Ice forms on the banks of the Crystal River a few miles south of Redstone, Colorado on October 29, 2025. (Caroline Llanes/Rocky Mountain Community Radio)Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes reports from western Colorado
Tree rings can tell a story. Wide bands signal a wet period, while narrow ones show a drought. Whole ecosystems can be encoded in trees. In Western Colorado, scientists are examining trees to find out more about the environment’s story in an effort to protect the river they stand along.
On the banks of the Crystal River, a few miles south of the small town of Redstone, David Cooper surveyed a spruce tree with its roots exposed.
“OK, our first victim,” Cooper said as he examined the roots and directed volunteers where to start digging.
Sheehan Meagher (left) and David Cooper (right) figure out the best place to start digging to uproot a large spruce tree. (Caroline Llanes/Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
Cooper has been a professor at Colorado State University for over thirty years, focusing on wetland and riparian ecology. For this study, he’s been working with Dave Merritt of Functional River Ecology and Peter Brown of Rocky Mountain Tree Ring Research. The group is trying to get to the root of how this tree and the river are connected.
Using clippers, shovels and metal poles, volunteers like Sheehan Meagher helped unearth the tree completely.
“For me, it was kind of hard the first day because I was like, ‘Oh, we’re digging up these trees,’” Meagher said. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m a tree hugger.’”
Despite Meagher’s initial hesitation, he’s enjoyed getting to see science in action. And, he says it’s for a good cause.
“I was like, ‘Alright, where’s the spruce that wants to give its life for science so that we can study this river and hopefully prevent this river from ever being dammed,’” he said.
This spruce tree on the banks of the Crystal River already has its roots exposed, giving volunteers a head start in digging it up. (Caroline Llanes/Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
The Crystal River is one of the few rivers in Colorado that doesn’t have any major dams; large stretches of it are still pristine. As demand for water increases amidst a warming climate, policy makers often scan the landscape looking for new supplies. A free-flowing river like the Crystal can be an attractive option to supplement fast-growing communities.
Proposals to dam the Crystal and create a reservoir have cropped up over the years, most recently in the early 2010s. Those have been shelved due to cost concerns and local opposition, but locals say it’s only a matter of time before someone else tries. They want to secure federal protections from Congress to protect the Crystal in perpetuity in the form of a “Wild and Scenic” designation.
Peter Brown and David Cooper examine the cross-section of a spruce tree, and estimate its ring count. (Caroline Llanes/Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
At the heart of what Cooper, Brown and Merritt are trying to do with this study is establish the relationship between the trees and the Crystal’s natural hydrologic rhythm, which wouldn’t exist if it were dammed or diverted.
“For most of the work we’ve done over the last 30 or 40 years, we’ve shown that it’s mostly big floods that disturb the ground and create habitat for establishment and allow these trees to get established,” Cooper said.
Once the group got the tree out of the ground, they used a chainsaw to cut near the roots to get a cross-section. Brown and Cooper examined the cross-section.
“You can see the rings real well here,” Cooper said, pointing with his finger. “Look how small they are. So that tree might be 25 or 30 years old.”
The trees that Cooper, Brown, and Merritt uproot are cut into smaller pieces and labelled, before being transported to a lab for further analysis. (Caroline Llanes/Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
But according to Cooper, these rings don’t tell the full story. These trees have been cut by beavers. They’ve been knocked over and buried by rockslides in this narrow valley. The stem itself doesn’t reflect the tree’s true age. Cooper is looking for the very oldest part of the tree, called the pith. Once that is exposed, researchers can compare the cross section to the Crystal’s water record. Cooper says they’ll go year by year, and see whether each ring correlates with a wet or dry year.
“There’s big floods and dry years and so if you’re just within one or two years, you have really no idea what kind of flow regime was required to establish the plant,” he explained. “So that’s why we need to know the year. Not, not plus or minus one, the year. There’s really no room for error.”
In the same way that the river shaped the trees by spurring or constraining their growth, Cooper says these trees in turn shape the river, and make it what it is.
“You see that the trees grow around the rocks and then sediment accumulates above them,” he said. “The roots of these plants hold this bar together. Without tree roots, this whole thing would be mobile. So the roots are building the floodplain and creating all of this habitat.”
Volunteer Sheehan Meagher looks around the banks of the Crystal River for a good tree to dig up on October 29, 2025. (Caroline Llanes/Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
It could be awhile before a proposal to secure protections for the Crystal goes before any federal agency. But for locals like Sheehan Meagher, the time spent on this research is well worth it.
“Hopefully the research shows that these mass flooding events are critical to establishing this type of habitat,” he said.
Any future dam would disrupt that, he said. Getting the science to back up that claim is worth taking a tree or two, he said.
“Please give your life to science, cottonwood,” he said, laughing.
If there’s the will and the funding, Cooper and his team will be back next year, documenting the story of the river and its trees, and building the case for its preservation.
This story was produced in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder Center for Environmental Journalism.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
The Colorado River fills Glen Canyon, forming Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir. The reservoir could drop to a new record low in 2026 if conditions remain dry in the Southwestern watershed. (Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk)
Heavy autumn rains brought relief to drought-plagued portions of the Southwest, but across the Colorado River basin ongoing water supply concerns still linger amid tense policy negotiations and near record-low reservoir storage.
Even after accounting for the heavy rain, 57% of the Colorado River watershed remains in severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. More than 11% of the basin is in extreme drought.
A less than average upcoming snow season combined with a dry spring or early summer in 2026 could create conditions for another low runoff year. The Colorado River’s headwaters saw a weak snowpack last winter, which contributed to one of the worst spring runoff seasons on record in 2025. Drought conditions spread and worsened into summer throughout the southern Rocky Mountains.
Peter Goble, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist, explained that the recent rainfall “certainly recharged soils,” in some watersheds.
Streamflow in the Animas River and Rio Grande increased significantly following the October rains and flooding. Rain in southwest Colorado, particularly around Pagosa Springs, brought flooding that damaged homes and downtown businesses. Rain gauges near the San Juan Mountains recorded 7 to 10 inches of precipitation from October 9-15.
“We would love to see this rain come over a more steady incremental period,” Goble said. “But oftentimes it is these flooding events that kind of put the kibosh on a drought more locally.”
The flooding erased drought designations on the Drought Monitor map in those localized areas, but basinwide drought conditions tell a different story. Dry soils, depleted reservoirs and winter weather forecasts continue to cause water managers to worry.
Even with the recent rain, soils in many parts of the Colorado River basin remain dry. Soil absorbs moisture almost like a sponge. When the soil moisture is low, spring runoff soaks into the soil, saturating the ground first. Soils that are more saturated lead to more water filtering into streams and reservoirs when runoff occurs, making the process more efficient.
“We’re still going to need a good snowpack in order to be set up nicely, but this (rain) improves our outlook for the efficiency of that snowpack,” Goble said.
Federal forecasts show the possibility of a mild La Niña through February. The climate pattern occurs when Pacific Ocean waters cool down and alter global weather conditions. La Niña patterns often impact the amount of snowpack accumulation in the coming year. The southern part of Colorado is often drier in a La Niña year while northern areas, around Steamboat Springs, typically see snowier conditions.
The stakes for an above average runoff next year are high. The two biggest reservoirs in the country, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have steadily declined over the last 25 years. Powell is currently at 29% of its capacity and Lake Mead is at 32%. A lessened runoff could push them dangerously low.
While the rain slightly alleviates local drought, it’s “only a drop in the bucket when it comes to refilling Lake Powell and Lake Mead,” Goble said. “We’re still going to see those regional water shortages persist.”
Glen Canyon Dam holds back the waters of Lake Powell, which has reached critically low levels in the last three years. The reservoir serves downstream water use in Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico. (Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk)
If water levels continue to decline in these larger reservoirs, the dams’ infrastructure is threatened and the hydropower turbines can’t be used. Lake Powell, for example, has different outlets installed so water can be released in low conditions, however they are not designed to be the main outlet source. New federal projections show it’s possible Powell’s levels could drop low enough to cease hydropower production as early as October 2026, if conditions remain dry.
“They could reach levels they have never reached before and potentially reach catastrophic levels,” said John Berggren, regional policy manager for Western Resource Advocates.
In response to extremely low water conditions, it’s possible water from upstream reservoirs in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico could be released to support Powell’s hydropower turbines.
“We are seeing a new normal because of climate change, because of aridification,” Eric Kuhn said, former general manager of the Colorado River District, on the state’s Western Slope. In 2022, the basin saw similar drought conditions.
“We are back where we were just a few years later,” Kuhn said. “The system is slipping away.”
The basin states are also engaged in negotiations for new operating guidelines for the Colorado River, set to be in place by 2027. Given the ongoing drought conditions, water experts say the two reservoirs cannot wait for new guidelines.
“Don’t forget the short term problem while you are focused on a long-term agreement,” Kuhn said. A recent research paper, co-authored by Kuhn, highlights the need for urgent consumptive cuts basinwide. “We have got to figure out what’s going to happen next year if next year happens to be dry.”
This story is produced and distributed by The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife invasive species specialist Maddie Baker looks for zebra mussels near the shore of East West Lake in Grand Junction, Colorado. (Caroline Llanes / Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
On a bluebird day at West and East Lake in Grand Junction, Maddie Baker throws a plankton tow net into the water, and drags it back to her.
“This is made of a 64 micrometer mesh, so that allows us to trap the veligers in their juvenile form, where they are microscopic and invisible to the eye,” she said.
Baker is an invasive species specialist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. A veliger is the larval form of many kinds of mollusks, including the invasive—and pervasive—zebra mussel.
Baker doesn’t have to tow the plankton net to know the mussels are here. She picks mussel after mussel off of a concrete platform that gives anglers access to the lake. These zebra mussels are small, about the size of dimes (though they can grow bigger) and the little brown stripes that give the species their name are only just visible.
“It sucks,” she said. “It’s a very unfortunate realization for us to come to. And it shows us that this population is already well established in this body of water, if we can find adults with relative ease.”
Part of the reason water and wildlife managers hope to avoid zebra mussel infestations is how durable they are. Baker said they attach to hard surfaces using bissell threads.
“It’s organic material that they secrete from their body that forms both a physical and chemical bond with whatever hard surface they’re attaching to,” Baker said. “So this does last for their life and beyond.”
Maddie Baker, Colorado Parks and Wildlife invasive species specialist, holds five adult zebra mussels in her hand. (Caroline Llanes / Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
Zebra mussels are bad news for western waterways. Spread mainly by hitching rides on watercraft, the fast-reproducing mollusks clog water infrastructure, cling to marinas and docks, and outcompete native species. Colorado has taken costly measures to keep its lakes and rivers free of the mussels, but recorded the first official infestation in the state’s portion of the Colorado River this year.
Quagga mussels, zebra mussels’ close relatives, and other aquatic nuisance species, have made their presence known at reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin, like Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Lake Mead has been infested with quagga mussels since 2010, and Lake Powell was officially considered infested in 2012.
“At places like Lake Powell, where the water level fluctuates pretty often, you will see mussels that are still attached to canyon walls even after they’re already dead,” Baker said of the strength of bissell threads. “Just because those bonds are really lasting.”
Another alarming zebra mussel trait is how fast they reproduce.
“Each one of these can produce a million offspring and then each of those million offspring produces a million every single year,” Baker said, showing off a handful of zebra mussels, freshly plucked from the concrete platform.
“The notion of these attaching inside of our pipes or hydroelectric infrastructure–dams–is very concerning,” she says.
Zebra mussels originally came to North America from Eastern Europe through shipping vessels travelling in the St. Lawrence Seaway. In the Great Lakes region, they’ve wreaked havoc on water infrastructure, and caused millions of dollars in damage.
Bruce Johnson is an Aquatic Invasive Species Lieutenant with the Utah Division of Wildlife. He said prevention and education programs at popular recreation areas like Lake Powell have been crucial in keeping quagga mussels contained.
Data from Lake Powell shows just how far boaters are traveling, and therefore, how widely contaminated vessels potentially carrying the microscopic veligers can spread the invasive species, Johnson said.
“Approximately 40% of our boaters that we document at Bullfrog (Marina) are Colorado-registered watercraft,” he said. “We have a high percentage of boaters that are coming from Colorado down to Lake Powell—an infested water body—and then traveling back into Colorado.”
Back in East and West Lake in western Colorado, Morgan Hoffmann holds up a little piece of pipe that stays in the water for mussels to attach to in their juvenile stage, when they’re still too small to see with the naked eye. It’s a method to detect when a water body might be infested. Hoffmann is an Early Detection and Rapid Response specialist with the state.
“On these, we’re really targeting the settler stage of the zebra mussels,” Hoffman says. “So when we pull these out of the water, we feel the pipe and we’re looking for a sandpaper-like texture on that stage of the mussel.”
East West Lake in Grand Junction connects to the Colorado River via a nearby canal. Zebra mussels have already attached to the concrete infrastructure that connects the lake and the canal. (Caroline Llanes / Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
There are five bodies of water in Colorado that are officially considered “infested,” which means that the zebra mussels have established a reproducing population, with multiple life stages detected. In addition to West and East Lake, the list includes Highline Lake, Mack Mesa Lake, the Colorado River from the 32 Road bridge to the Colorado-Utah state line, and a private body of water in Eagle County.
The Colorado River is considered mussel-free from its headwaters to the confluence with the Roaring Fork River in Garfield County. Downstream of that point, until the river flows through the Grand Valley, CPW hasn’t found any adults, but they have found the veligers.
West and East Lake drains into the Colorado River, via a nearby channel. The Colorado River is already under tremendous pressure. Climate change is contributing to a historic drought, and there’s a lot of demand for water from both agriculture and growing communities throughout the Southwest.
Zebra mussels add another layer of stress to the river’s increasingly fragile aquatic ecosystems, said Rachael Gonzales, a CPW Public Information Officer.
“(Zebra mussels) also have an impact to the environment, and specifically to the water because they’re filter feeders,” she said. “So they are filtering every good nutrient that our native fish need to survive.”
It’s because of these threats that CPW is taking zebra mussels so seriously, and has increased its sampling efforts all the way to the river’s headwaters. Hoffmann oversees the program, along with the agency’s testing lab in Denver.
Morgan Hoffmann holds up a piece of pipe that functions as a landing pad for the juvenile stage of zebra mussels. Because they’re still too small to see, she and other CPW specialists feel for the sandpaper texture that indicates the mussels’ presence. (Caroline Llanes / Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
“I’m feeling confident in our program overall,” she said. “Since we found them, it’s kind of proven that our sampling and monitoring program is effective and the way we’ve designed it is working. So we’re detecting these pretty quickly, which is what we want to do.”
Robert Walters, CPW’s invasive species program manager, said that because of the severity of the threat, they’ve been able to access additional resources, including from the federal government.
“Because we are collaborating with them so regularly, we’re not only able to do what we know or are more traditional sampling technologies, but we are also able to utilize those that are out there on the cutting edge to give us the highest probability of finding these things out in the environment,” he said.
He said they worked directly with the federal Bureau of Reclamation to develop testing methods to detect zebra mussel DNA, and they worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to deploy an autonomous sampler on the Colorado River—a new piece of technology.
In 2026, Walters said, CPW has plans to install a dip tank at Highline Lake in Grand Junction to clean boats and watercraft. It allows more complicated vessels to be decontaminated without CPW staff needing to understand how the boat works.
It’s the result of ongoing regional collaboration and knowledge-sharing between Colorado and other states on how to best respond to this emerging threat. Utah has six such tanks, the first installed at Lake Powell in 2021.
Bruce Johnson, with the Utah Division of Wildlife, said there are three more on the way, in addition to the one in Colorado.
“We’re the only ones in the world to build dip tanks for decontamination,” he said.
Johnson said that sharing knowledge is critical for big projects like the dip tanks, but regional leaders are in frequent communication about day-to-day operations when it comes to preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species.
“Talking about new developments, boater contacts, information, biological advances, options for conducting inspections on those watercraft and any issues that we’re having with their different registered boaters,” he listed.
Johnson said that he regularly talks with regional partners in Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming, along with federal partners like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation.
“That’s the beauty of the program, and why we’re so strong, and why we have held new discoveries, detections, and infestations to such a limited number here in the Western U.S. is because of that,” he said.
And it goes beyond just data and knowledge.
“We’ll actually coordinate our funding efforts,” Johnson said. “If there’s a new grant or funds that come into play, we’ll discuss our options and decide, ‘Okay, does this better fit Colorado? Is Colorado a better option to take a higher percentage of these funds?’ And Utah, we’ll take less funds because we know they can put it to better use than we can. And so we don’t fight over that.”
Colorado offers tools for recreationists looking to clean, drain, and dry their gear. They also offer free towels reminding people of the steps involved to properly remove any mussel remnants. (Caroline Llanes / Rocky Mountain Community Radio)
But Gonzales, the CPW spokesperson, wants to emphasize that it’s not just professionals out in the field that can make a difference. Zebra mussels spread from one body of water to another primarily through people recreating on the state’s waterways.
“We see a lot of fall fishing, we also see waterfowl hunting,” Gonzales said. “Taking a couple extra minutes when you’re done and cleaning your waders is going to go a long way to protect our bodies of water.”
The more the public can help with the risks, Gonzales says the better they can protect Colorado’s infrastructure, its native species, and a way of life that depends on healthy waters.
CPW lists gear-cleaning station locations across the state on its website, and the agency is asking the public to report any potential sightings of zebra mussels in local bodies of water.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio. It was produced in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder.
In late May, as the outside temperature approached 100 degrees, Arizona’s top water policy officials gathered in an air-conditioned Phoenix conference room. Their purpose that day was to decide whether the state should extend a longstanding drought emergency declaration. The standard indicators – minimal precipitation, low reservoirs, the second-hottest 12-month period on record – were not encouraging.
Halfway through the 90-minute meeting, gallows humor lightened the mood.
Ed Gerak, executive director of the Irrigation and Electrical Districts Association of Arizona, which represents power providers that receive federal hydropower from Colorado River dams, had the mic. Gerak shuffled through a matter-of-fact slide deck that explained how hydropower output from those dams, particularly the two largest, Hoover and Glen Canyon, has been diminished by shrinking reservoirs.
In the middle of the presentation, Tom Buschatzke, director of the state water agency, noticed a misspelling on the screen. He asked Gerak to scroll back to the previous slide.
“Is that Freudian?” Buschatzke asked. “Or did you put ‘Hoover Doom’ on purpose?”
For the millions of water and power customers in the Colorado River, it certainly feels that way. The typo, which received a knowing laugh from those in the room, cuts close to the truth.
The mood in the Colorado River basin is dreadful. River forecasts consistently overestimated runoff this year. Reservoirs are on a knife’s edge. The basin, on the whole, is drying. That’s frightful for the 40 million people and 5 million acres that the river supplies with water. But it’s also worrisome for electricity generation. Lakes Mead and Powell, the basin’s two largest reservoirs, are approaching critical levels in which hydropower from their dams (Hoover and Glen Canyon, respectively) would be severely curtailed or altogether cease.
Losing a power source at a time of life-threatening heat, rapidly rising electricity demand due to data centers and population growth, and a changing energy mix would be a blow to the region, though hydropower is a small portion of overall regional electricity supply. The impact of a hydropower cut would be unevenly distributed.
The mood in the Colorado River basin is dreadful. River forecasts consistently overestimated runoff this year. Reservoirs are on a knife’s edge. The basin, on the whole, is drying.
Small utilities have the most to lose. They operate with tiny customer bases,rely primarily on the dams and are at the mercy of market rates to cover hydropower shortfalls..
“We’re absolutely concerned about Mead dropping more,” said Dane Bradfield, general manager of Lincoln County Power District, in eastern Nevada, one of those at-risk small utilities. Hoover provides about 70% of its power, down from 100% two decades ago. “It’s on our minds every day.”
At the other end of the spectrum is the Gila River Indian Community Utility Authority, which serves the Arizona tribe whose lands surround the Gila River. Federal hydropower is only about 12% of its supply and its solar generating assets are growing rapidly.
“We’re not too put off,” said Kenneth Stock, the utility authority’s general manager, about less electricity from Hoover and Glen Canyon.
Acting like responsible asset managers who value diverse portfolios both Lincoln County Power and Gila River Indian Community, not to mention other utilities in the basin, are changing with the times. As the power of flowing water becomes less reliable, they are turning to an energy resource that is almost always on in the Southwest during the day: the sun.
Opened in 1936, in the midst of a national economic calamity, Hoover Dam was an expression of American optimism, worker desperation, and engineering prowess. Everything about its construction was monumental, from the 135 vertical feet of river bed that was excavated for the dam’s foundation to the creation of a town and rail lines that housed workers and ferried supplies to the remote and inhospitable Black Canyon work site, some 25 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
Walking inside Hoover’s labyrinth of tunnels, visitors today feel the dam vibrate with the impounded force of the Colorado River moving through its turbines.
Ever since these turbines started spinning, Hoover Dam electricity has flowed to irrigation districts, Native American tribes, cities, and industries. One of those original recipients is Lincoln County Power District. The tiny utility serves about 5,000 people across more than 10,000 square miles of rural eastern Nevada.
Until 2005, when the Colorado River reservoirs were in the early days of their 25-year plunge, Hoover Dam was the only power source Lincoln County needed. The dam provided all the district’s electricity.
Lincoln County is getting less hydropower because the dams have less to give. Since the turn of this century, Hoover’s electrical output has dropped in tandem with Lake Mead’s decline. Annual generation is down by about half since 2000, the last year the reservoir was full.
Graphic by Geoff McGhee/The Water Desk
Since the turn of this century, Hoover’s electrical output has dropped in tandem with Lake Mead’s decline. Annual generation is down by about half since 2000, the last year the reservoir was full.
More reductions might be in store. According to the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the basin’s large dams, if Lake Mead falls another 23 feet – to elevation 1,035 feet – Hoover Dam’s capacity to generate electricity would be slashed by 70% from its current level.
The huge drop in hydropower output is due to physics. A higher column of water behind a dam provides more pressure to spin the electricity-generating turbines. Less water, less pressure, less hydropower.
Twelve of Hoover’s 17 turbines are older units that were not designed to operate at low water levels. They could be damaged in a process called cavitation.
Twelve of Hoover’s 17 turbines are older units that were not designed to operate at low water levels. They could be damaged in a process called cavitation. This happens when miniscule air bubbles form due to water pressure changes. When the bubbles rupture, they gouge the turbine blades. Reclamation estimated this summer that replacing these older turbines with low-head units that are not prone to cavitation would cost $156 million.
Power customers, whose rates pay for dam operations and maintenance, hope Congress will come to their aid. One option would be an appropriation for the turbine upgrades. Another, unlocking some $50 million in funds set aside for pension benefits for federal employees. Power customers argue that the pensions are funded through other means and that Reclamation needs congressional approval if it were to spend the money on new turbines.
A severe curtailment of Hoover power is not implausible. Every month, Reclamation updates its projection of reservoir levels over the next two years. The June update shows a 10% chance that Lake Mead dips below 1,035 feet in spring 2027.
Glen Canyon Dam, the other big hydropower asset in the basin, is also in trouble. According to Reclamation, hydropower there will cease when Lake Powell falls below elevation 3,490 feet. The latest Reclamation projections indicate a 10% chance of that happening by September 2026. The agency is considering its options for the low-water scenario, but not publicly saying much more.
“Reclamation is in the early stages of developing and comparing alternatives for producing power below 3,490 feet and providing additional water delivery flexibilities,” Jennifer Erickson, a Reclamation spokesperson, wrote in an email. “It would be premature at this time to speculate on those results.”
Solar power is growing as a share of utility electricity regionally and nationally, even as solar faces stiffening headwinds from the Trump administration
Amid the gloomy hydropower projections, one power source in the basin is producing real and measurable progress. Solar power is growing as a share of utility electricity regionally and nationally, even as solar faces stiffening headwinds from the Trump administration. The White House has pulled funding for renewables and cancelled projects.
Lincoln County Power District, attempting to diversify from hydropower, is one of several electric power cooperatives that will benefit from Apache Solar II, a solar and battery storage project of Arizona Electric Power Cooperative that is expected to go online in December. Lincoln County will receive 5 megawatts.
The power district is also building its own 2-megawatt solar project thanks to a congressional earmark in the 2023 budget bill. Dane Bradfield, the district’s general manager, expects construction to begin next spring and electricity to begin flowing in the third quarter of 2027.
Solar is helpful for the power district because it will reduce its purchased power costs, which tend to be more expensive. When hydropower shortfalls occur, the district has to buy electricity on the market. It does so a year in advance through something called a power hedge. Market purchases also take place during the year if hydropower is less than expected or demand is higher than forecast. If electricity demand is high, market prices can be expensive. The district instituted a surcharge on customers starting in 2022 that provides reserve funds for when purchased power costs exceed the district’s forecast.
To the south, Gila River Indian Community Utility Authority is in an even stronger solar-power position, one that developed rapidly.
In the last three years, solar in Gila River went from almost zero – “extremely minimal rooftop solar,” said Kenneth Stock, the general manager – to 30% of the utility’s supply.
Gila River is not stopping there. The utility just broke ground on a nearly 21-megawatt solar project that should be completed in 18 to 24 months, Stock said. That’s in addition to smaller developments such as installing a half-mile of solar panels atop the Casa Blanca Canal. The 1.3-megawatt project was funded by the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill.
Even Boulder City, the community that was founded to house workers who built Hoover Dam, is moving in that direction.
Federal hydropower from the Colorado River provides about half of Boulder City’s electricity, according to Joe Stubitz, the city utilities director. But the city picked up 5 megawatts of solar and battery storage in 2022 through a power purchase agreement, and it wants more.
“What we’re doing now is we’re looking for other options, preferably renewables, to supplement that loss of capacity at Hoover,” Stubitz said.
Peak Value
Though solar is blunting the pain from Hoover’s power decline for individual utilities, less hydropower has broader ripple effects.
Hydropower’s value is measured not just in megawatts. It’s measured in its ability to rapidly turn on and off to respond to changes in electricity demand. This ramping power is important for today’s electrical grid in helping weave increasing amounts of solar and wind into the power mix.
In the early evening, power demand spikes as people return home from work and turn on appliances. At the same time, the sun is setting and solar generation is dropping. Utility-scale batteries typically have only four hours of storage. In these situations, hydropower can be flipped on, ready to generate power in minutes.
“We really count on [hydropower] to help us meet our peak demand,” said Grant Smedley, director of resource planning, acquisition, and development at Salt River Project during a meeting in August of the Glen Canyon Adaptive Management Program work group.
Graphic by Geoff McGhee/The Water Desk
What happens if Glen Canyon stops producing hydropower? Utilities will need to rely on a more diverse power mix.
Salt River Project provides water and energy to 2 million people in central Arizona. Solar, wind, and batteries today are less than a quarter of its power portfolio. By 2035, that number is expected to reach three quarters, Smedley said.
What happens if Glen Canyon stops producing hydropower? Utilities will need to rely on a more diverse power mix, including, in some cases, fossil fuel resources, to ensure the reliability of the system.
“I think that’s just a reality that we’re going to have to operate in,” Smedley said. “And so we recognize that we may be in that future for a bit, but to the extent that it’s available, [hydropower] is a very important part of our portfolio.”
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.
Due to the megadrought, the boat ramp at Lake Powell’s Hite Marina lies far from the Colorado River in this October 2022 aerial view. Photo by Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk.
The American Southwest has been gripped by an epic drought that has lasted decades and strained the fast-growing region’s naturally limited water resources.
The megadrought—thought to be the worst in at least 1,200 years—has caused reservoir levels to plummet on the Colorado River and shriveled the Rio Grande. The dry times have also stressed imperiled ecosystems, heightened wildfire risks and curtailed outdoor recreation.
While the drought’s consequences are easy to see, its causes and prognosis are trickier to disentangle, requiring scientists to look deeply into precipitation deficits, rising temperatures and changing patterns in the atmosphere and ocean.
Long before humans began altering the climate with greenhouse gases and other air pollutants, the Southwest was subject to feast-or-famine weather featuring extreme dry spells, raising the possibility that this current drought is just part of that natural variability.
What scientists are exploring now is how the human touch is imprinted on the drought due to our ongoing transformation of the climate, atmosphere and oceans.
Three recent scientific studies identify human emissions as a key driver in the precipitation declines that have helped cause the Southwest’s current drought, which has been made much worse by rising temperatures due to climate change.
The papers, published in the July 9 issue of Nature Geoscience and the August 13 issue of Nature, focus on what’s been happening in and above the Pacific Ocean to help explain recent precipitation deficits in the Southwest. As carbon emissions continue to rise, all three papers conclude that human-caused warming is likely to make drought a more persistent feature in the decades ahead.
The three recent studies examine why changes in and above the ocean have shifted storm tracks and made the Southwest’s weather drier, but that’s not the whole story about the drought. The picture is even bleaker when we account for what’s happening to the region’s warming landscape and an increasingly thirsty atmosphere.
Another line of research has found that higher temperatures alone are causing the Southwest to “aridify” by drying out soils, boosting evaporation rates and shrinking the snowpack. Known as a “hot drought,” this aridification due to warming would be troubling enough for the Southwest’s water resources and society. But the three recent studies, which focus on precipitation shortfalls, add another level of worry: relief falling from the skies as raindrops and snowflakes appears increasingly unlikely.
The Southwest continues to experience drought conditions, according to this September 16 map from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The PDO is a natural rhythm in sea-surface temperatures in the North Pacific Ocean that has warm and cool phases. The cycle, which is similar to the El Niño/La Niña pattern in the tropical Pacific, was thought to last about 20 to 30 years, but in recent decades it has predominantly been in the cool or “negative” phase, which tends to make the Southwest drier.
“The PDO has been locked in a consistent downward trend for more than three decades, remanding nearby regions to a steady set of climate impacts,” according to the study. “The ongoing, stubbornly persistent, cold phase of the PDO is associated with striking long-term trends in climate, including the rate of global warming and drought in the western United States.”
The conventional scientific understanding of the PDO holds that the pattern waxes and wanes largely due to natural “internal” variability. But this recent study, which relies on 572 climate simulations processed on supercomputers, argues that the PDO is, in fact, very much influenced by human activities and our air pollution. These external forces account for 53% of the variation in the PDO.
“Overall, we find that human activity is a key contributor to multi-decadal trends in the PDO since the 1950s,” according to the paper.
It wasn’t always this way. Between 1870 and 1950, the PDO’s changes were internally generated, with external forces explaining less than 1% of the variability.
“It seems like as long as emissions continue, we’re going to be stuck in this current phase of drought,” said lead author Jeremy Klavans, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. “If emissions were to abate, we think that the PDO would be able to vary freely again, and drought would be, again, a thing of chance. There would be the chance to end the drought.”
The researchers say they used an “extraordinarily large ensemble” of climate simulations to isolate the signal of human-caused climate change from the noise of natural variability.
“It takes a really large ensemble to find this signal, and that’s because we think that the signal-to-noise ratio in climate models is too low,” Klavans said.
That’s distressing news for the region’s water managers, who are already grappling with limited supplies. “We expect there to be reduced water supply in the form of precipitation, including snowfall, in the next 20, 30 years, so as they’re making planning decisions for how to allocate water resources or what infrastructure to build, they should expect less precipitation,” Klavans said.
“It certainly seems that in the near term, given the choices that we’ve made, the PDO will continue to be stuck in drought,” Klavans said.
Study 2: Deep drought long ago offers insights for today
This isn’t the first time the Southwest has faced a megadrought.
During the mid-Holocene, there was a different external force at play: an increase in the amount of solar radiation hitting the Northern Hemisphere during the summer, which also altered vegetation patterns on the land.
In a process known as the Milankovitch Cycles, the Earth’s orbit and movement change regularly over the span of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. Like a spinning top, the planet wobbles. The tilt of its axis also oscillates back and forth. And Earth’s orbit around the sun alters from a near-perfect circle to a slightly more elliptical path.
The Milankovitch Cycles caused more sunlight to hit the Northern Hemisphere in summer during the mid-Holocene warming. One of the effects was a more vigorous West African monsoon and the greening up of the Sahel and Sahara deserts, which caused those areas to absorb more heat as the land surface darkened. Similar processes happened elsewhere. The paper concludes that this external forcing had a major impact on the Pacific Ocean and the PDO, similar to how human-caused warming is playing out today and into the future.
“People used to think that droughts in the Southwest were just occurring kind of like as a random roll of the dice, and now we can see that actually it’s like a pair of loaded dice,” said lead author Victoria Todd, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas studying paleoclimatology. “This drought is occurring in wintertime, which is really important for snowpack in the Rockies and its role in Colorado River flow and Western U.S. water resources in general.”
The authors write that “our results suggest that these precipitation deficits will be maintained by a shift to a more permanent negative PDO-like state as long as hemispheric warming persists.”
“Such sustained drying and intense reductions in winter precipitation would have catastrophic impacts across the Southwest United States, particularly in the Colorado River Basin,” according to the paper.
Todd and co-authors investigated what happened during the mid-Holocene by using an analysis of leaf waxes extracted from the cores of lake sediments in the Rocky Mountains. Plants create waxy coatings on their leaves to minimize water loss and protect themselves. These hardy waxes can persist for ages when they’re deposited into sediments, allowing them to reveal critical clues about what the Earth was like when the plant was alive. By analyzing the leaf wax’s isotopes—special forms of chemical elements—researchers can paint a picture of precipitation patterns long ago.
The findings about the mid-Holocene and their analysis of modern climate projections led the researchers to conclude that current models underestimate the size of the precipitation deficits caused by warming. Both in the past and the present, the warming impacts the PDO and steers storms away from the Southwest.
If the Southwest’s drought were just due to natural variability—a fair roll of the dice—we’d expect the PDO to get unstuck eventually and for the dry spell to break. But the research concludes that pure chance is no longer governing the system. Humans are tilting the odds.
“If global temperatures keep rising, our models suggest the Southwest could remain in a drought-dominated regime through at least 2100,” co-author Timothy Shanahan, associate professor at the University of Texas’ Jackson School of Geosciences, said in a press release.
“Many people still expect the Colorado River to bounce back,” Shanahan said. “But our findings suggest it may not. Water managers need to start planning for the possibility that this drought isn’t just a rough patch—it could be the new reality.”
Lake Mead’s elevation has fallen as the region endures a megadrought. Photo by Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk.
Study 3: The effects of aerosols and tropical ocean warming
The study identifies two human-caused drivers for the shortfall in winter-spring precipitation in the region: the effects of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere and global warming’s impact on ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific. These forces have weakened the Aleutian Low, the semi-permanent low-pressure system in the North Pacific that directs storms toward the Southwest when it’s stronger.
The study concluded that the post-1980 period in the Southwest has seen record-fast drying of soil moisture due to the precipitation declines and human-caused warming. Natural variability still plays a significant role in the Southwest’s precipitation, according to the researchers, but humanity is making its mark.
“We are not saying 100% it’s because of climate change or because of human emissions, but there’s a role from human emissions,” said lead author Yan-Ning Kuo, a Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric science at Cornell.
Aerosols may conjure deodorant sprays, but in this context, they refer to a broad class of airborne particles that are emitted by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, and natural causes, such as dust from deserts or sea salt from the ocean.
Some aerosols, such as the sulfates emitted when coal and oil are burned, reflect incoming sunlight and can have a cooling effect. Others, such as sooty black carbon, absorb solar radiation and have a warming effect. Aerosols can also affect cloud formation.
In this study, the authors argue that aerosols can have a significant effect on the atmosphere as they drift eastward from Asia, where booming economies and lax regulations in some areas have caused air pollution to soar in recent decades.
“We actually feel like there’s a hope for good news on the precipitation side because as we clean up aerosols, precipitation might rebound a little bit,” said co-author Flavio Lehner, assistant professor in Cornell’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department.
But while reduced aerosol pollution might help the Southwest’s drought, the emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, keep rising, and warming temperatures continue to aridify the Southwest’s landscape.
“From a precipitation perspective, we might see a recovery in the next decade or two, but together with the continued warming, that might not help much with the drought,” Lehner said. “In none of these scenarios, I think everybody would agree, does it look like the Southwest is not going to be in trouble.”
A mountain stream in the San Juan National Forest near Pagosa Springs, Colorado, on July 26, 2025. Video by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.
Every spring, high-country streams and rivers in the American West begin to swell with water as the region’s snowpack starts to dissipate.
It’s easy to assume that the liquid flowing in these water bodies is just fresh meltwater emanating from the preceding winter’s snowpack.
But a recent study of 42 sites across the West finds that both the conventional wisdom and some traditional hydrologic models are wrong.
Most of that vital runoff—which sustains both ecosystems and economies—is actually groundwater that is many years old.
In the headwaters they studied, the researchers found the average age of the water in streams during snowmelt runoff was 5.7 years. Overall, about 58% of the runoff was derived from older groundwater that had been essentially pushed into the stream by the newer snowmelt.
“Contrary to the common assumption that snowmelt quickly contributes to runoff, stream flow during snowmelt in western US catchments is dominated by older groundwater,” according to the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment.
The spring and summer flows in the headwaters are certainly shaped by how much snow fell during the prior months. But the researchers argue that water managers need to account for longer periods of precipitation, the underlying geology and the resulting groundwater storage if they are to make more accurate forecasts of the runoff that supplies both natural and human communities downstream.
“We think it represents a fundamental change in how we think of water resources in the West,” said lead author Paul Brooks, a professor of hydrology in the Geology and Geophysics Department at the University of Utah.
People may think the melting snowpack “runs off the surface like spilling water on your countertop,” Brooks said, but “we know it’s more complicated than that.”
Many existing models of mountain hydrology assume that shallow soils sit on top of bedrock that lies close to the surface and doesn’t let much water through. Models also assume there’s minimal change in groundwater from year to year.
But Brooks said the study shows “without a doubt, there’s large and variable amounts of groundwater storage in the mountains.”
Implications for water management
The role of groundwater recharge and storage has important implications for how the West’s limited water supply is managed. Multiyear groundwater deficits could help explain why runoff in some basins has been far below average in recent years despite decent snowpack readings. Incorporating groundwater into runoff models could make predictions more accurate and inform how water is allocated over several years, not just season by season.
For Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs on the Colorado River and in the nation, “if you had the ability to predict several years in advance, you would change your management,” Brooks said. “If we can predict when there’s going to be more or less (water) available based on how groundwater storage responds to climate, we can look at a multi-year planning cycle rather than just starting all over again every year.”
“I’m very excited about this,” Brooks said. “It came out far better than I ever could have hoped for a sabbatical project.”
Keith Musselman, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Geography who wasn’t involved in the study, said that hydrologists studying riparian areas in lowland valleys have long described a “piston effect” in which newer precipitation pushes older groundwater out into a river.
“What Paul Brooks and his co-authors have done is bring that to the mountains, and mountains are important because they are really where the majority of our water in the West comes from,” Musselman said. “This paper kind of ties together a number of really important studies and highlights that there is this storage system that is important to consider when we’re thinking about, particularly, water conservation, water supply planning and, ultimately, climate change impacts on our ability to provide water to society.”
Overall, snowmelt-driven streamflow and groundwater recharge in the West’s mountain watersheds are “the primary water sources for 70 million people” across 10 states in the American West, according to the study. “This water supports municipal, industrial, agricultural, hydropower, and natural ecosystems powering a $9.8 trillion economy, trailing only the entire US and China in global economic activity.”
Dating the age of runoff
During his sabbatical, Brooks pursued what he called a “high-risk, high-reward” project. He traveled across the region to collect water samples from five major river basins that were then analyzed using tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.
This map shows the locations of the 42 headwater catchments that were sampled across five major drainage basins. Red and blue dots indicate if the underlying geology exhibited high or low permeability, respectively. Source: Brooks et al., 2025.
Tritium is a hydrogen isotope that occurs naturally in small amounts, but its prevalence in the atmosphere spiked in the 1950s and 1960s due to the testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
When precipitation falls, it contains tritium from the atmosphere, but the isotope decays relatively quickly, with a half-life of about 12.3 years, meaning around half of it transforms into a form of helium every dozen years or so. By measuring how much tritium remains in a water sample and comparing that to the expected level when the liquid fell as precipitation, scientists can estimate the water’s age.
“It creates a very, very precise clock,” Brooks said.
Brooks and other researchers collected samples of water in the middle of winter, when the flows were low and stable, and the tritium analysis confirmed that this baseflow was derived from groundwater storage; its age averaged 10.4 years from the time it originally fell as rain or snow.
Then the scientists gathered water samples during spring and early summer, when the snowmelt was running off, and they found that the water averaged nearly six years old, meaning that groundwater was still making a major contribution to the overall streamflow.
Importance of underlying geology
Looking across the diverse sites, the researchers concluded that the underlying geology played a key role in determining the age of the runoff. The sites with younger baseflows were underlain by hard rock and shale, which are relatively impermeable, so groundwater contributed less to the flows. Sites with older baseflows were characterized by more porous rock, such as sedimentary layers, that allowed the water to infiltrate far more effectively.
“If you have a subsurface underlying geology that has very, very low permeability, there really isn’t any place for that water to be stored,” Brooks said. “If you have high permeability and higher porosity, it’s easier to get water in and there’s more places for water to store.”
These two drawings show conceptual models of how streamflow is generated in mountain watersheds. On the left, diagram a) shows the system common in many prevailing models of mountain hydrology, with shallow soils and bedrock only able to store limited water. On the right, diagram b) shows what the new paper suggests is actually happening: there is far more storage of water in bedrock and a relatively porous layer of weathered rock known as saprolite. Source: Brooks et al., 2025.
Soil moisture is another key factor that explains runoff patterns. But the authors note much more water is held in groundwater storage, and a focus on soil moisture in modeling is “also due to the fact that soils are relatively easy to measure and monitor compared to deeper groundwater.”
Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, called the paper “eye-opening.”
“Paul and co-authors have done a really comprehensive look at a part of the water balance that heretofore has been mostly, completely understudied,” said Udall, who was not involved in the study. “It turns out this part of the water balance is looking to be more and more important in a changing climate world.”
With other studies highlighting the depletion of underground aquifers in the West, the paper’s focus on groundwater has “some pretty scary implications for future runoff in the Colorado and other Southwestern rivers,” Udall said.
“The Southwest’s water cycle has been flashing warning signs for 26 years . . . and this is just yet one more big warning to pay attention to,” he said, noting that much more research is needed on the West’s groundwater.
“What really . . . spooks me is there’s a delayed aspect of this,” Udall said. “If we’re looking at water that’s almost six years old, it means we may not see a problem until it’s six years too late, and that is particularly worrisome.”
Predicting streamflows
In Utah, Brooks said that accounting for groundwater storage has previously enabled his team to make more accurate predictions about runoff and flooding.
In 2021 and 2022, for example, Utah’s snowpack was around average, but Brooks said he and colleagues were able to correctly predict “horrendously low runoff” because they knew groundwater storage was meager. Similarly, in 2023, after a record snow year in Utah, the researchers accurately predicted only minor nuisance flooding because of the buffer of relatively low groundwater storage.
Water managers often look to April 1 snowpack readings as a barometer for the coming runoff season, but Brooks said gauging local groundwater storage in January or February can yield important insights about what’s to come in spring and summer.
“That simple number—how much groundwater is stored there relative to the long-term average—reduces your uncertainty in streamflow prediction by 50%,” Brooks said.
Measuring groundwater storage can be tricky, with nearby wells recording vastly different figures. “It’s really hard to get meaningful information on storage,” Brooks said.
However, the underlying geology across the West is widely understood from mapping and can be used to approximate whether an area has the potential to store more or less groundwater.
The researchers also argue that water managers can get a better handle on streamflows by employing tritium sampling themselves during the winter and the snowmelt season.
Brooks said he hopes the findings can be incorporated into hydrologic modeling and runoff predictions, but significant cutbacks in the federal workforce mean “it’s a very challenging time for water resource managers.”
“In an ideal world, we would have a National Science Foundation or NOAA or a private foundation say, ‘Hey, this could be really important. If we can predict streamflow more efficiently and earlier, we can make better decisions about how to manage it.’”
Streams like this one in the San Juan National Forest near Silverton, Colorado, on August 2, 2025, help supply residents, businesses, farms, ecosystems and other water users downstream. Video by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.
A detention basin under construction in Flagstaff, Ariz., will store excess water coming from Spruce Wash, an area that flooded in 2021 after the Museum Fire. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Five large wildfires have burned tens of thousands of acres in the forests around this northern Arizona city in the last 15 years. Monsoon floods after those fires closed roads, wrecked homes, and took the life of a 12-year-old girl.
But it is the fire that has yet to burn that most worries City of Flagstaff and Coconino County leaders.
A large blaze in the Upper Rio de Flag watershed, which crosses the heart of the city, would be a deep wound. If it were coupled with intense monsoon rains, a fire that burned the entire 21,500-acre basin could trigger a flood catastrophe.
In a worst-case scenario, the fire-flood combo could cause at least $2.8 billion dollars in economic losses, according to a 2023 assessment from Northern Arizona University’s Economic Policy Institute. Those estimates, which are conservative, include property damage, fire suppression, illness, loss of business revenue, and repair costs. They do not account for potentially expensive impairments to a major BNSF railway and Interstate 40 or effects on Grand Canyon tourism or multiple storms. Even a smaller fire that burns only 15 percent of the watershed could carry a $535 million price tag.
“If that watershed really burns, Flagstaff is in a world of hurt,” said Joe Loverich, who worked on the flood models that supported the economic analysis.
A disastrous outcome, however, is not preordained. With the right mix of data-informed foresight, proactive measures to reduce fuel loads by thinning dense stands of ponderosa pines, and luck, city and county officials hope to avoid the severe wildfire that would wreck the watershed and trigger the dreaded cascade of flood and debris. The risk cannot be eliminated. But it can be estimated. And it can be reduced.
The condition of western U.S. forests has climbed to a matter of national importance as megafires churn through millions of acres annually. The U.S. Forest Service has developed a wildfire strategy to protect critical infrastructure, wildlife habitat, recreation areas, communities, and headwater streams that are the source of drinking water for tens of millions of people. In that strategy, the Flagstaff area was designated a high-risk landscape. At the same time, the Trump administration is promoting logging as risk reduction while also cutting federal programs that help communities prepare for climate hazards.
Though the federal government is experiencing the whiplash of new administration priorities, durable, collaborative models to dampen the risks of severe wildfire and post-wildfire flooding still exist. In the last 15 years, Flagstaff and Coconino County have emerged as leaders in developing these strategies. They are joined in this watershed-focused work by organizations like Denver Water, Rio Grande Water Fund, and Placer County Water Agency.
The playbook developed in Flagstaff includes financial models to fund forest thinning and risk models to inform decision-making. Converting knowledge and money into projects on the ground requires partnerships that extend across local and federal agencies to connect with the private sector and NGOs. And it involves physical restoration of the landscape, both before and after a fire, so that fires are less destructive and floodwaters less perilous.
“The numbers are so clear,” said Lucinda Andreani, administrator of the Coconino County Flood Control District. “You spend so much money post-wildfire and you lose key assets and you lose communities that I think people are more and more understanding that we’ve got to keep investing in forest restoration.”
As more of the American West burns, Flagstaff’s experience is akin to a cairn in the wilderness, a waypoint showing where the rest of the region is heading.
Understanding Risk
As with most public policy shifts, the reckoning in Flagstaff and Coconino County was borne from calamity.
Post-fire flood risk came to the fore after the Schultz Fire, in 2010. Burning about 15,000 acres along the San Francisco Peaks, it was the first large fire near the city in more than three decades.
The fire damage was compounded by subsequent downpours. This area of the Southwest is subjected to stacked hazards: a fire season that overlaps with monsoon season. These punchy rainstorms are short-lived but potent. They can dump several inches in an hour or less. When they occur over a burn scar, which was the case after the Schultz Fire, 20 to 30 times more water can be flushed down a stream channel. If an area is burned again – the 2022 Pipeline Fire, for instance, reburned parts of the Schultz scar – the watershed is even more vulnerable to floods and erosion.
The Pipeline Fire burned in Coconino National Forest in 2022. City of Flagstaff and Coconino County officials hope to avoid a similar severe fire in the Rio de Flag watershed. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
After the Schultz Fire and subsequent floods, Coconino County received a FEMA grant to conduct a countywide assessment for flood and debris risk. JE Fuller, a firm that analyzes landscape hazards in the Southwest, was hired to do the modeling work. In the model, “we basically burned everything,” said Joe Loverich, a project manager at the firm. Then Loverich and his colleagues looked at where debris and water flows would do the most economic damage.
Society has been constructed as layers of fixed assets – roads, bridges, houses, water supply pipes, wastewater treatment plants, landfills – atop a landscape that flexes more than we’d like. When the environment changes, the risk to these assets also changes, Loverich said.
That happens after a severe wildfire, which transforms a watershed into something more dangerous. It shakes society’s physical foundation, not just for weeks but for years. The landscape becomes threatening in a way that it wasn’t before.
“We’re developing the science of understanding what the risk is,” Loverich said. “What it is, who it affects, why you should be concerned about it. And what that can do is then lead to an understanding of what we should do about it.”
In JE Fuller’s model several areas of Coconino County stood out as particularly susceptible to post-wildfire landscape transformations. One was Williams, a town some 30 miles west of Flagstaff. Williams has two water supply reservoirs that could be inundated with debris from post-fire floods originating in the Bill Williams watershed above town. In this flood scenario, the reservoirs could be rendered inoperable until they were dredged. The water supply would be cut off. Downtown Williams, meanwhile, could see “a wall of six feet of water,” Andreani said.
Other high-risk areas are clustered around the Upper Rio de Flag watershed, which crosses Flagstaff from north to south before turning eastward.
Responding to Risk
Most of the year, the Rio de Flag is a dry, narrow channel. Only rainfall and snowmelt give it life. On a July day earlier this summer, the section through Thorpe Park, near the city center, was covered in seasonal grasses and brush that hid subsurface drainage structures installed as part of a $122 million Army Corps flood-control project.
The relative calm of a dry channel could be disrupted if the right combination of fire and rain were to hit higher in the watershed.
Some of those punches have already landed in the Flagstaff area. The Schultz Fire, which caused some $100 million in damages, was the first caution sign.
More warnings came later. The Museum Fire, in 2019, burned only about 2,000 acres. But the fire occurred upstream of one of the areas identified as a high flood risk in the countywide modeling assessment. Two years later, ferocious monsoon rains swept through the area and caused substantial flooding in the Sunnyside neighborhood along Spruce Wash, a Rio de Flag tributary. Today, work crews are in the midst of a $26 million project to expand flood channels and retention basins in the neighborhood.
The San Francisco Peaks rise above the Rio de Flag, which crosses the center of Flagstaff, Ariz. A severe fire in the upper watershed would increase flood risk in the city. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
Knowing these potential outcomes, how is a place like Flagstaff to react? The city decided to ask its residents to pay for fire-risk reduction efforts that would take place on national forest land.
Flagstaff residents understood the need. In 2012, city voters approved a $10 million bond proposal to fund the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project, one of the first such efforts in the country.
Cal Joyner, former Southwestern regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service, called the bond’s passage “a great example of civic environmentalism” that led to a close partnership between the Forest Service and the city.
More funding and collaborations would follow. The Four Forests Restoration Initiative, a project to reduce catastrophic fire risk on 2.4 million acres of national forests in northern Arizona, contributed money and led an environmental assessment that cleared the path for large-scale thinning and prescribed fire projects across the project’s footprint. The state stepped in to facilitate development of a timber mill that could make use of the small-diameter trees that were being cut.
In 2020, Flagstaff increased its contribution by levying a Water Resources and Infrastructure Protection Fee on water bills. The fee of 52 cents per 1,000 gallons (now increased to 53 cents) helps to fund fire mitigation projects in upstream forests. In 2022, voters approved a $26 million bond for the Spruce Wash repairs. Three months later the City Council voted to increase stormwater fees by 12% annually for six years to pay for flood-control infrastructure and maintenance.
“There’s no one organization or municipality or county or anybody that can do all of this by themselves,” said Neil Chapman, wildland fire captain for Flagstaff Fire Department. “And so, partnerships are the way we scale up.”
All told, a mix of public agencies, private firms, and NGOs are raising funds, assessing risks, using computer models to test and refine their designs, and ultimately restoring forests.
“Having efficient organization at the local level to leverage the federal money and the state money that’s available is really key,” Loverich said. “And that’s something the City of Flagstaff and Coconino County have been really good at.”
Just last month the Coconino County Flood Control District partnered with The Nature Conservancy and Coconino National Forest to begin work on a 2,045-acre tree thinning project in the Upper Rio de Flag. The district contributed $2 million while the national forest chipped in $2.5 million.
Investing in Forests
Fire will occur in these high-elevation southwestern forests. The ecosystem has evolved that way. The aim for city and county officials is to prevent the high-intensity, catastrophic blazes that cook the soil and transform the watershed into a high-hazard flood risk.
Reconstruction work after a massive flood, as Andreani knows, is expensive. Some $130 million is being spent on flood-control projects after the Pipeline Fire, which occurred in 2022 and reburned portions of the Schultz Fire. The reconstruction there is a two-part strategy: repair and expand alluvial fans on national forest land. These slow down water and trap sediment and debris. Then, in the neighborhoods, build pipes and culverts to direct water away from homes, roads, and other high-value infrastructure.
That steep cost is why preventative work in the forests is so important, Andreani said. Things like restoring alluvial fans and cutting smaller trees or setting small, low-intensity fires to reduce forest fuel loads.
Though these measures can save money in the long-run, thoughtful action on the front end is not as highly valued. The Coconino County Flood Control District has identified an area in the Upper Rio de Flag that has eroded and could be proactively restored. Rejected for one federal grant, the district is still seeking funds to do the mitigation work.
“I’ll tell you it’s a lot harder to get that money than it is to get the disaster money,” Andreani said.
What money is available for preventative work should go toward forest restoration and forest thinning, Andreani and others said. That provides the most value per dollar. But translating that into a reliable funding stream to match the scale of the problem remains a challenge.
“There are so many benefits that come out of the forest,” Andreani said. They provide water, carbon storage, recreation, and habitat for endangered species. Though Flagstaff is at the forefront of using creative financing to fund forest restoration work, in general the opportunities are limited.
“How do people contribute to this work?” Andreani added. “If you put that across the millions of electric ratepayers, water ratepayers, recreationists, I mean, you add up all the different economic benefits that come from having a healthy forest. I frankly think there’s a lot of money, but we haven’t got the mechanisms in place.”
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.
Ivan Pacheco stands next to the flood-control system that was built in his family’s backyard following the Pipeline Fire. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – In July 2022, for the second time in a month, the landscape above the Wupatki Trails neighborhood took a beating.
The first blow was the Pipeline Fire, which ignited on June 12, 2022, and burned 26,770 acres mostly in Coconino National Forest including the slopes above Wupatki Trails and eight other forested drainages flowing into residential areas of Coconino County a few miles north of Flagstaff.
Danny Cobb, who had moved to the high desert of northern Arizona six months earlier from Anchorage, captured video of towering smoke plumes as he evacuated with his family. Ivan and Christy Pacheco, who live down the block, left as well.
Both families returned to the neighborhood with a feeling of relief. Their homes were still standing.
But then, weeks later, the second disruption in the forest occurred – borne not of fire but of water.
The southwest monsoon is an annual feature of Arizona weather. In the summer months, the punchy precipitation pattern delivers short, drenching cloudbursts – as much as several inches of rain in an hour. In Coconino County, the summer 2022 monsoon was a conveyor belt of destruction. A series of storms inflicted wave upon wave of property and infrastructure damage downstream of the Pipeline Fire burn scar. Lucinda Andreani, administrator of the Coconino County Flood Control District, counted 45 major flood events that summer that closed roads and flooded properties.
The summer storms whisked water off slopes and soils now charred by the fire. They flooded U.S. Route 89, a main highway heading north, some 13 times. They carved deep channels in the land, transported huge volumes of sediment, and pummeled homes with boulders larger than basketballs.
Christy Pacheco, a kayaker, called the murky torrent moving through their backyard a “class eight” whitewater. The top of the scale for Grand Canyon rapids is 10. “It was pretty powerful,” she said. The Pachecos stacked four layers of sandbags atop a berm on their property. When that wall started to fail, they grabbed wood panels and other supplies from their garage to act as makeshift levees.
“We were within half an inch of having all that mud and water coming in the house,” Ivan said.
A landscape coming apart at the seams that summer became the principal challenge for Andreani, other Coconino County and City of Flagstaff officials, and their long-time watershed restoration collaborators in the private sector. In the frantic months after the fire, they had a single, unifying mission that would shape the next year of their professional lives and become a $130 million endeavor:
Fix the watershed before it breaks again.
The disaster after the disaster
The western United States is experiencing an era of wildfire. From the ponderosa pine forests of Arizona and Colorado to the chaparral of Los Angeles County, wildfires are burning more acres with greater intensity. Recent research indicates their growth rate has accelerated, spreading flames with worrisome speed.
The shift is happening for several reasons. The region’s forests, owing partly to the U.S. Forest Service’s 20th century policy of fire suppression, are artificially crowded with kindling. A warming climate due to the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is roasting the landscape and drawing moisture out of its vegetation. Bark beetles have killed or wounded tens of millions of acres of timber. The result is dense forests riven with dead and drying plants that are primed to burn.
Wildfire damage is immediate and obvious. Denuded forests, noxious smoke that drifts across continents, destroyed homes, lives lost.
The Pipeline Fire burned in Coconino National Forest in 2022. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
What Flagstaff and many western U.S. communities are also struggling with is the long reach of a wildfire, the slow disaster that expresses itself months, years or even decades after the flames are extinguished. The recovery in Flagstaff is instructive – a testament to the risks of an altered landscape, the coalition-building and public outreach required to address them, and the high cost of reconstruction.
The deadliest and most destructive of these post-wildfire hazards are the floods, landslides, and debris flows that are wrought by water. The hazards are particularly acute in the monsoon-influenced regions of the Southwest.
Last month in Ruidoso, New Mexico, the monsoon deposited several inches of rain over an area that burned the previous year in the South Fork and Salt fires. The Rio Ruidoso swelled five feet higher than its former record peak, killing three people.
Important infrastructure threads through these forests and watersheds. It is often in harm’s way. The Ruidoso flood hobbled the town’s wastewater system. In Washington state, the Yakima-Tieton Irrigation Canal was punctured by debris flows after the Retreat Fire last August. The irrigation district that operates the canal is seeking a $240 million replacement for a leaking water-delivery structure that serves 35,000 acres of mostly orchards.
The Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon Fire, in 2022, inflicted so much injury on the Gallinas River watershed that Congress granted Las Vegas, New Mexico, $140 million for a new water treatment plant to filter higher levels of sediment in its drinking water source. As more acres succumb to wildfire, the U.S. Forest Service expects one-third of western U.S. watersheds to experience a doubling of post-fire sediment flows in rivers by mid-century.
Even in Flagstaff such assets have required emergency repair. The Inner Basin pipeline, one of several city water sources, can fulfill as much as 20 percent of summer demand, said Brian Huntzinger, the water production manager for Flagstaff. After monsoon floods following the Pipeline Fire, the water supply pipeline was cracked in three places by debris and rocks, he said. The $16 million repair project included stabilizing some 45 sites where the structure crosses drainages.
“When you have rain occur on top of a burn scar,” Huntzinger said, “you have these just devastating floods where the whole slopes of a mountainside, these drainages, everything comes down the mountain because there’s nothing to hold that soil in.”
Assemble the team
In the aftermath of the Pipeline Fire, Coconino County embarked on an ambitious plan to hold in that soil and protect – within reasonable limits – the safety of the public works and roughly 1,500 private properties downstream of the burn scar.
The plan’s outline – a mix of natural and concrete systems – was relatively simple in concept. The ideas about stream channel restoration had been developed in Colorado by the hydrologist Dave Rosgen and proven in Coconino County in response to previous fires. But the restoration and engineering work required after the Pipeline Fire had not been deployed at such scale across so many watersheds, Andreani said.
The first objective was to retain as much soil and sediment on the forested uplands as possible. This would be done by repairing drainage channels that had been scoured into deep gullies. Then, in tandem, calm fast-moving water and spread it out across the landscape. Finally, down in the neighborhoods and along the highway, use hard infrastructure like pipes, culverts, and channels to direct the now-diminished flows away from homes, roads, and the local landfill.
Andreani knew who to call. By this time, Flagstaff and Coconino County had already been through watershed restoration and flood-control work after the Schultz Fire, in 2010, and the Museum Fire, in 2019. Like the Avengers in the Marvel movies, Andreani had people in place with expertise and experience. This restoration project would be her team’s “third rodeo.” It would be the largest yet.
JE Fuller, an engineering company, would do the flood modeling. One of its employees was drafted as part of the U.S. Forest Service team evaluating the fire’s burn severity. Natural Channel Design Engineering, a Flagstaff-based firm, would sketch the watershed repairs. These treatments would be carried out on Forest Service land with the goal of protecting assets downstream. Civiltec Engineering would contribute the engineering work within the neighborhoods. Tiffany Construction, a contractor, would move the earth.
Andreani, meanwhile, was in contact with congressional representatives and local, state, and federal agencies to drum up financial support. The county needed outside money to cover a price tag that would rise into the low nine figures.
“If you’ve never been through it, you get so wrapped up like we did in just trying to figure out how to mitigate impacts to people’s homes, right?” Andreani said about flood hazards in the weeks and months after a wildfire. “So people have somewhere to go home at night, and they can at least try to get some sleep.” But funding is the grease that turns the wheel. “And so I just said, ‘No, we’re going to really hit the ground running. We’re going to make this ask.’”
The windfall that Andreani sought came through in December 2022 in the form of a congressional appropriation totaling about $100 million in an omnibus spending bill. About $30 million from other state and federal sources would trickle in later. But the major restoration work in the nine drainages could begin.
Slow it down, spread it out
The Pipeline Fire is one of several wildfires – including the Schultz Fire – that have remade the forests and watersheds northeast of Flagstaff in the last 15 years.
Before Schultz, the watersheds were “complacent,” to use a hydrology term. Rainfall did not produce much runoff. The water soaked into the ground. Allen Haden, an aquatic ecologist with Natural Channel Design, pulled up satellite photos from 1985 of the east side of the San Francisco Peaks, where the Pipeline and Schultz fires burned. No big channels are visible.
Allen Haden of Natural Channel Design Engineering stands next to a restored alluvial fan in Coconino National Forest, where the Pipeline Fire burned in 2022. Haden was part of the team that designed the post-fire watershed restoration. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
The Pachecos felt this, even if they didn’t notice it when they moved to Wupatki Trails in 2005. Not living in a valley or near a river, “we didn’t even think about flooding as an issue,” Ivan said.
After the Schultz Fire, the watershed was transformed, Haden said. “That complacency is eradicated overnight.”
The fire burned so hot in places that it cooked the soil, changing its chemical properties. “Once that happens, it becomes like a parking lot,” said Haden, who helped design the watershed repairs after the Pipeline Fire. These hydrophobic soils are common after severe fires in ponderosa pine forests like those around Flagstaff, he said.
The parking-lot effect showed up downstream. Peak stream flows after the Pipeline Fire increased 20-fold in some drainages. High-volume, fast-moving flows bite into the channels, eroding them and producing a firehose of sediment that moves downstream. “Once the gully process starts, things fall apart,” Haden said.
The goal of the restoration work was to reintroduce laziness to the watershed. That would be accomplished primarily using alluvial fans. These are natural features in stream channels, composed of loose sediment and rock. Though they look like a field of rubble, the post-Pipeline Fire fans were highly engineered for specific slopes and depths, Andreani said. Some of the reconstructed fans are massive, the largest measuring 40 acres. Nine fans were restored or expanded and 10 new ones were built. They are the first line of flood defense, intended to trap larger materials washing down the forest slopes and blunt the speed of the water.
Without the fans, any hard infrastructure within the residential areas would fill with sediment and be rendered useless, Andreani said. Not just immediately, but repeatedly. “In these burn areas, the debris and sediment doesn’t go away. It’s going to take decades.”
While the fan restoration work was happening, construction crews were working in the neighborhoods and within the Route 89 corridor to install channels and culverts. A 10-foot diameter pipe was placed in a tunnel bored beneath the highway. On Campbell Avenue homes were connected to the road by tiny bridges across a flood channel.
Constructing the neighborhood drainage structures was an exercise in patience. County officials and their partners held meetings and went door to door to secure easements from homeowners in the nine watersheds to build across their land, if necessary. Computer modeling was done to show that installing an engineered structure would not flood any home more than it would have flooded without the project.
The restoration work, broadly speaking, was intended to protect homes from two inches of rain in 45 minutes, an event that has a 4% chance of occurring each year. The modeling was conservative, though. And the alluvial fans, which are difficult to incorporate into the flood models, seem to be doing a better job than expected.
“We don’t over promise,” Andreani said. “But we see almost every system performs beyond what the modeling tells us it will do. And it’s because of those on-forest measures, the fan restorations in particular.”
An immediate test
Of the nine watersheds that were restored after the Pipeline Fire, some of the most creative problem solving took place in Wupatki Trails, Haden said. A single channel would not be enough to handle the expected flows. Instead, they converted an existing vegetated channel into a concrete structure that could withstand higher stresses and more water. They then split the flows coming from the tail of an expanded alluvial fan upslope of the houses. Water would go two directions around the neighborhood.
An engineered channel along Campbell Avenue, in Coconino County stands ready to receive flood waters. The San Francisco Peaks, where the Pipeline Fire burned in 2022, rise behind the channel. (Brett Walton/Circle of Blue)
The contractors finished their work in Wupatki Trails in July 2023, just 12 months after the fire. And not a moment too soon. The flood-control work was put to an immediate test.
The next day a monsoon storm dumped roughly three inches on the slopes above Wupatki Trails, equivalent to a 100-year storm. Would the fix hold? Neighbors gathered anxiously on the banks of the engineered channel. Resident Danny Cobb recorded video of the water hurtling by. But it did not overtop.
Cobb’s property is near the spot where the channel splits. “It’s nothing short of amazing,” Cobb said about the flood-control work in the forest and neighborhood. “To have help within a year – that’s big.”
Down the block Ivan and Christy Pacheco also see the benefits. They gave up a small corner of their property for a drainage pipe. In return, the county added a berm to their backyard and regraded a four-foot-deep fissure that had been gouged by floods the previous summer.
Though the flood-control work has held so far, it has limits. The interventions likely cannot protect homeowners from the biggest floods, those generated by more than three inches of rain in an hour. Even as a warming planet is producing larger cloudbursts, engineers must work within the constraints of cost and existing infrastructure.
“You only have so much room,” Haden said.
Christy Pacheco recognizes that flood risk, though substantially reduced, is still present. The family’s horse that used to roam the backyard remains in Colorado, where it was sent after the fire.
“I still do not feel 100 percent safe,” she said.
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.
The Water Desk is excited to announce the recipients of new grants to support water journalism connected to the Colorado River Basin.
The grantees will be reporting on a range of critical water issues facing the region, including climate change, biodiversity, pollution, groundwater, ecological restoration, water conservation, tribal water issues and more.
The nine awards, up to $10,000 each, are being funded thanks to the support of the Walton Family Foundation. A total of $70,900 has been awarded in this round of grantmaking.
The recipients of The Water Desk’s 2025 Colorado River grants (in alphabetical order):
Melissa Bailey, independent
David Condos, KUER
Jonathan Goodman, independent
Ian James, Los Angeles Times
Elizabeth Miller, independent
Jim Robbins and Ted Wood, independent
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Debra Utacia Krol, The Arizona Republic/azcentral
Janet Wilson, The Desert Sun
The Water Desk maintains strict editorial independence from its funders and the University of Colorado. Funders of The Water Desk have no right to review or to otherwise influence stories or other journalistic content that is produced with the support of these grants. For more about our editorial independence, please see our funding page.
Congratulations and best of luck to our grantees. We look forward to seeing the water journalism they produce!
Indigenous youths with Ríos to Rivers’ Paddle Tribal Waters program head toward the shore where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean in Northern California on July 11. The young kayakers were joined by a flotilla with dozens of tribe and community members on the final days of their monthlong, 310-mile journey. (Erik Boomer / Courtesy of Ríos to Rivers) Eleanor Bennett reports for Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio
KLAMATH, Calif. — In a thick forest along the remote northern California coast earlier this month, a group of mostly young Indigenous kayakers pushed off into the clear-emerald waters of the recently undammed Klamath River.
The 13- to 20-year-olds from more than six tribes in the Klamath Basin, along with several instructors, had been paddling for a month, covering over 300 miles.
In just a few hours, they would reach the Pacific Ocean, making the group among the first in over a century to descend the river from its headwaters in southern Oregon to its mouth in northern California. The expedition began in early June after the largest dam-removal project in history was completed last fall to restore salmon populations, improve water quality and support tribe-managed lands.
In the group was 15-year-old Hoopa Valley tribe member Carmen Ferris, who comes from a long line of fishing people along California’s Trinity River.
“The Trinity is the biggest tributary to the Klamath,” she said. “So I feel like I have a deep connection and ancestry with both of the waters.”
Carmen and about 40 other Indigenous kayakers had spent years training for the expedition with the help of Ríos to Rivers. Founded by Aspen resident Weston Boyles, 38, the nonprofit organization works with Indigenous youths around the world to protect rivers through advocacy, education and exchange programs.
Thirteen-year-old Scarlett Schroeder, left, and Coley Miller, 14, who belong to tribes on the Upper Klamath, stand with their paddles on the banks of the Klamath River. The Paddle Tribal Waters group of 13- to 20-year-olds from more than six tribes in the Klamath Basin, along with several instructors, were among the first in a century to paddle the free-flowing river after several major hydropower dams were removed last year. (Erik Boomer / Courtesy of Ríos to Rivers)
Historic paddle
In anticipation of the removal of four of the Klamath’s six dams, Boyles teamed up with local Indigenous youths and kayak instructors to launch the Paddle Tribal Waters program, with the goal of supporting young tribal members aiming to be the first to paddle the mostly free-flowing river since the first dam was built in 1918.
Although Carmen had heard about the dams growing up, it wasn’t until joining the program that she learned the full history of the decades-long effort by tribes and environmentalists, including her own Hoopa Valley people, to remove the dams from the Klamath and restore the salmon that local tribes once depended on.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that is happening, and it’s nearby,’” she said. “I was in shock, and I learned about the history and what my ancestors and people before me have gone through for these dams to finally come out.”
Carmen spent two years in the Paddle Tribal Waters program — taking tribe-led classes on river ecosystems, advocacy and cultural knowledge, as well as learning to whitewater kayak both in her own backyard and on exchange trips to Chile.
“I built a love for kayaking,” she said. “And then I was like, I’m definitely doing the descent, like I can’t stop kayaking now.”
The journey from the river’s headwaters to the Pacific Ocean wasn’t easy, from camping in a remote, rugged wilderness to tackling a number of Class 4 rapids on the upper Klamath, including one called “Big Ikes.”
“I got battered into this hole for a little bit, and if I didn’t know how to roll, I’d probably swim that day, which wouldn’t have been fun, because there were a lot of rocks,” she said. “I ended up being OK, but everyone was like, ‘Carmen, what happened?’”
Ruby Rain Williams of the Karuk tribe, who turned 18 on the trip, said the paddle group faced other challenges beyond navigating technical and dangerous rapids.
“There were definitely some hard parts, like getting up every morning around 6:30, and also the flat-water days on the lake with the headwind were quite treacherous,” Ruby said.
They also learned some valuable river-trip lessons, including the importance of sun protection.
“I remember the first couple days, we’re all like, ‘Oh, we don’t need sunscreen. We never wear sunscreen,’” Ruby said. “You know, we’re swimming in the river all day and I put pink Zinc on my face just to look cool and I had polka dots burned all over my cheeks and my ears were burnt, and even my eyes because I didn’t wear sunglasses. It was just gnarly.”
A map of the Klamath River Basin shows the four hydroelectric dams that were removed last year: Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2, and J.C. Boyle. The two remaining dams in the upper river basin (located west and northwest of J.C. Boyle Dam and depicted as gray dots) are mostly used for farming irrigation. (Courtesy of Cal Poly Humboldt)
Reshaped landscape
Along the river, the young kayakers saw how the dam removal and restoration effort had started reshaping landscapes and communities as they paddled through former reservoirs and dam sites, including Northern California’s Kikacéki Canyon, where for decades the water had been diverted to a power station, leaving a dry stretch of riverbed.
The four recently removed hydropower dams, which were built between 1918 and the mid-1960s, were still producing relatively low amounts of electricity. According to PacifiCorp, which operated the dams and is owned by Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, the sites were producing less than 2% of the operator’s total power generation — enough to power about 70,000 homes when they were running at full capacity.
The recently undammed Klamath River runs through the site of the former Copco Lake reservoir, named for the Copco 1 dam, in Northern California. Restoration efforts have begun above the former dam site, but signs of the former reservoir still remain on the landscape. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Journalism & Aspen Public Radio)
In addition to losing a relatively low amount of power generation, there were other concerns about removing the dams. These included potential impacts of drained reservoirs such as exposed sacred burial sites that had been previously submerged, increased fire risk, loss of tax revenues for nearby counties, and decreased property values for former lakeside homes.
Still, scientists and advocates for dam removal maintained that the dams and their reservoirs worsened water quality in the river and that removing them would reduce the likelihood of sediment buildup, toxic algae blooms and diseases that thrive in warmer, stagnant waters and are harmful to salmon. They also maintained that the dams blocked salmon from returning to their upstream habitat where fish lay eggs and babies grow before migrating to the ocean.
Eventually, local tribes and other dam-removal advocates came to an agreement with PacifiCorp and federal regulators, and in 2022, the four dams on the lower Klamath were approved for removal.
In order to alleviate some of the community concerns, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), which helped broker the dam-removal deal, and Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) are now overseeing restoration efforts. These include working with fire officials concerned about the loss of a wildfire-fighting resource once the reservoirs were drained to set up dry-hydrant systems that allow crews to pull water directly from the river.
They also worked with the Shasta Indian Nation to mitigate the risk of damage to newly exposed cultural sites. Last year, the state of California also transferred some of the land near one of the former reservoirs back to the group.
Other restoration projects include excavating sediment that had built up behind the dams and planting billions of native seeds along the riverbanks and former reservoir sites.
The two dams that remain in the upper section of the river in southern Oregon are primarily used to divert water for irrigation and farming. During their monthlong river trip, which began in Chiloquin, Oregon, the Paddle Tribal Waters group carried their kayaks on land and portaged around these remaining dams.
Tribal Paddle Waters youths kayak below the Keno dam, one of the two remaining dams on the upper Klamath. The expedition group carried their kayaks on land and portaged around both of the remaining dams. (Erik Boomer / Courtesy of Ríos to Rivers)
Salmon returning
Brook Thompson, a scientist and Yurok and Karuk tribe member, researches salmon life cycles and water quality, and joined the paddlers for the last few days on the river.
Despite an unexpected salmon die-off after the first of four dams came down last year, Thompson said hundreds of miles of fish habitat on the Klamath and its tributaries have now opened up and dwindling salmon populations are already returning to spawn in greater numbers.
“We really did not know what was going to happen with the salmon and if they would return right away, or if it would take years,” Thompson said. “So the fact that they immediately started going past where the dam sites were is so exciting for me as a tribal member.”
Researchers have also found lower rates of disease-carrying parasites and toxic algae since the dams were removed last year, according to Thompson.
Young Indigenous kayakers lead a flotilla of rafts and canoes on the final stretch of the Klamath River before reaching the Pacific Ocean on July 11. The 310-mile journey marked the end of a decades-long effort by tribes, environmentalists and fisher people to remove four major dams on the river in order to restore salmon habitat, improve water quality and support tribe-managed lands. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Journalism & Aspen Public Radio)
Thompson decided to study environmental engineering, water infrastructure and ecosystems after tens of thousands of dead salmon clogged the lower reaches of the river during a major drought in 2002, after a decision by the Bush administration that reversed environmental protections and allowed upper Klamath farmers to divert much of the remaining water.
“Witnessing thousands of fish die on the river firsthand as a 7-year-old really devastated me, personally, because these salmon are not just a food source for my family, they weren’t just our income — I paid for all my school clothes and supplies through selling fish as a kid — but they’re also a connection to family, they’re my connection to my ancestors and they’re really the lifeblood of the tribes here,” Thompson said.
Now that the dams are out, Thompson hopes reconnecting with the river, including through salmon fishing and recreation opportunities, can help address a rise in health concerns such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as mental health challenges faced by tribes in the region, including addiction and suicide.
“When you lose out on that culture, you’re having all these issues health-wise, and you’re having people die because of it,” Thompson said. “I know for me, if I’m not by the river, and I don’t get a chance to fish and pray and be thankful for this food that feeds my body, that connects me to my ancestors, then I don’t feel as well mentally either.”
Although the Klamath was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast, young people such as Ruby, the Karuk tribe member, had only heard stories about those days.
Carmen Ferris, in the red kayak, of the Hoopa Valley tribe, and Ruby Rain Williams, in the blue kayak, of the Karuk tribe, float on a peaceful stretch of the Klamath River the day before reaching the Pacific Ocean. The two young paddlers grew up hearing stories from their elders about a time when the undammed river was plentiful with salmon. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Journalism & Aspen Public Radio)
“My grandma and my dad always told me how there used to be so many salmon in the river, you used to be able to walk across their backs and almost make it across,” Ruby said. “There was such an abundance of them that my grandpa would go spearfishing and be able to see them swimming through the river, because it was so clean and healthy.”
During a fall scouting trip before their monthlong journey, Ruby and another young kayaker were some of the first to witness the salmon migrate past one of the former dam sites in Kikacéki Canyon.
“We looked down, and then there’s these salmon just flying up the river, and you could see their heads at the top of the river’s edge,” Ruby said. “I’ve never seen that before. And to be able to say that I saw some of the first set of salmon make it up above where the dams used to be was incredible.”
‘Only the beginning’
John Acuna, a Hoopa Valley tribe member and Ríos to Rivers kayak instructor, helped lead the group of young people on the Klamath just a few years after being introduced to the sport.
Despite nearing the end of a long expedition with only a day left on the river, Acuna sees the monthlong descent as the beginning of something bigger.
“This is the biggest dam removal in history, and kind of the question is ‘What do we do next?’” Acuna said. “The hope is that this sets a precedent for other dam-impacted rivers and dam-threatened rivers, and I think our work has kind of just begun.”
Young kayakers with Paddle Tribal Waters embrace a loved one on the beach July 11 after completing a 310-mile journey to the Pacific Ocean. Community members welcomed the paddlers home with a traditional prayer ceremony on the beach. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Journalism & Aspen Public Radio)
Ríos to Rivers board member and river guide Jaren Roberson, who grew up in Arizona, agrees — and he hopes the recent dam-removal can be a model for how his own Diné (Navajo) and Hopi tribes can have a greater say in how water is allocated in the Colorado River basin.
“Indigenous people should be figures in these resource management areas because they’re the ones who have been taking care of them and have been living in these places for generations and generations and generations,” Roberson said.
During the last few days of the trip, Boyles, Ríos to Rivers’ founder, invited Indigenous groups from Bolivia, Chile and New Zealand to join a flotilla with dozens of local tribe and community members, which accompanied the long-distance paddlers as they neared the end of their journey.
Paddle Tribal Waters youths run to touch the ocean at the mouth of the Klamath River aft9er finishing their monthlong journey July 11. Some of the young paddlers have already started their own kayak clubs in their communities to help other Indigenous youth reclaim their rivers. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Journalism & Aspen Public Radio)
Afterward, the visitors were invited to share their experiences with dams in their own communities during a two-day symposium on the Yurok Reservation, near the California towns of Requa and Klamath, where the river meets the ocean.
“In other basins, the mistakes of building dams, of destroying habitat, destroying culture, can be avoided if we learn from the past,” Boyles said, addressing the symposium crowd July 12. “And that’s a goal and a vision of ours, is to make sure that folks in river basins that have yet to be impacted or could avoid having the big impacts of dams, can come here to the Klamath and other parts of the world and learn from all of your lived experiences.”
Reaching the ocean
On July 11, the final day of the monthlong paddle, dozens of community members lined the beach and cheered as the flotilla, with the young kayakers leading the way, emerged from the mist and paddled toward the Pacific Ocean.
Clarence Hostler, of the Hoopa Valley, Yurok and Karuk tribes, and two younger men brought traditional drums to welcome the paddlers.
He grew up swimming on the river as a kid in the 1950s, but he had to stop after he got a rash from the toxic algae.
“So I hadn’t been on the water on the Klamath since 1965, and just a couple of days ago, I joined the paddle group and it was a stretch of river that I’d never been on because I didn’t want to get that rash again,” Hostler said. “And then being with the group, it settled with me that this was a triumph of a spirit coming back to the river, that we get to live with the river again after so many of us had to stay away from the river because of the contamination.”
Seeing the young kayakers paddle the river, after experiencing decades of violence, protests and legal battles over fishing and water rights on the Klamath, brought him to tears.
Clarence Hostler, of the Hoopa Valley, Yurok and Karuk tribes, waits on the shore at the mouth of the Klamath River to greet the young Indigenous paddlers as they reach the ocean. Having grown up on the river in the 1950s, Hostler witnessed decades of violence, protests and legal battles over fishing and water rights before the dams were removed last fall. (Eleanor Bennett / Aspen Journalism & Aspen Public Radio)
“A lot of the early warriors had to do the difficult work, and there are some of us, older ones, who carry the knowledge of old ways,” Hostler said. “But now, some real work starts with these young people who are activists on the water because there’s more contaminated water yet that needs to be worked on.”
As Carmen and her fellow kayakers reached the ocean and splashed in the waves, she felt the weight of that history.
“We shouldn’t be having to do this — like, there shouldn’t have been dams in the first place — but we fought a lot for nearly a century, for decades and decades, and now dams are finally out,” Carmen said.
Even with feelings of sadness and frustration over what her people endured, Carmen is proud of what she and her peers accomplished.
“We’re making history,” she said. “This is something I never thought I’d ever do, but I’m doing it today.”
Now that the dams are out, Carmen and several of the other young kayakers who have already started their own kayak clubs, are looking forward to returning to their communities to help the next generation of young paddlers reclaim their rivers and their ancestry.
This story was produced by Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
