Xu, the institute’s research director and an environmental engineer at New Mexico State University. “We also want this water to be very safe. I think we have made a lot of very good progress.”

THE BATTLE BETWEEN industry and environmental groups is heating up. In April, New Mexico’s Water Quality Control Commission announced that it would allow pilot treatment projects to discharge up to 84,000 gallons of wastewater into groundwater daily. Environmental groups filed court briefs and staged a protest outside the Capitol, and 27 state legislators wrote a letter to the commission urging it to reconsider. In a follow-up hearing on May 13, the commission rescinded its April decision and reinstituted the ban.

What environmental groups want, ideally, is to end fracking altogether. But that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon: New Mexico is economically dependent on oil and gas, ranking second in the nation’s top fossil fuel-producing states. Industry has a solid grip on politics here — roughly 60% of Lujan Grisham’s 2017-2022 campaign contributions came from the state’s largest oil corporations.

At the very least, environmental groups say, taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to solve a problem of the industry’s own making. “It should be the industry’s responsibility to clean up that produced water,” Conn said. Her suggestion: Reuse the wastewater for future fracking. About 60% of wastewater is recycled on oil fields; Conn says bumping the rate to 90% could save 4 billion gallons of fresh water — more than all the produced water that the strategic water supply proposal would treat.

Active Permian Basin pumpjack east of Andrews, Texas. By Zorin09 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14607474

Meanwhile, drilling shows no signs of slowing down. Across the Permian playa, pumpjacks rise like giant birds pecking at the ground. Strewn alongside these steel flocks are miles-deep injection wells, each designated by a comparatively squat wellhead that often comes in the shape of a cross — a headstone for an otherwise unmarked grave for the vast refuse that refuses to go quietly.

Environmental groups protest outside New Mexico’s Capitol after the state announced it would allow pilot treatment projects to discharge up to 84,000 gallons of wastewater into groundwater daily. Courtesy of New Energy Economy

Romancing the River: The Empire Strikes the Public Lands, Part 3 — George Sibley (SibleysRivers.com)

Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):

June 24, 2025

There it is again – the invocation for most of the 20^th century. But – wait: aren’t we in the 21^st century? Well, really – not yet in any way that matters. President Biden tried, through his big beautiful legislative acts (two of them), to nudge and cajole us into the early 21^st century: beginning to commence to proceed to address the scientific reality of a climate that our created realities have been inadvertently changing for the worse, and the socioeconomic realities of an increasingly inequitable society that unbridled private capitalism has been advertently imposing on us all. But Biden’s acts no longer address our official realities.

The new official reality, which wants to take us back to the good old days of the mid-20^th century, includes a full restitution of the fossil energies (including beautiful clean coal) that, a mere seven months ago, we were told we needed to stop using as soon as we possibly could for the sake of our continued existence on the planet. Trump may have missed a couple ‘first day’ promises – low grocery prices and peace in the Ukraine – but one first-day promise he did fulfill was issuing an executive order on January 20, 2025 for ‘Unleashing American Energy,’ colloquially known as ‘Drill, baby, drill.’

Therein, Trump explained that ‘in recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these (fossil) resources,’ inflicting ‘high energy costs upon our citizens … driving up the cost of transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing, while weakening our national security.’ Trump proclaimed that this constituted a ‘National Energy Emergency’ caused by President Biden and other liberals obsessed by a ‘climate crisis’ that is now, almost magically, no longer an official part of American reality.

Biden-era policies, according to this MAGA narrative, kept energy development off of the public lands by ‘locking the lands up’ for conservation, preservation and recreation, making Biden’s administration responsible for our high gasoline and home-heating prices. And the Trump administration was going to reverse that by reopening the public lands for the O&G industry to drill new wells, increasing the supply of gas and oil to both bring down O&G costs and re-establish America’s global energy dominance – a dominance in O&G production that we already in fact have.

Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed this up February 3, 2025 with a seven-page order revoking all of President Biden’s energy-related executive orders dating back to 2021, and replacing them with orders specific to ‘drill, baby, drill.’

But there is a problem they are not acknowledging, however: is the O&G industry really going to get out there and ‘drill, baby, drill’? The truth, as usual with Trump, lies elsewhere….

Let’s take a look at how the leasing process goes, on our Bureau of Land Management lands (with similar rules on the National Forests):

First, someone from the public – usually someone from the O&G industry – expresses interest in a piece of land for oil or gas production. The BLM then has to prepare a lease sale for that land. Biden rules put in force last year (now rescinded) restricted this to lands with some probability of actual O&G resources in the land.

Once requested lands are mapped into lease units (maximum lease 2,560 acres in the lower 48 states, 5,760 acres in Alaska), the BLM holds quarterly auctions to lease the mapped units. The 2024 rules (now rescinded) raised the minimum bid from $2/acre to $10/acre, and also declined to sell the leases when there was no competitive bidding.
The leases are for 10 years (renewable in some cases), with rental at $3/acre for the first two years, $5/acre for the next six years, and $15/acre for any year thereafter – obvious incentive to get a lease into production.

Before leaseholders can do anything on the land, they need to put up a bond to cover the cost of closing-off and site reclamation when they abandon the well (after 4 years with no action). The minimum bond was increased in 2024 from $10,000 to $150,000, making forfeiture painful (now rescinded).

When leaseholders are ready to ‘develop’ a lease, they apply for a drilling permit. If their drilling plan is approved by the BLM (more than 95 percent are), they pay a permitting fee (minimum $10,000) and can then ‘drill, baby, drill.’ Biden rules (now reduced again) charged a 16.67 percent royalty to the government on what they produce.

Oil wells can be operated as long as they are profitable, with lease extensions. When they are no longer producing enough to profitably cover lease rent plus operating expenses, the company owning the lease is responsible for closing down the well and restoring the land.

Did the ‘Biden-era’ government ‘shut down’ this leasing and permitting process, ‘locking out’ energy development, as the Trump administration and the O&G industry claim? Hardly; that’s just more Trumpty-Dumpty fake news. Anyone with a cultural memory that goes back further than 2025 will remember that environmental interests were constantly haranguing the Biden administration to stop the leasing on public lands, since it undermined the administration’s other efforts to address the climate crisis, which was then officially part of our reality, like it or not. It is also part of our reality, however, that our need for gasoline and natural gas has not diminished much, and Biden had to work for a balance no one liked. Anyone wanting to revisit the kind of pressure from both sides that Biden and his Interior Department encountered on such issues could look at this AP story about leases in Alaska’s far frozen north.

There’s a more important fact (remember ‘facts’?) to keep in mind about the leasing situation, however, and Trumpish complaints that the government is blocking our energy dominance on the planet: 25 million acres of public land are currently reserved in O&G leases, but at least a third of that, maybe more, is in leases that have not been developed. Let me say that again: the O&G industry already holds several thousand leases that it has not begun to bring into production.

Two questions rise: Why are they not developing these leases on which they are paying rent? And why are they agitating for even more leases?

The answer to the first question is the most obvious: they do not want to bring more wells into production because the price of a barrel of oil has been dropping below their industrial break-even price of around $65/barrel. Energy production is governed to some extent by a calculation called the ER:EI – ‘Energy Return on Energy Investment.’ In the good old days of 30-cents-a-gallon gasoline, oil was ‘gushing’ abundantly from wells. The ER:EI of oil then ranged from 20:1 upward, depending on how fast it flowed and how far it had to go to market – meaning 20 barrels were produced for every barrel-equivalent of energy invested.

The miracle of ‘fracking’ opened up vast new regions from which oil could be squeezed, but fracked oil does not gush; instead it has to be freed from rock formations with complex and expensive drilling and pumping procedures. The ER:EI of fracked petroleum and natural gas is 5:1 or often lower. The O&G frackers need barrel prices above $65 to even begin making a profit.

Recent rumors of war in the Mideast have pushed the price up to the $70-75/barrel range, but that is a fluctuating situation that will not be reflected at the gas pump. And that may be countered by the OPEC+ nations (all the Arabian nation-states plus Russia and a handful of other non-Arabian states), who just upped the ante. They still have oil they can access at an ER:EI significantly above that of the United States frackers – and they recently voted to increase their production June 1 by an additional 411,000 barrels a day, which pretty well insures that the global prices of a barrel will not go up to where United States frackers will want to start developing the thousands of leases they are paying rent on. Unless, perhaps, Trump decides to put a tariff on OPEC oil and gas, with all the political chaos that would create – including driving up the price of gasoline and heating gas here.

So therein lies the truth about who is responsible for persisting higher gas prices: it wasn’t the Biden administration shutting off opportunities; it was the O&G industries refusing to develop low-cost public-land opportunities they already owned – not wanting to produce oil and gas at a loss as a patriotic MAGA gesture. America has no more ‘cheap’ oil with the massive profitability of a high ER:EI.

But at any rate, if we do actually have a ‘national energy emergency,’ it is certainly not going to be resolved by putting a lot more public land up for leases to ‘unleash’ America’s fossil energy, with more than a third of the public land already leased but not developed due to low energy prices. A January lease offer – Biden’s last – in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge had no bidders.

So why the big push for more public lands leasing?

Well, in Trumpland it may not be about lower prices for consumers at all, but about industrial control in the public lands. An O&G lease, so long as the rent is paid – pocket change for the industry – amounts to a priority use on public lands managed for multiple uses. So long as a lease remains undeveloped, it can’t be fenced; it is open for grazing cattle, hikers, bikers and other ‘multiple-users’ to wander over. But the O&G company has the priority use on the land, and if it decides to develop the lease, the surface land needed for the drilling and pumping operations becomes single-use land, with a road leading into it – no longer really ‘public’ or ‘multiple use’ for so long as the well operates.

As noted in the leasing and permitting process outlined above, the drilling company has to put up a bond assuring that it will properly shut down and plug the well and reclaim the area when the well runs out. The historic $10,000 bond was so low that companies found it cheaper to just forfeit the bond and leave it leaking methane into the atmosphere, polluting the underground water table, and surrounded by the refuse from the fracking operation. The Biden administration raised the bond for a permit to drill to $150,000, about twice the current average reclamation cost, and enough to make some miners/drillers to think twice about just abandoning the well. Now, of course, that Biden-era move toward good sense is being rescinded.

Abandoned pumpjack.By Hillebrand Steve, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – http://www.public-domain-image.com/public-domain-images-pictures-free-stock-photos/miscellaneous-public-domain-images-pictures/abandoned-gas-well-pump.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24924881

How many ‘orphaned wells’ are there (abandoned with little or no reclamation)? No one seems to know for sure. The EPA estimates there are as many as four million abandoned wells nationwide, most plugged to some degree with known owners and operators; but some 100-150 thousand of the abandoned wells are orphaned – no financially solvent owner-operator can be found, and many of those are not plugged, and are emitting methane into the atmosphere and oil and toxic fracking fluids into water tables. Those numbers are more guesstimates than estimates, and no one really knows how many of the orphaned wells are on public lands, but we taxpayers will end up paying to plug, clean up and maintain the orphans, as (chronically inadequate) budgets allow (2024 information).

There may be another rationale behind the O&G industries’ desire for more leasing and permitting, when they aren’t developing a third of what they already have. There is a huge overlap between the 90 percent of BLM land that is open for O&G leasing at the request of the industry, and the BLM land that is suitable for the development of the massive solar, wind and geothermal renewable energy resources that will be needed when American reality again encompasses the climate crisis. Leasing processes have been worked out for renewable energy development – somewhat more rigorous than those for the O&G industry – and many of the suitable sites find an O&G lease right in the middle of them, with its undeveloped use priority. The developers of the renewables have to buy surface-use waivers from the O&G leaseholders – unless the O&G leaseholders don’t want to give up the chance to develop their non-renewables.

Well – enough said on this. I hope this disabuses you of the Trumpty-Burgumty nonsense about a ‘national energy emergency’ that can be resolved through a wide-open assault on our public lands. That’s the good news; the bad news is the fact that gasoline at the pump is probably never going to go down much, so long as a barrel of oil has to bring more than $70 to the fossil-fuel producer.

An intelligent and forward-looking society would be working to gently and fairly phase out the truculent O&G industries, and phase in the renewable energy resources with a lot of job creation – which the Biden administration, now seemingly maligned by everyone, was actually trying to do with the two big beautiful infrastructure acts that the Trumpty-Burgumties are trying to rescind as thoroughly as possible, for no discernible reasons other than their own ‘creative reality,’ and of course, with Trump, vengeance on his enemies.

The Trumpty-Burgumty teams have come up with some other plans for the public lands, including selling off some of them – a lemon from which it might actually be possible to squeeze some lemonade, depending on how it shakes out. More about that in the future, when we see if it stays in the Big Piggy Bill….

Next post – back to the Colorado River where, believe it or not, things are pretty much still where they were a year ago – which is to say ‘a standstill’ – at least in terms of a new management plan for the post-2026 era. Stay tuned.

Oil and gas infrastructure is seen on the Roan Plateau in far western Colorado. (Courtesy of EcoFlight)

On May 29, the Supreme Court – minus Justice Neil Gorsuch, who recused himself – decided the case of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, #Colorado — Westword

A coal train travels along the Colorado River north of Gypsum in Eagle County on June 12, 2023. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)

Click the link to read the article on the Westword website (J.B. Ruhl). Here’s an excerpt:

June 8, 2025

Getting federal approval for permits to build bridges, wind farms, highways and other major infrastructure projects has long been a complicated and time-consuming process. Despite growing calls from both parties for Congress and federal agencies to reform that process, there had been few significant revisions – until now. In one fell swoop, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed a big part of the game. Whether the effects are good or bad depends on the viewer’s perspective. Either way, there is a new interpretation in place for the law that is the centerpiece of the debate about permitting: the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, known as NEPA…

Decades of litigation about the scope of indirect effects have widened the required evaluation. As I explain it to my students, that logical and legal progression is reminiscent of the popular children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, in which granting a request for a cookie triggers a seemingly endless series of further requests – for a glass of milk, a napkin and so on. For the highway example, the arguments went, even if the agency properly assessed the pollution from the cars, it also had to consider the new subdivisions, malls and jobs the new highway foreseeably could induce. The challenge for federal agencies was knowing how much of that potentially limitless series of indirect effects the courts would require them to evaluate.

The Uinta Basin is shown on this map, along with existing rail terminals in Carbon County, Utah, where limited amounts of the basin’s waxy crude is loaded into train cars. A proposal to create a direct rail link to the basin would provide shippers with enough transportation capacity to quadruple output.

Supreme Court puts Utah’s oil train back on the rails — Lisa Song (High Country News)

*The proposed Uinta Basin Railway could traverse through part of the Ashley National Forest in Utah, seen from above.****Ken Lund / CC via Flickr***

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Lisa Song):

June 4, 2025

This article was originally published by Inside Climate News.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a controversial Utah railway project that critics say erodes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a bedrock of environmental law for the past half century.

The case centered on a proposed 88-mile railway that would connect the oil fields of northeastern Utah to a national rail network that runs along the Colorado River and on to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The waxy crude oil is currently transported by truck over narrow mountain passes. Project proponents said shipping the fossil fuel by rail — as many as 10 trains daily — would be quicker and revitalize the local economy by quadrupling the Uinta Basin’s oil production, ICN previously reported,

In 2020, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition applied to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board for approval of the railroad’s construction. Under NEPA, the board was required to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to evaluate possible harms from the project and consider how they could be mitigated.

Environmental groups and Eagle County, Colorado, opposed the railway project. They cited the potential for derailments and spills into the Colorado River, the drinking water supply for 40 million people. Opponents were also concerned about increased air pollution in the Uinta Basin, where oil fields emit high levels of methane, a potent planet-warming greenhouse gas, as well as volatile organic compounds, some of which have been linked to increased risks of cancer.

Gulf Coast communities would also be harmed by air pollution when the crude oil was refined, opponents argued. The increased oil production and associated emissions would also drive climate change and its disastrous global effects: hurricanes, floods, droughts and extreme heat.

The Center for Biological Diversity, among the groups that had sued the Surface Transportation Board, said in a prepared statement that the ruling “relieves federal agencies of the obligation to review all foreseeable environmental harms and grants them more leeway to decide what potential environmental harms to analyze, despite what communities may think is important. It tells agencies that they can ignore certain foreseeable impacts just because they are too remote in time or space.”

In 2021, the board issued a 3,600-page EIS, which identified numerous “significant and adverse impacts that could occur as a result of the railroad line’s construction and operation— including disruptions to local wetlands, land use, and recreation,” according to court documents.

The board nonetheless approved the railroad construction, concluding that the project’s transportation and economic benefits outweighed its environmental impacts.

Opponents, including EarthJustice and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Columbia. They argued the board’s environmental review excluded impacts of the project on people living near the oil fields, as well as Gulf Coast residents.

The appellate court agreed. It ruled that the board’s EIS impermissibly limited the analysis of upstream and downstream projects.

“The appeals court had ruled that the federal agency that approved the railway failed in its obligations to consider the regional consequences of massively increased oil extraction on the Uinta Basin, the increased air pollution for the communities in Texas and Louisiana where the oil would be refined and the global climate consequences,” said Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.

The Seven County Coalition and the railroad company then appealed to the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling will allow all these consequences to unfold without meaningful restraint,” Moench said. “This court has made a name for itself making rulings that mock science and common sense and fail to protect the common good. This unfortunate ruling fits that same pattern.”

The Uinta Basin lies in the northeast corner of Utah and has seen oil and gas development since 1925. The proposed railway could take one of three potential routes – the favored of which would run through 390 acres of state lands and 401 acres of roadless U.S. Forest Service lands. James St. John/CC via Flickr

NEPA has been federal law since 1970. It doesn’t prescribe specific environmental decisions, but it does establish a process to ensure federal agencies follow proper procedure in permitting. It can be a laborious, time-consuming process, but requires an agency to be thorough in assessing potential environmental impacts while giving the public adequate opportunity to comment.

NEPA doesn’t necessarily halt projects but it can force project developers to pursue alternatives that protect environmentally sensitive areas and communities.

In his first term, Trump rolled back some aspects of NEPA, including weakening requirements to consider cumulative impacts of a project and the effects of climate change. Shortly after taking office this year, Trump signaled he plans to further streamline NEPA to expedite its approval process, especially for energy projects.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by President Trump in his first term, wrote the opinion on behalf of four other members of the court. “NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Courts should “afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness,” Kavanaugh wrote. “NEPA does not allow courts, under the guise of judicial review of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand.”

The 8-0 decision excluded Justice Neil Gorsuch, who recused himself because of his close connection to billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, who would economically benefit from the project.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor differed with Kavanaugh on his rationale for the ruling, but agreed on the outcome. She wrote that NEPA didn’t require the board to consider the effects of oil drilling and refining because those activities were outside its authority. “Even a foreseeable environmental effect is outside of NEPA’s scope if the agency could not lawfully decide to modify or reject the proposed action on account of it.”

Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor in the concurrence.

The coalition was represented by Jay Johnson of Venable LLP, who said the ruling “restores much-needed balance to the federal environmental review process.”

Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, the project’s public partner, said the decision affirms the years of work and collaboration that have gone into making the Uinta Basin Railway a reality. “It represents a turning point for rural Utah—bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options and opening new doors for investment and economic stability.”

Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said despite the court’s ruling, “we’ll keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built.”

New #Colorado stream protection law targets massive permitting backlog, treatment costs — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

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

June 5, 2025

State health officials will face tighter deadlines and more scrutiny of a water quality permitting program that has been plagued by massive backlogs and criticized by some small communities who say they can’t afford their state-mandated water treatment systems.

The changes will come under a new bipartisan law Senate Bill 305 approved last month. Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign the bill this week, according to state Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Democrat from Greenwood Village who is one of the bill’s sponsors and chairs the Joint Budget Committee.

“This bill is a reset in the relationship between the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and local governments that both sides believe will result in better communication, collaboration and ultimately better water quality,” Bridges said this week.

The permits are required under the federal Clean Water Act and are designed to protect Colorado’s rivers and streams from contaminants contained in wastewater. The state is required to enforce the federal law.

The measure is designed to help the CDPHE battle a permitting backlog that has left dozens of communities without a current wastewater discharge permit. Those communities can still discharge under a special administrative rule, but the backlog means the communities aren’t complying with the most current wastewater treatment standards that seek to reduce the various contaminants, such as ammonia and nitrates, being discharged into streams.

Earlier this year, as the state sought to fast-track permit approvals, small towns revolted, saying the new permits that were issued were too tough and that it was too expensive to upgrade treatment systems to comply.

The controversy comes as climate change and drought reduce stream flows and cause water temperatures to rise, and as population growth increases the amount of wastewater being discharged to Colorado’s rivers.

In response to the towns’ concerns, the CDPHE water quality control division took the unusual step in March of holding off on taking enforcement action against at least some of the towns that say they can’t comply with the new regulations.

Senate Bill 305 will allow communities to hire outside engineers and consultants to help speed permit processing times and it also requires the CDPHE to develop new rules establishing clear timeframes for granting or denying different types of permits by Dec. 31, 2027.

In addition, according to Nicole Rowan, director of the Water Quality Control Division, they will set a schedule by Dec. 31, 2026, for reducing the backlog.

The changes aren’t likely to help Ault, a community of 2,350 people on the Eastern Plains that finally received a new permit in March. The permit, however, contains standards the town’s 9-year-old wastewater treatment plant can’t meet. The CDPHE has agreed to suspend any enforcement action against the community until it can do additional analysis to see if it can comply with the new rules simply by upgrading its treatment plant, according to Grant Ruff, who oversees the town’s treatment system.

The town still owes $1.2 million on the existing plant. Building a new one would likely cost more than $20 million, Ruff said.

“We hope it is feasible [to comply] by making minor upgrades,” he said. “Otherwise we will have to spend $20 million to $30 million.”

That won’t be the case for towns seeking new permits in the years ahead.

“The new standards will be tremendously helpful in the future because the state will have to take into consideration the community’s ability to pay,” he said.

More by Jerd Smith

US Supreme Court paves way for controversial Uinta Basin rail project that would haul crude oil along #ColoradoRiver: Unanimous ruling narrows the scope of a decades-old environmental review law — The Sky-Hi News #COriver

Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Robert Tann). Here’s an excerpt:

May 30, 2025

In a 36-page ruling, Supreme Court justices said the Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that oversees rail transit, had sufficiently considered the proposal’s environmental impacts when it approved the plan in 2021. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing the opinion for the other justices, said the board “identified and analyzed numerous ‘significant and adverse impacts that could occur as a result’ of the railroad line’s construction and operation — including disruptions to local wetlands, land use, and recreation.”

[…]

The plan had been on hold after a lower appeals court in 2023 ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought by Eagle County and five environmental groups that claimed the transportation board’s review had underestimated the railway’s environmental impact. The lawsuit garnered support from a coalition of local governments, including Pitkin, Routt, Grand and Boulder counties, the cities of Basalt, Avon, Minturn, Red Cliff, Crested Butte, Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction, and the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments…

At the heart of the lawsuit and the question before the Supreme Court was whether the transportation board had sufficiently followed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, when it approved the railway…The 55-year-old law requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their decisions, and the transportation board issued a 3,600-page environmental analysis as part of that review.

#YampaRiver Scorecard grade slips for South Routt — Steamboat Pilot & Today

Bear River at CR7 near Yampa / 3:30 PM, May 16, 2019 / Flow Rate = 0.52 CFS. Photo credit: Scott Hummer

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

May 14, 2025

The recently released Yampa River Scorecard Project grade of C-plus for the upper segment of the Yampa River shows a need for some improvements for overall river health in the stretch between Stillwater and Stagecoach reservoirs. Jenny Frithsen, environmental program manager at Friends of the Yampa, oversees the long-term river health monitoring and evaluation project. Frithsen said a major reason for the lower score is because that river segment is heavily utilized by agricultural water users but has less water coming in from smaller tributaries compared with downstream sections of the river.

“The first and foremost contributor to river health is water in the river, and the Upper Yampa and the Bear River are arguably the hardest-working and most heavily administered sections of river in the Yampa River system,” Frithsen said. “It probably is no surprise that the flow regime has lower scores for our ecological river health assessment. It is an altered flow regime.”

Frithsen presented a high-level overview of the 2024 river study segment during a South Routt Water Users meeting Monday evening at Soroco High School. The study looks at 45 indicators and nine characteristics of river health to determine and issue a score for combined flow and sediment regime, water quality, habitat and riverscape floodplain connectivity, riparian condition, river form, structural complexity and biotic community. On the positive side, the study team found the Upper Yampa stretch rated good in water quality, structural complexity, beaver activity, channel morphology and invasive weeds. The healthy beaver activity, especially on U.S. Forest Service land, showcases the natural engineering work of the large rodents to help mitigate the impacts of human water use and infrastructure. The beavers’ work maintains minimum flows in late summer and fall and provides a refuge for fish during low flows.

Bureau of Land Management restores significant water right north of Silverton: Mineral Point Ditch once diverted 11 cubic feet per second from #AnimasRiver — The #Durango Herald

The “Bonita Peak Mining District” superfund site. Map via the Environmental Protection Agency

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

April 29, 2025

The Bureau of Land Management is restoring up to 11 cubic feet per second of water previously diverted to the Uncompahgre River Basin back to the headwaters of the Animas River north of Silverton. That’s a win for fish, other aquatic wildlife and mining remediation, said Trout Unlimited’s Mining Coordinator Ty Churchwell, because the water will dilute heavy metals to less toxic concentrations. Both the national organization of Trout Unlimited and the local Five Rivers chapter provided financial assistance with the acquisition. The 11-cubic-foot diversion is about 10% of the river’s total current flows in Silverton before the confluence with Cement Creek…

The previous owner held the rights to divert the water through the Mineral Point Ditch – before it entered Burrows Creek – over into the Uncompahgre Basin for agricultural use. This resulted in a 100% depletion of that water from the Animas River…The BLM paid $297,000 – fair market value – to buy the water right from a willing seller, agency spokeswoman Katie Palubicki said in an email to The Durango Herald, using funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the agency’s Abandoned Mine Lands program to acquire the right.

Federal Water Tap, April 21, 2025: Agencies Fast-Track Controversial #FossilFuel and Mining Projects in Great Lakes, #Arizona — Brett Walton (circleofblue.org)

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

April 19, 2025

The Rundown

Army Corps expedites permit process for Line 5 oil tunnel that crosses beneath the Great Lakes.

White House fast-tracks 10 mining projects in its quest for domestically produced minerals.

FEMA cancels grant program meant to prepare communities for weather hazards, while USDA overhauls climate-smart agriculture grant program.

Federal agencies intend to shrink wildlife habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Judge sets a trial date for Rio Grande lawsuit between New Mexico and Texas.

EPA extends public comment period for health risk assessment of PFAS in sewage sludge.

And lastly, the Justice Department seeks to end an agreement to improve sewage infrastructure in Alabama.

“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens. President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.” – Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, as reported by Inside Climate News.

Dhillon is referring to a Biden-era civil rights agreement with the state of Alabama that sought to improve sewage infrastructure in the state’s poorest counties, which are also majority Black. The Justice Department is trying to end that agreement.

The agreement directed Alabama agencies to take a number of actions, such as halting referral of home wastewater violations to law enforcement and expanding a public health campaign about the dangers of raw sewage. It included a sewage system assessment and an infrastructure plan for at-risk areas.

By the Numbers

$882 Million: Funding that FEMA is rescinding from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which was meant to prepare towns for floods, sea level rise, hurricanes, and heat. FEMA is canceling the grant program, Engineering News Record reports.

$3 Billion: Biden-era funding for the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities that is being retooled by the Trump administration. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will reevaluate the program it has rebranded as Advancing Markets for Producers to ensure that less money is spent on administrative costs. Expenditures under the previous grants that were incurred through April 13 will be paid out.

Great Lakes satellite photo via Wikipedia.

News Briefs

Line 5 Tunnel Expedited
The Army Corps of Engineers determined that the Line 5 tunnel, a proposal to drill an oil pipeline tunnel beneath the strait that separates lakes Michigan and Huron, is being put on the permitting fast track.

The determination is in response to President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency in order to speed up the permitting and construction of fossil fuel infrastructure.

Carrie Fox, an Army Corps spokesperson, told Circle of Blue that the new permit review procedures and timeline are not known right now.

“We are coordinating with the applicant, who is Enbridge, and also coordinating with the Council on Environmental Quality, who will assist in establishing the review timeline,” Fox said. “So until those steps take place, we don’t have a timeline. And so we won’t know how exactly it’ll change yet. We just know right now that the permit has been placed under emergency procedures, but the timeline is to be determined.”

Enbridge proposes drilling a 3.6-mile tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. The existing seven-decade-old pipeline sits exposed on the lakebed. It has been hit by ship anchors and a rupture would be calamitous for Great Lakes ecology, tourism, and water supplies.

Six Great Lakes tribes, after learning in March that the project permitting would likely be expedited, withdrew from the federal review process in protest, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Mining Projects Fast-Tracked
The White House put 10 mining projects on the fast-track for regulatory approval, continuing the administration’s desire for more domestically produced minerals.

Oak Flat, Arizona features groves of Emory oak trees, canyons, and springs. This is sacred land for the San Carlos Apache tribe. Resolution Copper (Rio Tinto subsidiary) lobbied politicians to deliver this National Forest land to the company with the intent to build a destructive copper mine. By SinaguaWiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98967960

The list includes the Resolution Copper mine, in Arizona, which would be located on land that is sacred to the Apache people. Tribe members have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the project, the Arizona Republic reports.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the lead permitting agency for the Resolution project, will update the timeline by May 2.

The other mining projects would produce gold, phosphate, copper, lithium, and other critical minerals.

Redefining the Endangered Species Act
Two federal agencies that oversee the Endangered Species Act intend to eliminate the definition of “harm” because it does not fit with the new administration’s interpretation of a recent Supreme Court ruling.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had considered harm to mean habitat destruction. No longer, after the Loper Bright decision that the administration reads as curtailing agency authority in this matter.

The only wrongful actions under the ESA would be those that “take” an animal, meaning to capture, injure, or kill it.

The proposed change would apply only to new permits and would not affect existing actions. Public comments are being accepted through May 19 via www.regulations.gov using docket number FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0034.

Studies and Reports

Army Corps Water Storage Agreements
The Army Corps could improve its communication with utilities about the fees it charges them for water storage space in its reservoirs, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

The fees are a portion of the cost to operate and maintain the reservoirs. The Corps had 438 water storage agreements nationwide, as of 2023.

Tile Drainage and Transportation
The U.S. Geological Survey published a report describing how drainage from farm fields affects downstream flows.

The only wrongful actions under the ESA would be those that “take” an animal, meaning to capture, injure, or kill it.

The proposed change would apply only to new permits and would not affect existing actions. Public comments are being accepted through May 19 via www.regulations.gov using docket number FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0034.

Studies and Reports

Army Corps Water Storage Agreements
The Army Corps could improve its communication with utilities about the fees it charges them for water storage space in its reservoirs, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

The fees are a portion of the cost to operate and maintain the reservoirs. The Corps had 438 water storage agreements nationwide, as of 2023.

View of runoff, also called nonpoint source pollution, from a farm field in Iowa during a rain storm. Topsoil as well as farm fertilizers and other potential pollutants run off unprotected farm fields when heavy rains occur. (Credit: Lynn Betts/U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service/Wikimedia Commons)

Tile Drainage and Transportation
The U.S. Geological Survey published a report describing how drainage from farm fields affects downstream flows.

Tile drains, common in the Midwest, move water from beneath fields into ditches.

The report was supported by state transportation departments, which want to build roads, bridges, and culverts that can withstand high water flows.

On the Radar

Future Army Corps Projects
The Army Corps is seeking proposals from states, tribes, and regional bodies for projects to be considered for future feasibility studies or improvements.

Proposals are due August 15.

PFAS in Sewage Sludge
The EPA is extending the public comment period for its draft risk assessment of two PFAS in sewage sludge, also known as biosolids.

Comments are now due August 14. Submit them via http://www.regulations.gov using docket number EPA-HQ-OW-2024-0504.

In the assessment, the agency evaluated risks to people living on or near lands where these biosolids are applied. The analysis, which looked at PFOA and PFOS, also considered risks for people whose primary consumption of water and food comes from these lands. It is not intended to assess risk for the general public.

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

Rio Grande Lawsuit
The lawsuit between Texas and New Mexico over water supply from the Rio Grande will have a 10-day trial starting June 9, Source NM reports.

The parties to the case, which include Colorado and the federal government, are continuing to seek a mediated solution before the trial begins.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Small #Colorado towns cry foul as state seeks to clean up their #wastewater to protect rivers — Jerd Smith (Fresh Water News)

April 10, 2025

Dozens of small towns in Colorado have banded together to protest new wastewater treatment permits that are designed to protect state rivers and streams, saying they contain new rules that are too costly to implement and they haven’t had time to make the necessary changes to comply.

The controversy comes as climate change and drought reduce stream flows and cause water temperatures to rise, and as population growth increases the amount of wastewater being discharged to Colorado’s rivers.

In response to the towns’ concerns, the water quality control division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has taken the unusual step of holding off on taking enforcement action against at least some of the towns that say they can’t comply with the new regulations. It issued notice of its decision March 24.

“Some smaller communities have faced real technical and financial challenges meeting these new requirements,” CDPHE spokesman John Michael said in an email. “In response, we issued a temporary enforcement discretion memo to give systems time to work through compliance barriers without immediate penalties.”

Now Colorado lawmakers who represent the Eastern Plains have drafted a bill designed to help small communities cope with the new regulatory requirements by extending the time they have to build or upgrade new plants and raise the money to pay for them.

The issue came to a head last month. Akron Town Manager Gillian Laycock, whose town is trying to comply with its new permit, invited dozens of communities facing the same issues to attend a special meeting. Representatives from 64 towns attended along with lawmakers, Laycock said.

But problems have been brewing for years. The water quality control division has been battling a large backlog in wastewater discharge permits, meaning small towns have been allowed to operate their plants under old rules as they waited for their new permits to arrive. Laycock said Akron had been waiting for its new permit for at least eight years.

“We knew something was coming,” she said, “but this has been a shock.”

In recent years, lawmakers have given the division more money to hire additional people so that the backlog can be reduced and more towns can come into compliance with the new standards.

But Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican from Brighton, and Sen. Byron Pelton, a Republican from Sterling, said they are frustrated that the more than $2 million spent to address the problem isn’t helping.

“I told the CDPHE if they continue down this road, the folks out in the rural areas are about ready to tell them to pound sand,” Pelton said. “That’s how stressful it’s been for these small municipalities. The regulations just keep coming at them.”

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

Towns and water districts can receive either a general permit, which has standard terms and conditions, or individual permits, which take much longer to process, are typically more expensive and are often used by large systems in cities such as Denver.

The general permits were finalized in 2022 to help small towns comply with the stricter regulations quickly and at less cost, said Michael, the CDPHE spokesperson. But many haven’t been issued because of the backlog.

Akron finally received its new permit last October, Laycock said. But the town was unprepared for the strict new limits on what and how much can be discharged, the tight timelines to comply and the costs.

Once the new permit was issued, Laycock said, its old permit expired almost immediately, leaving the town out of compliance with the new regulations, exposing them to potential legal issues and fines.

The regulatory shock is understandable, but could have been avoided, according to Meg Parish, an attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit focused on enforcing air and water pollution regulations. She previously worked for the state’s water quality control division and helped develop the new general permit that is causing current concerns.

“Some of these towns have really old permits,” Parish said. They’ve been allowed to continue discharging under a special administrative permit. In the interim, strict new standards have taken effect.

But she said the new rules shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.

She said the new general permit was finalized after months of public work sessions and outreach meetings.

“We invited every small discharger in the state to participate. All the terms are on the state’s website….it literally says ‘if your (wastewater discharge) flow is this much, this is what your limit is going to be. There is no mystery.”

But Adam Sommers, an environmental engineer who has several clients trying to obtain new permits, said the process is cumbersome and expensive.

“Each permitting activity has a 180-day review period and if changes are needed, the clock starts over,” he said in an email.

“This frequently adds years to the schedule,” Sommers said. “The estimates engineers create are time sensitive. If years have passed between when they prepare the budget and when the project is constructed, they face affordability issues.”

Sens. Kirkmeyer and Pelton are working on a bill that will be introduced shortly forcing the CDPHE to give the towns more time to comply and help them address the financial challenges of the new regulations. It will also set strict deadlines on the permitting process, according to the latest draft of the bill. Kirkmeyer said the CDPHE has been helping with the new legislation.

Kirkmeyer said she was taking the unusual step of running the bill through the Joint Budget Committee because it approves the budget for the water quality control division and she wanted to send a strong message to the regulators.

“I want them to know we are serious about this,” she said.

Looking ahead, as water quality continues to deteriorate, treatment standards will continue to tighten, Parish said.

“One of the key realities is that wastewater treatment plants need to upgrade their plants and do better, and pollute less,” Parish said.

Laycock, the Akron town manager, said she understands the urgency of the problem but she said the state’s approach needs work.

“We are agricultural people and we love our land, but how do we as a town afford to meet these requirements? I understand what they are trying to do. But this is not the way to do it.”

More by Jerd Smith

Polluted discharge from the Moffat Tunnel continues to be released into the #FraserRiver — Sky-Hi Daily News

The pipeline, at the base of the Winter Park ski area, that moves water as part of the existing Moffat Collection System Project. The portal of the railroad tunnel is behind the pipeline, in this view. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi Daily News website (Meg Soyars Van Hauen). Here’s an excerpt:

March 25, 2025

According to Grand County Water Quality Manager Katherine Morris, polluted discharge from the Moffat Tunnel has adversely impacted the Fraser River. The Grand County water quality team recently wrote two letters to the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, outlining its concerns with violations by Union Pacific Railroad, which manages the tunnel. During a Grand County Board of Commissioners meeting March 11, 2025 Morris explained that polluted water from the tunnel enters the nearby Fraser River, which is a main tributary of the Colorado River. This ongoing problem began after the tunnel was completed, and Grand County government began advocating to fix the problem nearly two decades ago…

In the early 2000s, residents and governmental officials raised alarm about pollutants and increased turbidity (or clarity issues) in the Fraser River when water was discharged from the tunnel. The tunnel bores through James Peak. Groundwater from cracks in the mountain rock seeps into the tunnel, and that water needs a way out. Coal dust, heavy metals and other particulate matter can travel into the Fraser River through the runoff. At the time, a water treatment plant existed on the east portal of the tunnel but not on the west portal at Winter Park. People questioned why there was no treatment plant to protect Grand County, home to the headwaters of the Colorado River. Over the years, Union Pacific received fines and a cease-and-desist order. The railroad finally built a treatment plant in 2017, but issues have continued — even worsened in some cases, Morris said. A water centrifuge at the plant is designed to separate solids from the water, creating a sludge-like “centrifuge cake” that is put in a drum and disposed of in Utah. (This disposal has raised its own concerns.) The remaining water is discharged into the river.

Take your children out into these landscapes” — Kevin Fedarko

My friend Joe’s son and the Orr kids at the top of the Crack in the Wall trail to Coyote Gulch with Stevens Arch in the Background. Photo credit: Joe Ruffert

Kevin Fedarko was the keynote speaker at the symposium and he is as inspirational a speaker as you could ask for. It doesn’t hurt that the landscape that he spoke about is the Grand Canyon. He urged the attendees to, “Take your children out into these landscapes so that they can learn to love them.” He is advocating for the protection of the Grand Canyon in particular but really he is advocating for the protection all public lands.

Kevin Fedarko and Coyote Gulch at the Rio Grande State of the Basin Symposium hosted by the Salazar Rio Grande del Norte Center at Adams State University in Alamosa March 29, 2024.

What an inspirational talk from Kevin. I know what he is saying when he speaks about the time after dinner on the trail where the sunset lights up the canyon in different hues and where, he and Pete McBride, his partner on the Grand Canyon through hike, could hear the Colorado River hundreds of feet below them, continuing its work cutting and molding the rocks, because the silence in that landscape is so complete. He and I share the allure of the Colorado Plateau. Kevin was introduced to it through Collin Flectcher’s book The Man Who Walked Through Time, after he received a dog-eared copy from his father. They lived in Pittsburgh in a landscape that was industrialized but the book enabled Kevin to imagine places that were unspoiled.

My introduction to the Colorado Plateau came from an article in Outside magazine that included a panoramic photo of the Escalante River taken from the ledges above the river. Readers in the know can put 2 and 2 together from the name of this blog — Coyote Gulch — my homage to the canyons tributary to Glen Canyon and Lake Foul.

Stevens Arch viewed from Coyote Gulch. Photo via Joe Ruffert

Kevin’s keynote came at the end of the day on March 29th after a jam-packed schedule.

Early in the day Ken Salazar spoke about the future of the San Luis Valley saying, “Where is the sustainability of the valley going to come from.” Without agriculture this place would wither and die.” He is right, American Rivers and other organizations introduced a paper, The Economic Value of Water Resources in the San Luis Valley which was a response to yet another plan to export water out of the valley to the Front Range. (Currently on hold as Renewable Water Resources does not have a willing buyer. Thank you Colorado water law.)

Claire Sheridan informed attendees that their report sought to quantify all the economic benefits from each drop of water in the valley. “When you buy a bottle of water you know exactly what it costs. But what is the value of having the Sandhill cranes come here every year?”

Russ Schumacher detailed the current state of the climate (snowpack at 63%) and folks from the Division of Water Resources expounded on the current state of aquifer recovery and obligations under the Rio Grande Compact.

The session about the Colorado Airborne Snow Measurement Program was fascinating. Nathan Coombs talked about the combination of SNOTEL, manual snow courses, Lidar, radar, and machine learning used to articulate a more complete picture of snowpack. “You can’t have enough tools in your toolbox,” he said.

Coombs detailed the difficulty of meeting the obligations under the Rio Grande Compact with insufficient knowledge of snowpack and therefore runoff volumes. Inaccurate information can lead to operational decisions that overestimate those volumes and then require severe curtailments in July and August just when farmers are finishing their crops. “When you make an error the correction is what kills you,” he said.

If you are going to learn about agriculture in the valley it is informative to understand the advances in soil health knowledge and the current state of adoption. That was the theme of the session “Building Healthy Soils”. John Rizza’s enthusiasm for the subject was obvious and had me thinking about what I can do for my city landscape.

Amber Pacheco described how the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable and other organizations reach out to as many folks in the valley as possible. Inclusivity is the engine driving collaboration.

Many thanks to Salazar Rio Grande del Norte Center director Paul Formisano for reaching out to me about the symposium. I loved the program. You can scroll through my posts on BlueSky here

Microplastics might be worse than you think. Here’s why — Karen Garvey (MSUDenver.edu)

Click the link to read the article on the Metropolitan State University of Denver website (Karen Garvey):

February 11, 2025

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria that thrive in deteriorating plastics could cause the next pandemic, an environmental researcher says.

Just when it seemed the news about microplastics’ potential for harm couldn’t get worse, an environmental researcher at Metropolitan State University of Denver has found a new cause for concern: Microplastics are contributing to the global problem of antibiotic resistance.

In research published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, Sung Hee Joo, Ph.D., director of MSU Denver’s Environmental Engineering program, and colleagues describe how plastic waste, particularly in fresh water, creates a habitat that allows antibiotic-resistant bacteria and genes that promote antibiotic resistance to thrive, which could lead to another pandemic.

“That’s a significant concern, not just in the U.S. but globally,” Joo said. “We already have microplastics detected in tap water, and water-treatment methods don’t remove them all — yet there is no regulation on microplastics in drinking water. So I’m very concerned about another pandemic because of plastic waste and the genetic changes we see in bacteria as a result.”

As plastics age and degrade, their chemical makeup changes, which creates an environment where antibiotic-resistant microorganisms can survive and reproduce, Joo and her colleagues wrote in the study. The World Health Organization has called the growing problem of antibiotic resistance one of the world’s most critical health threats.

Sung Hee Joo, Ph.D., director of MSU Denver’s Environmental Engineering program, is surrounded by different types of plastic, including her polyester hat made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Photo by Amanda Schwengel via MSU Denver

Joo and her colleagues intend to conduct further research into the threat posed by microplastics. But her efforts on behalf of the environment don’t stop there. Thanks to a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Joo and one of her research colleagues, Katrina Knauer of the National Renewal Energy Laboratory, are set to lead a project to put some of those thrown-away plastics to new use.

“Increased regulation and education are essential to addressing the problem,” Joo said. “One thing we can do is focus on upcycling, which converts plastic waste into resources. That’s why we’re so excited for this collaboration with NREL.”

As part of the project, Joo will lead an education program, a cooperative between MSU Denver and NREL, that will examine ways to put postconsumer recycled plastics to use in new products, such as an asphalt replacement. Beginning this summer, the project will create internships for MSU Denver Environmental Engineering students and will include a community component. Interns will educate residents in low-income areas of Pueblo about the importance and benefits of recycling.

“We need to educate the public because many people don’t realize how important proper recycling is,” Joo said.

Joo teaches the Environmental Assessment of Plastic Particles class at MSU Denver. Photo by Amanda Schwengel via MSU Denver

If successful, the project would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 60% by developing an asphalt replacement that incorporates plastic waste while integrating bio-based additives. Using microplastics this way not only provides a new way to pave streets but reduces microplastic waste and decreases temperatures needed to create asphalt.

Joo, whose research over more than two decades has earned her numerous awards, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific and Technological Achievement Award, said finding new uses for plastic waste is one important way to combat the potentially deadly spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

“The human body carries plastics, and tiny plastic particles are found in every organ, including the brain, especially in the blood-brain barrier,” Joo said. “Still, it’s not too late to act now to protect our environment and public health.”

A Sagebrush Rebel returns to Interior: Karen Budd-Falen has spent her career fighting the agency; Mining Monitor; “Avalanche” comes out from behind the paywall — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

Ryan Bundy speaks at the 2014 Recapture rally to protest federal land management, which took place just days after armed insurrectionists threatened federal officers who had tried to detain Cliven Bundy’s cattle, which had long been grazing on public lands illegally. Karen Budd-Falen — reportedly appointed to be the number three at Interior — represented Bundy years before the standoff, but later condemned his response. Nevertheless, her writings and court cases provided an ideological underpinning for the Bundys and their fellow insurrectionists. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

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

March 7, 2025

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has given another indication of how he plans to oversee public lands with the reported appointment of Karen Budd-Falen, a Wyoming property rights lawyer and rancher, as associate deputy Interior secretary, the department’s third in command. This will be Budd-Falen’s third stint at Interior: She worked under James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s notorious Interior secretary, and served as deputy Interior solicitor for wildlife and parks under the first Trump administration. Budd-Falen revealed the appointment to Cowboy State Daily this week, though the administration has yet to announce it.

Budd-Falen has spent much of her five-decade-long career fighting against federal oversight and environmental protections — she has been called an “architect of the modern Sagebrush Rebellion” — and is a private property rights extremist (except when they get in the way of public lands grazing).

In 2011, Budd-Falen divulged her core philosophy — and her distorted view of the U.S. Constitution — in a keynote speech to a meeting of Oregon and California county sheriffs, many of who adhered to the “constitutional sheriff” creed. She told them that “the foundation for every single right in this country, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote, our freedom to petition, is all based on the right of ownership of private property.”

While this is obviously a messed up interpretation, it is an honest reflection of her worldview, and she has often stuck with it even if it meant going after extractive interests. In the 1990s, for example, Budd-Falen represented the legendary, stalwart Republican-turned-anti-oil-and-gas activist Tweeti Blancett in her attempt to get the Bureau of Land Management to clean up the mess its industry-friendly ways had facilitated on and around her northwest New Mexico ranch. And Budd-Falen’s law firm often worked with landowners to get the best possible deal from energy companies that developed their property.

But more often than not, Budd-Falen’s vision of private property rights extends beyond a landowner’s property lines and onto the public lands and resources — at the expense of the land itself, the wildlife that live there, and the people who rely upon it for other uses.

In a telling article in the Idaho Law Review in 1993, Budd-Falen and her husband, Frank Falen, argued that grazing livestock on public lands was actually a “private property right” protected by the Constitution. If you were to extend this flawed logic to oil and gas and other energy leases and unpatented mining claims, then corporations and individuals would have private property rights on hundreds of millions of acres of public lands. This may sound alarmist, but the fact is, the federal land management agencies often adhere to this belief. Once an oil and gas lease is issued, for example, a BLM field office is unlikely to deny a drilling permit for the lease, since doing so would be violating the company’s private property rights. Who needs public land transfers when this sort of de facto privatization is commonplace?

Many of Budd-Falen’s cases relied on a similar argument: That private property rights can apply to public resources. She defended Andrew VanDenBerg, for example, who bulldozed a road across the Whitehead Gulch Wilderness Study Area in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to access his mining claim — just one of many times she wielded RS-2477, the 160-year-old statute, to try to keep roads across public lands open to motorized travel and bulldozers. She represented big landowners who felt that they had the right to kill more big game — a public resource — than the law allowed, because they owned more acreage.

Budd-Falen was instrumental in crafting a slew of ordinances for Catron County, New Mexico, declaring county authority over federally managed lands and, specifically, grazing allotments. While the ordinances and resolutions focused on land use, they also contained language influenced by the teachings of W. Cleon Skousen, an extreme right-wing author, Mormon theologian, and founder of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, née the Freeman Institute, known for its bestselling pocket-size versions of the US Constitution.

The ordinances were “about the legal authority of county governments and the legal rights of local citizens as regards the use of federal and state lands.” They were intended to preserve the “customs and culture” of the rural West, which apparently included livestock operations, mining, logging, and riding motorized vehicles across public lands. And the Catron County commissioners were ready to turn to violence and even civil war to stop, in the words of the ordinance, “federal and state agents” that “threaten the life, liberty, and happiness of the people of Catron County … and present danger to the land and livelihood of every man, woman, and child.” The National Federal Lands Conference, a Utah-based organization launched in the late 1980s by Sagebrush Rebel Bert Smith, a contemporary and philosophical collaborator of Skousen’s, peddled similar ordinances to other counties around the West.

Budd-Falen has been especially antagonistic toward the Endangered Species Act, often representing clients hoping to reduce the law’s scope or to water down its enforcement or applicability. In 2013, for instance, she filed an amicus brief in support of People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners’ claim that the ESA should not apply to Utah prairie dogs because the species’ range was confined to one state. The property owners lost and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Occasionally Budd-Falen has veered away from defending property rights, however, if it means keeping cows on public lands. After Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, the Grand Canyon Trust bought out grazing allotments in the monument from willing sellers with the intention of retiring the permits for good. It was a win-win situation, one that allowed ranchers to bring in a pile of cash and maybe retire or move operations to a more cattle-appropriate area, and it protected sensitive areas from the ravages of grazing.

Nevertheless, Kane and Garfield County commissioners didn’t like the deal, mostly because they didn’t like the monument. So they sued to block the permit retirements, in an attempt to undercut the transactions, and Budd-Falen stepped in to represent them. She said she was trying to ensure the survival of the “cowboy’s Western way of life,” apparently even if it was against the cowboys’ own wishes. “I think it’s important to keep ranchers on the land,” she told the Deseret News. She definitely will not do anything to reform public lands grazing during her tenure, but then that’s no different from any other administration so far, Republican or Democrat.

In the early 1990s Budd-Falen represented a number of southern Nevada ranchers —including Cliven Bundy — in their beef with the feds over grazing in endangered desert tortoise habitat. Budd-Falen was quick to condemn the Bundys’ armed insurrection against the federal government when BLM rangers tried to remove their cows from public lands, where they had been grazing illegally for years. And she also spoke out against the Bundy-led armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Still, one can’t deny that her work and words — often hostile and aimed at environmentalists and federal land agencies — provide an intellectual underpinning for the Bundy worldview. She is an alumni of the Mountain West Legal Foundation, the breeding ground for the Sagebrush Rebellion and Wise Use movement that helped launch the careers of Watt and Gale Norton, the Interior secretary under W. Bush. And in 2007 Budd-Falen told High Country News’s Ray Ring that her most important case was when she used RICO, and anti-racketeering law, to go after BLM agents who had cited her client for violating grazing regulations.

Her rhetoric outside the courtroom not only inflames, but also provides justification for those who may be inclined to take up arms against their purported oppressors. She has referred to federal land management agencies as “a dictatorship” wielding its “bureaucratic power … to take private property and private property rights.” She once made the spurious claim that “the federal government pays environmental groups to sue the federal government to stop your use of your property.”

Seems pretty crazy to put someone like that near the top of a federal land management agency, but then, that’s par for the course for Trump and company.

The tally at Interior now includes, in addition to Budd-Falen:

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who has close ties to oil tycoon Harold Hamm, and who suggested using “inhospitable or unoccupied” public lands to pay down the federal debt.

BLM director Kathleen Sgamma, an oil and gas industry lobbyist who has sued the agency she is now tapped to lead.

Deputy Interior Secretary Katharine McGregor, who served the same position during the final year of Trump’s first term, and was most recently the VP of Environmental Services at NextEra Energy in Florida.

⛏️Mining Monitor ⛏️

It appears that Trump’s executive orders are beginning to change the way regional public lands offices operate. Patrick Lohmann with Source NM reports, for example, that Cibola National Forest Service employees — at least the ones that weren’t fired by DOGE — were ordered to prioritize “mission critical” activities, including reviews of proposed uranium mines, to comply with Trump’s energy orders.

There are currently two proposed uranium mines on the forest, which includes Mount Taylor and surrounding areas near Grants, New Mexico. Energy Fuels — the owner of the Pinyon Plain uranium mine and the White Mesa uranium mill — is looking to develop the Roca Honda mine on about 183 acres. And Laramide Resources wants to build the La Jara Mesa mine. Both projects would be underground, not surface mines, and were originally proposed over a decade ago, but stalled out when uranium prices crashed. Now that prices have increased, the firms have expressed renewed interest.

The dots show abandoned uranium mining and milling sites.

The Grants and Mount Taylor area was ravaged by Cold War-era uranium mining and the wounds from the previous boom continue to fester. That include the remnants of Anaconda Minerals Company’s Jackpile-Paguate Mine on Laguna Pueblo land, which was once the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, producing some 24 million tons of ore.

Miners were exposed to radioactive and toxic heavy metals daily, even spending their lunch breaks sitting on piles of uranium ore. Blasting sent tremors through the pueblo’s adobe homes, and a cloud of poisonous dust drifted into the village of Paguate, just 2,000 feet from the mine, coating fruit trees, gardens, corn, and meat that was set out to dry. A toxic plume continued to spread through groundwater aquifers, and the Rio Paguate, a Rio Grande tributary, remains contaminated more than a decade after the facility became a Superfund site, despite millions of dollars in cleanup work. Laguna residents and former mine workers still suffer lingering health problems — cancer, respiratory illnesses and kidney disease — from the mine and its pollution.

Now the feds are saying approving new uranium mines in the same area is “mission critical.”

***

In December, the Biden administration began the process of halting new mining claims and mineral leasing for the next 20 years on 165,000 acres in the upper Pecos River watershed west of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This included holding meetings to gather public input on the plan. But the BLM canceled the first such meeting, scheduled for late February, and has not announced a new date, sparking fears that the new administration may be withdrawing plans for a mineral withdrawal.

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

***

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

And now for a special treat, or maybe torture, but either way it might help take your mind off the dismantling of Democracy for a few moments. It’s my blow-by-blow analysis of the 1978 movie Avalanche, starring Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. Normally this would be behind a paywall, like all of the other Land Desk archives. But I’m opening up to everyone for a limited time only in honor of the snowslide-triggering storm that is pounding the San Juans as I write. Enjoy. And, while you’re at it, check out our interactive map of long-lost ski hills in southwest Colorado.

AVALANCHE: A blow-by-blow analysis of the 1978 disaster flick — Jonathan P. Thompson, February 9, 2022

I was drawn in by the close-up winter aerial shots of ridges and peaks of the San Juan Mountains—Look, there’s Vestal! I yelled to my non-existent viewing companions as Rock Hudson’s name flashed on the screen. And Arrow! And Mount Garfield! I kept watching the lost-to-obscurity 1978 disaster film,

Read full story

Messing with Maps: Pipeline edition — Jonathan P. Thompson (LandDesk.org)

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

February 11, 2025

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

Detail of a 1931 New Mexico oil and gas map showing part of the San Juan Basin, where commercial drilling began in earnest in the early 1920s. Note that there were already pipelines running from Bloomfield to Albuquerque, from the Ute Dome to Durango and from the Rattlesnake Dome to Gallup.

On the afternoon of December 5, 2024 at least seven homes were evacuated in rural La Plata County, Colorado, after a major pipeline ruptured and spilled some 23,000 gallons of gasoline 1. Two months later, lingering fumes and contamination kept at least one of the evacuated households from returning home, according to the Durango Herald.

The spill tainted nine domestic wells with benzene concentrations of up to 300 parts per billion; the carcinogen’s maximum allowable level is 5 parts per billion. And the nearby Rainbow Springs trout farm suffered an 80,000 fingerling die-off in the days following the spill, according to the Herald, though a conclusive link between the two has yet to be made.

That a bunch of hydrocarbons broke free from their confines in that part of the country didn’t shock me: La Plata County is in the San Juan Basin, where oodles of natural gas has been pumped from the ground over the last century or so, and leaks, breaches, and spills have been frequent — sometimes with deleterious results. But I was a bit taken aback to read that the material that spilled was gasoline that came from a major, interstate pipeline.

In fact, several Facebook commenters expressed their doubts, saying it must have been drip condensates or liquid natural gas, instead, coming from one of the lines associated with the gas fields or the processing plant nearby. But the Herald reporter got his info directly from the pipeline operator (and they should know). And I double-checked the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration incident report, which said Enerprise Products’ Four Corners Lateral Loop pipeline, which was installed in 1980, had spilled 544 barrels (or 22,848 gallons) of non-ethanol gasoline.

Curiously, both Energy Information Administration and PHMSA records show that only natural gas-carrying lines pass through the county. But apparently the line now carries auto fuel from Texas to New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, where it helps keep pump prices affordable, or so the pipeline operator told the Herald.

It’s one of seven natural gas, carbon dioxide, or hazardous liquids pipelines — totaling 225 miles — that cross La Plata County. The Western states contain about 93,024 miles of these long-distance methane and petroleum carrying lines (this does not include local gathering systems that web their way through the oil and gas fields or natural gas distribution lines that run through towns and cities).

The top 15 counties in the Western U.S. in terms of gas transmission and hazardous liquid pipeline mileage. Source: PHMSA.

That’s one of those things about pipelines. You might be subtly aware they exist, thanks to the strips of land that have been cleared of vegetation and the signs warning you not to dig there. But the fact that there are large quantities of flammable, sometimes explosive, climate-altering substances rushing beneath your feet on their way to distant destinations is not something that is often at the top of one’s mind. At least not until they leak, rupture, or explode.

And they do, more often than most of us would hope. Usually the cause is corrosion, a failed weld, or some other type of equipment or material failure, though excavation-caused ruptures are also up there. Cars and trucks run into pipelines and break them, floods or seismic activity can tear them apart, and sometimes lightning strikes them.

Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with about 86 times the atmospheric warming potential than carbon dioxide. So every release is contributing to climate change. A major breach or a slow leak that goes undetected can emit massive amounts of methane; in April, a construction worker breached a pipeline that released 118,000 MCF (thousand cubic feet) of natural gas before it was shut off 2. Plus, when the stuff builds up it can explode, which makes gas line leaks especially dangerous. Crude oil and gasoline spills, meanwhile, can harm wildlife, waterways, and people, and even carbon dioxide pipeline ruptures can be fatal.

So it’s good to have strong regulations around pipelines, as well as a well-staffed agency to enforce those regulations. It’s also nice to know where the major pipelines are around you. And for now, at least, you can find out by consulting the PHMSA’s National Pipeline Mapping System. Just enter your state and county and you get a map of the big hazardous liquid and natural gas transmission lines. You can also do an accident query and see where there have been accidents near you. One drawback is that the system limits how far you can zoom in on the map, apparently because they’re worried about saboteurs using it to locate targets. Here’s what the zoomed in map looks like. This is about the same view as the opening image from 1931.

Here are some zoomed out maps to give you a sense of where the pipelines are concentrated, with the highest densities in the Permian Basin and Louisiana.

DATA DUMP:

122 Number of U.S. interstate natural gas transmission system incidents, accidents, and spills in 2024, resulting in 7 injuries.

1.82 million MCF Volume of natural gas released during those incidents.

Corrosion The leading cause of natural gas transmission pipeline incidents.

13, 28 Number of fatalities and injuries, respectively, resulting from natural gas distribution system incidents nationwide in 2024.

309,560 MCF Volume of natural gas released during distribution system incidents.

$549,000 Total damages, as of early February, resulting from the Enterprise pipeline spill in La Plata County in December.

192 Number of incidents reported on Enterprise Products Operating pipelines between 2017 and 2025.

294 Number of incidents in interstate hazardous liquid pipelines nationwide in 2024.

80 Number of hazardous liquids incidents in 2024 that occurred in pipelines that were installed prior to 1985. Ten of the damaged lines were installed prior to 1940.

16,708 Barrels of crude oil spilled in 2024 pipeline incidents.

3,333 Barrels of refined petroleum products spilled or lost in 2024 pipeline incidents.

$70 million Total damages resulting from hazardous liquid (crude oil, gasoline, and other products) pipeline incidents in 2024.

Parting Poem

Now for something completely different, I’d like to leave you with this lovely poem by Richard Shelton. It’s from his Selected Poems, 1969-1981, which is easily my most read book, as I come back to it time after time. No one captures the essence of the desert like Shelton.

1 Which is about enough gasoline to fuel the ol’ Silver Bullet (the Land Desk’s official mascot) for another 800,000 miles or so.

2 The average U.S. residence uses about 65 MCF of natural gas per year.

The #SaltonSea’s weirdness is what’s appealing — Dennis Hinkamp (WriterOnTheRange.org) #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

*Bales of straw along the banks of the Salton Sea, Hinkamp photo*

Click the link to read the article on the Writers on the Range website (Dennis Hinkamp):

February 3, 2025

Fascinating and fetid, the Salton Sea in southern California lures me back, every year.

Driving south from Utah, I take bits of historic Highway 66 and then skirt Joshua Tree National Park to cruise through little known Box Canyon to Mecca, California. When the landscape opens up, I see the beautiful wreck of the Salton Sea, created by the collision of geology and bad luck.

Southern Pacific passenger train crosses to Salton Sea, August 1906. Photo via USBR.

The sea occupies a much smaller footprint of what used to be Lake Cahuilla, which disappeared in the late 1500s. Then, in a wild spring runoff in 1905, the Colorado River blew out a diversion dam and for three years, and the mighty Colorado drained into the Salton Sink. Agriculture runoff replenished the shallow lake over the following decades, though recently lined canals, courtesy of San Diego, in the Imperial Valley resulted in diminished flows. Its run as a bombing range ended in the 1970s.

If the lake were to completely dry up there would be a horror to behold. While at shrinking Lake Mead a few gangster cadavers showed up in the mud, the Salton Sea contains crashed planes and practice bombs, the targets simulations during the 1940s for the real atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

The lake is bracketed by opulent Palm Springs to the north and the arty squalor of Slab City to the south, home to about 150 full-time residents but temporary home to as many as 4,000 in the winter. In between there are hot springs RV resorts, date palm groves, geothermal energy plants and the town of Bombay Beach sitting atop the San Andreas fault.

Is the diminished sea worth saving? It’s too late to ask the question because, like the great Salt Lake, the cost of not saving it is likely higher than the rescue. Like many invasive species around the West, there is no easy way to get rid of it. Yet most of its fish are already dead and migrating birds have little to eat.

Dust is the issue, and most conservation programs attempt to mitigate dust.

Salton Sea screen shot credit Greetings from the Salton Sea — Kim Stringfellow.

The 1950s and 60s brought out the excesses of post-war revelers to the Salton Sea. You can see the salt-encrusted remains of former resorts and second homes of the Los Angeles fancy people. You can imagine the ghosts of boat races and cocktails.

Those folks even named the local wildlife refuge after swinging Sony Bono, but what came next was toxic salinity and decay as less water came in and the water that remained increased in salinity.

Still, the sea persists. Its salt-encrusted shores circle about 340 square miles of sea. A silo-full of conspiracy theories features the Salton Sea: The military may have accidently dropped a real bomb that did not explode, and the bomb might even be under the water along with hundreds of other dummy bombs and fallen planes. Bodies may still sit in the planes. We know for certain that Slab City is what’s left of a decommissioned military base built about 70 years ago.

Most of the people I meet around the lake seem happy. The place brings pleasure to pre-apocalyptic people like me and those creating outsider art on the actual beach near Bombay Beach. Thousands of Canadians migrate there each winter because the highest temperatures rarely top 80 degrees.

I look forward to my week at the hopefully named Fountain of Youth Spa RV Resort. I joke that I have been coming there since 1906 so it must be working.

It attracts so many Canadians that the resort hosts U.S. vs. Canada Games featuring geezer sports of pickleball, horseshoes, bocce and karaoke. Poutine and box wine flow freely, and people sometimes stay up into the double-digit hours of the evening.

Dennis Hinkamp. Photo credit: Writers on the Range

The Salton Sea will likely remain a curiosity and hiding place for the weird until some real monster beneath the sea emerges, which could be a rush to start mining lithium made by the sea.

On the other hand, the San Andreas fault might just swallow the whole thing in one glorious gulp. Meanwhile, it’s my refuge, my winter solace away from anxious headlines, and just strange enough to be hospitable.

Dennis Hinkamp is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, the independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He writes in Utah.

Map of the Salton Sea drainage area. By Shannon – Background and river course data from http://www2.demis.nl/mapserver/mapper.asp and some topography from http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9707481

The #ColoradoRiver is salty. But where does salinity come from, and what’s being done about it?: Among river disputes, salinity is an issue that all seven basin states agree is worth solving together — The Summit Daily #COriver #aridification

Colorado River. For over 50 years, stakeholders throughout the Colorado River basin have worked to address challenges caused by salinity. Photo credit: Abby Burk via Audubon Rockies

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

February 6, 2024

Since 1974, the seven Colorado River basin states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — have coordinated efforts to implement salinity control in the waterway as part of the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Forum. The forum was created by the U.S. Congress, flowing funding through the Bureau of Reclamation to reduce the salt load in the river and research the issue…While salinity is naturally occurring, there are a few reasons that states and river stakeholders have long kept an eye on it.A baseline amount of salinity is OK. Too much salinity can have adverse effects on drinking water, water infrastructure and treatment, appliance wear, aquatic life, the productivity of certain agricultural crops (including wine grapes, peaches and other salt-sensitive products) and more. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates that salinity causes between $500 and $750 million annually in damages and could exceed $1.5 billion per year if future increases are not controlled…

Much of the Upper Basin geology — specifically Mancus and Mesa Verde shale formations — was created when it was covered by an inland sea, [David] Robbins added. Therefore, they contain salt deposits that through natural erosion and runoff, make their way to the rivers and downstream. In Colorado, natural salinity sources include the geothermal hot springs in Glenwood Springs; shale cliffs and evaporating salt deposits in the Eagle and Roaring Fork valleys; and the salt domes in Paradox Valley in Montrose County along the Dolores River. Human activity can also exacerbate challenges by accelerating the release of compounds from these natural geologic materials and increasing the salt load in the river and tributaries, according to the 2009 U.S. Geological Survey report. This includes activities like mining, farming, petroleum exploration and urban development. For example, with some agricultural irrigation practices, by adding more water to the soil that naturally contains salts, “increases the rate of dissolution above the natural signal,” [Dave] Kanzer said. The use of road salts — solid and liquid — to clear snow and ice can also lead to increased salt loads as the salt dissolves and makes its way into snowmelt and streams.

Colorado’s Stream & Wetlands Protection Bill Becomes a Law: Representing the environment as a stakeholder in Colorado’s HB24-1379 rulemaking — Nathan Boyer-Rechlin (Rockies.Audubon.org)

Spotted Sandpiper. Photo: Mick Thompson/Audubon Rockies

Click the link to read the article on the Audubon Rockies website (Nathan Boyer-Rechlin):

January 28, 2025

Colorado is in the midst of a nation-leading rulemaking for its state-waters protection program, established by HB24-1379: Regulate Dredge & Fill Activities in State Waters (HB1379) which Governor Polis signed into law on May 29th. This bill establishes a state regulatory program to permit dredge and fill activities that impact state waters not covered by the Clean Water Act (CWA). This encompasses removal, filling, or other alteration of wetlands and ephemeral streams from activities such as mining and infrastructure development. Audubon Rockies told the story of why Colorado needed new legislation following the Supreme Court’s Sackett Decision—which removed crucial wetland protections—and how the bill passed with bi-partisan support in our June 2024 blog post, “A Colorado Program the Colorado Way.”

Ephemeral streams are streams that do not always flow. They are above the groundwater reservoir and appear after precipitation in the area. Via Socratic.org

The core of this program’s regulatory jurisdiction are ephemeral streams and isolated wetlands. Existing federal and state-managed regulatory programs tend to undervalue these types of streams and wetlands, and inadequately mitigate for loss of these habitats and their ecological functions. HB1379 has given Colorado the opportunity to lead the nation in developing a regulatory program that not only fills the gap left by Sackett, but effectively addresses impacts to these key habitats that birds, and humans, rely on. Although the bill set a strong framework for the regulatory program, the gains made during the legislative session could be minimized if the next step isn’t done well. That next step, the rulemaking process, is currently underway.

Anatomy of a Rulemaking

Most of us who grew up with the American public school system likely remember Bill, that “sad little scrap of paper” who only ever dreamed of becoming a law (revisit that Schoolhouse Rock clip for a trip down memory lane). However, what our schoolhouse rock education left out was the long road ahead once poor Bill finally achieves his dream. Sadly for him, it’s not over yet. In most cases, a bill that passes through the state or federal legislature is a sketch or outline which sets the structure and parameters for how a law will function. The rulemaking process fills in the color and detail.

In our bill’s case, HB24-1379 outlines key requirements and structure for a state program to regulate dredge and fill impacts to state waters which are not covered under the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Clean Water Act. The bill directs Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) to develop and promulgate rules detailing how the program will be administered by December 31, 2025. These rules will determine regulatory requirements for stream restoration projects; determine how permits are evaluated, including standards avoiding and minimizing impacts to state waters; and establish a compensatory mitigation program to ensure that all lost stream and wetland functions due to permitted activities are replaced. How these rules are written will determine how effectively the state program meets the bill’s objectives.

CDPHE began convening stakeholders, including Audubon and our partners, in September 2024. They then released the first draft of new regulations on December 6th. CDPHE is holding monthly stakeholder meetings through November 2025 to build consensus on priorities and draft additional language. WQCC will begin the formal rulemaking process in August 2025, which will include a public comment period for the proposed rules and the rulemaking hearing will be held on December 8, 2025.

What’s at Stake?

The United States Geological Survey’s National Hydrography Dataset estimates that 24 percent of Colorado’s streams are ephemeral and 45 percent are intermittent. These streams provide key habitat for more than 400 bird species throughout Colorado and are vital for mitigating climate and drought impacts, protecting water quality in downstream riverways by capturing sediment and other pollutants, and regulating late season flows and stream temperatures.

One of the most critical components of a dredge and fill permitting program is compensatory mitigation. In the federal dredge and fill permitting program ((§) 404 of the CWA), which Colorado is modeling its program after, permittees must first avoid and minimize all impacts to regulated waters and then compensate for all unavoidable impacts. Wetland compensatory mitigation most commonly takes place through mitigation banks, where permittees purchase credits from a mitigation bank that has previously constructed wetlands. Mitigation can also be done through an in-lieu fee program or onsite, where the impacts are taking place, by the permittee.

Sunrise Over Wetland by NPS/Patrick Myers

While wetland mitigation has been a well-established practice for decades, stream mitigation has only become common in the last 20 years. Due to challenges unique to streams, and particularly ephemeral streams which are more challenging to create or replace through mitigation banks, stream mitigation has been largely ineffective at replacing the functions lost through dredge or fill impacts. One review of the efficacy of stream mitigation programs found that “existing methods often devalued partially degraded, small, and non-perennial streams and thus discouraged protection and restoration of these stream types.” Developing a compensatory mitigation program that effectively replaces the functions of ephemeral streams that are lost through unavoidable impacts is a key challenge this rulemaking will address.

HB24-1379 included three key provisions to ensure the program adequately protects ephemeral streams and isolated wetlands:

The rules must focus on avoidance and minimization of all adverse impacts [of permitted projects] and describe avoidance and minimization standards.

The rules must implement a compensatory mitigation program for all unavoidable impacts [of permitted projects]. Compensatory mitigation must compensate for all “functions of state waters that will be lost as a result of the authorized activity”

The rules must include an exemption [from permitting] for stream restoration projects in ephemeral streams that are designed solely for ecological lift. Ecological life refers to improvement in the biological and/or hydraulic health of the stream.

While the first draft regulation has been released, many of the sections of the rules that will address these issues are still under development.

Better Together – Working Collaboratively for the Environment

Audubon and our partners have been actively engaged with CDPHE through their stakeholder engagement processes to advocate for strong rules in these three areas. In November, Audubon along with 10 other conservation organizations contributed and signed on to a letter to CDPHE detailing our priorities. This coalition, Protect Colorado’s Waters, also submitted specific feedback on the draft regulations in early January and are continuing to be engaged in advocating for strong rules that ensure avoidance and minimization of wetlands impacts and effective mitigation when needed. Our priorities also include ensuring that qualified stream restoration projects, designed for ecological lift, can continue without undue regulatory burden.

While Audubon and our partners secured a major victory for birds and people with the passing of HB24-1379, our bill’s journey is not done yet. If CDPHE can develop and promulgate rules for this program that ensure that permitted projects are the least damaging available alternative, ensure any lost functions are replaced through mitigation, and streamline permitting for voluntary stream restoration projects, then Colorado’s program will be the first of its kind to effectively protect these vital habitats. To stay engaged and attend future stakeholder meetings, visit CDPHE’s dredge and fill engagement website.

Colorado River headwaters tributary in Rocky Mountain National Park photo via Greg Hobbs.

Rare earth elements found in #LincolnCreek raise new questions: Mineralized tributary and Ruby mine also source of rare earth elements in Lincoln Creek — Heather Sackett (AspenJournalism.org)

Lincoln Creek was orange just downstream of the mineralized tributary in July 2024. A team of scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder found that a mineralized tributary is also contributing rare earth elements to Lincoln Creek, in addition to other metals like aluminum. Credit: HEATHER SACKETT/Aspen Journalis

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):

January 25, 2025

Recent sampling shows that a high-alpine tributary of the Roaring Fork River, in addition to having high concentrations of certain metals, also contains rare earth elements. But what that means for human and aquatic health is unclear.

Scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder presented the preliminary results from water-quality sampling on Lincoln Creek over last summer at a public meeting hosted by the Roaring Fork Conservancy at the Basalt Regional Library on Thursday.

Occupying a lesser-known corner of the periodic table, rare earth elements (which, despite their name, are commonly occurring in Earth’s crust) are a set of 17 heavy metals that are used in making products such as cellphones, fiber-optic cables and computer monitors. With names such as yttrium, lanthanum and neodymium, they often turn up at sites in Colorado where there is acid rock drainage, such as upper Lincoln Creek.

“You get a phone’s worth of neodymium coming down the mineralized tributary about every 5½ minutes,” said Adam Odorisio, a graduate student and researcher at CU’s environmental engineering department. “This translates to 96,000 phones per year. And what I think is the most striking fact in this is that this is for one tributary. You multiply this across hundreds of acid mine sites in Colorado and potentially thousands across the Western U.S. and it’s very exciting for resource extraction.”

CU scientists are also monitoring other high alpine acid rock and mine drainage sites in Colorado, including the Snake River. Odorisio said the concentrations of rare earth elements in a mineralized tributary that feeds Lincoln Creek was in the middle of the pack when compared to other sites around the state.

In addition to the potential for mining valuable rare earth metals, scientists are eager to learn more about their impacts to human health and aquatic environments. There are no state or federal water quality standards for rare earth elements. Lincoln Creek is a source of drinking water for Front Range cities, including Colorado Springs.

“This is just wide open as an unknown area,” said Diane McKnight, a professor at CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “It’s not clear that it’s something to worry about here. The water from (Lincoln Creek) that goes into the Twin Lakes system is highly diluted.”

Over nine days from June through October, the CU team collected 79 water samples from eight sites, took sediment core samples from the Grizzly Reservoir lakebed, and collected rock scrapings and bugs from the waterway. Early results also confirmed what the Environmental Protection Agency found in previous water-quality tests: The water is highly acidic, and concentrations of metals including zinc, copper and aluminum exceed standards for aquatic life. Scientists found that a groundwater source could also be adding metals to Lincoln Creek. They are still analyzing the data and plan to present more results at a spring meeting.

“For the greater scientific community, the fate of rare earth elements in aquatic systems is not well understood,” Odorisio said. “We are hoping to change that.”

The headwaters of Lincoln Creek upstream from the Ruby Mine and mineralized tributary. Recent water sampling by scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder found rare earth elements in the creek downstream, but implications for human health and aquatic impacts are unclear. Credit: HEATHER SACKETT/Aspen Journalism

The results may be of use to the Lincoln Creek workgroup, an ad hoc group – composed of officials from Pitkin County, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Independence Pass Foundation, Roaring Fork Conservancy and others – that is trying to understand how contaminants are impacting Lincoln Creek and the Roaring Fork River. The group has hired consultants LRE Water to compile water-quality data collected by several different agencies last summer and propose options to clean up the waterways.

“The rare earth metals is a group we haven’t really thought through,” said Kurt Dahl, Pitkin County’s environmental health manager. “That’s one of the things that we are talking through with the contractor, LRE Water.”

The water quality of Lincoln Creek has been under increased scrutiny in recent years as fish kills and discoloration of the water downstream of Grizzly Reservoir have become more frequent. In July, reservoir owner and operator Twin Lakes Reservoir & Canal Co. drained the reservoir for a planned dam-rehabilitation project, releasing an orange slug of sediment-laden water from the bottom of the reservoir downstream. Testing showed that the water had high levels of iron and aluminum, but not copper, which is toxic to fish.

An EPA report in 2023 determined that a “mineralized tributary,” which feeds into Lincoln Creek above the reservoir near the ghost town of Ruby, is the main source of the high concentrations of metals downstream.

The process that causes metals leaching into streams can be both naturally occurring and caused by mining activities. In both cases, sulfide minerals in rock come into contact with oxygen and water, producing sulfuric acid. The acid can then leach the metals out of the rock and into a stream, a process known as acid rock drainage. The contamination from acid rock drainage seems to be increasing at other locations around Colorado and may be exacerbated by climate change as temperatures rise.

The recent water-quality-testing effort on Lincoln Creek is probably just the beginning of a long-term data-collection and monitoring program, Dahl said.

“I think there’s still a lot of energy around this,” Dahl said. “People are really invested in this, and it’s going to take a couple of years to get it characterized.”

Aspen Journalism, which is solely responsible for its editorial content, is supported by a grant from the Pitkin County Healthy Community Fund.

This story ran in the Jan. 27 edition of The Aspen Times.

Gen Z Fears Clean Water Shortages, Displacement Due to #ClimateChange — Walton Family Foundation

Click the link to read the release on the Walton Family Foundation website (Mark Shields):

January 28, 2025

74% of Gen Zers say climate change threatens the clean water supply in the U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Jan. 28, 2025 — The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup released a new report today examining Gen Z’s experiences with climate change and water issues, shedding light on their concerns about climate events and the potential impact on their generation’s future. The research finds water issues top the list of Gen Z’s climate worries, with individual perspectives shaped by diverse experiences and beliefs.

Of 12 climate-related issues measured in the study, majorities of Gen Zers express “some” or “a great deal” of worry about nine, including five related to water. This is true regardless of location, with water pollution and the health of fish and oceans ranking among the top three concerns in every U.S. Census region. While a majority of Gen Zers nationwide (61%) have reported experiencing a water-related climate issue in the past two years, water-related problems are more commonly reported by those in the Central and Western U.S.

When considering how these issues may affect their future, Gen Zers report concern about the availability of clean water and the potential need to relocate. Those who have experienced climate-related events at a higher rate are more likely to worry about these impacts . T here are notable differences across demographic groups. Hispanic (36%) and Black (34%) Gen Zers are more likely than their White (27%) peers to have experienced unsafe tap water . They are also more likely to believe there will not be enough clean water for their generation to live in the future (41% of Hispanic and 34% of Black Gen Zers, compared with 24% of W hite Gen Zers). Adult Gen Zers are significantly more likely to worry about needing to move due to climate change compared with their 12- to 17-year-old counterparts (40% vs. 27%, respectively).

Denver School Strike for Climate, September 20, 2019.

There is large-scale unity among young people on the importance of protecting water quality. Seventy-four percent of Gen Zers say it is “very important” to protect oceans, lakes and rivers from pollution, with another 19% saying it is “somewhat important.” Gen Z acknowledges the adverse effects of climate change on water resources: 74% of Gen Zers say climate change impacts the amount of clean water available in the U.S. “somewhat” (47%) or “a great deal” (27%). There is solid bipartisan agreement on the inadequacy of current water protection efforts: M ajorities of both Democratic (88%) and Republican (63%) Gen Z adults say the U.S. is “probably” or “definitely” not doing enough to protect water.

“Gen Z is united in their deep concern for water protection and availability, recognizing it as a critical issue that touches us all — regardless of where we live or who we are,” said Moira Mcdonald, Environment Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation. “As we look to the future, there’s a growing sense of urgency. Young people fear inheriting a world where clean water is scarce and climate change continues to worsen. We need to work on solutions to ensure clean, safe water remains accessible for generations to come.”

Looking ahead, Gen Zers are pessimistic about the trajectory of climate change — 67% believe climate change will worsen in their lifetime. And rates of pessimism are about 10 percentage points higher among those who have recently experienced a climate-related issue such as flooding, drought or unsafe tap water. Among voting-age Gen Zers, majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believe it is very or somewhat unlikely that climate change will be stopped.

Methodology

Results are based on a Gallup Panel™ web survey conducted Aug. 6-14, 2024, with a sample of 2,832 12- to 27-year-olds from across the U.S. The Gallup Panel is a probability-based panel of U.S. adults. Data were weighted to match demographic targets of age, gender, education, race, Hispanic ethnicity and Census region for 12- to 27-year-olds, using the most recent five-year population estimates from the American Community Survey.

Twelve- to 17-year-old children, as well as some 18-year-olds, were reached through adult members of the Gallup Panel who indicated they had at least one child aged 18 or younger living in their household. The remaining 18- to 27-year-old respondents are members of the Gallup Panel.

For the total sample of 2,832 respondents, the margin of sampling error is +/-2.9 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error for subgroups are higher; selected subgroups are reported below. All margins of error reported are adjusted to account for the design effect.

El Paso County to consider forever chemicals testing agreement with Air Force — #Colorado Politics #PFAS

Fountain Creek photo via the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District

Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Politics website (Savannah Eller). Here’s an excerpt:

January 22, 2025

The El Paso County Board of County Commissioners will soon have an option on the table to formalize a forever chemicals testing agreement with the Air Force over wells at Fountain Creek Regional Park. Todd Marts, El Paso County director of community services, said in an informal meeting with commissioners on Tuesday that the U.S. Air Force has been regularly testing wells for two forever chemical types in “surrounding areas” including the park. The agreement would formalize continued access for the military…

Widefield aquifer via the Colorado Water Institute.

Residents in and around Fountain and Security-Widefield were previously exposed to elevated levels of forever chemicals from firefighting foams used on Peterson Space Force Base. The communities have since put in systems to treat groundwater…The county did not have immediate plans to mitigate forever chemicals in park water, with Melvin pointing out that the chemicals lived up to their name. El Paso County’s parks department is considering the addition of a third well to serve the Fountain Creek Nature Center, will would also be subject to testing under the access agreement with the Air Force. The contract will allow military access for testing for one year, with the option to renew for nine years. The El Paso County commissioners will vote on the agreement as an item at an upcoming public meeting.

How do President Trump’s Executive Orders Impact Your Clean Water? — Leda Hua (AmericanRivers.org)

Merrimack River, New Hampshire | Merrimack River Watershed Council

Click the link to read the article on the American Rivers website (Leda Hua):

January 22, 2025

Following his inauguration, President Trump issued a number of executive orders focused on climate and energy—actions that could have major impacts on the rivers and clean water that all Americans depend on. President Trump has said he wants our country to have “the cleanest water,” which is why we must prevent any actions that harm our rivers and drinking water sources.

That’s why we need a responsible national energy strategy that is considerate of our water resources. Responsible energy development means meeting the needs of people without damaging the environment that our health and water wealth depend on.

No matter who you are or where you live, we all need clean, safe, reliable drinking water. Most of our country’s water comes from rivers. Public opinion research shows that Republican, Democrat, and Independent voters of all ages and races overwhelmingly support protections for clean water.  Clean water is a basic need, a human right, and a nonpartisan issue we can all agree on.

The details and implementation of these executive orders will matter as we pursue the dual goals of energy and water security.

We cannot return to days where polluters were allowed to devastate rural and urban communities and their natural resources. But these executive orders eliminate efforts to safeguard communities from environmental harm, putting their drinking water at risk.

In addition to protecting Americans from pollution, we also need to help families and businesses prepare for increasingly extreme weather. As Asheville, North Carolina and other communities in the Southeast continue to recover from Hurricane Helene, and thousands in Los Angeles are without homes following recent catastrophic fires, we should be bolstering policies to fight climate change and working to strengthen communities in the face of severe floods, droughts, and fires.

Created by Imgur user Fejetlenfej , a geographer and GIS analyst with a ‘lifelong passion for beautiful maps.’ It highlights the massive expanse of river basins across the country – in particular, those which feed the Mississippi River, in pink.

Announcement: Public water systems grant availability for emerging contaminants: Grant application deadline is March 21 — #Colorado Department of Public Heakth & Environment

Firefighting foam containing PFAS chemicals is responsible for contamination in Fountain Valley. Photo via USAF Air Combat Command

From email from CDPHE:

January 24, 2025

The Water Quality Control Division (division) is pleased to announce the Request for Applications (RFA) for the Emerging Contaminants in Small or Disadvantaged Communities Grant Program. This RFA is open as of January 24, 2025.

This program helps non-transient, non-community or community public water systems in small or disadvantaged communities. The funds can help with planning, design, and infrastructure to reduce public health risks from emerging contaminants, including PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances), manganese, and others.

The details of this RFA are located on the division’s website. Written questions and inquiries regarding the RFA are due on February 7, 2025, by 2:00 p.m. MDT.

The application deadline is March 21, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. MDT.

Lenguaje y accesibilidad
Si necesita ayuda en español o en otro idioma, póngase en contacto con la división escribiendo a cdphe.commentswqcd@state.co.us.

The American Oil Industry’s Playbook, Illustrated: How Drillers Offload Costly Cleanup Onto the Public — Mark Olalde, illustrations by Peter Arkle (ProPublica.org) #ActOnClimate

Abandoned gas well located in Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. By Hillebrand, Steve, USFWS – https://digitalmedia.fws.gov/digital/collection/natdiglib/id/13540/rec/9, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113189594

Click the link to read the article on the ProPublica website:

by Mark Olalde, illustrations by Peter Arkle, special to ProPublica

December 30, 2024

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Series: Unplugged:Will Taxpayers Foot the Oil Industry’s Cleanup Bill?

More in this series

In December 1990, officials in the federal agency tasked with regulating offshore oil and gas drilling received a memo with a dire warning: America faced a ticking time bomb of environmental liability from unplugged oil and gas wells, wrote the agency’s chief of staff. Those wells and their costly cleanup obligations were being concentrated in the hands of cash-strapped drillers at the same time as production was shrinking. (The document, unearthed by public interest watchdog organization Documented, was shared with ProPublica and Capital & Main.)

More than three decades later, little action has been taken to heed that warning, and the time bomb is threatening to explode.

More than 2 million oil and gas wells sit unplugged across the country. Many leak contaminants like brine, methane and benzene into waterways, farmland and neighborhoods. The industry has already left hundreds of thousands of old wells as orphans, meaning companies walked away, leaving taxpayers, government agencies or other drillers on the hook for cleanup.

America’s oil fields are increasingly split between a small number of wells producing record profits and everything else. Researchers estimate roughly 90% of wells are already dead or barely producing.

Consider the Permian Basin, the world’s most productive oil field, stretching from West Texas across southeastern New Mexico.

“The Permian is the oil patch’s Alamo — that’s where it’s retreating to,” Regan Boychuk, a Canadian oil cleanup researcher, said of the oil industry. “That’s their last stand.”

Even here, many wells sit idle and in disrepair. It’s time to plug them, according to a growing chorus of researchers, environmentalists and industry representatives.

The question of who pays for cleanup remains unanswered. Time and again, oil companies have offloaded their oldest wells. Their tactics are not written down in one place or peddled by a single law firm — but companies follow an unmistakable pattern. The strategy, which is legal if followed properly, has become such a tried-and-true endeavor that researchers and environmentalists dubbed it “the playbook.”

Clark Williams-Derry, an analyst with clean-energy-focused think tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, studies fossil fuel companies’ cleanup costs. “There’s almost a cheerleading squad for shedding your liabilities, like a snake sheds its skin and just slithers away,” he said.

Should you want to become an oil executive and try this strategy yourself, here’s how it works …

As you launch your business, begin by collecting subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives from the government to guarantee you can pump oil and gas profitably. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies total in the trillions each year, according to organizations such as the International Monetary Fund.

Next, start pumping and profiting.

As you set up your business, create layers of shell companies. Down the road, they’ll provide a firewall between you and your liabilities — key among them, cleanup costs.

Once oil and gas production slows, sell low-producing wells. Smaller drillers operating on thinner margins, known in the business as “scavenger companies,” will be happy to take them off your hands.

Rinse and repeat by selling wells as their profits slow to a trickle. They’ll be sold again to ever-smaller companies that teeter on the edge of insolvency. Maintenance and environmental stewardship will usually fall by the wayside as companies eke out a profit. Studies show that the number of environmental violations rises as wells pass to less-capitalized drillers. But these wells aren’t your problem any longer.

Pull any remaining profits before regulators hit you with violations and fines for your remaining wells that aren’t pumping and may be leaking.

Then, idle the wells — pausing production, but not plugging them or cleaning up — and walk away. Regulators are typically tasked with ensuring that as much oil as possible is pumped out of the ground, so rules allow wells to sit idle, instead of being plugged, in case prices surge and it becomes profitable to restart them. However, a study in California found that, after wells are inactive for only 10 months, there’s a 50-50 chance they will never produce again.

Regulators will likely grow tired of asking you to clean up your wells, but you can make the case for leaving them unplugged for now. Pitch grand plans, as other drillers have — maybe repurposing the wells for bitcoin mining, carbon sequestration or the synthesis of hydrogen fuel — that require the wells to remain open.

When regulators’ patience has reached its limit, remind them what will happen if they come down hard on you. Fines or other extra costs could force your business into bankruptcy, leaving your unplugged wells as orphans and taxpayers on the hook. Ask them if they want to be responsible for that catastrophe.

“The root of the problem is there’s no regulator of the oil industry across North America,” Boychuk said, adding that “the rule of law has never applied to oil and gas.”

When regulators finally act, declare bankruptcy. The Bankruptcy Code is meant to protect businesspeople like you who took risks. More than 250 oil and gas operators in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy protection between 2015 and 2021, according to law firm Haynes Boone. (Industry groups estimate there are several thousand oil companies in the country.)

Regulators only require oil and gas companies to set aside tiny bonds that act like a security deposit on an apartment. Because you didn’t clean up your wells, you’ll lose that money, but it’s a fraction of the profits you’ve banked or the cost of the cleanup work. ProPublica and Capital & Main found that bonds typically equal less than 2% of actual cleanup costs.

And as you finalize your exit, the labyrinth of shell corporations you set up should act as corporate law intends, protecting you from future responsibility. Such companies, little more than stacks of paper, will be responsible for your liabilities, not you. Even if regulators know who is behind a company, it becomes increasingly difficult to penetrate each layer of a business to go after individual executives.

“It’s the essence of corporate law,” Williams-Derry said.

Now that you’ve offloaded your wells, you’re free to start fresh — launch a new oil company and buy some of your old wells for pennies on the dollar, a proven option. Maybe you leave oil entirely — that’s also tried-and-true. Or become a vintner and open a winery just down the road from the wells you left as orphans — you wouldn’t be the first.

For its part, the oil industry downplays the so-called playbook and the country’s orphan well epidemic. “There’s a general trend, which is there are very few orphan wells,” said Kathleen Sgamma, who has been among oil companies’ most vocal proponents as president of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry trade group. Plus, she said, companies’ bonds and states’ orphan well funds help pay for plugging.

But those tasked with addressing the reality of the country’s orphan wells disagree. “We have a welfare system for oil and gas. I hope you understand that,” said New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard, who oversees the state’s public lands. New Mexico has already documented more than 1,700 orphan wells across the state. “We have oil and gas welfare queens.”

In New Mexico, Garcia Richard is trying to hold accountable one of the myriad drillers that have followed key steps in the playbook, the oil company known as Siana.

Siana is made up of two related entities — Siana Oil and Gas Co. LLC and Siana Operating LLC — based in Midland and Conroe, Texas. The company operated 11 wells in southeastern New Mexico in the heart of the Permian Basin.

In reality, Siana is the corporate shield for a man named Tom Ragsdale. After he aggregated his few wells, he generated cash through a trickle of oil and gas production and set up a business injecting other companies’ wastewater into his wells to dispose of it. But the state worried that Ragsdale’s operations were polluting the environment and that he was refusing to pay royalties and rental fees he owed the state, according to State Land Office staff.

Ragsdale did not respond to repeated requests for comment from ProPublica and Capital & Main. He also did not appear for a pretrial conference after the state brought legal action against Siana, court records show, and a state court judge ruled against his companies.

Siana was responsible for at least 16 spills, according to New Mexico Oil Conservation Division data, mainly spilling what’s called produced water, a briny wastewater that comes to the surface alongside oil and gas. “Corrosion” and “Equipment Failure” were among the causes.

The State Land Office hired an engineering firm to study the damage. The firm produced a damning 201-page report in 2018, finding oil and salt contamination exceeding state limits at Siana’s most polluted site. At high enough levels, these substances can kill plants, harm wildlife and impact human health.

The State Land Office estimated that cleaning up that site alone would cost about $1 million.

In 2020, New Mexico won a judgment against Ragsdale’s companies that, with interest, is now worth more than $3.5 million. But it won’t cover the cleanup cost. Between a small bond and the judgment, the state has been able to recover a mere $50,000 or so from Siana and related entities.

When the state tried to collect the rest, Ragsdale placed Siana Oil and Gas in bankruptcy protection in June 2023. Although he listed the company as having millions in assets at the time of the bankruptcy, the company had only $20,500 in a bank account. Court records show Siana is responsible for between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities, including money owed to the state of New Mexico, other oil companies, various counties and others.

Stickers plastered around Siana’s drill sites — on which the company’s name is misspelled — provide phone numbers to call in case of leaks or other emergencies. None went to Ragsdale or Siana employees. A man named William Dean answered one number. He owned a local oil field services company called Dean’s Pumping that was contracted to work on Siana’s wells, but Ragsdale stopped paying its bills, ultimately owing his company tens of thousands of dollars, Dean said.

“He was trying to half-ass things,” Dean said of Ragsdale. “I don’t know what happened to Tom.”

Siana’s bankruptcy case is ongoing, but Ragsdale has been largely unresponsive even in those proceedings.

Siana is, Garcia Richard said, “an exemplar of how our system has failed.” Although he was very nearly free of his old wells, Ragsdale flouted the playbook and ignored the bankruptcy judge’s demands that he participate in the case. In an unusual move, the judge in late September issued a warrant for Ragsdale’s arrest to compel him to hand over certain data. The U.S. Marshals Service was investigating Ragsdale’s whereabouts but had not taken him into custody as of mid-December, according to an agency representative.

The day after the judge issued the arrest warrant, the bankruptcy trustee filed a complaint alleging Ragsdale had committed fraud, siphoning about $2.4 million from Siana to purchase real estate in Houston.

That money could have gone toward cleaning up the mess left to New Mexico taxpayers.

ProPublica and Capital & Main visited Siana’s 11 wells in late 2023. At one drill site, methane leaked from a wellhead that had also stained the surrounding land black from spilled oil. The air was sour with the smell of toxic hydrogen sulfide. A nearby tank that held oil for processing was rusted through. Another had leaked an unidentified liquid. There appeared to be hoofprints where cattle had tracked through the polluted mud.

ProPublica and Capital & Main found oil spills at multiple Siana wells. At others, the idle pump jacks stood silent — corroded skeletons at the end of the line, the detritus of another run through the playbook.

Efforts to reform the system that has shielded oil companies from liability have been haphazard. When the federal government rewrote its rule setting bond levels on federal public land earlier this year, a simple math error meant the government would ask oil companies to set aside around $400 million less in bonds than it would’ve otherwise. And when states have tried to pass reforms, they’ve been stymied by state legislators’ and regulators’ chummy relationships with the industry.

As an ever-greater share of wells go offline and the economy transitions to cleaner forms of energy, policymakers face a choice: Do they focus attention on propping up or cleaning up the industry?

Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance gives voice to one path forward. “Any time a well goes into an orphan status, it’s not a good thing,” Sgamma said, yet her group has been instrumental in killing efforts to address the orphan well epidemic and the oil industry’s contributions to climate change. Her organization is suing to halt the federal rule that sought to bring bonding levels closer to true plugging costs.

Sgamma co-authored the energy section of Project 2025, the conservative policy paper with deep ties to the first Trump administration that lays out policy priorities for a conservative White House. The plan would “Stop the war on oil and natural gas,” reopen undeveloped habitat from Alaska to Colorado for drilling, increase the number of sales for oil leases on public lands and shrink federal environmental agencies. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated this closely aligns with his vision for pumping America’s “liquid gold.” He has begun staffing his administration with pro-oil and gas figures.

The future for which Sgamma is fighting sees a resilient American oil and gas industry, able to “take a lot of punches” while continuing to grow unabated.

Or there’s the future Garcia Richard, who oversees New Mexico’s public land, envisions. She has paused the leasing of public land to drillers until the Legislature forces oil companies to pay state taxpayers higher royalties that reflect fair market rates. She directed her staff to aggressively pursue companies like Siana. And her office is preparing to raise required bonding levels. As she talked about this work, she held up the literal rubber stamp that imparts the State Land Office’s seal on documents, suggesting that’s not how business is done anymore. She also held up a small notebook where she tracks the numerous companies her office is pursuing for polluting the state’s land and water.

In her future, Garcia Richard said, oil drillers wouldn’t behave like Siana and Ragsdale. “A good-acting company is a company that understands there’s a cost of doing business that shouldn’t be borne by the landowner, shouldn’t be borne by the taxpayers,” she said. But in the modern American oil industry, she added, the playbook and the still-burning fuse of the cleanup time bomb represent little more than “Wild West behavior.”

EPA takes unprecedented step to remove uranium waste from the Navajo Nation: The decision opens the door for new ways to manage uranium pollution on tribal land — Natalia Mesa (High Country News)

Red Water Pond Road Community leader, Larry King, addresses plans to relocate the Quivera Mine Waste Pile that is located about 1,000 feet from the closest residence. Shayla Blatchford

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Natalia Mesa):

January 17, 2025

As a child, herding her grandmother’s sheep, Teracita Keyanna unknowingly wandered onto land contaminated with radioactive waste from three abandoned uranium mine and mill waste sites located near her home on the Navajo Nation.

Keyanna and other Diné citizens have been living with the consequences of uranium mining near the Red Water Pond Road community since the 1960s. But now, uranium waste rock that has sat for decades at a Superfund site will finally be moved to a landfill off tribal land.

“This is a seismic shift in policy for Indigenous communities,” said Eric Jantz, an attorney for the New Mexico Environmental Law Center.

On Jan. 5, in a first-of-its-kind move, the Environmental Protection Agency signed an action memo to transport 1 million cubic yards of low-grade radioactive waste from the Quivira Mining Co. Church Rock Mine to a disposal site at the Red Rock Regional Landfill. The Northwest New Mexico Regional Solid Waste Authority owns and operates the landfill, which is located about 6 miles east of Thoreau, New Mexico.

“I feel like our community has finally had a win,” Keyanna said. She is a member of the Red Water Pond Road Community Association, a grassroots organization made up of Diné families that have been advocating for the waste removal for almost two decades. “It’ll help the community heal.”

Companies extracted an estimated 30 million tons of uranium ore on or near the Navajo Nation from 1944 to 1986, largely to fuel the federal government’s enormous nuclear arsenal. When the mines were abandoned in the 1980s, the toxic waste remained. Today, there are hundreds of abandoned mines in plain sight on the Navajo Nation, contaminating the water, air and soil. Altogether, there are an estimated 15,000 uranium mines across the West — 1,200 of them on the Navajo Nation alone — with the majority located in the Four Corners region.

The impact of all this mining on Diné communities has been devastating. A 2008 study found uranium contamination in 29 water sources across the Navajo Nation, while other studies show that people living near waste sites face a high risk of kidney failure and various cancers.

At Quivira, the cleanup is set to begin in early 2025 and will continue for six to eight years, according to an EPA news release. The permitting process, which will provide opportunity for public comment, will be overseen by the New Mexico authority that manages the proposed waste site and is responsible for its long-term safety monitoring.

Mine Waste Area with Limited Vegetation. Photo credit: EPA

The EPA had considered multiple options for waste remediation. But for years, Red Water Pond Road advocates and other local organizations continually pushed it to simply remove the waste, a course of action that the EPA has never taken before, even though the Navajo Nation has repeatedly called for the federal government to move all uranium waste from Diné tribal land.

Throughout the Navajo Nation, said Jantz, “prior to this decision, EPA’s primary choice in terms of remediation of mine was to bury the piles under some dirt and plant some grass seeds on top, called cap in place.” But studies have shown that this approach is not effective at containing radioactive waste in the long term, he said.

The agency took a similar approach when addressing the other uranium waste in the Church Rock area. In 2013, the EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees uranium mine-waste cleanup, dumped 1 million cubic yards of waste from the Northeast Church Rock Mine — a different waste site, roughly 3 miles from the Quivira Mine — on top of existing tailings located half a mile from the Red Water Pond Road communities.

But the EPA plans to handle the Quivira Mine’s waste differently, placing it in geoengineered disposal cells with a groundwater leak protection system after it is moved off-site, an approach that Jantz called “state-of-the-art.”

The Quivira Mine cleanup is part of the 2014 Tronox settlement, which provided $5.15 billion to clean up contaminated sites across the United States. The settlement allocated $1 billion of those funds to clean up 50 uranium mines across the Navajo Nation.

There is a lot more to be done, said Susan Gordon, coordinator for the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a grassroots organization led by uranium-impacted communities. Hundreds of abandoned mines pepper the Navajo Nation, and the EPA has not formulated a broader plan to clean up the majority of them. Funding is also an issue, she added.

What the EPA’s decision means for the future of uranium mine waste remediation is unclear. Under other circumstances, Jantz said that the decision would signal a sea change for the EPA’s policy of removing waste from the Navajo Nation. But the incoming Trump administration has not indicated its policy on hazardous waste disposal.

As Jantz put it, “All bets are off.”

Graphic credit: Environmental Protection Agency

#Colorado to start regulating emission of 5 air toxics that make people sick: The new regulations will be rolled out in phases over the course of 2025 and into 2026 — The #Denver Post

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

January 13, 2025

Five new compounds soon will be listed as priority toxic air contaminants in Colorado and, over the next two years, the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment and Air Quality Control Commission will determine out how to regulate them. The state’s Air Pollution Control Division will recommend five compounds to be regulated to the commission during its two meetings that begin Thursday. The creation of the list of toxic air contaminants is the result of a years-long effort from environmentalists and public health advocates who want the state to do more to protect people from the pollution that can cause cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma, and lung diseases, such as asthma, and can harm women’s reproductive health. For years, environmentalists have complained that air pollution permits issued by the federal and state governments allow companies to pollute with little attention given to how much of those contaminants are dangerous to human health…

The five toxic air contaminants being proposed for regulation are:

Acrolein, which is created when fossil fuels are burned by wood-burning, industrial boilers and reciprocating engines, and it is also used to make a polymer for paints, coatings and adhesives. Acute, short-term inhalation can cause eye and respiratory tract irritation. It is not considered a cancer risk.

Benzene, a carcinogen released when fossil fuels are burned, including in car exhaust and oil and gas extraction and production. It also is created by cement manufacturing, waste disposal and wood burning. Acute exposure may cause drowsiness, dizziness and headaches, as well as eye, skin and respiratory tract irritation, and unconsciousness at high levels. Chronic inhalation has caused cancer, various blood disorders and affects women’s reproductive organs, the Environmental Protection Agency has reported.

Ethylene oxide, which is used to make other products such as antifreeze, textiles, adhesives, plastics and detergents. It’s used to sterilize medical equipment, including at Terumo BTC in Lakewood to sanitize medical equipment. It causes cancers in humans, including lymphoma, myeloma, leukemia and breast cancer.

Hydrogen sulfide, highly toxic gas that smells like rotten eggs. It is released by wastewater treatment facilities, meat processing facilities, petroleum refining, manufacturing of asphalt and roofing material and places where large quantities of manure are stored. It can cause people to pass out due to high exposure. Low exposure can cause headaches, memory loss, balance problems and fatigue. It is not considered a carcinogen but data is limited on how it affects children’s health or women’s reproductive health, according to the EPA.

Hexavalent chromium is a by-product of industrial processes such as metal fabricating and by burning coal for electricity. It can leak into water systems and into the air. It can cause cancer and impact the respiratory system, kidneys, liver, skin and eyes, the EPA’s website says.

Cleanup of abandoned uranium mines set to start after Navajo Nation, EPA reach agreement — AZCentral.com

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

January 8, 2025

After years of demanding the cleanup of uranium waste at the Kerr-McGee Quivira Mines on the Navajo Nation community advocates got the news this week that the Environmental Protection Agency will remove waste rock from three areas of the site and move it to a new off-site repository. The removal of over 1 million cubic yards of radioactive waste from the sites about 20 miles northeast of Gallup will begin in early 2025, the EPA said. The waste will be taken to a new off-site repository at Red Rocks Landfill east of Thoreau, N.M. The process, including permitting, construction, operation and closure of the repository, is expected to take 6-8 years.

“I feel as though our community finally has something of a win,” said Teracita Keyanna, a member of the executive committee for Red Water Pond Road Community Association. “Removing the mine waste from our community will protect our health and finally put us back on a positive track to Hózhǫ.”

Commercial exploration, development, and mining of uranium at Quivira Mines began in the late 1960s by the Kerr-McGee Corporation and later its subsidiary. The mine sites are the former Church Rock 1 (CR-1) mining area; the former Church Rock 1 East (CR-1E) mining area; and the Kerr-McGee Ponds area. The mines were in operation from 1974 to the mid-1980s and had produced about 1.2 million tons of ore, making them among the 10 highest producing mines on the Navajo Nation…From World War II until 1971, the U.S. government was the sole purchaser of uranium ore, driving extensive mining operations primarily in the southwestern United States. These efforts employed many Native Americans and others in mines and mills. Between 1944 and 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands under leases with the Navajo Nation. With over 500 abandoned uranium mines — many say the total could be in the thousands — clean up of mines has always been a battle.

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

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

January 8, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several Southeastern Board members attended Wednesday’s announcement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funding awarded from the senators’ Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More information on the funding is available HERE.

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

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

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

December 16, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 31, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rundown

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A dark water history

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Introducing bacteria to the environment

Where biochar comes in

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🌵 Public Lands 🌲

⛏️ Mining Monitor ⛏️

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🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

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Sued by environmental groups

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🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡

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Highly acidic concentrations

Both sides of the divide

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Planning for emergency water releases

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Lake Powell’s ecosystems feel the strain

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🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑

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Delays, Confusion Over PFAS

Research Under Fire

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