Will be interesting to see what a major heat wave does to next month’s projections.
13.03.2026 23:36
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Will be interesting to see what a major heat wave does to next month’s projections.
Things in the CO basin just keep heating up. Literally. The year without summer? Try the year without runoff.
Western US snowpack is still looking BAD. Hope for snow, but plan for low river flows and severe wildfire risk.
the Colorado River - again refusing to honor the Compact that it's bound to
Demand management and in-stream flow programs are great for addressing local environmental, ecological, and production concerns, but they aren’t up to saving 4 maf.
When thinking of solutions for the CO river basin, the scale of the problem far exceeds what is possible with demand management or in stream flow programs. Instead it seems reasonable to think of/address what the downstream (pun intended) impacts of removing water from the land are and address those
Oh, and give the rivers some damn water. In a first in time, first in right system, they were here first and their rights to exist (and thus support human civilization) are primary.
Everyone has to reduce their water use, and that reduction has to be collective-a full cultural shift. The primary burden will fall on ag because they are the primary users of water, but they are not alone, and they do not act in a vacuum.
our entire relationship with water, and ag has to change. HOW we perform ag is the key, not whether ag exists at all.
Not the same for municipal lawns. Those are bad and need to go. More trees less lawns, Denver.
It is also unarguable that farm and ranch lands, especially in regions where we have removed wetlands, provide significant ecosystem services to the public. To be clear, I actually don’t think ag is the bad guy here, nor do I think it needs to go away. What I do think is that
It also means critically examining the Western identity of farmers and ranchers. In the scheme of things, 100 years of ag settlement is nothing, but it is a big piece of people’s cultural identity, and cultural identity is important for belonging and engaged citizens.
The agricultural economy is not insignificant but it is also not an insurmountable barrier if the alternative is complete environmental degradation and collapse of the whole system. We make these changes in certain areas to protect row cropping in others (I love salads in winter).
It looks like transitioning from production of forage crops potentially to low impact grazing and low/no water intensive production. It looks like a massive increase in farm bill conservation title programs, like we saw after the dust bowl to assist agricultural producers to make this shift.
While the evaporation savings from draining Powell will help, it’s still a fraction of the total savings that are needed to stabilize the basin. So what does that look like? It looks like restoring grasslands and wetlands while we still have water to establish grasses and restore soil health.
The makings of a continuous dust-on-snow event. But if we don’t change our relationship with water, water use, and ag in the basin, Lake Mead will go the way of Powell, and there’s a lot more people reliant on Mead.
This also means there’s big money interests who are willing to bring takings claims. Real big caveat here though-we disrupted the native grasslands and desert habitats, so if we just remove water from the lands, the results could be essential another dust bowl.
Step two is learning to treat water like the public good it is. Western water law provides that water is held in the public trust, but the right to use water is a private property right that has lead to the over exploitation of water in the basin.
Decommissioning/by-passing Glen Canyon Dam, which directly serves Page, AZ for municipal water (they’ll need a new pipe and we should pay) and is a relic to help upper basin states comply with a compact we made up, is step one. It’s basic triage, and it’s the easy step.
One final note - this project should also include putting the river back in its historical channel at North Wash so the sediment continues to be moved downstream and doesn’t become a toxic dust source.
As the lake gets lower, these elevations take less water to change. All of this just results in cascading problems. Altering the ability to release from Powell is the only option and it has to be done BEFORE there’s a crisis.
3,490’ absolute bottom of power pool and reliant on cavitating outlet works, 3,470’ penstock intake- couldn’t put water through them even if we wanted to sacrifice the power plant, 3,440’ too little pressure to release enough to meet compact, 3,374 dead pool and then down at 3,133 is river level.
As I keep screaming from the rooftop, construction takes time, and we’re out of time! Things only get worse and worse starting around here 3,510’:
They’ve been missing deadlines since 2022. It’s time to end the charade and begin drilling tunnels around the Glen Canyon Dam
I’d bet my law school loans that the law is more flexible than the water that falls from the sky.
Without an incredible change in the trajectory of winter precipitation in the CO Basin this may be the year we see catastrophic collapse of the system and it really feels like we’re just standing on the tracks watching the train saying “we don’t have the legal authority to step off the track”
New projections out today show Lake Powell -- nation's second largest reservoir -- careening toward a loss of hydropower production as early as July 2026. Even the more optimistic model shows it losing power in December.
Meanwhile, the basin's leaders today admit failure on crafting new policy.
A little bit of snow falling in the San Juans the last few days, rain in the mid country, which really brings up the issue: the states can sue each other and the courts can find for whoever they want, but if there’s not enough water to get through Glen Canyon dam, it’s all irrelevant.
Talked about the Colorado River on @kjzz.org: www.kjzz.org/the-show/202...
Conversation inspired by my recent @nytimes.com op-ed: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/o...
“I don't see any plan, any strategy, any end game,” says Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the University of Vermont. “I don't see anything from this administration, just fuck everything up as much as you can. You can print that.”
Sounds accurate to me.
Even with the weekend snows, Upper Colorado River basin snowpack is still at a record low with barely a flake in the 10-day forecast.