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A water strategy for the parched West: Have cities pay farmers to install more efficient water systems

Low-tech irrigation on a cattle ranch near Whitewater, Colo., June 30, 2021. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Low-tech irrigation on a cattle ranch near Whitewater, Colo., June 30, 2021. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

By Robert Glennon

“Are you going to run out of water?” is the first question people ask when they find out I’m from Arizona. The answer is that some people already haveothers soon may and it’s going to get much worse without dramatic changes.

Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate change are causing this crisis across the U.S. Southwest. States are drawing less water from the Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million people. But levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the river’s two largest reservoirs, have dropped so low so quickly that there is a serious risk of one or both soon hitting “dead pool,” a level when no water flows out of the dams.

On June 14, 2022, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton warned Congress that the seven Colorado River Basin States – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – need to reduce their diversions from the Colorado River by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet in 2022. An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land, about the size of a football field, with a foot of water – roughly 325,000 gallons. If the states don’t come up with a plan by August 2022, Touton may do it for them.

To achieve Touton’s objective, states need to focus on the region’s biggest water user: agriculture. Farmers consume 80% of the water used in the Colorado River Basin. As a longtime analyst of western water policy, I believe that solving this crisis will require a major intervention to help farmers use less water.

John Oliver, host of HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight,’ delves into the West’s water crisis.

Lawns in the desert

It’s not an exaggeration to call the Southwest’s water shortage a crisis. Declining river levels are compromising electricity generation from hydropower, which affects the power supply for millions of people. Farmers are fallowing fields and using less water on their crops. This, in turn, imperils food production already under global strain from the war in Ukraine. Drought conditions could wipe out endangered species, especially salmon.

There is something profoundly unsettling about the lush green landscape in Southern California, a desert transformed by the power of water. The average annual rainfall at Los Angeles International Airport from 1944 to 2020 was 11.72 inches (30 centimeters). That’s not much more than Tucson, Arizona, gets in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

Now, however, western states are imposing unprecedented restrictions on water use. On June 1, 2022, the Metropolitan Water District, wholesaler to 20 million Southern Californians, urgently called for a 35% reduction in water use. In response, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power is limiting residents to watering their lawns twice a week, for eight minutes per session. Other providers allow just one weekly watering.

The California Water Resources Control Board has ordered many farmers and San Francisco Bay-area cities to stop diverting water from the San Joaquin River system. Golf course operators are under substantial pressure to reduce water use.

Focus on irrigation

Still, agriculture uses far more water than lawns and golf courses. In 2017, U.S. farmers irrigated about 58 million acres (23 million hectares) of cropland, almost two-thirds of it in the West.

In recent decades western farmers have significantly changed their irrigation practices. Many have switched from flood systems, which literally flood fields, to pressurized systems. Typically these are center pivots that apply water from sprinklers connected to a large arm that slowly moves around a core, creating those large, usually green circles that airplane passengers can see across the West. This shift reduces water losses from evaporation, percolation into the soil and runoff.

In 2012, U.S. farmers used pressurized systems on 72% of their fields, up from 37% in 1984. That still leaves 28%, or 20 million acres (8 million hectares), that are flood irrigated.

And center-pivot systems are not as efficient as drip or microirrigation, which delivers water directly to plants’ root zone through hoses embedded in the soil. Drip irrigation delivers water slowly, reducing runoff and evaporation. Microirrigation systems use 20% to 50% less water than conventional sprinkler systems.

A center-pivot irrigation system in Arizona. USGS
A center-pivot irrigation system in Arizona. USGS

But drip systems are quite expensive, costing upwards of US$2,000 per acre. They are not cost-effective for farmers who grow low-value crops, such as alfalfa, and are prohibitively expensive for small farmers.

Most farms that irrigate are small operations with fewer than 50 acres (20 hectares) and less than $150,000 in annual revenues. But large-scale farms, with annual revenues over $1 million, use about 60% of irrigated water.

Bigger farms have the necessary capital to invest in sprinkler systems, but not necessarily enough to invest in highly efficient subsurface drip or microirrigation. Existing U.S. Department of Agriculture programs offer modest incentives, usually a maximum of $100 per acre – not enough to justify switching for most farmers.

Balancing rural and urban needs

Helping farmers switch to high-efficiency irrigation systems would benefit the entire Southwest. I propose a two-pronged approach.

First, Congress would provide funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to offer farmers more generous financial incentives to switch to microirrigation systems. The 2021 infrastructure bill contains $8.3 billion to assist western states in adapting to drought and climate change. I believe that this financial aid, with support from the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the USDA, could persuade millions of American farmers to make the move.

Microirrigation on a fruit and nut farm in Yuba City, Calif.

Second, to augment the federal program, state, municipal and local interests, including government agencies and private businesses, would create funds to underwrite the entire cost of converting farms to microirrigation. As I envision it, cities could offer to absorb 100% of the purchase and installation costs of microsystems in exchange for a percentage of the water that farmers would save by making the switch.

A program that’s cost-free to farmers would be far more attractive than existing federal programs. In my view, locally financed programs managed in collaboration with farm communities could reallocate a lot of water in a short time frame. This could be done through either a formal water rights transfer or short- or medium-term leases with farmers retaining water rights.

In the past, farmers have been rightly suspicious when city representatives arrived with proposals to buy agricultural water. All too often, such transfers have triggered economic death spirals for rural communities. But it need not be so.

Because farmers consume about 80% of western water, while residential, commercial and industrial use is less than 10%, I believe reducing agricultural consumption by a few percentage points would solve the municipal and industrial need for water. If farmers achieve this reduction thanks to increased efficiencies from microirrigation systems – paid for by cities – the farmers could grow as much product as they do now, with slightly less water.

Making this shift could raise economic and technical challenges. For example, most farms would probably fallow or reduce production of low-value crops, such as alfalfa, which could affect animal feed prices. And one disadvantage of drip irrigation systems is that gophers love to gnaw on the plastic tubes, so farmers would need an animal control program.

Nonetheless, I see voluntary, compensated water transfers as a strategy that would protect the long-term viability of rural communities and keep the taps flowing in western cities. Limits on watering lawns won’t solve the West’s water crisis.

Robert Glennon is Regents Professor Emeritus and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy Emeritus, University of Arizona

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Water Desk offers support for coverage of Colorado River Basin

The Central Arizona Project crosses the Sonoran Desert just north of Bouse, Arizona. Photo by Ted Wood/The Water Desk

The Water Desk is now accepting applications for grants of $2,500 to $10,000 to support media outlets and individual journalists covering water issues related to the Colorado River Basin.

The deadline for applications for the 2022 grants is Wednesday, September 21, 2022, at 11:59 pm Pacific.

This grantmaking program is only open to journalists (freelance and staff) and media outlets.

The Water Desk is interested in supporting a wide variety of media and journalistic approaches: newspapers, magazines, websites, video, television, radio, podcasts and other channels.

The Water Desk will support journalism that focuses on water issues involving the seven states of the Colorado River Basin—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—as well as the borderlands of Northwest Mexico.

Proposals related to areas that lie outside of the hydrologic boundaries of the Colorado River Basin’s watershed must have a strong connection to the basin and its water resources.

Because water is intertwined with so many issues, we are open to proposals covering a broad spectrum of topics: climate change, biodiversity, pollution, public health, environmental justice, food, agriculture, drinking water, economics, recreation and more. We are especially interested in stories that explore inequities in our water systems.

Funding for these grants comes from the Walton Family Foundation. As a journalistic initiative, The Water Desk maintains a policy of strict editorial independence from our funders, as well as from the University of Colorado Boulder. Funders of The Water Desk have no right to review nor influence stories or other journalistic content that is produced with the support of these grants.

Our grantmaking page has more details about the program. You can apply on this page.

See a list of prior grantees on this page and view their work here

Questions? Please contact Water Desk Director Mitch Tobin at mitchtobin@colorado.edu.

60 days and counting: Colorado River cutbacks achievable, experts say, as long as farm interests are on board

Glen Canyon Dam creates water storage on the Colorado River in Lake Powell, which is just 27% full. Credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Glen Canyon Dam creates water storage on the Colorado River in Lake Powell, which is just 27% full. Credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

By Jerd Smith

Colorado River Basin states will succeed in complying with an emergency federal order that came just last week to slash water use by millions of acre-feet, experts said, but it will take time plus major deals with farm interests and tribal communities, and will likely require that the basin, whose flows and operational structure were divided by the 1922 Colorado River Compact, be united and managed as one entity.

“The world has shifted under our feet this week,” said Doug Kenney, former director of the Western Water Policy Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We are all being asked to innovate at a pace and scale that I don’t think we were thinking of. Sometimes a big threat from the federal government is what you need.”

The states have 60 days to come up with a water reduction plan.

Kenney’s comments came June 17 at the Getches-Wilkinson Law Conference on Natural Resources at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Kenney was referring to a June 14 emergency request from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton, telling the seven states that comprise the Colorado River Basin that they will need to find 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water use reductions in the next 18 months to stave off a potential collapse in the Colorado River system.

Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, in comparison, use roughly 3.5 million acre-feet (maf) annually.

Lake Powell, which can store roughly 26 maf of water when full, and its sister reservoir, Lake Mead, with 29.4 maf of storage, are two of the largest reservoirs in the United States.

A 20-year megadrought, considered to be the worst in 1,200 years, including two back-to-back intense drought periods during 2020 and 2021, has left each of the reservoirs well below their former levels, with Lake Mead just 24% full, and Lake Powell down to about 27% of capacity.

Touton’s order came just six weeks after the federal government and the states approved two other major agreements, one to hold 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell that would normally have been released to Lake Mead for Arizona, California and Nevada, and another releasing 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming state line to further boost levels in Lake Powell.

Under the terms of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the Upper Basin is made up of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, while the Lower Basin comprises Arizona, California and Nevada and Mexico.

Colorado River Basin: Credit: Chas Chamberlin
Colorado River Basin: Credit: Chas Chamberlin

Each basin was given the rights to 7.5 million acre-feet of water, with an additional 1.5 million acre-feet of water for Mexico. But the river has generated much less than that for decades, and since the megadrought began in the early 2000s, the river’s flows have declined and stored water supplies in Powell and Mead have shrunk as well.

How the new reduction orders will affect supplies in Colorado and other Upper Basin states, who have never used their full entitlements to the river’s flows, isn’t clear yet.

To find ways to cut 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water will require intense negotiations, and maybe even legal action, according to Bill Hasencamp, who manages Colorado River supplies for the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego and elsewhere.

Under the terms of the 1922 compact and subsequent agreements, California was entitled to use 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River Water, but because supplies were abundant and the river generated millions of acre-feet of extra water every year, California routinely used more than its share. That changed in 2003, when the federal government ordered it to cut back.

With last week’s announcement, Hasencamp said, “It feels like I am going through 2003 again. The lessons are still applicable today. Having a federal threat is a pretty good motivator.”

Despite the enormity of the challenge, Hasencamp said he was optimistic that the states would reach a deal, just as they did 20 years ago.

“It’s going to be painful,” Hasencamp said. “Some people will lose their jobs. These are such tough decisions that there could be fallout…but we have some pretty smart people in the basin. Let them be creative.”

Twenty years ago, California was able to reduce its use by arranging intermittent land fallowing deals with major agricultural irrigators, such as the Imperial Irrigation District. It also made deals with Arizona and Utah to stabilize its water supplies.

Now, Hasencamp said, California is down to using just 4.2 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually, below its formal allocation.

Some 30 tribes in the seven-state basin control millions of acre-feet of water, or an estimated 22% to 26% of the basin’s annual water supplies, some of which has never been diverted or stored due to a lack funding, pipelines and reservoirs.

Tribal concerns will have to be addressed to reach a deal, said Lorelei Cloud, a council member with the Southern Ute Tribe in southwestern Colorado.

Even now, she said, “Tribes are not compensated for their water that is in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Everybody is depending on tribes not to use their water. But the federal government needs to fulfill its trust responsibilities to the tribes.”

James Eklund, a water attorney and former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said that the federal government and the states will have to relax or eliminate the divisions between the upper and lower basins, because they sharply limit flexibility in managing the drought-strapped river system.

“We are in a crisis and we have an opportunity to reexamine [the 1922 compact]. Even five years ago, I would have said that is too much. That’s going too far.

“But a whole-basin approach is much more appropriate than continuing this fiction of an artificially bifurcated basin,” Eklund said.

Colorado officials have said repeatedly that they have always had to live with cutbacks as a result of lower flows that naturally occur in the system when you’re up high in the headwaters and don’t have substantial water storage to fall back on.

They also point to the two emergency releases from Flaming Gorge in 2021 and 2022, and releases from Colorado’s federally owned Blue Mesa Reservoir, as evidence of their having already given plenty of water to help stabilize the system.

And though Lower Basin states have already begun implementing cutbacks involving hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water, this new ask is much larger and must be answered quickly, experts said.

Because farm interests control roughly 80% of the river’s water supplies, farmers are going to be asked to fallow land and to put a price on how much that will cost other water users and federal government.

Peter Nichols is a Colorado water attorney who helped craft a large-scale farm fallowing program in the Lower Arkansas Valley that was modeled after work that California’s Metropolitan District did in the early 2000s. Rather than buying farm land and drying it up, what’s known as the Super Ditch project allows farmers to lease their water when it is convenient and in times of drought.

The Super Ditch took years in water court and three trips to the Colorado legislature to finally implement, but it serves as an example of what can be done through the seven-state basin to achieve the federally mandated cutbacks, Nichols said.

“Irrigators are going to be willing to do this,” Nichols said. “But they’re going to be interested in three things: price, price and price.”

“They are also interested in flexibility,” Nichols said. “They don’t want to be tied in forever. If the price of onions goes through the roof, they will want out. They will want to be able to grow onions.”

Still the framework is out there and is workable, he said.

“[California’s] Metropolitan proved you can do this. But you can’t do it quickly. Reclamation has drawn a couple of lines in the sand and it has changed what we have to do and the amount of time we have to do it in,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article failed to note that the four Upper Basin states combined use roughly 3.5 million acre feet of water annually.

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Race is on for Colorado River basin states to conserve before feds take action

This photo from December 2021 shows one of the intake towers at Hoover Dam. Federal officials said basin states must conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet to protect reservoir levels in 2023. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
This photo from December 2021 shows one of the intake towers at Hoover Dam. Federal officials said basin states must conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet to protect reservoir levels in 2023. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

By Heather Sackett

As water experts gathered this week for an annual conference in Boulder, it was with the sobering knowledge that despite everything they have done so far, it is still not enough to keep the Colorado River system from crashing.

Federal officials this week made the earth-shaking announcement that the seven basin states must quickly conserve an enormous amount of water and threatened unilateral action if they do not. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton, testifying at a U.S. Senate hearing on drought on Tuesday, said an additional 2 to 4 million acre-feet of conservation was needed just to protect critical reservoir levels in 2023.

Department of Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo reiterated this position in a talk at Thursday’s Conference on Natural Resources at the University of Colorado Law School. She said the federal government has the responsibility and authority to take action to protect the system and the infrastructure if the states can’t reach an agreement on their own.

“We are facing the growing reality that water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry and cities are no longer stable due to climate change,” Trujillo said. “Our collective goal is to be able to very quickly identify and implement strategies that will stabilize and rebuild the system so we don’t find ourselves constantly on the brink of a crisis.”

Houseboats on Lake Powell on Dec. 13, 2021, near Wahweap Marina, where the quarter-mile-long boat ramp is unusable due to low water levels. Federal officials have threatened unilateral actions to prop up levels in the nation’s largest reservoirs and protect the Colorado River System. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Houseboats on Lake Powell on Dec. 13, 2021, near Wahweap Marina, where the quarter-mile-long boat ramp is unusable due to low water levels. Federal officials have threatened unilateral actions to prop up levels in the nation’s largest reservoirs and protect the Colorado River System. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Worsening conditions

Over the past year, water managers have implemented measures to keep water levels from falling below critical thresholds for hydropower production in the nation’s two largest reservoirs, including a plan for holding back water in Lake Powell, emergency releases from upstream reservoirs, and a much-celebrated plan to save 500,000 acre-feet in Lake Mead.

The actions taken in the 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan will add about 1 million acre-feet, or 16 feet of elevation, to Lake Powell.

But these actions are not enough.

“It’s buying us a bit more time, but not much,” said James Prairie, the upper Colorado basin research and modeling chief for the Bureau of Reclamation.

Prairie kicked off the conference by sharing numbers from the Bureau’s June 24-month study, which predicted that 2022 will be another anemic year for spring runoff into Powell at just 55% of average. Total Colorado River system storage stands at about 35% full; last year at this time it was about 42% full. In March, Lake Powell dipped below a critical threshold of 3,525 feet, just 35 feet above the minimum level needed to generate hydropower for millions of people in the southwest.

The announcement of what one water expert dubbed the “2-to-4-million-acre-foot challenge” overshadowed many of the conference’s planned topics and left some presenters scrambling to change their talks or at least their tone. Debating the finer points of the Colorado River Compact, which divided the waters between the upper and lower basin states and marks its 100th anniversary this year, all of a sudden took a backseat.

“Everything has changed beneath our feet with Commissioner Touton’s announcement Tuesday,” said author and conference moderator John Fleck.

Touton gave the states until Aug. 16 to figure out a path to conservation before Reclamation would take unilateral action to protect the system. That’s when Reclamation’s August 24-month study comes out, which lays out a plan for how the agency will operate its reservoirs in the coming year.

Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Ariz., forms Lake Powell. It’s still unclear how Colorado would participate in a federally mandated plan to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet water to protect the Colorado River system.
CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Ariz., forms Lake Powell. It’s still unclear how Colorado would participate in a federally mandated plan to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet water to protect the Colorado River system.CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

Upper basin contribution

Federal officials made it clear that conserving the 2 to 4 million acre-feet is the responsibility of all seven basin states: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada, California and Arizona. But they were not prescriptive about how to do it or how the shortages should be shared; that’s for the states to figure out among themselves.

“Do we have any specific recipe in mind? The short answer is no, we don’t have a formula already pre-baked and pre-worked,” Trujillo said. “We are likely going to be in a situation of doing things we have never done before.”

How Colorado will conserve is unclear, especially since the state’s exploration of a demand management program that would have paid water users to cut back has been shelved for now. The program proved a hard sell, especially for some agricultural water users who questioned why Colorado should send water to prop up Lake Powell and fix a problem that is caused by what they say is over-use in California, Nevada and Arizona.

The compact divided the flows of the Colorado River equally between the upper and lower basin at 7.5 million acre-feet each. But the upper basin has never come close to using its full allocation, while the lower basin, by some estimates, uses more than 8.5 million acre-feet. Meanwhile, climate change and a two-decade-long drought have diminished river flows basin-wide in the 20th century by about 20%; scientists say about one-third of that loss can be attributed to warmer temperatures.

Chuck Cullom, the executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, said that while all seven states share the resource of the Colorado River and have an obligation to contribute to conservation, most of the water savings should come from the lower basin.

“Everyone needs to participate, but the vast majority of the effort needs to come from the lower basin because that’s where the preponderance of the uses are,” he said.

Upper basin water managers point to the emergency releases of 161,000 acre-feet last year from Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge and Navajo reservoirs as a way they have responded to the crisis. But that decision was made unilaterally by Reclamation and is not the same as conservation.

Colorado’s commissioner to the UCRC and head of the Colorado Water Conservation Board Rebecca Mitchell did not give specific examples of where Colorado could increase its water conservation, but said the state will continue to work with other basin states, the federal governments and tribal nations to find solutions.

“Colorado water users are on the front lines of climate change,” Mitchell said in an emailed statement. “We are continuing to work closely with our federal and state partners across the basin to address water shortages.”

Fleck ended Thursday’s session by striking an emotional tone that captured the mood in the room. We are at a moment of reckoning and realizing the West of the future will look much different than it does now, he said.

“We are in a moment of grieving,” he said. “The tools we developed were not enough.”

This story ran in the June 17 edition of the Vail Daily, the June 21 edition of The Aspen Times, the Craig Press, the Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent and the Aurora Sentinel.

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Scientists in the East River watershed collect ‘mountains of data’ to understand water in the West

The Xband radar on Crested Butte Mountain Resort. Maltarich/KBUT
The Xband radar on Crested Butte Mountain Resort. Maltarich/KBUT

By Stephanie Maltarich

For nearly a century, scientists from around the world have studied water and climate in the north end of the Gunnison Valley. In 2021, the high mountain watershed entered a new chapter: a first-of-its-kind project where scientists will trace snow from where it arrives in the atmosphere, to where it melts into the ground. 

Listen to this story.

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The research aims to understand water and snow in mountain systems for the first time. 

Dozens of instruments were placed in the north end of the valley starting last fall. A state-of-the-art radar is located at the intersection of popular ski trails on Crested Butte Mountain Resort. And rows of tan shipping containers and shiny instruments line the meadows along the East River from Mt. Crested Butte to Gothic. 

Rosemary Carroll lives in Mt. Crested Butte and works as an associate research professor in hydrology at the Nevada-based Desert Research Institute. Her work studies the snow and streams that span from Paradise Divide – all the way down to Almont. 

“I try to do the whole water budget of the basin,” said Carroll. “Which ties snow all the way down through deep geology.”

Carroll’s work is part of a national science research campaign, the Surface and Atmospheric Integrated Field Laboratory, OR SAIL. Over 150 scientists will spend two years measuring snow and water by using dozens of scientific instruments. The goal is to better understand mountain watersheds, and mountain climates, around the world. 

“Why this area why mountain systems,” said Carroll. “It’s because these are the systems that some would call a canary in the coal mine for climate change. One-sixth of the global population receives its water from snow-fed rivers of mountain systems. So it’s not trivial. And the systems are also experiencing a lot of change.”

Ken Williams, The SAIL program’s senior scientist, is a geologist who has studied groundwater with Carroll since 2014. The pair worked together on the Watershed Function Science Focus Area

After years of working in the area’s streams and rivers, Williams said he noticed a glaring hole in his research: understanding how snow falls from the sky.  

“And so if you really are interested in designing a scientific experiment, that’s looking at the future of water in the West, you have to understand all the processes that impact the flow of that water from the time it arrives in the atmosphere, to the time it eventually makes its way into bedrock, and then into streamflow,” said Williams. 

On a sunny day in January, Williams shuffled through the lift line at Crested Butte Mountain Resort with Dan Feldman to check on the project’s scientific instruments. Feldman is the principal investigator of the SAIL program. His work focuses on atmosphere and weather patterns to determine how and when rain and snow fall in the mountains. To do this, he uses radars that track precipitation. 

Dan Feldman does fieldwork near Gothic. Maltarich/KBUT
Dan Feldman does fieldwork near Gothic. Maltarich/KBUT

The pair rode to the top of Red Lady Express to check on an xband radar. The radar is 25-feet-tall and resembles an oversized golf ball because of its white plastic covering. It’s reached by a narrow ladder that can be difficult to navigate in ski boots. 

Feldman explained the importance of the xband radar in the larger SAIL program research. 

“The x band radar measures precipitation, it also measures what type of precipitation is occurring,” said Feldman. “So not just how much, whether it’s rain or snow, and where it’s occurring all, you know from here to a radius of about 40 kilometers.” 

The instruments being used in the SAIL program are on loan from the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric and Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility. The mobile research facility moves around the world to conduct atmospheric and climate research. 

A sign on Crested Butte Mountain Resort explains the Xband radar. Maltarich/KBUT
A sign on Crested Butte Mountain Resort explains the Xband radar. Maltarich/KBUT

Williams says the radar on the mountain, coupled with the one in Gothic, will provide a highly detailed understanding of weather patterns in the mountains. While the group is interested in learning about the East River Valley, the information they collect will tell a bigger story about mountain watersheds. 

“We are utilizing this watershed as being one that’s representative of many watersheds within the western United States,” said Williams. “We want our research and our research findings to be broadly representative, or broadly relevant to the future of water in a variety of mountainous systems.”

The SAIL program will continue until next June with support from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory –  and –  the data will be available to everyone. As water levels reach historic lows in the Colorado River Basin, understanding how water travels from mountain headwaters to dams below – couldn’t come at a better time. What water managers choose to do with the data is yet to be seen. 


KBUT’s Headwaters series was made possible by The Water Desk, an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Declining levels at Lake Powell increase risk to humpback chub downstream

The confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon, shown here in a September 2020 aerial photo from Ecoflight, represents an area where the humpback chub has rebounded in the last decade. That progress is now threatened by declining water levels in Lake Powell, which could lead to non-native smallmouth bass becoming established in the canyon. CREDIT: JANE PARGITER/ECOFLIGHT
The confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon, shown here in a September 2020 aerial photo from Ecoflight, represents an area where the humpback chub has rebounded in the last decade. That progress is now threatened by declining water levels in Lake Powell, which could lead to non-native smallmouth bass becoming established in the canyon. CREDIT: JANE PARGITER/ECOFLIGHT

By Heather Sackett

As climate change continues to shrink the nation’s second-largest reservoir, water managers are scrambling to prevent the release of an invasive fish into the Grand Canyon.

Smallmouth bass, a voracious predator and popular game fish, have been introduced into reservoirs throughout the Colorado River basin, including Lake Powell. The looming problem now is that as lake levels drop to historically low levels, the invasive fish are likely to escape beyond Glen Canyon Dam, threatening endangered fish in the canyon, whose populations have rebounded in recent years.

Smallmouth bass are a warm-water-loving species, hanging out in the top part of the water column, which is warmed by the sun. Until recently, the intakes for turbines at Glen Canyon Dam had been lower in the water column, where colder temperatures kept the fish away. But as the lake level falls, the warmer water band containing the smallmouth bass is sinking closer to the intakes, making it more likely that they will pass through the dam to the river below.

Warmer water below the dam also means a more ideal environment for the bass, which thrive in temperatures above 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius).

“With the levels we are expecting to get to this coming year, water temperatures are going to be warmer than they’ve been in 52 years in the Grand Canyon,” said Charles Yackulic, a research statistician with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

The research center has been modeling the likelihood that smallmouth bass will become established below the dam under different scenarios and providing that information to decision-makers and water managers.

Jack Schmidt, a Colorado River researcher at Utah State University and former director of the research center, co-wrote — along with Yackulic and others — a March 2021 paper that sounded the alarm that future warming is likely to disproportionately benefit nonnative fish species to the detriment of native species. The problem from which all others stem, including the changing fish communities, and the reason Powell is so low in the first place is the climate-change-driven supply-demand imbalance, Schmidt said.

“If we are going to continue to load the atmosphere with carbon such that the atmosphere warms and the runoff in the Colorado River keeps getting lower and if we are going to keep consuming water, … then you can only play this game of staving off the inevitable for so long before it’s game over,” he said.

This infographic shows how as Lake Powell water levels decline, warm water containing smallmouth bass gets closer to intakes delivering water through the Glen Canyon Dam to the Grand Canyon downstream. CREDIT: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
This infographic shows how as Lake Powell water levels decline, warm water containing smallmouth bass gets closer to intakes delivering water through the Glen Canyon Dam to the Grand Canyon downstream. CREDIT: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Threat to humpback chub

Although the trout fishery and other native fish around Lees Ferry would also be hurt by the bass, the biggest risk would be to the fish listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including the humpback chub.

“The biggest concern for a lot of stakeholders is how it could affect humpback chub and razorback sucker,” Yackulic said. “Over 90% of humpback chub are found in the Grand Canyon reach, and they have been doing really well over the last 10 years.”

So well in fact that in 2021 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service down-listed humpback chub’s status from endangered to threatened, a decision based partly on the thriving populations in the Grand Canyon. The down-listing means the chub still retains some ESA protections, but it is no longer at immediate risk of extinction.

Scientists think that smallmouth bass are responsible for decimating humpback chub populations in the upper basin — for example, near Echo Park, at the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers.

“We are very concerned that if they get into the Grand Canyon, they could have a similar impact on the humpback chub and, through predation and competition, could jeopardize that new listing of being threatened,” said Melissa Trammell, a fisheries biologist with the National Parks Service. “Our efforts to try to restore that species in the canyon would definitely be impacted.”

This invasive smallmouth bass is eating a native flannelmouth sucker. The smallmouth bass is a predation threat because it can eat fish up to half their own length and become fish-eaters when they are only a few inches long. CREDIT: MELISSA TRAMMELL
This invasive smallmouth bass is eating a native flannelmouth sucker. The smallmouth bass is a predation threat because it can eat fish up to half their own length and become fish-eaters when they are only a few inches long. CREDIT: MELISSA TRAMMELL

‘No low-hanging fruit to prevent this’

The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program has formed a technical work group subcommittee to address the problem. Several ideas have been floated: installing a bubble curtain that could keep fish away from the dam intakes; electro-fishing and removal of smallmouth bass below the dam; selective withdrawal devices that allow dam operators to pull from different parts of the water column; or releasing colder water from the deeper jet tubes once a week to make the temperatures below the dam inhospitable to the invasive fish. This, however, would mean bypassing the turbines that make hydropower.

Clarence Fullard, acting program manager for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program, said they are considering all options to prevent smallmouth bass from becoming established, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about a way forward.

“There’s really no low-hanging fruit to prevent this,” he said. “The scale of Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell make it hard to come up with solutions. We don’t know what we could do operationally.”

One thing that has seen some success on the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam is something called a flow spike. A carefully timed, short, high-flow release from the reservoir can knock the fish off their nests and wash their eggs downstream. According to Trammel, this tactic has reduced the reproduction of smallmouth bass in that area by about 30%.

And because of the planned releases this year from Flaming Gorge under the Drought Response Operations Plan (DROA), this spike flow is scheduled again for later this month.

“The extra water being released from Flaming Gorge to go down to Powell is actually being reshaped to help endangered fishes in the upper basin,” Trammell said. “We would not have had that experimental flow this year without the DROA.”

For now, members of the technical work group are creating a strategic plan, a draft of which will be released in August. Scientists will continue monitoring in places where the smallmouth bass are likely to try to establish. Each year for the past decade, Yackulic said, monitoring efforts have caught up to three smallmouth bass who made it through the turbines and ended up below the dam.

“The thing about fish is for every one you catch, there’s probably quite a few you don’t catch,” he said.

Still, scientists don’t think the fish have become established enough yet for there to be a reproducing population below the dam. But time is of the essence.

Although the invasive-fish issue may get overshadowed by the crush of bad news surrounding the Colorado River — record-low reservoir levels, shortages, emergency federal actions, potential loss of hydropower — scientists say there is still an urgent need to act on it.

“The long-term cost of trying to control that species maybe doesn’t feel as urgent as losing hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam, but once they are established, it is almost impossible to get rid of them,” Trammell said. “There’s no agency in the world that says, ‘I wish I had waited a little longer to try and control this invasive species.’”

But any operational changes to combat an invasion of smallmouth bass in the Grand Canyon are likely to be just a stopgap measure.

“We should never forget that the fundamental problem is much bigger than how to operate Glen Canyon Dam; it’s about the balance between watershed runoff and consumptive use,” Schmidt said. “And until we get consumptive use matching the available supply, we are always going to be flirting with disaster. We can only hold off these changes for so long before we lose the battle.”

Aspen Journalism covers water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times. This story ran in the June 13 edition of The Aspen Times and the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent.

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Ute Mountain Ute Tribe faces another devastating drought year, but recent rain, wheat prices bring hope

Pot that was used to hold water by the Anasazi People photo.
Eric Whyte, Hay Manager for the Ute Mountain Ute Farm & Ranch Enterprise near Towoac, Colo., holds a pot that was used to hold water by the Anasazi People in the Four Corners area of Colorado thousands of years ago. The pot was found in a field when work began clearing land for the farm and ranch enterprise. Credit: Dean Krakel, special to Fresh Water News

By Rachelle Todea 

Low snowpack and soaring temperatures made 2020 the third-driest year on record in Colorado. When similar conditions repeated in 2021, tribal farmers in southwest Colorado had to scramble, fallowing thousands of acres of land and laying off workers at the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s farm and ranch outside of Cortez.

“It made me very aware that our farm is in the desert. We have to look at it that way,” says Simon Martinez, general manager for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Farm and Ranch Enterprise and the Bow and Arrow Brand non-GMO cornmeal business. The 7,700-acre farm is located on the tribe’s 553,008-acre reservation in southwest Colorado, less than 20 miles from the Four Corners.

When Dolores River flows below McPhee Reservoir were reduced to just 10% of normal in 2021, the tribe was able to operate only eight center pivot sprinklers, compared to its usual capacity of 110 sprinklers. A single center pivot sprinkler system irrigates circles of crops ranging from 32 to 141 acres in area. Lack of water meant fallowed acres, leaving the tribe to use only 500 acres in 2021, compared to 4,500 acres of alfalfa alone grown in 2020.

Without irrigation water, the farm’s ability to grow its mainstay crops of alfalfa and corn was majorly reduced, and without crops to harvest, employment, too, was cut to 50%. Twenty farm workers lost their jobs.

This year the tribe is expecting slightly more water, 20% to 25% of its normal allocation, or roughly 6,000 acre-feet of water, according to Mike Preston, president of the Weenuch-u’ Development Corporation, which oversees the farm’s operations. But some 6,000 acres of its 7,700-acre farm remain fallowed, a situation that requires the tribe to spend millions of dollars to keep weeds in check.

There is also hope in rising wheat prices, which are expected to reach $11.16 a bushel by December, according to Wall Street Journal crop pricing data. Preston said the tribe hopes to plant a late wheat crop this year to capitalize on the world-wide wheat shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine.

Overall, the tribe’s farm and ranch enterprises operate for economic empowerment and employment. And operations are largely successful—before the drought, the farm had been productive and profitable since it began operating in the late 1980s.

For Bow and Arrow Brand, operations didn’t slow, even last year. The cornmeal operation was launched years ago in order to stretch the shelf life of the tribe’s corn. Fresh sweet corn can last about two weeks, but by creating cornmeal, the produce remains profitable for around 18 months. Even during the drought and pandemic, sales continue. Full staff employment has been maintained.

Sustaining everything has been a challenge, but Martinez is up for the challenge, as he must be, he says. “We’re going to do our best to keep employment.”

Some help and funding is available to make up for losses, such as drought impact funding. And Martinez is working to help the farm adapt. He’s spreading the limited amount of water as far as possible through work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to upgrade sprinkler nozzle packages and continued consultations with agronomists on crop selection for increased drought tolerance. But those efforts can only go so far.

Martinez is hopeful that McPhee, the third-largest reservoir in Colorado, which serves the tribe, will see its water levels restored to meet tribal needs.

“We’re kind of teetering on the brink,” says Preston. The Dolores River watershed relies entirely on snowpack. But conditions aren’t looking great—100% of Montezuma county remains in severe or extreme drought, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Forecasts for the Dolores River Basin, as of June 1, project 45% to 60% of water supply availability this year, according to the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center.

What seems clear to many in the region is that desert-like conditions are likely to continue and that means the Ute Mountain Utes must shift their operating plans to accommodate drier conditions.

“We’ve got to adapt,” Martinez says.

An earlier version of this article appeared in the Spring 2022 edition of Headwaters magazine. Additional reporting was contributed by Fresh Water News Editor Jerd Smith.

Rachelle Todea is Diné and a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She is a freelance reporter based in Westminster, Colo., who reports on climate change and Indigenous peoples.

Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Pitkin County agrees to fund ditch piping project

This Parshall flume on Red Mountain photo.
This Parshall flume on Red Mountain measures the amount of water diverted by the Red Mountain Ditch. Pitkin County commissioners approved a roughly $48,000 grant to pipe the last 3,600 feet of the ditch in the Starwood neighborhood. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

By Heather Sackett

The Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners has approved one year of funding toward completing a ditch piping project with the aim of keeping more water in Hunter Creek.

Over the past two decades, the Red Mountain Ditch Company has been working to pipe the entirety of its 12-mile ditch system — a $3.8 million cost so far — paid for by the ditch share owners. But to complete the final 3,600 feet, the ditch company is turning to public sources of money because they say the project will have the public benefit of keeping between 0.5 and 1 additional cubic feet per second of water in Hunter Creek.

The Pitkin County Healthy Rivers board recommended the county grant nearly $48,000 toward the project in April and county commissioners approved the request on Tuesday.

“I think this is the first time when I’ve been on the board that I’ve seen this type of project and I really think it’s valuable,” said commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury. “It’s a conservation-first type of program and to me this is the way I think the treatment of ditches should head in the future around the Western Slope.”

Red Mountain Ditch, whose horizontal scar across Red Mountain features prominently in the view from across the valley, has senior water rights that date to 1889. It irrigates about 380 acres of grass pasture on Red Mountain and in the exclusive Starwood subdivision with water from Hunter Creek.

A herd of elk feast on a sprinkler-irrigated meadow in the Starwood subdivision photo.
A herd of elk feast on a sprinkler-irrigated meadow in the Starwood subdivision. The area is irrigated with water from Hunter Creek via Red Mountain Ditch. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

More water in Hunter Creek

Jim Auster, who has managed the ditch since 1983, said before the capital improvement project, the high-maintenance, open ditch lost water to seepage and evaporation and had problems with blow outs and beaver activity that caused flooding. Now that the majority of the ditch is piped underground, he said it’s easier to get water during low-flow times of year and the company has reduced the amount it diverts from Hunter Creek by up to 6 cfs.

Auster said before the piping project, the ditch used to divert about 14 cfs on average; now it takes about 8 to 9 cfs. Numbers from the Colorado Division of Water Resources indicate the ditch has in fact diverted less in recent years.

“Technologically, we are progressive,” Auster said. “I don’t know of any other ditch company that is doing 100% piping like we are. It’s certainly the future. Open ditches are obsolete.”

Recent ditch inventories conducted by conservation districts across the Western Slope hint at widespread problems, disrepair and inefficiencies with irrigation infrastructure. Environmental groups often back irrigation efficiency projects because they could result in reducing the amount irrigators need to divert, thereby leaving more water in the river to the benefit of the environment.

But repairs and upgrades are often expensive. And most projects don’t put a number on how much water will be left in the stream. In most cases, paying irrigators for their extra water is the only way to ensure an environmental benefit.

Aaron Derwingson, water projects director for The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River Program, has worked on efficiency projects with irrigators. He said it can be hard to quantify a project’s environmental benefits and success often depends on the willingness of the irrigators.

“I think the challenge with our team that we run into is we are never going to have enough money to buy the water to really make a difference for a lot of streams and where does that leave us?” Derwingson said. “That’s why some of these efficiency projects can be great because it’s a one-time investment and you get continued benefit.”

Open ditch through properties in the Starwood subdivision photo.
This is part of the open ditch through properties in the Starwood subdivision that would be piped if Red Mountain Ditch company can secure the funds. Manager Jim Auster said up to an additional 1 cfs could be left in Hunter Creek if the last 3,600 feet of ditch is piped. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM

How to protect the water

McNicholas Kury brought up an unanswered question in Tuesday’s discussion: how to legally protect the water the piping project leaves in Hunter Creek. Under Colorado water law, another water user could pick up that water and put it to beneficial use, canceling out any environmental benefit to the stream. And as stream flows continue to dwindle due to climate change, an environmental benefit may be short-lived, especially if the water is not legally protected.

“I have some concern about the water that is going into Hunter Creek,” McNicholas Kury said. “That is fantastic; I don’t want others to pick it up along the way.”

McNicholas-Kury suggested the Red Mountain Ditch Company look into an agreement with the non-profit Colorado Water Trust, which helps water rights holders lease their water rights for the purpose of boosting environmental streamflows.

In addition to finishing the piping, Auster said $25,000 of the grant money will go toward installing remote monitoring and headgate controls, which will allow him to be more precise and reduce the amount of excess water that is run through the system.

Auster said the total cost of the project for the final 3,600 feet of piping is $680,000, and the ditch company is also applying for grants from the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the National Resources Conservation Service. The ditch company may return to the county in 2023 and 2024 to request additional funding.

Board of County Commissioners Chair Patti Clapper and Vice-Chair Francie Jacober questioned whether the residents of one of Aspen’s wealthiest subdivisions couldn’t pay for their own ditch piping project, but in the end, backed the grant request.

“The best interest of this community is keeping water in our rivers and that is a benefit to everyone,” Clapper said.

Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism is supported by Pitkin County’s Health Community Fund. Aspen Journalism covers water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times. This story ran in the May 28 edition of The Aspen Times.

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Hydropower’s future is clouded by droughts, floods and climate change – it’s also essential to the US electric grid

The white ‘bathtub ring’ on the canyon walls of Lake Powell
Lake Powell’s water level has been falling amid a two-decade drought. The white ‘bathtub ring’ on the canyon walls marks the decline. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

By Caitlin Grady, Penn State and Lauren Dennis, Penn State

The water in Lake Powell, one of the nation’s largest reservoirs, has fallen so low amid the Western drought that federal officials are resorting to emergency measures to avoid shutting down hydroelectric power at the Glen Canyon Dam.

The Arizona dam, which provides electricity to seven states, isn’t the only U.S. hydropower plant in trouble.

The iconic Hoover Dam, also on the Colorado River, has reduced its water flow and power production. California shut down a hydropower plant at the Oroville Dam for five months because of low water levels in 2021, and officials have warned the same thing could happen in 2022.

In the Northeast, a different kind of climate change problem has affected hydropower dams – too much rainfall all at once.

The United States has over 2,100 operational hydroelectric dams, with locations in nearly every state. They play essential roles in their regional power grids. But most were built in the past century under a different climate than they face today.

As global temperatures rise and the climate continues to change, competition for water will increase, and the way hydropower supply is managed within regions and across the power grid in the U.S. will have to evolve. We study the nation’s hydropower production at a systems level as engineers. Here are three key things to understand about one of the nation’s oldest sources of renewable energy in a changing climate.

Hydropower can do things other power plants can’t

Hydropower contributes 6% to 7% of all power generation in the U.S., but it is a crucial resource for managing the U.S. electric grids.

Because it can quickly be turned on and off, hydroelectric power can help control minute-to-minute supply and demand changes. It can also help power grids quickly bounce back when blackouts occur. Hydropower makes up about 40% of U.S. electric grid facilities that can be started without an additional power supply during a blackout, in part because the fuel needed to generate power is simply the water held in the reservoir behind the turbine.

People look at a partially rusting turbine set up for display outside. It's about twice the height of the tallest person in the crowd.
Tourists look at an old turbine that was replaced at the Glen Canyon Dam. AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca

In addition, it can also serve as a giant battery for the grid. The U.S. has over 40 pumped hydropower plants, which pump water uphill into a reservoir and later send it through turbines to generate electricity as needed.

So, while hydroelectricity represents a small portion of generation, these dams are integral to keeping the U.S. power supply flowing.

Climate change affects hydropower in different ways in different regions

Globally, drought has already decreased hydropower generation. How climate change affects hydropower in the U.S. going forward will depend in large part on each plants’ location.

In areas where melting snow affects the river flow, hydropower potential is expected to increase in winter, when more snow falls as rain, but then decrease in summer when less snowpack is left to become meltwater. This pattern is expected to occur in much of the western U.S., along with worsening multiyear droughts that could decrease some hydropower production, depending on the how much storage capacity the reservoir has.

The Northeast has a different challenge. There, extreme precipitation that can cause flooding is expected to increase. More rain can increase power generation potential, and there are discussions about retrofitting more existing dams to produce hydropower. But since many dams there are also used for flood control, the opportunity to produce extra energy from that increasing rainfall could be lost if water is released through an overflow channel.

In the southern U.S., decreasing precipitation and intensified drought are expected, which will likely result in decreased hydropower production.

Some grid operators face bigger challenges

The effect these changes have on the nation’s power grid will depend on how each part of the grid is managed.

Agencies known as balancing authorities manage their region’s electricity supply and demand in real time.

The largest balancing authority in terms of hydroelectric generation is the Bonneville Power Administration in the Northwest. It coordinates around 83,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually across 59 dams, primarily in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The Grand Coulee Dam complex alone can produce enough power for 1.8 million homes.

Much of this area shares a similar climate and will experience climate change in much the same way in the future. That means that a regional drought or snowless year could hit many of the Bonneville Power Administration’s hydropower producers at the same time. Researchers have found that this region’s climate impacts on hydropower present both a risk and opportunity for grid operators by increasing summer management challenges but also lowering winter electricity shortfalls.

Balancing authorities and the number of hydropower plants in each. Lauren Dennis, CC BY-ND

In the Midwest, it’s a different story. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, has 176 hydropower plants across an area 50% larger than that of Bonneville, from northern Minnesota to Louisiana.

Since its hydropower plants are more likely to experience different climates and regional effects at different times, MISO and similarly broad operators have the capability to balance out hydropower deficits in one area with generation in other areas.

Understanding these regional climate effects is increasingly essential for power supply planning and protecting grid security as balancing authorities work together to keep the lights on.

More change is coming

Climate change is not the only factor that will affect hydropower’s future. Competing demands already influence whether water is allocated for electricity generation or other uses such as irrigation and drinking.

Laws and water allocation also shift over time and change how water is managed through reservoirs, affecting hydroelectricity. The increase in renewable energy and the potential to use some dams and reservoirs for energy storage might also change the equation.

The importance of hydropower across the U.S. power grid means most dams are likely here to stay, but climate change will change how these plants are used and managed.

This article was updated May 18, 2022, to clarify that Bonneville Power Administration coordinates power from 59 dams.

Caitlin Grady, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State and Lauren Dennis, Ph.D. Student in Civil Engineering and Climate Science, Penn State

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

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

Two Southwest tribes raise concerns over uranium storage

Toxic waste from uranium pool photo
Exposed radioactive waste in tailing ponds at White Mesa mill, pictured in early April. Tim Peterson/EcoFlight.

By Miacel Spotted Elk

In White Mesa, Utah, at America’s last uranium mill, a pool of toxic waste is emitting dangerous amounts of radon to the surrounding communities, among them the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. This isn’t news: In November 2021, High Country News reported on the improperly stored waste and its impacts on the community, and in December — thanks to EcoFlight’s aerial photography and a proactive tribal government — the Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice to Energy Fuels Resources, ordering it to address the issue. Five months later, however, the improper storage practices persist.  

In March, follow-up aerial shots from EcoFlight revealed a noticeable difference between the photograph taken in August 2021; the tailings cells, which consist of radioactive waste typically submerged in liquid from the uranium processing, have since decreased even further, increasing the amount of exposed toxic compounds. The visual evidence arrived two months after EPA representatives visited the site on Jan. 13. At the time, it was estimated that 60% of Cell 4B was uncovered. In a March letter from the EPA, the agency reported that Energy Fuels’ explanation of this decline is due to water conservation practices and extracting vanadium from the liquid, a rare earth mineral, for profit.

While efforts are currently underway to hold the mill accountable, Scott Clow, the Ute Mountain’s Environmental Programs director, says that the company wants to be in business until it is no longer profitable.

“There is a lot of uncertainty. We do know that when, eventually, the owners of that mill find it is no longer profitable to operate, and they will close it, they will be required to spend what they have set aside in a bond to do as much as they can for reclaiming it safely,” Clow said.  “And then it’ll be the responsibility of the Department of Energy under their legacy program — and our tax dollars — to pay for it.” 

Complicating matters is the possibility that the Biden administration’s Department of Energy will establish a strategic uranium reserve, which would increase the domestic stockpile of uranium — but at a cost. Uranium mines would be able to begin operating and funnel ore to the White Mesa mill for processing. According to Amber Reimondo, the energy policy director at the Grand Canyon Trust, it doesn’t immediately pose problems for White Mesa residents, but might present long-term ecological and community health problems. Reimondo doesn’t believe it makes sense for uranium mines in the U.S. to begin extraction when the quality of the uranium here is lower, and it’s more expensive than it would be coming from countries like Australia or Canada.

“We did a lot of work at the beginning of the Biden administration trying to help decision-makers understand the implications of something like that,” Reimondo told HCN. “Especially because so (many) of the uranium deposits in the United States are either on or near tribal lands.”

This would further compound the concerns of local residents — concerns that are echoed throughout the Southwest. The Pinyon Plain Mine, located near the Havasupai Tribe and close to the Grand Canyon, is also owned by Energy Fuels. The Pinyon Mine recently received approval from Arizona for an aquifer permitCarletta Tilousi, who served on the Havasupai Tribe’s council in Arizona, told HCN that if the strategic uranium reserve is established, the Pinyon Plain Mine would resume operations.

“If the uranium from Pinyon Plain mine goes (to White Mesa) and contaminates people, we feel responsible — Havasupai people feel responsible — because if we don’t stop it from our end, then it’s going to contaminate other human lives,” Tilousi said. “And that’s something that the Havasupai elders would always stress, that we can’t just sit back and not say anything on this end in the cycle of uranium process.”

Tilousi added that Havasupai communities have previously experienced negative impacts from the mine, including onsite water contamination and destruction of the nearby sacred mountain Red Butte.

In an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing in late March, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., voiced his support for prioritizing domestic mineral supply chains to curb U.S. reliance on Russian minerals, including uranium. “They don’t understand that human life, water and animal life is so important here,” Tilousi said.

Meanwhile, Clow’s department has secured a small grant from the EPA that will enable the tribe to find a qualified candidate to design an epidemiological study of the direct and indirect health effects the White Mesa Mill has had on local residents, as well as its environmental impacts on the land. The study will look at the impacts of living in close proximity to the mine; for example, it will calculate the economic cost to community members who have to purchase bottled water because the local water supply is undrinkable. It will also examine how Native residents are affected when they are forced to cease traditional activities, such as picking plants for medicine.

Ultimately, the community will end up having to bear the costs of far-off industries, both nationally and globally, whether the nuclear waste comes from countries like Japan and Estonia or from nuclear power plants on the East Coast. “The initial mass and impact on the environment and public health are here,” in the West, Clow said. “And then the end impact is here” — also in the West.

Miacel Spotted Elk is an editorial intern at High Country News reporting on the Indigenous Affairs desk. Email her at miacel.spottedelk@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy

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 Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.

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