As Western states haggle over reducing water use because of declining flows in the Colorado River Basin, a more hopeful drama is playing out in Glen Canyon.
Lake Powell, the second-largest U.S. reservoir, extends from northern Arizona into southern Utah. A critical water source for seven Colorado River Basin states, it has shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years.
As the water drops, Glen Canyon โ one of the most scenic areas in the U.S. West โ is reappearing.
This landscape, which includes the Colorado Riverโs main channel and about 100 side canyons, was flooded starting in the mid-1960s with the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. The areaโs stunning beauty and unique features have led observers to call it โAmericaโs lost national park.โ
Lake Powellโs decline offers an unprecedented opportunity to recover the unique landscape at Glen Canyon. But managing this emergent landscape also presents serious political and environmental challenges. In my view, government agencies should start planning for them now.
The Powell-Ingalls Special Commission meeting with Southern Paiutes. Photo credit: USGS
Click the link to read the article on the USDA website:
Washington,ย February 3, 2023ย –ย The U.S. Department of Agricultureโs Forest Service today published an action plan that outlines steps the agency will take to advance tribal consultation and strengthen Nation-to-Nation relationships with federally recognized Tribes.
โThis is more than a document. This action plan solidifies a pivotal moment in our agencyโs history. The Forest Service manages millions of acres of lands, including ancestral homelands of American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal Nations. We acknowledge the tragic history involving the forced displacement of Indigenous People and recognize that upholding our federal trust and treaty responsibilities to Tribal Nations is a responsibility and an ongoing journey for our agency.โ said Forest Service Chief Randy Moore. โWhen we acknowledge this history and work to ensure our actions and investments are reflective of our commitment to a better future, we can build trust and repair relationships with Tribes.
โNational forests and grasslands often include ancestral homelands that Tribes have stewarded for centuries. Indigenous Nations are a key partner in how we value, co-manage, and steward our Nationโs grasslands and forests. Understanding the perspective and wisdom of Indigenous people gives us an opportunity to reflect on our policies, programs and practices, the real-life implications they have on Indigenous peoples and what role we can play in rectifying historical or ongoing issues. With this plan as a guide, Forest Service employees will begin to implement a new way of working that will build trust and create innovative opportunities with Tribal Nations.โ
The plan also emphasizes the agencyโs unique, shared responsibility to ensure that decisions relating to federal stewardship of lands, waters and wildlife include consideration of how to safeguard the treaty rights and spiritual, subsistence and cultural interests of any federally recognized Tribe.
As part of this work, the Forest Service has renamed the State & Private Forestry deputy chief area to State, Private & Tribal Forestry to emphasize our commitment.
The action plan provides a framework for advancing existing laws, regulations and policies and is not intended to amend or establish new Forest Service policy or direction. Rather, the plan provides steps that can be implemented through existing programs and processes based on four focus areas:
Strengthen Relationships Between Indian Tribes and the USDA Forest Service.
Fulfill Trust and Treaty Obligations.
Enhance Co-Stewardship of the Nationโs Forests and Grasslands.
Advance Tribal Relations Within the USDA Forest Service.
On our commitment to โEnhance Co-Stewardship of the Nationโs Forests and Grasslands,โ during the 2022 White House Tribal Nations Summit, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Dr. Homer Wilkes underscored the progress the Forest Service is making in the implementation of the Joint Secretarial Order on Fulfilling the Trust Responsibility to Indian Tribes in the Stewardship of Federal Lands and Waters (Order No. 3403), a policy framework to facilitate agreements with Tribes in the co-stewardship of federal lands and waters.
To date, the agency has signed 11 new agreements with 13 Tribes, involving eight National Forests, agreements that include a collective investment of approximately $4.1 million in FY22. These co-stewardship agreements, along with 60 others involving 45 tribes in various stages of review, represent a Forest Service FY22 investment of approximately $19.8 million in our shared commitment to advancing co-stewardship with tribes. The agreements also reflect an agency commitment to include consideration of how to safeguard the treaty, spiritual, subsistence, and cultural interests of any Indian Tribe by ensuring tribal governments play an integral role in decision-making related to the management of federal lands and waters through consultation, capacity-building, and other means consistent with applicable authority.
โThe U.S. and Tribal Nations are working together to create more realistic and progressive relationships that honor and respect tribal sovereignty,โ said Reed Robinson, director of the Forest Service Office of Tribal Relations.
โWe are witnessing significant growth of American Indian & Alaska Native populations, cultural expression and ownership, and economic development. This moment is critical for Forest Service employees to lead from where they are, to acknowledge, plan, take consequential actions, and step through the aperture of opportunity that, right now, is wider than any other time in history.โ
North American Indian regional losses 1850 thru 1890.
Part of the deal Wyoming struck for sending its water down the Colorado River was that state residents would be able to tap electricity generated at Glen Canyon Dam. But that arrangement is becoming less tenable as water levels at Lake Powell required for hydro-power production continue to drop.
Sinjin Eberle, southwest communications director with the group American Rivers, explained in order to be able to generate electricity, Lake Powell can drop no lower than 3,490 feet.
“Figuring out how we’re going to manage this system in the face of a much smaller river is what everybody in the Colorado River Basin, whether you are in Wyoming or California, need to be concerned about,” Eberle said.
Glen Canyon Dam currently generates energy for nearly 6-million households in Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Lake Powell water levels dropped to their lowest point since 1967 last summer, reaching 3,533 feet, and some warn the lake could dip below levels necessary for power generation as early as this spring, and have proposed demolishing the dam to help restore the Colorado River’s health and long-term viability.
If Lake Powell drops below Dead Power to Dead Pool status at 3,370 feet, water would no longer be able to flow through the dam to lower basin states. This year’s higher-than-average snow pack may provide short-term relief, but Eberle said it could take years of above-average precipitation to reverse decades of drought across the region, and added the challenges facing Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam are multi-faceted.
“Water-supply issues from a lingering 23-year drought, with impacts from climate change continuing to exacerbate those drought conditions,” Eberle said. “And then (we have) some of the fastest growing areas of the country demanding more water.”
When the Colorado River Compact was first negotiated in 1922, there were just 475,000 people living in the seven-state basin. Then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover projected that population could swell to two million people over time. But there are now at least 40-million people across the basin that depend on water from the river, Eberle said.
“This framework that was built in 1922 has lasted 100 years, but is also trying to support a system that is many, many times larger than the wildest imaginations of the framers when they built this compact,” he said.
Disclosure: American Rivers contributes to our fund for reporting on Environment, Public Lands/Wilderness, Salmon Recovery, Water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.
Click the link to read the post on the NOAA website (Emily Becker):
La Niรฑaโthe cool phase of the El Niรฑo-Southern Oscillation climate patternโweakened over the past month, and forecasters expect a transition to neutral conditions in the next couple of months. Weโll check in with the tropical Pacific to see how things are going before continuing the journey into understanding winter daily temperature variability that I started in Decemberโs post.
Current events
The sea surface temperature in theย Niรฑo-3.4 regionย in the tropical Pacific came in at 0.75 ยฐC (1.4 หF) cooler than the long-term average in January according toย ERSSTv5, our most consistent historical dataset.
Three-year history of sea surface temperatures in the Niรฑo-3.4 region of the tropical Pacific for the 8 existing multi-year La Niรฑa events (gray lines) and the current event (purple line). Of all the previous 7 events, 2 went on to La Niรฑa in their third year (below the blue dashed line), 2 went on to be at or near El Niรฑo levels (above the red dashed line) and three were neutral. Graph by Emily Becker based on monthly Niรฑo-3.4 index data from CPC using ERSSTv5.
This is the second month in a row with that the Niรฑo-3.4 anomaly (anomaly = โdifference from the long-term averageโ) has weakened, but it still exceeds the La Niรฑa threshold of -0.5 ยฐC. The most recent weekly Niรฑo-3.4 anomaly, which comes from the OISST dataset, was just at that threshold, measuring -0.5 ยฐC. (Take a look at Tomโs post for more details on the various datasets we use to track temperatures in the Pacific.)
Weekly measurements tend to bounce around (weather!), while ENSO is a seasonal pattern (climate!). Therefore, we wonโt declare La Niรฑa is over the moment the weekly value crosses the thresholdโweโll wait to be sure that the monthly average anomaly is in the neutral range (between -0.5 ยฐC and 0.5 ยฐC). The last time neutral conditions were present was summer 2021.
The atmospheric response to La Niรฑaโs cooler-than-average ocean surface is an amped-up Walker circulation: stronger trade winds, stronger westerly (west-to-east) winds high up in the atmosphere, more rain and clouds than average over the far western Pacific, and drier conditions over the east/central Pacific. All of these characteristics were evident through January, indicating that the atmosphere is still reflecting La Niรฑa.
Whatโs next??
Okay, okay, so La Niรฑa is still here. But forecasters expect that a change is imminent, with an 85% chance that the FebruaryโApril period will be neutral. This is based on the consensus of our computer models and bolstered by some physical observations, including the weakening oceanic anomalies at the surface and subsurface.
Water temperatures in the top 300 meters (1,000 feet) of the tropical Pacific Ocean compared to the 1991โ2020 average in DecemberโJanuary 2022โ23. NOAA Climate.gov animation, based on data from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
The subsurface provides a source for the surface. If there were still a lot of cooler water under the surface, we might be more hesitant to conclude that the transition to neutral conditions would happen soon. But as the animation above shows, the cold pool is getting smaller.
But will the neutral conditions we expect for spring precede an El Niรฑo?? Tell us what we really want to know! Currently, El Niรฑo has odds of about 60% for next fallโand after three La Niรฑa winters in a row, it might seem inevitableโbut there are some factors that provide uncertainty. Thereโs our old friend, the spring predictability barrier. Forecasts made in the spring tend to have lower accuracy, at least in part because spring is a time of transition for ENSO (other possible factors are still being explored), making it harder for models to get a grip on what direction things are going.
Also, the wide range of potential outcomes from the models (shown below) tells us that there is still a lot of uncertainty.
February 2023 climate model forecasts for the Niรฑo-3.4 temperature anomaly in 2023 from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME). Each gray line shows an individual potential outcome. Purple line shows the observed Oceanic Niรฑo Index. Graph by Emily Becker.
Each line in that graph shows a possible scenario for next fall and winter. The scenarios begin to diverge for two main reasons: the differences in how each model simulates certain small-scale physical processes and, for a given model, the very-slightly-different starting input that accounts for the fact that we can never observe the current state of the climate system perfectly. The predictions span from strong El Niรฑo to (gasp!) a 4th-year La Niรฑa. These extreme scenarios are unlikely, though, and the majority of the forecasts are in the neutral to moderate-El Niรฑo range. More on climate models in this post.
In summary: La Niรฑa is waning, and confidence is high that neutral conditions will be in place soon and will last through the spring and early summer. Chances for El Niรฑo next fall are increasing, but weโll have a better picture as we progress through and past the spring predictability barrier.
Daily temperature variability or bust!
To recap: over the last couple of posts, Iโve been looking into how ENSO affects the range of daily temperatures within a season. When it comes to ENSO impacts, we usually talk about the seasonal average temperature, butโas vividly illustrated by the two extreme cold-air outbreaks in the U.S. this winterโdaily temperature is how we experience weather. So I examined the variability or range of daily temperature each winter over 1950โ2020 and then checked if the range of variability was different in El Niรฑo winters or La Niรฑa winters compared to neutral winters. Details of my analysis are in the footnotes.
In December, I showed that the range of daily average temperature is wider during La Niรฑa winters than during El Niรฑo winters in nearly all of North America. The only geographic exceptions are the north-central region of the continent, Florida, and southern Mexico, all of which have lower variability during La Niรฑa and higher variability during El Niรฑo winters.
Then, inย January, I checked out the average range of dailyย minimumย andย maximumtemperatures. It turned out that there is a very wide range of daily minimum temperatures (usually the overnight low temperature) in the center of the continent, with less variability toward the coasts, especially the Southwest. Looking at daily maximums (usually the daytime high), we found that there was less variability overall than with the minimum, except for the subtropical regions.
The average variability of daily low temperatures (left) and high temperatures (right) within winter. Yellow regions show where the range of daily temperatures in winter is greatest, while blue shows regions with the narrowest range. The range is assessed using the standard deviation of daily low or high temperature averaged over all winters (DecemberโFebruary), 1950โ2020. Daily temperature data source is Berkeley Earth. Map by climate.gov based on analysis by Emily Becker.
Breaking down the patterns into ENSO phase, the first thing we can say is that El Niรฑo and La Niรฑa have approximately opposite effects on both daily maximum and daily minimum, much as they did on the average temperature variability I showed in December. Where El Niรฑo reduces variability, La Niรฑa increases it, and vice-versa.
The difference in the range of daily minimum and maximum temperature in El Niรฑo winters (upper row) and La Niรฑa winters (lower row), compared to the long-term average. Purple shows where the variability of daily highs or lows is greater, while orange shows where the range is reduced. For example, during El Niรฑo winters, the range of daily low temperatures is lower than average in Alaska, while it is increased during La Niรฑa winters. Long-term average is 1950โ2020. Temperature data from Berkeley Earth. Map by climate.gov based on analysis by Emily Becker.
However, things are a little noisier than those average daily patterns were. This is expected; any time you get into more granular dataโwhether youโre talking about area or time spanโyour results get noisier. (Another example of this is the weekly vs. monthly sea surface temperature I talked about above.) Iโll make a few quick observations about these maps but leave you to compare them for your hometown or other areas of interest.
Looking first at the maps for La Niรฑa winters, we find that much of the U.S. and Alaska experience an increased range of daily lows. The pattern of La Niรฑaโs impact on the daily high temperature range is somewhat different, with variability decreasing in the northern half of the U.S. and increasing in the Southeast. However, there are some regions where both daily highs and daily lows change the same way during La Niรฑa winters (increased range in the Southeast and in Alaska).
During El Niรฑo, the range of daily low temperature is substantially reduced across most of the U.S. and Alaska. The range of daily highs, however, is slightly expanded or only slightly reduced over the U.S.
Thatโs all thereโs space for this month. What ideas do you have for why these patterns vary the way they do? Let us know in the comments! Then next month, Iโll wrap things up with some explanations and thoughts about ENSOโs impact on daily temperature. Until then, stay cozy!
Footnote
Details on the analysis:
The maps show the standard deviation of daily maximum or minimum temperature for each winter averaged over all winters 1950โ2020 and the averages for La Niรฑa and El Niรฑo winters, as determined by the Oceanic Niรฑo Index.
Daily temperature data: I used Berkeley Earth daily average temperature dataset. Itโs also available here.
Years included: 1950โ2020. Berkeley Earth is available through near-present, but the data I downloaded ended in 2020. Iโll update with 2021โ2022, but I donโt expect the overall results to change.
Programming language: I used Python. Jupyter notebooks available upon request.
Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160
Click the link to read the article on The Gunnison Country Times website (Bella Biondini). Here’s an excerpt:
โWe can only save the Colorado River system if we act together,โ Upper Colorado River Commissioner Becky Mitchell said in a press release. โThe CBMA (Consensus-Based Modeling Alternative) approach appropriately distributes the burden across the Basin and provides safeguards for the Tribes, water users, and environmental values in the Upper Basin.โ
โWhoโs using all the water?โ
Water use by basin has been historically uneven, but dry conditions along the Colorado River have continued to reduce the amount of water available for all users. While each basin is entitled to 7.5 million acre-feet per year under the 1922 compact, only the Lower receives that much. And its use has been steadily increasing.ย At the same time, approximately 1.5 million acre-feet is lost to evaporation or in transit as it travels to large desert cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. The Lower Basin gets to keep this bonus, and its total allocation is not charged with the losses.ย Although Lower Basin users can pull more from large buckets of water upstream like Lake Powell in times of drought, those located at the headwaters of the Colorado River take their shortages directly from Mother Nature. Since 2019, use in the Upper Basin has declined by 22.5%, according to data from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.ย The Upper Basin states have consistently argued that the source of the problem is overconsumption downstream, said John McClow, general counsel for the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District. During the same time period that use in the Upper Basin declined, use in the Lower Basin increased by 7% โย ย equivalent to approximately 638,000 acre-feet or twice the current content of Blue Mesa Reservoir.ย
โWhoโs using all the water? It isnโt us,โ McClow said. โBut we have no choice. We canโt decide how much weโre consuming. We can only consume what melts into the rivers.โ
[…]
Reclamation has committed $125 million to a voluntary consumption reduction program in the Upper Basin through a partnership with the Upper Colorado River Commission. The Commission will select projects for implementation beginning in 2023 โ reimbursing selected water users per acre-foot of water saved for the greater system. Exactly how many users will participate is unknown.ย Thereโs agreement that the Upper and Lower Basin states must work collectively to address the risk in the Colorado River system, said Executive Director Chuck Cullom.
โThereโs also recognition that the Upper Basin activities are only effective if thereโs companion action in the lower basin,โ Cullom said.
Glen Canyon Dam during high flow experimental release about a decade ago. These occasional releases are just about the only time the river outlet works (where water is gushing out above) operate. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
For the last two years or so, federal Bureau of Reclamation officials have been fretting publicly about what might happen to Glen Canyon Dam as water levels continue to drop.ย Currently the surface of Lake Powell is perilously close to the penstocks, or the water intakes that lead to the hydroelectricity turbines. Once those are rendered inoperable, the only way to get water through the dam is via the river outlet works, or ROW.
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.
That could be a problem. First off, there are no turbines on the ROWs, so there would be no hydropower generation. And as Tanya Trujillo, the Interior Departmentโs assistant secretary for water and science, noted last year, the dam was not built โto operate solely through the outworks for an extended period of time.โ Bad things could happen, like cavitation of the ROWs, which could then threaten the very integrity of the dam. Something needs to be done.
Last week, the Bureau for the first time made public six alternatives the agency is considering:
Construct new, low- (3,245 feet) or mid-level (3,445 feet) power intakes through the dam that would utilize existing turbines, essentially lowering the โminimum power poolโ level as much as 200 feet.
Connect the current ROWs โ at 3,374 feet โ to the current turbines or install new turbines so hydropower generation could continue until the lake reached โdead pool,โ or falls below the ROWs (at which point no water can be released and the Grand Canyon will dry up).
Build a low-level bypass tunnel through the sandstone around the dam and install new turbines/power plant to allow for low-water releases with hydropower generation. (Simply reopening the original river diversion tunnels, built to allow for the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, was dismissed due to the fact that the openings are completely buried in silt. This bypass would be above the siltation level.)
Adjust Colorado River operations (e.g. release less water from Glen Canyon Dam, get people to stop using so much water, etc.)
Retrofit dam to allow it to generate hydropower through existing penstocks at slightly lower levels.
Invest in other power sources to offset hydropower losses.
Proposed powerplant addition Glen Canyon Dam. Credit: The Land Desk
Any of the first three options would be a major and expensive undertaking. And any of them would also allow Glen Canyon Dam to be operated at much lower lake levels, which would have consequences for Lake Powell, too. Already the reservoir looks radically different than it does at โnormalโ levels; try to imagine it 130 feet lower?
Currently, the surface of Lake Powell is sitting at 3,522 feet. Minimum power pool is 3,490. Dead pool is 3,370. The alternatives being considered would allow the minimum power pool level to drop to 3,390, according to the chart below (although, theoretically, a 3,285 foot intake would allow the level to drop another 100 feet before hitting dead pool).
Operations at or below reservoir elevation of 3,490′ (MPP). Credit: The Land Desk
That would not only reveal more hidden wonders, but would also cause the big slug of silt that is concentrated in the upper reaches of the reservoir to migrate further downstream. And it would wreak more havoc on recreation. Iโll leave you with a good Twitter thread from Zak Podmore mapping out Lake Powell at 3,285 feet.
It's a huge deal that Reclamation is considering drilling new tunnels through the Glen Canyon Dam. What would tunnels at 3,285 feet mean for the Colorado River in Glen Canyon? Thread… https://t.co/CmyVz0gDF6
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Rebecca Lindsey):
Last week, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information released a major update to the agencyโs global surface temperature dataset. The new product tracks temperatures back to 1850, adding 30 additional years to the historical record, and it has complete geographic coverage over data-sparse areas at the poles.
In honor of the new release, Climate.gov has made a poster-size image showing global temperature patterns for every year in the new data set. Each yearโs annual average temperature is compared to the 1991-2020 average, which makes it clear how long-term global warming has affected Earthโs temperature. The farther back in time you look, the colder the temperatures were (darker blues over larger areas) compared today.
Scattered among the blue globes in early decades are years with a wash of red across the eastern tropical Pacific, likely linked to El Niรฑo, the warm phase of theย El Niรฑo-Southern Oscillationย climate pattern. At the other end of the record, the pattern reverses, with the colder-than-average waters of La Niรฑa standing out on maps that are otherwise dominated by warmer-than-average conditions. Now here’s a question for other map geeks: what would the series look like if we had compared each year to the 1851-1880 average? To the 20th-century average?
Global average surface temperatures each year from 1850 to 2022 compared to the 1991-2020 average. Blue colors mean cooler-than-average annual temperatures, and red means warmer-than-average temperatures. Image by NOAA Climate.gov, based on data from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.
Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160
โThereโs too little supply and too much demand,โ said Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University. โUltimately, I think what weโre going to see here is some major rewriting of Western water law.โ
โWeโre seeing a collision right now between 19th century water law, 20th century infrastructure and 21st century population and climate change,โ Udall added. โAnd how this works out is anybodyโs guess.โ
[…]
West snowpack basin-filled map February 20, 2023 via the NRCS.
The snow and rain seen in the west this year isnโt enough to stabilize Lake Powell either, Andrechak said. โNow, the reality is, theyโre all going to get a cut. Everybody should give,โ he said.
โThereโs no time left. The crisis is here. They donโt necessarily have to give it up forever. It might be temporary for several years until thereโs improvements,โ he said. But even if water levels do improve in the future, states cannot expect to return to former water usage entirely.
โClimate change is making sure that itโll never get back to those levels,โ Andrechak said.
Click the link to read the article on The Los Angeles Times website (Hayley Smith and Ian James). Here’s an excerpt:
At the heart of the feud is the โLaw of the River,โ a body of agreements, court decisions, contracts and decrees that govern the riverโs use and date back to 1922, whenย the Colorado River Compactย first divided river flows among the states. [ed. note: George Sibley argues the “Prior Appropriation” is the base of the Law of the River.]ย
But as California argues most strongly for strict adherence to this system of water apportionment, the other states say it makes little sense when the riverโs largest reservoir, Lake Mead, continues to decline toward โdead poolโ level, which would effectively cut off the Southwest from its water lifeline. The Law of the River, they say, is getting in the way of a solution.
โWe can argue about whether interpretations of the Law of the River match the physical reality,โ said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. โBut if you end up in a courtroom arguing these points and something isnโt done, the Colorado River system is going to crash.โ
[…]
Californiaโs legal position is based on several factors, said James Salzman, a professor of environmental law at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. First, the authors of the original Colorado Compact made the โfateful decisionโ to divvy up water for the riverโs lower-basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada in absolute quantities instead of percentages.ย That means upper-basin states are obligated to deliver 7.5 million acre-feet per year to the lower states, no matter what, which โturned out to be a tragically bad design,โ Salzman said. Additionally, the massive Imperial Irrigation District in California established senior rights to the water before the Colorado River Compact โ meaning it holds high-priority rights to deliver theย single largest shareย of the riverโs water to Imperial Valley farmlands.ย
Arizona, by contrast, agreed to junior rights to the river in 1968 in exchange for building the Central Arizona Project, the system that transports river water through the state.
In other words, according to the Law of the River, if thereโs not enough water to go around, states like Arizona are supposed to be cut off before California.
The Salton Sea (pictured above ) straddles the Imperial and Coachella valleys and has long been a sticking point in Colorado River deals. But the federal government recently committed up to $250 million for restoration efforts at the sea. (Source: Water Education Foundation)
Farmer Kyler Brown in front of a small dam on the Rio Grande at a farm outside of Monte Vista, Colorado. โIโve ranched. Iโve cowboyed. Now Iโm farming and ranching,โ Brown said. โYou quickly learn in the West how important water is.โ (Photo By Diana Cervantes for Source NM).
RIO GRANDE RESERVOIR, Colo โ After 15 miles of pockmarked dirt road, the Rio Grande spreads wide in the shadows of the San Juan Mountains. It glitters, aqua, whitecaps whipped up by the wind. But even in the birthplace of the river lay the stark stains of climate change.
Deep, bald scars pucker the mountaintops, shorn of trees. In older burn scars, grass grows, flowing in the first summer breezes. In the newer scars, the thin rows of trees list, blackened and cracked, only a skirt of green growth at their base to mark the passage of time.
Crisis on the Rio Grandeย is a multi-part series that travels along the river from Colorado through New Mexico and into Texas. Read more:ย A river wounded
The Rio Grande meanders south and east through Coloradoโs San Luis Valley, a region of about 8,000 square miles spanning six counties, tucked between two mountain ranges. Agriculture drives the economy. More than 46,000 residents rely on $370 million generated by alfalfa, barley, potatoes, wheat, beef cattle and sheep.
โNow you just really feel that thatโs all on a collision course with climate, and that may have some severe ramifications,โ said valley farmer and rancher Kyler Brown as he passed over the low Rio Grande that cuts across his father-in-lawโs farm in Monte Vista, Colorado. The valleyโs way of agricultural life is imperiled.
The San Luis Valley depends on water, for the herds, the crops, for next yearโs planting. And for mortgages, farm insurance, sometimes for the shareholders, sometimes for keeping the business in the family.
Average rainfall is only 7 inches to 9 inches annually.
Three-fourths of the water in the Rio Grande instead starts as snow, folded into the crevices of the mountains, slowly seeping through soil or streaming down to the riverbed.
The river pools into the Rio Grande Reservoir at the base of the San Juan Mountains, fed mostly by snowmelt. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
The snowpack acts like a bank, a savings โ water frozen for the future. In past decades, that meant cold snowmelt would start filling the rivers in April, peaking in June, eventually slowing through the autumn.
But warmer temperatures, less tree cover due to wildfires, more dust and thirsty soils from years of compounded drought prevent the just-melted snow from ever reaching the riverbed. Over the years, the smaller snowpack is becoming liquid earlier and changing the rhythm of the river.
In scarcity, relationships change
Though the San Juans had all of the snow they usually would in early spring 2022, it didnโt translate to a full river. Brutal May winds stripped away snowpack.
โThere was a tension in my gut,โ said Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District. โBecause as the winds were howling, we knew we were losing snowpack. Every day, we were losing our opportunity to have flows in the river and put water in our aquifers.โ
Threats are present. Farmers pump groundwater to make up for the riverโs shortfalls, but that means falling groundwater levels. Populations swell on the Front Range around Denver, and downriver, too. And thereโs always potential for devastating wildfire.
โWeโre living on the knifeโs edge with water,โ Dutton said.ย
An old train depot captured June 22, 2022 outside of La Jara, Colorado. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
Water managers talk of new efforts to curb water use. Theyโre trying to change relationships between conservation groups, environmental nonprofits, farmers and the quasi-governmental irrigation districts.
Nathan Coombs, who manages the Conejos River District, said years of trust-building with groups typically at odds means thereโs a greater willingness to face issues.
โOnce we took down barriers of communication between project partners, we could start clearly seeing problems,โ Coombs said. โIf you want to solve those problems, youโve got to talk to people you have never wanted to talk to before.โ
Itโs not perfect.
โLook, thereโs always going to be a skunk at the picnic. Iโm not saying everything is always totally kumbaya, but the biggest players for the vast majority are engaged.โ
San Luis Valley Groundwater
Hidden waters
SAN LUIS VALLEY, Colo โ Groundwater made the valley green, but climate change and over-pumping across time has depleted those water sources.
There are two aquifers underlying the valley. One is called the โconfined aquifer,โ trapped under an impermeable clay layer deep down, concentrated centrally. The other is a shallow โunconfined aquiferโ generally found between 15 feet to 100 feet underground across most of the valley.
Artesian well Dutton Ranch, Alamosa 1909 via the Crestone Eagle
In certain spots in the valley, water used to gush out in artesian wells from the unconfined aquifer. But in recent decades, levels declined steeply after years of too many wells and too little recharge from the river or precipitation.
And the aquifers, explained Colorado State Engineer Mark Rein, take a double hit.
โThereโs less water flowing naturally into aquifers that the wells rely on. At the same time,โ he explained, โdue to the lack of surface water, the wells are going to be more reliant on the aquifers.โ
Farmers in the San Luis Valley have just eight years to stop the freefall of groundwater levels, or face the state shutting off wells.
In the valleyโs most affluent district stretching between Alamosa and Saguache Counties, the aquifer declined 1.3 million acre feet by 1976, most of that over just 20 years. District officials submitted a plan to replenish the aquifer.
Rein acknowledged the efforts of Valley residents to reduce pumping, saying in June that it was too soon to tell if they could succeed in replenishing the aquifer before the 2031 deadline.
A sprinkler waters barley in a farm at Monte Vista. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
Thereโs a nexus Subdistrict 1 is dealing with, Rein said.
โWe have this very rich culture in the San Luis Valley of irrigation, crops โ and the economy is so dependent on it,โ Rein said. โAnd at the same time, theyโre facing a reality of less water.โ One push to curb use might not go far enough. Another may go too far and erode culture and economy. โThatโs what makes success more or less possible.โ
All across Colorado, farmers have to offset any groundwater they pump either by submitting plans to water court for individual wells or joining a conservancy district in any of Coloradoโs river basins.
Self-governance
People in the Rio Grande basin went further, carving up the basin into seven hyper-local subdistricts with a role in restoring the โbalance between available water supplies and current levels of water use.โ
Dutton, 36, brims with verve when she speaks about the river. Growing up on a potato farm, both her father and grandfather took on water leadership positions.
She said decisions at the local level were how changes were made to water policy.
The entities, the districts, the boards, theyโre all made up of people that have a dog in the fight, she said. โThey live and work in the community. Theyโre water users.โ
Farmers in the valley taxed themselves, paying an additional fee for every acre-foot of groundwater they pumped to fund conservation measures.
Rio Grande and River Conejos conservation districts use the money to pay farmers to stay off their wells, to retire them, to retire fields, to purchase farmland. Or the funds go to creating a system of โwater credits,โ allowing farmers who need more water to buy from farmers who returned excess flows to the aquifer.
In 2022, the Colorado Legislature chipped in another $30 million out of federal coronavirus relief funds to buy land and retire irrigation wells along the Rio Grande.
The efforts are unique. Hundreds of wells were shuttered by the state in northeast Colorado in 2011.
โThere were large-scale wells shut-offs, and those wells are still shut off,โ Dutton said. โBut here, we took the initiative as a community, and we said, โWe want to regulate ourselves. We want to work together to make this work.โโ
Even as the valley had record-breaking monsoon rainfall in 2022, it isnโt enough to recharge the aquifers, which face decades of pumping more water than is sinking in. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
Recent cycles have not been kind, either. After a few frugal years of farmers cutting pumping recharged the aquifer some, bad drought struck again. Without much replenishment from the struggling river, the past three years nearly erased those gains for groundwater.
Even when, in 2021, the districtโs farmers pumped the least they had in a decade โ the aquifer still dropped to a new historic low.
โIt was incredibly disheartening,โ Dutton said.
When a near-record monsoon season doused the valley in the summer of 2022, with some places receiving double the annual average rainfall, the river still ran at only 67% of its long-term average.
โIt really wasnโt a great year as far as streamflow goes,โ Dutton said. โHopefully enough people saw what was happening in May and made some choices to change their farming plan for the year.โ
Time is running out. Subdistrict 1 has to replenish the unconfined aquifer by more than 900,000 acre feet, or face the state capping wells.
Despite all their efforts and sacrifices, Dutton said, โweโre anticipating seeing a significant drop in the aquifer.โ
THE San Luis Valley premiere of โWhere the Cranes Meet the Mountains,โ a short documentary to commemorate the 40th Annual Monte Vista Crane Festival, is slated for Saturday, March 11 at the Ski Hi Events Complex.
Filmmaker Christie Bode-Skeie and Crane Festival volunteer Jenny Nehring joined The Valley Pod for a conversation on the making of the film and all events scheduled for the 2023 Crane Festival.
Listen to the full podcast episode with Christie Bode-Skei and Jenny Nehring: HERE
โWe wanted to tell the story of how it feels to see the cranes at the Monte Vista Crane Festival and the impact of that to someone new to the Valley,โ explained Nehring.
The film features South Fork artistย Amanda Charlton Hurley,ย who is a new arrival to the Valley experiencing for the first time the sights and sounds of Sandhill Cranes. For Bode-Skeie, it was a perfect way to recreate her own initial experience with the Sandhill Cranes and bring that to life through the documentary.
โI really wanted to strike a deep emotional chord,โ Bode-Skeie said, โand I think I had to put myself back in the place when I first saw the cranes in the Valley 10 years ago and what that experience was like and looking at it with fresh eyes. Itโs so easy to take things for granted when itโs right in your own backyard.โ
The documentary also gives a subtle nod to other attributes of the Valley for residents and tourists alike to appreciate and provides a sense of the small town vibe of Monte Vista and surrounding communities.
In addition to the โWhere the Cranes Meet the Mountainsโ documentary, the 40th Monte Vista Crane Festival will feature a keynote address by George Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation. The International Crane Foundation is celebrating its 50th year and bringing Archibald in to speak was a natural fit for Monte Vistaโs 40th Crane Festival, said Nehring.
Tickets to the documentary premiere and to Archibaldโs keynote address are available at mvcranefest.org.
In August 2021, the human-caused Boulder 2700 Fire near Flathead Lake burned 2,230 acres and destroyed 31 structures, leaving debris along Highway 35 and threatening power lines and traffic.
MISSOULA โ More than three times as many houses and other structures burned in Western wildfires from 2010 to 2020 than in the previous decade, and that wasnโt only because more acreage burned, according to a new analysis from the University of Montana and its partners.
Human ignitions started 76% of the wildfires that destroyed structures, and those fires tended to be in flammable areas where homes, commercial structures and outbuildings are increasingly common.
โHumans are driving the negative impacts from wildfire,โ said lead author Philip Higuera, a UM fire ecologist and professor, who wrote the assessment during a sabbatical at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. โHuman fingerprints are all over this. We influence the when, the where and the why.โ
Most measures of wildfireโs impact โ for example, expansion of wildfire season into new months and the number of structures in flammable vegetation โ are going in the wrong direction, Higuera said. But the new finding, published Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences-Nexus, also means that human action can lessen the risks of wildfire damage.
โWe have levers,โ he said. โAs climate change makes vegetation more flammable, we advise carefully considering if and how we build in flammable vegetation, for example.โ
During Higueraโs visiting fellowship at CIRES, he worked with several researchers to dig into the details of 15,001 Western wildfires between 1999 and 2020.
Burned area increased 30% across the West, the team found, but structure loss increased much more, by nearly 250%. Many factors contributed, including climate change, our tendency to build more homes in flammable ecosystems and a history of suppressing wildfire.
Ph.D. student Maxwell Cook, a co-author from CIRES/CU Boulder, said the forcible removal of Indigenous people from landscapes played a role by all-but-eliminating intentional burning, which can lessen the risk of more destructive fires.
โPrescribed fire is an incredibly important tool, and we have a lot to learn about how people have been using fire for centuries,โ Cook said.
In the new assessment, the team found some horrible years for wildfires. Sixty-two percent of all structures lost in those two decades were lost in just three years: 2017, 2018 and 2020, Cook said.
And some states had it much worse than others. California, for example, accounted for more than 77% of all 85,014 structures destroyed during 1999-2020.
Across the West, 1.3 structures were destroyed for every 1,000 hectares of land scorched by wildfire between 1999 and 2009. Between 2010 and 2020, that ratio increased to 3.4.
Importantly, Higuera and his colleagues also found variability among states in how much burning occurred and how many structures were lost in wildfires. Montana sees less structure loss relative to the West as a whole, and most burning is from lightning ignitions. California, on the other hand, sees high losses from wildfires and burns much more overall.
The paper concluded that all states could benefit from policies that address human-related ignitions, especially during late summer and fall and near developments, as well as policies that address fire-resistant building materials and consideration of nearby vegetation.
Finally, the authors said climate change mitigation is also essential. Longer fire seasons โ a result of climate change โ mean that human-related ignitions are more consequential, leading to more destructive wildfires in the fall and early winter when they were once rare.
A lateral brings water from the Grand Valley Irrigation Company canal to this parcel of land, which is owned by private equity firm Water Asset Management, a company that has been accused of water speculation. A state work group has released its report on investment water speculation, but failed to come to a consensus and did not make recommendations to lawmakers.
CREDIT: BETHANY BLITZ/ASPEN JOURNALISM
About three-quarters or more of those polled identified as extreme or serious problems issues such as the levels of water in Colorado rivers, lower snowpack, availability of water for farming and ranching, wildfire conditions, and more frequent drought…Eight-four percent of respondents said they viewed out-of-state investment firms and hedge funds buying Colorado water rights, as has happened in Mesa County, as being very threatening to water availability on the Western Slope, and the same percentage consider out-of-state water interests like California to be very threatening. Seventy-eight percent said they consider foreign governments buying Colorado water rights to be very threatening, and 62% view water users from other parts of the state such as Denver and the Front Range as being very threatening…Four out of every five respondents said they would support a small tax increase dedicated to the river district to use easements to protect water, by employing land conservation agreements to pay willing agricultural producers to preserve their water right and keep that water in western Colorado…
Weigel said 53% of respondents in the eastern part of the district said water users from other parts of the state are very much a threat, even though it didnโt rank among their top-five perceived threats.
Updated water plan focuses key action areas to spur statewide water development, conservation
DENVER – Today [January 24, 2023], to meet Coloradoโs most critical water challenges, the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) unanimously approved the finalized 2023 Colorado Water Plan. First released in 2015, the Water Plan provides a comprehensive framework to guide collaborative action from water partners, agencies, and Coloradans. From securing supplies that provide safe drinking water to improving farm irrigation to rehabilitating streamsโtheย 2023 Water Planย targets specific, key actions to contribute to a stronger, more water-resilient Colorado.
โIn Colorado, water is life,โ said Colorado Governor Jared Polis. โColoradoโs Water Plan sets a vision for vibrant communities, successful farming and ranching, thriving watersheds, and climate resilient planning. Iโm excited to see how the updated plan supports a more resilient future here in Colorado for years to come.โ
Governor Polis championed approval of $17 million this year to kick-start local-level implementation of the Water Plan and is proposing $25.2M, including $12.6M General Fund, for the Water Plan Grant Program, which supports statewide water projects by providing grants and loans in collaboration with local partners in his FY 2023-2024 budget.
The 2023 Colorado Water Plan builds on the successes that followed the initial release of the pioneer plan in November 2015. For example, in recent years: water conservation efforts have decreased statewide per capita water use by 5 percent, water outreach and messaging reached 2.7 million people, and in 2019 Colorado voters passed Proposition DD to dedicate funding for the Colorado Water Plan grants program.
โWe are excited about this much-anticipated update. Seven years ago, the CWCB released the original Water Planโand now, guided by state-of-the-art data and innovative tools, the 2023 Plan puts Coloradoโs values into a set of actions that tackle the specific challenges and opportunities of our state,โ said Becky Mitchell, CWCB Director. โThe 2023 plan will spark the action we need across all sectors to build a better water future in Colorado, setting the stage for future decision-making and water resiliency.โ
Now, the 2023 update maintains the values and priorities of the original plan, while reframing actions into four key areas: Vibrant Communities, Robust Agriculture, Thriving Watersheds, and Resilient Planning. Within these four interconnected areas, a list of approximately 50 actions for partners and 50 actions for the state aim to address themes such as equity, climate resilience, water conservation, land use, education, and more. The Water Plan Grant Program welcomes projects and programs that fall in five major funding categories: Water Storage and Supply, Conservation & Land Use, Engagement & Innovation, Agricultural projects, and Watershed Health & Recreation.
Coloradoโs water challenges impact everyone from local leaders to stakeholders to families in their own backyards. The CWCB encourages people from all walks of life to get involved with Coloradoโs Water Plan: whether thatโs by practicing personal water conservation, getting involved in critical water initiativesโor applying for a Water Plan grant, or encouraging local organizations to pursue a grant to advance projects that build water resilience.
Throughout the development of the Colorado Water Plan, engaging with the public has been critical for the CWCB. The team conducted a year-long public engagement phase to incorporate all Coloradoโs voices, hosted a public comment period, held workshops, and encouraged Coloradans to share their own water conservation success stories and commit to action through a water conservation pledge.
In total, the public comment period yielded over 528 pages of comments, 1,597 suggested edits to the plan, and more than 2,000 observations. Comments came in a variety of formats including letters, emails, survey responses, feedback at events, and public listening sessions. Of those comments, about 60% were either already captured in the plan or were addressed by modifying the draft plan.
โI congratulate the Colorado Water Conservation Board, staff and all the Colorado water stakeholders who contributed to the 2023 Colorado Water Plan,โ said Dan Gibbs, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Natural Resources. โThe Plan provides an important vision and roadmap for Coloradoโs water future which faces increased challenges from climate change, population growth and changing water demands. But working together we can meet these challenges and ensure our Colorado communities, agriculture and environment will continue to thrive for generations to come.โ
CWCB will celebrate the release of the Water Plan on January 24, 2023, at Improper City in Denver from 5-9 p.m. The celebration is open to the public, and will feature speakers, live music, and recognition of 14 local water heroes who were instrumental in bringing the updated Plan to fruition. The Basin Water Heroes include Garret Varra (South Platte Basin), Bob Peters (Metro), Carl Trick (North Platte Basin), Daniel Boyes (Rio Grande Basin), Ken Brenner (Yampa/White/Green Basin), Mark Shea (Arkansas Basin), Carrie Padgett (Southwest Basin), Jason Turner (Colorado Basin), Kathleen Curry (Gunnison Basin); as well as the following Community Water Heroes: Ronda Lobato, Ernest House Jr., Jared Romero, CREA Results, and Water Education Colorado.
Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Conrad Swanson). Here’s an excerpt:
Evaporation and transfer loss is a meaningful starting point, Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University, said. But the countryโs two largest reservoirs, lakes Powell and Mead, are already at historic lows and waiting until they sink further to make cuts doesnโt make sense.
โLetโs cut the crap,โ Udall said. โWe donโt have elevation to give away right now.โ
All told, the six-state plan doesnโt save the smallest amount of water required by the federal government. Evaporation, transfer loss and the tiered water cuts to the lower basin combine to save as much as 1.95 million acre-feet…At a minimum, the states must save 2 million acre-feet a year,ย federal officials announced last summer, but now water experts are wondering whether the basin must saveย three times that much, more than Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined use in a single year…The existing proposal isnโt enough to qualify as a long-term plan, but it might be enough for the basin to survive until it can agree on one, Udall said.
Federal officialsโ reaction to the plan remains unclear. After the states published it Monday, a representative for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton canceled a Tuesday morning interview with The Denver Post and directed questions to the U.S. Department of Interior, which offered no additional insight.
Shoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWeb. Shoshone hydropower plant has the most senior, large-volume water right on the Colorado mainstem. The bonus for other users is that the water returns to the river after producing electricity.
Two proposed pumped water storage projects that could expand Coloradoโs ability to store renewable energy โ one in Fremont County and another between Hayden and Craig in the Yampa River Valley โ are moving forward.
Colorado will need green energy storage of some type if it is to attain its mid-century goals of 100% renewable energy. Solar and wind power are highly variable and cannot be turned off and on, like coal and natural gas plants are.
So the search is on for ways to build large-scale storage projects to hold the energy wind and solar generate. Lithium-ion batteries are part of the answer and are being rapidly added to supplement wind and solar. But they typically have a short life span, while pumped water storage hydropower projects can operate for decades.
Pumped storage hydro electric.
Pumped water storage has been refined in recent decades but the basic principles remain unchanged. Water is released from a higher reservoir to generate power when electricity is most in demand and expensive. When electricity is plentiful and less expensive, the water is pumped back up to the higher reservoir and stored until it is needed again.
This technology even today is responsible for 93% of energy storage in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That includes Cabin Creek, Xcel Energyโs 324-megawatt pumped storage unit near Georgetown. It was installed in 1967.
โThese pumped-storage projects are anathema to the modern way of thinking,โ says Peter Gish, a principal in Ortus Climate Mitigation, the developer of the Fremont County pumped water storage project.
โBut once built and operating, the maintenance costs are very, very low, and the system will last, if properly maintained, a century or longer. The capital investment up front is quite high, but when you run the financial models over 30, 50 or 60 years, this technology is, hands down, the cheapest technology on the market for [energy] storage.โ
Ortus Climate Mitigation wants to build a 500-megawatt pumped water storage facility on the South Slope of Pikes Peak above the town of Penrose in Fremont County. This facility โ essentially a giant battery for energy storage โ would require two reservoirs.
Gish hopes to have a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2026. Construction would take up to five years after the permit is approved.
In the Yampa Valley, another developer continues to plug away at a potential application for a site somewhere between Hayden and Craig. Still another idea is said to be in formulation in southwestern Colorado, but no details could be gleaned about that project.
Phantom Canyon, as Ortus calls its project in Fremont County, would require 17,000 acre-feet of water for the initial fill of the two reservoirs to be augmented by about 1,500 acre-feet annually due to losses from evaporation.
The company says it has accumulated water rights.
Gish, a co-founder of Ortus, says his company is โkeenly awareโ of water scarcity issues in Colorado and looks into ways to reduce the evaporative loss and hence shave water needs. One option is to place solar panels over the reservoirs, producing energy while shading the water. On a vastly smaller scale, that has been done at the Walden municipal water treatment plant in north-central Colorado.
Unlike an unsuccessful attempt by Xcel in 2021 to build a pumped water storage project in Unaweep Canyon on federal land in Western Colorado, the Ortus project near Pikes Peak would involve only private land. The company has exclusive purchase options for 4,900 acres. It also has secured 12 easements for pipeline access from the lower reservoir to the Arkansas River.
Proximity to water sources matters, and so does the location relative to transmission. Penrose is about 30 miles from both Colorado Springs and Pueblo and major transmission lines.
The company last year laid out the preliminary plans with Fremont County planners and hosted a meeting in Canon City to which environmental groups and others were invited. By then, FERC had issued a preliminary permit which is the start of the permitting process. Gish, who has worked in renewable energy for 25 years, says no potential red flags were noted.
โI have found that the local stakeholders are the first people you need to talk to about a project like this,โ Gish says, โIf you are able to get local support, the rest of the pieces will tend to fall into place. If not, the rest of the process is a much more difficult proposition.โ
In Western Colorado, Xcel faced local opposition but also the more daunting process of permitting for a project on federal land. In the Craig-Hayden area, Matthew Shapiro, a principal in green energy company Gridflex Energy, had been examining sites that are on private land. Work continues on geological assessments and other elements, but he says that a โlot of other pieces need to come together before there is real progress.โ
In addition to having water, that portion of the Yampa Valley also has the advantage of transmission lines erected to dispatch power from the five coal-burning units that are now scheduled to close between 2025 and 2030.
Shapiro hopes to also use Colorado-sourced water to generate electricity in a pumped-storage project on the North Platte River in Wyoming. Gridflex Energy filed for a license application with FERC last week for the project on Seminoe Reservoir.
โVery few projects have made it that far since the turn of the millennium. Itโs a pretty big deal,โ Shapiro said.
Long-time Colorado journalist Allen Best produces an e-journal called Big Pivots and is a frequent contributor to Fresh Water News.
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.
A preliminary analysis of potential modifications to the dam emerged during a virtual meeting held by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which is also reviewing options for averting a collapse of the water supply along the river. These new discussions about retooling the dam reflect growing concerns among federal officials about how climate change is contributing to the Colorado Riverโs reduced flows, and how declining reservoirs could force major changes in dam management for years to come…
Roerink and two other people who listened to the webinar told The Times that cost estimates for several alternatives ranged from $500 million to $3 billion. The agency will need congressional approval and will have to conduct an environmental review to analyze options. The Bureau of Reclamationโsย presentation, given by regional power manager Nick Williams, included some additional alternatives that wouldnโt require major structural modifications of the dam. Those options included adjusting operations to maximize power generation at low reservoir levels, studying ways of using the existing intakes at lower water levels, and making up for the loss of hydroelectric power by investing in solar or wind energy…
Low-Level Power Intake with New Low Head Runners (Alternative 1a. via USBR)
According to a slide presentation shown at the meeting, officials see potential hazards in some of the six alternatives. Piercing the damโs concrete to create new low-level or mid-level intakes, for example, would entail โincreased risk from penetration through dam,โ the presentation says. They also describe risks due to possible โvortex formation,โ or the creation of whirlpools above horizontal intakes as the water level declines. Their formation could cause damage if air is pulled into the system. The presentation says one alternative would involve lowering the minimum power pool limit and possibly installing structures on the intakes to suppress whirlpools, but it said this still would not allow for the water level to go much lower.
A high desert thunderstorm lights up the sky behind Glen Canyon Dam — Photo USBR
Outside Capitol Reef, photo courtesy of Michael Shoemaker
Click the link to read the article on the Writers on the Range website (Richard Knight):
High on a mesa where everyone can see it, a trophy house is going up in the northern Colorado valley where I live. Some of my neighbors hear that the house will be as big as 15,000 square feet. Others say it will take three years to complete. Whether that is valley gossip or truth, the house is now the center of everybodyโs attention.
Richard Knight. Photo credit: Writers on the Range
Until this happened, my valley seemed to offer much of the best of what Colorado has to offer, including views of a snow-capped mountain range, and spread out below, irrigated hayfields with black cows on tan rangeland. But now, right in the center of the valley, will be one person acting out a lack of consideration for others.
Gigantic trophy houses seem to signal, โI built here to see, but also to be seen.โ Itโs a jarring reminder that we in the New West are remaking the Old West in our own image, a job that apparently requires a drastic redoing of topography. These big homes seem to follow a pattern of complicated rooflines, lots of windows that reflect the light and โego gatesโ at the beginning of driveways.
Most of us in this valley delight in what weโve been able to see from our front door: Uninterrupted ridgelines, cliffs, and the rounded slopes that converge to make foothills, which then rise into mountains. Nature made these views, and weโve been fortunate to have them in our lives every day.
But more and more, houses that resemble castles are sprouting on ridgelines and hilltops, here and all over the mountains. And sometimes itโs ordinary houses or trailers that get built on ridgelines, interrupting the natural flow of the land.
Where only a few years ago our eyes might find comfort in tracing a ridgeโs backbone โ wondering how it got to be named White Pine Mountain when no white pines grow there โ now we look at manmade structures that irritate the eyes.
People who have lived in my valley for decades share a different style. Appreciating what a winter wind can do to steal warmth from inside a house, they looked for sheltered areas to build. They saw it made sense to build low, tucking a home against the south side of a hill or cliff.
Most yard lights were few and hard to see, as were their homes. But the new Western lifestyle broadcasts yard lights at night for all to see, just as the homes are conspicuously visible during the day.
In this newfangled West that has โranched the view,โ people apparently need to stand out to enjoy an amenity lifestyle. Will these new folk ever take time to appreciate the human and natural histories of the place they live in now, to show respect for the land and its natural beauty? Will they learn to be considerate of neighbors and not take away from the views that define where we live?
Itโs shameful to think that just as we first moved into the West to exploit its valuable resources, we now exploit the last resource our region has to offer โ its heart-stopping beauty.
There is some good news, because in many parts of the West we are learning how to sustainably log, graze, divert water and develop energy. I hope itโs not too late for us to also realize the value of fitting into the land as residents, to keep intact our ridgelines, mesas, mountains and valley floors. Once a house caps a hilltop, however, that view is irretrievable, gone forever.
I hope we can learn how to value homes that blend with the land in shape, color and location. Maybe a new generation of home builders, architects, and developers will lead the way in paying due respect to our regionโs natural beauty.
But Iโm afraid that itโs too late for our valley. The great writer Wallace Stegner told us that the task of Westerners was to build a society to match the scenery. From what I see, weโre not doing the job.
Richard Knight is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit that hopes to inspire lively conversation about the West. He works at the intersection of land use and land health in the American West.
Ken Jacobs tells the Golden City Council members that all-electric homes will avoid the spikes in home-heating bills caused by volatile natural gas prices. Photo/Allen Best
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
Golden could require all-electric in new construction by as early as January 2024.
The city council Tuesday evening gave staff members direction to continue working on a roadmap but with additional research and public meetings to resolve concerns about a proposed requirement for on-site renewable generation that some community members see as problematic.
Crested Butte was the first jurisdiction in Colorado to ban natural gas. The regulations it adopted last August allow natural gas only within special cases, such as for restaurants and other commercial uses, in the 100-plus lots remaining to be developed.
As Colorado jurisdictions go about updating their building codes, several are still undecided about whether to ban natural gas or other fossil fuels for space and water heating. Some have decided to lay the ground-work for all electric without actually raising that bar. Many, perhaps most, have given no thought to the day of all-electric buildings.
Towns, cities, and counties have until July 1 to update their building codes to recent iterations of the national standard or accept a code being drawn up by a state committee identified in 2022 legislation.
Golden is not facing that deadline as it has already adopted the 2021 national building codes. Instead, it is being pushed by its own climate action goals, which correspond with the Paris Accord of 2017. To hit its targets, Golden will have to achieve 100% renewables for heating by 2050.
As was observed at the council meeting, the first step in achieving that ambitious goal will be to stop digging a deeper hole. Building new houses that burn natural gas digs the hole deeper because they will ultimately have to be retrofitted. The city has 9,459 buildings.
โEvery new building that is constructed and every existing building that is retrofitted without efficiency and electrification as a primary objective works directly against the Cityโs Goals,โ says a report given to the city council members.
In raw numbers, this all-electric requirement will have marginal impact in that Golden is land-locked. That limits new construction to infill or to replacement of existing buildings. In the last five years, Golden has had no more than 17 new single-family houses in any given year. The maximum for one year was 8 commercial buildings.
If modest in numbers by itself, Goldenโs work can best be understood in the broader context of local communities looking to reinvent our energy systems. Golden studied what others are doing in Colorado and beyond and expects that others will in turn study what Golden has done.
The efforts to crowd out natural gas from buildings constitutes the most easily identified story. Theresa Worsham, the sustainability director for Golden, emphasizes that each communityโs needs are likely to be different, and its decarbonization plans need to be similarly different.
What works for Denver is entirely appropriate there, โbut it does not suit Golden,โ she says. โThat is why we are coming up with a lot of solutions across many communities. Goldenโs plan works for our scale and size and might also work for other jurisdictions similar to Golden.โ
After adopting a resolution aligning the cityโs goals with those of the Paris Accord in 2017, Golden in 2019 adopted its climate action goals and then, in 2020, began assembling the document that more narrowly addresses emissions from buildings. Two city-appointed commissionsโthe Community Sustainability Advisory Board and the Planning Commissionโwere principally responsible for creation of the recommendations, called โA Roadmap to Net-Zero Buildings.โ
In addition, 12 community members with a diversity of interests and backgrounds were enlisted to participate in the Energy Code Stakeholder Group.
Others from the cityโs affordable housing, building and planning staffs were also engaged, and several dozen public meetings were held, some with the specific intent of inviting comment from builders and others.
The report to the city council identified four strategies. One would require owners of commercial buildings of 5,000 square feet or more to track their emissions. The state now has a similar requirement for buildings 50,000 square feet or more. The idea is to get building owners and managers to understand their emissions with the potential for instituting programs in the future that may seek to reduce emissions. Among the cityโs goals, adopted with the Paris agreement, is to squeeze energy use in all buildings by 15% through efficiency measures.
Another strategyโgiven virtually no attention at the city council meetingโwould commit the city to further research during 2023 about how to convert existing buildings toward net-zero all-electric in coming years.
Still to be worked out is how the policy will address building retrofits. Ken Jacobs, a member of the sustainability committee for six years who remains involved, suggests the most effective policy would trigger the net-zero requirement if the remodeling is extensive enough to require new heating systems. Building professionals may have other and better ideas, he says. But in any case, retrofits will be more complicated than new builds.
Where Goldenโs work stands most prominently is the proposed requirement for on-site renewable generation. This proposed requirement comes from core assumptions by the Golden groups who worked on these recommendations. While it might easily be possible to import all of Goldenโs electricity from distant wind and solar farms, the groups concluded that the city has a moral responsibility to generate electricity locally. This also has the advantage of furthering the cityโs interests in resilience.
The proposed regulation would require that on-site energy storage be deployed or off-site solar via solar gardens located in Golden. The last resort would be purchase of renewable energy credits for renewable energy systems located in Colorado.
This on-site requirement provoked nearly the only red flag. Articulating that concern was Angela Schwab, principal architect at AB Studio.
She said she supports sustainability goals, including the 100% net-zero goal. However, it may not work well in the case of some commercial properties and other special properties, such as those with view and other considerations, she said.
To illustrate her concerns, she cited her work on the Astor House, a stone hotel built in 1867, when Colorado was a territory and Golden was its capital.
The building has been expanded to accommodate an art gallery but also improve accessibility as required for buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Regulations for such buildings preclude solar on the roofs.
Solar panels could be located on the ground, but that would have conflicted with the planting of trees and the planned open space.
Goldenโs city staff and advisory board will be working over concerns centered around the on-site renewables requirement in coming weeks and months.
West snowpack basin-filled map February 18, 2023 via the NRCS
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:
Heavy snows have come again to Pagosa Country, with sites in Archuleta County receiving be- tween 6.1 and 13.1 inches of snow in the storms between Tuesday, Feb. 14, and 11 a.m. on Feb. 15, according to the Community Col- laborative Rain Hail and Snow Network website. Higher snowfall totals were concentrated in the northern and southern portions of the county, with the highest reported precipitation amount reported north of Pagosa Springs near Piedra Road.
A 6 a.m. Feb. 15 report from Wolf Creek Ski Area indicates that Wolf Creek had received 22 inches of snow in the previous 24 hours and 25 inches in the last week, bringing the midway snow depth to 101 inches and the year-to-date snow- fall total to 275 inches. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Water and Climate Centerโs snowpack report, the Wolf Creek summit, at 11,000 feet of elevation, had 26.3 inches of snow water equivalent as of 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15. The Wolf Creek summit was at 121 percent of the Feb. 15 snow- pack median.
The San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan River basins were at 134 percent of the Feb. 15 median in terms of snowpack.
River Report
Stream flow for the San Juan River at approximately 11 a.m. on Feb. 15 was 66.3 cubic feet per second (cfs), according to the U.S. Geological Service National Water Dashboard. This reading is up slightly from last weekโs reading of 55.9 cfs at 11 a.m. on Feb. 8. According to a Feb. 13 press release from Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Manager Justin Ramsey, Lake For- est and Village Lake are full.
At its Jan. 30 meeting, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation Dis- trict (PAWSD) Board of Directors discussed state-mandated modi- fications to the Vista Wastewater Treatment Plant that come with a potential cost of $15 million during a public hearing on a potential State Revolving Fund (SRF) loan for the project. The modifications are intended to improve nutrient removal and allow the plant to comply with new state nutrient standards. Nutrient removal involves the removal of nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen, which can be damaging to drinking water and aquatic environments in high quan- tities, from wastewater.
According to the Colorado De- partment of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), such nutrients from the Vista plant could impact both nearby drinking water wells and the Piedra River, claims disputed by PAWSD.
The hearing opened with PAWSD District Manager Justin Ramsey ex- plaining, in response to a question from board member Gene Tautges, that PAWSD is currently pursuing a โpolitical routeโ in its efforts to delay the modifications and that it had some initial communication with Colorado Sen. Cleave Simpson.
Xcel truck at Shoshone plant. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
Holy Cross Energy aims to distribute 100% emission-free electricity to its 55,000 members in the Aspen, Rifle, and Vail areas by 2030. How will it do that?
Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Coloradoโs second largest utility, has a different but related problem. It wants to best use infrastructure associated with its coal-burning operations at Craig after the last unit closes before 2030.
One clue may lie in Pueblo. There a pilot program testing a new technology for long-duration energy storage will be deployed by Xcel Energy and Form Energy by the end of 2025. The new iron-air batteries will be able to use chemical processes to store electricity and then discharge it for up to 100 hours.
The new battery technology has been reported to be 10 times less expensive than lithium-ion batteries. Iron is abundant in the United States, and the batteries are non-flammable.
In announcing the pilot projects, Bob Frenzel, the chief executive of Xcel, said the 100-hour batteries at Pueblo and at a coal site in Minnesota โwill strengthen the grid against normal day-to-day, week-to-week, and season-to-season weather variability, in addition to extreme weather events, including severe winter storms and polar vortex events.โ
Duration of storage matters entirely as electric utilities add low-cost and emissions-free renewables. Short-duration storage, such as the lithium-ion batteries installed in conjunction with a new solar farm near Glenwood Springs in 2022, can help. They provide two to four hours of storage.
With 100 hours of storage, utilities can smooth the highs and the lows of renewables. Consider Uri, the week of cold in 2022 when wind on Coloradoโs eastern plains ceased for several days. Utilities cranked up turbines burning natural gas that was suddenly in high demand. Consumers are still paying off those bills. Tri-State even resorted to burning oil.
Summers have brought inverse problems of spiking demand caused by heat. In 2021, it got so hot in Portland that electric lines for trains melted, and some people without air conditioning literally baked to death in apartments. Colorado regulators worry whether the stateโs utilities can handle such weather extremes.
Iron-air batteries alone are unlikely to solve the intermittencies of renewable energy or the havoc produced by a warming and more erratic climate. This pilot project does represent a notable effort to explore whether they can be scaled.
โThis is an exciting new frontier for energy storage in Colorado,โ said Mike Kruger, chief executive of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, a trade group of 275 members. โThis announcement goes to show that when there is clear policy, American companies can innovate to meet the electric power sectorโs needs.โ
Holy Cross Energy has been diversifying its supplies, both locally and regionally, but still depends largely upon wholesale deliveries from Xcel. The Glenwood Springs-based cooperative in 2022 delivered 50% emissions free electricity but has a goal of 100% just seven years from now.
Sam Whelan, the vice president for finance at Holy Cross, said that increased reliability by Xcel will help Holy Cross reliably deliver electricity to its members.
Holy Cross has been investigating its own optionsโand has had conversations with Form Energy. It will look at many alternatives, including green hydrogen and pumped-storage hydro, each with problems but also promise.
โYou have to start something, and you have to start in small increments as well,โ says Whelan.
The solar industry, he also started small. โIt was not that long ago that solar costs were significantly higher,โ he observed. Now, solar has become competitive. โIt will take these incremental storage projects to prove out and hopefully pave the way.โ
Tri-State, at a recent meeting with stakeholders, also reported that iron-air storage technology was among several options for Craig being studied once the coal plants there close. Transmission lines already exist, capable of carrying renewable energy to the site to be stored โ and then released as needed.
Xcel may have gleanings about how they will act at scale and be used to manage the grid by 2026.
Will these new batteries eliminate need for expensive natural gas plants designed for use to meet peak demands? Such plants are expensive to build, and they do produce emissions. Too soon to tell, says Robert Kenney, the president of Xcel Energyโs Colorado division.
โIf we see success with this program, we will explore how we can expand it and scale it up further. But to what extent it will displace โpeakerโ plants or any other technology, that would be the learning that we would expect to come out of the pilot itself. So stay tuned.โ
Forty percent or more of all water use in western US cities goes to outdoor watering of lawns, gardens, pools, and golf courses. One of the most effective urban water conservation strategies is to reduce the area of irrigated landscaping, or switching to less water-intensive vegetation. Photo credit: Brian Richter
My research group spent three years collecting water data and other information from 28 water utilities that serve a total of 23 million people in the American Southwest. The task wasnโt easy: 39 researchers were involved in collecting data from 45 different utility employees. Each of these utilities we surveyed is dependent on the Colorado River for some portion or all of their water supplies. You can find our full results in this paper from the Journal of Water Resources Management & Planning.*
Overall, cities dependent on the Colorado River have done a fantastic job of managing their total water use under very high rates of growth. Theyโve cut their water use by 18% while their populations grew by a whopping 24% during 2000-2020.
Big cities are doing a much better job with water conservation than smaller cities. Cities with more than 1 million residents cut their water use by an impressive 24% but water use in small cities actually grew by 3%. This is due to two factors: smaller cities are growing very fast, yet they donโt have the financial capabilities to invest in water conservation programs.
Key to big water savings is being able to get your customers to substantially reduce their average daily use of water, known as โGallons Per Capita per Dayโ (GPCD). On average, big cities (>1 million pop.) were able to lower their Total GPCD by 35%. Medium cities (100,000-1 million pop.) lowered their GPCD by 30%, and smaller cities (less than 100,000 pop) lowered it by 25%.
But even with impressively lower per-capita needs, smaller cities simply grew too fast (median=42% growth) to keep their overall water demands in check.
Some of the primary water conservation strategies being applied in these 28 cities include offering rebates for replacing old water-guzzling toilets and other plumbing fixtures, and paying homeowners and businesses to rip out lush green lawns and replace them with drought-tolerant and often native shrubs, flowers, and grasses. Many cities also used water rate structures to control water use, such as by increasing the cost per gallon as water use rises.
Not Much Help for the Colorado River, thoughโฆ.
Unfortunately, those impressive water conservation efforts didnโt do much for the Colorado River, because total use of the river by the 28 cities we surveyed actually increased slightly during 2000-2020. That means that cities are taking less water from other water sources โ such as their local rivers or from groundwater, or from desalination or water reuse โ but not reducing their pressure on the Colorado River.
Water Conservation is Still Largely Untapped
Based on the fact that per-capita water use varied greatly among our 28 cities (low of 80 to a high of 286 in Total GPCD), thereโs clearly room for the under-performing cities to tighten up their water belts. In larger cities, there is still great potential for reducing outdoor water use, or tapping into โalternativeโ water supplies, such as reusing water more thoroughly, capturing stormwater, or encouraging homeowners and businesses toย harvest rainwater.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority โ which supplies water to nearly 1.4 million residents in Las Vegas, Nevada โ is a great example of water conservationโs potential. During 2000-2020, the city reduced its total water use by 10% and lowered its Total GPCD by 47%, even while its service population grew by a staggering 69%! Yet the water authority has set an admirable goal of lowering its GPCD by another 23% by 2035.
*Note: If you are unable to access our paper using the link in the first paragraph above, please drop me a note at brian@sustainablewaters.org and Iโll send you a copy.
the Lower Basin โstructural deficitโ, reified. Photo credit: John Fleck
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
First the bad news from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Centerโs mid-February forecast โ this yearโs runoff into Flaming Gorge, which is at record low thanks to Drought Response Operations Agreement releases to prop up Lake Powell, is forecast to be below average this year, at 86 percent of average. At some point weโve gotta refill this hole.
But the Lake Powell forecast continues to hover well above the โaverageโ line, currently sitting at 117 percent.
Reclamationโs latest 24-month study โmost probableโ shows Powell bouncing back to above elevation 3,550. In the โolden daysโ (like, last year?) 3,550 would have been awful, but in the midst of our current crisis management fire drill it looks pretty good.
Mead stays awful in the current โmost probableโ, ending the water year at elevation1,034, another 10 feet below current levels, which should be enough for photojournalists to find some fresh wrecked pleasure boats, or possibly mob hits.
Under the โmin probableโ, Powell ends the water year at 3,544 and Mead ends at 1,021.
To help frame the current discussions, hereโs the hypothetical Lower Basin cuts under the six-state and California SEIS proposals under elevations in the min probable forecast:
The winter of 2022-23 is off to a cold and snowy start across most of Colorado, which is good news for the stateโs water supply.
So far, water watchers say weโve had the best start for the statewide snowpack season since 2017.
However, while some parts of the state, like Steamboat Springs, are seeing the highest snowpack levels in over a decade, numbers in some parts of the state are lagging.
Snowpack is a measurement of the amount of water packed into the snow.
Colorado Snowpack basin-filled map February 17, 2023 via the NRCS.
โColorado is a big state and itโs not uncommon to see a wide range of snow totals across various regions,โ said Nathan Elder, Denver Waterโs manager of water supply.
For example, the snowpack in the northwest corner of Colorado sat at 151% of normal as of Jan. 31, but the southeastern corner was just at 83% of normal.
Sign up for our free, weekly TAP email to stay on top of this season’s snowpack. (Scroll down to put your email in the light blue sign-up bar.)
The amount of snow that falls in the mountains is critical in Colorado because thatโs where most of the stateโs water comes from each year.
Skiers enjoy a powder day at Winter Park Ski Resort in December 2022. The resort saw 85 inches of snow in January and reported receiving 226 inches of snow so far this season as of Jan. 31. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Denver Water provides water to 1.5 million people in Denver and several surrounding suburbs, and 90% of the utilityโs water supply comes from snow. The utility collects water from roughly 4,000 square miles of terrain in the mountains and foothills west of Denver in the Upper Colorado and Upper South Platte river basins.
Denver Water collects roughly half of its water from the Colorado River Basin and half from the South Platte.
Denver Water collects water from across 4,000 square miles of forest that spans the Upper Colorado and the South Platte river basins. Image credit: Denver Water.
In the areas where Denver Water collects water, as of Jan. 31, the snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin stood at 111% of normal, while the Upper South Platte River Basin stood at 82% of normal.
Seven SNOTEL stations in the area of the South Platte River Basin where Denver Water collects water are tracking below normal (the blue line) so far this season. Image credit: Denver Water.
โThe difference in snowpack is why Denver Water has built a large collection system spread across several counties. That way if one area is having a down year, hopefully things are better in another area. And thatโs what weโre seeing so far this year,โ Elder said.
Elder said this year the snowfall in the mountains has been steady since November 2022, compared with last winter, which will be remembered for having only a couple big storms that hit over the holiday season and ended up providing the bulk of the entire seasonโs total snowfall.
โAs a water planner, it would be nice to have a steady, predictable snowpack season, but weather doesnโt work that way and each year plays out differently,โ Elder said. โThatโs why we constantly monitor the mountain snowpack and adjust our water planning accordingly.โ
See how Denver Water monitors the snowpack from the air, on the ground and by using automated weather stations.
Denver Waterโs reservoir storage stood at 82% full heading into February, which is average for this time of year. Elder said heโs cautiously optimistic the reservoirs will fill when the snow melts in the spring due to the snowpack so far.
Heโs also encouraged by the fact that soil moisture for the state is the best itโs been in eight years.
โWhen the soil moisture is in good shape, it means more water will flow into rivers and streams instead of being absorbed by dry ground,โ he said.
Denver Waterย monitors snowpackย throughout the winter season, using monthly measurements gathered by crews on the ground and daily reports from automated weather stations. The utility also gets information about the snowpack from planes surveying its collection system using high-tech equipment.ย
Denver Waterโs Rob Krueger (left) and Adam Clark work out of the utilityโs Moffat Collection System office in Winter Park. Here they are weighing a snow sample to calculate how much water it contains. Photo credit: Denver Water.
This year, planes will fly over forests in Summit and Grand counties where Denver Water collects water โ and for the first time also will fly over the utilitiesโ South Platte and South Boulder Creek watersheds.
โWeโve got our snowiest months of the season coming up, and weโre hoping the snow will keep falling,โ Elder said. โSnowpack typically peaks around the third week of April, so thatโs the key snowpack measurement weโll be watching.”
Elder said that even though water supply looks good now, the winter months are a great time to get your house into water-wise shape indoors by finding and fixing toilet leaks, installing low-flow aerators and replacing old showerheads with WaterSense-labeled fixtures.
Plume of ENSO predictions January 2023. Credit: Climate Prediction Center
Click the link to read the discussion on the NOAA website:
ENSO Alert System Status:ย La Niรฑa Advisory
Synopsis: ENSO-neutral conditions are expected to begin within the next couple ofmonths, and persist through the Northern Hemisphere spring and early summer.
Although a weak La Niรฑa was still apparent during January, below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) continued to weaken further across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The latest weekly Niรฑo index values were mostly near -0.5oC, with the exception of Niรฑo-1+2 which was +0.1oC. Like the surface, negative subsurface temperature anomalies continued to weaken, with above-average subsurface temperatures expanding eastward at depth and near the surface of the eastern Pacific Ocean. Low-level easterly wind anomalies continued, but were confined to the western and central Pacific Ocean. Upper-level westerly wind anomalies were evident over the east-central Pacific. Suppressed convection persisted over the western and central tropical Pacific, while enhanced convection was observed over western Indonesia. Overall, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system continued to reflect La Niรฑa.
The most recent IRI plume predicts a transition from La Niรฑa to ENSO-neutral in the next couple of months. The forecaster consensus is largely in agreement. ENSO-neutral is expected to prevail during the spring and early summer. There are increasing chances of El Niรฑo at longer forecast horizons, though uncertainty remains high because of the spring prediction barrier, which typically is associated with lower forecast accuracy. In summary, ENSO-neutral conditions are expected to begin within the next couple of months, and persist through the Northern Hemisphere spring and early summer.
The Colorado River flows through Gore Canyon in Colorado. Photo: Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk
Click the link to read the article on the Audubon website (Jennifer Pitt):
Itโs early January, and while snow season in the Southern Rockies continues for another three months, we already see snowpack at 59% of the seasonal average. That is something to celebrate, as the Colorado River Basin has been in an extended drought going on 24 years, with consequences for people, birds and every other living thing that depend on rivers in this region. But the abundant start to the snow season does not mean Colorado River managers get a reprieve from their aggressive efforts to reduce water use and reform Colorado River operations.
In recent years we have seen โabove averageโ early season snowpack turn into below average snowpack and far-below-average runoff. In 2021 for instance, 85% of average snowpack turned into runoff of 36%. A variety of factors created these dynamics, including fewer storms later in the snow season, warmer temperatures both increasing evaporation and evapotranspiration (evaporation from plants) and drying out soils which then soak up melting snow. Of course, we donโt yet know this how this year will turn out for Colorado River water supply. Butย weย know it is too early to draw conclusions, other than โย gee, sure would be nice if it keeps snowing.
With Colorado River reservoirs two-thirds empty, federal and state water managers have sounded alarms, pointing to the risk of infrastructure failure and even the ability to deliver water and hydroelectric power to tens of millions of people. The available storage space in the reservoirs can hold more than three years of the Colorado Riverโs average undepleted flow. So even a bomber snow season is not going to end the drought. Tom Buschatzke, who leads the Arizona Department of Water Resources acknowledged this in a recent interview with CNN: “One good year doesn’t fix usโeven a couple of good years doesn’t fix usโฆWe’ve got to rebuild that bank account.”
With climate warming projected to increase, thereโs an urgent need to balance Colorado River water uses with supply, even to reduce uses below supply so that thereโs less risk to the dams, to people and to nature. Best to keep the pedal to the floor on reforming Colorado River managementโbecause while winter storms areย inherently good for water supplies, there is noย guarantee winters will be long, sustained, or consistent.
Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam on the border between Nevada and Arizona on the morning of Friday, April 8, 2022. (Tim Lenard/The Nevada Independent)
Click the link to read the article on the LAist website (Erin Stone), publishedย Feb 1, 2023 2:44 PM:
This article was originally published by LAist on February 1, 2023
The seven states that draw from the Colorado River missed another deadline from the federal government to come up with an agreement to cut total water use by 2 to 4 million acre-feet.
Late Tuesday, California released its own plan after not signing on to a proposalagreed upon by six states to cut about 2 million acre-feet. Both plans agree we need to cut down a lot more on water use, but who shoulders the biggest cuts remains a question.
The Colorado River provides water to more than 40 million people and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California, plus two Mexican states (Baja California and Sonora).
California gets the most water from the river of any state, and the riverโs main reservoirs โ Lake Powell and Lake Mead โ are two of our biggest water sources in the Southland (Lake Powell is also a major source of clean hydroelectric power). The river has long been overused โ and the climate crisis is pushing a reckoning with a century-old water rights law that many say is outdated in our hotter and drier reality.
Complicated Legal Rights
Last year, the federal government told the seven U.S. states that rely on the Colorado River to come up with a voluntary plan to cut total water use by 2 to 4 million acre-feet โ or face federal mandates. For context, California is legally entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of water from the river every year.
The All-American Canal conveys water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley in Southern California. The Imperial Irrigation District is the largest user of Colorado River water. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Most of the legal rights to that water are held by farmers in the arid Imperial Valley. The next biggest bucket goes to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people in cities across the Southland.
Lack of snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas and the crisis on the Colorado led to millions of people in Southland cities being put under outdoor watering restrictions. In Los Angeles, you can only water twice a week, though watering food gardens and trees by hand is allowed whenever needed.
The crisis on the Colorado River could eventually bring more restrictions.
Two Proposals
After missing an initial deadline last August, on Tuesday six of the seven states releasedย a proposalย to cut water use by about 1.5 million acre-feet per year โ calling on California to shoulder the biggest cuts.
California didnโt sign on, citing its senior water rights (the current rules say California is last to lose its water amid a shortage). In response, state officials released another plan that leaves the bulk of water cuts over the next few years to Arizona and Nevada (which have both faced unprecedented cuts to their usual shares over the last two years). California would curb its own water use 9% through 2026, when the current water shortage rules expire.
Both plans would lead to 2 to 3 million acre-feet of water cuts in 2024, but big disagreements remain on how to achieve those cuts.
That lack of consensus could spur federal mandates and lawsuits from the states, which could delay solutions. The current rules expire in 2026. By then, the states and federal government will need a more permanent plan for Colorado River water use.
A final decision on the plan until then is expected by summer.
West snowpack basin-filled map February 15, 2023 via the NRCS.
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
New data show a snowy start to 2023 for the Colorado River basin. Inflows into Lake Powell, the nationโs second largest reservoir, are currently projected to be 117% of average during spring runoff thanks to heavy winter precipitation in the Rocky Mountains… Snow in Colorado is an important factor in determining the amount of water that will flow into the Colorado River system each year. About two-thirds of annual flow starts as snow high in the mountains of Colorado. Across the state, snow totals are almost all above average, withย most zones showingย 120 to 140% of normal for this time of year. Northwest Wyoming and central Utah, which also contribute to the basinโs water supply, posted January snowfall totals that nearly broke precipitation records. Many parts of Utah are showing snow totals above 170% of average, boosting the odds of above-average runoff in the spring, and fostering memorable seasons for theย areaโs ski resorts…
New data from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center show heavy precipitation through much of the Colorado River Basin states โ especially Utah, Wyoming and Arizona.
In the Colorado Riverโs Upper Basin โ which includes parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico โ the strongest precipitation fell in southwestern Colorado. The Gunnison, Dolores and San Juan rivers all saw January precipitation that ranged from 160 to 200% of average. Meanwhile, the lowest January precipitation totals were along the Eagle River in central Colorado, and the Green River above Fontenelle Reservoir in Wyoming. The Lower Colorado River Basin โ which includes parts of Nevada, Arizona, and California โ also saw strong precipitation. The Virgin, Little Colorado and Verde rivers all saw January precipitation above 200% of normal. Rain and snow in the Lower Basin is typically less important for the Colorado Riverโs flow, but is helpful for plants, farms and ranches and wildfire mitigation…
When it comes to predicting the amount of water in the Colorado River each year, snow totals donโt tell the full story. Scientistsย look to soil moistureย for a clearer picture of how much water will actually reach the places where humans divert and collect it. This year, soil moisture in the mountains is well below average. That could prevent some melting snow from ever reaching the Colorado River. That soil acts like a sponge, soaking up water before it has a chance to flow downhill to streams and lakes. Scientists have recorded years with 90% of average snowpack, only to see 50% of average runoff into reservoirs.
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
Let me give you a precise example of what weโre talking about. An infill housing development took shape a couple of years ago near the Arvada High School in metropolitan Denver.
My midnight walksโitโs safer to walk thenโoften take me up that hill above the baseball diamond where grass was planted next to a row of mini-mansions. Rarely, if ever, will anybody set foot on that basketball court-sized plot of grass save to mow it.
Why was the turf planted? Likely because thatโs the way it was always done. What I know with greater certainty is that roughly 75% of the water for this municipality comes from tributaries of the Colorado River. And I also know that these water rightsโArvada gets water from Denver Waterโare junior to the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Water did not begin flowing through the Moffat Tunnel until 1936.
Huffing up the hill past this ornamental turf, I ask myself, โDonโt they know that adding turf in metro Denver or, for that matter, Grand Junction, during this time of rapid climate change is deeply problematic? Doesnโt this qualify as either terribly ignorant or, just perhaps, arrogant?โ
In Colorado, weโve resumed our conversation about how we use water and, more broadly, the type of development we want to see. Gov. Jared Polis made housing a central portion of his state-of-the-state address in early Januaryโand he cycled around again and again to frame it within an ecosystem of impacts and goals, including water. He mentioned water 24 times in his address:
โLet me be clear โ housing policy is climate policy.
Housing policy is economic policy.
Housing policy is transportation policy.
Housing policy is water policy.โ
On Jan. 26, in an address to the Colorado Water Congress, Polis made it a little more clear what he has in mind. He called for a โcomprehensive approach to housing to preserve our water resources.โ He cited multiple benefits for revised land-use policies: reduced traffic, saved money for consumers and โ most important, he added, it โlimits demand on water resources.โ
Polis said the Colorado Water Conservation Board will lead a study on integrating land use and water demand.
Front yard in Douglas Countyโs Sterling Ranch are sparse on turf. Houses use well below the average volumes for Colorado. Photo/Allen Best
This 21-member Urban Landscape Conservation Task Force is to include representatives from 8 water utilities, 2 conservation districts, 2 environmental NGOs, with the balance to come from areas of expertise and interests such as stormwater, equity, and urban planning.
Looming over the three-day Water Congress conference was the future of the Colorado River. Attorney General Phil Weiser and Becky Mitchell, the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, both spoke from the same script. They said Colorado has kept within its limits as specified by the compact. The problems of the Colorado River are due very fundamentally to overuse by the lower-basin states, particularly California.
โDenial is not just a river in Egypt,โ Weiser said.
Mitchell reported that Colorado and the three other upper-basin states in 2020 used altogether 3.5 million acre-feet compared to the 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River Compact apportionment. The lower-basin states used on the order of 10 million acre-feet. The upper basin states live within what the climate delivers, she said, while the lower-basin states have lived beyond their means, steadily draining the federal reservoirs, both big and small. โThey must do something, they must do it now,โ Mitchell said.
On Jan. 30, an agreement was announced among six of the seven states โ California was the hold-out. It didnโt impress many people.
โLetโs cut the crap,โ Brad Udall, who has emerged in the last decade as one of the most insightful observers of the Colorado River, told The Denver Post. โWe donโt have elevation to give away right now,โ a reference to elevations of the two big reservoirs, Mead and Powell.
Some homes in Erie have almost football field-sized back yards. Photo/Allen Best
Sounds simple enough. We wear the white hats. Yet Eric Kuhn, a former long-time manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, said itโs not really that simple. Heโs parsed the agreements at length in a book he co-authored called โScience Be Dammed,โ a history of the Colorado River Compact, as well as various other papers and studies.
Kuhn said itโs not a given that Colorado municipal water providersโmost of whom have water rights junior to the Colorado River Compactโwill always be able to access the Colorado River and its tributaries. And having no water is not an option.
โCurtailment of those junior users is not acceptable at any time in the future,โ said Kuhn.
But the only logical place for growing towns and cities to expand their water portfolios is from water users with senior appropriations, namely agriculture.
When we spoke several days after the water conference, Gimbel reminded me that it was written for a business audience understanding that it needed to include the water community. โIt was our opportunity to tell the business community โpay attention, because what happens with water is going to affect our economy one way or another.โโ
This is from Big Pivots 67, a reader-supported e-journal covering climate change and the resulting energy and water transitions in Colorado.
Useful to this understanding is the Common Sense Instituteโs mission statement:
โCommon Sense Institute is a non-partisan research organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of Coloradoโs economy. CSI is at the forefront of important discussions concerning the future of free enterprise in Colorado and aims to have an impact on the issues that matter most to Coloradans.โ
The report cites the need for demand-mitigation measures such as removing non-functional turf in new development. They cite the examples of Sterling Ranch, a tiny project in Douglas County where the developers, because they had little water, were forced to figure out how to minimize water use. They also cite Aurora, which last year adopted regulations that dramatically ratchet down water for new development.
They say this must become more common as Coloradoโs population grows.
โLacking statewide or regional standards, home developers are free to choose cities with less strict conservation standards,โ they wrote. โRegional approaches are needed.โ
They suggest regional conservancy and conservation districts might be a vehicle in lieu of statewide standards. They also cite WISE, the project in metro Denver and several of its suburban water providers, particularly those on the south side.
Lake Powell has been about a quarter-full. The snowpack looks strong now, but itโs anybodyโs guess whether there will be enough runoff come April and May to substantially augment the reservoir. May 2022 photo/Allen Best
The report, if broad-ranging and data-rich, also has a vagueness to it on this point. Gimbel says that lack of specificity was intentional. โThe idea of demand-management measures in the report was left vague for a reason,โ she says. โWe purposefully did not develop it more, to allow discussion already taking place to maybe morph into broad action.โ
โWe have to do more with less,โ said Kuhn. He cited projected population growth of 1.6 to 1.8 million new residents by 2050, most along the Front Range, but also the probability that the warming climate will make less water available, particularly from the Colorado River.
At several times during their Water Congress presentation, Gimbel and Kuhn acknowledged that state-wide standards would be an uphill struggle. In Colorado, towns, cities, and counties have traditionally called their own shots on land use and other development questions.
This is starting to shift, though. It is clear in Coloradoโs agenda on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But even here, thereโs a balancing act. Legislatorsโwith the consent of Polisโhave told the investor-owned utilities they must meet carbon reduction goals. They have delivered the same mandate to Tri-State Generation and Transmission, which operates in ways that somewhat resemble those of Xcel.
But legislators left alone the municipal providers and the independent electrical cooperatives, instead choosing to persuade. It always helps, though, when the market is marching at a fast pace in the same direction.
In what I see as a direct parallel, the state recently has started to apply pressure to local jurisdictions to get ready for electrification in their building codes. Thereโs some wiggle room for local jurisdictions, but itโs not the free-for-all of yesteryear. Climate change forces a more urgent focus on issues we would have faced anyway but for other reasons.
Colorado has been having this water conversation for a while. In 2014, Ellen Roberts, then a state senator from Durango, and Don Coram, then a state representative from Montrose, introduced a conservation bill called โLimit Use of Ag Water for Lawn Irrigation.โ
Local governments didnโt want the state stepping in. And there was pushback from the ag sector. โIf itโs water intensive, are you going to tell us that we canโt grow that?โ one agriculture sector representative responded.
In the end, the bill became a study bill, the idea directed to an interim committee for further study. That, notes Roberts, is where bills commonly get sent to die. In this case, though, the conversation continuedโand that was what she had intended all along.
โMy concern was that if we waited for that to happen naturally, it might never happen or it would be so slow that it would have no meaningful impact,โ she says.
If the proposal was watered down, so to speak, even some legislators from the Western Slope who might not vote for it were โappreciative that somebody was willing to walk the plank on the topic.โ In Durango itself, support ranged from those on the far left to those on the far right of the political spectrum.
The same issues that Roberts encountered are still very much alive.
Aurora, if lately a shining light for advocates of demand-management policies, harbors skepticism of mandates. โAurora must retain control of what our city looks like,โ says Greg Baker, the cityโs spokesman. Guidelines could be acceptableโand smaller water municipalities could very well use help in delivering incentives.
This said, Aurora is open to discussion โand it needs to be a proportional discussion,โ says Baker. โWe donโt want to tell agriculture how to use their water, but they account for 85% of water use in this state.โ
On Jan. 31, in a legislative forum sponsored by Empower our Future, a Boulder County energy-focused organization, I asked State Sen. Fenberg, the Senate president, if the legislative broad brushes to advance the Polis land-use agenda could be described. He didnโt deliver specifics, but he did a good job of describing the dynamics of what he called a โthird-rail issue.โ
โIt will come down to what things should stay at the local level and I think the vast majority will remain at the local level.โ That said, he continued, the question remains of how we go about this in ways to advance Coloradoโs other goals.
More issues have become statewide in nature. More state funding has been advanced for funding to expand housing. Water use is associated with housing, so the state has a connected interest, he suggested.
โBecause of that, I think people have started asking more questions. If it is a state problem, shouldnโt the state be more involved in either solving the problem or stopping the problem from getting worse?โ
It will be, he concluded, a โtough conversation.โ Laws governing water move slowly, and speakers at the Water Congress repeatedly said it is wise to move cautiously. Can the rapidly changing water story in the Colorado River Basin and the changing climate that is producing the crisis abide caution?
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
US Drought Monitor map February 14, 2023.High Plains Drought Monitor map February 14, 2023.West Drought Monitor map February 14, 2023.Colorado Drought Monitor map February 14, 2023.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:\
This Week’s Drought Summary
An active weather week over much of the South, Southeast and portions of the Midwest allowed many locations in eastern Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, central Mississippi, northern Florida, southern Georgia and into coastal areas of South Carolina to record above-normal precipitation. Dry conditions dominated the West and northern Plains. Temperatures were well above normal in the northern Plains and upper Midwest, with departures of 15-20 degrees above normal. Most areas east of the Missouri River were above normal for the week with departures of 5-15 degrees above normal common. Cooler-than-normal temperatures dominated the intermountain West and into the Four Corners region where temperatures were 5-10 degrees below normal for the week…
Temperatures for the week were warmest over the eastern and northern extent of the region with departures 10-15 degrees above normal while the western areas were 5-10 degrees below normal in portions of Wyoming and Colorado. Most of the region was dry this week with the exception of eastern Kansas where over 200% of normal precipitation was recorded for the week. As temperatures warmed up and the benefits of the snowpack over portions of southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska started to be observed, improvements were made this week to the drought intensity levels along the South Dakota and Nebraska borders. A full category improvement was also made to conditions in eastern Kansas where more moderate drought was eliminated and improvements to severe and extreme drought were made in southeast portions of the state. Some slight degradation was introduced in Wyoming where severe drought was expanded in the east and southwest portions of the state…
Cooler-than-normal temperatures dominated most of the region outside of Montana where temperatures were 15-20 degrees above normal for the week. Most of the region was dry with only portions of New Mexico, southern Colorado, southern Montana and portions of the Pacific Northwest recording above-normal precipitation. Snowpack over the region remains well above normal. With the continued wet pattern over the Southwest, portions of Arizona and New Mexico were improved this week with moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions reduced in both states. Drier conditions in Washington allowed for some expansion of abnormally dry conditions while a reassessment of the extreme drought in northwest Nevada determined that conditions had improved enough to remove all of the extreme drought in this region…
Precipitation was widespread throughout most of eastern Oklahoma, northern Texas, northern Arkansas and portions of southern Louisiana with most of these areas recording 150-200% of normal precipitation for the week. Temperatures were warmest in the eastern extent where Arkansas and Louisiana were 4-6 degrees above normal while most of Oklahoma and Texas were 2-4 degrees below normal. The recent wetter pattern allowed for most of eastern Oklahoma to observe a full category improvement to the drought intensities with abnormally dry conditions removed from the eastern extent and some exceptional drought improved as well. Areas of eastern Texas had improvements made to moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions but saw degradations, mainly on long-term indicators highlighting the changes over portions of the panhandle, central and south Texas…
Looking Ahead
Over the next 5-7 days, a storm system will track out of the Four Corners region and onto the Plains, bringing with it widespread precipitation from Colorado, through the Plains and into the Midwest. Widespread precipitation is also expected throughout the South and into the Mid-Atlantic where up to 2-3 inches of rain is anticipated. Much of the southern and northern Plains as well as the West will be dry during this time. Temperatures are expected to be above normal over much of the southern Plains, Midwest and eastward with departures of 8-10 degrees above normal. Cooler-than-normal temperatures are expected over the central to northern Plains, and over the West where departures of up to 15 degrees below normal will be expected over Wyoming.
The 6โ10 day outlooks show above-normal chances of below-normal temperatures over the northern Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and much of the West. The best chances of above-normal temperatures will be over the Southeast and through much of the South and Mid-Atlantic. Most of the country is showing above-normal chances of recording above-normal precipitation with the best chances over the Great Basin and in the Mid-Atlantic. South Texas and the peninsula of Florida are still showing a better likelihood of below-normal precipitation.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending February 14 2023.
Thirteenth annual Conservation in the West Poll reveals voters not willing to go backwards on conservation progress to address gas prices, cost of living, or water shortages
COLORADO SPRINGSโColorado Collegeโs 13th annual State of the Rockies Projectย Conservation in the West Pollย released today [February 16, 2023] shows strong support for conservation policies among Westerners even as concerns around gas prices, cost of living, drought and water shortages remain high.
The poll, which surveyed the views of voters in eight Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), found support in theย 70 to 90 percentย range for conservation goals like protecting wildlife habitats and migration routes, ensuring healthier forests, preventing light pollution that blocks out the stars, and safeguarding drinking water.
From Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan Thompson
82 percentย of Westerners support achieving a national goal of conserving 30 percent of land and inland waters in America, and 30 percent of ocean areas, by the year 2030. Support for that proposal is upย 9 percentย since 2020, while opposition to the goal dropped byย 5 percentย during that time. In order to further conservation progress,ย 84 percentย of Westerners support presidents continuing to use their ability to designate existing public lands as national monuments to maintain public access and protect the land and wildlife for future generations.
Voters express higher levels of concern than in the past over several issues that impact Western lifestyles. Asked what they consider to be extremely or very serious problems for their state, 65 percent of Westerners point to inadequate water supplies, 67 percent say drought, 69 percent say the low level of water in rivers, 78 percent name the rising cost of living, and 60 percent say the price of gasoline.
Those spiking concerns, however, are not dampening enthusiasm for conservation action across the West. Support remains high for a range of policies aimed at protecting land, water, air, and wildlife, including:
Highway 160 wildlife crossing 15 miles west of Pagosa Springs. Photo credit: Allen Best
85 percentย support constructing wildlife crossing structures across major highways that intersect with known migration routes.
The tallest dunes in North America are the centerpiece of a diverse landscape of grasslands, wetlands, forests, alpine lakes and tundra at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. Photo credit: The Department of Interior
84 percentย support creating new national parks, national monuments, and national wildlife refuges and Tribal protected areas to protect historic sites or areas of outdoor recreation.
Community solar garden in Arvada. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
67 percentย support gradually transitioning to 100 percent of energy being produced from clean, renewable sources like solar and wind over the next ten to fifteen years.
Hey, World! I’m Tye, and I’ve been hiking for about 10 years. Come join me on this hiking journey throughout the state of New York. To learn more about me: https://youtu.be/GH2NqOEWJoc. Photo credit: Hiking While Black
76 percentย support directing funding to ensure adequate access to parks and natural areas for lower- income people and communities of color that disproportionately lack them.
Western San Juans with McPhee Reservoir in the foreground from the Anasazi Center Dolores
85 percentย support ensuring Native American Tribes have greater input into decisions made about areas on national public lands that contain sites sacred or culturally important to their Tribe.
โThis year voters in the West have a lot on their minds, but they are not willing to trade one priority for another,โ said Katrina Miller-Stevens, Director of the State of the Rockies Project and an associate professor at Colorado College. โHigh gas prices, increasing costs of living, and water shortage concerns are not enough to move Westerners to reconsider their consistent support for conservation policies or seek out short-sighted solutions that put land and water at risk. In fact, people in the West want to continue our progress to protect more outdoor spaces.โ
Dories at rest on a glorious Grand Canyon eve. Photo by Brian Richter
Locally, a variety of proposed conservation efforts are even more popular with in-state voters than they were when surveyed last year. In Arizona, 62 percent of voters support legislation to make permanent the current ban on new uranium and other mining on public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon. 90 percent of Coloradans agree with protecting existing public lands surrounding the Dolores River Canyon to conserve important wildlife habitat, safeguard the areaโs scenic beauty, and support outdoor recreation. 84 percent of Montanans support enacting the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act to ensure hunting and fishing access, protect stream flows into the Blackfoot River, and add eighty thousand acres of new protected public lands for recreation areas, along with timber harvest and habitat restoration. In New Mexico, 88 percent of voters want to designate existing public lands in the Caja del Rio plateau as a national conservation area to increase protections for grasslands and canyons along the Santa Fe river and other smaller rivers flowing into the Rio Grande. 83 percent of Nevadans want to designate existing public lands in southern Nevada as the Spirit Mountain National Monument to ensure outdoor recreation access and help preserve sacred Native American sites.
Voters call for bold action on water conservation in line with heightened concerns
The level of concern among Westerners around water issues remains high in this yearโs poll even amidst a notable uptick in winter precipitation across the West.
Colorado River “Beginnings”. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
The Colorado River is held in high regard by voters in the states that rely on it. 86 percent say the Colorado River is critical to their stateโs economy and 81 percent view it as an attraction for tourism and recreation. At the same time, 81 percent of voters say the Colorado River is at risk and in need of urgent action.
Concerns about water availability in the West translate into support for a variety of water conservation efforts, including:
95 percent support investing in water infrastructure to reduce leaks and waste. 88 percent support increasing the use of recycled water for homes and businesses.
87 percent support requiring local governments to determine whether there is enough water available before approving new residential development projects.
80 percent support providing financial incentives to homeowners and businesses to replace lawns and grassy areas with water-saving landscaping.
62 percentย support prohibiting grass lawns for new developments and homes.
Rancher Bryan Bernal irrigates a field that depends on Colorado River water near Loma, Colo. Credit: William Woody
54 percentย support providing financial incentives to farmers to temporarily take land out of production during severe water shortages.
Despite concerns over higher gas prices and cost of living, voters want a cleaner and safer energy future on public lands
In the face of higher gas prices and increased costs of living, Westerners still support proposals to limit the volume and impacts of oil and gas drilling on public lands.
The Four Corners methane hotspot is yet another environmental climate and public health disaster served to our community by industry. But now that weโve identified the sources we can begin to hold those responsible accountable for cleaning up after themselves. The BLM methane rule and EPA methane rule are more clearly essential than ever. Photo credit: San Juan Citizens Alliance (2018)
91 percent support requiring oil and gas companies to use updated equipment and technology to prevent leaks of methane gas and other pollution into the air. 91 percent of voters support requiring oil and gas companies, rather than federal and state governments, to pay for all of the clean-up and land restoration costs after drilling is finished. 72 percent of voters support only allowing oil and gas companies the right to drill in areas of public land where there is a high likelihood to actually produce oil and gas.
Asked what should be the highest priority for meeting Americaโs energy needs, 65 percent of Westerners say it should be reducing our need for more coal, oil and gas by expanding the use of clean, renewable energy. That is compared to 32 percent who favor drilling and digging for more oil and gas wherever we can find it.
Given a choice of public lands uses facing lawmakers, 68 percent of voters prefer ensuring we protect water sources, air quality, and wildlife habitat while providing opportunities to visit and recreate on national public lands. By contrast, only 26 percent of voters would rather ensure we produce more domestic energy by maximizing the amount of national public lands available for responsible oil and gas drilling and mining.
This is the thirteenth consecutive year Colorado College gauged the publicโs sentiment on public lands and conservation issues. The 2023 Colorado College Conservation in the West Poll is a bipartisan survey conducted by Republican pollster Lori Weigel of New Bridge Strategy and Democratic pollster Dave Metz of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates. The survey is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The poll surveyed at least 400 registered voters in each of eight Western states (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, & WY) for a total 3,413-voter sample, which included an over-sample of Black and Native American voters. The survey was conducted between January 5-22, 2023 and the effective margin of error is +2.4% at the 95% confidence interval for the total sample; and at most +4.9% for each state. The full survey and individual state surveys are available on theย State of the Rockies website.
Colorado College is a nationally prominent four-year liberal arts college that was founded in Colorado Springs in 1874. The College operates on the innovative Block Plan, in which its 2,200 undergraduate students study one course at a time in intensive three and a half-week segments. For the past eighteen years, the college has sponsored the State of the Rockies Project, which seeks to enhance public understanding of and action to address socio-environmental challenges in the Rocky Mountain West through collaborative student-faculty research, education, and stakeholder engagement.
About Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates
Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3)โa national Democratic opinion research firm with offices in Oakland, Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsinโhas specialized in public policy oriented opinion research since 1981. The firm has assisted hundreds of political campaigns at every level of the ballotโfrom President to City Councilโwith opinion research and strategic guidance. FM3 also provides research and strategic consulting to public agencies, businesses and public interest organizations nationwide.
About New Bridge Strategy
New Bridge Strategy is a Colorado-based, woman-owned and operated opinion research company specializing in public policy and campaign research. As a Republican polling firm that has led the research for hundreds of successful political and public affairs campaigns we have helped coalitions bridging the political spectrum in crafting winning ballot measure campaigns, public education campaigns, and legislative policy efforts. New Bridge Strategy helps clients bridge divides to create winning majorities.
About Hispanic Access Foundation
Hispanic Access Foundation connects Latinos and others with partners and opportunities to improve lives and create an equitable society.
The top 10% of recipients of federal farm payments raked in more than 79% of total subsidies over the last 25 years โ producing billions of dollars for a relatively small group of U.S. producers, according to a new analysis of federal data from an environmental group.
In total, the federal government paid more than $478 billion from 2015 to 2021 in farm support for crop insurance, disasters, conservation payments and subsidies for certain crops like corn and soybeans, according to theย analysis of federal dataย the Environmental Working Group released Wednesday [February 1, 2023].ย
The U.S. Agriculture Department programs support hundreds of thousands of producers across the country. But a select group of super collectors is bringing in an outsized portion of farm subsidies.
The top 1% collected 27% of total subsidies between 1995 and 2021, according to the report.
Some of the farm payments are more opaque. The government does not release information on all of the individuals who receive support for crop insurance. And the Trump administration changed how it reported some farm subsidies, so it lists them by banks instead of individuals, making it harder to see who received some of the payments from 2019 to 2021.
More than half of farm subsidies over the last 25 years were commodity payments to crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice, according to the EWG database.
โBased on what we do know, we can still see the most successful farm businesses are still collecting the lionโs share of subsidies โฆ while the vast majority of farmers are getting little or nothing,โ said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, an independent nonprofit that conducts extensive research.ย
The biggest of those were corn subsidies.
Federal spending on crop insurance has grown in recent farm bills, and crop insurance payments now make up a quarter of all subsidy payments.
In Iowa, the family farm that is managed by the son of Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a farm policy leader, received more than $1.4 million from 1995 to 2021, the report shows. The payments includedย disaster, corn, soybean and oat commodity subsidies.ย
The payments are listed for Robin Grassley, the family farm manager. Chuck Grassley and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa both sit on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Pat Grassley, a state representative in Iowa and the senatorโs grandson, collected $55,500 in federal payments since 2005. Most of those were relatively small commodity payments from $700 to $2,000 a year โ with the exception of 2020, when he received $20,000.
The database compiles data collected from federal reporting and Freedom of Information Act requests.
For instance, California is the most agriculture-producing state, according to the USDA, but is 11th on the list for subsidy payments.
North Carolina is in the top 10 for agriculture production but ranks 20th for farm subsidy receipts. Instead, more money goes to Texas, Iowa and Illinois, where large farms grow subsidized commodity crops, like corn and soybeans.
Theย top 15 states with the most total farm subsidies distributed from 1995 to 2021, ranked by payments, were:ย
Texas ($44.5 billion)
Iowa ($39. 6 billion)
Illinois ($32.7 billion)
Minnesota ($28.1 billion)
Kansas ($27.7 billion)
Nebraska ($27 billion)
North Dakota ($26.6 billion)
South Dakota ($21 billion)
Missouri ($17.4 billion)
Indiana ($16.5 billion)
California ($16.3 billion)
Arkansas ($15.9 billion)
Ohio ($12.8 billion)
Wisconsin ($11.7 billion)
Oklahoma ($11.5 billion).
Colorado came in 19th, with $8.7 billion in subsidies from 1995-2021. Most of that money went to counties on the stateโs Eastern Plains, with the most โ $906 million โ going to Kit Carson County.
Pennsylvania, a major agricultural state, is 29th on the list with $3.4 billion from 1995-2021. The biggest subsidy programs in the state are for dairy farmers.
But 80% of Pennsylvaniaโs producers do not receive federal farm subsidies, according to the report.
Producers in House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompsonโs congressional district in Pennsylvania received nearly $35 million in commodity payment support from 1995 to 2021, according to the database. The largest of those went to Long Acres Potato Farms in Tionesta, which collected more than $1.5 million over that time period.
Farm bill debate launches
The report comes as Congress kicks off its rewrite of the sweeping federal farm bill, which will set both policy and funding levels for farm, food and conservation programs for the next five years. The Senate Agriculture Committee held its first farm bill hearing of the year Wednesday. The current farm bill expires at the end of September.
Originally a product of the New Deal, the first farm bill in 1933 focused on commodity price support to provide relief for farmers and ensure a steady domestic food supply for Americans during the Great Depression.
Since then, lawmakers have passed 18 farm bills and greatly expanded the reach of the legislation.
For example, Congress added a conservation section to the farm bill in 1985 with payments for farmers who conserve soil, idle land for wildlife habitat or employ certain conservation practices.ย
But the biggest spending in recent farm bills is not on farms at all but in the nutrition title, which includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.
The politically fraught process of authoring a new farm bill faces extra challenges this year from a divided Congress, a looming debate over the federal debt ceiling and the potential for extended amendments in the House.
The leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees, Thompson and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, have each said they will aim to finish a new farm bill on time but acknowledged it will be a challenge this year.
โWe know because of the timeline and all of the complexity of everything going on and the challenges in the House that it may take a little bit longer, but weโre committed to getting it done,โ Stabenow said in a January interview on the web broadcast Agri-Pulse newsmakers.
Crop subsidies could face attacks
Crop subsidies come under fire in every farm bill debate โ both from environmental groups that would like to see the money invested elsewhere and budget hawks who want to trim federal spending.
The Republican Study Committee, whose members make up 80% of all Republican members of Congress, proposed drastic cuts for the farm bill and limits on some farm subsidies in the draft budget it released last summer as a โBlueprint to Save America.โ
But Agriculture Committee leaders have not indicated they intend to undertake any massive overhaul in this farm bill.
Thompson has said he does not want to dismantle farm supports, which he and other farm state lawmakers see as a safety net critical for producers and rural communities.ย
Democrats on his committee have not shown enthusiasm for an overhaul of farm subsidies, either.
In a recent list of farm bill priorities, Georgia Rep. David Scott, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, did not include changes for farm subsidies other than extending programs for livestock producers and small farmers.
Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott, who will chair the subcommittee that oversees farm commodities, said at a farm bill listening session last month that he wants to look at the reference prices that trigger payments for row crops but has not expressed interest in a massive subsidy overhaul.
Drought-weary California is entering February with deeper snowpack than it has seen in four decades, reflecting a healthy boost in the stateโs supply of water but also spurring concerns about dryness, flooding and other potential hazards in the months ahead. Statewide Sierra snowpack was 205% of normal for the date on Wednesday [February 1, 2023], said officials with the Department of Water Resources during theย second snow survey of the season.ย Snow levels at Phillips Station near South Lake Tahoe, where the monthly surveys are conducted each winter, were 193% of average for the date. Even more promising, snowpack was 128% of its April 1 average, referring to the end-of-season date when snowpack in California is typically at its deepest.ย
โOur snowpack is off to an incredible start, and itโs exactly what California needs to really help break from our ongoing drought,โ DWR snow survey manager Sean de Guzman said. The stateโs snowpack is currently outpacing the winter of 1982-83 โ โthe wettest year on record dating back about 40 years,โ he said…
This yearโs bounty is the direct result of theย atmospheric river stormsย that pounded California at the end of December and into January, De Guzman said. The storms dumped trillions of gallons of moisture onto the state, replenishing reservoirs and burying mountain areas under several feet of powder. It was enough for DWR to tentatively increase its allocation of supplies for the stateโs water agenciesย from 5% to 30%. But officials on Wednesday expressed some concern about the stateโs recent return to dryness.
A satellite image captured on January 20, 2023 from the National Weather Service Pueblo office shows the ‘doughnut hole’ a section of terrain in and south of Pueblo that receives less precipitation than surrounding areas. The white area in the image indicates snowfall and cloud cover. Courtesy National Weather Service Pueblo Office
Click the link to read the article on The Pueblo Chieftain website (Josue Perez). Here’s an excerpt:
A recent satellite image showing snow throughout Colorado offered a glimpse and insight into a novel southern Colorado weather phenomenon: the Pueblo Precipitation Doughnut Hole.ย sThe image, released by the National Weather Service of Pueblo, showed that most of Colorado received snowfall on Jan. 20, with some cloud cover mixed in. But there was one specific area that missed out on the precipitation, which encompassed portions of east and northern Pueblo County, as well as portions of Caรฑon City and some of Colorado Springs.
Fisher peak a spur of the Mesa de Maya (Raton Mesa), Colorado. It rises nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 m) above the town (Trinidad?) in the foreground. By Unknown author – Popular Science Monthly Volume 74, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18486163
That area is the home of the Pueblo Precipitation Doughnut Hole, a cross-section of terrain from south to north that tends to receive less precipitation than the areas surrounding it because of different geographical features such as Raton Mesa, the Arkansas River Valley, Palmer Divide and the surrounding mountains.ย
โItโs all about terrain, elevation and elevation change,โ said Michael Garberoglio, an NWS meteorologist. โIf youโre moving towards Pueblo from any direction, youโre decreasing in elevation, and when air flows down, terrain tends to dry out.โ
Precipitation isnโt a fan of that sinking air flow, so those downslope winds contribute to dry and warmer climates for the region, Garberoglio said.ย Itโs something thatโs much more common during winter, especially when dealing with snowfall…
This image illustrates a south to north cross section of terrain and Pueblo’s position in the ‘doughnut hole’. A few terrain features — Raton Mesa and Palmer Divide — contribute to downslope winds that make the area at the bottom of the slope drier and warmer. Courtesy National Weather Service Pueblo Office
Although westerly winds are frequent in the region, intense, low-pressure easterly winds upslope along the terrain, enhancing the possibility for some precipitation, Garberoglio said, as long as theyโre strong enough and have enough moisture in them.ย
Governor Hickenlooper, John Salazar and John Stulp at the 2012 Drought Conference
Click the link to read the article on The Hill website (Sharon Udasin). Here’s an excerpt:
Keeping the Colorado River flowing will require concessions from seven sparring states โ but Congress may have the financial mobility to help get them there, according to Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
โWe are working in a bipartisan fashion at this point,โ he told The Hill on Monday. โThereโs a recognition that a lot of peopleโs livelihoods are at stake, and thereโs a real urgency.โ
Hickenlooper is at the helm of the new Colorado River Caucus โ a cohort of senators from both sides of the aisle who intend to help the states agree on consumption cutbacks.
Members of the group include representatives from all seven Colorado River states: California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.
Critical infrastructure investments under President Bidenโs Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act to provide clean, reliable drinking water to communities and support water conservation in the Upper Colorado River Basin
As part of the Biden-Harris administrationโs commitment to enhance the resilience of the West to drought and climate change, the Department of the Interior today [February 13, 2023] announced a $728 million investment to deliver clean, reliable drinking water to rural and Tribal communities, support water conservation in the Upper Colorado River Basin, and complete projects to improve water supply reliability. This historic funding from President Bidenโs Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 supplementsย unprecedented investmentsย to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System now and into the future.
Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, seven authorized rural water projects under construction in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota will receive $278 million. These investments build on the allocation of $420 million for rural water construction activities in fiscal year 2022. The funding is helping projects complete construction of water treatment plants and intakes, supporting work related to pipeline connections, pump systems, and reservoir construction, and advancing other efforts to provide potable water to rural and Tribal communities.
The Bureau of Reclamation is also making available up to $125 million to support the relaunch of a System Conservation Pilot Program in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The renewed program โ funded with an initial allocation through the Inflation Reduction Act โ will help support water management and conservation efforts to improve water efficiency and ultimately protect the short-term sustainability of the Colorado River System.
This is in addition to the over $325 million in fiscal year 2023 funding that Reclamation has allocated for ongoing work on drought resilience projects across the country. Separately, this week the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $25 million in WaterSMART funds to help Western farmers and ranchers conserve water through a partnership with Reclamation and USDAโs Natural Resources Conservation Service.
โThe Biden-Harris administration is committed to making communities more resilient to the impacts of climate change — this includes making the Colorado River Basin and the diverse communities that rely on it more resilient to the ongoing drought in the West,โ saidย Secretary Deb Haaland. โWe are investing historic resources through the Presidentโs Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act to provide clean, reliable drinking water to rural and Tribal communities, protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System, and increase water efficiency across the West.โ
โThe Bureau of Reclamation is committed to ensuring the continued availability of water across the West, while at the same time enhancing the resiliency of our communities to a changing climate. As we move forward with these urgent priorities, we are doing so in close collaboration with Basin states, Tribes, water managers, farmers, irrigators, and other stakeholders,โ said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. โThis historic funding underscores how proactive efforts from the Biden-Harris administration are helping increase water efficiency and conservation across the West.โ
Overall, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides Reclamation with $8.3 billion over five years for water infrastructure projects to advance drought resilience and expand access to clean water for families, farmers, and wildlife. The Inflation Reduction Act is investing an additional $4.6 billion to address the worsening drought crisis and plan for the hydrology of today and into the future. Combined, these laws represent the largest investments in climate resilience in the nationโs history.
Historic Investments for Rural Water
Funding in fiscal year 2023 from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will enable significant advances of rural water systems and associated features:
$77.56 million for the Rocky Boys / North Central Montana Rural Water System in Montana for core pipeline construction on segments 7 and 8, continued construction progress of a water treatment plant, as well as construction for segments associated with Havre, Chester and Shelby Hub service areas.
$62.11 million for the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System in New Mexico for the construction of approximately 26 miles of raw water transmission pipeline.
$60 million for the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota to support a water treatment plant, construction associated with the Sible service area, and to reimburse states for related costs.
$26.33 million for the Garrison-Diversion Unit of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program in North Dakota for efforts associated with construction of water treatment plants, as well as efforts to support service on the Spirit Lake, Standing Rock and Fort Berthold Reservations.
$25 million for the recently authorized Musselshell-Judith Rural Water System in Montana for substantial completion of phases 3 and 4 of rural water construction activities.
$15 million for the Fort Peck Reservation โ Dry Prairie Rural Water System in Montana to support substantial completion of the project.
$12 million for the Jicarilla Apache Rural Water System in New Mexico to support progress toward water treatment plant upgrades.
Detailed information on the fiscal year 2023 spend plan is available on Reclamationโs website.
Upper Basin System Conservation Pilot Program
Up to $125 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act will enable Reclamation, in partnership with the Upper Colorado River Commission, to immediately move forward to implement the System Conservation Pilot Program. From 2015 to 2018, the Upper Basin System Conservation Pilot Program(link is external) successfully tested new approaches to conserve water on the Colorado River and proved these measures are an effective approach to temporarily increase water efficiency and mitigate the impacts of drought.
The program is cooperatively managed by Reclamation and the Upper Division States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming acting through the Upper Colorado River Commission.
This program supplements additional investments from the Biden-Harris administration to help increase water conservation, improve water efficiency, and prevent the Systemโs reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production. Reclamation is currently reviewing applications for a similar program in the Lower Colorado River Basin and expects to make additional announcements in the coming months to support water conservation and address the ongoing drought.
Investments from the Consolidated Appropriations Act:
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 provides an additional $325 million in funding for work in five categories within the Water and Related Resources account, including:
Over $229 million for Water Conservation and Delivery;
$50 million for Rural Water;
$31 million for Environmental Restoration or Compliance;
$11 million for Fish Passage and Fish Screens; and
$4 million for Facilities Operation, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation.
This funding will go to construction and preconstruction activities where environmental compliance has been completed and the project will improve water supply reliability, improve water deliveries, enhance economic development, promote job growth, advance Tribal and non-Tribal water studies and activities or address critical backlog maintenance and rehabilitation activities.
The inexorable rise of ocean heat is now evident off the coast of West Antarctica, potentially disrupting critical parts of the global climate system and accelerating sea level rise. Giant iceberg breaks off Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Credit: European Space Agency
The inexorable rise of ocean heat is now evident off the coast of West Antarctica, potentially disrupting critical parts of the global climate system and accelerating sea level rise.
Research scientists on ships along Antarcticaโs west coast said their recent voyages have been marked by an eerily warm ocean and record-low sea ice coverageโextreme climate conditions, even compared to the big changes of recent decades, when the region warmed much faster than the global average.
Despite โthat extraordinary change, what weโve seen this year is dramatic,โ said University of Delaware oceanographer Carlos Moffat last week from Punta Arenas, Chile, after completing a research cruise aboard the RV Laurence M. Gould to collect data on penguin feeding, as well as on ice and oceans as chief scientist for the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research program.
โEven as somebody whoโs been looking at these changing systems for a few decades, I was taken aback by what I saw, by the degree of warming that I saw,โ he said. โWe donโt know how long this is going to last. We donโt fully understand the consequences of this kind of event, but this looks like an extraordinaryย marine heatwave.โ
If such conditions recur in the coming years, it could start a rapid destabilization of Antarcticaโs critical underpinnings of the global climate system, including ice shelves, glaciers, coastal ecosystems and even ocean currents. Such radical changes have already been sweeping the Arctic, starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the 2000s.
Data collected during Moffatโs most recent research voyage includes the first readings from temperature and salinity sensors that were deployed a few years ago, which will give the scientists a starting point for comparisons. Moffat said itโs โtoo early, and difficultโ to attribute this yearโs conditions to long-term climate change until some peer-reviewed results are published.
โBut it seems to me that this might be a really unprecedented event,โ he said. โThese episodes of relatively rapid ocean warming that can persist for months have been occurring all over the place. They havenโt been common in this region.โ
He said ocean temperature readings going back to April 2022 speak to the persistence of the warm conditions off the Antarctic Peninsula. The cruise covered an area more than 600 miles long and criss-crossed waters above the 125-mile wide continental shelf, documenting widespread ocean heating.
โThatโs a very significant region,โ he said. โWe donโt have data going back 30 years for the entire region. But for the parts of the shelf for which we do have that data, it really seems extraordinary. Itโs very difficult to warm the ocean, and so when we see these conditions, that really speaks to a very intense forcing.โ
A Dangerous Climate Feedback
Greenhouse gases, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are the force behind the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. The latest reports from Antarctica raise concern that a perilous climate feedback cycle of warmer oceans and melting ice has started around the continent, saidย Johan Rockstrรถm, director of theย Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.ย
โWe knowย the melting of Antarcticaย is most sensitive to lubrication by water,โ he said. โItโs the sea melting the ice from below, itโs not atmospheric melting from above. And this is really, really worrying โฆ and quite surprising, because up until 10 years ago, we were absolutely convinced that the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic was the more sensitive of the two poles.โ
Up until about 2014, science suggested that Antarctica was still gaining ice, but โthat has shifted,โ he said. Anย assessmentย released that year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that there is likely an Antarctic tipping point between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius warming that would trigger irreversible melting of ice shelves and glaciers.
The Paris Climate Agreement to cap warming in that range was signed the following year with the understanding that a vicious climate cycle in Antarctica has global implications, raising sea level faster than expected, and contributing to the slowdown of the critical Atlantic thermohaline circulation that moves warm and cold water between the poles. He said research shows that system of currents has been affected by global warming in recent decades, leaving more warm water in the Southern Ocean to drive marine heatwaves.
Instead of flowing northward to the Gulf Stream, the warmer water persists around Antarctica, because โThat whole system has slowed down by 15 percent,โ he said. โSo when the circulation slows down, and you have more heat, you get more warm surface water in Antarctica.โ
The Potential Start of an Icy Death Spiral
Antarctica was seen as a frozen redoubt until very recently because its ice sheets average more than a mile thick and cover an area as big as the contiguous United States and Mexico combined, spreading over about 5.4 million square miles with its center more than 1,000 miles from the ocean.
The continent is also encircled by a swift ocean currentโthe only one that flows all the way around the worldโand an accompanying belt of jet stream winds several miles above it. Both helped buffer Antarcticaโs sea ice, as well as its land-based glaciers and floating ice shelves, from the rapid increase of climate extremes seen in most other parts of the world the past few decades.
But the observations from this yearโs conditions may bolster several recent studies showing how global warming is eroding that protection. An August 2022ย studyย in Nature Climate Change suggested that โcircumpolar deep waterโ at a depth of 1,000 to 2,000 feet has warmed by up to 2 degrees Celsius, which is in turn related to a poleward shift of the westerly wind belt.ย
Warming through the worldโs oceans is projected to persist in coming decades, so โthe oceanic heat supply to East Antarctica may continue to intensify, threatening the ice sheetโs future stability,โ the authors of the 2022 paper wrote.ย
Another study, published June 2022 in Science Direct, showed that the changes to the winds responsible for pushing the warmer water closer to shore will also persist if greenhouse gas emissions continue, so without immediate action to implement global climate policies, the Antarctic system could loop into a death spiral.
A 2016 study outlined a worst-case scenario in which warming would contribute to a rapid break-up of towering ice cliffs near the shore in a process that could speed up sea level rise, raising the water up to 7 feet by 2100 and 13 feet by 2150, increases that would be very hard to adapt to.
The waterโs rise is already accelerating. In the 1990s, the global average sea level increased at about 3 millimeters per year, but that annual rate increased to 4.5 millimeters in the last five years. Between August 2020 and January 2021, sea level rose 10 millimeters.
Warming Waters Spread South
Researchers feel those buffering winds and ocean currents when they start their research voyages from South America, Africa or Australia because they have to cross the โRoaring Forties,โ latitudes where fierce winds and deck-washing waves toss the vessels for a day or two before they end up in the relative calm of the Southern Ocean, where they can cruise smoothly under misty skies past floating sheets of ice.
The Southern Ocean encompasses all the water below 60 degrees South, and while itโs a mix of Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean waters, it was geographically recognized as a distinct geographic entity by NOAA in 1999, precisely because itโs separated by those currents in the ocean and the sky that enclose Antarcticaโs climate and ecosystems.
But itโs now clear that warming is dangerously infiltrating West Antarctica, said Rob Larter, a polar marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey who is currently measuring marine sediments in the Southern Ocean from the RV Polarstern to determine how fast and how far ice sheets have moved in the past.
Comparing the marine geology with climate data like temperatures and carbon dioxide levels through the millennia helps show how the ice will respond to human-caused warming, but some of the changes are visible without instruments, Larter said.
โThe most striking changes I have witnessed are the retreat of the front of Pine Island Glacier after an abrupt change in its calving style in 2015,โ he said, describing one of the glaciers in West Antarctica known to be particularly vulnerable to the warming ocean. Up until that year, the glacier had been thinning, and then all of a sudden, big chunks started breaking off, he said.
โI visited the front on three different research cruises, in 2017, 2019 and 2020,โ he said. โAnd each time we had to go about 10 km further upstream due to the rapid retreat resulting from more frequent calving.โ
The RV Polarstern is cruising in the Bellingshausen Sea, farther south than Moffatโs ship, but Larter said the ocean surface in their research area is also unusually warm, โlargely a consequence of the fact most of the sea ice thatโs usually here had melted or drifted away westward by the end of November,โ he said.
Sea ice holds the water temperature to about 2 degrees below zero Celsius, Larter said, but the water during his current expedition has been nearly a degree above zeroโalmost three degrees Celsius warmer than normal.
He said declining sea ice could potentially affect the global ocean temperatures more rapidly by decreasing the flow of frigid water from the Southern Ocean along sea floors farther north.
โThe dense, cold water formed around Antarctica flows northward and fills the deepest parts of most ocean basins,โ he said. โIn doing so it provides an important driver for the overturning thermohaline circulation.โ Those currents help balance the global climate by redistributing massive amounts of heat energy.
The process of producing that dense water starts with sea ice formation and melting, he said.
โSea ice is a little fresher than the water it forms from due to brine rejection during ice crystal formation,โ he said. โThe residual water becomes more saline, which makes it denser, causing it to sink, where it keeps the global refrigerator running as it spreads outward.โ
It will be critical to monitor exactly how and where the warming ocean moves toward the ice shelves in West Antarctica, said Ted Scambos, a senior Antarctic researcher with the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.ย
For now, itโs not clear whether the warmer water will reach the Amundsen Sea,
which holds the Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier,โ he said. โIf it does, or if itโs the start of a patch of warm water that will eventually drift in front of all of those glaciers, then, yeah, we would see a jump in the retreat rates for sure.โ
Scambos helps coordinate a global effort studying the regionโs most vulnerable ice, and he said the scientists are also probing and prodding far beneath the shelves to learn how the formation of grooves and cracks affects melting. Sometimes, as the shelf drags across sections of the rough seafloor, the friction opens up gaps that can trigger more crack as the ice sags from above.
โThe processes are real,โ he said. โThey really do happen, they really do speed things up and they are being incorporated in the models. But itโs not as dire as some of the more high end forecasts.โ
While the tipping points that could cause runaway ice melt are difficult to reach, he said, research like Larterโs sediment maps shows that rapid retreats and meltdowns have happened in the geological past, potentially raising seas 2 to 3 meters in a century to submerge coastlines around the world.
โThe runaway aspects of the process take hold fairly slowly. In the natural world, this process of marine ice instability takes about a millennium,โ he said. But, โif we continue to drive it hard by warming the Pacific, by changing the circulation of air and ocean around Antarctica, we will get the fastest possible version of that marine ice sheet instability.โ
Click the link to read the article on The Deseret News website (Amy Joi O’Donoghue). Here’s an excerpt:
Poll probes attitudes on drought, weather in Utah
A new poll shows that while more than 8 in 10 Utah residents remain concerned over the drought impacting the state, the series of storms this winter leaving a bountiful mountain snowpack have more than half of them less concerned than last year…When it came to views people have regarding Utahโs drought in general, 85% of survey participants said they were concerned, 14% said they were not concerned, while another 1% said they did not know…But with winter storms pounding the state, delivering snow levels well above average and in some areas like southern Utah nearly twice what is average, the poll shows some residentsโ concern over drought is starting to wane. More than half of those polled, over 52%, said they are less concerned about drought than last year, 14% remain more concerned, 34% have about the same attitude and 1% donโt know…
โWhen people are seeing the above normal precipitation and snowpack, theyโre talking about meteorological drought, which itโs something that we welcome and we are seeing improvements, of course, in that area,โ Clayton said. โThe one thatโs going to take a much longer time to get out of is the hydrological drought, which is essentially our storage systems, our reservoirs โ all of our surface water storage.โ
Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam on the border between Nevada and Arizona on the morning of Friday, April 8, 2022. (Tim Lenard/The Nevada Independent)
Click the link to read the article on Nevada’s only non-profit newsroom The Nevada Independent website (Daniel Rothberg):
Six of the seven U.S. states that rely on the Colorado River released a framework Monday that outlines a potential strategy for federal water regulators tasked with making unprecedented cuts on an overused watershed that serves about 40 million people across the Southwest.
The states released the plan, outlined in a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Interior, one day before a federal deadline to negotiate a consensus-based framework for cutting back. Years of drought, amplified by climate change, have exposed structural imbalances in how the Colorado River is used, as there are often more legal rights to use water than there is water to go around.
What happens next is an open question. The plan shows a unified front among six states about how some of the cuts should be divided, but it is also a reflection of the unresolved tensions that have characterized seven-state negotiations over short-term cuts, which began last summer.
Notably, the plan failed to gain the support of California, seen as critical to making meaningful cutbacks, as the state with the largest apportionment of the river and priority legal entitlements to use water. And itโs unclear how federal officials will regard a plan that leaves out a key state.
John Entsminger, who leads the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said in a statement Monday that while the goal remains a seven-state deal, the six-state plan was a โpositive step forward.โย
Gov. Joe Lombardo also released a statement calling the six-state plan a โmajor step forward.โ
The plan builds upon a framework Nevada outlined this year. The consensus-based approach would require states to account for water lost to evaporation and leaky infrastructure, resulting in significant cuts to overall use. Together, annual water losses make up about half of the water federal officials are looking to cut as a short-term measure to stabilize the riverโs major reservoirs โ Lake Mead and Lake Powell โ until a longer-term deal can be negotiated.
California negotiators said any plan to make major cuts should adhere to a foundational tenet of Western water law โ that those who developed their water rights first have a priority to water in times of shortages. They have argued that any cuts should be dealt with under this system, a move that would require junior users, particularly in Arizona, to take potentially steeper cuts.
The proposal to cut back by dividing evaporation losses in proportion to water use, California has argued, would be an unfair way to shift the burden of cuts to some of the stateโs oldest Colorado River users, including the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest single river user.
โWhen you have a junior right, thatโs what you do,โ Tina Shields, an official with the farming district, recentlyย told theย Associated Press. โYou try to share the problem with other users.โ
In the coming weeks, federal water officials will review the plan and could incorporate parts of it in anย environmental review processย to evaluate the short-term cuts to annual water use. The federal government will likely announce a regulatory action later this year.
This graphic indicates Colorado River reservoir levels as of November 2022. (Arizona Department of Water Resources)
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Sukyoung Lee,ย Kris Karnauskas,ย Ulla Heede,ย ANDย Michelle L’Heureus):
โHow will climate change influence ENSO?โ is one of the most common questions that we get on the ENSO Blog. While it makes sense folks want to know about the future changes in El Niรฑo and La Niรฑaโare they becoming more/less frequent? stronger? weaker? (1)โthere is an even more basic question for future climate change that scientists are pondering:
How will trends in sea surface temperatures change across the equatorial Pacific Ocean?
It is very likely that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is going to warm up somewhere, but where exactly the strongest warming occurs is an important question. In particular, scientists want to know more about the geographic pattern of trends (2). By modifying the heating in the tropics, these changes will then have knock-on influences across the globe because, as we like to say, what happens in the Pacific does not stay in the Pacific!
The trend pattern is critical to understanding how the average or background atmospheric circulation of the tropical Pacific will change. Remember: the background state of the atmosphere in the tropical Pacificโtheย Walker Circulationโis fueled by the difference in sea surface temperature between the west and the east.
Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific around the equator are generally cooler in the East (blue colors) than they are in the West (yellow-orange). This temperature contrast, or gradient from warm to cool, is key to the Walker Circulation. January 21, 2023, image from Climate.gov Data Snapshots.
If temperatures warm faster in the western Pacific than in the eastern Pacific, the background tropical circulation could become more La Niรฑa-like (3). But if the trend pattern changes as global temperatures continue to rise, meaning the east starts warming faster than the west in the future, the whole circulation across the tropical Pacific could become more El Niรฑo-like. So actual ENSO events would be occurring against a different background climate than they do today. Yeah, itโs complicated.
How the sea surface temperature trend pattern will change has profound, world-wide implications for impacts such as regional changes in rainfall, where drought occurs, numbers of tropical cyclones, the rate of global mean warming, ocean biogeochemistry, etc. If you are trying to make decisions based on projections of the future, you need to know the answer. And, at this moment, there is some significant (perhaps even growing) debate that surrounds it.
Some scientists believe the recently observed trends suggest the models may be not reproducing some key mechanisms that are critical to provide accurate projections for the tropical Pacific Ocean. There are some long-standing biases in how models simulate the tropical Pacific that we have covered before on this blog, which could be playing some role.
To help us better understand this question, we have assembled a panel of three experts: Professorย Sukyoung Leeย at the Pennsylvania State University, Professorย Kris Karnauskasat the University of Colorado- Boulder (who has previously written on theย ENSO blog), Dr.ย Ulla Heedeย who is now a CIRES postdoctoral visiting fellow, following her PhD withย Alexey Fedorovย at Yale University. Keep in mind that this is not a complete representation of all possible perspectives on the matter, and there are some angles not represented by this group (4).
Questions and Answers
(A) So, what are the trends in sea surface temperature (and other variables) across the tropical Pacific Ocean? Why canโt you just measure past trends and assume they will continue? Whatโs the problem here?
UH:ย Since at least 1980, the tropical Pacific warming pattern has become more La Niรฑa-like in the observations. This means that SSTs are warming faster in the western tropical Pacific Ocean than the eastern Pacific, and that surface winds are blowing stronger from east-to-west along the equatorial Pacific Ocean (5). This is opposite to the El Niรฑo-like trend many climate models are projecting into the future because of greenhouse gases. Right now, there is a vigorous debate in the climate community whether the La Niรฑa-like trend we are observing now is being driven by greenhouse gases or has natural causes. Because natural variations in the ocean circulation are slow, it is difficult to estimate the signal of global warming in a short observational record.
From Jan. 1982 until Dec. 2022, the linear trends of anomalies in sea surface temperature (top left), 850hPa-level zonal winds (top right), outgoing longwave radiation (bottom left), and 1000hPa-level geopotential height (bottom right). Red (blue) shading in the SST map indicates trends toward more positive (negative) SSTs. Purple (green) shading in the wind map indicates that trends are stronger going from east to west (west to east). Brown (green) shading in the OLR map indicates that convection/rainfall is below-average (above-average). Orange (purple) shading in the surface height/pressure map indicates trends toward higher (lower) pressure/heights. Data are in monthly means and the slope is multiplied by the number of months over the period to obtain the total change in the anomalies. Figures by Michelle LโHeureux and modified by climate.gov.
KK: It might sound simple, but quantifying those trends in the past observed record is more challenging than you might think! This is because the tropical Pacific is home to ENSO, which can either hide the long-term trends with its large variability, or make trends appear that are just temporary and could change later on.
UH: There is another reason why we cannot simply assume the recently observed La Niรฑa-like trend will continue in the future. Mainly, we donโt know with enough certainty what the trend was before we had satellites monitoring the vast expanse of the tropical Pacific Ocean.
KK:ย Ulla is right, we have a tougher time reliably estimating the trends prior to the satellite era (late 1970s), and this problem gets even worse prior to the 1950s. Back then the instrumental data (mostly from ships) have gaps and changes in measurement protocols. Think of it like this: ideally, we would like to estimate the trend using as long of a record as possible (going back to the 1800s) but this is hampered by gaps in space and time. With 40 years of satellite data, we can be more confident that weโre accurately measuring the whole tropics, but with that shorter record, it is harder to distinguish trends from just a random pileup of ENSO events.
Locations of sea surface temperature observations from the International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) for 20-year periods starting with the 1860-1879 period and ending with 1980-1999. The colors represent the percentage of months with at least one sea surface temperature measurement in each 2 degree by 2 degree grid box. The darker the color the higher the percentage of months in each 20-year period that has an observation. NOAA Climate.gov image with data from ICOADS.
(B) Why is it so important we know the pattern of tropical Pacific trends? Who cares?
UH: Iโd like to rephrase this question another way: What are the climate impacts associated with the tropical Pacific climate change? (6) The short answer is: a lot! This is because the tropical Pacific plays a key role in distributing energy and moisture to the rest of the planet, so any change in the tropical Pacific will be felt in other parts of the world. Letโs look at an example: in the last several decades we have observed drought conditions in many parts of the southwestern United States. This is likely partially related to the stronger tropical Pacific winds (more La Niรฑa-like trends) we have recently observed. So, if the trends in the tropical Pacific changes, we might also see a change in these drought conditions.
SL: During La Niรฑa, the atmospheric circulation over the middle latitudes is unusually wavier in the east-west direction (7). Surface temperatures can also be more variable as this blog recently pointed out. This increased waviness can mean the Arctic tends to be unusually warm and a large area of the North American and Eurasian continents tend to be unusually cold (8). Conversely, during El Niรฑo, the atmospheric circulation is less wavy and the mid-latitude continents tend to be unusually warm and the Arctic tends to be colder than average.
Because climate change might have similar effects, we really need to know how the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature pattern and latent heating [the heating of the atmosphere that occurs when water vapor condenses into rain or clouds] will change. If it becomes more La Niรฑa-like, the likelihood of undesirable conditions such as an even drier southwest U.S., as Ulla mentioned, or an amplified cold continents/warm Arctic pattern, would increase (8). Because most of the population resides in the mid-latitude continents, this clearly has implications for energy and water usage planning.
(C) Why is this happening? Why are future projections more El Niรฑo-like while observations are more La Niรฑa-like? What would even cause more El Niรฑo- vs. more La Niรฑa-like changes?
KK: Perhaps we should not be that surprised that future projections and past observations do not always give the same answer. Future projections are from imperfect computer models, and past observations are from imperfect attempts to measure the vast ocean. The causes of these possible changes have been hotly debated for decades, and it was like โlove at first sightโ when I was introduced to it as a postdoc!
SL:ย One explanation is โinternal variability,โ which essentially suggests that natural causes explain the recent La Niรฑa-like trend. However, recent work by Dr. Richard Seager (hereย andย here), among others, suggests models are either deficient at correctly estimating this internal variability or the response to greenhouse gases may not be right. Either outcome raises some doubts on the future projections of the tropical Pacific made by the current generation of climate models. Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms that could drive El Niรฑo-like vs. La Niรฑa-like trends.
The left column shows the relevant processes in the pre-industrial climate and the right column shows how these same processes initially respond to GHG warming (this schematic does not show the final state). Technical Details(left panel): Convection is strongest in the western Pacific where the SST is the highest. Latent heating warms aloft, and evaporation cools the ocean surface. In the eastern Pacific, the thermocline is closest to the surface. Right panel: Under GHG warming, a uniform surface heat flux into the Pacific Ocean causes the SST to rise, but in the eastern tropical Pacific, the upwelling of cold water counters the forced warming. As a result, the zonal SST gradient increases. Schematic by climate.gov.
KK:ย One mechanism that could lead to more La Niรฑa-like change is that cold waterย upwellingย in the eastern Pacific may keep warming at bay โ the idea here is that the coldest waters at depth in the ocean are slower to feel the effects of climate change and provide a break on local rates of warming (see figure above). Another mechanism that could lead to more El Niรฑo-like change is that radiative effects of global warming [the upward transfer of heat away from the surface] would cause the tropical atmosphere to become more stable, slow down the Walker circulation, weaken the upwelling in the eastern Pacific, and lead to more warming there (see figure below).
Caption: Schematic showing a possible mechanism toward an El Niรฑo-like state, reviewed in Lee et al. (2022). The left column shows the relevant processes in the pre-industrial climate and the right column shows how these same processes initially respond to GHG warming (this schematic does not show the final state). Technical Details (left panel): Convection is strongest in the western Pacific where the SST is the highest. Latent heating warms aloft, and evaporation cools the ocean surface. Right panel: SSTs in the tropical Pacific increase leading to more condensational heating aloft and a higher tropopause, which increases dry static stability and gross moist stability, thus weakening the Walker circulation. At the same time, evaporative cooling and cloud shading are more sensitive to warming in the western Pacific, which weakens the zonal SST gradient. Schematic by climate.gov.
SL:ย A final possible mechanism may result in a La Niรฑa-like future. The air over the western Pacific Ocean could become moister, promoting even stronger convection (showers and thunderstorms), and therefore strengthening the Walker circulation. At the same time, in the periphery of the Indo-Pacific warm pool, contraction of the cirrus cloud cover could cause more surface cooling by allowing more infrared radiation to escape to space, again helping to create a more La Niรฑa-like sea surface temperature pattern (see figure below).
Schematic showing a possible mechanism toward an La Niรฑa-like state, reviewed in Lee et al. (2022). The left column shows the relevant processes in the pre-industrial climate and the right column shows how these same processes initially respond to GHG warming (this schematic does not show the final state). Technical Details (left panel): Highlighting the abundance of water vapor in the lower troposphere, and the trapping of infrared radiation (IR) by cirrus outflow from convective towers which otherwise escapes to space. Latent heating warms aloft, and evaporation cools the ocean surface. Right panel: Under GHG warming, the lower troposphere becomes more moist which decreases the gross moist stability and thus strengthens the Walker circulation. In the margins of the convective region, the horizontal moisture gradient increases, and advection from the surrounding drier region diminishes the area of convection. The so-called โiris effectโ can also lead to a similar response to increased warming: Precipitation efficiency in convective tower increases, leaving less moisture for cirrus outflow. The resulting contraction of the cirrus cover in the periphery of the warm pool allows for more IR to escape, potentially cooling SSTs and thus enhancing the zonal SST gradient between the warm pool and its surroundings. Schematic by climate.gov.
(D) Can we reconcile the seemingly different trends in the models versus the observations? Could they both be โright?โ
UH: It is entirely possible that the La Niรฑa-like trends in the Pacific we are observing now are transient (short-term) and will reverse at some point in the next 100 years and start to look more like the modeled projections, with the eastern Pacific Ocean warming faster than the rest of the tropical oceans (9). Even if it is just transient, we need to understand these trends better: is it a response to global warming? (I tend to think so!), natural variability, or some mix of the two? However, this is difficult to diagnose using the models because the historical model simulations (run using observed historical forcings) and the observations still do not agree very well.
KK: It is fair to say both might be โrightโ in the very general sense that both sets of mechanisms are real and part of the fundamental physics controlling the climate system, but I donโt think we can say that both are right in terms of their relative importance. If the models and observations agreed on what *has* happened since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, then that would be one thing, but they donโt. As for the future, it is possible that a mixture of physical processes can evolve, and some of Ullaโs work has really been groundbreaking in thinking along those lines. However, I suspect that as time goes on, we will learn that the models are still not representing some of the key ocean processes very well (10), such as the currents and upwelling, and their relation to changes in the windโespecially in places like the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean where the thermocline is very shallow.
(E) How and when will scientists figure out where we are headed? What more could be done to help resolve this important question?
KK: Progress on the observational side might be slow. I donโt know how much more we can improve our ability to describe historical trends back to the 1800s. Even as different groups of scientists throw new statistical techniques to fill in the gaps, etc., the observational uncertainties arenโt being reduced very much. That said, we now have 40+ years of satellite data. When I started grad school, that was only 22 years. We probably have a few more decades to go, but we are getting closer to an acceptably long satellite record that can distinguish between ENSO, decadal variability, and long-term trends that are arising from human activities.
On the modeling side, heroic efforts are being done at modeling centers around the world to improve the representation of the physical processes. Perhaps gains will come from moving toward higher spatial resolution of the models as computers get cheaper and faster, which I suspect is critical for resolving upwelling, the shear between currents flowing in different directions, and the way that the friction from wind makes its way down into the ocean to influence the currents and mixing. Iโm hopeful, and Iโm glad I still have a few decades left to work on this fun and important problem!
SL: I agree with Kris that as the length of observational records increases, the impact of the internal variability on the trend diminishes, and therefore increasing the likelihood that the La Niรฑa-like trends weโve seen represents natureโs response to greenhouse gases. However, it is difficult to lengthen our historical record and infill where there are few measurements, so improving the accuracy of climate models is critical. Kris points out that we need to better resolve the ocean, but I think we also need to focus on how well tropical convection and rainfall is captured, which occur on scales that are unresolved by current model grid spacing. The current generation of parameterizationsstill warms the upper troposphere too aggressively and therefore weakens the simulated Walker circulation, leading to a more El Niรฑo-like state.
For good reason, improving the parameterization is one of the most prominent research activities in climate science. At the same time, I believe that continued efforts should be made to develop new theories and to improve existing theories of fundamental mechanisms. In the meantime, for users who need to make decisions, it is important to recognize that there may be two different โstorylinesโ for the tropical Pacific in the future, which they need to take into account.
Lead Editor: Michelle LโHeureux (NOAA CPC)
Footnotes:
(1) Tom has done a masterful job going over these questions. Check out his most recent post going over the latest IPCC findings related to ENSO and climate change. I also really like his older post using a dimmer switch metaphor.
(2) Iโm avoiding using the term โzonal gradientโ up top because it involves two fairly jargon-y terms that I think confuse most non-scientific readers. But, for those who are familiar, Iโm talking about trends in the zonal gradient across the tropical Pacific Ocean. In other words, weโre interested in the relative rate of trends in tropical sea surface temperature, sea level pressure, rainfall, etc. in the zonal, or east-west, directionโi.e. comparing impacts between the eastern Pacific versus the western Pacific.
(3) Now some readers might ask โWait, isnโt ENSO already tied to the pattern of sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific Ocean? El Niรฑo is associated with ocean temperatures warming up (more than average) in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific and La Niรฑa is linked to cooler ocean temperatures there. So how is this question about trend patterns any different from asking how ENSO itself will change?โ Good question smart readers!
Changes in El Niรฑo and La Niรฑa are most strongly tied to seasonal (3-month) average anomalies in the climate system, and this seasonal variability has its own mechanismsthat result in the growth and decay of events over the span of a year or couple years. In contrast, what we are talking about here is the slower, smaller background changes in the tropical Pacific that occur over multiple decades or even centuries. Even though the timescales and mechanisms are separate and distinct from the seasonal ENSO cycle, folks often use the phrases โEl Niรฑo-like change/trendsโ or โLa Niรฑa-like change/trendsโ to describe these longer, gradual trends.
Although potentially confusing, these terms provide a handy shortcut because El Niรฑo-like change means that these trends will look more El Niรฑo-like over the tropical Pacific (relatively warmer in the central/east Pacific and cooler in the western Pacific) or La Niรฑa-like (relatively cooler in the central/east Pacific and warmer in the western Pacific).
(4) I think Sukyoung Leeโs review paper (which available through open access) is a nice place to start reading about different ideas and approaches (disclosure: two ENSO bloggers are co-authors). There are also more papers that have been released since that review paper was assembled that are also worth checking out:
Hartmann, D. L. (2022). The Antarctic ozone hole and the pattern effect on climate sensitivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(35), e2207889119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207889119
Wills, R. C. J., Dong, Y., Proistosecu, C., Armour, K. C., & Battisti, D. S. (2022). Systematic climate model biases in the large-scale patterns of recent sea-surface temperature and sea-level pressure change. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL100011. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL100011
Dong, Y., Pauling, A. G., Sadai, S., & Armour, K. C. (2022). Antarctic ice-sheet meltwater reduces transient warming and climate sensitivity through the sea-surface temperature pattern effect. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL101249. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL101249
(5) For example, one recent study has shown that the ocean surface near the Galapagos Islands in the far eastern equatorial Pacific cooled down by about a half degree Celsius over the past 40 years.
(6) It is often useful to make a distinction between climate change and climate impacts. Climate change refers to the โbig pictureโ of how earthโs climate is changing in response to more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. This includes questions like how much the surface of the planet is warming, how the jet stream is changing, how fast the ice sheets are melting, and – you guessed it – how the tropical Pacific is changing. Climate impacts are the consequences of climate change that impacts humans locally. For example, climate impacts could be increased droughts, more frequent forest fires, flooding of coastal cities, stronger hurricanes making landfall.
(7) The reason why La Niรฑa events bring about wavier conditions is because the latent heat released during cloud formation in the tropics is mostly confined to the western part of the tropical Pacific. The latent heating generates so-called Rossby waves which are responsible for the aforementioned waviness (see Figure 6 in Lee et al., 2022). If the latent heating is uniform in the east-west direction, the heating cannot generate Rossby waves. Therefore, the more east-west confinement of the latent heating, the more the waviness, which has profound impacts on temperature and precipitation locally around the globe. The pattern of the future tropical Pacific is not necessarily the same as either El Niรฑo or La Niรฑa.
(8) For more details see:
Lee, S. (2012). Testing of the Tropically Excited Arctic Warming Mechanism (TEAM) with Traditional El Niรฑo and La Niรฑa, Journal of Climate, 25(12), 4015-4022.
Clark, J. P., & Lee, S. (2019). The role of the Tropically Excited Arctic Warming Mechanism on the warm Arctic cold continent surface air temperature trend pattern. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 8490โ 8499. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082714
(9) Here are some papers that delve on the issue of future Pacific warming:
Heede, Ulla, and Alexey Fedorov. 2021. โEastern Equatorial Pacific Warming Delayed by Aerosols and Thermostat Response to CO2โ.
Heede, Ulla K., Alexey V. Fedorov, and Natalie J. Burls. 2020. โTimescales and Mechanisms for the Tropical Pacific Response to Global Warming: A Tug of War between the Ocean Thermostat and Weaker Walkerโ. Journal of Climate, April. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0690.1.
Wu, Mingna, Tianjun Zhou, Chao Li, Hongmei Li, Xiaolong Chen, Bo Wu, Wenxia Zhang, and Lixia Zhang. 2021. โA Very Likely Weakening of Pacific Walker Circulation in Constrained Near-Future Projectionsโ. Nature Communications12 (1): 6502. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26693-y.
Ying, Jun, Matthew Collins, Wenju Cai, Axel Timmermann, Ping Huang, Dake Chen, and Karl Stein. 2022. โEmergence of Climate Change in the Tropical Pacificโ. Nature Climate Change, March, 1โ9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01301-z.
(10) Karnauskas, K. B., J. Jakoboski, T. M. S. Johnston, W. B. Owens, D. L. Rudnick, and R. E. Todd, 2020: The Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent in Three Generations of Global Climate Models and Glider Observations. J. Geophys. Res.โOceans, 125(11), e2020JC016609, doi: 10.1029/2020JC016609.
This paper analyzed a ton of climate models, from the ones that were state-of-the-art a dozen years ago (CMIP3 / IPCC AR4) to the most recent generation of CMIP6 models that fed into the 6thIPCC Assessment Report. While the currents along the equatorial Pacific have improved over time, there is still a ways to go, and this has implications for how SST changes.
Coats, S., and K. B. Karnauskas, 2018: A role for the Equatorial Undercurrent in the ocean dynamical thermostat. J. Climate, 31, 6245โ6261, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0513.1.
This paper analyzed a recent generation of global climate models (CMIP5 / IPCC AR5) and found, among other things, that the relationship between the wind stress and the underwater currents does not match observations in the eastern equatorial Pacific, which has implications for how SST changes in that climatically important region.
Castle Rock Water Conservation Specialist Rick Schultz, third from the right, inspects and tests a new landscape watering system in Castle Rock, one of many Douglas County communities reliant on the shrinking Denver Aquifer. In a Fresh Water News analysis of water conservation data, Castle Rock leads the state, having reduced its use 12% since 2013. Oct. 21, 2020. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News
With the Colorado River crisis deepening and the warming climate continuing to rob streams and rivers of their flows, talk in Colorado has resumed about how to limit growing water demand statewide for residential use.
A new report commissioned by the Common Sense Institute and written by Colorado water veterans Jennifer Gimbel and Eric Kuhn, cites the need for broader conservation measures such as removing non-functional turf in new development, among other things.
โRegional approaches are needed,โ they added in their broad-ranging report. They suggest regional conservancy and conservation districts might be a vehicle in lieu of statewide standards.
Gimbel, a senior scholar at CSUโs Water Center and former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and Kuhn, retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, summarized their findings last Friday [January 27, 2023] in a presentation at the Colorado Water Congress Annual Convention. The water congress is a bi-partisan group representing dozens of water users across the state.
โWe have to do more with less,โ said Kuhn. He cited projected statewide population growth of 1.6 to 1.8 million new residents by 2050, most along the Front Range, but also the probability that the warming climate will make less water available, particularly from the Colorado River.
Kuhn warned that deliveries of water from the Colorado River Basin to the Front Range are by no means guaranteed. Several Front Range water providers, including Pueblo, Denver and Northern Water have at least some water rights that are younger, or more junior than those farther downstream in places such as California, and could be vulnerable if mandatory cutbacks ever occurred. Within individual states in the West, older water rights are typically fulfilled before younger water rights during times of scarcity, though itโs yet to be seen how mandatory cutbacks would materialize across the entire Colorado River Basin.
โCurtailment of those junior users is not acceptable at any time in the future,โ said Kuhn.
Earlier during the conference, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called for a โcomprehensive approach to housing to preserve our water resources.โ He cited multiple benefits for revised land-use policies: reduced traffic, saved money for consumers and โ most important, he added, it โlimits demand on water resources.โ
Polis said the Colorado Water Conservation Board will lead a task force on integrating land use and water demand. This 21-member Urban Landscape Conservation Task Force is to include representatives of 8 water utilities, 2 conservation districts, 2 environmental NGOs, with the balance to come from areas of expertise and interest such as stormwater, equity, and urban planning.
Local control, a basic precept of Coloradoโs form of government, will also likely be an issue. Towns, cities and counties who are authorized to govern themselves in most cases, often resist state control in matters they believe should remain in local hands.
Aurora, if lately a shining light for turf removal and strict water conservation policies, harbors skepticism of any potential statewide mandates. โAurora must retain control of what our city looks like,โ says Greg Baker, Aurora Waterโs spokesman.
Aurora is open to discussion but โit needs to be a proportional discussion,โ says Baker. โWe donโt want to tell agriculture how to use their water, but they account for 85% of water use in this state.โ
In 2014, when Ellen Roberts, then a state senator from Durango, introduced a conservation bill, she found significant opposition.
Roberts said she introduced the bill, which did not pass, to get the conversation going in Colorado about stepped-up conservation programs. โMy concern was that if we waited for that to happen naturally, it might never happen or it would be so slow it would have no meaningful impact,โ she says.
This latest report was designed for the business community, says Gimbel, but with the understanding that it needed to include the water community. โIt was our opportunity to tell the business community โpay attention, because what happens with water is going to affect our economy one way or another.โโ
Allen Bestย grew up in eastern Colorado, where both sets of grandparents were farmers. Best writes about the energy transition in Colorado and beyond atย BigPivots.com.
Several conservation organizations today [February 2, 2023] urge Colorado River Basin decision-makers to protect critical environmental priorities as they wrestle with Basin management decisions being made over the next several months. The groups warn that ignoring these priorities risks further damage to the Basinโs environment and natural heritage, the foundation of the iconic Colorado River system.ย
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is pursuing a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) process to evaluate the need to partially modify operating criteria for primary Colorado River reservoirs given extreme drought conditions and historically low reservoir levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
While the groups are encouraged to see six of the Basin states put forward a โconsensus based modeling alternativeโ for Reclamation to consider in the SEIS process, the groups seek to ensure that critical environmental concerns are considered in any operational actions that Reclamation models and evaluates.
As the Colorado River community considers operational changes, seven conservation organizations identify five (5) environmental priorities that are most directly linked to or implicated by the SEIS process, which is expected to be completed in the summer of 2023:
Investing federal funds in watershed health, long term resilience, and agricultural innovation in the Upper Basin tributaries with high fish and wildlife and recreational value;
Preserving the Endangered Fish Recovery Programs in the Upper Basin and the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program;
Safeguarding the integrity of the Grand Canyon ecosystem and recreational values;
Restoring wetlands at the Salton Sea to minimize toxic dust and benefit bird habitat along the Pacific Flyway;
Forestalling the loss and continuing restoration of the Colorado River Delta.
โWe highlight these particular priorities because, for the Colorado River community, they are closely tied to the continued integrity of the Colorado River Basin and are potentially most affected by the current SEIS process,โ said Jennifer Pitt, Colorado River Program Director for National Audubon Society. โIn the face of a hotter, drier climate, the Colorado Riverโand all of the living things depending on itโrequire that we stay focused on these priorities.โ
โWhatever options Reclamation ultimately considers as part of the SEIS process, these environmental priorities cannot be lost in the mix or sacrificed in the name of a crisis, or we risk making the entire situation worse,โ said Christy Plumer, chief conservation officerfor Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
โThese and related priorities are essential to the continued sustainability of the Colorado River system.ย Failing to consider them when making basin management decisions would undermine the ecological health of the Colorado River Basin, adding more potential for controversy in a Basin that needs to move forwardโurgentlyโwith consensus efforts to reduce water demand and restore the health of the watershed,โ saidย Sara Porterfield, western water policy advisor for Trout Unlimited.ย
โOur groups have worked hard over the last decade to find environmental solutions that also benefit water users. We want to ensure those hard-won solutions and benefits arenโt sacrificed because of interstate disputes over water allocations,โ said Taylor Hawes, director of the Colorado River Program at The Nature Conservancy. โWe know the Basinโs stakeholders are facing difficult decisions with dropping reservoir levels, drier soils, hotter temperatures, and that adjustments are needed now to deal with those issues in both the Upper and Lower Basins. Nevertheless, we donโt want to lose sight of the risks to the extraordinary natural heritage of the Colorado River,โ Hawes added.
โWe stand ready to work with Basin states, Tribes, water users, and the federal government to ensure that the SEIS process is sufficiently transparent, efficient, and comprehensive,โ said Kevin Moran, associate vice president of regional affairs for Environmental Defense Fund.
As Western states haggle over reducing water use because of declining flows in the Colorado River Basin, a more hopeful drama is playing out in Glen Canyon.
Lake Powell, the second-largest U.S. reservoir, extends from northern Arizona into southern Utah. A critical water source for seven Colorado River Basin states, it has shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years.
As the water drops, Glen Canyon โ one of the most scenic areas in the U.S. West โ is reappearing.
This landscape, which includes the Colorado Riverโs main channel and about 100 side canyons, was flooded starting in the mid-1960s with the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. The areaโs stunning beauty and unique features have led observers to call it โAmericaโs lost national park.โ
Lake Powellโs decline offers an unprecedented opportunity to recover the unique landscape at Glen Canyon. But managing this emergent landscape also presents serious political and environmental challenges. In my view, government agencies should start planning for them now.
From the 2018 Tribal Water Study, this graphic shows the location of the 29 federally-recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin. Map credit: USBR
by Shondiin Silversmith, Arizona Mirror February 10, 2023
Several tribal nations will start seeing some funding as part of their water rights settlements, as the U.S. Department of the Interior has allocated nearly $580 million to start fulfilling Indian water rights claims.
โWater is a sacred resource, and water rights are crucial to ensuring the health, safety, and empowerment of Tribal communities,โ Secretary Deb Haaland said. โThrough this funding, the Interior Department will continue to uphold our trust responsibilities and ensure that Tribal communities receive the water resources they have long been promised.โ
Five tribes in Arizona will receive more than $306 million in funding from the settlement: the Ak-Chin Indian Community, Gila River Indian Community, Navajo Nation, San Carlos Apache Tribe and Tohono Oโodham Nation.
The money will help each tribe develop infrastructure projects that will fulfill the terms of their water rights settlements.
โI am grateful that Tribes, some of whom have been waiting for this funding for decades, are finally getting the resources they are owed with the help of this crucial funding from President Bidenโs Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,โ Haaland said.
An additional $120 million has been allocated from the Reclamation Water Settlement Fund, a fund created by Congress in 2009 that receives $120 million in mandatory funding annually from 2020 through 2029.โฏ
Together, both funds allocated nearly $580 million to fulfill 14 tribal water settlement claims from 12 tribal nations.
Schatz said the Department of Interiorโs funding announcement shows leaders following through on the work legislatures did toโ pass and fund Indian water rights settlements to ensure water security for Tribes and surrounding communities.โ
There are 34 congressionally enacted Indian Water Rights settlements as of Nov. 15, 2021, when the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was signed, which included $2.5 billion to implement the Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund.
The Department of Interior stated that it will help deliver long-promised water resources to Tribes, certainty to all their non-Native neighbors, and a solid foundation for future economic development for entire communities dependent on common water resources.
โAs a champion of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in the House, Iโm excited to see this significant investment in Arizonaโs Tribal communities,โ U.S. Rep. Ruban Gallego said in a statement.
Gallego, a Phoenix Democrat, said that Arizona is experiencing the devastating impacts of a 1,200-year drought, but the funding will go a long way to help secure Arizonaโs water which ensures a sustainable water future and follows through on tribal water settlements.
Indian reserved water rights are vested property rights for which the United States has a trust responsibility, according to the department. The federal policy supports the resolution of disputes regarding Indian water rights through negotiated settlements.
For Arizona, this funding supports five specific settlements:
$22,000,000: Ak-Chin Indian Water Rights Settlement Operations, Maintenance & Replacement
$18,225,000: AZ Water Settlements Act Implementation โ San Carlos Irrigation Project Rehabilitation
$79,000,000: Gila River Indian Community โ Pima Maricopa Irrigation Project
$1,500,000: San Carlos Apache Tribe Distribution System
$8,000,000: So. Arizona Water Rights Settlement โ Farm Extension
The Navajo Nation is included in these settlements, and their funding will support projects they have established in the New Mexico and Utah portions of their tribal land. The settlements include:
$2,000,000: Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Operations, Maintenance & Replacementโฏ
$137,000,000: Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Projectโฏ
Audubon and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have partnered to host a webinar series on important stream restoration legislation. The DNR-led stream restoration legislation is expected to be introduced in mid-February and will provide clarity on where stream restoration projects can occur without being subject to enforcement actions.
Part one of the series showed substantial interest with more than 160 live participants, including legislators, staff/aids, and interested stakeholders. The roster of expert panelists included SenatorDylan Roberts and RepresentativeKaren McCormickโbill sponsors for the stream restoration legislationโAssistant Director of Water Policy for Coloradoโs Department of Natural Resources Kelly Romero-Heaney, Colorado State University Professor and renowned Fluvial Geomorphologist Dr. Ellen Wohl, Land and Water Conservation Lawyer Jackie Corday, and was facilitated by Audubon Rockies Western Rivers Regional Program Manager Abby Burk. Hereโs a recap of the discussion and what you need to know to support Coloradoโs streams and riverscapes. A recording of the webinar is included at the end.
Healthy streams and riverscapes are beneficial to us allโthey provide a suite of multifaceted benefits that all Coloradans depend upon. Unfortunately, the majority of our streams have been degraded by more than two centuries of hydrologic modification, agricultural land use practices, roads and development, channelization, mining, and climate-driven disasters. The good news is that case studies of Colorado and other Western statesโ stream restoration projects have proven successful to improve human and environmental health and reduce vulnerability to fire, flood, and drought. However, existing Colorado water governance creates substantial uncertainty and even barriers to restoring the valuable natural processes of streams.
Under the direction of Governor Polis, the DNR and associated experts drafted a legislative solution to this challenge. As with many water law issues, there is a need to provide clarity, which is what the legislation will do by setting forth where stream restoration can take place (in the historic footprint of the stream riparian corridor), without being subject to water administration.
Senator Dylan Roberts (6:16) reports, โThis bill is a key part in protecting our watersheds, streams, and rivers, and capitalizing on the incredibly unique and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to receive funding from the federal government so that we can have healthy streams and rivers for decades into the future.โ He further stated that โby having legal clarity for stream restoration, we can reduce barriers for these important projects to get off the ground and still protect water rights, and draw down some of the federal funding.โ
Dr. Ellen Wohl (22:05) led the audience through the changes and challenges our river systems face and the importance of this timely opportunity to steward our rivers back into health. Jackie Corday (32:14) provided a detailed overview of the many benefits that healthy riverscapes offer through a series of successful restoration case studies, including reduced flood risks, improved water quality and resilience to drought and fires, reduction in sedimentation of reservoirs and headgates, and restoration aquatic and terrestrial habitat. All such projects could be in jeopardy in the future without a legislative fix.
Kelly Romero-Heaney (10:55) spoke to the importance of this unique opportunity for the Colorado General Assembly to โset a vision for the state, and the landscapes that have served us well for generations.โ She reminded the audience that โColorado provides the headwaters for 19 states and Mexicoโ and that โwe have shared responsibility to store water through our landscapes in a way that restores and maintains its environmental benefits.โ Both Kelly and Senator Roberts informed the audience that the Colorado General Assembly has invested $45 million in watershed restoration over the last few years. Water providers, conservation organizations, and local governments have also invested millions of dollars in restoring our streams.
Representative Karen McCormick (43:55) recounted the similar policy solutions in neighboring Western states, setting the path for Colorado to take lead. โWe want to make sure weโre removing these barriers to stream restoration while protecting the rights of water users. This is an everybody conversation. We need to craft the best solution that brings all voices to the table.โ
Healthy riverscapes contribute to healthy forest systems, provide habitat for birds and wildlife, improve water supplies and forage for agriculture, and offer clean and reliable drinking water. Please join us in supporting our streams to ensure they can be restored to their natural function so that we can all thrive. Mark your calendars for a second installment of the series on March 8th. Registration and further details will be released in the coming weeks.
For specific draft stream restoration bill inquiries, please contactย Kelly Romero-Heaneyย orย Daphne Gervais. Any further questions about the need and benefits of stream restoration can be sent toย Abby Burkย orย Jackie Corday.
Hard calculations and changed practices in the era of drought and global warming
A self-described Midwest import from Missouri, 39-year old Kyler Brown is a cowboy, farmer and philosopher. These days, he feels driven by questions of life and death.ย
โDo people feel like they have morality in their occupation? I think people have moral moments, but probably most people donโt question the morality of their profession. And I feel like I come in contact with mine almost daily,โ he said, driving over the Rio Grande outside of Monte Vista, Colorado.
โI see life and death a lot. I got to see baby calves get born in the spring. And then I had to put a cow downโ he said. โI see whole cottonwood galleries dying. I just feel my morality is being challenged every day, where other people go through their life and donโt question it.โ
Brown lives on his farm in Del Norte with wife Emily, and two kids โ Elijah and Olivia.ย
Kyler Brown and his son Elijah Brown go over the schedule for the day on June 21, 2022, before Kyler heads to the cattle drive. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
He also works his father-in-lawโs farm just outside of Monte Vista. Itโs a small operation โ two circles of russet potatoes, another two circles of barley and a small herd of cattle.
โA standard San Luis Valley farm,โ Brown said, piling pivot sprinkler supplies into the back of a battered white truck. โIโm kind of slowly dragging him towards something different.โ
Some of those changes included using a new fungal compost to improve soil health, building 21 pastures on a 600-acre lot to prevent overgrazing โ and determining that this will be the last season for growing barley for Coors beer.
Still, the drought creeps in, ruining best-laid practices. No clover grows in the meadow cultivated for cattle. In early summer, there wasnโt enough rain to grow forage.
Brown credits the institutional knowledge of his in-laws, but also their very senior water rights, for the farmโs endurance. In recent years, thereโs a stark visual divide drawn by water rights, he said, watching some neighborsโ fields โgrow green, the literal color of money,โ while others withe
Cows can be seen amid alfalfa fields during the cattle drive on June 21, 2022. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
A few years before, Brown had an epiphany, realizing his generation โwould have to bear the brunt of climate changeโ and needed to be in the room when tough decisions are made.
He slowly entered the fray, sitting on the board for a nonprofit conservancy district, meeting with state and national lawmakers as chapter president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union.
The conversations have often focused on an urban-rural divide, he said, which ignores a crucial interconnectedness.
โWe give them a host of things: food, asphalt for roads, clean air, water, places to recreate. And they give us a tax base, so that we can have police departments, fire stations and school districts,โ he said. โWe need each other. It is a Faustian bargain, but we both need each other.โ
Kyler Brown helps wife Emily Brown put on boots before the cattle drive the morning of June 21, 2022. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
A ballooning population
Growth in Denver and the surrounding metropolitan areas caused tension across the state, including a decades-long effort to build a 200-mile pipeline to pump San Luis water for residential use in Douglas County.
Opposing water exportation, Brown said, rallies the valley and is โfighting the good fight,โ but may pull attention away from other threats bearing down on the region.
โBut it also does a good job of distracting us from us being our own enemy,โ he said. โOur pumping, our management of water, our management of our land and climate change will have far greater impacts on our valley and our water than an exportation scheme.โ
Heโs worried about the โtremendous cultural and economic implicationsโ of determining who will have to fallow land โ or stop farming altogether in future years as the aquifers and Rio Grande shrink more.
Brown turns the truck into a barley circle, parallel to the pivot sprinkler, green stems and spikes rustling in the summer wind. Grabbing the stepladder from the back of the truck, he acknowledges that the politics feel fraught and toxic, and the solutions arenโt easy.ย
Kyler Brown stands atop an irrigation sprinkler on the Monte Vista, Colorado property. (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
He describes listening to a public meeting back in April from the irrigation district as he was simultaneously fixing yet another pivot sprinkler, Zoom playing on his speakerphone. An early snowmelt at the headwaters of the Rio Grande meant managers had to scramble to provide water for the upcoming growing season. With an earlier snowmelt, there may not be enough river water for irrigation when crops need it most.
โI could just tell that this is just the beginning of folks trying to figure out how to do the same thing with far less resources โ and being very, very frustrated at their capabilities, their power, or more importantly, their options,โ he said.
Not only is the source of the river sometimes melting early as seasons change, snowmelt also doesnโt result in as much water in a hotter, drier climate thanks to global warming. โYouโre literally trying to move the days of a calendar year, which does nothing to make you have more water,โ Brown said.
Sprinkler repaired, he drives out of the barley circle, down the highway to another parcel which he calls โjust a little nature preserve on the river.โ
What once was a gravel pit has been transformed into habitat on the edge of the Rio Grande, with a pond for waterfowl. Bald eagles and owls roost in the trees at its edge. Itโs a place for mule deer to gather, too. Another resident, a groundhog, Brown nicknamed โLarry the whistlepig.โ
This haven offers both solace and grief.
Sitting back in the truck, as the river chuckles by, Brown said he senses thereโs been a reckoning, even if just a small one, over the impacts of climate change in the valley.
โPeople are really saying โWow, itโs the driest itโs ever been,โ or โMan, another bad fire year.โ So theyโre seeing the symptoms of the disease,โ he said. โAnd you donโt have to name the disease in order for people to be feeling it intimately.โย
Kyler Brown, a farmer in the San Luis Valley, looks on the cottonwood stands on his father-in-lawโs property along the Rio Grande in Monte Vista. โIt makes me sad to go through drought, but every other year is drought.โ (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)
Will it be enough?
For water managers, naming the problem offers more clarity for solutions.
โThis is no longer drought. This is aridification,โ said Cleave Simpson Jr., a longtime Republican state senator and manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, living outside Alamosa, Colorado.
Drastic river patterns the last two decades and mostly below average flows โ plus two of the worst drought events in recorded history in 2022 and 2018 โ are harbingers of the permanent change to agriculture and ways of life in the valley, Simpson said.
โUltimately, thereโs going to be less irrigation,โ he said. โIf weโre thoughtful, thatโll be a managed, incremental change, versus if weโre not engaged.โ
Simpson said it takes both collective decision making from individuals and institutions to build resilience.
โLook, I raise alfalfa, the most water-consumptive use crop we have here,โ Simpson said. โHow do I figure out how to raise something else here?โ
He and his son raised hemp for fiber, and they found it only consumed half the water compared to the alfalfa crop.
โI have a 31-year-old son and a 2-year-old grandson,โ he explained. โIโm very mindful about being in that space to set this place up for success for being resilient and being able to respond when these water supplies continue to dwindle.โ
Being more efficient, growing crops that require less irrigation โ those are just the first steps in finding alternatives to help the community long-term in the valley.
