The driest year revisited: Five takeaways from 2002 for today’s Colorado River
The Colorado River basin has been here before.
This year’s historic winter of low snow might feel novel. But recent years give some insight into...
As the West’s scant snowpack melts, Coloradans brace for a lean water year
Call it the winter that wasn’t.
Throughout Colorado a record-warm and dry winter has come to a close. Attention now pivots to spring and the...
Upper Basin states test methods to fill Powell pool
States say automatically turning to agriculture isn’t always reliable
Less federal pressure, worsening drought, and more interstate tension loom over Colorado River talks
The Colorado River Basin is in crisis.
Climate change is reducing its flow and its biggest reservoirs are shrinking. The seven U.S. states that use...
Zebra mussels threaten infrastructure and native ecosystems. Colorado is ramping up efforts to detect...
On a bluebird day at West and East Lake in Grand Junction, Maddie Baker throws a plankton tow net into the water, and drags...
Wyoming’s Colorado River water rights in jeopardy without improved info, official warns
Wyoming’s water chief wants emergency funds for hydrologists to measure flows in the state’s portion of the troubled Colorado River Basin, documentation he said...
Holding out hope on the drying Rio Grande
Reporting supported with a grant from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder's Center for Environmental Journalism. Aerial photography support provided by...
Farmers use the majority of Colorado’s water. Shouldn’t they bear the burden of future...
You’ve heard the news: Farmers and ranchers use roughly 80% of the water in Colorado and much of the American West.
So doesn’t it make...
Colorado’s water users are told “use it or lose it.” But is the threat...
In December 2020, the Summit County Open Space and Trails Department bought a 15-acre property with a small pond, three ditches and a well.
Known...
Using less of the Colorado River takes a willing farmer and $45 million in...
Wyoming native Leslie Hagenstein lives on the ranch where she grew up and remembers her grandmother and father delivering milk in glass bottles from...