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Some of Arizona’s most valuable water could soon hit the market 

By
Brett Walton, Circle of Blue
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The Colorado River Indian Tribes have the right to divert 662,402 acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River for use on their lands in Arizona. Congress recently granted the tribes authority to lease some of this water to entities elsewhere in the state. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)

PARKER, Arizona – South of Headgate Rock Dam, beyond riverbanks lined with willow and mesquite, the broad floodplain of the Colorado River spreads across emerald fields and sun-bleached earth. 

The Colorado River has nourished these lands in present-day western Arizona for millennia, from the ancestral Mohave people who cultivated corn, squash, beans, and melons, to the contemporary farmers of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, or CRIT, whose reservation extends for 56 miles along its namesake river.  

CRIT has rights to divert a large volume of Colorado River water – nearly 720,000 acre-feet in Arizona and California combined, which is more than twice Nevada’s allocation from the river. To this point, the water has remained within the bounds of the CRIT reservation. But soon, the water might flow to lands far beyond CRIT’s borders.  

Due to an act of Congress signed into law in January 2023, CRIT now has the authority to lease or exchange its water for use elsewhere in Arizona. (The authority does not apply to water rights held by CRIT on the California portion of its reservation.) Agreements signed in April with the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the federal Bureau of Reclamation to fulfill administrative requirements in the legislation brought the tribes another step closer to greater control over their water. 

What remains is the work of negotiation, both within CRIT and with potential leaseholders. CRIT leadership must decide what it wants in leasing deals – how much water to part with, to whom, for what price, and for how many years. And they will have to find a partner who agrees to those terms. 

CRIT’s leasing authority opens a new chapter, not only for the tribes but for other water users in the state who might covet CRIT’s high-value, high-priority Colorado River water. Leasing this water would represent a financial windfall for CRIT’s more than 4,600 enrolled members. CRIT leadership has framed it as an economic and civic development opportunity. For those on the other side of the deal – be they environmental groups, farm districts, mining companies, or fast-growing cities in the center of the state – it is a rare chance for a relatively secure source of water in an arid region where most supplies are already claimed or running out. Homebuilders west of Phoenix, for instance, have recently seen their access to local groundwater restricted by state regulators.  

For CRIT leaders, the new powers come at an auspicious time. They see their duty as stewards of the river intersecting with the mounting challenges of maintaining Arizona’s desert empire amid merciless heat and a drying climate. 

“With the climate crisis and the drought going on at the present time, there’s going to be a major shortage of water,” Dwight Lomayesva, CRIT Tribal Council vice chairman, said at a conference in March. “But we would like to be part of the solution to the problem.” 

A valuable asset 

CRIT is a union of sorts. Four tribes with distinct histories live on the 278,000-acre reservation that spans Arizona and California. The Mohave, known for farming and beadwork, and the Chemehuevi, masterful basket weavers, were original inhabitants of the land. The Hopi and Navajo came later. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs relocated members of the two northeastern Arizona tribes to the area after World War Two. 

Some 79,350 acres are farmed on the Arizona portion of CRIT’s reservation. More acres are dedicated to alfalfa than any other crop. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)

CRIT’s history and location translate into a strong water rights position. Like in most western states, water in Arizona is based on a priority system. “First in time, first in right,” as the saying goes. Junior users, who have a later priority date, are cut off first in times of shortage, while senior users like CRIT who have earlier claims can continue to divert. 

CRIT’s reservation along the banks of the Colorado was established in 1865, making it one of the first in time in Arizona for water rights – and one of the last to lose access to water. Crucially, leased water retains its place in the priority system. That’s what makes it valuable, said Cynthia Campbell, the water resources management adviser for Phoenix. “That’s front of the line, basically.” 

Not only does CRIT have secure water. The tribes also have a lot of it. Comparatively speaking, their water rights are massive. A display at the CRIT Museum makes the point visually. Tubes of foam insulation painted blue depict the volume of water held by tribes along the lower Colorado River. CRIT has the right to divert 662,402 acre-feet per year to its Arizona lands and 56,846 acre-feet to its much smaller landholdings across the river in California. The museum display reflects this bounty – the blue foam bar representing CRIT’s water towers over the others. 

For now, CRIT is keeping its water leasing intentions close to the vest. Chairwoman Amelia Flores and Tribal Council members declined to be interviewed for this story.  

John Bezdek, CRIT’s lawyer, said that Tribal Council had been focused on finalizing the state and federal agreements and is now turning its attention to how it might structure leases. “There’s a number of additional steps that need to be done in terms of developing a water code, developing provisions on how proposals will be evaluated, looking at those types of things,” Bezdek said. “And so that is all being done right now. We’re working on the next steps internally.” 

Despite that public reticence, the contours of CRIT’s thinking have been previewed in other venues. Vice Chairman Dwight Lomayesva outlined his thoughts on the matter in a panel discussion earlier this year, when he participated in the Eccles Family Rural West Conference, held in Tempe, on March 27. 

Lomayesva reiterated the cultural and spiritual significance of the Colorado River to his people. “We want to save the river,” he said. “We’re not just a benevolent nation trying to help other countries and tribes and water districts.”  

Dwight Lomayesva, vice chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, speaks at the Eccles Family Rural West Conference, held in Tempe, Arizona, on March 27, 2024. (Courtesy Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University)

CRIT has a history of working with state and federal agencies to protect the Colorado River. The tribes participated in a pilot farmland fallowing program from 2016 to2019, in which they saved 45,373 acre-feet for storage in Lake Mead. That deal was the precursor to a larger commitment in 2020, when the tribes pledged to fallow 10,000 acres of farmland and store 50,000 acre-feet of water per year in the basin’s largest reservoir. For the three-year effort, the tribe earned $38 million, from the state and the Environmental Defense Fund. 

CRIT’s capacity to lease water is directly related to the farming operations that take place on the reservation. About 79,350 acres are farmed on its Arizona lands, mostly for alfalfa. Some of the land is farmed by a tribal enterprise, but many of the acres are leased by non-tribal members. A majority of the fields are flood irrigated, an inefficient method in which only half of the water is taken up by the crop. The rest eventually flows back to the river or evaporates. 

This is important because CRIT can only lease water that it has put to consumptive use in at least three of the previous five years. The consumptive-use stipulation is part of the agreement signed with Arizona and Reclamation in April. CRIT diverts less Colorado River water than its allocation, so the agreement dictates that the tribes can’t part with unused water to which they have rights but bypasses their fields. In effect, it means that water conserved from farming is water that can be leased. 

“That’s a very, very important component that we then have to factor into in terms of how we want to develop the program,” Bezdek said. 

A huge impediment is CRIT’s obsolete means of moving water to its fields. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal agency, owns and operates the Colorado River Irrigation Project, an irrigation system that is, by all accounts, deteriorating and badly needs repair. It was developed piecemeal starting in the 1870s and diverts water into the main line canal at Headrock Gate Dam. Two-thirds of the 232 miles of lateral canal are made of packed dirt, Lomayesva said. (All quotes from Lomayesva in this piece are from his comments at the March conference.) 

Lomayesva said that one study pegged the cost of rehabilitating the system at $300 million – an amount of money that CRIT cannot afford. And even if it could, Lomayesva said that because the tribes do not own the water delivery infrastructure, they would hesitate to invest in it. But he said that leasing deals could provide the capital for farming on the reservation to become more efficient. 

“We’re going to only market the water if we can use those funds to develop conservation systems – sprinklers instead of flood [irrigation], pipes instead of dirt ditches, recycle some of that water and reuse it again,” Lomayesva said. “That’s the only reason why we would market our water.” 

Others have concluded that the outdated irrigation system is a hindrance. “The high cost to repair infrastructure, including lining canals, reconstructing gates and turnouts, and realigning reaches of the system, limit the Tribes’ ability to realize the full potential value of its water,” according to a 2018 Bureau of Reclamation study. 

CRIT recently asked BIA to increase the amount it charges for irrigation water because the tribes believe that the system is underfunded and additional revenue could improve the irrigation infrastructure. 

BIA did not respond to interview requests. 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal agency, owns and operates the canal system that supplies the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation with irrigation water. The system, which draws from the Colorado River, was developed piecemeal starting in the 1870s and needs repair. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)

Tribal members voted on an ordinance in 2019 that endorsed leasing and set certain boundaries for its implementation. The ordinance, which passed with 63 percent of the vote, was the result of an attempt a year earlier to recall all nine council members over some residents’ objections to leasing. Two council members, including former chairman Dennis Patch, lost their seats. 

Under the ordinance, Tribal Council intends that the same number of acres will be farmed after water is leased. “We are farmers,” Lomayesva said. “We are farmers first, and we will probably always be farmers. And we want to continue farming. But the savings from conservation efforts, we could make some of that water available.” 

The way for that to happen is for farming on the reservation to become more efficient – and that means applying less water to the fields. It could happen through conservation. But what tribal leaders like Lomayesva really want is a better irrigation system. 

“Water could be made available for conservation or off-reservation leasing, exchange or storage in accordance with the requirements of the federal legislation and agreements if deferred maintenance was addressed along with improvements to the irrigation project,” according to a statement from the tribal government. 

How much water might be available? In 2018, CRIT participated in a Bureau of Reclamation study to assess current and future tribal water use in the Colorado River basin. CRIT told Reclamation to assume that up to 150,000 acre-feet per year might be leased and moved off the reservation by 2060. CRIT used the same figure in a December 7, 2020, public meeting discussing the proposed legislation to authorize leasing. However, at the end of July the tribal government said in a statement, “No decisions have been made on a baseline amount of water to be available for leasing.” 

What about the length of the leases? Many leases signed as part of a settlement extend for 99 or 100 years. CRIT’s authorizing legislation caps leases or exchange agreements at 100 years. But otherwise CRIT will be a free agent, able to negotiate its terms. Several water policy experts in Arizona interviewed for this story said they heard CRIT was considering a lease length of 25 years. The tribes, however, said in a statement that they have not decided any lease parameters. 

Farming is a cultural legacy and economic driver for the Colorado River Indian Tribes. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)

The length is significant because of state water supply rules for municipalities. The Arizona Department of Water Resources requires proof of a 100-year supply. A shorter lease would not fully satisfy that requirement, but the water could be used in other ways, said Kathryn Sorensen, the former director of the Phoenix water department. It could be stored underground to offset groundwater pumping, or be paired with other water to fulfill the state’s 100-year directive. In the end, it will be a cost-benefit analysis for cities whether to lease CRIT water with a shorter term, she said. 

“Each provider is going to have to weigh the length of the lease versus the priority and weigh the value,” said Sorensen, who is now with the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “But, look, it’s the highest priority Colorado River water in the state. So it’s bound to be very valuable, even with a short [lease] term.” 

Autonomy and flexibility 

Though it has liquid riches, this form of tribal wealth has been stuck in place. Tribes elsewhere in Arizona determined their rights to the Colorado, Gila, Salt, Verde and other rivers through negotiated settlements.  

In these agreements, tribes generally ceded a portion of their historical rights in exchange for state and federal funding to build the infrastructure that would deliver water to their lands. A settlement currently before Congress – the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement – is the largest yet, a $5 billion proposal to determine water rights and build water supply and energy generation systems for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and San Juan Southern Paiute. 

Those settlements typically include leasing provisions. Twenty-four tribes in the West and eight in Arizona currently have leasing authority. The Fort McDowell Indian Community’s settlement, approved by Congress in 1990, for instance, sends 4,300 acre-feet a year to Phoenix. The lease extends for 99 years. Other central Arizona cities, including Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, and Scottsdale, lease Colorado River water from the tribes, as do mining companies and a housing developer.  

CRIT, however, is an entirely different case study. The tribes did not receive their water through a settlement. Their rights were part of the U.S. Supreme Court decree in 1964 that resolved a Colorado River quarrel between Arizona and California and set water allocations in the lower basin. The decree granted CRIT a significant volume of Colorado River water but it did not confer the right to lease. Instead, CRIT had to seek the blessings of Congress to gain leasing authority.  

CRIT is now celebrating that authority. In April, three weeks before the state and federal agreements were signed, the tribes held a Water Rights Day, a community festival “honoring our continued commitment to the living river.” 

This story was produced by Circle of Blue, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

Reporter’s Notebook: The making of “The Gen Z Water Dealmaker,” a podcast about the Colorado River negotiations

By
Luke Runyon
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The Colorado River is in the midst of one of the worst water crises in recorded history. Climate change and overuse are taking a significant toll. Leaders from seven U.S. states must compromise and reach a solution to prevent the river from collapsing.

LAist Correspondent Emily Guerin

To understand how negotiators from those states are thinking in this moment, Emily Guerin, a reporter for LA’s public radio station, LAist 89.3, took a deep dive into the river’s political landscape in her latest podcast series, “Imperfect Paradise: The Gen Z Water Dealmaker” from LAist Studios.

Emily brings a sharp eye to the river’s notoriously complex, multi-layered political landscape, and paints a compelling portrait of the most powerful people tasked with negotiating agreements to share the dwindling water supply.

In this recorded webinar, The Water Desk co-director Luke Runyon and Emily talk about narrative storytelling on the Colorado River, and what the story of the river basin’s most powerful decision-makers tells us about our ability to adapt to a changing climate.

Unanswered questions: New Mexico looks to fossil fuel byproduct to ease pressure on freshwater supplies

By
Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
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A reverse osmosis membrane is seen at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Liam DeBonis for NM Political Report)

Mario Atencio’s family never received a notification that 1,100 barrels of produced water—a byproduct of oil and gas extraction—had spilled on their allotment in February 2019 near Counselor, New Mexico in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, near Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

It wasn’t until later that the Atencios learned about the incident and, with the help of Silas Grant from the Center for Biological Diversity, were able to track down the spill report that companies are required to file with the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division. 

The report details how a contractor noticed fluids flowing from a 6-inch transfer line. This line was supposed to move produced water to a recycling facility. Produced water contains highly brackish groundwater from deep aquifers as well as chemicals from the hydraulic fracturing process and hydrocarbons such as crude oil. 

A total of 1,400 barrels spilled—1,100 of those were produced water and another 300 were crude oil.

Through the report, Atencio learned how the produced water flowed down a small unnamed tributary of Escavada Wash—the place where his grandmother bathes her sheep. He learned how it occurred in an area where the freshwater aquifer is just 50 feet below the surface, which is a rarity in the desert environment where aquifers tend to be deep and laden with salt. 

A photo included in a report submitted to the Oil Conservation Division shows the initial response actions that Enduring Resources took after discovering a produced water spill near the Escavada Wash. (New Mexico Oil Conservation Division)

The most economic option to deal with produced water has been to inject it deep underground, to avoid contaminating the surrounding environment. But in states like New Mexico, where a bustling oil and gas industry overlaps with a strained water supply, what once was viewed as a nuisance to be disposed of, is now being viewed as a valuable, untapped natural resource. Relying on it more has the potential to amplify its risks.  

Atencio had been a vocal critic of the oil and gas industry before the spill and was among the Navajo people advocating for a moratorium on extraction in parts of Eastern Agency surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park. 

Now he says the state has failed in its constitutional duty to protect residents from pollution caused by oil and gas extraction. 

The Atencios are not alone in facing pollution from produced water spills, which are common in New Mexico in part due to a boom in extraction.

His family and other advocates had filed a lawsuit against New Mexico months before they learned of a new plan for produced water. That lawsuit is still making its way through the court system. In April, a judge heard oral arguments on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but has not yet issued a ruling.

It was late November 2023 when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP-28. During a panel discussion, Lujan Grisham announced a plan she dubbed “the strategic water supply.” The funding for the strategic water supply—a proposed $500 million—requires legislative approval and lawmakers expressed concerns about some of the unknowns during this year’s session. A bill that would have provided some of the funding, but not the amount the governor requested, failed to pass this year. New legislation is expected to be introduced next year. 

The concept is that the state of New Mexico will act as a middle man between companies treating brackish and produced water and the companies that can use the treated water for industrial purposes such as hydrogen production or manufacturing. Lujan Grisham’s administration has described this as a way to bolster the renewable energy industry in a state where fresh water supplies are already strained.

“We’re not looking for potable, drinkable water supplies,” Lujan Grisham said during a press conference in January. “We’re trying to preserve those. We’re identifying water supplies that do other things.”

But activists like Atencio are worried that this will have unintended consequences.

“To hear this announced on the world stage for political points, it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth,” Atencio said.

A photo included in a report to the Oil Conservation Division shows where Enduring Resources installed an absorbent boom in a tributary of the Escavada Wash in 2019 to stop produced water from migrating downstream following a spill. (New Mexico Oil Conservation Division)

Atencio expressed concern that the sacred landscape near Chaco Culture National Historical Park could be exploited to extract produced water for the “governor’s newfangled idea.”

The proposal comes as New Mexico experienced more than two produced water spills a day over a 13 year time period stretching from 2010 to 2023. While produced water spills are not directly connected to the strategic water supply, activists fear that the transportation of produced water to sites for treatment may lead to increased spills. 

Opposition to produced water

There are a variety of reasons why environmental advocates are concerned about the proposal. 

They point to the uncertainties about what is in the produced water—which could create some challenges for treating it—as well as the history of spills like the one that occurred on the Atencios’ allotment. If produced water is being moved off of the oil fields, they say it could lead to increased spills either through pipeline ruptures or, if being moved by truck, through crashes.

An average of two produced water spills happen per day in New Mexico.

Last year, more than 700 produced water spills occurred, according to data available from the state’s Oil Conservation Division, and already, in 2024, there have been more than 220 produced water spills of varying sizes. Most produced water spills get little attention and nearby residents or land owners may not even receive notification.

“We’ve been really trying to get more accountability for the ongoing crisis of produced water and waste spills that are happening all the time in New Mexico,” Grant said. Grant works for the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been assisting the Atencios with a lawsuit brought against the state of New Mexico.

They said New Mexico’s oil and gas industry has a huge waste problem as well as a problem with not enough maintenance or inspections. Even though New Mexico has a rule that prohibits spills of produced water, Grant said those spills are continuing to occur at record rates that coincide with the increased oil and gas production.

Christopher Lewis, a lead environmental scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy, said during a New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission in May that many of the constituents found in untreated produced water are known hazards. He gave examples of arsenic, barium, bromide, mercury, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes.

“These constituents have the potential to cause carcinogenic, developmental, reproductive or other adverse effects in humans and other biological organisms,” he said.

But even if they weren’t there, the untreated produced water would be toxic.

“The concentration of salts alone in raw produced water are high enough to be toxic to freshwater organisms, meaning raw produced water discharged into a freshwater stream or lake poses a risk of harming aquatic ecosystems,” he said.

A photo included in a remediation and closure report submitted to the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division following a 2021 spill shows crews excavating an area near the Pecos River where corrosion led to a steel pipe leaking produced water into a pool. (New Mexico Oil Conservation Division)

This was seen in 2021 near the Pecos River in Eddy County, New Mexico when corrosion at a facility led to a small amount of produced water leaking into a backwater pool on private land. While the pollution never reached the river itself, crews found 245 minnows dead in the pool that the contamination reached.

Exactly what is in the produced water varies from basin to basin and, to some extent, even operator to operator.

The variability is one reason that the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has proposed a new rule that would prohibit discharges of produced water, even after it has been treated. Discharge permits are needed for activities that would impact surface or groundwater.

Some of the questions that remain include how much produced water is even available and if it can be safely treated. 

This is because the oil and gas industry keeps some of the chemicals used in fracking fluids secret and, Lewis said, tests may not be able to detect all of them.

Additionally, he said, interactions that occur during the drilling process can lead to chemical transformations that would make it hard to know what constituents are present in the produced water.

“The very nature of its highly variable constituents mean that produced water from one well may pose a significantly different risk than produced water from another one,” Lewis said.

Should the strategic water supply become a reality, NMED will need to set quality standards that the treated water has to meet.

Shrinking supplies driving interest in produced water

Pressure to find uses for produced water comes as the state, and the West in general, sees existing water supplies shrinking as the region warms due to climate change. New Mexico officials say the state will have 25% less water available in 2050.

“So if we do nothing, where would you make 25 percent cuts?: Lujan Grisham said during a January press conference about water. “Would it be in one community, one region of the state and one reservoir?”

During the press conference, the governor said conservation is needed to close the gap, but said that New Mexico also needs to find new water supplies that can support continued economic growth such as manufacturing.

But Lewis said there aren’t even tests to detect some of the chemicals that might be present in produced water. And, because treatment needs to be tailored to the type of contaminants present, this makes it hard to know what methods to use to clean up produced water.

One of the more common ways to treat produced water is using a reverse osmosis filter. 

Kannalis LLC is one of the companies experimenting with produced water treatment and use in New Mexico as part of a demonstration project.

One of the experiments that Kannalis performed involved using both reverse osmosis and salt water reverse osmosis technologies at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo to treat the water and then using the treated water to grow forage crops at a greenhouse owned by the New Mexico State University that is located near Navajo Nation’s Ojo Encino Chapter House.

Kannalis is now experimenting on using treated produced water to grow trees.

But reverse osmosis does not work on all types of produced water.

In 2019—the same year that produced water contaminated the water that Atencio’s family has relied upon for generations—the New Mexico legislature passed the Produced Water Act. This law established a framework for how produced water would be managed outside of the oil and gas sector and it gave NMED statutory control and authority. NMED then entered into a memorandum of understanding with New Mexico State University which created the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium. This consortium is tasked with establishing science-based methods and policies for using treated produced water, and stems from previous state initiatives to find a use for produced water.

Mike Hightower heads the group. During a May Water Quality Control Commission hearing regarding produced water, Hightower said that in the Permian Basin, where produced water is generally three times as salty as seawater, thermal technologies will be needed to treat it. He said there have been significant advancements in those technologies over the past 40 years.

But, while the San Juan Basin produced water is easier to treat, he said there are communities in the Permian Basin that could benefit from treated produced water. 

“In the Permian Basin, you have some cities like Jal that are really close to being out of water,: Hightower said. “And maybe that’s a place where the risks of not having water versus the risks of using treated produced water is something that they might want to take on board more easily or more quickly.”

He said that there may need to be regional standards for treated produced water rather than a state standard due to the differences in produced water between the three oil and gas basins in New Mexico.

“There’s different qualities of water, different locations and different risks by different communities that may be interested in using that water quicker than Albuquerque or Santa Fe,” he said.

Outside of New Mexico, states rely on produced water

During the May hearing, Hightower said that there are around 30 states in the country that have produced water and many of them are facing drought or water shortages. Not all of the states allow produced water to be used outside of the oilfields, but some of the states that do include California, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. 

More than a dozen states, including Ohio, allow it to be used for dust control. Another common application is as a de-icer. Because produced water has high salinity and can melt snow and ice, it is spread on roads in states like Ohio and New York during the winter.

In the western United States, where water resources are naturally more strained, states are turning to produced water to augment their diminishing supplies.

When it comes to agriculture, crops in Kern County in the central valley of California are irrigated with produced water that has been diluted using freshwater resources. This practice has been going on for decades.

In Montana and Wyoming, produced water has been used to irrigate lands in the Powder River Basin in an effort to restore rangelands following overgrazing. 

Wyoming has also allowed ranchers to use produced water for livestock. Additionally, produced water in Wyoming has been used for wildlife and to enhance wetlands.

The Town of Wellington in northern Colorado found that using treated produced water for aquifer recharge could significantly increase the amount of water available for residents by injecting the treated water into the aquifer. A similar demonstration project is underway in northern New Mexico’s San Juan Basin.

For produced water proponents, the oil field wastewater represents a largely untapped possibility. Nationwide, about one to two percent of the produced water is used outside of the oil fields. 

Hightower sees the potential to use produced water in the San Juan Basin to help people who currently have to haul water long distances to their houses.

“In those rural areas of northwestern New Mexico, there’s huge opportunity to provide some social improvements, economic improvements for people in that region,” he said. 

Currently, though, that is outside of the scope of the state’s proposed strategic water supply, which would limit the use of treated produced water to industrial purposes. 

But in places where produced water is used outside of the oilfields, the use has often been met with protests from environmental activists.

During a 2018 presentation that was part of the WateReuse Association’s webcast series, Christopher Bellona with the Colorado School of Mines identified public perception as one of the challenges facing produced water. And, during a 2022 presentation, the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium listed public perception as one of the biggest hurdles.

In California, the use of produced water in agriculture has led to protests outside the state Capitol. And, in Pennsylvania, concerns about potential contamination led to a moratorium in 2018 on spreading produced water on roadways, including as a de-icer.

This story was produced by New Mexico Political Report, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

Searching for solutions: In New Mexico, researchers seek to make brackish water a viable supply

By
Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
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An experiment conducted by the University of North Texas and New Mexico State University tests different types of brackish and treated water on fava bean plants at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The device affixed to the pole in the center collects data from sensors used in the experiment. (Liam DeBonis for NM Political Report)

Heading through eastern New Mexico, dairy cattle can be seen in farms beside the highway while flashing lights illuminate the wind farms at night. Large sprinklers irrigate the crop circles where, in the spring, the endangered lesser prairie chickens may venture out of the brush onto the fields to dance while keeping a close eye on the sky for the hawks that hunt overhead. 

Farther south, oil wells become more common than windmills. 

Beneath all of this lies a giant underground lake that gives life to the region and has allowed it to become one of the top crop producing areas of the state and the fifth leading cheese producing region in the country. But that aquifer—the Ogallala—is quickly being depleted. 

Faced with their depleting wells, farmers in eastern New Mexico are increasingly turning to dryland farming methods.

“Farming with limited irrigation is a challenge, and it is a greater challenge to produce crops in a strict dryland situation,” John D’Antonio said. “However, half of the eastern New Mexico farms have already been turned into dryland production.”

D’Antonio is a former New Mexico state engineer and now runs the company American West Water Advisors, which has a contract with the Lea County Soil and Water Conservation District to investigate the use of brackish – or salty – water to supplement dwindling supplies in the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies six New Mexico counties as well as portions of seven other states including Colorado, South Dakota, Kansas and Wyoming.

“The Ogallala Aquifer in New Mexico is the most economically important groundwater source in eastern New Mexico and is the primary driver for crop production in the High Plains region,” he told NM Political Report. 

D’Antonio’s team has repurposed abandoned oil and gas wells in the heavily drilled Permian Basin to access naturally-occuring brackish water aquifers. Those aquifers tend to be deeper than the freshwater sources. To reach the brackish supplies, D’Antonio is using repurposed oil wells that can reach far deeper than even the deepest irrigation water wells.

D’Antonio said the six New Mexico counties overlying the Ogallala Aquifer provide a third of all the agricultural cash receipts in the state, including more than a quarter of the crop cash receipts. That makes it a valuable part of the state’s economy that could be jeopardized by the declining availability of water.

“The Ogallala Aquifer is heavily pumped for irrigation of various agricultural crops that support farming and livestock industries, which, in turn, sustain the many small- to medium-sized cities dotted throughout eastern New Mexico,” D’Antonio said.

Some of the crops grown there include corn, sorghum, wheat, triticale and alfalfa.

But, for decades, water levels in the New Mexico portion of the Ogallala have experienced what D’Antonio described as “long-term, serious decline.”

According to an Ogallala Summit white paper from March 2024, researchers sampled 121 wells in New Mexico’s Curry and Roosevelt counties from 2004 to 2007 and then again from 2010 to 2015. The samples indicated an estimated loss of about 2 million acre-feet of water in the aquifer and the average loss was about 277,586 acre-feet per year. About 75% of those 121 wells in the two  counties experienced declining water levels.

“Well capacities are increasingly becoming less capable of supplying enough water to grow high water demand crops such as corn,” the white paper states.

Filtration and reverse osmosis systems are among the tools available for research inside the main bay of the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Liam DeBonis for NM Political Report)

To make matters more complicated, there are very few sources of surface water in eastern New Mexico to supplement the dwindling groundwater.

And it isn’t just the Ogallala Aquifer that is in decline. As water supplies become more strained—not just in the eastern part of the state, but throughout New Mexico—supplies that were previously considered unusable are getting increasing attention from government officials desperate to fulfill current demands, and spur future economic development. 

D’Antonio’s team is not the only group studying the use of brackish water in New Mexico. Pilot projects have been in the works since at least 2007 when the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility was established in Alamogordo to provide a place for research. But now that work has a new sense of urgency. 

With water being one of the major limiting factors to future economic growth, New Mexico officials are looking to the vast, but largely untapped and unstudied, brackish aquifers.

This is part of what is known as the strategic water supply, a proposal that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced in November 2023. 

New Mexico’s strategic water supply

Sydney Lienemann, Deputy Secretary of Administration for New Mexico’s Environment Department, said that one of the pillars of the 50-year water plan that Lujan Grisham unveiled in January is providing approximately 150,000 acre-feet of new water to New Mexico per year.

To do so, New Mexico is looking at treated brackish water as well as treated produced water, a byproduct of oil and gas production.

Lienemann said one policy lever New Mexico has to accomplish the goal is by using what she described as commitments from industries seeking to buy water to incentivize development of previously unused water sources, such as brackish water. Essentially, the state will have contracts with companies that need water and that will provide a guaranteed customer for the companies treating the water.

“The administration’s proposal for (the strategic water supply) is not to fund the infrastructure itself or to finance the construction of these produced water or brackish water treatment plants, but rather to provide a guaranteed purchaser of the water at the end of treatment as a way to de-risk the upfront capital investment that treatment companies would need to take on,” she said.

Lienemann compared this arrangement to governments promising to purchase vaccines if companies will do the research and build the companies to manufacture the vaccines.

State funds will only be available to purchase the treated water if it meets predefined water quality standards that will be determined based on the end use.

Lienemann said New Mexico does not want to “stay in the business of owning that water.” Instead, the state plans to sell the treated water to identified end users who are currently unknown, similar to how a water wholesaler would act. She said having access to the treated water will allow New Mexico to recruit the end users. Under the current proposal, those end users would likely be hydrogen power generators or manufacturers of renewable energy technology.

“We want to reduce the pressure on our potable water, and this is one way to do it, while supporting the administration’s priorities to help with the clean energy transition,” Lienemann said. “So that is, are there ways that we can desalinate brackish water to do manufacturing of solar cells? Are there ways that we can treat produced water in a closed loop manner to generate hydrogen for energy storage?”

But the use of state funds for the strategic water supply requires legislative approval, which the governor has not yet secured. Lujan Grisham proposed using $500 million to fund the strategic water supply.

A University of Texas El Paso experiment uses brackish water to cool solar panels at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in an effort to increase their efficiency. The returning water, which is fed through red piping, is heated in the process, which makes it easier to treat. (Liam DeBonis for NM Political Report)

Funding and the state legislature

Rep. Nathan Small, D-Las Cruces, is the chairman of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee and the vice chair of the interim Legislative Finance Committee. Small is one of the legislators who supports using brackish water to augment the dwindling freshwater supplies.

He emphasized the importance of work to “enhance protections” for the existing supplies of freshwater.

“We have to be ready to use our budget to safeguard what we have,” he said.

New Mexico’s rivers were recently ranked as the most endangered in the country due to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that stripped Clean Water Act protections from ephemeral streams.

Small said the state budget should be used to maximize the efficiency of existing sources of freshwater. Some of the ways that New Mexico has worked to maximize efficiency include lining ditches with concrete to reduce water loss and removing invasive plants from banks.

“But, as we look to diversify and grow our economy, particularly when it comes to zero-carbon solutions…we’re going to need water,” he said.

In part due to federal incentives, New Mexico has seen increased interest in clean energy manufacturing including solar cells and wind turbines.

Small said companies that might be interested in locating in New Mexico to manufacture batteries or electric vehicles or other products needed for the energy transition will need water and, in some cases, those industries have high demands for water.

“I know that it’s very challenging for New Mexico to consider sort of slicing the freshwater pie even further. And so that’s a place where I think that treated brackish water fits for purpose… that’s where I think that brackish water really fundamentally is central to the state,” he said.

He said some industries may need lower salinity than others and that the treatment processes can be tailored for the end use.

At the same time, Small said New Mexico needs to follow and invest in science and implement safeguards. While the governor proposed $500 million for the strategic water supply, investing in science will require additional state funds for projects like aquifer mapping.

He said he would like more details about a timeline for developing the strategic water supply if a bill is brought to the legislature in the future.

In the interim, he said that he is beginning to see early engagement with stakeholders that is “essentially putting all the questions out there” and providing an open forum for discussion around the proposed strategic water supply. And, Small said, there is positive and innovative research occurring across New Mexico, including at universities like New Mexico State University and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

He said it is important to take an “all of the above” approach toward water and that focusing on treating brackish water should not come at the expense of watershed restoration.

Small also said it is important to fund efforts to study the aquifers, including aquifer mapping.

Aquifer mapping a limiting factor

One of the biggest unknowns with the treatment of brackish water is how much is available and what its composition is.

D’Antonio said there needs to be more aquifer mapping done.

Former State Engineer Mike Hamman, said that if a well is deeper than 2,500 feet and is drilled into an aquifer that is considered to be in an undeclared basin for non-potable water sources, the Office of the State Engineer requires companies to file a notice of intent to drill a well. 

“Then there will be requirements, once the well is completed, to meter and monitor the volume of water that’s pulled out of that,” Hamman said. “And we would do that to protect any surrounding freshwater aquifers and also to assure that there would be no residual impacts to river flows or anything along that line.”

Hamman said he is aware of three pilot wells for brackish water that have been drilled. Those include two in Sandoval County and one in the Santa Teresa area of southern New Mexico.

Staci Timmons, the Associate Director of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, said that in 2016 her agency worked to compile existing water quality data to try to characterize the brackish water aquifers in New Mexico.

She said statewide questions still exist about aquifer depth, water quality, recharge time and long-term usability.

“There’s certainly, we think, a good amount of brackish water because many of our rocks are salt bearing formations, and as you go deeper, we would expect that as the water is moving through lots of deep layers and longer flow paths, it’ll pick up greater mineral content and get saltier,” Timmons said. “But we generally don’t have a crystal clear view of exactly what the brackish water looks like.”

There are places in the state where the brackish water aquifers are a bit better understood.

For example, Timmons said, in the Estancia Basin east of Albuquerque, there is brackish water close to the surface.

“We’ve never really invested in the basic characterization that needs to happen for us to just jump ahead into brackish water yet,” Timmons said.

She said there’s still a lot of work to do on aquifer characterization, including mapping and determining how deep the brackish water supplies are. That will require a significant investment from the state. In 2023, Timmons told state lawmakers that the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources would need $1.25 million annually to hire eight employees to build and maintain an aquifer mapping and monitoring program. On top of that, it would need between $4 million and $10 million a year for ten years to install exploratory and monitoring wells.

One reason this is important is because brackish water supplies could interact with freshwater sources such as rivers or other aquifers. That could compromise the very freshwater sources that the strategic water supply hopes to protect.

Timmons gave the example of a hypothetical brackish water aquifer that interacts with the Pecos River. Developing the hypothetical brackish water aquifer could have downstream implications and even threaten compact compliance, she said. This could occur if there is a connection between the brackish aquifer and the freshwater aquifers. Flows in the Pecos River are in part influenced by the underground aquifer. 

In some areas of the state, Timmons said, the brackish aquifers are not connected to any other source of water. In those places, the water is a nonrenewable resource.

She said if someone plans to invest millions of dollars on a desalination facility, they need to make sure that there is enough brackish water to last more than ten years.

“There has to be substantial research in any given location (where) we want to explore desal,” she said.

But just knowing where the brackish supplies are and how much water is in the aquifers is not enough. Timmons said it’s also important to know what chemical constituents are in the brackish water.

“It’s not just your plain old you know, sodium chloride, seawater,” she said. “You also have things like silicate minerals that are going to have to be filtered out you’re going to have different types of salts, not just sodium and chloride, you might have calcium and sulfate instead. So those molecules are going to require different treatment technologies.”

A small bird floats on an evaporation pond, which collects sediments from brackish water as it evaporates, at The Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Liam DeBonis for NM Political Report)

It’s also important for people to know how drawing the brackish water out from beneath the surface will impact the ground. 

In the Deming area, pumping of groundwater—even freshwater supplies—has led to what is known as subsidence where the ground sinks. 

“We still need to fully map our aquifers in New Mexico and develop groundwater and surface water models to better manage this resource,” D’Antonio said. “That will require measuring and metering our water use along with monitoring our groundwater elevations.”

Metropolitan areas interested too 

As New Mexico looks to grow despite the arid environment and decreasing supplies, a couple of cities have looked toward the brackish water supplies as a possible solution.

For more than two decades, the City of Alamogordo has been studying the possibility of using desalination to treat brackish water. In 2000, Alamogordo filed an application with the Office of the State Engineer to use about 10,000 acre-feet of brackish groundwater from a series of wells in the Snake Tank field. Alamogordo’s brackish water reverse osmosis treatment plant took about two decades to complete.

Farther north, Sandoval County began looking at treated brackish water for industrial purposes about two decades ago and contracted with a company based out of Scottsdale, Arizona, known as New Mexico Water, LLC. This company provided information to the New Mexico Environment Department this spring about their effort.

The company is hoping to develop a desalination and mineral recovery plant with an estimated price tag of $800 million at a location near Placitas. This effort is known as the Rio West Water Project and, while it has been in the works for years, it has been slow to materialize.

“Future development in the properties West of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho depends on making additional water sources available for industrial development including support of future data centers, green hydrogen facilities and others,” the company states in the information provided to the state.

New Mexico Water would take brackish supplies from the San Andreas/Glorieta unit, which is a confined aquifer about 3,500 feet below the surface in the southeastern San Juan Basin.

“Significant process engineering, hydro-geologic investigations and piloting have taken place on this endeavor over the last decade and a half to develop a sound and achievable project.” Gary Lee, the project engineer, said in a document submitted to NMED.

Protecting agricultural producers

While D’Antonio supports the strategic water supply, he said there is a potential that the industrial use of brackish water could compete with agricultural uses.

“Depending on what projects or uses are prioritized, the industrial use of treated brackish water could compete for the same water that the agricultural users would attempt to use,” he said.  

D’Antonio said it could also open the door for increased opportunities to expand the use of treated brackish water into other regulated uses that could support economic development and even provide drought mitigation. 

Some of the examples he gave are growing grass on fallow lands to promote natural carbon sequestration and using the treated water from green hydrogen production, which is something the governor also highlighted when announcing the proposed strategic water supply.

Already, some agricultural producers rely on saline water supplies either for irrigation purposes or to provide water for livestock. 

Water storage tanks at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Liam DeBonis for NM Political Report)

Rebecca Roose, the governor’s infrastructure advisor, said there will be safeguards in any future strategic water supply legislation to ensure those agricultural supplies are not impacted.

“We’re talking about different water than the water that farmers have allocated and are relying upon,” she said.

Legislation that was introduced late in this year’s legislative session and failed to pass included a definition of brackish water that required it to be sourced from aquifers at least 2,500 feet below the surface and with total dissolved solid levels of at least 1,000 milligrams per liter.

“The depth of the well is one safeguard that we’ve identified to hardwire into the program so that it’s clear to everybody, including anybody who’s implementing the program from state agency level that we’re talking about these brackish wells, and those are unallocated sources of water,” Roose said.

Malynda Capelle manages the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo where researchers including universities and businesses are experimenting on ways to increase the efficiency of desalination.

There are ten different pads at the facility that can support individual projects and there are three storage tanks for brackish water.

“The future water supplies will require some level of water treatment, possibly desalination,” she said.

This facility is unique. Capelle said she is not aware of anyone else who is doing the level of research on brackish water that is occurring at the facility in Alamogordo. However, there is a research facility that is looking at desalination of seawater in California and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation also has a facility in Yuma, Arizona, that does small scale, internal research on desalination. 

“States like New Mexico and others, we need to get creative with figuring out different ways to fill up the bucket…we’re all going to be competing over the same freshwater sources. So I think we do need to get creative,” she said.

Capelle said that one of the main critiques she hears about desalination is that it is expensive and uses a lot of energy. She acknowledges that desalination is more expensive and energy intensive than freshwater treatment.

“Those were the easy sources. That’s why we use them first,” she said.

At the same time, Capelle said other options are to pipe water hundreds of miles, which can be challenging, expensive and energy intensive.

D’Antonio also identified the cost of building a desalination facility and the energy required as some of the biggest challenges, along with finding the best option for disposing of the concentrate.

But, as a former state engineer and a member of the New Mexico Desalination Association, he sees opportunities for brackish water and the strategic water supply.

“Many western states are using desalination plants to augment their freshwater supplies,” D’Antonio said. “The Strategic Water Supply would greatly benefit New Mexico to aggressively jump into the desalination business by funding a few pilot projects around the state. This should be done in conjunction with ensuring the protection of public health and the environment of the treated brackish water reuse.”

This story was produced by New Mexico Political Report, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

Does Arizona have enough water? Phoenix-area cities are spending big to make sure it does

By
Alex Hager, KUNC
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Brett Fleck stands by the Arizona Canal in Peoria, Ariz. on March 18, 2024. The water department he manages is focused on making sure taps keep flowing in the long term, even as Peoria’s main source of water shrinks. (Alex Hager / KUNC)

Brett Fleck does not have an easy job. He manages water for a city in the desert. He has to keep taps flowing while facing a complicated equation: The city is growing — attracting big business and thousands of new residents every year — but its main source of water is shrinking.

Standing on the edge of a sun-baked canal with palm trees lining its banks, Fleck watched water flow into the pipes that supply the Phoenix suburb of Peoria, Arizona.

“We’re really having a complete changeover in how people view the Colorado River from a reliability standpoint,” he said.

The river, which accounts for about 60% of the city’s supply, is stretched thin. Its water is used by 40 million people from Wyoming to Mexico. Climate change is shrinking its supply, and the federal government is scrambling to boost depleted reservoirs. The Biden Administration has poured money on the problem, allocating $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act for Colorado River projects.

Across the seven U.S. states that use its water, that money has been used to save water in a number of ways — from patching up leaky canals to paying farmers to pause crop planting. A relatively small chunk of that money has gone to cities, but it’s being welcomed with open arms in the Phoenix metro area.

Peoria’s water department is one of seven in Arizona getting paid by the federal government to leave some of its supplies in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. In May 2023, the Biden Administration announced it would set aside $157 million for a handful of Arizona cities and one mining company to cut back on their take from the Colorado River.

Following that money and seeing how cities are spending the federal cash reveals a major trend in Arizona’s water management.

The sun sets behind Phoenix on June 14, 2024. The city and its suburbs are attracting new residents and businesses despite shrinking water supplies. Local leaders say they have plans for expensive engineering projects that will help keep taps flowing for decades to come. (Alex Hager / KUNC)

The Biden administration framed the spending effort as “water conservation,” but Arizona’s municipal water leaders aren’t using it to make changes traditionally thought of as conservation. Instead of paying for small tweaks to water use – like encouraging residents to install low-flow showerheads or rip out their thirsty lawns – many are thinking bigger, putting their multimillion dollar checks towards billion dollar infrastructure projects that are aimed at keeping taps flowing for decades to come.

Basically, cities like Peoria are planning to engineer their way out of the problem.

“When you don’t have that reliability,” Fleck said, “You have to make additional investments for alternatives, backup supplies, etc. That’s what it really takes to make sense of the world that we live in now.”

A changing mindset

Much ink has been spilled about the future of life in Phoenix. The sprawling metro area – referred to by locals as “The Valley” – is home to about 5 million people. A booming economy and strikingly wide suburban sprawl are pushing its borders further into once-unoccupied dusty expanses in nearly every direction. Meanwhile, climate change has inspired growing skepticism about the long-term sustainability of that growth.

Scorching temperatures, which consistently peak above 110 degrees in the summer, and much-publicized threats to its major sources of water, have accelerated calls in the national media for central Arizona to pump the brakes on expansion.

But on the ground, the people that run water departments in cities and suburbs project optimism.

“We have to plan ahead and say, ‘It’s not enough to have enough water to live this year, this month, two years, or five years,” said Cynthia Campbell, a water management advisor for the City of Phoenix. “We plan for 100, and that’s the way we’ve approached it in Arizona. That, I think, is the secret sauce that keeps us sustainable.”

Downtown Phoenix viewed from City Hall on March 4, 2024. The city’s water leaders say they’re nearing the ceiling on how much water can be saved through traditional conservation, and are instead turning their eyes and budgets toward new technology that will help decrease demand for water from the Colorado River and underground aquifers. (Alex Hager / KUNC)

Campbell described shifting attitudes in Phoenix-area water management. Dwindling water supplies have, for years, forced those cities to do more with less. She explained how Phoenix uses less water now than it did two decades ago, despite significant population growth. The city mostly chalks that up to more efficient water use by homes and businesses, specifically highlighting water that was conserved through more efficient outdoor watering for lawns and plants.

But now, those practices are getting closer to the ceiling in terms of how much water they can save, and new residents keep arriving.

“At some point in time, there does have to be a recognition of the scope of the problem,” Campbell said. “You just can’t conserve your way out of it.”

That mindset has put one word on the lips of many water managers in central Arizona: augmentation.

Engineering a way to more water

The word “augmentation” has different definitions depending on who you ask, but it generally means water departments are focused on adding new water supplies, rather than just using less of the water they already have.

Peoria and Phoenix water leaders highlighted two expensive infrastructure projects that fall into the augmentation category. The first is a massive renovation of a nearby dam that would make its reservoir bigger, allowing cities in the area to store more water during wet winters.

The Bartlett Dam holds back a reservoir about an hour’s drive northeast of Phoenix. Over time, the reservoir has gotten shallower, as sediment in the water settles to the bottom and piles up, reducing the amount of water storage. Bartlett Reservoir and nearby Horseshoe Reservoir have lost a combined 45,000 acre-feet of their total holding capacity. By comparison, Peoria, a city of nearly 200,000 people, gets a total of 35,000 acre-feet of water delivered each year.

Because the reservoirs reach capacity more quickly, water managers have been forced to release excess water instead of storing it for dryer times. A proposed expansion of the dam would make it easier to store that water by making Bartlett Dam about 100 feet taller. Peoria and Phoenix are among 22 cities, tribes and farm districts that are interested in chipping in for the project, which is projected to cost about $1 billion.

Water is released from behind Bartlett Dam in March 2023 after a wet winter. Cities that use water stored behind the dam want to fund a $1 billion expansion of the dam to make sure that extra water can be stored instead of released downstream. (Michael McNamara / Salt River Project)

The dam holds back water from the Verde River, part of the broader Salt River watershed, whose supplies are managed separately from the Colorado River. But increasing the amount of stored water from that system could help cities ease up on their Colorado River reliance.

A second idea that falls into the augmentation category represents an entirely different way of “adding” water to the system, and it’s part of a regional trend: cleaning up sewage and making it drinkable again.

Water managers refer to the practice as “advanced water purification,” or “wastewater recycling,” and it’s stirring up a lot of excitement – and big investment – in a number of places that share similar anxieties about shrinking supplies from the Colorado River.

Small cities are eyeing the expensive new technology for the future, and big ones are already putting shovels in dirt.

In Phoenix, the city council greenlit a $300 million construction project to revive a shuttered water treatment plant in the city’s far northern reaches, which officials said would lay the groundwork for installing equipment to turn wastewater into clean drinking water.

Elsewhere in the Colorado River basin, big cities are forging ahead with the practice. In the Los Angeles Metro area, the main water distributor proposed a $3.4 billion wastewater recycling facility, and has rallied hundreds of millions of dollars in support from out-of-state water agencies that could buy California’s unused Colorado River water if the new facility is a success. In Colorado, the state government passed first-of-its-kind legislation that would make it easier for cities to bring the new water treatment tech online, and some cities say they’re 3-5 years away from building it.

Beneath the surface

Phoenix-area water managers have to keep a lot of balls in the air at once. The water flowing through their pipes comes from a few sources, each with very different challenges.

The Colorado River, which mostly begins as snowmelt in the faraway Rocky Mountains, comes to the metro via the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile canal that cuts through the desert. The Salt and Verde Rivers bring snow and runoff from a watershed that covers the colder, higher-altitude parts of Arizona. And one source starts much closer to home: groundwater.

That last water source, at least recently, has proven the trickiest to manage. Groundwater use and management have become hot-button political issues in Arizona as experts raise alarm about underground stores of water that are shrinking fast, including some that, once drained, would take generations to refill.

Water experts say all of the most pressing water issues facing Arizona cities – the shrinking Colorado River, the overtaxed underground aquifers, and work to augment existing supplies – are all smaller pieces of a bigger puzzle.

Kathryn Sorensen, a former director of Phoenix’s water department, said Colorado River shortages will probably turn up the pressure on groundwater.

“Our aquifers, while large and plentiful, are also fossil aquifers, so if we pump them out too quickly, then it’s just gone,” said Sorensen, who now researches water policy at Arizona State University. “So these types of things like advanced water purification, augmentation, additional conservation efforts, those all play into avoiding the use of those fossil groundwater supplies.”

Sorensen described the groundwater supplies – and whether or not they’re managed sustainably – as pivotally important to Arizona’s long-term future.

“If we’re going to continue to have the sort of economic opportunities we have here and the quality of life that we have here a few generations from now,” she said, “It’s really of utmost importance that we protect groundwater today.”

‘There’s not a lot of gambling going on here’

Groundwater has become the latest issue to help fuel a wave of national attention on the long-term viability of Phoenix as a place for people to live.

Articles with headlines like “How long can the world’s ‘least sustainable’ city survive?” have helped to crystalize nationwide skepticism about central Arizona’s future. In 2023, state officials put a pause on some new subdivisions because they couldn’t draw enough water from underground. The announcement launched a flurry of news coverage. The New York Times framed it as “the beginning of the end” for development around Phoenix.

In that article, Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s governor, is quoted as saying, “We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water.”

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs speaks in Tucson, Ariz. on March 13, 2024. State leaders have been forced to advocate for policies that respond to the Phoenix area’s water supply crunch while simultaneously trying to tamp down any fears that the city and suburbs might not be a good place to live and work. (Alex Hager / KUNC)

Hobbs and other leaders in the state have been forced into a bit of a juggling act. Some are trying to advocate for policies that respond to the Phoenix area’s water supply crunch while simultaneously trying to tamp down any fears that the city and suburbs might not be a good place to live and work.

Campbell, who advises Phoenix’s political leaders on water decisions, said she’s confident that people who buy a house or open a business in Phoenix will have water in the future, because those policymakers are feeling a lot of pressure to make sure growth is sustainable.

“They know that the moment there’s a crack in the armor,” she said, “The moment that we have to turn off a tap, every national media outlet will cover it, and it will have a devastating effect on our economy. So there’s not a lot of gambling going on here.”

What ‘sustainable’ growth looks like

Sustainable growth certainly weighs on the mind of water manager Brett Fleck in Peoria.

The city itself touted its status as one of the nation’s top “boomtowns,” growing by 19% in the five-year stretch between 2016 and 2021. It recently paved the way for a massive, $2 billion microchip operation. Amkor Technology’s 56-acre facility in Peoria is set to be the nation’s largest semiconductor packaging and test facility, and will likely use a massive amount of water.

“Do I think Arizona can continue to grow sustainably? As long as we continue to make the investments and plan, absolutely,” he said. “The day that we stop making those investments in our sustainability is the day that we probably shouldn’t be growing anymore.”

Fleck said his city is working with Amkor to create a system that brings recycled water to the facility, so the semiconductor operation doesn’t draw from the drinking supply.

Brett Fleck shows where Colorado River water enters the city’s water treatment facility in Peoria, Ariz. on March 18, 2024. The city has plans to build new water purification technology that will turn sewage into usable water, decreasing the strain on the Colorado River and groundwater. (Alex Hager / KUNC)

At a relatively small water treatment plant on Peoria’s western edge, the city’s water system is getting upgraded in real time and the facility is quickly expanding its footprint.

“This water reclamation facility is really the start of Peoria’s water future,” Fleck said as workers in hard hats crisscrossed the dirt expanse behind him.

Treated water from the plant could see a few fates, Fleck said. It may be pumped into underground storage, sent to the giant new microchip facility, or maybe even purified to drinking standards and sent back into pipes. The latter is probably a decade from reality.

“It’s all based on funding,” Fleck said.

Now that cities around Arizona are seeing the promise of new technology and methods to get more out of their endangered water supplies, the massive cost of those projects stands as the biggest hurdle to their implementation. Fleck said the billions of federal dollars being sent to remedy the Southwest’s water woes pale in comparison to the tens or hundreds of billions needed to build needed infrastructure.

“Unfortunately, it’s a drop in the bucket,” he said. “However, at least we’re headed in the right direction. So at least we’re making those investments, and we’re recognizing that we need to make those investments to pivot away from our very large reliance on Colorado River supplies.”

Armed with a combination of federal, state, and local money, cities all around the Phoenix area are moving in that direction. Tempe, for example, has similar plans to Peoria and plans to open a water recycling facility by 2025. Nearby Scottsdale hosts one of only three water treatment facilities in the nation that is part of a pilot program for advanced water purification, and is poised to bring it into regular use.

An uncertain future

Arizona’s city leaders say they’re doing all they can to fend off anxiety about an uncertain future for water supply. Two big factors, largely out of those cities’ hands, mean that anxiety is justified.

The first is funding. Large-scale, high-tech water projects that come with nine- or ten-figure price tags benefit greatly from federal help. The Biden Administration has spent an amount of money that one water expert called, “the largest investment in drinking water infrastructure and water supply infrastructure that we’ve seen in a generation.”

Future administrations might not be so spendy.

“Federal funding is always a dicey proposition,” said Sorensen, the ASU water researcher. “Relying on annual appropriations, it can be hinky, especially when you have to compete with other very worthy federal priorities.”

The second big cause for uncertainty is the messy, ongoing negotiation process that will result in new rules for sharing the Colorado River. The current rules for divvying up its water expire in 2026, and the people in charge of writing new ones are stuck in a heated standoff.

Those people are negotiators from the seven states that use its water. Despite their differences, they generally agree that climate change has shrunk the amount of water in the river, and states need to cut back on demand accordingly.

Tom Buschatzke (right), Arizona’s top water negotiator, sits on a panel about Colorado River management in Boulder, Colo. on June 6, 2024. Every proposed water cutback plan, even the one co-signed by Arizona itself, puts more of Arizona’s water on the chopping block than any other state. (Alex Hager / KUNC)

Their disagreements, though – sometimes rooted in century-old rivalries between states – mean that it’s not clear exactly how much water, if any, each state should lose.

But every proposed cutback plan, even the one co-signed by Arizona itself, puts more of Arizona’s water on the chopping block than any other state.

That is due to a system called prior appropriation, which serves as the bedrock of Colorado River management. In short, it means that the first person to use water will be the last to lose it in times of shortage. And when it comes to Colorado River use, Arizona sits in a more vulnerable legal position.

The canal that carries water to central Arizona from the Colorado river was authorized in 1968, and the users who depend on its water are first in line to have their water taken away when reservoirs are low.

Sorensen said that fact is a major motivator for Arizona’s water leaders to make sure they manage supplies in a sustainable way.

“We’ve known since 1968 that our water was first to be cut when there wasn’t enough to go around, and that has made us prepare very methodically for those cuts,” Sorensen said. “The pressure has certainly been turned up, but it’s pressure that’s always existed.”

This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. It was produced in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

“Thirst Gap” Podcast, Hosted By The Water Desk’s Luke Runyon, Garners Journalism Awards

By
The Water Desk
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“Thirst Gap: Learning to Live with Less on the Colorado River,” a podcast produced by The Water Desk co-director, Luke Runyon, earned multiple awards in recent regional and national contests. 

Runyon reported the six-episode narrative series for KUNC, the NPR station for northern Colorado, before joining The Water Desk in September 2023.

The Water Desk Co-director Luke Runyon

The series follows the length of the Colorado River from its headwaters in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains to its delta in northern Mexico, highlighting the communities and individuals grappling with water scarcity along the way. 

The show took home the following awards: 

  • Best podcast in small market radio in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the regional Edward R. Murrow awards from Radio Television Digital News Association
  • First place for Best Podcast among extra-large newsrooms in the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Top of the Rockies contest, which includes news organizations in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico 

Runyon began reporting for the series in 2021, and developed the concept during his Ted Scripps fellowship at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism. He reported, wrote and produced the series. Johanna Zorn edited the project. Jason Paton sound designed and mixed the series. 

Reporting for “Thirst Gap” was made possible in part with an award from The Water Desk, along with support from the Walton Family Foundation, the Colorado Water Center and the Colorado State University Office of Engagement and Extension.

Using less of the Colorado River takes a willing farmer and $45 million in federal funds

By
Alex Hager, KUNC & Heather Sackett, Aspen Journalism
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Leslie Hagenstein indicates where the New Fork River flows through her property on Mar. 27, 2024. She signed up for a program that pays her to pause irrigation on her land in order to save Colorado River water. Some experts say the System Conservation Pilot Program, or SCPP, is costly and may not be the most effective way to save Colorado River water. (Alex Hager/KUNC)

Wyoming native Leslie Hagenstein lives on the ranch where she grew up and remembers her grandmother and father delivering milk in glass bottles from the family’s Mount Airy Dairy.

The cottonwood-lined property, at the foot of the Wind River Mountains south of Pinedale, is not only home to Hagenstein, her older sister and their dogs, but to bald eagles and moose. But this summer, for the second year in a row, water from Pine Creek will not turn 600 acres of grass and alfalfa a lush green.

On a blustery day in late March, Hagenstein stood in her fields, now brown and weed-choked, and explained why she cried after she chose to participate in a program that pays ranchers in the Upper Colorado River basin to leave their water in the river.

“You have these very lush grasses, and you have a canal or a ditch that’s full of this beautiful clear, gorgeous water that comes out of these beautiful mountains. It’s nirvana,” Hagenstein said. “And then last year, it looks like Armageddon. I mean, it’s nothing, it’s very sad, there’s just no growth at all. There’s no green.”

The Colorado River basin has endured decades of drier-than-normal conditions, and steady demand. That imbalance is draining its largest reservoirs, and making it nearly impossible for them to recover, putting the region’s water security in jeopardy. Reining in demand throughout the vast western watershed has become a drumbeat among policymakers at both the state and federal level. Hagenstein’s ranch is an example of what that intentional reduction in water use looks like.

A ditch runs dry through Leslie Hagenstein’s fields near Pinedale, Wyo. on Mar. 27, 2024. Through the federally-funded System Conservation Pilot Program, she was able to make 13 times more than she would have by leasing her fields out to grow hay. (Alex Hager/KUNC)

In Sublette County, Hagenstein said it’s rare for people to make a living solely on raising livestock and growing hay anymore. In addition to ranching, she worked as a nurse practitioner for more than 40 years before retiring. And when she looked at her bank accounts, she realized she needed a better way to meet expenses if she was going to keep the ranch afloat in the future. Hagenstein said it was a no-brainer. She signed up for the System Conservation Pilot Program (SCPP) in 2023. Through the federally funded program, she was able to make 13 times more than she would have by leasing it out to grow hay.

Since its inception as a mass experiment in water use reduction, the program has divided farmers and ranchers. Concerns over the high cost, the limited water savings, the difficulty in measuring and tracking conserved water, and the potential damage to local agricultural economies still linger. But without fully overhauling the West’s water rights system, few tools exist to get farmers and ranchers — the Colorado River’s majority users — to conserve voluntarily.

“I’m a Wyoming native,” Hagenstein said. “I don’t want to push our water downstream. I don’t want to disregard it. But I also have to survive in this landscape. And to survive in this landscape, you have to get creative.”

SCPP participation doubles in 2024

Driven by overuse, drought and climate change, water levels in Lake Powell fell to their lowest point ever in 2022. The nation’s second-largest reservoir provided a stark visual indicator of the Colorado River’s supply-demand imbalance. Those falling levels also threatened the ability to produce hydroelectric power and prompted officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to call on states for an unprecedented level of water conservation. The agency gave the seven states that use the Colorado River a tight deadline to save an additional 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill 1 acre of land to a height of 1 foot. One acre-foot generally provides enough water for one to two households for a year.)

States gave the federal government no plans to save that much water in one fell swoop, instead proposing a patchwork of smaller conservation measures aimed at boosting the reservoirs and avoiding infrastructural damage.

The Upper Colorado River Commission (UCRC), an agency that brings together water leaders from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, offered up the “5-Point Plan,” one arm of which was restarting the SCPP.

In 2023, after the federal government announced it would spend $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on Colorado River programs, the Upper Colorado River Commission decided to reboot the SCPP, which was first tested from 2015 to 2018. The program pays eligible water users in the four Upper Basin states to leave their fields dry for the irrigation season and let that water flow downstream.

But a hasty rollout to the SCPP in 2023 meant low participation numbers. Only 64 water-saving projects were approved, and about 38,000 acre-feet of water was conserved across the four states, which cost nearly $16 million. Water users complained about not having enough time to plan for the upcoming growing season and said an initial lowball offer from the UCRC of $150 per acre-foot was insulting and came with a complicated haggling process to get a higher payment. UCRC officials said the short notice and challenges with getting the word out about the program contributed to low participation numbers in 2023.

A University of Wyoming study surveyed the region’s growers about water conservation between November 2022 and March 2023. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in the Upper Basin were not even aware that the SCPP existed.

UCRC commissioners voted to run the program again in 2024, but said this time projects should focus on local drought resiliency on a longer-term basis. UCRC officials tweaked the program based on lessons learned in 2023, and the 2024 program had nearly double the participation, with 109 projects and nearly 64,000 acre-feet of water expected to be conserved.

“I view the doubling of interest and participation from one year to the next as a significant success,” UCRC Executive Director Chuck Cullom said.

What happens to conserved water?

Despite one of its stated intentions — protecting critical reservoir levels — water being left in streams by SCPP-participating irrigators is not tracked to Lake Powell, the storage bucket for the Upper Basin.

In total, across 2023 and 2024, the program spent $45 million to save a little more than 1% of the Colorado River water allocated to Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

Although engineers have calculated how much water is saved by individual projects, known as conserved consumptive use, officials are not measuring how much of that conserved water ends up in Lake Powell. And the laws that govern water rights allow downstream users to simply take the water that an upstream user participating in the SCPP leaves in the river, potentially canceling out the attempt at banking that water.

These types of temporary, voluntary and compensated conservation programs aren’t new to the Upper Basin. In addition to the pilot program from 2015 to 2018, the state of Colorado undertook a two-year study of the idea of a demand management program by convening nine work groups to examine the issue.

System conservation and demand management, while conceptually the same, have one big difference: A demand management program would track the water so that downstream users don’t grab it and create a special pool to store the conserved water in Lake Powell. With system conservation, the water simply becomes part of the Colorado River system, with no certainty about where it ends up.

This lack of accounting for the water has some asking whether the SCPP is accomplishing what it set out to do and whether it is worth the high cost to taxpayers.

Even if all the roughly 64,000 acre-feet from the SCPP in 2024 makes it to Lake Powell, it’s still a drop in the bucket for the reservoir; last year, 13.4 million acre-feet flowed into Lake Powell. The reservoir currently holds about 8.2 million acre-feet and has a capacity of about 25 million acre-feet.

“I still haven’t really seen evidence of total water savings or anything like that,” said Elizabeth Koebele, a professor of political science and director of the graduate program of hydrologic sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno. Koebele wrote her doctoral dissertation on the first iteration of the SCPP. “As far as getting water to reservoirs, I’m not sure that we’ve seen a lot of success from the System Conservation Pilot Program so far.”

And the program has been expensive. For the 2024 iteration of the program, UCRC officials offered a fixed price per acre-foot that applicants could take or leave — no haggling this time. Colorado, Utah and Wyoming paid agricultural water users about $500 an acre-foot; the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, New Mexico’s sole participant in 2023 and 2024, received $300 an acre-foot. Projects that involved municipal or industrial water use were compensated on a case-by-case basis, and those that involved leaving water in reservoirs were paid $150 an acre-foot. The majority of projects in both years involved taking water off fields for the whole season or part of the season, known as fallowing.

The UCRC doled out nearly $29 million in payments to water users in 2024. The program paid about $45 million to participants in 2023 and 2024 combined. Some participants are using these payments to upgrade their irrigation systems, Cullom said, which helps maintain the vitality of local agriculture.

But even with this amount of money spent, Koebele said it may still not cover the costs to participants for things such as long term impacts to soil health that come with taking water off fields for a season or two. After the infusion of IRA money runs out, it’s unclear how such a program would be funded in the future.

“I also worry that we don’t have an endless supply of money to compensate users for conservation in the basin,” Koebele said. “And perhaps we need to be thinking about — rather than doing temporary conservation — investments in longer-term conservation beyond what we’re already doing.”

The Green River flows through Sublette County, Wyo. on Mar. 27, 2024. Snowmelt-fed rivers and streams near the Colorado River’s headwaters have been at the heart of recent negotiations about the region’s water future. (Alex Hager/KUNC)

Western Slope water managers critical of SCPP

Some groups have concerns with the SCPP beyond its issues with accounting for how much water ends up in Lake Powell.

The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District represents 15 counties on Colorado’s Western Slope. Their mission is to protect, conserve, use and develop the water within its boundaries, which has often meant fighting Front Range entities that want to take more from the headwaters of the Colorado River in the form of transmountain diversions. Sometimes, that means voicing concerns about conservation programs that it thinks have the potential to harm Western Slope water users.

River District officials have been vocal critics of the SCPP, pointing out the ways that it could, if not done carefully, harm certain water users and rural agricultural communities. Because of the way water left in the stream by participants in the SCPP can be picked up by the next water user in line, some of which are Front Range cities, at least two of the projects this year could result in less — not more — water in the Colorado River, according to comments that the River District submitted to the state of Colorado. (One of these projects dropped out in 2024.)

“Without significant improvements, it would be hard for the River District to support additional expenditures on system conservation,” said Peter Fleming, the district’s general counsel.

The River District had also wanted a say in the SCPP process in 2023, going as far as creating their own checklist for deciding project approval, but UCRC officials said the commission had sole authority to approve projects.

Water users from all sectors — including agriculture, cities and industry — are allowed to participate in the program, but, in practice, all of the 2023 and 2024 projects in Colorado involve Western Slope agricultural water users. That’s partly because the price that the SCPP offered was less than the market value of water on the Front Range.

“If you’re simply basing it on a set dollar value per acre-foot, you’re going to result in disproportionate impacts to areas of the state where the economic value of water is not as high as others,” Fleming said. “You’re going to end up with all the water coming from the Western Slope. … You shouldn’t create sacrificial lambs.”

Upper Basin facing increased pressure

The Upper Basin’s conservation program is playing out against the backdrop of watershedwide negotiations with the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) about how to share the river after the current guidelines governing river operations expire in 2026.

After failing to come to an agreement, the Upper and Lower basins submitted competing proposals to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Lower Basin officials committed to a baseline of 1.5 million acre-feet in cuts, plus more when conditions warrant. They also called for the Upper Basin to share in those additional cuts when reservoirs dip below a certain level.

Upper Basin officials have balked at the notion that their water users should share in any cuts, saying they already suffer shortages in dry years. The source of the problem, they say, is overuse by the Lower Basin.

Plus, without ever having violated the 1922 Colorado River Compact by using more than the 7.5 million acre-feet allotted to them, they say there’s no way to enforce mandatory cuts on the Upper Basin.

But under increased pressure from the Lower Basin, and facing a drier future as climate change continues to rob the Colorado River of flows, Upper Basin water managers have made one small concession. In their proposal, they have offered to continue “parallel activities” like the SCPP, but said these programs will be separate from any post-2026 agreement with the Lower Basin. The congressional authorization for the SCPP expires at the end of 2024, and it’s unclear whether water managers will implement a program in 2025 or beyond.

Inherent in the Upper Basin’s stance is a contradiction: Why maintain that both the source of the problem and responsibility for a solution rest with the Lower Basin, but then agree to do the SCPP or a conservation program like it?

“I think that they’re basically saying that the Lower Basin needs to get their act together before we actually really need to come to the table in a realistic way,” said Drew Bennett, a University of Wyoming professor of private-lands stewardship. “I think they feel like, ‘We don’t actually really need to do anything.’ That the SCPP is actually above and beyond what they need to be doing. Is that reality? I don’t know. But I think that’s sort of the message they’re trying to send in negotiations.”

Docks and buoys, once floating atop dozens of feet of water, sit stranded on the sand at Lake Powell’s Bullfrog Marina on April 9, 2023. Record-low levels at the reservoir helped spur water officials to reboot the System Conservation Pilot Program. (Alex Hager/KUNC)

Grower attitudes key to program success

Some experts say the program’s real value is not getting water into depleted reservoirs. It is testing out a potential tool to help farmers and ranchers adapt to a future with less water. They frame it as an experiment that provides crucial information and lessons on how an Upper Basin conservation program could be scaled up. It also continues to ease water users into the concept of using less should a more permanent water conservation program come to pass.

“This program kind of, I think, helps grease the skids for that process that gets people comfortable for how it operates,” said Alex Funk, who worked for the Colorado Water Conservation Board in 2019 and helped to guide the state’s demand management study with regard to agricultural impacts. “Just seeing the doubling of the amount of acre-feet conserved under the second year and then the interest shows that, yeah, I think there could be some longevity to the program. … I think one has to be optimistic because I don’t see how the Upper Basin navigates a post-2026 future without such a program.”

Funk now works as senior counsel and director of water resources at the nonprofit Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The group receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also funds a portion of Colorado River coverage from KUNC and The Water Desk.

Cows graze in Routt County, Colo. on Oct. 8, 2021. Government-funded water conservation programs have divided farmers and ranchers. While the System Conservation Program initially had low buy-in, water officials say it helped them gather valuable data about working with growers. (Alex Hager/KUNC)

Cullom, executive director of the agency that runs the SCPP, pushed back on the idea that it is intended to help correct the supply/demand imbalance on the river, which he said is the fault of the Lower Basin.

“The intent of the program is to develop new tools for the upper division water users to adapt to a drier future,” he said. “We’re trying to develop tools that benefit the local communities and producers and water users in the four upper division states through drought resiliency, new tools, the ability to explore crop switching and irrigation efficiencies.”

Of all the challenges in setting up a program such as this — funding, pricing, calculating water saved, getting the word out — the biggest may be the attitudes of water users themselves, some of whom have a deep-seated mistrust of the federal government. Like Hagenstein, all of the water users that Aspen Journalism and KUNC interviewed for this story said financial reasons were the biggest driver behind their participation in the SCPP.

Bennett’s research also explained some of the reasons why growers may be hesitant to enroll in conservation programs such as the SCPP. It found that farmers and ranchers trusted local organizations to administer conservation programs significantly more than state or federal ones.

If demand management strategies were deployed, 74% of survey respondents said they’d prefer to have a local agency manage the program, as opposed to a state or federal agency. Only about 14% of growers said there is a high level of trust between water users and water management agencies in their states. The same percentage said their state’s planning process was adequate for dealing with water supply issues.

These findings point to a stumbling block that the UCRC and other agencies must overcome if they hope to create a longer-term conservation program.

Hagenstein, the Wyoming rancher, has experienced those attitudes firsthand. She has been on the receiving end of insults and name-calling because of her participation in the SCPP.

But Hagenstein says the SCPP has allowed her to have money in her pocket to continue ranching long term.

“I didn’t anticipate it would be so beneficial,” she said. “It bought us time to stay in ranching is the long and the short of it. So, I’m most grateful for the abundance that the federal government offered us. … You know, some would call it a golden goose.”

This story was reported and produced collaboratively by Aspen Journalism, a nonprofit, investigative news organization, and Northern Colorado-based public radio station KUNC, and is a part of KUNC’s ongoing coverage of the Colorado River supported by the Walton Family Foundation. Additional editing resources and other support for this story came from The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

Q&A: Defining the “snow deluge” and projecting its future

By
Mitch Tobin
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Deep snow in the Sierra Nevada, about 90 miles east of Sacramento, on March 3, 2023. Photo by Jonathan Wong, California Department of Water Resources.

For California’s Sierra Nevada, the winter of 2022-2023 delivered an epic snowpack that broke many records and busted a severe drought.

The exceptional season, dubbed the “snowpocalypse” by some, caused havoc during the winter and flooding later in the year while also replenishing reservoirs and making skiers happy—once the roads and resorts emerged from storm closures.

Both hazardous and helpful, the banner year was also of interest to snow scientists, such as Adrienne Marshall, an assistant professor of geology and geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. 

Marshall was lead author of a paper published in April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that introduces the term “snow deluge” to describe extreme snow years like the one California weathered.

I spoke with Marshall recently about the study and its conclusion that snow deluges are likely to decline in the decades ahead as human-caused climate change continues to warm the planet and make it more likely that rain, rather than snow, will fall. 

The video below contains the full interview, and the Q&A that follows includes excerpts from the conversation, edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

May 7 interview with snow scientist Adrienne Marshall of the Colorado School of Mines

Could you please summarize the paper and its main findings?

In this paper, we were interested in looking at what’s happening with our biggest snow years. The snow community has had a lot of focus in the last several years on snow drought: what’s happening with changes in our lowest snow year, and how much more frequent should we expect those low snow years to get? But when we focus on the low snow years, there’s a little bit of a risk that we neglect to look at what’s happening with our biggest snow years. So when we saw the 2023 water year come along in California, it provided sort of a great study to dive into this question of biggest snow years. 

We argue that we should call these big snow years “snow deluges.” We looked at how rare the snow deluge in California water year 2022-2023 was. Essentially, we see that it was, statewide, about a 1-in-54-year event is our best estimate.

There was a lot of discussion at the time of whether it was a record-breaking water year or not. We saw that about 42% of sites had the highest April 1 snow water equivalent ever recorded. That was more record-breaking sites than we saw in any other water year in California. 

We were also interested in the extent to which the 2023 snow deluge and others like it are caused by relatively cool versus wet conditions. And maybe not surprisingly, we saw that both cool and wet conditions are required to have these snow deluges. You can get maybe average temperatures and average precipitation, but you really couldn’t have a very warm year and get a snow deluge. 

Finally, we wanted to know what happens to our snow deluges in warmer climate scenarios. So we looked at the outputs of some climate models and found that it looks like—on average across climate models—we should expect our snow deluge years to decline in terms of the amount of snow we see on the ground. But they do decline less on a percentage basis than our average years.

How did you come up with the definition for a snow deluge?

There’s a little bit of a parallel here to snow drought—and drought in general—where generally there’s a lot of academic debate over how we should define these things. 

In this case, we used April 1 snow water equivalent because that’s the type of data for which we have the longest record. Snow surveyors have been going out into the mountains to observe the amount of snow at individual locations for as long as 100 years or so, but they could only do that historically on a few days of the water year and commonly did it April 1st. So that’s a bit of a decision based on data availability. 

Then we used a definition of looking at a 1-in-20-year return interval—the event that you would expect to see once every 20 years, statistically on average—as our cutoff threshold for what we call a snow deluge. 

Employees of the California Department of Water Resources measure the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada on April 3, 2023. Photo: Kenneth James, California Department of Water Resources.

Did any of these findings surprise you?

Probably the most surprising was that the 2023 water year in California—we looked over November to March—was anomalously cold. And that was a little unexpected, particularly in the context of the record-breaking warm global temperatures. As far as I know, that’s just sort of an anomaly with respect to the rest of the global trend. 

In terms of how we should expect the snow deluges to change, there are two competing factors happening. One is as conditions get warmer, of course we get less precipitation falling as snow, more falling as rain, and so we expect our total snow accumulations to decline. The other sort of competing component is as we get warmer conditions, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, so there’s an increasing probability of more precipitation intensity. Those two factors might counterbalance each other to some extent. We didn’t know for sure what the net effect would be and saw that it looks like the net effect is the warming having a bigger effect in terms of our snow accumulations.  

Is it likely we’ll ever see another deluge like last year’s?

The 1-in-54-year event statistic that we came up with means that each year—over that same spatial area (California)—there’s a little under a 2% chance of an event that big happening again. That said, given our findings with the climate models, it looks like as our emissions rise and warming continues over time, that percentage and that probability is decreasing. So it’s getting less and less likely that we would see a snowfall event that big again. So I’m inclined to say that, statistically, it’s not likely that we should expect to see another year that big.  

Marshall talks about her snow deluge research at the 91st Annual Western Snow Conference at Oregon State University in Corvallis on April 24, 2024. Photo by Mitch Tobin, The Water Desk.

What are you able to say about snow deluges in other parts of the West?

We did see a remarkable amount of consistency in terms of the climate model projections for changes in snow deluges. It was really across almost the entire Western U.S. that we saw the average of the nine climate models we looked at were projecting declines in snow deluges and smaller changes in the snow deluges than the median years. That was consistent across California, Colorado, and the rest of the Western U.S.

With atmospheric rivers, we hear they can be both beneficial and hazardous. Is it helpful to think of snow deluges in the same way?  

It’s certainly true that they can be beneficial and hazardous, even if we were to just think about one industry, like winter recreation and skiing. Of course, it’s good to get lots of snow at your ski resorts. And there were parts of the year where people couldn’t access the ski resorts and they had to close.

Similarly, you might have snow deluges that are good at one time of year, like beneficial for our summer water supply, but detrimental to our infrastructure in the winter. Or, ecologically, it might be beneficial for one type of organism and detrimental for another. So they’re certainly complex in terms of their effects. I don’t know that you could isolate it to some quantity being good and then above that being bad because I think there’s a big dependence on good or bad for who, when and where, which would be great to dive into. It sounds like decades of research, too.

These maps visualize the Sierra Nevada’s snowpack on April 1, 2023. Snow water equivalent is a measure of how much water the snowpack contains. The right map shows the snowpack above 5,000 feet was more than 300% of average in some locations. Source: Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

What are the implications for water managers?

A big snow year—a snow deluge—can certainly help refill our reservoirs, which we’ve seen. The fact that we see these (snow deluges) declining might suggest that we shouldn’t count on big snow years coming along periodically and saving us. 

Snow tends to be more predictable from a water manager’s perspective in terms of when they’re going to get runoff because if we have precipitation falling as rain, then you’re just kind of constrained to the uncertainty of your seasonal weather, which is pretty hard to forecast. But if you have a whole bunch of snow sitting in the mountains above your watershed, you know it’s going to melt and the question is how much do you have out there, when will it melt, and should you release water now to maintain flood storage capacity or just expect that maybe you’ve already gotten most of your snow runoff for the year? 

So losing that snow deluge is probably challenging from a water management perspective because those big snow years offer more predictability and more ability, potentially, to refill reservoirs than if you are just relying on rain, which is so much harder to predict on a seasonal scale.

Any other takeaways?

A very good question to think about is: how much can we save if we’re able to get ourselves on a lower warming scenario? So treat these projections of snow loss as very concerning projections to be aware of and that should inform our decisions about how hard we work to mitigate climate change, but not as fatalistic predictions. There is a lot that we can do societally to try to nudge ourselves ever towards those lower warming scenarios, and that is what we should be doing to save as much of our snowpack as we can.

Deep snow nearly buries a road sign along Highway 50 in El Dorado County, California, on March 3, 2023. At the time, nearby Sierra-at-Tahoe Ski Resort had already received nearly 500 inches during the snow deluge. Photo by Fred Greaves, California Department of Water Resources.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The Other Border Dispute Is Over an 80-Year-Old Water Treaty

By
Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News
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The U.S. 90 bridge crosses the Amistad Reservoir near Del Rio, Texas. Water deliveries from Mexico are stored at the reservoir, where water levels have dropped in recent months. (Omar Ornelas for Inside Climate News)

This story was reported with a grant from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder.

EL PASO—Maria-Elena Giner faced a room full of farmers, irrigation managers and residents in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas on April 2. 

The local agricultural community was reeling. Reservoirs on the Rio Grande were near record lows and the state had already warned that water cutbacks would be necessary. The last sugar mill in the region closed in February, citing the lack of water.

But Mexico still wasn’t sending water to the U.S. from its Rio Grande tributaries, as a 1944 treaty requires the country to do in five-year intervals. 

“We haven’t gotten any rains or significant inflows,” said Giner, the commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission. “It’s not looking good.” 

The IBWC, based in El Paso, implements the boundary and water treaties between the two countries. Giner’s team had spent 2023 working to reach an agreement with Mexico to ensure more reliable water deliveries on the Rio Grande. In December, she was confident the U.S. and Mexico would sign a new agreement, known as a minute. But at the final hour Mexico declined to sign. 

The impasse left farmers and communities in the Rio Grande Valley facing down another hot summer with limited water supplies. The state of Texas and members of Congress joined the supplications to Mexico: Start sending the water you owe. But with the political opposition in Mexico calling for the water treaty to be renegotiated—and presidential elections approaching in June—Mexican officials waited.

Immigration, trade and drug trafficking dominate much of the U.S. diplomatic agenda with Mexico. But in recent months water has become a more urgent topic, rising to the “upper echelons of the Department of State,” in Giner’s words. The 1944 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico governs water distribution on both the Rio Grande and Colorado River. Drought, climate change and politics are increasing tensions over treaty compliance. 

As of May 20, United States ownership of water at the Falcon and Amistad Reservoirs was at 20.1 percent of normal conservation capacity. South Texas farmers and municipalities are figuring out how to make do with less this summer.

Texas Republican Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and members of both parties in the House are pushing for the State Department to withhold funds for Mexico. 

Giner, who herself grew up between the two countries in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, remains convinced the neighboring nations can work out their differences over an 80-year-old treaty to manage shared rivers. 

“[This minute is] the tool that we have at the IBWC,” Giner said during the April meeting. “Mexico is a sovereign country. And our tool is influence.”

Rio Grande Valley Farmers Fear More Losses

The Rio Grande starts its 1,900-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico high in the mountains of southwestern Colorado. But the water that flows through the Texas Rio Grande Valley mostly originates in tributaries in Mexico. The most important is the Rio Conchos that flows from the Sierra Tarahumara through the agricultural heart of Chihuahua before joining the Rio Grande at Presidio, Texas.

The 1944 water treaty commits the U.S. to send Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado River each year. On the Rio Grande, Mexico is expected to send an average of 350,000 acre-feet of water from the Mexican tributaries each year over a five-year cycle for a total of 1.75 million acre-feet. This water flows to the Falcon and Amistad Reservoirs, which store water for the farms and communities of the Rio Grande Valley and the downstream Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León. 

Irrigation water from the Rio Conchos feeds alfalfa and pecan production in Chihuahua, Mexico. Farmers and politicians in Chihuahua have opposed additional water deliveries to the United States. (Omar Ornelas for Inside Climate News)

The last five-year cycle ended in conflict in 2020, with farmers in Chihuahua protesting water deliveries to the U.S. In a last-minute deal, known as minute 325, Mexico agreed to transfer water stored at the international reservoirs to the U.S. to end the cycle without a deficit.

The current cycle ends on October 25, 2025. Well into the fourth year, Mexico has sent less than 400,000 acre feet of water. At this rate it is unlikely that Mexico can meet its obligations.The main reservoirs on the Rio Conchos are at low levels, with La Boquilla at 28 percent capacity and Francisco Madero at 25.8 percent, as of May 16. The entire state of Chihuahua is currently in a drought.

With irregular water deliveries hampering agricultural production, the last sugar mill in Texas, the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, closed for good in February. 

“I just don’t see a means by which sufficient water could be delivered right now in time to save the agricultural production for this year,” said Carlos Rubinstein, a former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Rio Grande watermaster and consultant. “So the water is going to have to come from Mother Nature this year, which is a bad spot to be in.”

Towns and cities in the Rio Grande Valley that rely on the river for their water could also face shortages this year. Municipalities may be forced to buy additional water or speed up plans to develop alternative water supplies, like desalination. 

The Delta Lake Irrigation District diverts water to municipalities including Raymondville and Lyford. Water for these communities is conveyed through irrigation canals; if there is no irrigation water the municipal water can’t move through the canals.

“We’re at a point where within the next 60 days if we don’t get substantial rainfall or Mexico releases some water… I don’t know what my municipalities that I deliver water to are going to have to do,” said general manager Troy Allen in early May.

“We’ve already lost the sugar industry in the Rio Grande Valley,” Allen said. He worries the citrus industry will be next. “That’s my big fear.”

Negotiations Advance Then Falter in 2023

State and federal officials tried to avoid this. 

Minute 325, signed by the U.S. and Mexico in October 2020, set the goal of signing a new minute by December 2023 to increase “reliability and predictability” in Rio Grande water deliveries.

The Rio Grande Minute Working Group formed in 2022 with representatives from IBWC, the TCEQ, the Department of State, Mexico’s IBWC, known as CILA, and Mexico’s National Water Commission, known as CONAGUA.

In Mexico, water is federal property. But once that same water is delivered to the U.S. in the international reservoirs, it falls under the purview of the state of Texas. TCEQ’s Rio Grande Watermaster then manages deliveries to irrigation districts and other users. While IBWC handles direct negotiations with Mexico, the agency must work closely with TCEQ. 

Giner wrote to TCEQ Commissioner Bobby Janecka, a member of the working group, in January 2023. She wrote in an email, provided by TCEQ in a records request, that she looked forward to “achieving a minute signing that will lead to predictability and reliability in the Rio Grande.”

TCEQ has urged IWBC to do more, and political tensions on the border have bled into the water dispute. “IBWC must hold Mexico accountable,” wrote the director of the agency’s Office of Water at the end of January 2023.

In late June 2023, IBWC took issue when Texas Governor Gregg Abbott ordered floating buoys designed to stop migrants to be installed in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. IBWC denounced the move, saying they were not consulted and the buoys could violate treaty agreements. Tensions with Mexico flared; Mexico’s top diplomat lodged a complaint with the U.S. government, warning the buoys violated the 1944 treaty and were possibly in Mexican territory. The U.S. Department of Justice later sued Texas. That case is now in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

On July 18, 2023 IBWC foreign affairs officer Sally Spener notified TCEQ that Mexican officials had postponed a meeting because of the incident, according to emails obtained by Inside Climate News. 

“We were able to continue our negotiations through all of that last year,” Spener said in a May 2024 interview, referring to the buoy controversy. “But it was a distraction.”

Spener said by the second half of 2023, the working group put “concepts on paper” and drafted a minute laying out what the two countries agreed on.

On December 5, the IBWC presented details of the draft minute to stakeholders in the Rio Grande Valley. Irrigation districts and farmers in the valley don’t always agree with the federal government’s approach to working with Mexico, so their buy-in was important. Commissioner Giner explained how key points in the minute would resolve long-standing disagreements about the treaty.

Some irrigation districts and politicians in Chihuahua argue that Mexico should only allocate “wild water,” or water that overflows the country’s domestic dams, to fulfill the treaty. The draft minute would reinforce the importance of Mexico releasing water from its domestic reservoirs, settling that debate. 

Mexico’s San Juan and Alamo Rivers have previously been used to supplement the five tributaries named in the treaty. The draft minute affirmed that, when the U.S. agrees, Mexico could allot water from these rivers to meet its obligations.

The draft also included a new “projects” working group that would focus on increasing water conservation in the drought-impacted watershed. A separate “environment” working group would focus on the Big Bend and increasing water flow in an area that runs dry much of the year. 

“There was some of it that we didn’t agree with, but it was a start,” said Troy Allen of the Delta Lake Irrigation District of the draft minute. “[Commissioner Giner] is very transparent and I think she is really trying her best to help us out.”

IBWC was poised to sign the minute in December. Suddenly Mexican federal officials backtracked, saying they needed to “undertake additional domestic consultations,” according to Spener. Until those consultations were complete, Mexico wouldn’t sign the minute.

Not everyone in Mexico wanted the new agreement. The heart of that opposition lies in Chihuahua.

Mexican Opposition Politicians Protest Water Deliveries

Mexican presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez took the stage in Camargo, Chihuahua, on April 14. She spoke just a few miles from La Boquilla, where Mexican farmers protested water deliveries to the United States in 2020.

Those same farmers were out in force for Gálvez, who is backed by Mexico’s three main opposition parties, the PAN, PRI and PRD. Her opponent from the MORENA party, Claudia Sheinbaum, is the hand-picked successor to incumbent president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 

In 2020, López Obrador sent the National Guard to the La Boquilla reservoir in anticipation of opening the floodgates to send water north. Protesters pushed out the National Guard and a protester was killed in the confrontations. 

A view of the La Boquilla Dam along the Rio Conchos in Chihuahua, Mexico. (Omar Ornelas for Inside Climate News)

Gálvez opened her speech this spring discussing water. “We are in the worst drought in many years,” she said, before launching into criticisms of MORENA’s agricultural policies.

“The treaty payment to the United States in 2025 has to be renegotiated,” she said to cheers. “I promise I will defend the water of Chihuahua.”

Chihuahua governor María Eugenia Campos Galván also opposes water deliveries. Representing the PAN, Campos Galván is one of the few opposition governors in Mexico. For her, defending the water of Chihuahua means challenging the federal officials who send water to the United States.

Chihuahua Congressman Salvador Alcántar, also of the PAN, was instrumental in the 2020 protests. He is steadfast that the water stored at the reservoirs along the Rio Conchos should not be sent to the United States.

“We are in an extreme drought in Mexico. Right now it will be difficult to comply with the commitments in the treaty,” he said in an interview in Spanish. “No one is obligated to give what they don’t have.”

Texas and IBWC officials acknowledge that Mexico’s upcoming presidential election on June 2 cast a shadow over the minute negotiations. Sheinbaum is heavily favored to win. But the federal government is not expected to take action on the treaty or water deliveries in the interim.

“We continue to push for the minute,” said IBWC’s Spener. “And even without the minute [Mexico] can make water deliveries.”

CONAGUA, which manages water allocations on the Rio Conchos, did not respond to questions from Inside Climate News. 

Bad Weather and Bad Politics

Mexico alone doesn’t shoulder the blame for water shortages this year. A prolonged drought and climate change are pummeling the Rio Grande watershed and Mexican tributaries alike. Extreme heat is already taking a toll on agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley. These trends are only expected to continue.

Temperatures throughout the Rio Grande basin are projected to increase by four to 10 degrees Fahrenheit this century, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. Higher temperatures decrease snow accumulation and snow melt. More water evaporates from reservoirs as temperatures warm. 

The Rio Grande flows through a balmy former wetland in Cameron County, Texas. (Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News)

Drought and rising temperatures are also impacting the Conchos basin in Mexico. Annual runoff in the Conchos basin could decline by up to 25 percent by 2050 because of changes in precipitation and higher temperatures, according to the 2015 Mexico Water Vulnerability Atlas. A study in the Journal of Climate this year projected that Chihuahua is likely to “experience strong drying during the spring and summer months” this century. 

Texas politicians are pressuring the Biden administration to take more decisive action to help the state’s farmers. On May 10, Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, along with eight representatives, including Republicans Monica De La Cruz and Tony Gonzales and Democrats Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, sent a letter urging the both the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on State and Foreign Operations to withhold designated funds from Mexico until the country “meets its obligations to resolve the ongoing water dispute.” 

López Obrador spoke to the treaty on May 15 during his daily press conference. He said Mexico does not have a date to make a decision. “We support this compact,” he said. “We agree it shouldn’t be modified and we have a very good relationship [with the United States]. But as the weather gets hot and there are elections coming up, all these issues come to light.”

The Department of State referred questions about the treaty negotiations to IBWC. 

Spener of the IBWC said they continue to encourage Mexico to deliver water. The minute working group held its most recent meeting in April in El Paso. 

TCEQ Commissioner Bobby Janecka wrote to Commissioner Giner on April 26, concerned that Mexico continued to allocate water to its irrigation districts without planning how to send water to Texas. He also opposed Mexico arguing that extraordinary drought prevented the country from complying with the treaty. “We are deeply concerned about these claims,” he wrote.

Irrigation districts in the Rio Grande Valley worry about trade-offs when the U.S. agrees to alternative measures—beyond the five tributaries named in the treaty—for Mexico to deliver the water it owes. Anthony Stambaugh, general manager of the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2., said Mexico “needs to be caught up first,” before the U.S. offers more concessions.

When the treaty clock runs out on October 25, 2025, both the U.S. and Mexico will have entered new presidential administrations. The incoming U.S. president will also appoint the IBWC commissioner. The tone of binational negotiations could change dramatically.

Mexicans go to the polls on June 2. Water issues, from Chihuahua to Mexico City, have taken on greater importance during the campaign. Water shortages are spreading to more neighborhoods in Mexico City as supplies dip. Frontrunner Sheinbaum is largely expected to continue her predecessor’s policies if elected. She has committed to making water management a priority and would consider a revision of the National Water Law. Meanwhile, her opponent Gálvez has said, if elected, she would modernize agriculture to make more efficient use of water.

Six months later, the United States will hold its presidential election. Water and the 1944 treaty are hardly top campaign issues north of the border. But, if elected, Republican candidate Donald Trump would likely take a more confrontational approach in his dealings with Mexico. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has invested heavily in water conservation in Western states, including in the Colorado River Basin and the Rio Grande. These investments, through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, would likely continue if Biden is re-elected.

In the Rio Grande Valley, the immediate concern is how to get through a dry, hot summer with less water to go around. As water supplies dwindle—and the political divide widens—the immediate needs to secure water will take precedent.

Carlos Rubinstein, the former TCEQ watermaster, said resolving the root issues of water supplies on the Rio Grande requires continuous work, not just during the bad years.

“It’s bad weather and it’s bad politics,” he said. “So that’s a really tough place to be.”

This story was produced by Inside Climate News, in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

In Colorado, new scrutiny and possible fixes coming for drinking water in mobile home parks

By
Eleanor Bennett, Aspen Public Radio
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Silvia Barragán stands outside her front door in Apple Tree Park in western Colorado on April 28, 2024. For years, Barragán and her neighbors in the mobile home park have been speaking out about the discolored water that comes out of their taps. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Public Radio)

In western communities, mobile home parks provide a more affordable place to live, but residents often face problems with their drinking water. 

In Colorado, a new law gives the state authority to test water quality in these communities and force owners to fix any issues.

The state plans to start testing the water at hundreds of parks across the state this summer. Officials have already gotten a head start at one community in Western Colorado that helped spur the legislation.

Apple Tree Park sits on the banks of the Colorado River just across from the town of New Castle. 

Silvia Barragán moved to the park in 2015. Her street is lined with trees and she has a big yard with a garden. 

“Some people might look at this as just a trashy mobile park, but it’s not,” Barragán said. “It’s a nice, nice neighborhood. There’s a lot of kids in the summer running around and there’s a lot of elderly people that have lived here most of their lives.”

Barragán is originally from Michoacán, Mexico, and she raised her family in western Colorado. Her experience at Apple Tree Park over the last decade has mostly been positive. 

“Since I moved here, I felt peaceful and at home,” Barragán said. “My neighbors are great neighbors and I haven’t had any issues in Apple Tree except the water.”

Cars line up in front of mobile homes on a quiet street at Apple Tree Park in western Colorado on April 28, 2024. Water quality issues at the park helped spur a new Colorado law that gives the state authority to test water quality in mobile home parks and force owners to fix any issues. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Public Radio)

For years, Barragán and her neighbors have been speaking out about the discolored water that comes out of their taps. 

“It’s kind of brownish, yellowish. It’s kind of nasty,” she said. “It’s like river water, like if I’m camping and I go get river water, that’s what it looks like.”

Barragán only wears black now because the water stains her clothes and laundry, and it ruins her appliances.

It has an unpleasant smell and taste, so she fills up water jugs at the local grocery store.

“I buy water,” Barragán said. “I buy water for cooking, I buy water for drinking, I buy water for the dogs.” 

When the state tested the water at Apple Tree Park, they found it meets federal EPA standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1974, but it has higher than normal levels of heavy metals such as iron and manganese. The park is supplied by groundwater wells, and is outside the limits of the nearby town of New Castle, which draws the majority of its drinking supply from a nearby creek.

Apple Tree Park resident Silvia Barragán points at a bucket she filled with discolored water on April 28, 2024. The water meets federal EPA health standards, but has higher than normal levels of heavy metals such as manganese and iron, so Barragán buys water at the local grocery store. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Public Radio) 

Joel Minor used to manage the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s environmental justice program, and said Apple Tree’s situation — of heavy metals showing up in underground well water — is pretty common. 

“Because of the taste and color and odor of the water, it can be unpleasant to drink and can cause other issues,” Minor said. “We recognize that that creates challenges for park residents and may require them to spend money on things like bottled water or repairing or replacing appliances.”

While Apple Tree’s overall water system meets federal health standards for drinking, a recent round of testing this winter found that a few samples out of the 200 taken had manganese levels that were above the EPA’s health advisory for infants. High levels of manganese can negatively impact babies’ brain development.

When the state got the test results back in February, they worked with the park owner—Utah-based company Investment Property Group (IPG)—to notify residents and local health officials about the issue. 

“What we want folks to know is to be cautious about using tap water from the park for making formula for infants under the age of six-months-old,” Minor said. “These particular locations where this occurred seem to be spots where maybe the water isn’t being flushed quite as well.”

A water-stained bathtub in Silvia Barragán’s home at Apple Tree Park is one example of how the discolored water has impacted her appliances. Other residents at the mobile home park have also had to replace appliances such as dishwashers and laundry machines more frequently than usual. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Public Radio)

With the passage of the Mobile Home Park Water Quality Act in 2023, the state’s been working with IPG to do more regular testing and to fix the water issues. The company didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. 

In 2020, IPG bought the mobile home park from the local Talbott family, which had owned the park since its inception. The company has properties across 13 states, including more than 110 mobile home parks, according to the Mobile Home Park Home Owners Allegiance’s online database.

The state has been having regular meetings with IPG, Garfield County health officials, local advocacy groups and park residents to come up with a variety of ways to improve the water. 

“One key short-term solution that we’ve been working with the park on is flushing the water system more frequently, which can help remove iron and other metals that have accumulated in the system,” Minor said. “We’ve also worked with that same coalition to put on an informational webinar about how to do in-home flushing for appliances like water heaters and pipes so that residents are also able to flush their own water systems.”

Another short-term fix already underway is putting in water stations where residents can fill up jugs for cooking and drinking. 

The state is providing direct funding to the park in the form of an assistance grant to help install these stations. One has already been installed at a local school across from the mobile home park that’s also owned by IPG, and the company plans to install a second by early June in a communal area near the entrance to the park. 

“That was something we came up with based on feedback from park residents that folks are having to drive across the river and across the highway into New Castle to fill water jugs for drinking and other purposes,” Minor said. “So these are key short-term solutions, but we recognize they don’t address the root cause of the problem.”

A Pride flag hangs outside a home at Apple Tree Park near New Castle, Colorado on April 28, 2024. State officials are working with the company that owns the park to fix its water quality issues under a new state law that went into effect this year. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Public Radio)

To address the root cause, the state is proposing bigger engineering solutions like installing a filtration system, or even connecting Apple Tree to a municipal water supply. 

But Apple Tree is just one of about 750 mobile home parks in Colorado. The new legislation gives the state authority to test, but the full scope of just how bad water quality could be at those parks, and the costs to fix the various causes could easily begin to rise as testing ramps up.

There is additional funding available for park owners to make these system-wide changes, and if they don’t, the state could impose fines until the problem is fixed. 

“We are really trying to prioritize solutions that won’t increase rent for park residents by either looking at lower cost options or ways of getting outside funding that can ensure that some of those costs don’t get passed on to residents,” Minor said. “We know that passing along the cost could potentially make the equity challenges that are already at play worse if residents have to pay more for their water bills or their space rents.”

Alex Sanchez leads the Glenwood Springs-based Latine advocacy nonprofit Voces Unidas, which worked with Apple Tree residents and Democratic Colorado House Representative Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs to pass the water quality legislation. 

“We’re not opposed to getting state dollars and federal dollars to be able to support or incentivize some of these solutions,” Sanchez said. “But ultimately, we believe it’s the responsibility of those corporate owners who have been making a lot of profit off the backs of hardworking folks without having access to, you know, quality water, potentially sidewalks, infrastructure and other benefits that many of us take for granted.” 

Apple Tree Park resident Silvia Barragán fills up a bucket with the discolored water that comes out of her kitchen faucet on April 28, 2024. Barragán only wears black now because the water stains her clothes and laundry. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Public Radio)

For Sanchez and Voces Unidas, the new law is just the first step in addressing a widespread environmental justice issue — many people living in these communities have lower incomes, don’t speak English as a first language, don’t have access to resources to file complaints, and are Latines or other people of color. 

“The issue is not just contained to one or two parks. Something is happening in these mobile home park communities and because they’re not regulated, there’s not a lot of accountability,” Sanchez said. “Many of these communities across Colorado are owned by corporations that are from out of state.” 

In a recent statewide poll in Colorado, Voces Unidas found 41% of mobile home park residents surveyed did not trust or drink their water. 

Since 2020, the state’s health and environment department has received 66 formal water quality complaints from 42 parks. State officials estimate that it will take them four years to test the water at all of Colorado’s roughly 750 parks. 

For her part, Apple Tree Park resident Silvia Barragán is glad that her community is at the top of the state’s list.  

“When I bought this place, I thought I was gonna retire here,” Barragán said. “So I would be sad to think that I need to buy another place just because, you know, I haven’t seen any change.”

Barragán hopes the new legislation will speed things up, but she doesn’t know how much longer she can wait for clean water. 

This story was produced by Aspen Public Radio, in partnership with The Water Desk, an independent initiative of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism. 

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